A Suitable Vengeance

1

Lady Helen Clyde was surrounded by the trappings of death. Crime-scene exhibits lay upon tables; photographs of corpses hung on the walls; grisly specimens sat in glass-fronted cupboards, among them one particularly gruesome memento consisting of a tuft of hair with the victim's scalp still attached. Yet despite the macabre nature of the environment Lady Helen's thoughts kept drifting to food.

As a form of distraction, she consulted the copy of a police report that lay on the work-table before her. 'It all matches up, Simon.' She switched off her microscope. 'B negative, AB positive, O positive. Won't the Met be happy about that?'

'H'm,' was her companion's only response.

Monosyllables were typical of him when he was involved in work, but his reply was rather aggravating at the moment since it was after four o'clock and for the last quarter-hour Lady Helen's body had been longing for tea. Oblivious of this, Simon Allcourt-St James began uncapping a collection of bottles that sat in a row before him. These contained minute fibres which he would analyse, staking his growing reputation as a forensic scientist upon his ability to weave a set of facts out of infinitesimal, blood-soaked threads.

Recognizing the preliminary stages of a fabric analysis, Lady Helen sighed and walked to the laboratory window. On the top floor of St James' house, it was open to the late June afternoon, and it overlooked a pleasant brick-walled garden. There, a vivid tangle of flowers made a pattern of undisciplined colour. Walkways and lawn had become overgrown.

'You ought to hire someone to see to the garden,' Lady Helen said. She knew very well that it hadn't been properly tended in the last three years.

'Yes.' St James took out a pair of tweezers and a box of slides. Somewhere below them in the house a door opened and shut.

At last, Lady Helen thought, and allowed herself to imagine Joseph Cotter mounting the stairs from the basement kitchen, in his hands a tray covered by fresh scones, clotted cream, strawberry tarts and tea. Unfortunately, the sounds that began drifting upwards – a thumping and bumping, accompanied by a low grunt of endeavour – did not suggest that refreshments were imminent. Lady Helen sidestepped one of St James' computers and peered into the panelled hall.

'What's going on?' St James asked as a sharp thwack resounded through the house, metal against wood, a noise boding ill for the stairway banisters. He got down awkwardly from his stool, his braced left leg landing unceremoniously on the floor with an ugly thud.

'It's Cotter. He's struggling with a trunk and some sort of package. Shall I help you, Cotter? What are you bringing up?'

'Managing quite well,' was Cotter's oblique reply from three floors below.

'But what on earth-?' Next to her, Lady Helen felt St James move sharply away from the door. He returned to his work as if the interruption had not occurred and Cotter were not in need of assistance.

And then she was given the explanation. As Cotter manoeuvred his burdens across the first landing, a shaft of light from the window illuminated a broad sticker affixed to the trunk. Even from the top floor, Lady Helen could read the black print across it: D. Cotter/USA. Deborah was returning, and quite soon by the look of it. Yet, as if this all were not occurring, St James devoted himself to his fibres and slides. He bent over a microscope, adjusting its focus.

Lady Helen descended the stairs. Cotter waved her off.

'I c'n manage,' he said. 'Don't trouble yourself.'

'I want the trouble. As much as do you.'

Cotter smiled at her reply, for his labours were born of a father's love for his returning child, and Lady Helen knew it. He handed over the broad flat package which he had been attempting to carry under his arm. His hold on the trunk he would not relinquish.

'Deborah's coming home?' Lady Helen kept her voice low. Cotter did likewise.

'She is. Tonight.'

'Simon never said a word.'

Cotter readjusted his grip on the trunk. 'Not likely to, is 'e?' he responded grimly.

They climbed the remaining flights of stairs. Cotter shouldered the trunk into his daughter's bedroom to the left of the landing, while Lady Helen paused at the door to the lab. She leaned the package against the wall, tapping her fingers against it thoughtfully as she observed her friend. St James did not look up from his work.

That had always been his most effective defence. Work-tables and microscopes became ramparts which no-one could scale, incessant labour a narcotic that dulled the pain of loss. Lady Helen surveyed the lab, seeing it for once not as the centre of St James' professional life, but as the refuge which it had become. It was a large room scented faintly by formaldehyde; walled by anatomy charts and graphs and shelves; floored by old, creaking hardwood; ceilinged by a skylight through which milky sun provided an impersonal warmth. Scarred tables furnished it, as did tall stools, microscopes, computers, and a variety of equipment for studying everything from blood to bullets. To one side, a door led into Deborah Cotter's darkroom. But that door had been closed for all the years of her absence. Lady Helen wondered what St James would do if she opened it now, flinging it back like an unavoidable invasion into the reaches of his heart.

'Deborah's coming home tonight, Simon? Why didn't you tell me?'

St James removed one slide from the microscope and replaced it with another, adjusting the dials for a higher degree of magnification. After a moment of studying this new specimen, he jotted down a few notes.

Lady Helen leaned across the work-table and clicked off the microscope's light. 'She's coming home,' she said. 'You've not said a word about it all day. Why, Simon? Tell me.'

Instead of answering, St James looked past her shoulder. 'What is it, Cotter?'

Lady Helen swung around. Cotter was standing in the doorway, frowning, wiping his brow with a white linen handkerchief. 'You've no need to fetch Deb from the airport tonight, Mr St James,' he said in a rush. 'Lord Asherton's to do it. I'm to go as well. He rang me not an hour ago. It's all arranged.'

The ticking of the wall clock made the only immediate response to Cotter's announcement until somewhere outside a child's frantic weeping – rife with outrage – rose on the air.

St James stirred to say, 'Good. That's just as well. I've a mountain of work to get through here.'

Lady Helen felt the sort of confusion that requires an accompanying cry of protest. The world as she knew it was taking on a new shape. Longing to ask the obvious question, she looked from St James to Cotter, but their reserve warned her off. Still, she could tell that Cotter was willing to say more. He appeared to be waiting for the other man to make some additional comment that would allow him to do so. But instead St James merely ran a hand through his unruly black hair. Cotter shifted on his feet.

‘I’ll be about my business, then.' With a nod, he left the room, but his shoulders looked burdened and his steps were heavy.

'Let me understand this,' Lady Helen said. 'Tommy's fetching Deborah from the airport. Tommy. Not you?'

It was a reasonable enough question. Thomas Lynley, Lord Asherton, was an old friend to both St James and Lady Helen, something of a colleague as well since for the past ten years he had worked in the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard. In both capacities, he had been a frequent visitor to St James' Cheyne Row house. But when on earth, Lady Helen wondered, had he come to know Deborah Cotter well enough to be the one to meet her at the airport after her time away at school? To phone her father coolly with the arrangements every bit as if he were… what on earth was Tommy to Deborah?

'He's been to America to see her,' St James replied. 'A number of times. He never told you that, Helen?'

'Good heavens.' Lady Helen was nonplussed. 'How do you know that? Surely Deborah didn't tell you. As for Tommy, he knows that you've always-'

'Cotter told me last year. I suppose he'd spent some time wondering about Tommy's intentions, as any father might.'

His dry, factual tone spoke volumes more than any telling comment he might have chosen to make. Her heart went out to him.

'It's been dreadful for you, hasn't it, these last three years without her?'

St James drew another microscope across the table and gave his attention to the removal of a speck of dust that seemed to be adhering stubbornly to its eyepiece.

Lady Helen watched him, seeing clearly how the passage of time, in conjunction with his wretched disability, was doing its best to make him every year less of a man in his own eyes. She wanted to tell him how untrue and unfair such an assessment was. She wanted to tell him how little difference it made. But to do so bordered too closely upon pity, and she would not hurt him by a display of compassion he did not want.

The front door slamming far below saved her from having to speak at all. Rapid footsteps followed. They flew up three flights of steps without a pause for breath and served as harbinger of the only person with sufficient energy to make so steep a climb in so little time.

'That sounds like Sidney,' St James said moments before his younger sister burst into the room.

'I knew I'd find you in here,' Sidney announced, brushing a kiss against his cheek. She flopped onto a stool and said by way of greeting her brother's companion, 'I do love that dress, Helen. Is it new? How can you manage to look so put together at a quarter past four in the afternoon?'

'While we're talking of being put together…' St James eyed his sister's unusual attire.

Sidney laughed. 'Leather pants. What d'you think? There's a fur as well, but I left it with the photographer.'

