A Suitable Vengeance

20

'Then, Mick must have left both of those telephone numbers in Tina Cogin's flat,' St James said. 'Trenarrow's as well as Islington's. That explains why Trenarrow didn't know who Tina was.'

Lynley didn't reply until he'd made the turn into Beaufort Street, to head in the general direction of Paddington. They had just dropped Cotter at St James' Cheyne Row house where he'd greeted the sight of that brick building like a prodigal son, scurrying inside with a suitcase in each hand and undisguised, wholehearted relief buoying his footsteps. It was ten past one in the afternoon. Their drive into the city from the airfield in Surrey had been plagued by a snarl of slow-moving traffic, the product of a summer fete near Buckland which apparendy was drawing record crowds.

'Do you think Roderick's involved in this business?'

St James took note not only of the dispassionate tone of Lynley's question but also of the fact that he'd deliberately phrased it to leave out the word murder. At the same time, he saw the manner in which his friend attended to the driving as he spoke, both hands high on the steering wheel, eyes fixed straight ahead. He knew only the barest details of Lynley's past relationship with Trenarrow, all of them circling round a general antipathy that had its roots in Lady Asherton's enduring relationship with the man. Lynley would need something to compensate for that dislike if Trenarrow was even tangentially involved in the deaths in Cornwall, and it seemed that he'd chosen scrupulous impartiality as a means of counterbalancing the animosity that coloured his long association with the man.

'I suppose he could be, even if only unconsciously.' St James told him about his meeting with Trenarrow, about the interview Mick Cambrey had done with him. 'But if Mick was working on a story that led to his death, Trenarrow may have merely given him a lead, perhaps the name of someone at Islington-London with information Mick needed.'

'But if, as you say, there were no notes in the newspaper office from any story connected to Roderick…' Lynley braked at traffic lights. It would have been natural to look at St James. He did not do so. 'What does that suggest to you?'

'I didn't say there were no notes about him, Tommy. I said there was no story about him. Or about anything relating to cancer research. That's a different matter from an absence of notes. There may be hundreds of notes for all we know. Harry Cambrey was the one who looked through Mick's files. I had no chance to do so.'

'So the information may still be there, with Harry unable to recognize its importance.'

'Quite. But the story itself – whatever it was, if it's even connected to Mick's death – may have nothing to do with Trenarrow directly. He may just be a source.'

Lynley looked at him then. 'You didn't want to phone him, St James. Why?'

St James watched a woman push a pram across the street. A small child clung to the hem of her dress. The traffic lights changed. Cars and lorries began to move.

'Mick may have been on the trail of a story that caused his death. You know as well as I that it makes no sense to alert anyone to the fact that we may be on the trail as well.'

'So you do think Roderick's involved?'

'Not necessarily. Probably not at all. But he could inadvertently give the word to someone who is. Why phone him and allow for that chance?'

Lynley spoke as if he hadn't heard St James' words. 'If he is, St James, if he is…' He turned the Bentley right, into the Fulham Road. They passed the dress shops and antique dealers, the bistros and restaurants of trendy London where the streets were peopled by fashionably dressed shoppers and trim-looking matrons on their way to rendezvous.

'We don't have all the facts yet, Tommy. There's no sense in tormenting yourself about it now.'

Again, St James' words seemed to make no difference. 'It would destroy my mother,' Lynley said.

They drove on to Paddington. Deborah met them in the small lobby of the Shrewsbury Court Apartments where she had apparently been waiting for them, pacing back and forth across the black and white tiles. She pulled the door open before they'd had a chance to ring the bell.

'Dad phoned to tell me you were on your way. Tommy, are you all right? Dad said there's still been no sign of Peter.'

Lynley's response was to say her name like a sigh. He drew her to him. 'What a mess this weekend's been for you. I'm sorry, Deb.'

'If s all right. It's nothing.'

St James looked past them. The sign concierge on a nearby door was done in calligraphy, he noted. But the hand was inexpert and the dot above the i had blurred and become a part of the second c. He examined this, considered this – each letter, each detail – keeping his eyes fastened to the sign until Deborah spoke.

'Helen's waiting up above.' She moved with Lynley towards the lift.

They found Lady Helen on the telephone in Deborah's flat. She was saying nothing, merely listening, and from her look in his direction and the expression on her face when she replaced the receiver St James realized whom she had been trying to reach. 'Sidney?' he asked her.

'I can't find her, Simon. Her agency gave me a list of names, friends of hers. But no-one's heard a word. I just tried her flat again. Nothing. I've phoned your mother as well, but there's no answer there. Shall I keep trying her?'

Cold prickling ran its way down St James' spine. 'No. She'll only worry.'

Lady Helen spoke again. 'I've begun to think about Justin Brooke's death.'

She didn't need to say more. St James' own thoughts had made that same leap forward the moment she told him that his sister had still not turned up. Again, he cursed himself for allowing Sidney to leave Cornwall alone. If she had walked into danger, if she was hurt in any way… He felt the fingers of his right hand dig into his palm. He forced them to relax.

'Has Tina Cogin returned?'

'Not yet.'

'Then, perhaps we ought to make certain about the key.' He looked at Lynley. 'Have you brought them?'

'Brought them?' Lady Helen asked blankly.

'Harry Cambrey's managed to get us Mick's set of keys from Boscowan,' Lynley explained. 'We wanted to see if one of them might unlock Tina's door.'

He kept them in suspense only as long as it took to get to the next flat, to insert and turn the proper key in the lock. He swung the door open. They walked inside.

'All right. He had his own key,' Lady Helen said. 'But, really, Tommy, where does that get us? It can't be a surprise. We already knew he'd been here. Deborah told us that. So all we know beyond that fact is that he was special enough to Tina Cogin to merit a key to her door.'

'It changes the nature of their relationship, Helen. This obviously isn't a call girl and her client. Prostitutes don't generally give out their keys.'

From his position near the tiny kitchen, St James was scrutinizing the room. Its furnishings were expensive, but they told little about the inhabitant. And there were no personal objects on display: no photographs, no mementoes, no collection of any kind. Indeed, the entire bed-sitting room had the look of having been put together by a decorator for a hotel. He walked to the desk.

The red light of the answering machine was blinking, indicating a message. He pushed the button. A man's voice said, 'Colin Sage. I'm phoning about the advert,' and he gave a number for a return call. A second message was much the same. St James wrote down the numbers and gave them to Lady Helen.

'An advertisement?' she asked. 'That can't be how she makes her arrangements.'

'You said there was a savings book?' St James replied.

Deborah came to his side. 'Here,' she said. 'There's this as well.'

From a drawer she took both the savings book and a manila folder. He looked at the latter first, frowning down at the neatly typed list of names and addresses. Mostly London. The furthest was Brighton. Behind him, he heard Lynley going through the chest of drawers.

'What is this?' Meditatively St James asked the question of himself, but Deborah replied.

'We thought of clients at first. But, of course, that can't be. There are women on the list. And, even if there weren't any women at all, it's hard to imagine anyone managing to…' She hesitated. St James looked up. Her cheeks had coloured.

'Service this many men?' he asked.

'Well, of course, she's indicated on the tab that they're just prospects, hasn't she? So at first we thought that she was using the list to… before we actually opened up the file and saw… I mean, how exactly would a prostitute build up a clientele? Through word of mouth?' Her colour deepened. 'Lord. Is that a dreadful sort of pun?'

He chuckled at the question. 'What did you imagine she was doing with this list – sending out brochures?'

Deborah gave a rueful laugh. 'I'm hopeless at this sort of thing. A hundred clues shrieking to be noticed, and I can't make sense of a single one.'

'I thought you'd decided she wasn't a prostitute. I thought we'd all decided that.'

'It's just something about the way she talked and her appearance.'

'Perhaps we can let go of whatever her appearance might have suggested,' Lynley said.

Across the room, he stood at the wardrobe with Lady Helen at his side. He had taken down the four hatboxes from the top shelf, had opened and placed them on the floor in a line. He was bending over one of these, separating the folds of white tissue paper. From the centre of the nest which the paper created, he withdrew a wig. Long black hair, wispy fringe. He balanced it on his fist.

Deborah gaped at it. Lady Helen sighed.

'Wonderful,' she said. 'The woman actually wears a wig! So what little we know of her – not to mention Deborah's description – must be virtually meaningless. She's a chimera, isn't she? False fingernails. False hair.' She glanced at the chest of drawers. Something seemed to occur to her, for she went to them, pulled one open, and fingered through the undergarments. She held up a black brassiere. 'False everything else.'

St James joined them. He took the wig from Lynley and carried it to the window where he opened the curtains and held it under the natural light. The texture told him that the hair was real.

'Did you know she wore a wig, Deb?' Lynley asked.

'No, of course not. How could I have known?'

'It's a high-quality piece,' St James said. 'You'd have no cause to think it a wig.' He examined it closely, running his fingers across the inner webbing. As he did so, a hair came loose – not one of those which comprised the wig, but another shorter hair that had detached itself from the wearer, becoming caught up in the webbing. St James plucked it completely free, held it up to the light, and handed the wig back to Lynley.

'What is it, Simon?' Lady Helen asked.

He didn't reply at once. Instead, he stared at the single hair between his fingers, realizing what it had to imply and coming to terms with what that implication had to mean. There was only one explanation that made any sense, only one explanation that accounted for Tina Cogin's disappearance. Still, he took a moment to test his theory.

'Have you worn this, Deborah?'

'I? No. What makes you think that?'

At the desk, he took a piece of white paper from the top drawer. He placed the hair on this and carried both back to the light.

'The hair,' he said. 'It's red.'

He looked up at Deborah and saw her expression change from wonder to realization.

'Is it possible?' he asked her, for since she was the only one who had seen them both she was also the only one who could possibly confirm it.

'Oh, Simon. I'm no good at this. I don't know. I don't know.'

'But you saw her. You were with her. She gave you a drink.'

'The drink,' Deborah said. She dashed from the room. In a moment, the others heard her door crash back against the wall of her flat.

Lady Helen spoke. 'What is it? You can't possibly be thinking Deborah has anything to do with all this. The woman's incognita. That's all it is, plain and simple. She's been in disguise.'

St James placed the piece of paper on the desk. He placed the hair on top of it. He heard over and over that single word. Incognita, incognita. What a monumental joke.

'My God,' he said. 'She was telling everyone she met. Tina Cogin. Tina Cogin. The name's a bloody anagram.'

Deborah flew into the room, in one hand the photograph she had brought with her from Cornwall, in the other hand a small card. She handed both to St James.

'Turn them over,' she said.

He didn't have to do so. He knew already that the handwriting would be identical on each.

'It's the card she gave me, Simon. The recipe for her drink. And on the back of Mick's picture…'

Lynley joined them, taking the card and the photograph from St James. 'God almighty,' he murmured.

'What on earth is it?' Lady Helen asked.

'The reason Harry Cambrey's been building Mick's reputation as a real man's man, I should guess,' St James said.

Deborah poured boiling water into the teapot and carried it to the small oak table which they had moved into the sitting area of her flat. They took places round it, Deborah and Lynley sitting on the day bed, Lady Helen and St James on ladder-back chairs. St James picked up the savings book which lay among the other items attached to Mick Cambrey's life and his death: the manila folder entitled Prospects, the card upon which he'd written the phone number of Islington-London, the Talisman sandwich wrapper, his photograph, the recipe for the drink which he'd given to Deborah on the day that he'd appeared – as Tina Cogin – at her door.

'These ten withdrawals from the account,' Lady Helen said, pointing to them. 'They match what Tina – what Mick Cambrey paid in rent. And the time works right with the facts, Simon. September to June.'

'Long before he and Mark began dealing in cocaine,' Lynley said.

'So that's not how he got the money for the flat?' Deborah asked.

'Not according to Mark.'

Lady Helen ran her finger down the page which listed the deposits. She said, 'But he's put money in every two weeks for a year. Where on earth did it come from?'

St James flipped to the front of the book, scanning the entries. 'Obviously, he had another source of income.'

The amount of money comprising each deposit, St James saw, was not consistent. Sometimes it was significant, other times barely so. Thus, he discounted the second possibility that had risen in his mind upon noting the regularity of the payments into Mick's account. They couldn't be the result of blackmail. Blackmailers generally increase the cost of suppressing a damaging piece of information. Greed feeds on itself; easy money begs for more.

'Beyond that,' Lynley said, 'Mark told us that they'd reinvested their profits in a second, larger buy. His taking the Daze on Sunday confirms that story.'

Deborah poured the tea. St James scooped up his customary four spoonfuls of sugar before Lady Helen shuddered and handed the bowl to Deborah. She picked up the manila folder.

'Mick must have been selling his share of the cocaine in London. Surely, if he'd been doing so in Nanrunnel, someone would have discovered it eventually. Mrs Swann, for instance. I can hardly think she would have let something like that go unnoticed.'

'That makes sense,' Lynley agreed. 'He had a reputation as a journalist in Cornwall. He'd hardly have jeopardized it by selling cocaine there when he could just as easily have done so here.'

'But I've got the impression he had a reputation here in London as well,' St James said. 'He'd worked here, hadn't he, before returning to Cornwall?'

'But not as Tina Cogin,' Deborah pointed out. 'Surely he must have sold the drugs as a woman.'

'He became Tina in September,' Lady Helen said. 'He took this flat in September. He began selling the following March. Plenty of time to amass a list of buyers.' She tapped her fingers against the folder. 'We were wondering what was meant by "prospects", weren't we? Perhaps now we know. Shall we see what sort of prospects these really are?'

