Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

“Now,” Lynley said when Havers had fi nished. “Where were you Sunday night, Mr. Thorsson? Where were you in the early hours of Monday morning?”

“I demand a solicitor.”

Lynley gestured towards the phone which hung on the wall. “Please,” he said. “We’ve plenty of time.”

“I can’t get one at this hour of the morning and you know it.”

“Fine. We can wait.”

Thorsson shook his head in an eloquent-if clearly apocryphal-display of disgust. “All right,” he said. “I was heading to St. Stephen’s early Monday morning. One of the undergraduates wanted to meet with me. I’d forgotten her paper and was in a rush to come back and get it and get to the meeting on time. Is that what you’re so determined to know?”

“ Her paper. I see. And this morning?”

“Nothing this morning.”

“Then how do you explain the condition of the Triumph? Aside from being warm, it’s covered with damp. Where was it parked last night?”

“Here.”

“And you want us to believe that you went out this morning, wiped off only the windscreen for purposes unknown, and returned to the house to have a bath?”

“I don’t much care what either of you-”

“And that perhaps you idled the engine for a bit to get the car warmed up although you aren’t apparently going anywhere at the moment?”

“I’ve already said-”

“You’ve already said a great deal, Mr. Thorsson. And none of it meshes with anything else.”

“If you think I murdered that fucking little cunt-”

Lynley got to his feet. “I’d like to have a look at your clothes.”

Thorsson shoved his coffee mug the length of the work top. It crashed into the sink. “You need a warrant for that. You damn well know it.”

“If you’re an innocent man, you have nothing to fear, do you, Mr. Thorsson? Just produce the undergraduate you met with on Monday morning, and hand over everything black that you own. We’ve found black fibres on the body, by the way, but as they’re a mixture of polyester, rayon, and cotton, we should be able to eliminate one or two of your garments right off the top. That ought to cover it.”

“That covers skit . If you want black fi bres, give a thought to trying the academic gowns. Oh, but you won’t go sniffing in that direction, will you? Because everyone in the fucking University owns one.”

“An interesting point. Is the bedroom this way?”

Lynley headed back in the direction of the front door. In a sitting room at the front of the house, he found the stairway and began to climb. Thorsson followed him with Havers quickly at his heels.

“You bastard! You can’t-”

“This is your bedroom?” Lynley said at the doorway closest to the top of the stairs. He walked into the room and opened the clothes cupboard built into one of the walls. “Let’s see what we have. Sergeant, a sack.”

Havers tossed him a plastic rubbish sack as he began his examination of the clothes.

“I’ll have your job for this!”

Lynley looked up. “Where were you Monday morning, Mr. Thorsson? Where were you this morning? An innocent man has nothing to fear.”

Sergeant Havers added, “If he’s innocent in the first place. If he lives an honest life. If he has nothing to hide.”

Every vein on Thorsson’s neck swelled. His pulse was throbbing like a drumbeat in his temple. His fingers jerked at the belt of his dressing gown. “Take it all,” he said. “You have my bloody permission. Take every rotten piece. But don’t forget this.”

He ripped the dressing gown from his body. He wore nothing underneath it. He put his hands on his hips.

“I have nothing to hide from you lot,” he said.

“I didn’t know whether to laugh, applaud, or make an arrest on the spot for indecent exposure,” Havers said. “That bloke takes everything right over the top.”

“He’s in a class all his own,” Lynley agreed.

“I wonder if that’s what the University environment does.”

“Encourages the senior fellows to disrobe before police officers? I don’t think so, Havers.”

They had stopped at a bakery in Cherry Hinton where they picked up two fresh currant buns and two tepid coffees. These they drank from Styrofoam cups on their way back into the town, Lynley cooperatively operating the gear shift to leave his sergeant with at least one free hand.

“Still, it was a telling sort of thing to do, wasn’t it, sir? I don’t know about you, but I think he actually was looking for the opportunity to…I mean I think he was all hot to display…Well, you know.”

Lynley crumpled the flimsy paper in which his currant bun had been wrapped. He deposited it in the ashtray among what appeared to be at least two dozen cigarette butts. “He was eager enough to make a show of his equipment. There’s no doubt of that, Havers. You provoked him to it.”

Her head whipped in his direction. “ Me? Sir, I didn’t do a thing and you know it.”

“You did, I’m afraid. You’ve indicated from the first that you aren’t about to be dazzled by either his position at the University or any of his accomplishments-”

“Dubious though they probably are.”

“-so he felt compelled to give you an adequate idea of the size of the pleasure he was going to withhold as your punishment.”

“What a berk.”

“In a word.” Lynley took a sip of his coffee and changed down into second gear as Havers rounded a corner and stepped on the clutch. “But he did something more, Havers. And if you’ll pardon the expression, that’s the beauty of it all.”

“What, besides provide me with the best morning’s entertainment I’ve had in years?”

“He verified the story Elena told Terence Cuff.”

“How? What?”

Lynley changed to third and then fourth before replying. “According to what Elena told Dr. Cuff, Thorsson’s approach to her had included, among other things, references to the diffi culties he’d had when he was engaged to be married.”

“What sort of diffi culties?”

“Sexual ones, centring round the size of his erection.”

“Too much man for the poor woman to handle? That sort of thing?”

“Exactly.”

Havers’ eyes lit. “And how would Elena have known about his size unless he’d actually told her himself? He was probably hoping to get her interested in having a look. Perhaps he even gave her one to get her juices fl owing.”

“Indeed. And taken as a whole it’s not the sort of veiled invitation to intercourse that a twenty-year-old girl would cook up on her own, is it? Especially when it so exactly matches the truth. If the story were invention, she’d have been more likely to come up with something far more blatant on Thorsson’s part. And he’s capable of blatancy, as we’ve just seen.”

“So he was lying about the harassment situation. And”-Havers smiled with undisguised pleasure-“if he was lying about that, why not about everything else as well?”

“He’s definitely back in the running, Sergeant.”

“I’d say he’s about to win the race by a length.”

“We’ll see.”

“But, sir-”

“Drive on, Sergeant.”

They headed back into town where, after a minor snarl of traffic created by a collision between two taxis at the top of Station Road, they drove to police headquarters and unloaded the sack of clothing which they’d taken from Thorsson’s house. The uniformed receptionist buzzed them through the interior lobby doors with a nod at Lynley’s identifi cation. They took the lift up to the superintendent’s offi ce.

They found Sheehan standing next to his secretary’s vacant desk, the telephone receiver pressed to his ear. His conversation consisted mostly of grunts and damn’s and blast it all ’s. He finally said impatiently, “You’ve had him jumping through hoops with that girl’s body for two days now and we’re getting nowhere, Drake…If you don’t agree with his conclusions, call in a specialist from the Met and have done with it…I don’t care what the CC thinks at this point. I’ll handle him. Just do it…Listen to me. This isn’t an enquiry into your competence as department head, but if you can’t in conscience sign off on Pleasance’s report and if he won’t change it, there’s nothing else to be done…I don’t have the power to give him the sack…That’s the way it is, man. Just phone the Met.” When he rang off, he didn’t appear pleased to see the representatives from New Scotland Yard standing in the doorway as further testimony to the outside help which the circumstances of Elena Weaver’s murder had forced him and his police force to endure.