In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(206)

Lynley handed it over. It was turned inside out, as it had been upon his discovery of it. But one of its edges was exposed, where the blood made a purple deposit in the shape of a leaf.

“Ah,” Hanken said when he saw it. “Yes. We'll get this over to forensic, then. But I'd say everything's over bar the shouting.”

Lynley didn't feel so certain. But why? he wondered. Was it because he couldn't believe Andy Maiden had killed his daughter? Or was it because the facts truly led elsewhere? “It looks deserted,” he said with a nod at the Hall.

“Due to the rain,” Hanken told him. “They're inside though. The lot of them. Most of the guests're gone, it being Monday. But the Maidens are here. As are the employees. Except for the chef. He generally doesn't show up till after two, they said.”

“Have you spoken to them? The Maidens?”

Hanken appeared to read the underlying meaning, because he said, “I haven't told the wife, Thomas,” and then transferred the waterproof to the front seat of the panda car. “Fryer!” he shouted in the direction of the slope. The family-floor constable looked up, then came at a trot when Hanken gestured him over. “The lab,” he said with a jerk of his head towards the car. “Drive that bag over for a work-up on the blood. See if you can get the job done by a girl called Kubowsky. She doesn't let grass grow, and we're in a hurry.”

The constable looked happy enough to be out of the rain. He removed his lime-coloured windcheater and hopped into the car. In less than ten seconds he was gone.

“Exercise in going through the motions,” Hanken said. “The blood's the boy's.”

“Doubtless,” Lynley agreed. Still, he looked towards the Hall. “D'you mind if I have a word with Andy?”

Hanken eyed him. “Can't accept it, can you?”

“I can't get away from the fact that he's a cop.”

“He's a human being. Governed by the same passions as the rest of us,” Hanken said. Mercifully, Lynley thought, he didn't add the rest: Andy Maiden was better than most people at doing something about those passions. Instead, Hanken said, “Mind you, remember that,” and strode off in the direction of the outbuildings.

Lynley found Andy and his wife in the lounge, in the same alcove where he and Hanken had first spoken to them. They weren't together this time, however. Rather, they sat, silent, on the opposing sofas. They were in identical positions: leaning forward with their arms resting just above their knees. Andy was rubbing his hands together. His wife was watching him.

Lynley obliterated from his mind the Shakespearean image that was invoked by Andy's attention to his hands. He said his former colleague's name. Andy looked up.

“What're they looking for?” he asked.

Lynley didn't miss the pronoun or its implication of a distinction between himself and the local police.

He said, “How are you both doing?”

“How do you expect we're doing? It's not enough that Nicola's been taken from us. But now you come and tear apart our home and our business without having the decency to tell us why. Just waving a filthy piece of paper from a magistrate and barging inside like a group of hooligans with—” Nan Maiden's anger threatened to give way to tears. She clenched her hands in her lap and, in a movement not unlike her husband's, she beat them together as if this would allow her to maintain a poise she'd already lost.

Maiden said, “Tommy?”

Lynley gave him what he could. “We've found her waterproof.”

“Where?”

“There's blood on it. The boy's most likely. We assume the killer wore it to protect his clothes. There may be other evidence on it. He'd have pulled it on over his hair.”

“Are you asking me for a sample?”

“You might want to arrange for a solicitor.”

“You can't think he did this!” Nan Maiden cried.

“Do you think I need a solicitor?” Maiden asked Lynley. And both of them knew what he was really asking: How well do you know me, Thomas? And: Do you believe I am as I appear to be?

Lynley couldn't reply in the way Maiden wanted. Instead, he said, “Why did you ask for me specifically? When you phoned the Yard, why did you ask for me?”

“Because of your strengths,” Maiden replied. “Among which was always honour first. I knew that I could depend on that. You'd do the right thing. And, if it came down to it, you'd keep your word.”

They exchanged a long look. Lynley knew its meaning. But he couldn't risk being played for a fool. He said, “We're approaching the end, Andy. Keeping my word or not isn't going to make a difference then. A solicitor's called for.”

“I don't need one.”

“Of course you don't need one,” his wife agreed quietly, having taken some strength, it seemed, from her husband's sense of calm. “You've done nothing. You don't need a solicitor when you've nothing to hide.”

Andy's gaze dropped back to his hands. He went back to massaging them. Lynley left the lounge.

For the next hour the search of Maiden Hall and its environs continued. But at the end of it, the five remaining constables had come up with nothing that resembled a long bow, the remains of a long bow, or any item related to archery. Hanken stood in the rain with the wind whipping his mac round his legs. He smoked and brooded, studying Maiden Hall as if its limestone exterior were hiding the bow in plain sight. His search team waited for further instructions, their shoulders hunched, their hair flattened against their skulls, and their eyelashes spiked by the rain. Lynley felt vindicated by Hanken's lack of success. If the other DI was going to suggest that Andy Maiden as their killer had removed every last bit of evidence related to archery from his home—without knowing they'd connected one of the two killings to archery in the first place—he was prepared to do battle on that front. No killer thought of everything. Even if that killer was a cop, he was going to make a mistake, and that mistake would hang him eventually.