She dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink and quickly did her few morning chores. Teeth cleaned and hair combed, with a smudge of blusher on each cheek in a bow to femininity, she grabbed her shoulder bag, locked the door behind her, and sauntered up the path towards the street.
She went out the front gate but halted when she saw it.
Lynley's silver Bentley was parked in the driveway.
“You're off your patch, aren't you, Inspector?” she asked him as he got out of the car.
“Winston phoned me. He said you'd left your car at the Yard last night and took a taxi home.”
“We'd guzzled a few drinks and it seemed the better course.”
“So he said. It was wise not to drive. I thought you might like a lift into Westminster. There are problems on the Northern Line this morning.”
“When aren't there problems on the Northern Line?”
He smiled. “So…?”
“Thanks.”
She slung her shoulder bag into the passenger seat and climbed inside. Lynley got in beside her, but he didn't start the car. Instead, he took something from his jacket pocket. He handed it over.
Barbara looked at it curiously. He'd given her a registration card for the Black Angel Hotel. It wasn't a blank card, however, which might have inspired her to think that he was offering her a holiday in Derbyshire. Rather, it was filled in with a name, an address, and other pertinent information about car types, number plates, passports, and nationalities. It had been made out to an M. R. Davidson, who had listed an address in West Sussex and an Audi as the vehicle that had carried him or her to the North.
“Okay,” Barbara said. “I'll bite. What is it?”
“A souvenir for you.”
“Ah.” Barbara anticipated his starting the Bentley. He didn't do so. He merely waited. So she said, “A souvenir of what?”
He said, “DI Hanken believed that the killer stayed at the Black Angel Hotel the night of the murders. He ran the cards of all the hotel guests through the DVLA to see if any of them were driving cars that were registered to a name different from the name they had put on the card. That was the one that didn't match up.”
“Davidson,” Barbara said, examining the card. “Oh yes. I see. David's son. So Matthew King-Ryder stayed at the Black Angel.”
“Not far from the moor, not far from Peak Forest, where the knife was found. Not far, as it turns out, from anything.”
“And the DVLA showed this Audi as registered to him,” Barbara concluded. “And not to an M. R. Davidson.”
“Things happened so quickly yesterday that we didn't actually see the report from the DVLA till late in the afternoon. The Buxton computers were down, so the information had to be compiled by phone. If they hadn't been down…” Lynley looked through the windscreen and spoke meditatively. “I want to believe that the fault lies in technology, that had we only got our hands on the DVLA information quickly enough, Andy Maiden would still be alive.”
“What?” Barbara breathed the word, astounded. “Still be alive? What happened to him?”
Lynley told her. He spared himself nothing, Barbara saw. But then, that was his way.
He concluded with “It was a judgement call on my part not to talk directly about Nicola's prostitution when her mother was present. It was what Andy wanted and I went along. Had I simply done what I should have done…” He gestured aimlessly. “I let my feelings for the man get in the way. I made the wrong call, and as a result he died. His blood is on my hands as indelibly as if I'd wielded the knife.”
“That's being a little rough on yourself,” Barbara said. “You didn't exactly have time to ponder the best way to handle things once Nan Maiden barged into your interview.”
“No. I could see that she knew something. But what I thought she knew-or at least believed-was that Andy had murdered their daughter. And even then I didn't bring the truth to light because I couldn't believe he'd murdered their daughter.”
“And he hadn't,” Barbara said. “So your decision was right.”
“I don't think you can separate the decision from the outcome,”
Lynley said. “I'd thought so before, but I don't think so now. The outcome exists because of the decision. And if the outcome is an unnecessary death, the decision was wretched. We can't twist the facts into a different picture no matter how much we'd like to do so.”
It sounded like a conclusion to Barbara. She treated it as such. She reached for her seat belt and pulled it round her. She was about to fasten it, when Lynley spoke again.
“You made the right decision, Barbara.”
“Yeah, but I had the advantage over you,” Barbara said. “I'd talked to Cilia Thompson in person. You hadn't. I'd talked to King-Ryder in person as well. And when I saw that he'd actually bought one of her gruesome paintings, it was easy for me to reach the conclusion that he was our man.”
“I'm not talking about this case,” Lynley said. “I'm talking about Essex.”
“Oh.” Barbara felt herself grow unaccountably small. “That,” she said. “Essex.”
“Yes. Essex. I've tried to separate the judgement call you made that day from its outcome. I kept insisting that the child might have lived had you not interfered. But you didn't have the luxury to make calculations about the boat's distance from the child and someone's ability to throw a life belt to her, did you, Barbara? You had an instant in which to decide what to do. And because of the decision you made, the little girl lived. Yet given the luxury of hours to think about Andy Maiden and his wife, I still made the wrong call in their case. His death's on my shoulders. The child's life is on yours. You can examine the situations any way you want to, but I know which outcome I'd prefer to be responsible for.”
Barbara looked away, in the direction of the house. She didn't quite know what to say. She wanted to tell him that she had lain awake nights and paced away days waiting for the moment when he'd say he understood and approved what she'd done that day in Essex, but now that the moment had finally come, she found that she couldn't bring herself to say the words. Instead, she muttered, “Thanks. Inspector. Thanks,” and she swallowed hard.
“Barbara! Barbara!” The cry came from the flagstone area in front of the ground floor flat. Hadiyyah was standing there, not on the stones but on the wooden bench in front of the french windows to the flat she shared with her dad. “Look, Barbara!” she crowed, and danced a little jig. “I got my new shoes! Dad said I didn't have to wait till Guy Fawkes. Look! I got my new shoes!”
Barbara lowered her window. “Excellent.” she called. “You're a picture, kiddo.”
Kiddo whirled and laughed.
“Who is that?” Lynley asked next to her.
“The child in question,” Barbara replied. “Let's get going, Inspector Lynley. We don't want to be late for work.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Those familiar with Derbyshire and the Peak District will attest to the fact that Calder Moor does not exist. I ask their pardon for the liberties I've taken in molding the landscape to fit the needs of my story.
I extend my most sincere thanks to the people who assisted me in England during my research for and my writing of In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner. Without them I would not have been able to take on the project. In the North, I thank Inspector David Barlow in Ripley and Paul Rennie of Outdoor Pursuits Services in Disley for putting me in the picture with regard to Mountain Rescue; Clare Lowery, at the police forensic science lab in Birmingham, for a crash course in forensic botany; Russell Jackson of Haddon Hall for a behind-the-scenes look at a fourteenth-century architectural jewel. In the South, I thank Chief Inspector Pip Lane in Cambridge for his assistance in enhancing my understanding of virtually every area of policing, from the Criminal Reporting Information Service to search warrants; James Mott in London for the helpful background on London's College of Law; Tim and Pauline East in Kent for information on and a demonstration of modern archery; Tom Foy in Kent for a lesson in arrow making and a heightened understanding of the crime in this novel; and Bettina Jamani in