“Do what?” Hanken asked.
And Lynley told him. Hanken listened to the story with a fair amount of incredulity. Midway through, he said, “Hell's bells. Damn. Hang on, Thomas. I'll need to take some notes,” and he went from the garage into the kitchen, where his wife was supervising his two daughters’ lunch while his infant son dozed in a baby carrier that was set on the work top. Clearing off a space next to Sarah, who'd separated her egg sandwich into halves, which she was smearing on her face, he said, “Right. Go on,” and began jotting down places, activities, and names. He whistled softly as Lynley told the tale of Nicola Maiden's clandestine life as a London prostitute. Dazed, he looked at his own young daughters as Lynley explained the dead girl's speciality. He found that he felt torn by the need to make accurate notes and the desire to crush Bella and Sarah to his heart—grimy with egg mayonnaise though they were—as if by that action he could ensure that their future would be blessed with the safety of normalcy. It was, in fact, in consideration of his girls that Hanken said, “Thomas, what about Maiden?” when Lynley had concluded his remarks by explaining that his next move was going to be to track down Vi Nevin's former flatmate Shelly Platt, sender of the anonymous letters. “If he somehow found out that his daughter was turning tricks in London … Can you imagine what that would have done to him?”
“I think it's more profitable to consider what that knowledge would have done to a man who thought he was her lover. Upman and Britton—even Ferrer—seem far more likely than Andy for the role of Nemesis.”
“Not when you consider how a father thinks: ‘I gave her life.’ What if he also thought her life was his to take away?”
“We're talking about a cop, Peter, a decent cop. An exemplary cop without a single black mark on his whole career.”
“Right. Fine. But this situation has sod all to do with Maidens career. What if he went to London? What if he stumbled on the truth? What if he tried to talk her out of her lifestyle—and I want to be sick even calling it a lifestyle—but failed and knew there was only a single way to end it? Because, Thomas, if he didn't end it, the girl's mum would have discovered it eventually and Maiden couldn't abide the thought of what that would do to the woman he loves.”
“That goes for the others as well,” Lynley countered. “Upman and Britton. They'd want to talk her out of it. And with far more reason. Christ, Peter. Sexual jealousy goes a greater distance than protecting a mother from having to hear the truth about her child. You must see that.”
“He found that car. Out of sight. Behind a wall. In the middle of the God damn bloody White Peak.”
“Pete, the children …” Hanken's wife admonished him, delivering glasses of milk to their daughters.
Hanken nodded in acknowledgement as Lynley said, “I know this man. He doesn't have a violent bone in his body. He had to leave the Yard, for God's sake, because he couldn't stomach the job any longer. So where and when did he develop the capacity—the blood lust—to beat in his own child's skull? Let's do some digging on Up-man and Britton—and Ferrer if we have to. They're unknown quantities. There are at least two hundred people at the Yard who can testify that Andy Maiden isn't. Now, the flatmate—Vi Nevin—is insisting we talk to Upman again. She may be temporising, but I say we start with him.”
It was, Hanken realised, the logical place to begin. But something about tackling the enquiry from that direction didn't feel right to him. “Are you personalising this in some way?”
“I might very well ask the same of you” was Lynley's reply. Before Hanken could argue, the London DI concluded the call with the information that Terry Cole's black leather jacket was missing from the personal effects Usted on the receipt that had been handed over to his mother on the previous morning. “It makes sense to have a thorough look for it among the crime scene evidence before we rally the troops,” he pointed out. And then, as if he wished to smooth over their disagreement, he added, “What do you think?”
“I'll see to that at this end,” Hanken said.
The call concluded, he looked at his family: Sarah and Bella shredding their sandwiches and dipping the torn bits of bread into their milk, PJ awakening and beginning to fret for his own lunch, and Hanken's own darling Kathleen unbuttoning her blouse, loosening the nursing bra, and raising their son to her swollen breast. They were a miracle to him, his little family. He would, he knew, go to any extreme to keep them from harm.
“We're richly blessed, Katie,” he said to his wife as she sat at the table where Bella was inserting a carrot stick into her sister's right nostril. Sarah screamed in protest and startled PJ. He turned from his mother's milk and began to wail.