In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(90)
Barbara winced and held her breath at the plural pronouns. No fool, Lynley. On his end of the line, he jumped at once.
Nkata said in reply with a glance at Barbara, “What? … No. Figure of speech, man … Yeah. Believe me, I got that engraved on my soul.” He listened as Lynley apparently relayed how things were playing out in his part of the world. He laughed outright at a piece of information, saying, “The fun of it? Lord, I believe that like the world is flat,” and toyed with the steel tubing of the telephone cord. After a few moments, he said, “Battersea right now. Barb said that Cole's flatmate'd be in for the evening, so I thought to have a look through his traps. Landlady wouldn't let Barb have a peek earlier and—” He stopped as Lynley interrupted at some length.
Barbara tried to read his expression for an indication of what the inspector was saying. The black man's face was completely blank. She whispered tersely, “What? What?”
Nkata waved her off. “Following up on those names you gave her,” he said. “Far as I know, at least. You know Barb.”
“Oh, thanks very much, Winston,” she whispered.
Nkata turned his shoulder and gave her his back. He went on to Lynley, saying, “Barb said the flatmate says anything's possible. The kid was flush with money—always had a wad of cash—and he never sold a stick of his art. Which isn't hard to believe when you see it. Blackmail's sounding nicer every minute.” Again he listened and he finally said, “That's why I want to have a recce. There's a connection somewhere. Has to be.”
That they were on the trail of something significant had been spelled out to them in the complete lack of personal detail in Nicola Maiden's Fulham bedroom. Apart from a few articles of clothing and an innocuous line of seashells on the window sill, there was nothing to suggest the room had ever been occupied by a real person. Barbara would have concluded that the Fulham address was a front and that the Maiden girl had never lived there at all had not the evidence of something having been removed betrayed Vi Nevin's use of the time between their speaking to her from the street and her appearance at the front door of the building. Two drawers in the large chest were completely empty, in the clothes cupboard a space on the hanging rail spoke of a few articles hastily deleted, and on top of the chest bare spots devoid of dust indicated that something had stood there until recently.
Barbara saw all of this, but she didn't bother to request a look at Vi Nevin's own bedroom for the missing items. The young woman had been plain enough earlier that she knew her rights under the law, and there was no point in pushing her to exercise them.
But it meant something that she'd performed the expurgation. And only a fool would walk away from the implications.
Nkata rang off and recounted Lynley's end of the investigation. Barbara listened carefully, looking for connections among the pieces of information they were gathering. When he was done, she said, “The Upman bloke claims he stuffed her on a one-off. But he could be Mr. Oooh-la-la from the postcards and be lying through his teeth, couldn't he?”
“Or lying about what it meant when he had her,” Nkata said. “He could've thought it was something important happening between them. She could've just been doing it for kicks.”
“And when he found out, he did her in? Where was he on Tuesday night, then?”
“Getting a massage near Manchester Airport. For stress, he said.”
Barbara whooped. “That's an alibi I've not heard before.” She slung her bag over her shoulder and jerked her head towards the door. They ducked out into Parkgate Road.
The house that contained Terry Cole's flat was less than five minutes by foot from the pub, and Barbara led Nkata to it. This time when she rang the buzzer next to the tag reading Cole/Thompson, the door catch was released in reply.
Cilia Thompson met them at the top of the stairs. She was dressed for a night out, her metallic silver mini-skirt and matching bustier and beret suggesting an imminent audition for a role in a feminist Wizard of Oz. She said, “I don't have much time.”
Barbara replied, “No problem. We don't need much.” She introduced Nkata and they went inside the flat which, occupying the second floor of the house, had been remodeled into two small bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen, and a loo the size of a larder. Not wanting to encounter another Vi Nevin situation, Barbara said, “We'd like to paw through everything, if that's okay with you. If Terry was into something dodgy, he might have left evidence of it anywhere. He might have hidden it as well.”
Cilla had nothing to hide, she informed them, but she didn't fancy them fingering through her knickers personally. She'd show them every one of her belongings, but that was the extent of it. They could do whatever serious trolling they wanted to do among Terry's lumber.
The rules established, they began in the kitchen, where the cupboards revealed nothing except a predilection for instant macaroni cheese which the flat's occupants appeared to consume by the gross. Several bills lay on the draining board—where what looked like six weeks of crockery was drying—and Nkata examined these and handed them over to Barbara. The telephone bill was respectable but not outrageously high. The electricity usage seemed normal. Neither bill was overdue; neither bill had gone unpaid during the previous billing period. The refrigerator was equally unilluminating. A limp lettuce and a plastic bag of sad-looking Brussels sprouts suggested that the flat's inhabitants hadn't been as conscientious about eating their veg as they should have been. But there was nothing more sinister inside the appliance than a tin of pea soup that was open and appeared to have been half eaten as it was, straight up with no heating. Barbara's stomach lurched. And she'd thought her culinary tastes were questionable.