In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (31 page)

Barbara shot Nkata an admiring glance. She liked that he was willing to cut to the chase.

“I happen to be in love with my wife,” Reeve said deliberately. “Tricia and I have been together for twenty years, and if you think I'd jeopardise everything we have for a one-time romp with a college girl, then you're wrong.”

“There's nothing to suggest it was a one-off,” Barbara said.

“One-off or every night of the week,” Reeve countered, “I wasn't interested in a liaison with Nicola Maiden.” He seemed to stiffen as his thoughts suddenly took another direction. He drew in a shallow breath and reached for a silver letter opener that sat in the middle of his desk. He said, “Has someone told you otherwise? Has my good name been slandered by someone? I insist on knowing. Because if that's the case, I'll be talking to my solicitor.”

He was definitely an American, Barbara thought wearily. She said, “Do you know a bloke called Terry Cole, Mr. Reeve?”

“Terry Cole? C-o-l-e? I see.” As he spoke, Reeve reached for a pen and a pad of paper and scrawled the name. “So he's the little bastard who's said that—”

“Terry Cole's dead,” Nkata cut in. “He didn't say anything. He died with the Maiden girl in Derbyshire. You know him?”

“I've never heard of him. When I asked who'd told you … Look here. Nicola's dead and I'm sorry she's dead. But I haven't seen her since the end of April. I haven't talked to her since the end of April. And if someone out there is besmirching my good name, I mean to take whatever steps are necessary to rout the bastard out and make him pay.”

“Is that your usual reaction when you're crossed?” Barbara asked.

Reeve set down his pen. “This interview's over.”

“Mr. Reeve …”

“Please leave. You've had my time and I've told you what I know. If you think I'm going to play police patsy and sit here while you attempt to lead me down the garden path towards some sort of self-incrimination …” He pointed at them both. He had, Barbara saw, inordinately small hands, his knuckles cross-hatched with myriad scars. “You guys need to be less obvious,” he said. “Now, get out of here. Pronto.”

There was nothing for it but to accede to his request. Good expatriate Yank that he was, his next move surely was going to be to ring up his solicitor and claim harassment. There was no point pushing anything further.

“Nice work, Winston,” Barbara said when her colleague had unlocked the Bentley and they'd climbed inside. “You put him on the ropes quick and proper.”

“No sense in wasting our time.” He examined the building. “I wonder if there's a real Children in Need do going on at the Dorchester today.”

“There must be something going on somewhere. She was dressed up to the nines, wasn't she?”

Nkata looked at Barbara. His glance traveled over her clothes sorrowfully “With all respect, Barb …”

She laughed. “All right. What do I know about the nines anyway?”

He chuckled and started the car. Pulling away from the pavement, he said, “Seat belt, Barb.”

Barbara said, “Oh. Right,” and turned in her seat to reach for it.

Which was when she saw Tricia Reeve. The assistant director of MKR had taken herself nowhere near the Dorchester, as things turned out. She was skulking round the side of the building, hastening up the front steps, and heading straight for the door.

he moment the cops were out of his office, Martin Reeve pressed the call button that was recessed into one of the shelves on which his collection of Henley photos were arranged. Just as the phony college diplomas were part of the Martin Reeve Story, the Henley photos were a vital piece of the Martin and Tricia Reeve Romance. It was part of their manufactured history that they'd first met at the Regatta. He'd been telling the apocryphal tale of their introduction for so long that he'd begun to believe it himself.

His call was answered in less than five seconds, a record. Jaz Burns entered the room without knocking. “A real cow, she was,” he said with a smirk. “Fancy shagging her, Marty. You'd not soon forget it.”

From his lair at the back of the house, it was Jaz's habit to play Peeping Tom with the surveillance equipment in Martin's office. He had an annoying tendency to voyeurism, which Martin was willing to overlook in the cause of employing his other talents.

“Follow them,” Martin said. “The cops? There's a turnaround for you. What's up?”

“Later. Get on it now.”

Jaz was astute at reading nuances. He jerked his head in a nod, snatched up the keys to the Jaguar, and slipped soundlessly from the room on cat-burglar feet. The door hadn't been closed behind him for more than fifteen seconds, however, when it opened again.