'If they're prospective cocaine buyers,' Lynley said, 'they're hardly going to admit the fact.'

Lady Helen smiled serenely. 'Not to the police, Tommy darling. Of course.'

St James knew what that angelic smile meant. If anyone could wrangle information from a total stranger, it would be Lady Helen. Light-hearted chitchat leading down the primrose path to disclosure and co-operation was her special talent. She had already proved that with the caretaker of Shrewsbury Court Apartments. Obtaining the key to Mick's flat had been child's play for her. This list of prospects was merely one step advanced, a moderate challenge. She would become Sister Helen from the Salvation Army, or Helen the Saved from a drug rehabilitation programme, or Helen the Desperate looking for a score. But ultimately, in some way, she would ferret out the truth.

'If Mick was selling in London, a buyer may have followed him to Cornwall,' St James said.

'But, if he was selling as Tina, how would someone know who he really was?' Deborah asked.

'Perhaps he was recognized. Perhaps a buyer, who knew him as Mick, saw him when he was posing as Tina.'

'And followed him to Cornwall? Why? Blackmail?'

'What better way to get cocaine? If the buyer was having a hard time coming up with the money, why not blackmail Cambrey for a payment in drugs?' St James picked up items one by one. He studied them, fingered them, dropped them back on the table. 'But Cambrey wouldn't want to risk his reputation in Cornwall by giving in to the blackmail. So he and the buyer argued. He was hit. He struck his head and died. The buyer took the money that was in the cottage sitting room. Anyone who's desperate for drugs – and who's just killed a man – is hardly going to draw the line at taking money lying right in the open.'

Lynley got up abruptly. He walked to the open window and leaned on the sill, looking down at the street. Too late, St James recognized whose portrait he had been painting with his series of conjectures.

'Could he have known about Mick?' Lynley asked. No-one answered at first. Instead, they listened to the rising sound of traffic in Sussex Gardens as afternoon commuters began to make their way towards the Edgware Road. An engine revved. Brakes screeched in reply. Lynley repeated the question. He did not turn from the window. 'Could my brother have known?'

'Possibly, Tommy,' St James said. When Lynley swung to face him, he went on reluctantly: 'He was part of the drug network in London. Sidney saw him not that long ago in Soho. At night. In an alley.' He paused thoughtfully, remembering the information his sister had given him, remembering her fanciful description of the woman Peter had been assaulting. Dressed all in black with flowing black hair.

He had the impression that Lady Helen was recalling this information even as he did, for she spoke with what seemed a determination to relieve Lynley's anxiety by looking for another focus for the crime. 'Mick's death might revolve round something entirely different. We've thought that from the first, and I don't think we ought to dismiss it now. He was a journalist, after all. He might have been writing a story. He could even have been working on something about transvestites.'

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

'Harry knew?'

'He seems to have figured it out.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Something's happened to Sasha.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Where is he, Tommy?'

'Whitechapel.'

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

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

'Don't be absurd.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I've not blamed you.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'He said he's on the first floor,' Lynley said and headed for the stairs.

Once covered with a cheap linoleum, they were worn through in the centre to the black backing, and the edges that remained were crusted with a combination of old wax and new dirt. Large, greasy discolourations splodged the stairway walls, which were pockmarked with bolt holes where once a hand-rail had been mounted. Hand-prints covered them, as well as an enormous gravy-like stain which oozed down from an upper floor.

On the landing, a dusty pram tilted on three wheels, surrounded by several sacks of rubbish, two tin pails, a broom and a blackened mop. A gaunt cat, ribs showing and an ulcerated sore in the middle of its forehead, slunk by them as they climbed upwards, assailed by the odour of garlic and urine.

In the uncarpeted first floor corridor, the building came to life. Televisions, music, voices raised in an argument, a baby's sudden wail – the discordant sounds of people going about the daily business of living. This was not the case in Peter's flat, however, which they found at the far end of the corridor where a grimy window admitted a weak shaft of light from the street. The door was shut, but neither closed nor latched, so when Lynley knocked, it swung inwards to reveal a single room whose windows – closed and covered by bedsheets – seemed to entrap the odours of the entire building, mingling them with the stronger stench of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes.

Although the room was not altogether much smaller than the bedsit they had just left in Paddington, the contrast was unnerving. There was virtually no furniture. Instead, three large, stained pillows lay on the floor among discarded newspapers and open magazines. In lieu of either wardrobe or chest of drawers, a single chair held a pile of unfolded clothing which spilled down to four cardboard cartons in which more clothing lay. Up-ended fruit packing crates served as tables, and a shadeless floor lamp provided the room with light.

Lynley said nothing at all as they entered. For a moment, he didn't move from the threshold, as if he were summoning the strength of purpose to shut the door behind them and face the truth.

He pushed the door closed so that nothing further obstructed their line of vision. Against the near wall, a threadbare sofa had been folded out into a bed. On this, a partially shrouded figure lay motionless. On the floor, just beyond the sofa, Peter Lynley was curled into a foetal position, his hands curved round his head.

'Peter!' Lynley went to him, kneeled, cried his name again.

As if roused by the sound, Peter gasped and made a convulsive movement. His eyes focused, found his brother.

'She won't move.' He stuffed part of his T-shirt into his mouth for a moment as if in an attempt to prevent himself from crying. 'I came home and she was there and she won't move.'

'What's happened?' Lynley asked.

'She won't move, Tommy. I came home and she was there and she won't move.'

St James went to the sofa. He removed the sheet which covered most of the figure. Beneath it, Sasha lay naked on her side on the filthy linen with one arm stretched out and one hand dangling from the edge of the bed. Her thin hair fell forward to cover her face, and where her neck was exposed its flesh looked grey with dirt. He put his fingers to her outstretched arm, although even as he did so he knew the exercise was mere rote formality. He'd once been a member of the Met's crime-scene team. This wasn't the first time he'd looked upon a dead body.

He straightened and shook his head at Lynley. The other man came to join him.

St James pushed the fallen hair to one side and moved the arm gently to check for rigor. He took a step back, however, when he saw the hypodermic needle embedded in her flesh.

'Overdose,' Lynley said. 'What's she taken, Peter?'

He went back to his brother. St James remained with the body. The hypodermic, he noticed, was empty, the plunger down, as if she'd mainlined a substance that had lolled her in an instant. It was hard to believe. He looked for some indication of what she had taken to bring about such a death. There was nothing on the packing crate next to the bed, save an empty glass with a tarnished spoon inside it and a residue of white powder on its rim. The bed itself held nothing other than the corpse. He stepped back, looking on the floor between the bed and the crate. And then, with a rush of horror, he saw it.

A silver bottle lay on its side, almost out of sight. It spilled forth a white powder, undoubtedly the same substance which clung to the rim of the glass, the same substance which ended Sasha Nifford's life. Unprepared for the sight, St James felt his heart begin to pound. He felt burned all at once by a sudden heat. He refused to believe it.

The bottle was Sidney's.

21

'Get control of yourself, Peter,' Lynley was saying to his brother. He took Peter's arm, pulling him to his feet. Peter clung to him, weeping. 'What's she taken?'

St James stared at the bottle. He could hear Sidney's voice with utter clarity. She might have been standing right there in the room. ' We drove him home,'' she had said. 'Squalid little flat in Whitechapel’ And then later, more damning and completely undeniable, 'Just tell little Peter when you find him that I have lots to discuss with him. Believe me, I can hardly wait for the opportunity.'

In the light from the lamp the bottle glinted, winking at him and demanding recognition. He gave it, admitted it without hesitation. For from where he stood St James could see part of the engraving that comprised her initials, and he'd insisted upon the delicacy of that engraving himself because he'd given the bottle to his sister four years ago on her twenty-first birthday.

'You were my favourite brother. I loved you best.'

There was no time. He did not have the luxury in which to consider his various options and weigh the relative morality of each. He could only act or let her face the police. He chose to act, bending, reaching out his hand.

'Good. You've found it,' Lynley said, coming to his side. 'It looks like-' He suddenly seemed to recognize the significance of St James' posture, of his outstretched hand. Certainly, St James thought, from the chill that had rapidly followed the heat in his body, Lynley must have seen something in the pallor of his face. For directly after his words faded away Lynley drew St James back from the bed. 'Don't protect him for my sake,' he said quietly. 'That's finished, St James. I meant what I said in the car. If it's heroin, I can only help Peter by allowing him to face the consequences. I'm going to telephone the Met.' He walked from the room.

Heat returned, a wave of it. St James felt it on his face and in his joints. Oblivious of Peter, who leaned against the wall, weeping into his hands, he moved woodenly to the window. He fumbled behind the bedsheet curtain to open it, only to find that some time in the past it had been painted shut. The room was stifling.

Less than twenty-four hours, he thought. The bottle was marked with the silversmith's identification, a small, fanciful escutcheon worked into its base. It wouldn't take long for the police to trace the piece back to Jermyn Street where he'd bought it. Then it would be a simple matter. They would go through the files and look at orders. These they would compare to the bottle itself. After making some telephone calls to patrons, they would follow up with discreet enquiries at those patrons' homes. The most he could hope for was twenty-four hours.

Dimly, he heard Lynley's voice, speaking into the telephone in the hallway, and, nearer, the sound of Peter's weeping. Above that, the harsh grating of stertorous breathing rose and fell. He recognized it as his own.

'They're on their way.' Lynley closed the door behind him. He crossed the room. 'Are you all right, St James?'

'Yes. Quite.' To prove this beyond doubt, he moved -it took an effort of will – away from the window. Lynley had dumped the clothes from the room's only chair and placed it at the foot of the bed, its back towards the body.

'The police are on their way,' he repeated. Firmly, he led his brother to the chair and sat him down. 'There's a bottle of something over by the sofa that's likely to get you arrested, Peter. We've only a few minutes to talk.'

'I didn't see a bottle. It isn't mine.' Peter wiped his nose on his arm.

'Tell me what happened. Where have you been since Saturday night?'

Peter squinted as if the light hurt his eyes. 'I've been nowhere.'

'Don't play games with me.'

'Games? I'm telling-'

'You're on your own in this. Are you capable of understanding that? You're entirely on your own. So you can tell me the truth or talk to the police. Frankly, I don't care one way or the other.'

'I'm telling you the truth. We've been nowhere but here.'

'How long have you been back?'

'Since Saturday. Sunday. I don't know. I don't remember.'

'What time did you arrive?' 'After dawn.' 'What time!’

'I don't know the time! What difference does it make?'

'The difference it makes is that Justin Brooke's dead. But you're lucky for the moment because the police seem to believe it was an accident.'

Peter's mouth twisted. 'And you think I killed him? What about Mick? Are you setting me up for that as well, Tommy?' His voice broke when he said his brother's name. He began to cry again, thin body racked by the force of dry sobs. He covered his face with his hands. His fingernails were bitten, crusted with dirt. 'You always think the worst of me, don't you?'

St James saw that Lynley was preparing for verbal battle. He spoke to intervene. 'You're going to be asked a great many questions, Peter. In the long run, it might be easier to answer them with Tommy so that he can help you, rather than with someone you don't even know.'

'I can't talk to him,' Peter sobbed. 'He won't listen to me. I'm nothing to him.'

'How can you say that?' Lynley demanded hotly.

'Because it's true, and you know it. You just buy me off. It's what you've always done. You were there with the chequebook all right because that was easy for you. You didn't have to be involved. But you were never there -never once in my life – for anything else.' He leaned forward in the chair, his arms cradling his stomach, his head on his knees. 'I was six years old when he got sick, Tommy. I was seven when you left. I was twelve when he died. Do you know what that was like? Can you even imagine it? And all I had – all I had, damn you – was poor old Roderick. Doing what he could to be a father to me. Whenever he thought he could get away with it. But always in secret because you might find out.'

Lynley pushed him upright. 'So you turned to drugs and it's all my fault? Don't put that on me. Don't you dare.'

'I put nothing on you,' his brother spat back. 'I despise you.'

'You think I don't know it? Every second you breathe is a second you live to hurt me. You even took Deborah's cameras to get back at me, didn't you?'

'That's really rich, Tommy. Get out of here, will you? Leave me to the police.'

St James forced himself to intercede, desperate to get the information he needed. 'What did she take, Peter?' he asked. 'Where did she get it?'

Peter scrubbed his face on his tattered T-shirt. It was ancient, faded, bearing the figure of a skeleton, a cluster of roses and the words Grateful Dead. 'I don't know. I was out.'

'Where?' Lynley demanded.

Peter shot him a contemptuous look. 'Buying bread and eggs.' He flung his hand towards the string bag that lay on the floor by the wall, the two items within it. He directed the rest of his answer to St James. 'When I came back, she was like that. I thought she was asleep at first. But then I could tell… I could see.' He faltered, lips trembling. 'I rang Tommy's office, but they said he wasn't there. I rang his house, but Denton said he was still in Cornwall. I rang Cornwall, but Hodge said he was in London. I-'

'Why were you looking for me?' Lynley asked.

Peter dropped his hands. He stared at the floor. 'You're my brother,' he said hollowly.

Lynley looked as if his heart were being torn from his chest. 'Why do you do these things, Peter? Why? God, why?

'What does it matter?'

St James heard the sirens. They had made good time. But, then, they would have had the advantage of being able to clear away traffic with those shrieking alarms and flashing lights. He spoke quickly, determined to know the worst. 'There's a silver container by the bed. Could it be Sasha's?'