'Rather a warm combination for summer,' Lady Helen said.

'Isn't it beastly?' Sidney agreed happily. 'They've had me on Albert Bridge since ten o'clock this morning in leather pants, a fur coat, and nothing else. Perched on top of a 1951 taxi with the driver – I wish someone would tell me where they get these male mannequins – leering up at me like a pervert. Oh, yes, and a bit of au natural showing here and there. My au naturel, if it comes to that. All the driver has to do is look like Jack the Ripper. I borrowed this shirt from one of the technicians. We're breaking for now, so I thought I'd pop over for a visit.' She looked round the room curiously. 'So. It's past four. Where's tea?'

St James nodded towards the package which Lady Helen had left leaning against the wall. 'You've caught us in disarray this afternoon.'

'Deborah's coming home tonight, Sid,' Lady Helen said. 'Did you know?'

Sidney's face lit. 'Is she at last? Then, those must be some of her snaps. Wonderful! Let's have a peep.' She hopped off her stool, shook the package as if it were an early Christmas gift, and blithely proceeded to remove its outer wrapping.

'Sidney,' St James admonished her.

'Pooh. You know she wouldn't mind.' Sidney tossed away the sturdy brown paper, untied the cords of a black portfolio, and picked up the top portrait from the stack within. She looked it over, whistling between her teeth. 'Lord, the girl's handier with a camera than she's ever been.' She passed the photograph to Lady Helen and went on with her perusal of the others in the stack.

Self and Bath. The three words were scrawled in haphazard script across the bottom edge of the picture. It was a nude study of Deborah herself, arranged in three-quarter profile to the camera. She had composed the piece cleverly: a shallow tub of water; the delicate arch of her spine; a table nearby on which sat a pitcher, hairbrushes and comb; filtered light striking her left arm, her left foot, the curve of her shoulder. With a camera and using herself as a model, she had copied The Tub by Degas. It was lovely.

Lady Helen looked up to see St James nod as if in appreciation of it. He walked back to his equipment and started sorting through a stack of reports.

'Did you? Did you know it?' Sidney was asking them impatiently.

'Know what?' Lady Helen said.

'That Deborah's involved with Tommy. Tommy Lynley! Mummy's cook told me, believe it or not. From what she said, Cotter's quite up in arms about it. Honestly, Simon, you must talk some sense into Cotter. For that matter, talk some sense into Tommy. I think it's completely unfair of him to choose Deb over me.' She resumed her stool. 'That reminds me. I've got to tell you about Peter.'

Lady Helen felt a margin of relief at this welcome change of subject. 'Peter?' she said helpfully.

'Imagine this.' Sidney used her hands to dramatize the scene. 'Peter Lynley and a lady of the night – dressed all in black with flowing black hair like a tourist from Transylvania – caught in flagrante delicto in an alley in Soho!'

'Tommy's brother Peter?' Lady Helen clarified, knowing Sidney's proclivity for overlooking pertinent details. 'That can't be right. He's in Oxford for the summer, isn't he?'

'He looked involved in things far more interesting than his studies. History and literature and art be damned.'

'What are you talking about, Sidney?' St James asked as she hopped off the stool and began to prowl around the lab like a puppy.

She switched on Lady Helen's microscope and had a look through it. 'Crikey! What is this?'

'Blood,' Lady Helen said. 'And Peter Lynley?'

Sidney adjusted the focus. 'It was… let me see. Friday night. Yes, that's right because I'd a grim little drinks-party to attend in the West End on Friday and that was the night I saw Peter. On the ground in an alley. Scuffling with a prostitute! Wouldn't Tommy be pleased if he heard about that?'

'Tommy's not been happy with Peter all year,' Lady Helen said.

'Doesn't Peter know it!' Sidney looked at her brother plaintively. 'What about tea? Is there hope?' 'Always. Finish your saga.'

Sidney grimaced. 'There's not much else to tell. Justin and I came upon Peter grappling with this woman in the dark. He was punching her in the face, as a matter of fact, and Justin pulled him off. The woman – now, this was a bit odd – began to laugh and laugh. Of course, she must have been hysterical. But before we had a chance to see if she was fit she ran off. We drove Peter home. Squalid little flat in Whitechapel, Simon, with a yellow-eyed girl in filthy blue jeans waiting for Peter on the front steps.' Sidney shuddered. 'Anyway, Peter wouldn't say a word to me about Tommy or Oxford or anything. Embarrassed, I suppose. I'm sure the last thing on earth he expected was to have a friend stumble upon him as he rolled round an alley.'

'What were you doing there?' St James asked. 'Or was Soho Justin's idea?'

Sidney avoided his gaze. 'D'you think Deb'll take a set of photos of me? I ought to start work on a new portfolio now my hair's cut off. You've not said a word about it, Simon, and it's shorter than yours.'

St James was not to be so easily diverted. 'Haven't you had enough of Justin Brooke?'

'Helen, what do you think of my hair?'

'What about Brooke, Sid?'

Sidney directed a wordless apology towards Lady Helen before she faced her brother down. The resemblance between them was remarkable, a sharing of the same curly black hair, the same spare aquiline features, the same blue eyes. They looked like skewed mirror images: the liveliness of one was replaced by resigned repose in the other. They were before-and-after pictures, the past and the present, joined by an undeniable bond of blood.

Sidney's words, however, seemed an effort to deny this. 'Don't mother-hen me, Simon,' she said.

The sound of a clock chiming in the room startled St James out of sleep. It was 3 a.m. For a dazed moment -half-sleeping, half-waking – he wondered where he was until a knotted muscle, cramping painfully in his neck, brought him fully awake. He stirred in his chair and got up, his movements slow, his body feeling bent. Stretching tentatively, he walked to the study window and looked out on Cheyne Row.

Moonlight lit tree-leaves with silver, touching upon the restored houses opposite his own, the Carlyle Museum and the corner church. In the past few years, a renaissance had come to the riverside neighbourhood, taking it from its Bohemian past into an unknown future. St James loved it.

He went back to his chair. On the table next to it, a balloon glass still held a half-inch of brandy. He drained it, switched off the lamp, and left the study, making his way down the narrow hallway to the stairs.

These he mounted slowly, pulling his bad leg up next to him, gripping the handrail against the strain of dead weight. He shook his head in weary denigration at his solitary, fanciful dance of attendance upon Deborah's return.

Cotter had been back from the airport for some hours, but his daughter had stopped in only briefly, remaining for the entire time in the kitchen. From his study, St James could hear Deborah's laughter, her father's voice, the barking of the dog. He could even imagine the household cat jumping down from the window-sill to greet her. This reunion among them had gone on for half an hour. Then, instead of Deborah coming up to bid him hello, Cotter had stepped into the study with the uneasy announcement that Deborah had left again with Lord Asherton. Thomas Lynley. St James' oldest friend.

Cotter's embarrassment at Deborah's behaviour only promised to worsen an already uncomfortable situation.

'Said she'd only be a while,' Cotter had stammered. 'Said she'd be back directly. Said she'd-'

St James wanted to stop the words but couldn't think how to do it. He resolved the situation by noting the time and declaring his intention of going to bed. Cotter left him in peace.

Knowing sleep would elude him, he remained in the study, trying to occupy himself with reading a scientific journal as the hours passed and he waited for her to return. The wiser part of him insisted there was no point to a meeting between them now. The fool longed for it, in a welter of nerves.

What idiocy, he thought, and continued climbing the stairs. But, as if his body wished to contradict what his intellect was telling him, he made his way not to his own bedroom but to Deborah's on the top floor of the house. The door stood open.

It was a small room with a jumble of furnishings. An old oak wardrobe, lovingly refinished, leaned on uneven legs against the wall. A similar dressing table held a solitary, pink-edged Belleek vase. A once colourful rug, hand-made by Deborah's mother just ten months before her death, formed an oval on the floor. The narrow brass bed that had been hers from childhood stood near the window.

St James had not entered this room for the three years of Deborah's absence. He did so now reluctantly, crossing to the open window where a soft breeze rustled white curtains. Even at this height, he could catch the perfume of the flowers planted in the garden below. It was faint, like an unobtrusive background on the canvas of night.

As he enjoyed the subtle fragrance, a silver car glided round the corner from Cheyne Row into Lordship Place and halted next to the old garden gate. St James recognized the Bentley and its driver, who turned to the young woman next to him and took her into his arms.

