In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(92)

“There's not much here if he's pushing,” Nkata said to Barbara.

“Maybe he's got a cache somewhere else.”

But aside from a lumpy overstuffed chair, the only other article of furniture in the room that afforded a hiding place was the bed. It seemed too obvious to be likely, but Barbara went through the manoeuvre anyway: She lifted the edge of an old chenille counterpane. Doing so, she exposed the side of a cardboard box that had been shoved beneath the bed.

“Ah,” Barbara said. “Perhaps, perhaps …” She crouched and drew the box towards her. Its flaps were tucked in, but they weren't sealed. She separated them and examined the box's contents.

They were, she discovered, postcards, several thousand of them. But they were definitely not the kind that one sent home to the family while on one's yearly hols in regions afar. These postcards weren't for greeting purposes. They weren't for sending messages. They weren't souvenirs. What they were, however, was the first indication of who had killed Terry Cole and why.

A detective constable had been sent to fetch the Maidens to Buxton for their inspection of their daughter's effects. Hanken had pointed out that a mere request for their presence would likely be met with a postponement on their part, since the dinner hour was fast approaching and the Maidens would claim to be tied up seeing to the needs of their guests. “If we want an answer tonight, we fetch them,” Hanken said not unreasonably.

An answer that night would be helpful, Lynley concurred. So while he and Hanken tucked into rigatoni puttanesca at the Firenze Restaurant in Buxton market square, DC Patty Stewart went to Padley Gorge to fetch the parents of the dead girl. By the time the DIs had finished their meal and topped it off with two espressos apiece, Stewart had telephoned to Hanken that Andrew and Nan Maiden were waiting at the station.

“Have Mott sign out the girl's belongings to you,” Hanken directed her from his mobile. “Lay them out in room four and wait for us.”

They were no more than five minutes from Buxton station. Hanken took his time about seeing to the bill. He wanted to make the Maidens sweat if he could, he explained to Lynley. He liked everyone on edge in an investigation because one never knew what a case of nerves could turn up.

“I thought you'd switched your interest to Will Upman,” Lynley remarked to his colleague.

“I'm interested in everyone. I want them all on edge,” Hanken replied. “It's a treat what people will suddenly remember when the pressure builds.”

Lynley didn't point out that Andy Maiden's experience with SO 10 had probably conditioned him to weathering a great deal more pressure than would develop during quarter of an hour's wait for two colleagues inside a police station. This was, after all, still Hanken's case, and he was proving himself to be an accommodating colleague.

“I'm sorry to have missed you this afternoon,” Lynley told Nan Maiden when she and her husband were ushered into room four, where he and Hanken stood on either side of a large pine table. On this, Nicola's possessions had been laid out by DC Stewart, who remained by the door with a notepad in her hand.

“I'd gone out for a bike ride,” Nan Maiden said.

“Andy said you were on Hathersage Moor. Is that a tough ride?”

“I like the exercise. It's not as rough as it sounds.”

“Run into anyone else while you were out there?” Hanken asked.

Andy Maiden's arm went round his wife's shoulders. She replied evenly enough. “Not today. I had the moor to myself.”

“Go out often, do you? Mornings, afternoons? Nights as well?”

Nan Maiden frowned. “I'm sorry, are you asking me—” Her husband's grip, tightening on her shoulders, was enough to stop her.

Andy Maiden said, “I think you wanted us to look through Nicola's belongings, Inspector.”

He and Hanken observed each other across the width of the table. By the door, DC Stewart glanced between them, her pencil poised. Outside the building, a car alarm went off.

Hanken was the one to blink. He said, “Have a go,” with a nod at the articles on the table. “Is there anything missing? Or anything not hers?”

The Maidens moved slowly, inspecting each item. Nan Maiden reached out and fingered a navy sweater with a strip of ivory defining its neckline.

She said, “The neck wasn't right … the way it lay on her skin. I wanted to change it, but she wouldn't have that. She said, ‘You made it, Mum, and that's what counts.’ But I wish I'd fixed it. It would've been no trouble.” She blinked several times, and her breathing became shallow. “I don't see anything. I'm sorry. I'm being so little help.”

Andy Maiden put his hand on the back of his wife's neck and said, “A few moments more, love.” He urged her along the table. He, however, rather than she, was the one to notice what wasn't among the items gathered from the scene of the crime. “Nicola's rain gear,” he told them. “It's blue, hooded. A waterproof. It isn't here.”

Hanken shot a glance at Lynley. Corroboration for your theory, his expression said.

“It didn't rain Tuesday night, did it?” Nan Maiden's question was non-sequiturial. They all knew that anyone who hiked on the moors had to be prepared for swift changes in weather.

Andy spent the longest time with the implements from the camp site: the compass, the stove, the pot, the map case, the trowel. His forehead creased as he examined everything. Then he finally said, “Her pocket knife's missing as well.”