Peter gave a short laugh. 'Hardly. If she owned a piece of silver, we would have sold it long ago.'

'She never showed it to you? You never saw it among her things? She never said where she got it?'

'Never.'

There was time for nothing more. The noise of the arriving police swelled to a crescendo, then ceased abruptly. St James went to the window and pushed back the curtain to see two panda cars, two unmarked police cars and one van pulling up behind the Bentley. They took up most of the street. The children had scattered, leaving the rubbish-sack goalposts behind.

While a uniformed constable remained at the front of the building, tying the police line from the hand rail on the front steps to a nearby lamp post, the rest of the group entered. From his own years at the yard, St James recognized most of them, either by name or by function: two CID detectives, the scenes-of-crime team, a photographer, the forensic pathologist. It was unusual for all of them to effect an arrival at the same time, so there was no doubt that they knew it was a colleague who had placed the call. That would be why Lynley had telephoned the Met in the first place and not the local station -Bishopsgate – in whose jurisdiction Whitechapel lay. While he intended Peter to face whatever consequences grew from Sasha Nifford's death, he did not intend that his brother should face them without his own indirect participation. It was one thing to swear off assisting Peter if drugs were involved. It was quite another to leave him to his fate in a situation that could possibly turn into an investigation of an entirely different nature. For if Peter had known about the drugs, if he had passed them on to Sasha, if he had even helped her to take them, intending to shoot up himself upon his return from the market… These were all possibilities of which St James knew that Lynley was well aware. And they could all be moulded into various degrees of homicide. Lynley would want the entire investigation handled by a team he could trust, so he'd called the Met. St James wondered which officer in Victoria Street was phoning the Bishopsgate station right now with the explanation of why Scotland Yard were invading a foreign patch.

The officers pounded up the stairs. Lynley met them at the door.

'Angus,' he said to the man at the head of the group.

He was Detective Inspector Angus MacPherson, a hefty Scot who habitually wore old worsted suits that looked as if they doubled at night as his pyjamas. He nodded at Lynley and walked to the bed. The other officer followed him, removing a small notebook from her shoulder bag and a ballpoint pen from the breast pocket of her rumpled puce blouse. Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, MacPherson's partner. St James knew them both.

'What hae we here?' MacPherson murmured. He fingered the bed sheet and looked over his shoulder as the rest of the team crowded into the room. 'Ye havena moved anything, Tommy?'

'Just the sheet. She was covered when we got here.'

'I covered her,' Peter said. 'I thought she was asleep.'

Sergeant Havers raised an expressive, disbelieving eyebrow. She wrote in her notebook. She looked from Lynley, to his brother, to the corpse on the bed.

'I went to buy eggs. And bread,' Peter said. 'When I got back-'

Lynley stepped behind his brother, dropping his hand to Peter's shoulder. It was enough to still him. Havers glanced their way again.

'When you got back?' She spoke entirely without inflection.

Peter looked at his brother as if for guidance. First his tongue then his teeth sought his upper lip. 'She was like that,' Peter said.

Lynley's fingers whitened on his brother's shoulder. It was obvious that Sergeant Havers saw this, for she exhaled in a brief, knowing snort – a woman who possessed no affinity for Thomas Lynley and no fellow-feeling for his situation. She turned back to the bed. MacPherson began speaking to her in a low, quick voice. She jotted down notes.

When MacPherson had completed his preliminary inspection, he joined Peter and Lynley. He drew them to the far corner of the room as the forensic pathologist took over, pulling on surgical gloves. The pathologist probed, touched, poked and examined. In a few minutes, it was over. He murmured something to Havers and made way for the scenes-of-crime officers.

St James watched them begin to gather the evidence, his every sense alive to the presence of Sidney's silver bottle on the floor. The water glass on the packing crate was placed in a bag and marked. The tarnished spoon likewise. A fine residue of powder, which St James himself had not seen in his first inspection of the fruit packing crate, was carefully brushed from its surface into a container. Then the crate was inched to one side, and the bottle itself was plucked from the floor. When it, too, had been dropped into a bag, the twenty-four hours had begun.

St James signalled to Lynley that he was going to leave. The other man joined him.

'They'll be taking Peter in,' Lynley said. ‘I’ll go with him.' And then, as if he believed that his intention to accompany his brother in some way negated his prior determination to let Peter stand on his own, he went on to say, 'I must do that much, St James.'

'That's understandable.'

'Will you tell Deborah for me? I've no idea how long I'll be.'

'Of course.' St James thought how to phrase his next question, knowing that Lynley, upon hearing it, would leap to a conclusion which might make him refuse. Still, he had to have the details, and he had to have them without Lynley's knowing why. He led into it cautiously. 'Will you get me some information from the Yard? As soon as they have it?'

'What sort of information?'

'The post-mortem. As much as you can. As soon as you can.'

'You don't think that Peter-?'

'They're going to rush things through for you, Tommy. It's the most they can do, all things considered, and they'll do it. So will you get the information?'

Lynley glanced at his brother. Peter had begun to shake. MacPherson rooted through the pile of clothing on the floor until he found a striped sweatshirt which he handed over to Havers who inspected it with deliberate slowness before passing it on to Peter.

Lynley sighed. He rubbed the back of his neck. 'All right. I'll get it.'

In the back of the taxi spinning towards St Pancras, St James tried to remove every thought of his sister from his mind, replacing her image with an unsuccessful attempt to formulate some sort of plan of action. But he could come up with nothing other than a host of memories, each one more importunate than the last, making its own demand that he save her.

He had stopped briefly in Paddington to deliver Lynley's message to Deborah. There, he had used her telephone, ringing his sister's flat, her modelling agency, his own home, knowing all along that he was duplicating Lady Helen's earlier efforts, knowing and not caring, not even thinking, doing nothing but trying to find her, seeing nothing but the silver bottle on the floor and the intricate scrollwork of initials that identified it as Sidney's.

He was aware of Deborah standing nearby, watching and listening. She was alone in the flat – Helen having gone her way to do what she could with the messages on Mick's answering machine and the file marked Prospects - and he could read her concern in the fine tracery of lines that appeared on her brow as he continued to dial, continued to ask for his sister, continued to meet with no success. He found that, more than anything, he wanted to keep from Deborah the true nature of his fear. She knew Sasha was dead, so she assumed his concern revolved only round Sidney's immediate safety. He was determined to keep it that way.

'No luck?' Deborah asked, when he finally turned from the telephone.

He shook his head and went to the table upon which they had left the material they'd gathered from Mick Cambrey's flat. He sorted it, stacked it, tapped it into a neat pile which he folded and put into his jacket pocket.

'Can I do anything?' she asked. 'Anything at all? Please. I feel so useless.' She looked stricken and afraid. 'I can't believe someone would actually want to hurt Sidney. She's just gone off somewhere, Simon. Hasn't she? She's in agony over Justin. She needs to be alone.'

He heard the penultimate statement and knew it for the truth. He had seen his sister's grief in Cornwall and had felt the inchoate fury which that grief provoked. Still, she had gone and he had allowed her to do so. Whatever fell upon Sidney now was in large part his responsibility.

'There's nothing you can do,' he said. He started for the door. His face was impassive. He could feel each feature settle until he wore a perfectly insensate mask. He knew that Deborah wouldn't understand such a reaction to her offer. She would read it as rejection, seeing it, perhaps, as an adolescent retaliation for everything that had passed between them since her return. But that couldn't be helped.

'Simon. Please.'

'There's nothing more to be done.' 'I can help. You know I can.' 'There's no need, Deborah.' 'Let me help you find her.' 'Just wait here for Tommy.'

'I don't want-' She stopped. He could see a pulse beating in her throat. He waited for more. There was nothing. Deborah took in a slow breath, but she didn't look away. 'I'll go to Cheyne Row.'

'There's no point to that. Sidney won't be there.'

'I don't care. I'm going.'

He had neither the time nor the wish to argue with her. So he left, forcing himself back to his original purpose in returning to London. He hoped that a visit to Islington-London might somehow reveal the truth behind Mick Cambrey's death and that this additional death in Whitechapel were somehow tied to the previous two. For tying them together would serve as a means of exonerating Sidney. And tying them together meant a pursuit of the ghost of Mick Cambrey. He was determined to incarnate this spectre from Cornwall. Islington-London seemed to offer the final opportunity of doing so.

But in the back of the taxi he felt his weary mind lose the battle against images that attacked his calm, forcing him back to a time and a place he thought he had left behind for ever. There, he saw them as they had appeared at the hospital, distorted faces emerging out of the fugue created by alternating states of consciousness and by the drug that deadened his most immediate suffering. David and Andrew in hushed consultation with the doctors; his mother and Helen, riven by sorrow; Tommy, driven by guilt. And Sidney. Just seventeen years old, with a butchered-up haircut and earrings that looked like communication satellites. Outrageous Sidney, reading to him from the most ridiculous of the London dailies, laughing uproariously at the worst of their gruesome and titillating stories. She was always there, never missing a day, refusing to allow him to sink into despair.

And then later in Switzerland. He remembered the bitterness with which he had looked at the Alps from his hospital window, loathing his body, despising its weakness, confronting for the very first time the inescapable reality of never being able to walk with ease in those mountains – or any others – again. But Sidney was with him, bullying, shouting, harassing him back to health, stubbornly insisting he would live to old age even when he prayed each night that he might die.

Remembering all this, he fought against the facts that nagged at his consciousness: Sidney's presence in Soho, the nature of her relationship with Justin Brooke, her easy access to drugs from the life she led, the people she knew, and the work she did. And while he tried to convince himself that she did not know – could not possibly have known – Mick Cambrey, and thus could not be involved in his death in any way, he could not dismiss the fact that Deborah had told him Sidney had seen Tina Cogin that day in her flat. Sidney herself had talked about seeing Peter assaulting a woman in Soho, a woman whose description was identical to Tina's. Even though it was tenuous enough to be disregarded as meaningless, the connection was there. He could not overlook it. So he wondered where she was and what she had done, while twenty-five years of mutual history cried out that he find her before the police.

Islington-London was an unprepossessing building not far from Gray's Inn Road. A small, gated courtyard set the structure back from the street, and it was crammed with half a dozen small cars and a minivan with the letters ISLINGTON spread across a map of Great Britain and white stars scattered here and there in all three countries, obviously indicating the location of branch offices. There were ten in all, as far north as Inverness, as far south as Penzance. It appeared to be quite an operation.

Inside the lobby, the sound from the street was muted by thick walls, thick carpet, and a muzak track currently playing an all-strings rendition of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'. Handsome sofas lined the walls beneath large modern canvases in the style of David Hockney. Across from these a receptionist, who couldn't have been more than an erstwhile fifth-form student who'd decided not to continue at school, tapped away at a word processor with impossibly long magenta-coloured fingernails. Her hair was dyed to match.

Out of the corner of her eye, she appeared to see St James approach, for she did not turn from her word processing screen. Rather she wiggled her fingers vaguely in the direction of a stack of papers on her desk and popped her chewing gum before saying, 'Take an application form.'

‘I’ve not come about a job.'

When the girl didn't respond, St James noticed that she was wearing the small kind of headset earphones that are usually attached to a tape recorder either giving dictation or blaring out rock-and-roll music that, mercifully, no-one else has to hear. He repeated his statement, louder this time. She looked up, removing the headset hastily.

'Sorry. One gets used to the automatic response.' She pulled a ledger towards her. 'Have an appointment?'

'Do people generally have appointments when they come here?'

She chewed her gum more thoughtfully for a moment and looked him over as if searching for hidden meanings. 'Generally,' she said. 'Right.'

'So no-one would come to make a purchase?'

The gum snapped in her mouth. 'The sales force goes out. No-one comes here. There's the odd telephone order, isn't there, but it's not like a chemist's shop.' She watched as St James took the folded materials from his jacket pocket and produced the photograph of Mick Cambrey. He gave it to her, his hand making contact with her talon nails which, glistening wetly, grazed his skin. She wore a tiny gold musical note glued on to the nail of her ring finger, like a piece of odd jewellery.

'Has this man had an appointment to see anyone?' he asked.

She smiled when her eyes dropped to the picture. 'He's been here all right.'

'Lately?'

She tapped her nails on the desk top as she thought. 'H'm. That's a bit difficult, isn't it? A few weeks past, I think.'

'Do you know who he saw?' 'His name?'

'Mick – Michael – Cambrey.'

'Let me check.' She opened the ledger on her desk and scanned several pages – an activity which seemed to allow her the opportunity of showing off her fingernails to their best advantage, since every time she turned a page, she used a new nail to guide her eyes down the column of times and names.

'A visitor's log?' St James asked.

'Everybody signs in and out. Security, you know.'

'Security?'

'Drugs research. You can't be too careful. Something new comes out and everyone in the West End's hot to try it with drinks that night. Ah. Here it is. He's signed into Project Testing, Department Twenty-Five.' She flipped back through several more pages. 'Here he is again. Same department, same time. Just before lunch.' She slipped back several months. 'Quite a regular, he was.'

'Always the same department?'

'Looks that way.'

'May I speak to the department head?'

She closed the ledger and looked regretful. 'That's a bit rough. No appointment, you see. And poor Mr Malverd's balancing two departments at once. Why don't you leave your name?' She shrugged noncommittally.

St James wasn't about to be put off. 'This man, Mick Cambrey, was murdered on Friday night.'