The moonlight that earlier had served to illumine the street did as much for the interior of the car. As St James watched, unable to move from the window even if he had wanted to – which he did not – Lynley's blond head bent to Deborah. She raised her arm, fingers seeking first his hair, then his face before drawing him nearer to her neck, to her breast.

St James forced his gaze from the car to the garden. Hyacinth, larkspur, alyssum, he thought. Kaffir lilies that wanted clearing out. There was work to be done. He needed to see to it. But he couldn't use the garden to avoid his heart.

He had known Deborah from the day of her birth. She had grown up, a member of his small Chelsea household, the child of a man who was to St James part nurse, part servant, part valet, part friend. During the darkest time of his life, she'd been a constant companion whose presence had saved him from the worst of his despair. But now…

She's chosen, he thought, and tried to convince himself in the face of this knowledge that he felt nothing, that he could accept it, that he could be the loser, that he could go on.

He crossed the landing and entered his laboratory where he turned on a high-intensity lamp that cast a circle of light upon a toxicology report. He spent the next few minutes attempting to read the document – a pitiful endeavour to put his house in order – before he heard the car's engine start, a sound that was shortly followed by Deborah's footsteps in the lower hall.

He put on another light in the room and walked to the door, feeling a rush of trepidation, a need to find something to say, an excuse for being up and about, fully dressed, at three in the morning. But there was no time to think, for Deborah came up the stairs nearly as quickly as Sidney had done, bringing their separation to an end.

She stepped on to the final landing and started when she saw him. 'Simon!'

Acceptance be damned. He held out a hand and she came into his arms. It was natural. She belonged there. Both of them knew it. Without another thought, St James bent his head, seeking her mouth but finding instead her mane of hair. The unmistakable smell of Lynley's cigarettes clung to it, a bitter reminder of who she had been and who she had become.

The odour brought him to his senses, and he released her. He saw that time and distance had caused him to magnify her beauty, attributing physical qualities to her that she didn't possess. He admitted to himself what he had always known. Deborah was not beautiful in any conventional way. She didn't have Helen's sleek, aristocratic lines. Nor had she Sidney's provocative features. Instead, she was a compilation of warmth and affection, perception and wit, qualities whose definition rose from her liveliness of expression, from the chaos of her coppery hair, from the freckles that dashed across the bridge of her nose.

But there were changes in her. She was too thin, and inexplicable illusory veins of regret seemed to lie just beneath the surface of her composure. Nonetheless, she spoke to him much as she always had done.

'Have you been working late? You've not waited up for me, have you?'

'It was the only way I could get your father to go to bed. He thought Tommy might spirit you away this very night.'

Deborah laughed. 'How like Dad. Did you think that as well?'

'Tommy was a fool not to.'

St James marvelled at the rank duplicity behind their words. With one quick embrace they had neatly sidestepped Deborah's reasons for having left England in the first place, as if they had agreed to play at their old relationship, one to which they could never return. For the moment, however, even spurious friendship was better than further disjunction. 'I have something for you.'

He led her through the laboratory and opened the door of her darkroom. Her hand went out for the light, and St James heard her gasp of surprise as she saw the new colour enlarger standing in place of her old black and white one.

'Simon!' She was biting the inside of her lip. 'This is… How very kind of you. Truly… it's not as if you had to… and you've even waited up for me.' Colour smudged across her face like unattractive thumbprints, a reminder that Deborah had never possessed any skills of artifice to fall back upon when she was distressed.

In his grasp, the doorknob felt inordinately cold. In spite of the past, St James had assumed she would be pleased by the gift. She was not. Somehow, his purchase of it represented the inadvertent crossing of an unspoken boundary between them.

'I wanted to welcome you home somehow,' he said. She didn't respond. 'We've missed you.'

Deborah ran her hand over the enlarger's surface. 'I had a showing of my work in Santa Barbara before I left. Did you know that? Did Tommy tell you about it? I phoned him because… well, it's the sort of thing that one dreams of happening, isn't it? People coming, liking what they see. Even buying… I was so excited. I'd used one of the enlargers at school to do all the prints and I remember wondering how I'd ever afford the new cameras I wanted as well as… And now you've done it for me.' She inspected the darkroom, the bottles of chemicals, the boxes of supplies, the new pans for the stop bath and the fixer. She raised her fingers to her lips. 'You've stocked it as well. Oh, Simon, this is more than… Really, I didn't expect this. Everything is… it's exactly what I need. Thank you. So much. I promise I'll come back every day to use it.'

'Come back?' Abruptly, St James stopped himself, realizing that he should have had the common sense to know what was coming when he saw them in the car together.

'Don't you know?' Deborah switched off the light and returned to the lab. 'I've a flat in Paddington. Tommy found it for me in April. He didn't tell you? Dad didn't? I'm moving there tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow? You mean already? Today?'

'I suppose I do mean today, don't I? And we'll be in poor shape, the both of us, if we don't get some sleep. So I'll say good night, then. And thank you, Simon. Thank you.' She briefly pressed her cheek to his, squeezed his hand, and left.

So that's that, St James thought, staring woodenly after her.

He headed for the stairs.

In her room, she heard him go. No more than two steps from the closed door, Deborah listened to his progress. It was a sound etched into her memory, one that would follow her right to her grave. The light drop of healthy leg, the heavy thump of dead one. The movement of his hand on the handrail, clenched into a tight, white grip. The catch of his breath as precarious balance was maintained. And all of it done with a face that betrayed nothing.

She waited until hearing his door close on the floor below before she moved away from her own and went -as she could not know he had done himself only minutes before – to the window.

Three years, she thought. How could he possibly be thinner, more gaunt and ill, an utterly unhandsome face of battling lines and angles on which was engraved a history of suffering. Hair always too long. She remembered its softness between her fingers. Haunted eyes that spoke to her even when he said nothing himself. Mouth that tenderly covered her own. Sensitive hands, artist's hands, that traced the line of her jaw, that drew her into his arms. 'No. No more.'

Deborah whispered the words calmly into the coming dawn. Turning from the window, she tugged the counterpane off the bed and, fully clothed, lay down.

Don't think of it, she told herself. Don't think of anything.

2

Always, it was the same miserable dream, a hike from Buckbarrow to Greendale Tarn in a rain so refreshing and pure it could only be phantasmagorical. Scaling outcroppings of rock, running effortlessly across the open moor, sliding helter-skelter down the fell to arrive, breathless and laughing, at the water below. The exhilaration of it all, the pounding of activity, the rush of blood through his limbs that he felt – he would swear it – even as he slept.

And then awakening, with a sickening jolt, to the nightmare. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, willing desolation to fade into disregard. But never quite able to disregard the pain.

The bedroom door opened, and Cotter entered, carrying a tray of morning tea. He placed this on the table next to the bed, eyeing St James guardedly before he went to open the curtains.

The morning light was like an electrical current jolting directly through his eyeballs to his brain. St James felt his body jerk.

'Let me get your medicine,' Cotter said. He paused by the bed long enough to pour St James a cup of tea before he disappeared into the adjoining bathroom.

Alone, St James dragged himself into a sitting position, wincing at the degree to which sounds were magnified by the pounding in his skull. The closing of the medicine-cabinet was a rifle shot, water running into the bath a locomotive roar. Cotter returned, bottle in hand.

'Two of these'll do it.' He administered the tablets and said nothing more until St James had swallowed them. Then casually he asked, 'See Deb last night?'

As if the answer didn't really matter to him, Cotter returned to the bathroom where, St James knew, he would test the heat of the water pouring into the tub. This was a completely unnecessary civility, an act giving credence to the manner in which Cotter had asked his question in the first place. He was playing the servant-and-master game, his words and actions implying a disinterest which he didn't feel.

St James sugared his tea heavily and swallowed several mouthfuls. He leaned back against the pillows, waiting for the medicine to take effect.

Cotter reappeared at the bathroom door.

'Yes. I saw her.'

'A bit different, wouldn't you say?'

'That's to be expected. She's been gone a long time.' St James added more tea to his cup. He forced himself to meet the other man's eyes. The determination written across Cotter's face told him that if he said anything more he would be extending a blanket invitation to the sort of revelations he would rather not hear.

But Cotter didn't move from the doorway. It was a conversational impasse. St James surrendered. 'What is it?'

