DI Hanken appeared to take a fairly quick measure of what was implied by her reaction. He was observing Andy Maiden with a decidedly unsympathetic eye. He asked no questions in response to Nan's revelation though. Like a good cop, he merely waited.
In the aftermath of all this, Maiden waited as well. Still, he apparently reached the conclusion that something was required of him by way of explanation for his incomprehensible behaviour. “Love, I'm sorry,” he said to Nan. “I couldn't … I'm sorry. Nan, I could barely cope with the fact that she'd died, let alone tell … let alone have to face … have to begin to deal with …” He spent a moment rigidly marshaling the inner resources a policeman learned to develop in order to live through the worst of the worst. His right hand—still in possession of the ball his wife had given him—clutched and released it spasmodically. “I'm so sorry,” he said brokenly “Nan.”
Nan Maiden raised her head. She watched him for a moment. Then her hand—shaking as it was—reached out and closed over his arm. She spoke to the police.
“Would you …” Her lips quivered. She didn't go on until she had the emotion under control. “Tell me what happened.”
DI Hanken obliged with minimal details: He explained where Nicola Maiden had died and how, but he told them nothing more.
“Would she have suffered?” Nan asked when Hanken had concluded his brief remarks. “I know you can't be positive. But if there's anything that might allow us to feel that at the end … anything at all …”
Lynley recounted what the Home Office pathologist had told them.
Nan reflected on the information for a moment. In the silence, Andy Maiden's breath sounded loud and harsh. Nan said, “I wanted to know because … D'you think … Would she have called out for one of us … would she have hoped … or needed … ?” Her eyes filled. She stopped talking.
Hearing the questions, Lynley was reminded of the old moors murders, the monstrous tape recording that Myra Hindley and her cohort had made, and the anguish of the dead girl's mother when the recording had been played at the trial and she'd had to listen to her child's terrified voice crying out for her mummy in the midst of her murder. Isn't there a certain kind of knowledge, he thought, that shouldn't be revealed publicly because it can't be borne privately? He said, “The blows to the head knocked her unconscious at once. She stayed that way.”
“And on her body, were there other … Had she been … Had anyone … ?”
“She wasn't tortured.” Hanken cut in as if he, too, felt the need to show some mercy to the dead girl's mother. “She wasn't raped. We'll have a fuller report later, but at the moment it seems that the blows to the head were all that she”—he paused, it seemed, in the search for a word that connoted the least pain—“experienced.”
Maiden said, “She looked asleep. White. Like chalk. But still asleep.”
“I want that to make it better,” Nan said. “But it doesn't.”
And nothing will, Lynley thought. “Andy, we've got a possible identification on the second body. We're going to need to press forward. We think the boy was called Terence Cole. He had a London address, in Shoreditch. Is his name familiar to you?”
“She wasn't alone?” The glance Nan Maiden cast at her husband told the police that he'd withheld this information from her as well.
“She wasn't alone,” Maiden said.
Hanken clarified the situation for Nan Maiden, explaining that the camping gear of one person only—which he would later ask Maiden to identify as belonging to his daughter—had been within the enclosure of Nine Sisters Henge along with the body of a teenaged boy who himself had no gear other than the clothes on his back.
“That motorcycle by her car.” Maiden pulled his facts together quickly. “It belonged to him?”
“To a Terence Cole,” Hanken affirmed. “Not reported stolen and so far not claimed by anyone coming off the moor. It's registered to an address in Shoreditch. We've a man heading there now to see what's what, but it seems likely that we've got the right ID. Is the name familiar to either of you?”
Maiden shook his head and said, “Cole. Not to me. Nan?”
“I don't know him. And Nicola … Surely she would have talked about him if he was a friend of hers. She would have brought him round to meet us as well. When did she not? That's … It was her way.”
Andy Maiden then spoke perspicaciously, asking a logical question that rose from his years of policing. “Is there any chance that Nick—” He paused and seemed to prepare his wife for the question by laying a hand gently on her thigh. “Could she just have been in the wrong place? Could the boy have been the target? Tommy?” And he looked to Lynley.
“That would have to be a consideration in any other case,” Lynley admitted.
“But not in this case? Why?”
“Have a look at this.” Hanken produced a copy of the handwritten note that had been found on Nicola Maiden's body.