I Peter Hanken apparently decided to show mercy when it came to the Marlboros. The first actions he took when they were on the road from Buxton to Padley Gorge were to lean over, flip open the Fords glove compartment, and pluck out a packet of sugarless gum. As he folded a stick of it into his mouth, Lynley blessed him for his willingness to abstain from tobacco.
The DI didn't speak as the A6 began its course through Wye Dale, hugging the placid river for several miles before dipping slightly to the southeast. It wasn't until they passed the second of the limestone quarries scarring the landscape that he made his first comment.
“Newlywed, is it?” he said with a smile. Lynley steeled himself for the ribald humour that was doubtless coming, the price one generally paid for legitimising a relationship with a woman. “Yes. Just three months. That's longer than most Hollywood marriages, I expect.”
“It's the best time. You and the wife starting out. There's nothing else like it. Your first?”
“Marriage? Yes. For both of us. We got a late start.”
“All the better.”
Lynley glanced at his companion warily, wondering if the fallout from his parting argument with Helen could be read on his face, acting on Hanken as an inspiration for a tongue-in-cheek panegyric to the blessings of the marital state. But all he saw in Hanken's expression was the evidence of a man who seemed content with his life.
“Name's Kathleen,” the DI confided. “We've got three kids. Sarah, Bella, and PJ. That's Peter Junior, our newest. Here. Have a look.” He pulled a wallet from his jacket pocket and handed it over. In pride of place was a family photo: two small girls cuddling a blue-blanketed newborn on a hospital bed with Mum and Dad cuddling the two small girls. “Family's everything. But you'll be finding that out for yourself soon enough.”
“I dare say.” Lynley tried to picture himself and Helen similarly surrounded by winsome offspring. He couldn't do it. If he summoned up his wife's image at all, it was as it had been earlier that day, pale-faced as she left him.
He stirred uncomfortably in his seat. He didn't want to discuss marriage at the moment, and he offered a silent imprecation to Nkata for having brought up the subject at all. “They're brilliant,” he said, handing the wallet back to Hanken.
“Boy's the image of his dad,” Hanken said. “Hard to tell from that snap, of course. But there you have it.”
“They're a handsome group.”
To Lynley's relief, Hanken took this as sufficient closing comment on the subject. He returned his full attention to the driving. He gave the road the same concentration that he appeared to give everything else in his immediate environment, a characteristic of the man that Lynley had had little difficulty in deducing. After all, there hadn't been a paper out of place in his office, he was running the most orderly incident room in Lynley's memory, and his clothes made him look as if his next destination were a photo shoot for GQ magazine.
They were on their way to see the parents of the dead girl, having just met the Home Office pathologist who'd traveled up from London to perform the post-mortems. They'd had their conference with her outside the post-mortem room, where she was changing from trainers into court shoes, one of which she was in the process of repairing by pounding its heel into the metal plate on the door. Announcing that women's shoes—not to mention their handbags—were designed by men to promote the enslavement of the female sex, she had eyed the DIs’ comfortable footwear with undisguised hostility and said, “I can give you ten minutes. The report'll be on your desk in the morning. Which one of you is Hanken, by the way? You? Fine. I know what you want. It's a knife with a three-inch blade. Folding knife—pocket knife—most likely, although it could be a small one used in the kitchen. Your killers right-handed and strong, quite strong. That's for the boy. The girl was done in with that chunk of stone you had off the moor. Three blows to the head. Right-handed assailant as well.”
“The same killer?” Hanken asked.
The pathologist gave her shoe five final pounds against the door as she reflected on the question. She said brusquely that the bodies could tell only what they'd told: how they'd been robbed of life, what sort of weapons had been used against them, and whether a right or left hand had wielded those weapons. Forensic evidence—fibres, hairs, blood, sputum, skin, and the like—might tell a longer, more precise story, but they'd have to queue to get the reports back from the lab for that. The naked eye could discern only so much, and she'd told them what that so much was.