The second message began with a bright “Hello hello”, followed by three breathy notes of music. “Did you hear that? I'm learning flute. I just got it today after school and I'm to be in the orchestra! They asked me special and I asked Dad would it be okay and he said yes so now I play flute. Only I don't play it very well yet. But I'm practising. I know the scale. Listen.” There followed a clatter as the phone was dropped. Afterwards came eight highly hesitant notes, breathy like the first. Then, “See? The teacher says I've a natural talent, Barbara. Do you think so as well?” The voice was interrupted by another, a man's voice speaking quietly in the background. Then, “Oh. This is Khalidah Hadiyyah. Up front in the ground floor flat. Dad says I forgot to tell you that. I expect you know it's me though, don't you?
I wanted to remind you about my sewing lesson. It's tomorrow and you said you wanted to see what I'm making. D'you still want to go? We c'n have the rest of the toffee apple afterwards, for our tea. Pang me back, okay?” And the phone clunked down at her end of the line.
After which Barbara heard the quiet, well-bred tones of Inspector Lynley's wife. Helen said, “Barbara, Winston's just returned the Bentley. He told me you're working on the case here in town. I'm so glad, and I wanted to tell you so. I know your work will put you back in good standing with everyone at the Yard. Barbara, will you be patient with Tommy? He thinks the world of you, and … Well, I hope you know that. It's just that the situation … what happened this past summer … it took him rather by surprise. So … Oh bother. I just wanted to wish you well on the case. You've always worked brilliantly with Tommy, and I know this instance will be no different.”
At which Barbara winced. Her conscience prickled. But she muffled the voice that told her she'd been acting in defiance of Lynley's orders for a good part of the day, and she silently announced that she wasn't defying anyone at all. She was merely taking the initiative, supplementing her assignment with additional activities demanded by the logic of the unfolding investigation.
It was as good an excuse as any.
She kicked off her shoes and flopped onto the day bed, where she pulled the elastic band from the collection of postcards she was carrying. She began to flip through them. And as she did so, she thought of the myriad ways in which Terry Cole's life—as it was unfolding through her investigation of it—was unveiling him as a killer's target while Nicola Maiden's life—no matter how they viewed it—was unveiling her as nothing more than a sexually active twenty-five-year-old who'd had one or two men in every port and a wealthy lover by the string. And while sexual jealousy on the part of one of those men might have led him to give the girl the chop, he certainly wouldn't have needed to do the job out on the moor, especially when he saw that she was with someone. It would have made more sense for him to wait till he found her alone. Unless, of course, she and Terry had been into something at that moment that made him think they were an item. In which case, blinded by rage and jealousy, he could well have stormed into the stone circle and attacked his rival for the Maiden girl's favours, running her down as well after he'd wounded the boy. But that seemed an unlikely scenario. Nothing Barbara had learned about Nicola Maiden had so far suggested that she'd gone for unemployed teenaged boys.
Terry, on the other hand, was turning out to be a field ripe for harvest when it came to activities from which murder could arise. According to Cilia, he'd carried gobs of cash with him, and the postcards that Barbara now arranged on her day bed suggested a field of underworld employment that was absolutely rife with violence. Despite what his mother claimed about the big commission that Terry had, despite what Mrs. Baden had asserted about the boy's good nature and generosity, it was seeming more and more likely that the real Terry Cole had lived close to if not directly within the underbelly of English life. Tied to that underbelly were drugs, pornography, snuff films, paedophilia, exotica, erotica, and white slavery. Not to mention a hundred tasty perversions, all of which could so easily give rise to a motive for murder.
But in Nicola's case, nearly everything had been accounted for: from her lifestyle in London to her supply of dosh. They still had to discover why she'd gone to work in Derbyshire for the summer, but what on earth could that possibly have to do with her murder?
On the other hand, virtually nothing about Terry Cole's life had made sense at all. Until Barbara had unearthed the postcards.
She gazed upon them in their orderly rows on the day bed and pursed her lips. Come on, she told them, give me something to run with. I know it's here, I know one of you can tell me, I know, I know.
She could still hear Cilia Thompson's passionate reaction to seeing the cards: “He never would've told me about this. Never in a hundred years. He was pretending to be an artist, for God's sake. And artists spend their time on their art. When they're not creating, they're thinking about creating. They're not crawling round London sticking these up everywhere. Art begets art so you expose yourself to art. This”—with a contemptuous gesture towards the cards—“is a life exposed to absolute crap.”