'Lord Asherton and Deb.' Cotter smoothed back his sparse hair. 'I knew that Deb would give 'erself to a man one day, Mr St James. I'm no fool. But knowing 'ow she always felt about… well, I suppose I'd thought that…' Cotter's confidence seemed to dwindle momentarily. He picked at a speck of lint on his sleeve. 'I'm that worried about 'er. What's a man like Lord Asherton want with Deb?'

To marry her, of course. The response came like a reflex, but St James didn't voice it even though he knew that doing so would give Cotter the peace of mind he sought. Instead, he found himself wanting to voice warnings of Lynley's character. How amusing it would be to limn his old friend as a Dorian Gray. The desire disgusted him. He settled on saying, 'It's probably not what you think.'

Cotter ran his finger down the door-jamb as if testing for dust. He nodded, but his face remained unconvinced.

St James reached for his crutches and swung himself to his feet. He headed across the room, hoping Cotter would see this activity as a conclusion to their discussion. But his design was foiled.

'Deb's got 'erself a flat in Paddington. Did she tell you that? Lord Asherton's keeping the girl like she was some tart.'

'Surely not,' St James replied and belted on the dressing-gown that Cotter handed him.

'What money's she got, then?' Cotter demanded. 'How else is it paid for, if not by 'im?'

St James made his way to the bathroom where the rush of water told him that Cotter – in his agitation – had forgotten that the tub was rapidly filling. He turned off the taps and sought a way to put the discussion to an end.

'Then, you must talk to her, Cotter, if that's what you think. Set your mind at rest.'

'What I think? It's what you think as well and there's no denying it. I c'n see it plain as plain on your face.' Cotter warmed to his topic. 'I tried talking with the girl. But that was no good. She was off with 'im last night before I'd the chance. And off again this morning as well.'

'Already? With Tommy?'

'No. Alone this time. To Paddington.'

'Go to see her, then. Talk to her. She might welcome the chance to have some time alone with you.'

Cotter moved past him and began setting out his shaving equipment with unnecessary care. St James watched warily, his intuition telling him the worst was on its way.

'A solid, good talk. Just what I'm thinking. But it's not for me to talk to the girl. A dad's too close. You know what I mean.'

He did indeed. 'You can't possibly be suggesting-' 'Deb's fond of you. That's always been the case.' Cotter's face spoke the challenge beneath the words. He was not a man to avoid emotional blackmail if it took him in the direction which he believed that he – and St James – ought to be travelling. 'If you'd caution the girl. That's ail I'd ask.'

Caution her? How would it run? Don't have anything to do with Tommy, Deborah. If you do, God knows you may end up his wife. It was beyond consideration.

'Just a word,' Cotter said. 'She trusts you. As do I.'

St James fought back a sigh of resignation. Damn Cotter's unquestioning loyalty throughout the years of his illness. Blast the fact that he owed him so very much. There is always a day of accounting.

'Very well,' St James said. 'Perhaps I can manage some time today if you have her address.'

'I do,' Cotter said. 'And you'll see. Deb'll be glad of what you say.'

Right, St James thought sardonically.

The building that housed Deborah's flat was called Shrewsbury Court Apartments. St James found it easily enough in Sussex Gardens, sandwiched in between two seedy boarding-houses. Recently restored, it was a tall building faced with unblemished Portland stone, iron-fenced in the front, its door gained by passing across a narrow concrete walkway that bridged the cavernous entrance to additional flats below the level of the street.

St James pressed the button next to the name Cotter. An answering buzz admitted him into the small lobby with a floor covered by black and white tiles. Like the outside of the building, it was scrupulously clean, and a faint odour of disinfectant announced the fact that it intended to stay that way. There was no furniture, just a hallway leading to the ground-floor flats, a door discreetly hung with a hand-lettered sign reading concierge - as if a foreign word might attest to the building's respectability – and a lift.

Deborah's flat was on the top floor. Riding up to it, St James reflected upon the absurdity of the position in which Cotter had placed him. Deborah was an adult now. She would hardly welcome anyone's intrusion into her life. Least of all would she welcome his.

She opened the door at once to his knock, as if she'd spent the afternoon doing nothing save awaiting his arrival. Her expression shifted quickly from welcome to surprise, however, and it was only after a fractional hesitation that she stepped back from the door to admit him.

'Simon! I'd no idea…' She offered her hand in greeting, seemed to think better of the gesture, and dropped it to her side. 'You've quite surprised me. I was expecting… this is really… you've only… Oh, why am I babbling? Please. Come in.'

The word flat turned out to be a euphemism, for her new home was little more than a cramped bed-sitting-room. Still, much had been done to fill it with comfort. Pale green paint, refreshing and spring-like, coated the walls. Against one of them, a rattan daybed was covered with a bright, multicoloured counterpane and embroidered pillows. On another, a collection of Deborah's photographs hung, pieces which St James had never seen before and realized must represent the result of her years of training in America. Music played softly from a stereo near the window. Debussy. Afternoon of a Faun.

St James turned to comment upon the room – what a far cry it was from the adolescent eclecticism of her bedroom at home – and caught sight of a small alcove to the left of the door. It comprised a kitchen where an undersized table was set with a china tea-service. Two places were laid.

He should have realized the moment he saw her. It was hardly in character for her to be lolling around in the middle of the day, wearing a soft summer dress in place of her usual blue jeans.

'You've someone coming. I'm sorry. I should have phoned.'

'I'm not connected yet. It doesn't matter. Really. What do you think? Do you like it?'

The entire bedsit was, he thought, pretty much what it was intended to be: a room of peace and femininity in which a man would want to lie at her side, throwing off the day's burdens for the pleasure of making love. But that was hardly the response Deborah wanted from him. To avoid having to give one, he walked to her pictures.

Although more than a dozen hung on the wall, they were grouped in such a way that his eyes were drawn to a striking black and white portrait of a man standing with his back to the camera, his head turned in profile, his hair and skin – both lit with a shimmering cast of water -acting as contrast to an ebony background.

'Tommy photographs well.'

Deborah joined him. 'He does, doesn't he? I was trying to give some definition to his musculature. I'm not at all sure about it, though. The lighting seems off. I don't know. One minute I like it and the next I think it's about as subtle as a mug shot.'

St James smiled. 'You're as hard on yourself as you ever were, Deborah.'

'I suppose I am. Never satisfied with anything. That's always been my story.'

'I'd say a piece was fine. Your father would agree. We'd bring in Helen for a third opinion. Then you'd celebrate your success by throwing it away and claiming we all were hopeless judges.'

She laughed. 'At least I didn't fish for compliments.'

'No. You didn't do that.' He turned back to the wall. The brief pleasure of their exchange withered to nothing.

A different sort of study had been placed next to the black and white portrait. It, too, was of Lynley, seated nude in an old iron bed, rumpled bedlinen thrown over the lower part of his torso. With one leg raised, an arm resting on his knee, he gazed towards a window where Deborah stood, her back to the camera, sunlight gleaming along the swell of her right hip. Yellow curtains billowed back frothily, no doubt serving to hide the cable release that had allowed her to take the picture. The photograph looked completely spontaneous, as if she had awakened at Lynley's side and found an opportunity in a chance of light, in the contrast of curtains and morning sky.

St James stared at the picture, trying to pretend he could evaluate it as a piece of art, knowing all the time it was affirmation that Cotter had guessed the entire truth about Deborah's relationship with Lynley. In spite of the sight of them together in his car last night, St James knew that he had been holding on to an insubstantial thread of hope. It snapped before his eyes. He looked at Deborah.

Two spots of colour had appeared high on her cheeks. 'Heavens, I'm not a very good hostess, am I? Would you like something to drink? Gin and tonic? Or there's whisky And tea. There's tea. I've lots of tea. I was about to-'

'No. Nothing. You've someone coming. I'll not stay long.'

'Stay for tea. I can set another place.' She went to the tiny kitchen.

'Please, Deborah. Don't,' St James said quickly, imagining the awkward civility of getting through tea and three or four digestive biscuits while Deborah and Lynley made polite conversation with him, all the time wishing he would be on his way. 'It's really not right.'

Deborah paused at the kitchen cupboard, a cup and saucer in her hand. 'Not right? What d'you mean? It'll just be-'

'Listen, little bird.' He wanted only to get everything said, do his miserable duty, keep his promise to her father, and be gone. 'Your father's worried about you.'

