In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(207)

Lynley said, “Let's go on to Broughton Manor, Peter. We've got the team, and it won't take long to get a second warrant.”

Hanken roused himself. He said, “Get back to the station,” to his men. And then to Lynley, when the constables had departed, “I want that report from SO 10. The one your man in London put together.”

“You can't still be thinking that this is a revenge killing. At least not one that's connected with Andy's past.”

“I don't think that,” Hanken said. “But our boy-with-a-past might have used that past in a way we've not considered yet.”

“How?”

“To find someone willing to do a nasty spot of work for him. Come along, Inspector. I've a mind to have a look through the records at your Black Angel Hotel.”





[page]CHAPTER 29


lthough they'd been thorough, the police had also been moderately gentle in their treatment of the Maidens’ personal belongings and the Hall's furnishings. Andy Maiden had seen far worse searches in his time, and he tried to take comfort from the fact that his brother policemen hadn't decimated his dwelling in their search. Still, the Hall had to be put back into order again. When the police had left, Andy, his wife, and their staff each took a separate section to straighten.

Andy was relieved that Nan had agreed to this reasonable plan of action. It kept her away from him for a while. He hated himself for wanting to be away from her. He knew she needed him, but with the departure of the police, Andy found himself desperate for solitude. He had to think. He knew he wouldn't be able to do so with Nan hanging over him, displacing her grief by locking her mind on the fruitless endeavour of caring for him. He didn't want his wife's care right now. Things had progressed too far for that.

The wheel of Nicola's death was coming closer and closer to breaking them both. Andy realised he could protect Nan from it while the investigation was on-going, but he didn't know how he could continue to do so once the police made an arrest. That they were getting closer to doing just that had been made only too evident by his brief conversation with Lynley. And in Tommy's suggestion that Andy ask for his solicitor's help, there was fair indication of exactly what the detectives’ next move would be.

Tommy was a good man, Andy thought. But there was only so much you could ask of a good man. When that good man's limit was reached, you had to place your confidence in yourself.

This was a principle that Nicola had seen. Blended with her insatiable desire to be gratified—now—whenever she had an inclination towards something, her reliance on herself before others had led her down the path she'd taken.

Andy had long known that his daughter's ambition in life was, simply expressed, never to go without. She'd seen the economies her parents had employed both to save towards the purchase of a country home and to channel funds to Andy's father, whose pension didn't cover his profligate ways. And more than once, especially when met with her parents’ refusal to accede to one of her demands, she'd announced that she would never find herself in a position of having to scrimp and save and deny herself life's simple pleasures, eschewing them for such barren activities as repairing sheets and pillowcases, turning collars on shirts, and darning socks. “You'd better not end up like Granddad, Dad,” she'd said to Andy on more than one occasion. “'cause I plan to spend all my money on me.”

Yet it really wasn't avarice that dominated her behaviour. Rather, it seemed to be a profound vacuity at the heart of her that she sought to fill with material possessions. How often he'd tried to explain to her mankind's essential dilemma: We are born of parents and into families, so we have connections, but we're ultimately alone. Our primitive sense of isolation creates a void within us. That void can be filled only through the nurturing of spirit. “Yes, but I want that motorbike,” she'd respond as if he hadn't just attempted to explain to her why the acquisition of a motorbike would not soothe a spirit whose singular needs were restless for acknowledgement. Or that guitar, she'd reply. Or that set of gold earrings, that trip to Spain, that flashy car. “And if there's money enough to buy it, I don't see why we shouldn't. What's spirit got to do with whether one has the money to buy a motorbike, Dad? Even if I wanted to, I can't spend money on my spirit, can I? So what am I supposed to do with money if I've ever got it? Throw it away?” And she'd list those individuals whose achievements or position garnered them vast reserves of cash: the Royal Family, erstwhile rock stars, business magnates, and entrepreneurs. “They've got houses and cars and boats and planes, Dad,” she would say. “And they're never alone either. And they don't look like they've got some big hollow in the pit of their stomachs, if you ask me.” Nicola was a persuasive supplicant when she wanted something, and nothing he could say was sufficient to make her see that she was merely observing the exterior lives of these people whose possessions she so admired. Who they were inside—and what they felt—was something that no one but them could know. And when she acquired what she had begged to possess, she wasn't able to see that it satisfied her only briefly. Her vision was occluded from this knowledge because what stood in the way was always the desire for the next object that she believed would soothe her soul.

And all of this—which would have made any child difficult to rear—was combined with Nicola's natural propensity for living life on the edge. She'd learned that from him, from watching him shift from persona to persona over the years of undercover work and from listening to the tales told by his colleagues over family dinners when they'd all drunk too much wine. Andy and his wife had kept from their daughter the other side of those acts of bravado that so regaled her. She never knew the personal price her father paid as his health crumbled beneath his mind's inability to divide itself into separate arenas serving who he was and who his work forced him to pretend to be. She was supposed to see her dad as strong, complete, and indomitable. Anything else would shake her foundations, they assumed.