The receptionist's face sharpened with immediate interest. 'You're police?' she asked; and then, sounding hopeful, 'Scotland Yard?'

St James gave a moment's thought to how easily it could all have been managed had Lynley only come with him. As it was, he removed his own card and handed it over. 'This is a private endeavour,' he told her.

She glanced at the card, moved her lips as she read it, and then turned it over as if more information might be printed on the back. 'A murder,' she breathed. 'Just let me see if I can reach Mr Malverd for you.' She punched three buttons on the switchboard and pocketed his card. 'Just in case I need you myself,' she said with a wink.

Ten minutes later, a man came into the reception area, swinging shut a heavy panelled door behind him. He introduced himself as Stephen Malverd, offered his hand in an abbreviated greeting, and pulled on his earlobe. He was wearing a white lab coat which hung below his knees, directing attention to what he wore upon his feet. Sandals, rather than shoes, and heavy argyle socks. He was very busy, he said, he could spare only a few minutes, if Mr St James would come this way…

He strode briskly back into the heart of the building. As he walked, his hair – which sprang up round his head wild and unruly like a pad of steel wool – fluttered and bounced, and his lab coat blew open like a cape. He slowed his pace only when he noticed St James' gait, but even then he looked at the offending leg accusingly, as if it too robbed him of precious moments away from his job.

They rang for the lift at the end of a corridor given over to administrative offices. Malverd said nothing until they were on their way to the building's third floor. 'It's been chaos round here for the last few days,' he said. 'But I'm glad you've come. I thought there was more involved than I heard at first.'

'Then, you remember Michael Cambrey?'

Malverd's face was a sudden blank. 'Michael Cambrey? But she told me-' He gestured aimlessly in an indication of the reception area and frowned. 'What's this about?'

'A man named Michael Cambrey visited Project Testing, Department Twenty-Five, several times over the past few months. He was murdered last Friday.'

'I'm not sure how I can help you.' Malverd sounded perplexed. 'Twenty-Five isn't my regular patch. I've only stepped in briefly. What is it that you want?'

'Anything you – or anyone else – can tell me about why Cambrey was here.'

The lift doors opened. Malverd didn't exit at once. He appeared to be trying to decide whether he wanted to talk to St James or merely to dismiss him and get back to his own work.

'This death has something to do with Islington? With an Islington product?'

That certainly was a possibility, St James realized, although not in the manner that Malverd obviously thought. 'I'm not sure,' St James said. 'That's why I've come.'

'Police?'

He took out another card. 'Forensic science.'

Malverd looked moderately interested at this piece of information. At least, his expression indicated, he was talking to a fellow. 'Let's see what we can do,' he said. 'It's just this way.'

He led St James down a linoleum-tiled corridor, a far cry from the reception and administration offices below. Laboratories opened to either side, peopled by technicians who sat on tall stools at work areas that time, the movement of heavy equipment, and the exposure to chemicals had bleached from black-topped to grey.

Malverd nodded at colleagues as they walked, but he said nothing. Once he removed a schedule from his pocket, studied it, glanced at his watch, and cursed. He picked up speed, dodged past a tea cart round which a group of technicians gathered for an afternoon break, and in a second corridor he opened a door. 'This is Twenty-Five,' he said.

The room they entered was a large, rectangular laboratory, brightly illuminated by long ceiling tubes of fluorescent lights. At least six incubators sat at intervals on a worktop that ran along one wall. Interspersed among them, centrifuges squatted, some open, some closed, some humming at work. Dozens of pH meters lay among microscopes, and everywhere glass-fronted cabinets held chemicals, beakers, flasks, test tubes, pipettes. Among all these accoutrements of science, two technicians copied the orange digital numbers which flickered on one of the incubators. Another worked at a hood, from which a glass cover had been pulled down to protect cultures from contamination. Four others peered into microscopes while another prepared a set of specimens on slides.

Several of them looked up as Malverd led St James towards a closed door at the far end of the lab, but none of them spoke. When Malverd rapped once sharply upon that door and entered without waiting for a reply, the few who had given him their attention lost interest.

A secretary, who appeared as harried as Malverd, turned from a filing cabinet as they entered. A desk, a chair, a computer and a laser printer hemmed her in on all sides.

'For you, Mr Malverd.' She reached for a pile of telephone messages which were joined together by a paper clip. 'I don't know what to tell people.'

Malverd picked them up, flipped through them, dropped them on to her desk. 'Put them off,' he said. 'Put everyone off. I've no time to answer phone calls.'

'But-'

'Do you people keep engagement diaries up here, Mrs Courtney? Have you evolved that far, or would that be too much to expect?'

Her lips whitened, even as she smiled and made a polite effort to take his questions as a joke, something which Malverd's tone made difficult. She pushed her way past him and went behind her desk where she took out a leather volume and handed it over. 'We always keep records, Mr Malverd. I think you'll find everything in perfect order.'

'I hope so,' he said. 'It'll be the first thing that is. I could do with some tea. You?' This to St James, who demurred. 'See about it, will you?' was Malverd's final comment to Mrs Courtney who fired a look of nuclear quality in his direction before she went to do his bidding.

Malverd opened a second door which led to a second room, this one larger than the first but hardly less crowded. It was obviously the office of the project director and it looked the part. Old metal bookshelves held volumes dedicated to biomedicinal chemistry, to pharmaco-kinetics, to pharmacology, to genetics. Bound collections of scientific journals vied with these for space, as did a pressure reader, an antique microscope and a set of scales. At least thirty leather notebooks occupied the shelves nearest the reach of the desk, and these, St James assumed, would contain the reported results of experiments which the technicians in the outer lab carried out. On the wall above the desk, a long graph charted the progress of something, using green and red lines. Below this in four framed cases hung a collection of scorpions, splayed out as if in demonstration of man's dominion over lesser creatures.

Malverd frowned at these latter objects as he took a seat behind the desk. He gave another meaningful glance at his watch. 'How can I help you?'

St James removed a stack of typescript from the only other chair in the room. He sat down, gave a cursory look at the graph, and said, 'Mick Cambrey evidently came to this department a number of times in the last few months. He was a journalist.'

'He was murdered, you said? And you think there's some connection between his death and Islington?'

'Several people feel he might have been working on a story. There could be a connection between that and his death. We don't know yet.'

'But you've indicated you're not from the police.'

'That's right.'

St James waited for Malverd to use this as an excuse to end their conversation. He had every right to do so. But it seemed that their previously acknowledged mutual interest in science would be enough to carry the interview forward for the moment, since Malverd nodded thoughtfully and flipped open the engagement diary in what appeared to be an arbitrary selection of date. He said, 'Well. Cambrey. Let's see.' He began to read, running his finger down one page and then another much as had the receptionist a few minutes before. 'Smythe-Thomas, Hallington, Schweinbeck, Barry – what did he see him for? – Taversly, Powers… Ah, here it is: Cambrey; half-past eleven' – he squinted at the date – 'two weeks ago last Friday.'

'The receptionist indicated he'd been here before. Is his name in the diary other than that Friday?'

Co-operatively, Malverd flipped through the book. He reached for a scrap of paper and made a note of the dates which he handed to St James when he had completed his survey of the diary. 'Quite a regular visitor,' he said. 'Every other Friday.'

'How far back does the book go?'

'Just to January.'

'Is last year's diary available?'

'Let me check that.'

When Malverd had left the office to do so, St James took a closer look at the graph above the desk. The ordinate, he saw, was labelled tumour growth, while the abscissa was called Time – post injection. Two lines marked the progress of two substances, one falling rapidly and bearing the identification drug and the other, marked saline, rising steadily.

Malverd returned, cup of tea in one hand and engagement diary in the other. He tapped the door shut with his foot.

'He was here last year as well,' Malverd said. Again, he copied the dates as he found them, pausing occasionally to slurp a bit of tea. Both the lab and the office were almost inhumanly quiet. The only sound was the scratching of MaJverd's pencil on paper. At last he looked up. 'Nothing before last June,' he said. 'June the second.'

'More than a year,' St James noted. 'But nothing to tell us why he was here?'

'Nothing. I've no idea at all.' Malverd tapped the tips of his fingers together and frowned at the graph. 'Unless… It may have been oncozyme.'

'Oncozyme?'

'It's a drug Department Twenty-Five's been testing for perhaps eighteen months or more.' 'What sort of drug?' 'Cancer.'

Cambrey's interview with Dr Trenarrow rose instantiy in St James' mind. The connection between that meeting and Cambrey's trips to London was finally neither conjectural nor tenuous.

'A form of chemotherapy? What exactiy does it do?'

'Inhibits protein synthesis in cancer cells,' Malverd said. 'Our hope is that it'll prevent replication of oncogenes, the genes that cause cancer in the first place.' He nodded at the graph and pointed to the red line that descended it steeply, a sharp diagonal that indicated the percentage of inhibited rumour growth versus the time after the drug had been administered. 'As you can see, it looks like a promising treatment. The results in mice have been quite extraordinary.'

'So it's not been used on human subjects?'

'We're years away from that. The toxicology studies have only just begun. You know the sort of thing. What amount constitutes a safe dosage? What are its biological effects?'

'Side effects?'

'Certainly. We'd be looking closely for those.' 'If there are no side effects, if there's nothing to prove oncozyme a danger, what happens then?' 'Then we market the drug.'

'At some considerable profit, I should guess,' St James noted.

'For a fortune,' Malverd replied. 'It's a breakthrough drug. No doubt about it. In fact, I should guess that oncozyme's the story this Cambrey was writing. But as to its being a potential case for his murder' – he paused meaningfully – 'I don't see how.'

St James thought he did. It would have taken the form of a random piece of knowledge, a source of concern, or an idea passed on by someone with access to inside information. He asked, 'What's the relationship between Islington-London and Islington-Penzance?'

'Penzance is one of our research facilities. We have them scattered round the country.'

'Their purpose? More testing?'

Malverd shook his head. 'The drugs are created at the research labs in the first place.' He leaned back in his chair. 'Each lab generally works in a separate area of disease control. We've one on Parkinson's, another on Huntington's, a new one dealing with AIDS. We've even a lab working on the common cold, believe it or not.' He smiled.

'And Penzance?'

'One of our three cancer locations.'

'Did Penzance produce oncozyme, by any chance?'

Malverd looked meditatively at the graph again. 'No.

Our Bury lab in Suffolk was responsible for oncozyme.'

'And you've said they don't test the drugs at these facilities?'

'Not the sort of extensive testing we do here. The initial testing, of course. They do that. Otherwise, they'd hardly know what they've developed, would they?'

'Would it be safe to assume that someone at one of these associate labs would have access to results? Not only that local lab's results but London's results as well.'

'Of course.'

'And he or she might recognize an inconsistency? Perhaps some detail glossed over in the rush to market a new product?'

Malverd's benign expression altered. He thrust out his chin and pulled it back as if adjusting his spinal cord. 'That's hardly likely, Mr St James. This is a place of medicine, not a science fiction novel.' He got to his feet. 'I must get back to my own lab now. Until we've a new man to take over Twenty-Five, I'm in a bit of a frazzle. I'm sure you understand.'

St James followed him out of the office. Malverd handed the secretary both of the engagement diaries and said, 'They were in order, Mrs Courtney. I do congratulate you on that.'

She responded coldly as she took the diaries from him. 'Mr Brooke kept everything in order, Mr Malverd.'

St James heard the name with a rush of surprise. 'Mr Brooke?' he asked. It couldn't be possible.

Malverd proved that it was. He led him back into the lab. 'Justin Brooke,' he said. 'Senior biochemist in charge of this lot. Bloody fool was killed last weekend in an accident in Cornwall. I thought at first that's why you'd come.'

22

Before he nodded at the constable to unlock the interrogation room's door, Lynley looked through the small, thick-glassed window, a plastic tray of tea and sandwiches in his hand. Head bowed, his brother was sitting at the table. He still wore the striped sweatshirt that MacPherson had given him in Whitechapel, but whatever protection it had afforded him earlier was no longer adequate. Peter shook – arms, legs, head and shoulders. Lynley had no doubt that every internal muscle was quivering as well.

When they had left him in the room thirty minutes before – alone save for a guard outside to make sure he did nothing to harm himself – Peter had asked no question; he had made neither statement nor request. He merely stood, hands on the back of one of the chairs, glancing over the impersonal room. One table, four chairs, a dull beige linoleum floor, two ceiling lights only one of which worked, a red, dented tin ashtray on the table. All he had done before taking a seat was to look at Lynley and open his mouth as if to speak. His face limned entreaty upon every feature. But he said nothing. It was as if Peter were finally seeing how irreparable was the damage he had done to his relationship with his brother. If he believed that blood tied them inextricably to each other, that he could call upon that blood to save himself in some way, he apparently did not intend to mention the fact now.

Lynley nodded at the constable, who unlocked the door and relocked it once Lynley had entered. Always a sound of grim finality, Lynley found that the key grating upon metal was even more so now that it was being turned against the freedom of his own brother. He hadn't expected to feel this way. He hadn't expected to feel the desire to rescue or the exigent need to protect. For some delusional reason, he had actually believed that he would feel a closure had been reached once Peter finally faced the criminal implications of the lifestyle he'd chosen these past few years. But, now that the justice system had caught Peter up, Lynley found himself feeling not at all righteously vindicated at having been the brother who had chosen the clean, the moral, the ethical life, the life guaranteed to make him society's darling. Rather, he felt himself the hypocrite and knew beyond a doubt that if punishment were to be meted out to the greater sinner – the man who had been given the most and had therefore thrown the most away – he would be its rightful recipient.