With studied precision, Deborah put down the saucer, and then, even more carefully, the cup on top of it. She lined them up with the edge of the worktop. 'I see. You're here as his emissary, aren't you? It's hardly the role I'd expect you to play.'

'I told him I'd speak to you, Deborah.'

At that – perhaps it was the change in his tone – he saw the spots of colour deepen on her cheeks. Her lips pressed together. She walked to the daybed, sat down, and folded her hands.

'All right. Go ahead.'

St James saw the unmistakable flicker of passion cross her face. He heard the first stirring of temper in her voice. But he chose to ignore both, deciding to go on with what he had come to say. He assured himself that his motivation was his promise to Cotter. His given word meant commitment, and he could not leave without making certain Cotter's concerns were explained to his daughter in the most explicit terms.

'Your father's worried about you and Tommy,' he began, in what he deemed a reasonable manner.

'And what about you? Are you worried as well?'

'It has nothing to do with me.'

'Ah. I should have known. Well, now that you've seen me – and the flat as well – are you going to report back and justify Dad's worries? Or do I need to do something to pass your inspection?'

'You've misunderstood.'

'You've come snooping around to check up on my behaviour. What is it exactly I've misunderstood?'

'It isn't a question of your behaviour, Deborah.' He was feeling defensive, decidedly uncomfortable. Their interview wasn't supposed to take this course. 'It's only that your relationship with Tommy-'

She pushed herself to her feet. 'I'm afraid that's none of your business, Simon. My father may be little more than a servant in your life, but I'm not. I never was. Where did you get the idea you could come round here and pry into my life? Who do you think you are?'

'Someone who cares about you. You know that very well.'

'Someone who…' Deborah faltered. Her hands clenched in front of her as if she wished to stop herself from saying more. The effort failed. 'Someone who cares? You call yourself someone who cares about me? You, who never bothered to write so much as a single letter all the years I was gone. I was seventeen years old. Do you know what that was like? Have you any idea since you care so much?' She walked unevenly to the other side of the room and swung to face him again. 'Every day for months on end, there I was, waiting like an idiot – a stupid little fool – hoping for word from you. An answer to my letters. Anything! A note. A card. A message sent through my father. It didn't matter what as long as it was from you. But nothing came. I didn't know why. I couldn't understand. And in the end, when I could face it, I just waited for the news that you'd finally married Helen.'

'Married Helen?' St James demanded incredulously. He didn't stop to consider how or why their conversation was escalating so rapidly into an argument. 'How in God's name could you even think that?'

'What else was I to think?'

'You might have had the sense to start out with what existed between the two of us before you left England.'

Tears sprang into her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously. 'Oh, I thought of that all right. Every night, every morning, I thought of that, Simon. Lying in my bed, trying to come up with a single good reason to get on in my life. Living in a void. Living in hell. Are you pleased to know it? Are you satisfied now? Missing you. Wanting you. It was torture. A disease.'

'With Tommy the cure.'

'Absolutely. Thank God. With Tommy the cure. So get out of here. Now. Leave me alone.'

'I'll leave all right. It would hardly do to have me here in the love-nest when Tommy arrives to claim what he's paid for.' He pointed crudely at each object as he spoke. 'Tea laid out nicely. Soft music playing. And the lady herself, ready and waiting. I can see I'd get just a bit in the way. Especially if he's in a rush.'

Deborah backed away from him. 'What he's paid for? Is that why you're here? Is that what you think? That I'm too worthless and stupid to support myself? That this is Tommy's flat? Who am I, then, Simon? Who bloody well am I? His bauble? Some scrubber? His tart?' She didn't wait for the answer. 'Get out of my flat.'

Not yet, he decided. By God, not yet. 'You talk a pretty piece about torture, don't you? So what the hell do you think these three years have been like for me? And how do you imagine I felt waiting to see you last night, hour after hour – after three goddamn years – and knowing now you were here all that time with him?'

'I don't care how you felt! Whatever it was, it couldn't come close to the misery you foisted on me.'

'What a compliment to your lover! Are you sure misery is the word you want to use?'

'It comes back to that, doesn't it? Sex is the issue. Who's screwing Deb. Well, here's your chance, Simon. Go ahead. Have me. Make up for lost time. There's the bed. Go on.' He didn't reply. 'Come on. Screw me. Have me for a quickie. That's what you want, isn't it? Damn you, isn't it?'

When still he was silent, she reached in a fury for the first available object that came into her hand. She threw it at him with all her strength, and it crashed and splintered against the wall near his head. They both saw too late that in her rage she had destroyed his gift to a long-ago childhood birthday, a porcelain swan.

The act ended anger.

Deborah started to speak, a fist at her lips, as if she were seeking the first horrified words of apology. But St James felt beyond hearing another word. He looked down at the broken fragments on the floor and crushed them into powder beneath his foot, a single sharp movement with which he demonstrated that love, like clay, can be pitiably friable.

With a cry, Deborah rushed across the room to where a few pieces lay beyond his reach. She picked them up.

'I hate you!' Tears finally coursed down her cheeks. 'I hate you! This is just the sort of thing I'd expect you to do. And why not when everything about you is crippled? You think it's just your stupid leg, don't you, but you're crippled inside, and by God, that's worse.'

Her words knifed the air, every nightmare come to life. St James flinched from their strength and moved towards the door. He felt numb, weak, and primarily conscious of the terrible awkwardness of his gait, as if it were magnified a thousand times for her to see.

'Simon! No! I'm sorry!'

She was reaching towards him, and he noted with interest that she'd cut herself on the edge of one of the pieces of porcelain. A hairline of blood ran from palm to wrist.

'I didn't mean it. Simon, you know I didn't mean it.' He marvelled at the fact that all previous passion was quite dead in him. Nothing mattered at all, save the need to escape.

'I know that, Deborah.'

He opened the door. It was a mercy to be gone.

The blood felt like rising floodwaters within his skull, the usual precursor of intolerable pain. Sitting in his old MG outside the Shrewsbury Court Apartments, St James fought it, knowing that if he gave it even a moment's sway the agony would be so excruciating that finding his way back to Chelsea without assistance would be impossible.

The situation was ludicrous. Would he actually have to telephone Cotter for assistance? And from what? From a fifteen-minute conversation with a girl just twenty-one years old? Surely he, eleven years her senior with a world of experience behind him, ought to have emerged the victor from their encounter rather than what he was at the moment – shattered, weak-kneed and ill. How rich.

He closed his eyes against the sunlight, an incandescence that seared his nerves, one that he knew did not really exist but was only the product of his heat-oppressed brain. He laughed derisively at the tortured convolution of muscle, bone, and sinew that for eight years had been his bar of justice, prison, and final retribution for the crime of being young and being drunk on a winding road in Surrey long ago.

The air he drew in was hot, fetid with the scent of diesel fuel. Still, he sucked it in deeply. To master pain in its infancy was everything, and he did not pause to consider that doing so would then give him leave to examine the charges which Deborah had hurled against him and, worse, to admit to the truth of every one.

For three years, he had indeed not sent her a message, not a single letter, not a sign of any kind. And the damnable fact behind his behaviour was that he could not excuse it or explain it in a way she might ever come to understand. Even if she did, what point would it serve for her to know now that every day without her he had felt himself growing just a bit more towards nothing? For while he had allowed himself to die by inches and degrees, Lynley had taken up position within the sweet circumference of her life, and there he had moved in his usual fashion, gracious and calm, completely self-assured.

At the thought of the other man, St James made himself stir and felt for the car keys in his pocket, determined not to be found – looking like a puling schoolboy – in front of Deborah's block of flats when Lynley arrived. He pulled away from the kerb and joined the rush-hour traffic that was hurtling down Sussex Gardens.

As the light changed on the corner of Praed Street and London Street, St James braked the car and let his glance wander forlornly with a heaviness that matched the condition of his spirit. Without registering any of them, his eyes took in the multifarious business establishments that tumbled one upon the other down the Paddington street, like children eager to grab one's attention on the pathway to the Tube. A short distance away, beneath the blue and white Underground sign, a woman stood. She was making a purchase of flowers from a vendor whose cart stood precariously, one wheel hanging over the kerb. She shook back her head of close-cropped black hair, scooped up a spray of summer flowers, and laughed at something the vendor said.

Seeing her, St James cursed his unforgivable stupidity. For here was Deborah's afternoon guest. Not Lynley at all, but his very own sister.

