Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

Lynley tried to catch his drift. 'What money?'

'Nancy said Mick was doing the pay envelopes. She said there was money in the sitting room that evening. You and I discussed it later that night, after she told us about it at the lodge. Who else did you tell? Who else knew about the money?'

'Deborah and Helen. They were there when Nancy told us. John Penellin as well.'

'Did you tell your mother?'

'Of course not. Why on earth would I?'

'Then, how did Dr Trenarrow know?'

Lynley realized at once what the question meant. He saw the answer on Trenarrow's face. He fought a battle for professional indifference. He lost it, saying only, 'Jesus God.'

Trenarrow said nothing. Lynley couldn't think beyond a simple no, recognizing that what his friend had said earlier was coming to pass. His every foul wish of the last fifteen years was about to be granted in absolute spades.

'What are you saying, St James?' he managed to ask, although he knew the answer without having to hear it.

'That Dr Trenarrow killed Mick Cambrey. He didn't intend to. They argued. He hit him. Mick fell. He began to haemorrhage. He was dead within minutes.'

'Roderick.' Lynley felt desperate for the man to exonerate himself in some way, knowing only that Trenarrow's exoneration was tied intimately into Lynley's own future life. But St James went on, utterly calm. Only the facts counted. He wove them together.

'When he saw Cambrey was dead, he acted quickly. It wasn't a search. Even if Mick had been stupid enough to keep records of the oncozyme transactions in the cottage, there was no time to look for them then. There was only time to make it look like a search, or a possible robbery, or a sexual crime. But it was none of those things. It was a fight about oncozyme.'

Dr Trenarrow's face looked implacable. When he spoke, his lips moved, but the rest of him was immobile. And his words seemed nothing more than a futile, if expected, effort at denial. They carried no conviction. 'I was at the play on Friday night. You know that very well.'

'An open-air play in a school yard,' St James said. 'Hardly a difficult feat to slip out for a while, especially since you'd placed yourself at the back. I expect you went to him after the interval, during the second act. It's not a long walk – three minutes, no more. You went to see him then. You intended only to talk to him about oncozyme, but instead you killed him and came back to the play.'

'And the weapon?' Trenarrow's bravado was weak. 'Was I supposed to be carrying it round Nanrunnel in my jacket?'

'For the fracture of the skull, there was no weapon. The castration was another matter. You took the knife from the cottage.'

'To the play?' Scorn this time, yet no more successful than the bravado had been.

'I should think you hid it somewhere en route. In Virgin Place. Perhaps in Ivy Street. In a garden or a dustbin. You returned for it later that night and got rid of it on Saturday at Howenstow. Which is where, I dare say, you got rid of Brooke as well. Because once Brooke knew that Cambrey had been killed he knew who must have done it. But he couldn't afford to turn you in to the police without damaging himself. The oncozyme scheme bound the two of you together.'

'This is all conjecture,' Trenarrow said. 'According to what you've said so far, I had more reason to keep Mick alive than to kill him. If he was supplying me with patients, what purpose would his death serve?'

'You didn't intend to kill him. You struck out in anger. Your interest was in saving people's lives, but Mick's was in collecting their money. That attitude pushed you right over the edge.'

'There's no evidence. You know that. Not for a murder.'

'You've forgotten the cameras,' St James said. Trenarrow looked at him steadily, his expression unchanging.

'You saw the camera at the cottage. You assumed I'd taken pictures of the body. During the chaos on Saturday when John Penellin was arrested, you dropped the cameras from Deborah's room.'

'But, if that's so,' Lynley said, feeling himself Trenarrow's advocate for the moment, 'why didn't he take the cameras to the cove? If he disposed of the knife there, why not the cameras as well?'

'And risk being seen hiking across the grounds with the case in his possession? I don't know why I didn't realize the stupidity of that idea before. He could conceal the knife on his person, Tommy. If someone saw him in the grounds, he could have claimed to be taking a walk to clear his head of drink. It would have been a believable story. People were used to seeing him at Howenstow. But the cameras, no. I imagine he took them somewhere else – in his car perhaps – later that night. To a place where he could be relatively certain they'd never be found.'

Lynley listened, coming to terms with the truth. They'd all been at the dinner to hear the conversation. They'd all laughed at the absurdity of tourists in the mines. He said the name, two words that acted as final acceptance of what his heart told him was an incontrovertible fact. 'Wheal Maen.' St James looked at him. 'At dinner on Saturday night, Aunt Augusta was up in arms about sealing Wheal Maen.'

'This is supposition,' Trenarrow broke in sharply. 'Supposition and madness. Beyond our oncozyme connection, you've nothing else to go on besides what you're inventing right here in this room. And once our mutual history is out in public, Tommy, who's going to believe this story? If, indeed, you actually want our mutual history to be known.'

'It comes down to that in the long run, doesn't it?' Lynley asked. 'It always begins and ends with my mother.'

For an instant, he allowed himself to see past the call for justice to its attendant scandal. He could have ignored Trenarrow's use of oncozyme, his illegal clinic, and the exorbitant price that patients no doubt paid for treatment there. He could have overlooked all this and allowed his mother to remain in ignorance for the rest of her life. But murder was different. It demanded retribution. He could not ignore that.

Lynley saw how the next few months would play out. A court of law, his accusations, Trenarrow's denial, the sort of case the defence would build with his mother caught in the middle and ultimately named as the reason behind Lynley's public denunciation of her long-time lover.

'He's right, St James,' Lynley said hollowly. 'This is conjecture. Even if we got the cameras from the mine, the main shaft's been flooded for years. The film's ruined by now, no matter what was on it.'

St James shook his head. 'That's the only thing Dr Trenarrow didn't know. The film's not in the camera. Deborah gave it to me.'

Lynley heard the swift breath hiss between Trenarrow's teeth. St James went on.

'And the evidence is there, isn't it?' St James asked. 'Your silver pillbox under Mick Cambrey's thigh. You may be able to explain away everything else, you may be able to accuse Tommy of attempting to fabricate evidence in order to separate you from his mother. But you'll never be able to deal with the fact that in the photograph of the body the pillbox is there. The very same one you took from your pocket only minutes ago.'

Trenarrow looked at the misty view of the harbour. 'It proves nothing.'

'When it's in our photographs but missing from the police photographs? That's hardly the case, and you know it.'

Rain pattered on windows. Wind sounded in the chimney. A distant foghorn moaned. Trenarrow moved in his chair, turning back towards the room. He grasped its arms and said nothing.

'What happened?' Lynley asked him. 'Roderick, for the love of God, what happened?'

For a long time, Trenarrow didn't answer. His dull eyes were fixed upon the space between Lynley and St James. He reached for the pull of the top drawer of the desk and aimlessly played it between his fingers.