Peter looked up, saw him, looked away. The expression on his face was not sullen, however. It was dazed by both confusion and fear.

'We both need something to eat,' Lynley said. He sat opposite his brother and placed the tray on the table between them. When Peter made no move towards it, Lynley unwrapped a sandwich, fumbling with the seal. The crinkling of the paper made that curious sound like fire eating wood. It was unusually loud. 'The Yard food's unspeakable. Either sawdust or institutional mush. I had these brought in from a restaurant down the street. Try the pastrami. It's my favourite.' Peter didn't move. Lynley reached for the tea. 'I can't recall how much sugar you take. I've brought a few packets. There's a carton of milk as well.' He stirred his own tea, unwrapped his sandwich, and tried to avoid considering the inherent idiocy of his behaviour. He knew he was acting like a hovering mother, as if he believed that food was going to take the illness away.

Peter raised his head. 'Not hungry.' His lips, Lynley saw, were cracked, raw from having been bitten during the half-hour in which he'd been left alone. In one spot they had begun to bleed, although already the blood was drying in a ragged, dark blot. Other blood – in the form of small, crusty scabs – ringed the inside of his nose, while dry skin caked his eyelids, embedding itself between his lashes.

'The appetite goes first,' Peter said. 'Then everything else. You don't realize what's happening. You think you're fine, the best you've ever been. But you don't eat. You don't sleep. You work less and less and finally not at all. You don't do anything but coke. Sex. Sometimes you do sex. But in the end you don't even do that. Coke's so much better.'

Lynley carefully placed his sandwich, untouched, on the paper in which it had been wrapped. He was suddenly unhungry. And wanting to be nothing more than unfeeling as well. He reached for his tea and circled his hands around it. A dull but comforting warmth emanated from the cup.

'Will you let me help you?'

Peter's right hand gripped his left. He made no reply.

'I can't change the kind of brother I was when you needed me,' Lynley said. 'I can only offer you what I am right now, however little that may be.'

Peter seemed to withdraw at this. Or perhaps it was that the cold – within and without – was causing him to diminish in size, conserving energy, garnering whatever small resources he had left. When he finally answered, his lips scarcely moved. Lynley had to strain to hear him.

'I wanted to be like you.'

'Like me? Why?'

'You were perfect. You were my standard. I wanted to be like you. When I found I couldn't, I just gave it up. If I couldn't be you, I didn't want to be anything.'

Peter's words sounded the sure ring of finality. They sounded not only like the end of an interview that had barely begun, but also like the end of any possibility to put things right between them. Lynley sought something -words, images, a common experience – that would allow him to reach back through those fifteen years and touch the little boy he had abandoned at Howenstow. But he could find nothing. There was no way to go back and no way to make amends.

He felt leaden. He reached in his jacket pocket, brought out his cigarette case and lighter, and lay them on the table. The case had been his father's, and the elaborately engraved A on the cover had worn through time. Portions of it had disappeared altogether, but the case was familiar to him, dear to him, nicked and dented with age though it was. He wouldn't have considered replacing it with another. Staring at it – small rectangular symbol of everything he had run from, all the areas of his life he had chosen to deny, the welter of emotions he had refused to face – he found the words.

'It was knowing that she was sleeping with Roderick while Father was alive. I couldn't stand that, Peter. It didn't matter to me that they'd fallen in love, that they hadn't set out to but that it just happened between them. It didn't matter that Roderick had every intention of marrying her when she was free. It didn't matter that she still loved Father – and I knew she loved him, because I saw how she acted with him even after she'd begun the affair with Roderick. Still, I didn't understand, and I couldn't abide my own blind ignorance. How could she love them both? How could she be devoted to one – take care of him, bathe him, read to him, see to him hour after hour and day after day, feed him, sit with him… all of that – and still sleep with the other? And how could Roderick go into Father's bedroom – talk to him about his condition – and all the time know that he would be having Mother directiy afterwards? I couldn't understand it. I didn't see how it was possible. I wanted life simple, and it wasn't. They're savages, I thought. They have no sense of propriety. They don't know how to behave. They have to be taught. I'll teach them. I'll show them. I'll punish them.' Lynley took a cigarette and slid the case across the table to his brother. 'My leaving Howenstow, my coming back so seldom, had nothing to do with you, Peter. You just turned out to be the victim of my need to avenge something which Father probably never even knew was happening. For what it's worth – God knows it's little enough – I'm sorry.'

Peter took a cigarette. But he held it in his fingers, unlit, as if to light it would be taking a step further than he wished to go. 'I wanted you to be there, but you weren't,' he said. 'No-one would tell me when you'd be home again. I thought it was a secret for some reason. Then I finally realized that no-one would tell me because no-one knew. So I stopped asking. Then after a while I stopped caring. When you did come home, it was easier to hate you so that when you left again – as you always did – it wouldn't really matter.'

'You didn't know about Mother and Trenarrow?'

'Not for a long time.'

'How did you find out?'

Peter lit a cigarette. 'Parents' Day at school. Both of them came. Some blokes told me then. "That chap Trenarrow's been boffing your mum, Pete. You too daft to know it?"' He shrugged. 'I pretended to be cool. I pretended I knew. I kept thinking they'd get married. But they never did.'

'I made certain of that. I wanted them to suffer.'

'You didn't have that sort of control over them.'

'I did. I do. I knew where Mother's loyalties lay. I used them to hurt her.'

Peter asked for no further explanation. He put his cigarette into the ashtray and watched its fragile plume of smoke rise. Lynley chose his next words carefully, feeling his way in a land that should have been old and familiar but was instead quite foreign.

'Perhaps we can make our way through this together. Not try to go back, of course. That's impossible. But try to go on.'

'As restitution on your part?' Peter shook his head. 'You don't have to make anything up to me, Tommy. Oh, I know you think you do. But I chose my own path. I'm not your responsibility.' And then, as if he thought this final statement sounded petulant, he finished with, 'Really.'

'None of this has anything to do with responsibility. I want to help. You're my brother. I love you.'

Uttered so simply as a declaration of fact, the statement might have been a blow to his brother. Peter recoiled. His raw lips trembled. He covered his eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he finally said. And then only, 'Tommy.'

Lynley said nothing more until his brother lowered his hand. He was alone in the interrogation room with Peter solely because of Inspector MacPherson's compassion. MacPherson's partner, Sergeant Havers, had protested vociferously enough when Lynley had asked for these few minutes. She had cited regulations, procedures, Judge's Rules and civil law until MacPherson had silenced her with a simple 'I dae know the law, lass. Gie me credit for that, if ye will,' and sent her to sit by a phone and await the results of the toxicological analysis of the powder they had found in Peter's Whitechapel room. After which, MacPherson himself had lumbered off, leaving Lynley at the interrogation room's door, and saying, 'Twenty minutes, Tommy,' over his shoulder. So, in spite of what needed to be said about the years of suffering he and Peter had caused each other, there was little enough time for gathering information and none at all for restoring the relationship they had destroyed. That would have to wait.

'I need to ask you about Mick Cambrey,' Lynley said. 'About Justin Brooke as well.'

'You think I killed them.'

'It doesn't matter what I think. The only thing that matters is what Penzance CID think. Peter, you must know I can't let John Penellin take the blame for Mick's death.'

Peter's eyebrows drew together. 'John's been arrested?'

'Saturday night. You'd already left Howenstow when they came for him, then?'

'We left, directly after dinner. I didn't know.' He touched a finger to the sandwich in front of him and pushed it aside with a grimace of distaste.

'I need the truth,' Lynley said. 'It's the only thing that's going to help anyone. And the only way to get John released – since he doesn't intend to do anything to help himself – is to tell the police what really happened on Friday night. Peter, did you see Mick Cambrey after John went to Gull Cottage?'

'They'll arrest me,' he mumbled. 'They'll put me on trial.'

'You've nothing to fear if you're innocent. If you come forward. If you tell the truth. Peter, were you there? Or did Brooke lie about that?'

Escape was well within Peter's reach. A simple denial would do it. An accusation that Brooke had lied. Even a manufactured reason why Brooke might have done so since the man himself was dead and couldn't refute it. Those were the possibilities of response. As was a decision to help a man who had been part of their extended family for Peter's entire life.

Peter licked his dry lips. 'I was there.'

Lynley didn't know whether to feel relief or despair. He said, 'What happened?'

'I think Justin didn't trust me to see to things on my own. Or else he couldn't wait.' 'For the coke?'

'He'd had a stash with him at Howenstow.' Briefly, Peter related the scene that had occurred between Sidney and Justin Brooke on the beach. 'She threw it in the water,' he concluded. 'So that was that. I'd already phoned Mark about getting some more, but I didn't have enough money and he wouldn't trust me for it, not even for a few days.'

'So instead you went to Mick?' A positive answer would be the first fissure in the tale Brooke had told. But it was not forthcoming.

'Not for coke,' Peter said, unconsciously corroborating the first part of Brooke's story. 'For cash. I remembered he did the pay envelopes for the newspaper on alternate Fridays.'

'Did you know Mick was a cross-dresser as well?'

Peter smiled wearily. There was an element of grudging admiration in it, a ghost of the little boy he had been. 'I always thought you'd make a decent detective.'

Lynley didn't tell him how little of his own talent for inference and deduction had gone into the discovery of Mick Cambrey's second life in London. He merely said, 'How long have you known?'

'About a month. I bought from him occasionally in London when my other sources were dry. We'd meet in Soho. There's an alley near the square where deals go down. We'd meet in a club there. I'd buy a gram, half a gram, less. Whatever I could afford.'

"That seems damn risky. Why not meet at your flat? At his?'

Peter shot him a look. 'I didn't even know he had a flat. And I sure as hell didn't want him to see mine.'

'How would you get in touch? How would you make the arrangements?'

'Like I said. Sometimes my other sources went dry. So I'd phone him in Cornwall. If he was due to come to London, we'd set up a buy.' 'Always in Soho?'

'Always the same place. At this club. That's where I found out about the cross-dressing.' 'How?'

Peter's face coloured as he related the story of how he had waited an hour for Mick Cambrey to appear at Kat's Kradle; how a woman approached him when he went to the bar for matches; how they had three drinks together; how they finally went outside. 'There's a bit of an alcove there,' Peter said. 'It's private more or less. I was drunk as hell by then. I didn't know what I was doing, much less care, so when she started rubbing against me, really feeling me up, I was willing all right. Then when things had gone as far as she wanted them to go, she started laughing. Laughing and laughing like a crazy woman. I saw it was Mick.'

'You couldn't tell before that?'

Peter gave a rueful shake of his head. 'Mick looked good, Tommy. I don't even know how he did it. But he looked damn good. Sexy. He probably could have fooled his own father. He sure as hell fooled me.'

'And when you saw the woman was Mick?'

'I wanted to beat the shit out of him. But I was too drunk. I took a swing. We both fell. At least, I know we ended up on the ground somehow. And then, of all people, Sidney St James showed up out of nowhere – Christ, it was like a nightmare. She was with Brooke. He pulled me off Mick and Mick took off. I didn't see him again until Friday night in Nanrunnel.'

'How did you find out Mick dealt cocaine in the first place?'

'Mark told me.'

'But you didn't try to get cocaine from him in Nanrunnel?'

'He wouldn't sell there. Only in London.' 'He wasn't in London all that often, was he? Who were his buyers?'

'There's a whole network, Tommy. Dealers know the buyers. Buyers know the dealers. Everyone knows everyone. You get a number. You ring it. You make arrangements.'

'And if your caller turns out to be from the Met's drug squad?'

"Then you're busted. But not if you're smart. And not if you know how to set up your network. Mick knew how to do that. He was a journalist. He knew how to establish good sources. He just looked for a different kind of source once he started dealing. He had hundreds of connections.'

That was true, Lynley thought. It would have been simple for a man in Mick Cambrey's position. 'What happened between you on Friday night? The neighbours heard a row.'

'I was getting desperate. Mark picked up on that in the afternoon and obliged me by raising his price. I didn't have the cash, so I went to see Mick to borrow some. He said absolutely not. I promised I'd be good for it. I swore that I'd have it back in a week.'

'How?'

Peter stared at his bitten fingernails. Lynley saw that he was struggling with his conscience, choosing how far to go, and costing out the consequences. 'Things from Howenstow,' he finally said. 'The silver. I thought I could sell a few pieces in London and no-one would be the wiser. At least not for a while.'

'Is that why you went to Cornwall in the first place?' Lynley waited for the answer and tried to remain indifferent to the idea of his brother's selling what had been part of their family for generations merely to feed his drug addiction.

'I don't know why I went to Cornwall. I wasn't thinking straight. One minute I was going there to make a buy from Mark. The next it was to pinch a bit of silver to take back to London. The next it was to get some money from Mick. That's what it's like. You don't even know what you're doing after a while. It's like being dizzy.'

'And when Mick refused to lend you the money?'

'It was stupid. I threatened to let it out in the village what he was up to in London. The cross-dressing. The drug-dealing as well.'

'I take it that didn't convince him to hand over a few pounds?'

'Not at all. He just laughed. He said if I wanted money I should threaten him with death, not blackmail. People pay a hell of a lot more to stay alive than to have a secret kept, he said. That's where the real money is. And all the time he kept laughing. Like he was egging me on.'

'What was Brooke doing?'

'Trying to get us both to shut up. He could tell I was crazy. I think he was scared that something weird would happen.'