The knocking began at her door just moments after Simon left, but Deborah ignored it. Crouched near the window, she held the broken fragment of a fluted wing in her hand, and she drove it into her palm so that it drew fresh blood. Just a drop here and there where the edges were sharpest, then a more determined flow as she increased the pressure.

Let me tell you about swans, he had said. When they choose a mate, they choose once and for life. They learn to live in harmony together, little bird, accepting each other just the way they are. There's a lesson in that for us all, isn't there?

Deborah ran her fingers over the delicate moulding that was left of Simon's gift and wondered how she had possibly come to engage in such an act of betrayal. What possible triumph had she managed to achieve beyond a brief and blinding vengeance that had as its fountainhead his complete humiliation? And what, after all, had the frightful scene between them managed to prove at the heart of the matter? Merely that her adolescent philosophy – spouted to him so confidently at the age of seventeen – had been incapable of standing the test of a separation. I love you, she had told him. Nothing changes that. Nothing ever will. But the words hadn't proved true. People weren't like swans. Least of all was she.

Deborah got to her feet, wiping at her cheeks roughly with the sleeve of her frock, uncaring if the three buttons at the wrist abraded her skin, rather hoping they would. She stumbled into the kitchen where she found a cloth to wrap round her hand. The fragment of wing she placed in a drawer. This latter she knew was fruitiess activity, carried out in the ridiculous belief that the swan itself might someday be mended.

Wondering what excuse she could make to Sidney St James for her appearance, she went to the door where the knocking continued. Wiping her cheeks a second time, she turned the knob, trying to smile, but managing only a grimace.

'What a mess. I'm perfectly…' Deborah faltered.

A bizarrely clad, but nonetheless attractive, black-haired woman stood on the threshold. She held a glass of milky green liquid in her hand, and she extended it without a prefatory remark. Nonplussed, Deborah took it from her. The woman nodded sharply and walked into the flat.

'Men are all the same.' Her voice was husky, with a regional accent she seemed to be trying to shed. She padded on bare feet to the centre of the room and continued to speak as if she and Deborah had known each other for years. 'Drink it up. I go through at least five a day. It'll make you feel a new woman, I swear it. And, Christ knows, these days I need to feel like new after every-' She stopped herself and laughed, showing teeth that were extraordinarily white and even. 'You know what I mean.'

It was hard to avoid knowing exactly what the woman did mean. In a black satin negligee with voluminous folds and flounces, she was a walking advertisement for her calling in life.

Deborah held up the glass which had been pressed upon her. 'What is this?'

A buzzer sounded, indicating the presence of someone in the street below. The woman walked to the wall and pressed the reciprocal bell for entry.

'This place is as busy as Victoria Station.'

She nodded to the drink, removed a card from the pocket of her dressing-gown and handed it to Deborah. 'Nothing but juices and vitamins, that. A few veggies thrown in. A little pick-me-up. I've written it all down for you. Hope you don't mind the liberty, but from the sound of today, you'll be needing a lot of it. Drink it. Go on.' She waited until Deborah had raised the glass to her lips before sauntering to her photographs. 'Very nice. This your stuff?'

'Yes.' Deborah read the list of ingredients on the card. Nothing more harmful than cabbage, which she'd always loathed. She placed the glass on the worktop and smoothed her fingers across the cloth that was wrapped round her palm. She lifted her hand to her tangled mess of hair. 'I must look a sight.'

The woman smiled. 'I'm a wreck myself until after nightfall. I never bother much in the light of day. What's the point, I say. Anyway, you're a perfect vision as far as I'm concerned. How d'you like the drink?'

'It's not quite like anything I've ever tasted.'

'Special, isn't it? I ought to bottle the stuff

'Yes. Well, it's good. Very good. Thank you. I'm terribly sorry about the row.'

'It was a great one. I couldn't help overhearing most of it – walls being what they are – and for a bit I thought it might come to blows. I'm just next door.' She cocked her thumb to the left. 'Tina Cogin.'

'Deborah Cotter. I moved in last night.'

'Is that what all the thumping and pounding was about?' Tina grinned. 'And to think I was imagining some competition. Well, none of that talk. You don't look the type to be on the game, do you?'

Deborah felt herself colouring. 'Thank you' hardly seemed an appropriate response.

Apparently finding reply unnecessary, Tina busied herself looking at her reflection in the glass that covered one of Deborah's photographs. She rearranged her hair, examined her teeth, and ran a long fingernail between the front two. 'I'm a ruin. Make-up just can't do it all, can it? Ten years ago, a bit of blusher was all it took. And now? Hours in front of a mirror and I still look like hell when I'm done.'

A knock sounded on the door. Sidney, Deborah decided. She wondered what Simon's sister would say about this unexpected visitor to her flat who was currently studying the photograph of Lynley as if she were considering him a source of future income.

'Would you like to stay for tea?' Deborah asked her.

Tina swung from the picture. One eyebrow lifted.

'Tea?' She said the word as if the substance had not passed her lips for the better part of her adult life. 'Sweet of you, Deb, but no. Three in this kind of situation is a bit of a crowd. Take it from me. I've tried it.'

'Three?' Deborah stammered. 'It's a woman.'

'Oh, no!' Tina laughed. 'I was talking of the table, love. It's a bit small, you see, and I'm all elbows and thumbs when it comes to tea. You just finish that drink and return the glass later. Right?'

'Yes. Thank you. All right.'

'And we'll have a nice litde chat when you do.'

With a wave of her hand, Tina opened the door, swept past Sidney St James with an electric smile, and disappeared down the hall.

3

Peter Lynley hadn't chosen his Whitechapel flat for either amenities or location. Of the former, there were none, unless one could call four walls and two windows – both painted shut – a strong selling feature. As to the latter, the flat indeed had ease of access to an Underground station, but the building itself was of pre-Victorian vintage, surrounded by others of a similar age, and nothing had been done to clean or renovate either buildings or neighbourhood in at least thirty years. However, both the flat and its location served Peter's needs, which were few. And, more importantly, his wallet, which as of today was nearly empty.

The way he had it worked out, they could make it another fortnight if they played it conservatively and held themselves to just five lines a night. All right, perhaps six. Then during the day they'd start looking for work in earnest. A job in sales for him. New performances for Sasha. He had the brains and the personality for sales. And Sasha still had her art. She could use it in Soho. They'd want her there. Hell, they'd probably never seen anything like her in Soho. It would be just like Oxford, with a bare stage, a single spotlight, and Sasha on a chair, letting the audience cut her clothes off, daring them to cut off everything. 'Get in touch with yourself. Know what you feel. Say what you want.' All the time she'd be smiling, all the time superior, all the time the only person in the room who knew how to be proud of who and what

she was. Head high, held confidently, arms at her sides. I am her posture declared. I am. I am.

Where was she? Peter wondered.

He checked the time. His watch was an unattractive, second-hand Timex that managed to exude an air of unreliability simply by existing. He'd sold his Rolex some time ago and had quickly discovered that relying on this current piece for accuracy was just about as ridiculous as relying on Sasha to make a score on her own without latching on to a copper's nark by mistake.

He avoided dwelling upon that thought by shaking his wrist anxiously and peering at the watch. Had its blasted hands even moved in the last half-hour? He held it to his ear, swore in disbelief at the gentle ticking. Could it only have been two hours since she'd left? It seemed like ages.

Restlessly, he got up from the sagging sofa, one of the room's three pieces of fourth-hand furniture, if one didn't count the cardboard cartons in which they kept their clothes or the overturned vegetable-crate that held their only lamp. The sofa unfolded into a lumpy bed. Sasha griped about it daily, saying it was doing in her back, saying she hadn't had a decent hour's sleep in at least a month.

Where was she? Peter went to one of the windows and flicked back its covering, a bedsheet crudely fashioned into a curtain by shoving a rusting rod through its hem. He gazed through the pane. It was grimy inside as well as out.

As Peter searched the street for Sasha's familiar form -for a glimpse of the old carpet-bag satchel she always carried – he took a dirty handkerchief from the hip pocket of his blue jeans and wiped his nose. It was an automatic reaction, done without thought. And the brief spurt of pain that accompanied it was gone in an instant and thus easily ignored as inconsequential. Without looking at the linen or examining the new, rust-coloured stains upon it, he replaced the handkerchief and chewed with rabbit bites on the side of his index finger.