Martin swung round in agitation, saying, “God damn it, Jaz,” and ready to berate his employee for whatever dawdling had caused him to lose the cops’ trail before they'd even begun to lay it. But Tricia, not the spritelike Burns, stood there, and the expression on her face told Martin that a Scene was coming.

Fuck it, he wanted to say, not now. At the moment he didn't have the resources to soothe Tricia through an attack of the Shrills.

“What are you doing here? Tricia, you're supposed to be at the tea.”

“I couldn't.” She shut the door behind her.

“What do you mean, you couldn't? You're expected. This has been set up for months. I pulled a dozen strings to get you on that committee, and if you're on the committee, you're supposed to turn up. You've got the God damn list, Patricia. How're those women supposed to carry on this event—and, by the way, how are we supposed to maintain our good name—if you can't be relied upon to show up on time with a seating plan in your possession?”

“What did you tell them about Nicola?”

He blew out a breath on the word shit. “Is that why you're here? Am I clear on that? You've failed in your part to show open support for one of the worthiest causes in the UK because you want to know what I told the cops about a fucking dead bitch?”

“I don't like that language.”

“Which part? Fucking? Dead? Or bitch? Let's get it straight, because right at this moment there are five hundred women and photographers from every publication in the country waiting for you to appear and God knows you won't be able to manage it if we aren't clear on which part of my language bothers you.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them the truth.” He was so irritated that he could almost enjoy the expression of horror that crossed her face.

“What?” When she asked, the question was hoarse.

“Nicola Maiden was a trainee financial advisor. She quit last April. If she hadn't quit, I would have fired her.”

Tricia relaxed noticeably. Martin went on. He vastly preferred his wife on edge. “I'd love to know where the little bitch took herself off to from here, and with any luck, I'll have that information from Jaz within the hour. Cops are nothing if not predictable. If she had a place in London—and my money says she had—then the cops're going to lead us straight to it.”

The tension was, gratifyingly, back in an instant. “Why d'you want to know? What're you going to do?”

“I don't like disrespect, Patricia. You of all people ought to know that. I don't like to be lied to. Trust is the bedrock of any relationship, and if I don't do something when someone screws me over, then it's open season for everyone to take Martin Reeve for all that he's worth. Well, I won't allow that.”

“You had her, didn't you?” Tricia's face was pinched.

“Don't be an idiot.”

“You think I can't tell. You say to yourself, ‘Dear Trish's doped up to her eyeballs half the time. What could she possibly notice?’ But I do. I saw how you looked at her. I knew when it happened.”

Martin sighed. “You need a hit. Sorry to put it so crudely, my dear. I know you'd prefer to avoid the topic. But the truth of the matter is that you always get weird in the head when you're coming down too fast. You need another hit.”

“I know what you're like.” Her voice was rising, and he wondered idly if he could manage the needle without her cooperation. But how the hell much was she shooting up these days anyway? Even if he could cope with the needle and the syringe, the last thing he needed was his wife carted off in a coma. “I know how you like to be the boss, Martin. And what better way is there to prove you're in charge than to tell some college girl to drop her knickers and then watch how fast she's willing to do it.”

“Tricia, this is such awesome bullshit. Are you listening to yourself?”

“So you had her. And then she walked away. Poof. She was gone. Vanished.” Tricia snapped her fingers. Rather weakly, Martin noticed. “And that felt nasty, didn't it? And we know how you react when something feels nasty.”

Speaking of which … Martin itched to strike her. He would have done so had he not been certain that, doped up or not, she'd run straight home to Daddy in an instant with the tale. Daddy would make certain demands if she did that. Detox first. Divorce after that.

Neither of which was acceptable to Martin. Marriage into wealth—no matter that the money came from a successful antiques business and hadn't been passed down through successive generations in best blue-blood fashion—had garnered for him a degree of social acceptance that he'd never have acquired as a mere immigrant to the country, no matter how successful in business he might be. He had no intention of giving that social acceptance up.

