Elizabeth George - Payment in Blood

“And if Stinhurst had been the killer? If I’d closed the case without making an arrest?”

“You didn’t do that, did you? I trusted Havers to see that you wouldn’t. And I trusted you. I knew that your instincts would take you to the killer eventually.”

“But they didn’t,” Lynley said. The words cost him dearly in pride, and he wondered why it mattered so much to him that he had been such a fool.

Webberly studied his face. When he spoke, his voice was kind yet still keen with perception. “And that’s why you’re tossing it in, isn’t it, laddie? Not because of me and not because of Stinhurst. And not because some higher-ups saw you as a man they could use to meet their own ends. You’re tossing it in because you made a mistake. You lost your objectivity on this one, didn’t you? You went after the wrong man. So. Welcome to the club, Inspector. You’re not perfect any longer.”

Webberly reached for the warrant card, fi ngered it for a moment before taking it to Lynley. Without formality, he shoved it into the breast pocket of his coat.

“I’m sorry the Stinhurst situation happened,” he said. “I can’t tell you it won’t happen again. But if it does, I should guess you won’t need Sergeant Havers there to remind you that you’re more of a policeman than you ever were a bloody peer.” He turned back to his desk and surveyed its mess. “You’re due time off, Lynley. So take it. Don’t report in till Tuesday.” And then, having said that, he looked up. His words were quiet. “Learning to forgive yourself is part of the job, lad. It’s the only part you’ve never quite mastered.”

HE HEARD the muted shout as he drove up the ramp from the underground car park and pulled onto Broadway. It was fast growing dark. Braking, he looked in the direction of St. James’ Park Station, and among the pedestrians he saw Jeremy Vinney loping down the pavement, topcoat flapping round his knees like the wings of an ungainly bird. As he ran, he waved a spiral notebook. Pages, covered with writing, fluttered in the wind. Lynley lowered the window as Vinney reached the car.

“I’ve done the story on Geoffrey Rintoul,” the journalist panted, managing a smile. “Jesus, what a piece of luck to catch you! I need you to be the source. Off the record. Just to confi rm. That’s all.”

Lynley watched a flurry of snow blow across the street. He recognised a group of secretaries making their end-of-day dash from the Yard to the train, their laughter like music rising into the air.

“There’s no story,” he said.

Vinney’s expression altered. That momentary sharing of confidence was gone. “But you’ve spoken to Stinhurst! You can’t tell me he didn’t confirm every detail of his brother’s past! How could he deny it? With Willingate in the inquest pictures and Joy’s play alluding to everything else? You can’t tell me he talked his way out of that!”

“There’s no story, Mr. Vinney. I’m sorry.” Lynley began to raise the window but stopped when Vinney hooked his fingers over the glass.

“She wanted it!” His voice was a plea. “You know Joy wanted me to follow the story. You know that’s why I was there. She wanted everything about the Rintouls to come to light.”

The case was closed. Her murderer had been found. Yet Vinney pursued his original quest. There was no possibility of a journalistic coup involved for him since the government would quash his story without a thought. Here was loyalty far beyond the call of friendship. Once again, Lynley wondered what lay at its heart, what debt of honour Vinney owed Joy Sinclair.

“Jer! Jerry! For God’s sake, hurry up! Paulie’s waiting and you know he’ll get himself all hot and bothered if we’re late again.”

The second voice drifted from across the street. Delicate, petulant, very nearly feminine. Lynley tracked it down. A young man- no more than twenty years old-stood in the archway leading into the station. He was stamping his feet, shoulders hunched against the cold, and one of the passageway lights illuminated his face. It was achingly handsome, possessing a Renaissance beauty, perfect in feature, in colour, in form. And a Renaissance assessment of such beauty rose in Lynley’s mind, Marlowe’s assessment, as apt now as it had been in the sixteenth century. To hazard more than for the Golden Fleece .

Finally, then, that last puzzle piece clicked into position, so obvious a piece that Lynley wondered what had kept him from placing it before. Joy hadn’t been talking about Vinney on her tape recorder. She had been talking to him, reminding herself of a point she wanted to make in a future conversation with her friend. And here across the street was the source of her concern: “ Why be in such a lather over him? It’s hardly a lifetime proposition .”

“Jerry! Jemmy!” the voice wheedled again. The boy spun on one heel, an impatient puppy. He laughed when his overcoat billowed out round his body like a circus clown’s garb.

Lynley moved his eyes back to the journalist. Vinney looked away, not towards the boy but towards Victoria Street.

“Wasn’t it Freud who said there are no accidents?” Vinney’s voice sounded resigned. “I must have wanted you to know, so you’d understand what I meant when I said that Joy and I were always-and only-friends. Call it absolution, I suppose. Perhaps vindication. It makes no difference now.”

“She did know?”

“I had no secrets from her. I don’t think I could have had one if I tried.” Vinney looked deliberately back at the boy. His expression softened. His lips curved in a smile of remarkable tenderness. “We are cursed by love, aren’t we, Inspector? It gives us no peace. We seek it endlessly in a thousand different ways, and if we’re lucky, we do have it for a shuddering instant. And we feel like free men then, don’t we? Even when we bear its most terrible burden.”

“Joy would have understood that, I dare say.”

“God knows. She was the only one in my life who ever did.” His hand dropped from the window. “So I owe her this about the Rintouls, you see. It’s what she would have wanted. The story. The truth.”

Lynley shook his head. “Revenge is what she wanted, Mr. Vinney. And I do think she got that. After a fashion.”

“So that’s the way it’s to be? Can you really let it end this way, Inspector? After what these people have done to you?” He waved in the direction of the building behind them.

“We do things to ourselves,” Lynley replied. He nodded, raised the window, and drove on.

HE WOULD LATER SEE the trip to Skye as a phantasmagorical blur of continually changing countryside that he was only dimly aware of as he flew towards the north. Stopping merely for food and petrol and once for a few hours of rest at an inn somewhere between Carlisle and Glasgow, he arrived at Kyle of Lochalsh, a small village on the mainland across from the Isle of Skye, in the late afternoon the following day.

He pulled into the car park of an hotel on the waterfront and sat gazing at the strait, its rippled surface the colour of old coins. The sun was setting, and on the island the majestic peak of Sgurr na Coinnich looked covered in silver. Far below it, the car ferry pulled away from the dock and began its slow movement towards the mainland, carrying only a lorry, two hikers who hugged one another against the bitter cold, and a slender solitary fi gure whose smooth chestnut hair blew round her face, which was lifted, as if for blessing, to the last rays of the winter sun.

Seeing Helen, Lynley all at once perceived the sheer lunacy of his coming to her now. He knew he was the last person she wanted to see. He knew that she wanted this isolation. Yet none of that mattered as the ferry drew nearer to the mainland and he saw her eyes fall upon the Bentley in the car park above her. He got out, pulled on his overcoat, and walked down to the landing. The wind blew frigidly against him, buffeting his cheeks, whipping through his hair. He tasted the salt of the distant North Atlantic.