In the distance, at the mouth of the narrow street in which they lived, pedestrians passed in Brick Lane, commuters on their way home for the day. Peter tried to focus upon them, making a deliberate exercise of attempting to pick Sasha out of the bobbing heads on their way to or from Aldgate East Station. She'd come on the Northern, he told himself, make a switch to the Metropolitan and home. So where was she? What was so hard about one buy, after all? Give over the money. Get the stuff. What was taking so long?

He mulled over the question. What was taking Sasha so long? For that matter, what was to prevent the little bitch from taking off with his cash, making the score on her own, and never coming back to the flat at all? In fact, why should she bother to return? She'd have what she wanted. That's why she continued to hang about.

Peter rejected the idea as completely impossible. Sasha wouldn't leave. She said only last week that she'd never had it as good as she had it from him. Didn't she beg for it practically every night?

Pensively, Peter wiped his nose on the back of his hand. When had they last done it? Last night, wasn't it? She was laughing like crazy and he'd caught her up against the wall and… wasn't that last night? Sammy from across the hall pounding on the door and telling them to hold it down, and Sasha shrieking and scratching and gasping for breath – only she wasn't shrieking, she was laughing – and her head kept bouncing back against the wall and he didn't finish with her, couldn't finish, but it didn't matter at the time because both of them were up in the clouds.

That was it. Last night. And she'd be back when she scored.

With his teeth, he pulled at the rough edge of a fingernail.

So. What if she couldn't make the buy? She'd talked big enough this afternoon about Hampstead, a house near the heath where deals went down if the money was right. So where was she? How long could it take to get there and back? Where the hell was she?

Peter grinned, tasted blood where he'd bitten through the skin. It was time for control. He inhaled. He stretched. He touched his toes.

It didn't matter anyway. He had no real need of it. He could stop any time. Everyone knew that. One could stop any time. Still and all, he was something with it. Master manipulator, king of the world.

The door opened behind him, and he spun to see that Sasha was back. In the doorway, she pushed her lank hair off her face and watched him warily. Her stance reminded him of a cornered hare.

'Where is it?' he asked.

An emotion flickered across her features. She kicked the door closed and went to the sofa where she sat on its threadbare brown cushions, her back to him, her head dropped forward. Peter felt the skeletal fingers of warning dance against his skin.

'Where is it?'

'I didn't… I couldn't…' Her shoulders started shaking.

Control disintegrated in an instant.

'You couldn't what? What in hell's going on?' He dashed to the window and inched back the curtain. Christ, had she blown it? Had she been followed by the police? He peered at the street. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. No unmarked police car held occupants busily observing the building. No van stood illegally against the kerb. No plain-clothes policeman loitered beneath the street-lamp. There was nothing.

He turned back to her. She was watching him over her shoulder. Her eyes – like a dog's curious shade of yellow and brown – were watery, red-rimmed. Her lips trembled with defeat. He knew.

'Jesus Christ!' He flew across the room, shoved her to one side, and grabbed the carpet-bag. He dumped its contents on to the sofa and sifted through them. His hands were clumsy, his frantic search useless. 'Where the hell…? Where's the stuff, Sasha? Where is it? Where?'

'I didn't-'

'Then, where's the cash?' Sirens shrieked in his head. The walls tilted in. 'Sasha, what the fuck have you done with the cash?'

Sasha reared up at that, right off the sofa and across the room. 'That's it?' she shouted. '"Where the fuck is the cash?" Not "Where've you been?" Not "I've been worried". But "Where the fuck is the cash?'" She whipped back the sleeve of her stained, purple jersey. Deep scratches covered her jaundiced skin. Bruises were rising to the surface there. 'Look for yourself! I was mugged, you little bastard!'

'You were mugged}'' The question climbed a scale of disbelief. 'Don't give me that crap. What've you done with my cash?'

'I told you! Your sodding wad of cash was pinched on the bloody platform of the bloody station. I've spent the last two hours socializing with the bloody Hampstead police. Ring them yourself if you don't believe me.' And she began to sob.

He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. 'Christ, you can't do anything, can you?'

'No, I can't. And neither can you. If you'd got it yourself last Friday like you said you would-'

'I told you, God damn it. How many times do I have to repeat it? It didn't work out.'

'So you got me to do it, didn't you?'

'I got you?

'You did. You bloody well did!' Her face worked bitterly. 'You were too flipping terrified that you'd get busted, weren't you? So you left it to me. Don't harp on it now when it didn't work out.'

Peter felt his palm itch with the need to strike her, to see the red rush of blood on her skin. He walked away from her, buying time, seeking calm, trying to think what to do. 'You've got them, Sash. All the facts. All in order.'

'It was all right, wasn't it, if I took the fall? What difference would that make? Sasha Nifford. Nobody. Nothing in the newspapers about her, right? But what would it look like if the Honourable Peter got his little hands slapped?'

'Shut up about that.'

'Making smelly little messes on the family name?' 'Shut up!'

'Upsetting the apple-carts of three hundred years of law-abiding Lynleys? Upsetting Mummy? Upsetting big brother at Scotland Yard CID?'

'God damn you, shut up!'

Someone below them pounded on the ceiling, shouting for peace. Still Sasha glared at him, her posture and expression daring him to disprove what she'd said. He couldn't.

'Let's just think this out,' he muttered. He noticed that his hands were shaking – every joint had begun to sweat as well – and he shoved them into his pockets. 'There's always Cornwall.'

'Cornwall?' Sasha sounded incredulous. 'Why the hell-?'

'I don't have enough money here.'

'I don't believe it. If you're out of money, ask your brother for a cheque. He's rolling in cash. Everyone knows that.'

Peter went back to the window, gnawing his thumb. 'But you won't do that, will you?' Sasha continued. 'You wouldn't dare ask your brother for a loan. We're going to traipse all the way to Cornwall because you're scared to death of him. You're absolutely petrified at the thought of Thomas Lynley's getting wise to you. And what if he does? What is he, your keeper? Just some big toff holding an Oxford degree? Are you such a little pansy that-?' 'Stow it!'

'I won't. What the hell's in Cornwall that we've got to go there?'

'Howenstow,' he snapped.

Her jaw dropped. 'Howenstow? A little visit with Mummy? Jesus, that's just about what I'd expect of you next. Either that or sucking your thumb. Or playing with yourself.'

'Fucking bitch!'

'Go ahead! Hit me, you pathetic little twit. You've been aching to do it ever since I walked in the door.'

His fist clenched and unclenched. God, how he wanted to. Years of upbringing and codes of behaviour to hell. He wanted to pound on her face, see blood pour from her mouth, break her teeth and her nose, blacken both of her eyes.

Instead, he fled the room.

Sasha Nifford smiled. She watched the closed door, meticulously counting the seconds that it would take Peter to crash down the stairs. When a sufficient amount of time had elapsed, she cracked the bedsheet back from the window and waited for him to fling himself from the building and stumble down the street towards the corner pub. He did not disappoint her.

She chuckled. Getting rid of Peter hadn't been difficult at all. His behaviour was as predictable as a trained chimpanzee's.

She went back to the sofa. From the spilled contents of her carpet-bag, she took a chipped compact and flipped it open. A pound note was folded into the mirror. She removed it, rolled it, and reached into the V neck of her jersey.

Brassieres, she thought drily, have such varied uses. She removed a plastic bag which held the cocaine she'd bought for them in Hampstead. Cornwall be damned, she smiled.

Her mouth watered as she poured a small quantity of the drug on to the compact's mirror, hastily using a fingernail to chop it into dust. Using the rolled pound note, she inhaled in greedily.

Heaven, she thought, leaning back against the sofa. Unutterable ecstasy. Better than sex. Better than anything. Bliss.

Thomas Lynley was on the telephone when Dorothea Harriman entered his office, a sheet of memo paper in her hand. She gave the paper a meaningful shake and winked at him like a fellow conspirator. Seeing this, Lynley brought his conversation with the fingerprint officer to a conclusion.

Harriman waited until he had hung up the phone. 'You've got it, Detective Inspector,' she announced, using his full organizational title in her cheerfully perverse fashion. Harriman never referred to anyone by 'mister', 'miss' or 'ms' when she had the opportunity to string six or ten syllables together as if she were making introductions at the Court of St James. 'Either the stars are in the right position, or Superintendent Webberly's won the football pools. He signed without a second glance. I should be so lucky when I want time off.'