'But you didn't shut up?'

'Mick kept after me. He said that if I wanted to put his dirty linen on the table, that he'd be willing to spread mine out as well. He said you and Mother might find my return to drug use of interest. But, as to that, I didn't even care.' Peter bit at his thumbnail, anxious little nibbling bites. 'It didn't matter to me if he told you since you'd guessed I was using again anyway. As for Mother… nothing mattered to me except getting high. You don't know what it feels like to be willing to do anything just to get your hands on some coke.'

It was a damning admission. Lynley only thanked the luck of the moment that neither MacPherson nor Havers was there to hear it. The former, he knew, might well take it as a meaningless slip of the tongue. The latter, however, would pounce upon it like a starving mongrel.

'I just exploded at that point,' Peter said. 'It was that or start to beg.'

'Is that when Brooke left?'

'He tried to get me to go as well, but I said no. I said I wanted to finish what I'd started with the little poof.'

Again, the damning choice of words. Lynley felt himself wince inwardly. 'What happened then?'

'I called Mick every foul name I could think of. I raved. Screamed. I was strung out and mad and I needed…' He picked up his cup of tea, swallowed a large mouthful. A trickle of the liquid dripped down his chin. 'I ended up begging and snivelling for just fifty quid. He threw me out.'

Peter's cigarette had gone untouched in the ashtray. It had burned to nothing, creating a perfect cylinder of grey ash. He tapped it with the broken nail of his index finger. It dissolved into a wispy pile. He said: "The money was still there when I left him, Tommy. You've no cause to believe that. But the money was there. And Mick was alive.'

'I believe you.' Lynley tried to make his words ring with the assurance that his personal belief was all that would be necessary to restore Peter to the safety of his family. But that was nothing more than irresponsible fantasy. For, as things stood now, once Peter's story was relayed to the Penzance police, he would surely stand trial. And once his extensive drug use was revealed to a jury, his position would be perilous at best, no matter Lynley's earlier avowals of the inherent value of telling the truth.

Peter seemed to take comfort from his brother's words. He seemed to feel an encouragement to continue, a fragile bond between them that allowed for revelation. 'I didn't take them, Tommy. I wouldn't have done that.' Lynley looked at him blankly. Peter went on. 'Her cameras. I didn't take them. I didn't. I swear it.'

The fact that Peter had been willing to sell off the family silver made it hard to believe he'd suddenly developed a conscience when it came to Deborah. Lynley avoided a direct reply. 'What time did you leave Mick on Friday?'

Peter considered the question. 'I went to the Anchor and Rose and had a pint,' he said. 'It must have been about a quarter to ten.'

'Not ten o'clock? Not later?'

'Not when I arrived.'

'Were you still there at ten?' When Peter nodded, Lynley asked, 'Then, why did Justin hitch-hike back to Howenstow alone?'

'Justin?'

'Wasn't he there in the pub?'

Peter looked at him in some confusion. 'No.'

It was the first exonerating piece of information that his brother had offered. And the fact that he had offered it, so completely unconscious of its importance, told Lynley that in this instance his brother was telling the truth. It was a detail to be checked upon, a blemish on Brooke's story, the vague promise that the case against Peter could indeed be broken by a barrister in court.

'What I don't understand,' Lynley said, 'is why you left Howenstow so suddenly. Was it the row we had in the smoking room?'

Peter smiled briefly. 'Considering how many other rows we'd had, one more would hardly have made me turn tail, would it?' He looked away. At first Lynley thought he was fabricating a story, but he saw the spots of colour on his brother's face and realized he was embarrassed. 'It was Sasha,' he said. 'She wouldn't let up on me. She kept insisting we come back to London. I'd taken a matchbox from the smoking-room – the silver piece that usually sits on the desk – and once she knew I couldn't get any money from Mick or some dope from Mark she wanted to bring the box back to London and sell it here.

She was in a rush. She wanted the coke bad. She used a lot, Tommy. All the time. More than me.'

'Did you make the buy? Is that where you got whatever she took this afternoon?'

'I couldn't find a buyer. Everyone knows the box's hot. I'm surprised I wasn't arrested.'

Before now remained unspoken. But there was no doubt that the two words were foremost in both of their minds. The key turned in the door. Someone knocked upon it sharply. MacPherson swung it open. He'd loosened his tie and removed his jacket. His heavy-rimmed spectacles rode high on his forehead, shoved there out of the way. Behind him, Sergeant Havers stood. She made no effort to hide the smile of gratification on her face.

Lynley got to his feet but motioned his brother to stay where he was. MacPherson thumbed towards the hallway where Lynley followed him, shutting the door on his brother.

'Has he a solicitor?' MacPherson asked.

'Of course. We've not phoned, but…' Lynley looked at the Scot. His face, in contrast to Havers', was grave. 'He's said he doesn't recognize that container, Angus. And surely we'll find any number of witnesses who can verify his story of going out to buy bread and eggs when she took the drug.' He tried to keep his voice calm and reasonable so they would not wander beyond the death of Sasha Nifford. The idea that MacPherson and Havers had somehow connected Peter to the Cornwall deaths was unthinkable. But the mention of a solicitor suggested nothing else. 'I spoke to the print men just before coming to see him. Evidently, only Sasha's are on the needle. And none of Peter's are on that bottle. For an overdose of this kind-'

MacPherson's face had creased with growing worry. He lifted a hand to stop Lynley's words, dropped it heavily when he said, 'Ay, for an overdose. Ay, laddie.

Ay. But we do hae more of a problem than an overdose.'

'What do you mean?'

'Sergeant Havers'll gie ye the facts.'

It took an effort for Lynley to move his eyes from MacPherson to the snubby-faced sergeant. She held a paper in her hand.

'Havers?' he said.

Again, that slight smile. Condescending, knowing and, more than that, enjoying. 'The toxicology report indicates it's a mixture of quinine and a drug called ergotamine,' she said. 'Mixed together appropriately, Inspector, they not only resemble but also taste exactly like heroin. That's what the girl must have thought it was when she injected it.'

'What are you saying?' Lynley asked. MacPherson shuffled his feet. 'Ye know as well as I. It's a murder.'

23

Deborah had been as good as her word. When St James returned home. Cotter told him that she had arrived herself only an hour before. With an overnight case, he added significantly. 'She talked of 'aving a load o' work ahead, printing up some fresh snaps, but I think the girl means to stay till there's word of Miss Sidney.' As if in the expectation that St James would interfere with her plans upon his own arrival, Deborah had gone directly up to her darkroom where the red light glowing above the door told him she was not to be disturbed. When he knocked and said her name, she shouted cheerfully, 'Out in a bit,' and banged about with what sounded like unnecessary vigour. He descended to his study and placed a call to Cornwall.

He found Dr Trenarrow at home. He did nothing more than identify himself before Trenarrow asked about Peter Lynley, with a forced calm that said he expected the worst but was keeping up the pretence of all being well at the heart of the matter. St James guessed Lady Asherton was with him. Bearing that in mind, he gave Trenarrow only the barest information.

'We found him in Whitechapel. Tommy's with him at the moment.'

Trenarrow said, 'He's all right?'

St James affirmed this in as indirect a fashion as he could, leaving out most of the details, knowing that their recitation to Trenarrow or to anyone else was something that belonged by rights to Lynley. He went on to explain Tina Cogin's true identity. At first Trenarrow sounded relieved to hear that his telephone number had been in the possession of Mick Cambrey all along, and not in the possession of an unknown London prostitute. But that relief was fleeting, and it faded to what seemed to be discomfort and then finally compassion as the full implications of Mick Cambrey's double life dawned on the man.

'Of course I didn't know about it,' he responded to St James' question. 'He'd have had to keep something like that completely to himself. Sharing that sort of secret in a village like Nanrunnel would have been the death-' He stopped abruptly. St James could imagine the process of Trenarrow's thoughts. They certainly weren't out of the realm of possibility.

'We've traced Mick's activities to Islington-London,' St James said. 'Did you know Justin Brooke worked there?'

'For Islington? No.'

'I wondered if Mick's trip there somehow grew out of the interview you and he had all those months ago.'

Over the line, he heard the distinct sound of china upon china, something being poured into a cup. It was a moment before Trenarrow answered. 'It may well have. He was doing a feature on cancer research. I spoke of my work. I no doubt mentioned how the Islington company operates, so the London facility would have come into it.'

'Would oncozyme have come into it as well?'

'Oncozyme? You know…' A shuffling of papers. The sound of a watch alarm going off. It was quickly silenced. 'Damn. Just a moment.' A swallow of tea. 'It must have come up. As I recall, we were discussing an entire range of new treatments, everything from monoclonal antibodies to advances in chemotherapy. Oncozyme fits into the latter category. I doubt that I would have passed it by.'

'So you knew about oncozyme yourself when Mick interviewed you?'

'Everyone at Islington knew about oncozyme. Bury's Baby, we called it. The branch lab at Bury St Edmunds developed it.'

'How much can you tell me about it?'

'It's an anti-oncogene. It prohibits DNA replication. You know what cancer is all about – cells reproducing, killing one off with a large dose of the body's own functions gone completely haywire. An anti-oncogene puts an end to that.'

'And the side effects of an anti-oncogene?'

'That's the problem, isn't it? There always are side effects to chemotherapy. Hair loss, nausea, weight loss, vomiting, fever.'

'All of those are standard, though, aren't they?'

'Standard but none the less inconvenient. Often dangerous. Believe me, Mr St James, if someone could develop a drug without side effects, the scientific world would be dazzled indeed.'

'What if a drug was found to be an effective anti-oncogene but, unfortunately, it was also the cause of more serious side effects?'

'What sort do you have in mind? Renal dysfunction? Organ failure? Something like that?'

'Perhaps something worse. A teratogen, for example.'

'Every form of chemotherapy is a teratogen. Under normal circumstances it would never be used on a pregnant woman.'

'Something else, then?' St James considered the possibilities. 'Something that might damage progenitor cells?'

There was an extremely long pause which Dr Trenarrow finally ended by clearing his throat. 'You're suggesting a drug causing long-range genetic defects in both men and women. I don't see how that's possible. Drugs are too well tested. It would have come out somewhere. In someone's research. It couldn't have been hidden.'

'Suppose it was,' St James said. 'Would Mick have been able to stumble upon it?'

'Perhaps. It would have shown up as an irregularity in the lest results. But where would he have got test results? Even if he went to the London office, who would have given them to him? And why?'

St James thought he knew the answer to both those questions.

Deborah was eating an apple when she entered the study ten minutes later. She had cut the piece of fruit into eighths which she'd then arranged on a plate with half a dozen unevenly sliced pieces of Cheddar cheese. Because food was involved in her current activity, Peach and Alaska – the household dog and cat – attended closely at her heels. Peach kept a vigilant eye hovering between Deborah's face and the plate, while Alaska, who found overt begging beneath his feline dignity, leaped on to St James' desk and strolled through the pens, pencils, books, magazines and correspondence. He settled comfortably next to the telephone as if expecting a call.

'Finished with your pictures?' St James asked. He was sitting in his leather armchair where he had spent the time following his conversation with Trenarrow by brooding into the unlit fireplace.

Deborah sat opposite him, cross-legged on the sofa. She balanced the plate of cheese and apple on her knees. A large chemical stain ran from calf to ankle on her blue jeans, and in several places her white shirt bore spots of damp from her work in the darkroom. 'For the moment. I'm taking a break.'

'Came up rather suddenly, your need to print pictures. Wouldn't you say?'

'Yes,' she said placidly. 'Indeed, I would.'

'Using them for a show?'

'Possibly. Probably.'

'Deborah.'

'What?' She looked up from her plate, brushed hair from her forehead. She held a wedge of cheese in her hand. 'Nothing.'

'Ah.' She pinched off a bit of the cheese, offered it with a portion of apple to the dog. Peach gobbled down both, wagged her tail, barked for more.

'After you left, I broke her of begging like that,' St James said. 'It took me at least two months.'

In answer, Deborah gave Peach another bit of cheese. She patted the dog's head, tugged her silky ears, and then looked up at him. Her expression was guileless. 'She's just asking for what she wants. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?'

He could feel the provocation behind the words. He pushed himself out of his chair. There were phone calls to make about Brooke, about oncozyme; there was checking to do into his sister's whereabouts; there were at least a half a dozen studies unrelated to the Cambrey-Brooke-Nifford deaths awaiting his attention in the lab and a half a dozen other reasons for leaving the room. But, instead of doing so, he stayed.

'Would you get that blasted cat off my desk?' He walked to the window.

Deborah went to the desk, scooped up the cat, deposited him on St James' chair. 'Anything else?' she asked as Alaska began enthusiastically kneading the leather.

St James watched the cat curling up for a lengthy stay. He saw Deborah's mouth twitch with a smile. 'Minx,' he said.

'Brat,' she responded.

A car door slammed in the street. He turned to the window. 'Tommy's here,' he said, and Deborah went to open the front door.

St James could see that Lynley bore no good news. His gait was slow, without its natural grace. Deborah joined him outside, and they spoke for a moment. She touched his arm. He shook his head, reached for her.

St James left the window. He went to a bookshelf. He chose a volume at random, pulling it down and opening it at random as well. 'I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul,' he read. 'In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows …' Good God. He snapped the book shut. A Tale of Two Cities. Great, he thought wryly.

He shoved the book back among the others and considered making another selection. Far From the Madding Crowd looked promising, a good bout of psychic suffering with Gabriel Oak.