“We can have this discussion later,” he said with a glance at his pocket watch. “For now, you still have time to get to the tea without thoroughly humiliating yourself or me. Say it was the traffic: a pedestrian hit by a taxi in Notting Hill Gate. You stopped to hold his hand—no, make it a woman and a child—till the ambulance arrived. A hole in your stocking would support the story, by the way.”

“Don't dismiss me like some mindless tart.”

“Then stop acting like one.” He shot the retort back without thinking and immediately regretted it. What possible purpose could be served by escalating an idiotic discussion into a fully blown row? “Look, sweetheart,” he said, aiming for conciliation, “let's stop the bickering. We're letting ourselves get thrown by a simple, routine visit from the cops. As far as Nicola Maiden goes—”

“We haven't done it in months, Martin.”

He went steadily on. “—it's unfortunate that she's dead, it's unfortunate that she was murdered, but as we weren't involved in what happened to her—”

“We. Haven't. Fucked. Since. June.” Her voice rose. “Are you listening to me? Are you hearing what I'm saying?”

“I'm doing both,” he replied. “And if you weren't blitzed most hours of the day, you'd find your memory improving.”

That, at least and thank God, stopped her. She, after all, had no more wish than he had to end their marriage. He served a purpose in her life that was as necessary to her as the purpose she served was necessary to him: He kept her supply lines open and her secret safe; she increased his mobility and garnered from his fellows the sort of deference one man shows another when that other has possession of a beautiful woman. Thus, she very much wanted to believe. And in Martin's experience, when people desperately wanted to believe, they talked themselves into believing just about anything. In this case, however, Tricia's belief wasn't far from the truth. He did indeed do her when she was tripped out. She just didn't know he preferred it that way.

She said in a smaller voice, “Oh,” and she blinked.

“Yes,” he said. “Oh. All through June, July, and August. Last night as well.”

She swallowed. “Last night?”

He smiled. She was his.

He went to her. “Lets not let the cops wreck what we have, Trish. They're after a killer. They're not after us.” He touched her lips with the battle-weary knuckles of his right hand. Left hand on her buttocks, he drew her near. “Now, isn't that right? Isn't it true that what the police are looking for, they won't find here?”

“I've got to get off the stuff,” she whispered.

He urged her down for a kiss. “One thing at a time,” he said.

In his room at the Black Angel Hotel, Lynley discarded his suit and tie in favour of jeans, hiking boots, and the old waxed jacket that he generally wore in Cornwall, an ancient possession of his long-dead father. He kept glancing at the telephone as he dressed, alternately willing it to ring and willing himself to make the call from this end.

There had been no message from Helen. He'd excused her silence that morning as a result of her late night with Deborah St. James and her probable subsequent lie-in, but he was having difficulty excusing a silence that had apparently continued well into mid-afternoon. He'd even phoned down to Reception, asking that they double-check on his messages, but an extended foray into pigeon holes and rubbish baskets hadn't produced anything different from what he'd had at the beginning: His wife hadn't phoned. Nor had anyone else, for that matter, but silence from the rest of the world didn't concern him. Silence from Helen did.

In the way of people who believe they're in the right, he replayed their conversation of the previous morning. He checked it for subtext and nuance, but no matter how he examined it, he came out on top. The fact was simplicity itself. His wife had been interfering in his professional life, and she owed him an apology. She had no business second-guessing decisions that he made as part of his work any more than he had a place instructing her how and when she could assist St. James in his lab. In the personal arena they each had a vested interest in knowing the others hopes, resolutions, and desires. In the world of their individual occupations, they owed each other kindness, consideration, and support. That his wife—as was clearly indicated by her undeniably perverse refusal to phone him—didn't wish to adhere to this basic and reasonable manner of coexisting was a source of disillusionment to him. He'd known Helen for sixteen years. How could he have gone such a time without actually knowing her at all?”

He checked his watch. He looked out of the window and made note of the sun's position in the sky. There were several good hours of daylight left, so he had no need to rush off right at the moment. Knowing this, and knowing what he could well do because of this, he procrastinated by checking to make sure he had a compass, a torch, and an Ordnance Survey map tucked into the various pockets of his jacket.