Lynley took the memo from her. His superior officer's name was scrawled in approval across the bottom along with the barely legible note, 'Have a care if you're flying, lad,' seven words that telegraphed Webberly's accurate guess that he planned upon heading to Cornwall for a long weekend. Lynley had no doubt that the superintendent had also deduced his reason for the trip. Webberly had, after all, seen and remarked upon the photograph of Deborah on Lynley's desk, and although he was not himself uxorious the superintendent was always first with congratulations when one of his men got married.

The superintendent's secretary was examining this picture herself at the moment. She squinted to bring it into focus, once again eschewing the spectacles which Lynley knew were in her desk. Wearing spectacles detracted from the marked resemblance Harriman bore to the Princess of Wales, a resemblance which she did much to promote. Today, Lynley noted, Harriman was wearing a reproduction of the black-sashed blue dress which the Princess had worn to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in America. Royalty had looked quite svelte with it on. Harriman, however, was given over just a bit too much to hips.

'Rumour has Deb back in London,' Harriman said, replacing the picture and frowning at the unorganized clutter of his desk-top. She gathered up a fan of telephone messages, clipped them together, and straightened five files.

'She's been back for more than a week,' Lynley answered.

'That's the change in you, then. Grist for the marriage mill, Detective Inspector. You've been grinning like a fool these last three days.'

'Have I?'

'Walking on bubbles with not a trouble in the world. If this is love, I'll take a double portion, thank you.'

He smiled, sorted through the files and handed two of them to her. 'Take these instead, will you? Webberly's waiting for them.'

Harriman sighed. 'I want love and he gives me' – she examined them – 'fibre optic reports from a killing in Bayswater. How romantic. I'm in the wrong line of work.' 'But it's noble work, Harriman.'

'Just what I need to hear.' She left him, calling out to someone to answer a phone that was ringing in an unmanned office nearby.

Lynley folded the memo and flipped open his pocket watch. It was half-past five. He'd been on duty since seven. There were at least three more reports on his desk waiting for comment, but his concentration was dwindling. It was time to join her, Lynley decided. They needed to talk.

He left his office, making his way down to the lobby and out the revolving doors onto Broadway. He walked along the side of the building – such an unprepossessing combination of glass, grey stone, and protective scaffolding – towards the green.

Deborah still stood where he had seen her from his office window, in the corner of that misshapen trapezoid of lawn and trees. She appeared to be alternating between studying the top of the Suffragette Scroll and gazing at it through her camera, which she had mounted on its tripod perhaps ten feet away.

Whatever she hoped to capture through the lens seemed to elude her, however. For, as Lynley watched, she scrunched up her nose, dropped her shoulders in disappointment, and began disassembling her equipment, packing it away in a sturdy metal case.

Lynley prolonged the moment before he crossed the green to join her, taking pleasure in a study of her movements. He savoured her presence. He had no fondness for the tender angst of being in love with a woman who was six thousand miles away. So Deborah's absence had created anything but an easy time for him. Most of it he had spent with his mind fixed upon when he would next see her on one or another of his quick trips to California.

But now she was back. She was with him. He was fully determined to keep it that way.

He crossed the lawn, scattering pigeons who were pecking about in search of crumbs from afternoon lunches. They took hasty flight, and Deborah looked up. Her hair, which had been pulled back with a haphazard arrangement of combs, tumbled towards freedom. She muttered in exasperation and began to fuss with it.

'You know,' she said by way of greeting him, 'I always wanted to be one of those women who're described as having hair like silk. You know what I mean. An Estella Havisham type.'

'Did Estella Havisham have hair like silk?' He pushed her hand away and saw to the snarls himself.

'She must have. Can you imagine poor Pip falling for someone who didn't have hair like silk? Ouch!’

‘Pulling?'

'A bit. Honestly, isn't it pathetic? I lead one life and my hair leads another.'

'Well, it's fixed now. Sort of.' 'That's encouraging.'

They laughed together and began gathering her belongings which were scattered on the lawn. She'd come with tripod, camera-case, a shopping-bag containing three pieces of fruit, a comfortable old pullover, and her shoulder-bag.

'I saw you from my office,' Lynley told her. 'What are you working on? A tribute to Mrs Pankhurst?'

'Actually, I was waiting for the light to strike the top of the scroll. I thought to create some diffraction with the lens. Utterly defeated by the clouds, I'm afraid. By the time they decided to drift away, the sun had done so as well.' She paused reflectively and scratched her head. 'What an appalling display of ignorance. I think I mean the earth.' She fished in her shoulder-bag and brought out a mint which she unwrapped and popped into her mouth.

They strolled back towards Scotland Yard.

‘I’ve managed to get Friday off,' Lynley told her. 'Monday as well. So we're free to go to Cornwall. I'm free, that is. And if you've nothing planned I thought we might…' He stopped, wondering why he was adding the verbal apologia.

'Cornwall, Tommy?' Deborah's voice was no different when she asked the question, but her head was turned away from him so he couldn't see her expression.

'Yes. Cornwall. Howenstow. I think it's time, don't you? I know you've only just come back and perhaps this is rushing things. But you've never met my mother.'

Deborah said only, 'Ah. Yes.'

'Your coming to Cornwall would give your father an opportunity to meet her as well. And it's time they met.'

She frowned at her scuffed shoes and made no reply.

'Deb, it can't be avoided for ever. I know what you're thinking. They're worlds apart. They'll have nothing to say to each other. But that isn't the case. They'll get on. Believe me.'

'He won't want to do this, Tommy.'

'I've already thought of that. And of a way to manage it. I've asked Simon to come along. It's all arranged in fact.'

He did not include in the information the details of his brief encounter with St James and Lady Helen Clyde at the Ritz, they on their way to a business dinner and he en route to a reception at Clarence House. He also didn't mention St James' ill-concealed reluctance or Lady Helen's quick excuse. An enormous backlog of work, she'd said, promising to keep them busy for every weekend over the next month.

Helen's declining the invitation had been too quick to be believable, and the speed of her refusal, in combination with the effort she made not to look at St James, told Lynley how important absence from Cornwall was to them both. Even if he had wanted to lie to himself, he couldn't do so in the face of their behaviour. He knew what it meant. But he needed them in Cornwall for Cotter's sake, and the mention of the older man's possible discomfort was what won them over. For St James would never send Cotter alone to be wretchedly enthroned as a weekend visitor to Howenstow. And Helen would never abandon St James to what she clearly visualized as four days of unmitigated misery. So Lynley had used them. It was all for Cotter's sake, he told himself, and refused to examine the secondary reasons he had – even more compelling than Cotter's comfort – for arriving at Howenstow with a surfeit of companions.

Deborah was inspecting the silver letters on the Yard's revolving sign. She said, 'Simon's to go?'

'And Helen. Sidney as well.' Lynley waited for her further reaction. When there was none other than the smallest of nods, he decided they were finally close enough to the single area of discussion which they had long avoided. It lay between them, unspoken, putting down roots of potential doubt which needed to be extirpated once and for all.

'Have you seen him, Deb?'

'Yes.' She shifted her tripod from one hand to the other. She said nothing else, leaving everything up to him.

Lynley felt in his pocket for cigarette case and lighter. He lit up before she had a chance to admonish him. Feeling weighted down by a burden he did not wish to define, he sighed.

'I want to get us through this, Deb. No, that's not quite true, is it? We need to get through it.'

'I saw him the night I got home, Tommy. He was waiting up for me in the lab. With a homecoming present. An enlarger. He wanted me to see it. And then the next afternoon he came to Paddington. We spoke.'

That's all was left unsaid.

Lynley tossed his cigarette to one side, angry with himself. He wondered what it was that he really wanted Deborah to say, and why he expected her to account for a relationship with another man that had spanned her entire life, and how on earth she could ever begin to do so. He disliked the belief that was eating at his confidence, a gnawing conviction that somehow Deborah's return to London had the power to nullify every word and act of love that had passed between them in the last several years. Perhaps, hidden beneath the most troubling of his feelings, was the real reason he was determined to have St James with them in Cornwall: to prove to the other man once and for all that Deborah was his. It was a contemptible thought.

'Tommy.'

He roused himself to find that Deborah was watching him. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to tell her how he loved the way her green eyes were flecked with bits of gold, the way her skin and hair reminded him of autumn. But all of that seemed ridiculous right now.

'I love you, Tommy. I want to be your wife.'

That, Lynley decided, didn't seem ridiculous at all.