Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

He was making conversation and he knew it, in the hope that by doing so he could vanquish the legion of memories that were waiting on the plain of his consciousness, ready to assault him, memories that were intimately associated with the mill and tied to a portion of his life from which he had walked away, making an obstinate vow – never to think of it again. Even now, as they approached the building and saw the tiles of its roof-line emerge through the trees, he could feel the first tentative foray of a recollection: just an image of his mother striding through the woods. But he knew that she was merely an illusion, trying her luck against his protective armour. He fought her off by pausing on the path, taking his time and lighting a cigarette.

'We came this way yesterday,' St James was answering. He walked on ahead for a few paces, stopping when he glanced back and saw that Lynley had fallen behind. 'The wheel's overgrown. Did you know?'

'I'm not surprised. That was always a problem, as I recall.' Lynley smoked pensively, liking the concrete feel of the cigarette between his fingers. He savoured the sharp taste of the tobacco and the fact that the cigarette in his hand gave him something to which he might attend with more concentration than was necessary.

'And Jasper thinks someone's using the mill? For what? Dossing?'

'He wouldn't say.'

St James nodded, looked thoughtful, walked on. No longer able to avoid it through idle conversation or cigarette-smoking or any other form of temporizing, Lynley followed.

Oddly enough, he found that the mill wasn't very much changed since he had last been there, as if someone had been caring for it. The exterior needed paint – patches of whitewash had worn completely through to the stone -and much of its woodwork was splintered, but the roof was all of one piece, and aside from a pane of glass that was missing from the single window on the upper floor the building looked sturdy enough to stand for another hundred years.

The two men climbed the old stone steps, their feet sliding into shallow grooves which spoke of the thousands of entries and exits made during the time that the mill was in operation. Its paint long ago faded and storm-washed to nothing, the door hung partially open. Its wood was swollen from seasons of rain, so the door no longer fit neatly into position. It gave way with a shriek at Lynley's push.

They entered, paused, took stock of what they saw. The bottom floor was nearly empty, illuminated by streaky shafts of sunlight that gained access through gaps in the shuttered windows. Against a far wall, some sacking lay in a disintegrating heap next to a stack of wooden crates. Beneath one of the windows, a stone mortar and pestle were cobwebbed over, while nearby a coil of rope hung from a peg, looking as if it hadn't been touched in half a century. A small stack of old newspapers stood in one corner of the room, and Lynley watched as St James went to inspect them.

'The Spokesman,' he said, picking one up. 'With some notations in the text. Corrections. Deletions. A new design for the masthead.' He tossed the paper down. 'Did Mick Cambrey know about this place, Tommy?'

'We came here as boys. I expect he hadn't forgotten it. But those papers look old. He can't have been here recently.'

'H'm. Yes. They're from a year ago April. But someone's been here more recently than that.' St James indicated several sets of footprints on the dusty floor. They led to a wall ladder that gave access to the mill loft and the gears and shafts which drove its great grindstone. St James examined the ladder-rungs, pulled on three of them to test their safety, and began an awkward ascent.

Lynley watched him make his slow way to the top, knowing quite well that St James would expect him to follow. He could not avoid doing so. Nor could he any longer avoid the force of reminiscence that the mill – and, more so, the loft above him – provoked. For, after ages of searching, she'd found him up there, where he had hidden from her and from the knowledge that he had come upon unexpectedly.

Dashing up through the garden from the sea, he'd only had a glimpse of the man passing before a first-floor window, a glance that gave him the impression of height and stature, a glance in which he saw only his father's paisley dressing-gown, a glance in which he hadn't bothered to think how impossible it was that his father – so ill – would even be out of bed, let alone sauntering round his mother's bedroom. He didn't think of that, only felt instead a sunshot bolt of joy as the words cured cured cured sang out in his mind and he ran up the stairs – pounded up the stairs calling to them both – and burst into his mother's room. Or at least tried to. But the door was locked. And, as he called out, his father's nurse hurried up the stairs, carrying a tray, admonishing him, telling him he would awaken the invalid. And he got only as far as saying, 'But Father's…' before he understood.

And then he called out to her in such a savage rage that she opened the door and he saw it all: Trenarrow wearing his father's dressing-gown, the covers on her bed in disarray, the clothing discarded hastily on the floor. The air was heavy with the pungent odour of intercourse. And only a dressing room and bath separated them from the room in which his father lay dying.

He'd flung himself mindlessly at Trenarrow. But he was only a slender boy of seventeen, no match for a man of thirty-one. Trenarrow hit him once, a slap on the face with his open palm, the sort of blow one uses to calm a hysterical woman. His mother had cried, 'Roddy, no!' and it was over.

She had found him in the mill. From the one small window in the loft, he watched her coming through the woodland, tall and elegant, just forty-one years old. And so very beautiful.

He should have been able to maintain his poise. The eldest son of an earl, after all, he should have possessed the strength of will and the dignity to tell her that he'd have to return to school and prepare for exams. It wouldn't matter whether she believed him. The only object was to be off, at once.

But he watched her approach and thought instead of how his father loved her, how he shouted for her – 'Daze! Darling Daze!' – whenever he walked into the house. His life had revolved round making her happy, and now he lay in his bedroom and waited for the cancer to eat away the rest of his body while she and Trenarrow kissed and clung and touched and…

He broke. She climbed the ladder, calling his name. He was more than ready for her.

'Whore,' he screamed. 'Are you crazy? Or just so itchy that anyone will do? Even someone with nothing more on his mind than sucking you a good one and laughing about it with his mates in the pub when he's done. Are you proud of that, whore? Are you fucking proud?'

When she hit him, the blow came completely by surprise because she had stood there, immobile, and accepted his abuse. But with his last question she struck him so hard with the back of her hand that he staggered against the wall, his lip split open by her diamond ring. Her face never changed. It was blank, carved in stone.

'You'll be sorry!' he screamed as she climbed down the ladder. 'I'll make you sorry! I'll make both of you sorry. I will!'

And he had done so, over and over again. How he had done so. 'Tommy?'

Lynley looked up to find St James watching him over the edge of the loft.

'You might want to see what's up here.'

'Yes. Of course.'

He climbed the ladder.

It had only taken a moment for St James to evaluate what he found in the loft. The mill shaft, its tremendous gears and its grindstone took up much of the space, but what was left gave mute evidence of the use to which the mill had been put most recently.

In the centre of the room stood a rusting card-table and one folding chair. This latter held a discarded T-shirt, long ago metamorphosed from white to grey, while on the surface of the former an antique postage scale measured the weight of a tarnished spoon and two dirty razor blades. Next to this was an open carton of small plastic bags.