Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

So he said, “Do you have any idea what you've done?” as his insides tightened like a wrung-out rag. “Any idea at all?” and he grabbed her hair and jerked her head back viciously.

“Stop it! Tha’ hurts. Marty! Stop!”

“Do you know what you've done, you stupid little cunt? Have you any idea how thoroughly you've finished us?”

“No! Hurts!”

“Oh darling, I'm glad of it.” And he yanked her head so far back that he could count the muscles down the front of her neck. “You're worthless, beloved,” he said into her ear. “You're trash in a bun, little wife of mine. If your father had just half a dozen fewer connections, I'd throw you on the street and be done with you.”

She began to cry at that. She was afraid of him, had always been so, and that knowledge usually acted like an aphrodisiac upon him. But not tonight. Tonight, on the contrary, he wanted to kill her.

“They were going to arrest you,” she cried. “Wha’ was I s'posed to do? Just let it happen?”

He moved his other hand under her jaw, thumb on one side and index finger on the other. This grip could cause a mark or two. But, by God, she was such an exceptional imbecile that the consequences of damaging her seemed almost worth it. “Oh, were they?” he said, again into her ear. “And upon what charge?”

“Marty, they knew ever'thing. They knew about Global and Nicola and about Vi and her going off on their own. I di'n't tell them any of that. But they knew. They asked where you were on Tuesday night. I told them the res'rant, but it wasn't enough. They were going t’ search and get our books and give them to the Inland Revenue and charge you with keeping a disorderly house and-”

“Stop babbling!” He pressed thumb and index finger more deeply into her skin to emphasise his point. He needed time to think what to do, and he wasn't going to be able to manage it with her spewing nonsense like a vomiting cat.

All right, he thought, one hand still in Tricia's hair and the other at her throat. The worst had happened. His dearly beloved-possessing all the presence of mind of a melting ice cube-had been the one to parry with the cops on their second go in Lansdowne Road. That was unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped now. And Sir Adrian Beattie, not to mention the thousands he was willing to spend in a single month just to gratify the more eccentric of his urges, was undoubtedly lost to their ability to regain his custom. He might take others with him if he was willing to spread the word to his fellow puling bottoms that his name and inclinations had been made known to the police by a source hitherto unapproachable. But there was a saving grace: The cops had nothing on Martin Reeve in the long run, had they? Just the blathering of a smack user whose credibility was about as unimpeachable as a con man's in the act of selling eighteen karat “gold” necklaces at Knightsbridge Station.

They might come to arrest him, Martin thought. Well, frigging let them. He had a solicitor who'd have him out of the slammer so fast, the cell bars might have been coated with axle grease in anticipation of his rapid departure. And if he ever had to stand in front of a magistrate or if he was ever charged with something other than introducing gentlemen with a taste for quirky encounters to appealing and intelligent young women willing to take an active part in those encounters, he had in his possession a list of clients from so many lofty positions of influence that the multitudinous strings that could be called upon to pull on his behalf would make the Inns of Court, the Old Bailey, and the Metropolitan Police look like marionette conventions.

No. He had nothing to worry about in the long run. And he was as likely to have to go to Australia as to the moon. Things might be a little unpleasant for a while. Certain newspaper editors might have to be paid to quash a story here and there. But that would be the extent of it aside from the cash he'd also probably have to pay out to his solicitor.

And that likely-and significant-expenditure pissed him off in a very big way. So much so, in fact, that when he thought about it, when he added it all up, when he dwelt for so much as a nanosecond on the fucking cause of all these added aggravations Jesus he just wanted to crush in her face break open her nose blacken her eyes ram himself into her when she was dry and unwilling and likely to scream and beg him to stop so that just for a moment he'd be so supreme that no one no one no one in his life would ever again look at him and think he was less than or smaller than or weaker than or God God God how he wanted to hurt her and mutilate everyone else who said Martin Reeve without Mister in front of it who smiled from faces with eyes of derision who crossed his path without stepping aside who dared to even think -Tricia had ceased moving. She wasn't thrashing. Her legs were motionless. Her arms had gone limp.

Martin looked down at her, down at his hand whose thumb and index finger made a half circle high on his wife's throat.

He jumped up, jumped off her, backed away in a rush. She was white in the moonlight, as still as marble.

“Tricia,” he said hoarsely. “God damn you. Bitch!”

Lynley's credit card was sufficient to slide the latch of the lock from its housing. The maisonette's door swung open. Inside, all was darkness. There was no sound save what drifted upwards from the drinks party going on in the ground floor flat.

“Miss Nevin?” Lynley called.

There was no response.

The light from the corridor provided a glowing parallelogram on the floor. In it, a large cushion lay, half in and half out of its yellow cover of fine brocade. Next to this, a pool of spilled liquid had soaked into the carpet in an alligator shape, while just beyond, the drinks trolley stood upended and surrounded by its bottles, its decanters-now upstoppered and emptied-its glasses, and its jugs.

Lynley reached for a switch on the wall to the right of the door. He flipped it on. Recessed lights sprang to Life in the ceiling, revealing the extent of the chaos beneath them.

From what he could see from the doorway, the maisonette was in ruins: sofa and love seat overturned with cushions torn from their covers, pictures off the walls and looking as if they'd been broken deliberately across someone's knee, stereo system and television flung to the floor and destroyed-the backings on everything from the speakers to the television hacked away-a portfolio ripped into two pieces with its photographs left scattered round the room. Not even the fitted carpet had escaped, jerked back from the wall with the sort of strength that spoke of a rage long anticipated and fully indulged.

The devastation in the kitchen was similar: crockery lying shattered on the white-tiled floor, shelves swept clean of every object which now lay where it had apparently fallen, either on work tops or broken beneath them. The refrigerator had been dealt with as well, if only in part: Everything from the freezer was dewing with moisture among the rest of the detritus while the contents of the crisping drawers were smashed like victims of runaway lorries, leaving smears of their juices on the tiles, in the grout, and against the cupboard doors.

From the ruins of a bottle of ketchup and ajar of mustard, footprints led from the kitchen towards the outer corridor. One of them was perfectly formed, as if brushed onto the tiles with dark orange paint.

Along the ascent of the stairs, pictures torn from the walls had met a fate similar to those in the sitting room, and as he climbed, Lynley felt the burning of a slow, hard anger begin in the middle of his chest. It mixed there, however, with the chill of fear. And he found himself praying that the condition of the maisonette meant Vi Nevin had been absent from the building when the intruder-so obviously bent upon harming her-had taken out his frustration on her possessions.