'… spoke to Mother afterwards,' Lynley was saying as he and Deborah came into the study. 'She didn't take it well.'

St James greeted his friend with a small whisky which Lynley accepted gratefully. He sank into the sofa. Deborah perched next to him on the sofa's arm, her fingertips brushing his shoulder.

'Brooke appears to have been telling the truth,' Lynley began. 'Peter was in Gull Cottage after John Penellin left. He and Mick had a row.' He shared the information which he'd gathered from his interview with Peter. He added the Soho story as well.

'I did think that might have been Cambrey with Peter in the alley,' St James said when Lynley had finished. 'Sidney told me about seeing them. The description seemed to fit,' he added, answering the unasked question that immediately appeared on Lynley's face. 'So if Peter recognized Cambrey there's a good chance Justin Brooke did as well.'

'Brooke?' Lynley queried. 'How? He was there with Sidney in the alley, I know, but what difference does that make?'

'They knew each other, Tommy. Brooke worked for Islington.' St James related his own information about Brooke's position at Islington-London, about Cambrey's visits to Department Twenty-Five, about oncozyme and the potential for a story.

'How does Roderick Trenarrow fit into all this, St James?'

'He's the prime mover. He gave Mick Cambrey some key information. Cambrey used it to pursue a story. That appears to be the extent of his involvement. He knew about oncozyme. He mentioned it to Mick.'

'And then Mick died. Trenarrow was in the vicinity that night.'

'He has no motive, Tommy. Justin Brooke did.' St James explained. His theory – the product of those minutes brooding alone in the study – was simple enough. It involved the promise of cocaine in exchange for key background information from an unnamed source that would evolve into an important story about a potentially dangerous drug. A deal between Cambrey and Brooke that had somehow gone bad, coming to a head on the night Brooke had gone with Peter to Gull Cottage.

'But that doesn't account for Brooke's death.'

'Which the police have said from the first was an accident.'

Lynley took his cigarette case from his jacket pocket, staring down at it thoughtfully before he spoke. He flipped open his lighter but did not use it at once. 'The pub,' he said. 'Peter said Brooke wasn't in the Anchor and Rose on Friday night, St James.'

'After he left Gull Cottage?'

'Yes. Peter went to the pub. He was there at a quarter to ten and beyond. Brooke never showed up.' 'So it fits, doesn't it?'

Deborah spoke. 'Did Justin Brooke know Peter was taking him to see Mick Cambrey? Did Peter name Mick before they left for the village? Or did he just say it was someone in Nanrunnel?'

'He must not have known in advance,' St James said. 'He'd hardly have gone had he known Mick Cambrey was the man with the money Peter intended to borrow. He wouldn't have wanted to run the risk of exposure.'

'It seems that Mick was in more danger of exposure than Justin Brooke,' Deborah said. 'The cocaine, the cross-dressing, his second life in London. God knows what else you've yet to tumble up.'

Lynley lit his cigarette, spoke with a sigh that expelled a gust of smoke. 'Beyond that, there's Sasha Nifford. If Brooke killed Cambrey and then fell to his death, what happened to Sasha?'

St James attempted to look noncommittal. He made himself ask, 'What did the Met have to say about Sasha?'

It was ergotamine and quinine.' Lynley took a white envelope from his inner breast pocket. He handed it to St James. 'She seems to have thought it was heroin.'

He read the brief report, finding it all at once difficult to assimilate technical information that should have been like a natural second language. Lynley was continuing to speak, giving facts which St James had himself possessed for years.

'A massive dose constricts all the arteries. Blood vessels rupture in the brain. Death is immediate. But we saw that, didn't we? She still had the needle in her arm.'

'The police aren't calling it an accident.'

'Quite. They were still questioning Peter when I left.'

'But if it wasn't an accident,' Deborah said, 'doesn't that mean…?'

'There's a second killer,' Lynley concluded.

St James went to his bookshelves once again. He was sure his movements, jerky and awkward, gave him away.

'Ergotamine,' he said. 'I'm not entirely sure…' He let his voice drift off, hoping for a display of natural curiosity, the reaction typical to a man of science. But, all the time, dread and knowledge were seeping through his skin. He pulled down a medical volume.

'It's a prescription drug,' Lynley was saying.

St James flipped through the pages. His hands were clumsy. He was at G and then H before he knew it. He aimlessly read without seeing a word.

'What's it for?' Deborah asked.

'Migraine headaches mostly.'

'Really? Migraine headaches?' St James felt Deborah turn towards him, willed her not to ask. Innocently, she did so. 'Simon, do you take it for your migraines?'

Of course, of course. She had known he took it. Everyone knew. He never counted the tablets. And the bottle was large. So she had gone to his room. She'd taken what she needed. She'd crushed them. She'd mixed them. She'd created the poison. And she'd handed it over, intending it for Peter, but killing Sasha instead.

He had to say something to direct them back to Cambrey and Brooke. He read for another moment, nodded as if caught in heavy contemplation, then shut the book.

'We need to go back to Cornwall,' he said decisively. 'The newspaper office should give us the definite connection between Brooke and Cambrey. Harry was looking for a story right after Mick's death. But he was looking for something sensational: gun-running into Northern Ireland, call girls visiting cabinet ministers. That sort of thing. Something tells me he would have overlooked oncozyme.' He didn't add the fact that leaving London by tomorrow would buy him time, making him unavailable to the police when they came calling to question him about a silver bottle from Jermyn Street.

'I can manage that,' Lynley said. 'Webberly's been good enough to extend my time off. And it'll clear Peter's name. Will you come as well, Deb?'

St James saw that she was watching him closely. 'Yes,' she said slowly. Then, 'Simon, is there-?'

He couldn't allow the question. 'If you'll both excuse me, I've a number of reports to see to in the lab,' he said. 'I've got to make at least some sort of start on them before tomorrow.'

He hadn't come down for dinner. Deborah and her father had finally taken their meal alone after nine o'clock in the dining room. Dover sole, asparagus, new potatoes, green salad. A glass of wine with the food. A cup of coffee afterwards. They didn't speak. But every few minutes Deborah caught her father glancing her way.

A division had come into their relationship since her return from America. Where once they had spoken freely to each other, with great affection and trust, now they were wary. Entire subjects were taboo. She wanted it that way. She had been in such a rush to move from the Chelsea house in the first place to avoid a sharing of confidences with her father. For in the long run he knew her better than anyone. And he was the most likely person to push back through the present to examine the past. He had, after all, the most at stake. He loved them both.

She pushed back her chair and began gathering their plates. Cotter stood as well. 'Glad to have you here tonight, Deb,' he said. 'Old times, seems like. The three of us.'

'The two of us.' She smiled in what she hoped would be affectionate and dismissive at once. 'Simon didn't come to dinner.'

'Three of us in the house, I meant,' Cotter said. He handed her the tray from the sideboard. She stacked the plates on it. 'Works too much, does Mr St James. I worry the man'll wear 'imself down to nothing.'

Cleverly, he'd moved to stand near the door. She couldn't escape without making obvious her desire to do so. And surely her father would pounce upon that. So she co-operated by saying, 'He is thinner, Dad, isn't he? I can see that.'

'That 'e is.' And then adroitly he took the opening. 'These last three years didn't go easy on Mr St James, Deb. You think they did, don't you? But you've got it wrong.'

'Well, of course, there were changes in all of our lives, weren't there? I expect he hadn't thought much about my running round the house until I wasn't here to do it any longer. But he got used to it in time. Anyone can see-'

'You know, luv,' her father interrupted, 'you've never in your life been one to talk false to yourself. I'm sorry to see you start doing it now.'

'Talk false? Don't be ridiculous. Why would I do that?'

'You know the answer. Way I see it, Deb, you and Mr St James both know the answer more'n quite well. All it takes is one o' you to be brave enough to say it and the other brave enough to stop living a lie.'

He put their wineglasses on the tray and took it from her hands. She had inherited her mother's height, Deborah knew, but she'd forgotten how that only made it easier for her father to look directly into her eyes. He did so now. The effect was disconcerting. It drew a confidence from her when she wanted to avoid giving it.

'I know how you want it to be,' she said. 'But it can't be that way, Dad. You need to accept it. People change. They grow up. They grow apart. Distance does things to them. Time makes their importance to each other fade away.'

'Sometimes,' he said.

' This time.' She saw him blink rapidly at the firmness of her voice. She tried to soften the blow. 'I was just a little girl. He was like my brother.'

'He was that.' Cotter moved to one side to let her pass.

She felt bereft by his reaction. She wanted nothing so much as his understanding but didn't know how to explain the situation in any way that would not destroy the dearest of his dreams. 'Dad, you must see that it's different with Tommy. I'm not a little girl to him. I never was. But to Simon I've always been… I'll always be…'

Cotter's smile was gentie. 'You've no need to convince me, Deb. No need.' He straightened his shoulders. His tone became brisk. 'At least we need to get some food in the man. Will you take a tray up? He's still in the lab.'

It was the least she could do. She followed him down the stairs to the kitchen and watched him put together a tray of cheese, cold meats, fresh bread and fruit, which she carried up to the lab where St James was sitting at one of the work tables, gazing at a set of photographed bullets. He held a pencil, but it lay unused between his fingers.

He'd turned on several lights, high-intensity lamps scattered here and there throughout the sprawling room. They created small pools of illumination within great caverns of shadow. In one of these, his face was largely screened by the darkness.

'Dad wants you to eat something,' Deborah said from the doorway. She entered the room and set the tray on the table. 'Still working?'

He wasn't. She doubted that he'd got a single thing done in all these past hours he'd spent in the lab. There was a report of some sort lying next to one of the photographs, but its front page didn't bear even a crease from having been folded back. And although a pad of paper lay beneath the pencil he held, he'd written nothing upon it. So all of this was rote behaviour on his part, a falling back on his work as an act of avoidance.

It all involved Sidney. Deborah had seen that much in his face when Lady Helen told him she hadn't been able to find his sister. She had seen it again when he had returned to her flat and placed call after call, trying to locate Sidney himself. Everything he had done from that moment – his journey to Islington-London, his discussion with Tommy about Mick Cambrey's death, his creation of a scenario to fit the facts of the crime, his need to get back to work in the lab – all of this was diversion and distraction to escape the trouble that had Sidney at its core. Deborah wondered what St James would do, what he would allow himself to feel, if someone had hurt his sister. Once again, she found herself wanting to help him in some way, giving him a peace of mind that appeared to elude him.

'It's just a bit of meat and cheese,' she said. 'Some fruit. Bread.' All of which was obvious. The tray was lying in his line of vision.

'Tommy's gone?' he asked.

'Ages ago. He went back to Peter.' She drew one of the lab stools to the other side of the table and sat facing him. 'I've forgotten to bring you something to drink,' she said. 'What would you like? Wine? Mineral water? Dad and I had coffee. Would you like a coffee, Simon?'

'Thank you, no. This is fine.' But he made no move to eat. He straightened on the stool, rubbed the muscles of his back.

The darkness did much to alter his face. Harsh angles were softened. Lines disappeared. The years drained away, taking with them the evidence of their companion pain. He was left looking younger and far more vulnerable. He seemed all at once so much easier to reach, the man to whom Deborah had once said anything at all, without fear of either derision or rejection, secure in the knowledge that he would always understand.

'Simon,' she said and waited until he had looked up from the plate of food which she knew he would not touch. 'Tommy told me what you tried to do for Peter today. That was so kind of you.'

His expression clouded. 'What I tried-?'

She reached across the table, grasping his hand lighdy. 'He said that you were going to take the container so that it wouldn't be there when the police arrived. Tommy was so moved by that act of friendship. He would have said something this afternoon in the study, but you left before he had the chance.'

She saw that his eyes were on Tommy's ring. The emerald shimmered like a translucent liquid in the light. His hand beneath hers was very cool. But as she waited for him to respond, it balled into a fist and then jerked away. She pulled her own hand back, feeling momentarily struck, feeling that any foolhardy lowering of her defences, any attempt to reach him in simple friendship, condemned her to failure again and again. Across from her, he swung to one side. The shadows deepened on the planes of his face.

'God,' he whispered.

At the word, at his expression, she saw that his pulling away had nothing to do with her. 'What is it?' she asked.

He leaned into the light. Every line reappeared with every angle newly honed. Dominant bones seemed to draw the skin against his skull. 'Deborah… how can I tell you? I'm not the hero that you think I am. I did nothing for Tommy. I didn't think of Tommy. I didn't care about Peter. I don't care about Peter.'

'But-'

'The container belongs to Sidney.'

Deborah felt herself drawing back at this statement. Her lips parted, but for a moment she did nothing but stare incredulously at his face. Finally, she managed, 'What are you saying?'

'She thinks Peter killed Justin Brooke. She wanted to even the score. But somehow, instead of Peter-'

'Ergotamine,' Deborah whispered. 'You do take it, don't you?'

He shoved the tray to one side. But that was the only reaction he appeared to be willing to allow himself. His words – if not their connotation – were perfectly cool. 'I feel like an idiot. I can't even think what to do to help my own sister. I can't even find her. It's pathetic. Obscene. I'm perfectly useless, and this entire day has been nothing more than an illustration of that fact.'

'I don't believe it,' Deborah said slowly. 'Sidney wouldn't… she didn't… Simon, I can't think you believe it yourself.'

'Helen's looked everywhere, phoned everywhere. So have I. Nothing's any good. And they'll trace that container within twenty-four hours.'

