Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

St James shook his head. 'He wasn't writing about transvestites. He was a transvestite. The expense of the flat tells us that. The furniture. The woman's wardrobe. He wouldn't need all that just to gather information for a story. And there's the newspaper office to consider as well, with Harry Cambrey finding the underwear in Mick's desk. Not to mention the row the two of them had.'

'Harry knew?'

'He seems to have figured it out.'

Lady Helen fingered the Talisman wrapper, as if with the resolution of making yet another effort to put Lynley's mind at rest. 'Yet Harry was sure it was a story.'

'It might have been a story. We've still got the connection to Islington-London.'

'Perhaps Mick was investigating a drug of some kind,' Deborah offered. 'A drug that wasn't ready to be marketed yet.'

Lady Helen took up her thought. 'One with side-effects. One that's already available to doctors. With the company pooh-poohing the possibility of problems.'

Lynley came back to the table. They looked at one another, struck by the plausibility of this bit of idle conjecture. Thalidomide. Thorough testing, regulations and restrictions had so far precluded the possibility of another teratogenic nightmare. But men were greedy when it came to fast profits. Men had always been so.

'What if, in researching an entirely different subject, Mick got wind of something suspicious?' St James proposed. 'He pursued it here. He interviewed people here at Islington-London. And that was the cause of his death.'

In spite of their efforts, Lynley did not join them. 'But the castration?' He sank down on to the day bed rubbing his forehead. 'We can't seem to turn in any direction that explains it all.'

As if to underscore the futility behind his words, the telephone began to ring. Deborah went to answer it. Lynley was back on his feet an instant after she spoke.

'Peter! Where on earth are you?… What is it?… I can't understand… Peter, please… You've called where?… Wait, he's right here.'

Lynley lunged for the phone. 'Damn you, where have you been! Don't you know that Brooke… Shut up and listen to me for once, Peter. Brooke's dead as well as Mick… I don't care what you want any longer… What?' Lynley stopped. His body was rigid. His voice all at once was perfectly calm. 'Are you certain?… Listen to me, Peter, you must pull yourself together… I understand, but you mustn't touch anything. Do you understand me, Peter? Don't touch anything. Leave her alone… Now, give me your address… All right. Yes, I've got it. I'll be there at once.'

He replaced the phone. It seemed that entire minutes passed before he turned back to the others.

'Something's happened to Sasha.'

'I think he's on something,' Lynley said.

Which would explain, St James thought, why Lynley had insisted that Deborah and Helen remain behind. He wouldn't want either of them to see his brother in that condition, especially Deborah. 'What happened?'

Lynley pulled the car into Sussex Gardens, cursing when a taxi cut him off. He headed towards the Bayswater Road, veering through Radnor Place and half a dozen side streets to avoid the worst of the afternoon crush.

'I don't know. He kept screaming that she was on the bed, that she wasn't moving, that he thought she was dead.'

'You didn't want him to phone for an ambulance?'

'Christ, he could be hallucinating, St James. He sounded like someone going through the DTs. Damn and blast this bloody traffic!'

'Where is he, Tommy?'

'Whitechapel.'

It took them nearly an hour to get there, battling their way through a virtual traffic jam of cars, lorries, buses and taxis. Lynley knew the city well enough to run through countless side streets and alleys, but everytime they emerged on to a main artery their progress was frustrated again. Midway down New Oxford Street, he spoke.

'I'm at fault here. I've done everything but buy the drugs for him.'

'Don't be absurd.'

'I wanted him to have the best of everything. I never asked him to stand on his own. What he's become is the result. I'm at fault here, St James. The real sickness is mine.'

St James gazed out of the window and sought a reply. He thought about the energy people expend in seeking to avoid what they most need to face. They fill their lives with distraction and denial, only to find at an unexpected eleventh hour that there is in reality no absolute escape. How long had Lynley been engaged in avoidance? How long had he himself done the same thing? It had become a habit with both of them. In scrupulously avoiding what they needed to say to each other, they had learned to adopt evasion in every significant area of their lives.

He said, 'Not everything in life is your responsibility, Tommy.'

'My mother said practically the same thing the other night.'

'She was right. You punish yourself at times when others bear equal responsibility. Don't do that now.'

Lynley shot him a quick look. 'The accident. There's that as well, isn't there? You've tried to take the burden from my shoulders all these years, but you never will, not completely. I drove the car, St James. No matter what other facts exist to attenuate my guilt, the primary fact remains. I drove the car that night. And when it was over I walked away. You didn't.'

'I've not blamed you.'

'You don't need to do so. I blame myself.' He turned off New Oxford Street and they began another series of side-street and back-alley runs, edging them closer to the City and to Whitechapel which lay just beyond it. 'But at least I must let go of blaming myself for Peter if I'm not to go mad. The best step I can take in that direction at the moment is to swear to you that, no matter what we find when we get to him, it shall be Peter's responsibility, not mine.'

They found the building in a narrow street directly off Brick Lane, where a shouting group of Pakistani children were playing football with a caved-in ball. They were using four plastic rubbish sacks for goalposts, but one sack had split open and its contents lay about, smashed and trodden under the children's feet.

The sight of the Bentley called an abrupt halt to the game, and St James and Lynley climbed out of the car into a curious circle of faces. The air was heavy, not only with the apprehension that accompanies the appearance of strangers in a closely knit neighbourhood but also with the smell of old coffee grounds, rotting vegetables, and fruit gone bad. The shoes of the football players contributed largely to this pungent odour. They appeared to be caked with organic refuse.

'Wha's up?' one of the children murmured.

'Dunno,' another replied. 'Some motor, that, i'n it?'

A third, more enterprising than the others, stepped forward with an offer to 'watch the motor f'r you, mister. Keep this lot off it.' He nodded his head towards the rest of the crew. Lynley raised his hand slightly, a response which the boy seemed to take as affirmation, for he posted himself with one hand on the bonnet, the other on his hip, and one grubby foot on the bumper.

They had parked directly in front of Peter's building, a narrow structure five floors high. Originally, its bricks had been painted white, but time, soot, and lack of interest had dirtied them to a repellent grey. The woodwork of windows and front door appeared to have been untouched for decades. Where handsome blue paint had once made a pleasing contrast to the white of the bricks, mere flecks remained, azure spots like freckles on a skin being eaten by age. The fact that someone on the third floor had tried to ease the aspect of the building by planting freesias in a splintered window box did nothing to combat the general feeling of poverty and decay.

They climbed the four front steps to the door. It stood open. Above it, the words last few days had been sprayed on to the bricks with red paint. They seemed a suitable epigraph.