'How could they? Even if her fingerprints are on it-'

'It has nothing to do with fingerprints. She's used her perfume bottle. It's from Jermyn Street. That's not going to give the police any difficulty. They'll be here by four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. You can bet on that.'

'Her perfume… Simon, it's not Sidney!' Quickly, Deborah pushed off the lab stool, going round to join him. 'It's not Sidney. It can't be. Don't you remember? She came to my room the night of the dinner. She used my perfume. Hers was missing, she said. Someone had straightened her room. She couldn't find anything. Don't you remember?'

For a moment, he looked stunned. His vision was fixed upon her although he didn't appear to be seeing her at all. 'What?' he whispered and then went on in a voice that was stronger. 'That was Saturday evening. That was before Brooke died. Someone was planning to kill Peter even then.'

'Or Sasha,' Deborah said.

'Someone's trying to frame Sidney.' He pushed himself off the lab stool, walked to the end of the work table, swung round, walked back. He did it a second time, more quickly and with growing agitation. 'Someone got into her room. It could have been anyone. Peter – if Sasha was the intended victim – or Trenarrow or any one of the Penellins. Good God, even Daze.'

The truth was all of a piece in a moment. 'No,' Deborah said. 'It was Justin.'

'Justin?'

'It never made sense to me that he went to her bedroom on Friday night. Not after what happened between them on the beach that afternoon. He had a grievance against Sidney. The cocaine, their fight, Peter and Sasha laughing at them both. Laughing at him.'

'So he went to her room,' St James said slowly, 'made love to her, and took the bottle then. He must have done. Damn him to hell.'

'And Saturday when Sid couldn't find him for most of the day – remember, she told us that? – he must have got the ergotamine and quinine then. He made the mixture and passed it on to Sasha.'

'A chemist,' St James said thoughtfully. 'A biochemist. Who would know drugs better?'

'So who was he after? Peter or Sasha?'

'It was always Peter.'

'Because of the visit to Mick Cambrey?'

'The room had been searched. The computer was on. There were notebooks and photographs all over the floor. Peter must have seen something when he was there with Brooke, something Brooke knew he might remember once Cambrey was dead.'

'Then, why give the drugs to Sasha? When Peter died, she would have told the police at once where she'd got them.'

'Not at all. She'd have been dead as well. Brooke was betting on that. He knew she was a user. So he gave her the drugs, hoping she and Peter would use them together and die at Howenstow, I imagine. When it became apparent that the plan wasn't working, he tried to be rid of Peter in a different way: by telling us about their visit to Cambrey so that Peter would be arrested and out of the way. What he couldn't have known is that Sasha and Peter would leave before Peter could be arrested in Cornwall and that Sasha's addiction was worse than Peter's. He especially had no way of knowing that she would hoard the drugs and use them alone. Nor did he know that Peter would go to the Anchor and Rose and get himself seen by a dozen or more people who could provide him with an alibi for the time of Cambrey's death.'

'So it was Justin,' Deborah said. 'Everything was Justin.'

'I've been blinded by the fact that he died before Sasha. I never considered that he might have given her the drugs first.'

'But his own death, Simon?' 'An accident all along.'

'Why? How? What was he doing on the cliff in the middle of the night?'

St James glanced over her shoulder. She'd left the warning light on above the darkroom door. It cast an eerie glow of blood red on the ceiling. It also gave him the answer. 'Your cameras,' he said. 'That's where he got rid of them.'

'Why?'

'He was wiping out every trace of his connection to Cambrey. First Cambrey himself. Then Peter. Then-'

'My film,' she said. 'The pictures you took in the cottage. Whatever Peter saw, you must have photographed as well.'

'Which means the state of the sitting room was merely a blind. He hadn't searched for anything. He hadn't taken anything. Whatever he wanted was too big to be removed.'

'The computer?' Deborah asked. 'Even so, how could he have known you even took any pictures in the first place?'

'He knew we had your camera with us on Friday night. Mrs Sweeney made certain of that at dinner on Saturday. He knew my line of work. Sidney would have told him. He had to have known Tommy is with Scotland Yard. He might have risked our coming upon a murder scene and doing nothing save calling the police. But why take the risk if there was something in that room – something on the film – that could tie him to Cambrey?'

'But the police would have found it eventually, wouldn't they?'

'They'd made their arrest. Penellin was as good as confessing to the crime. The only thing Justin had to fear was that someone other than the local police wouldn't accept the idea of Penellin as a killer. Which is exactly what happened less than twenty-four hours after Cambrey's death. We were nosing about. We were asking questions. He had to take steps to protect himself.'

She asked a final question. 'But why all my equipment? Why not just the film?'

'He didn't have time. It was easier to take the entire case, drop it from your window, and then trot down to see Tommy and me in the day room where he told us all about Peter. Then, later on, he took the cameras to the cove. He went out on the rocks and disposed of them in the water. He climbed back up the cliff. And that's when he fell.'

She smiled, feeling the release that comes with relief. He looked as if he'd shaken off a terrible burden. 'I wonder if we can prove any of it.'

'Indeed we can. In Cornwall. First at the cove to find the cameras, then at the newspaper office to find whatever Mick Cambrey was writing about oncozyme. Tomorrow.'

'And the film? The pictures?'

'Icing on the cake.'

'Shall I develop them for you?' 'Would you?' 'Of course.'

'Then, let's be about it at once, little bird. It's time to put Justin Brooke in his place.'

24

Deborah worked with a lightness of both heart and spirit that she would have thought impossible a mere two hours before. She found herself humming, occasionally singing a line or two from old songs that popped into her head out of nowhere: the Beatles, Buddy Holly, an ancient Cliff Richard that she didn't even know she knew. In the darkroom, she clipped the leader from the roll of exposed film, spooling it into the developing-tank in an automatic process that was second nature to her. She didn't pause to reflect upon the work itself or upon the carefree manner in which she did it. Nor did she pause to think about how and why time and circumstances had somehow reversed themselves, allowing her former childhood affection for St James to blossom, renewed, while they talked together in the lab. She was merely grateful that it had somehow happened, she was merely grateful for the promise it held that rancour could at last be put to rest between them.

How right she had been to follow her instincts and come to Chelsea to be with Simon tonight. How happy she had felt to see his face alter the moment he realized that no blame could be laid at his sister's feet. How comfortable she had been to follow him to his bedroom, to stand chatting and laughing while he rooted out the roll of film. They were comrades again, sharing their thoughts, listening to each other, debating, and reflecting.

Joy in communicating had been the hallmark of their relationship prior to her three-year stay in America. And those minutes in the lab, in his bedroom afterwards, had brought back to her the vivid memory of that joy, if not the full intensity of the joy itself. She saw what he had once been to her as a series of images, playing in the field of her mind. These whirled her back through childhood and adolescence, vast periods of time that she shared with him.

He was her history in a thousand different ways: listening to her woes, softening the blow of disappointments, reading to her, talking to her. watching her grow. He had seen the very worst that she was – her temper tantrums, her stubborn pride, her inability to accept defeat, the demands for perfection which she placed upon herself, the difficulty she faced in forgiving weakness in others. He had seen this and more, and never had he been anything less than completely accepting. He might advise or instruct, he might warn or admonish. But he always accepted. And she had known he always would from the moment when, as an eighteen-year-old boy, he had squatted before her at the side of her mother's grave where she was trying to be brave, striving for indifference, making a show of the fact that at seven years old she could stand the terror of a devastating loss that she barely understood. He had drawn her into his arms with five simple words which effectively freed her to be who and what she really was for the rest of her life: 'It's all right to cry.'

He had helped her grow up, encouraged her in every way, and let her go when it was time for her to leave. But it was that final action – his obvious willingness to release her into her own adulthood without a word to stop her from leaving him – which had undermined their relationship, creating a rankling that had gnawed within her. And, because the very worst she could be was the part of her that rose to the surface when she was first confronted with his intention to subject them both to three years of separation heightened by silence, she had let joy wither, she had let warmth die, she had given herself over to a need to hurt him. And she had done so, achieving a revenge that was at once initially satisfying, pure and simple. But now she saw that the attainment of such a goal was at best a Pyrrhic victory, and any vengeance she had wrought upon Simon had merely ricocheted, wounding herself.

Only in speaking the truth did there exist any hope to rebuild a friendship with him. Only in confession, expiation and forgiveness did there lie the possibility of retrieving joy. And she wanted joy. Nothing meant more than being comfortable with him again, talking to him as she had in her childhood, as his little sister, his comrade, and his friend. She wanted nothing more. For what had long been at the festering core of her painful separation from Simon was the thwarted desire to be taken to his bed so that she might know that he truly wanted her, so that she might finally be assured that she hadn't just imagined those long-ago moments when he had allowed her to see what she had convinced herself was honest desire.

But the need for that satisfaction and knowledge had long since been consumed by the flames of her love for Tommy. And it was Tommy now who would give her the courage to speak the truth. For as she held the film's negatives to the light, searching for the pictures of the Cambrey cottage, she saw the pictures of Lynley as well, co-operatively posing with the Nanrunnel Players. She felt a rush of gratitude and devotion just studying him -the way he threw back his head in a burst of laughter, the way his hair shone, the shape of his mouth. She knew that Tommy was where the loyalty of her adulthood lay. He was the future towards which she was moving. But she couldn't reach him with an unfettered heart without laying rest to the past.

She worked through the process of enlarging the photographs which St James had taken in the Cambrey cottage. From enlarger, to developer, to stop bath, to fixer. All the time her mind was taken up with what she would say to him, how she would say it, and whether her explanation and apology could possibly suffice to end their estrangement.

It was nearly midnight when she'd completed her work in the darkroom: the developing, the washing, the drying, the cleaning-up. She switched off the lights, gathered up the photographs, and went in search of St James.

He heard her movement on the stairs before he saw her. Across his bed he'd spread out every document that pertained to the case, and he was studying them all, deciding which of them could be used to exonerate not only his sister but Peter Lynley and John Penellin as well. A flash at his doorway stirred him from his contemplation of these items. It was Deborah's white shirt against the shadows in the hall. She was holding the photographs.

He smiled. 'Have them finished?'

'Yes. It took a bit longer than I thought. I wasn't used to the enlarger. Because it's new and… well, you know that, don't you? How silly.'

He thought she might give the photographs to him, but she didn't do so. Instead, she came to stand at the foot of his bed. One hand held the photographs pressed against her side, the other curved round the bed's tall, fluted post.

'I need to talk to you, Simon.'

Something in her face reminded him instantly of a bottle of ink spilled on a dining room chair and a scuffy-shoed ten-year-old's quavering confession. Something in her voice, however, told him that, for Deborah, a moment of accounting had arrived, and as a result he felt that sudden draining of strength that comes with an onslaught of dread.

'What is it? What's wrong?'

'The photograph. I knew that you'd see it one day or another, and I wanted you to see it. It was my dearest wish. I wanted you to know that I sleep with Tommy. I wanted you to know because then I might hurt you. And I wanted to hurt you, Simon. I was desperate to punish you. I wanted you to think of us making love together. I wanted you to be jealous. I wanted you to care. And I… Simon, I despise myself for having done that to you.'

Her words were so unexpected that the very surprise of them buffeted him into a form of shock. For one ridiculous moment, he talked himself into misunderstanding the direction she was heading in, allowing himself to assume that she was speaking of the Cambrey pictures and making references to them that he simply couldn't comprehend. In that instantaneous way that minds have of working, he made a quick decision to direct the conversation along those lines. What are you talking about? Jealous of Tommy? What photograph, Deborah? I don't understand. Or, better yet, laughing it off, indifferent. Just a practical joke that didn't work out. But even as he gathered the resources to respond she continued, making her meaning quite clear.

'I wanted you so much when I left for America. I loved you so much, and I was sure you loved me. Not as a brother or an uncle or a sort of second father. But as a man, an equal. You know what I mean.' Her words were so gentle, her voice so quiet. He felt compelled to keep watching her face. He stood immobilized, unable to go to her even as every sinew in his body insisted he do so. 'I don't know if I can even explain what it was like for me, Simon. So confident when I left, so sure of what you and I had together. And then waiting for you to answer my letters. At first not understanding, even believing something had happened to the post. Phoning you after two months and hearing how distant you were. Your career was making such demands on you, you said. Responsibilities were piling up. Conferences and seminars and papers to write. You'd answer my letters when you could. And how is school, Deborah? Are you getting on? Are you making friends? I'm sure you'll do well. You've the talent. You've the gift. You've nothing but a brilliant future ahead of you.'

He said the only thing he could manage. 'I remember.'

'I judged myself’ Her fleeting smile was a fragile thing. 'Not pretty enough for you, not clever enough, not amusing, not compassionate, not loving, not desirable… not enough.'

'That wasn't the truth. That isn't the truth.'

'Most mornings I woke and despaired of the fact that I was still alive. And that became part of my loathing as well. I wasn't even enough of a person to take my own life. Worthless, I thought. Totally without value. Stupid and ugly and utterly useless.'

Each word was more difficult to bear than the last.

'I wanted to die. I prayed to die. But I didn't. I just went on. Which is what most people do.'

'They do go on. They heal. They forget. I understand.' He hoped those four statements would be enough to stop her. But he saw that she was determined to carry their conversation through to an end of her own devising.

'Tommy was my forgetting at first. When he came to visit, we laughed. We talked. The first time he made an excuse why he'd come. But not after that. And he never pushed me, Simon. He never once made demands. I didn't talk about you, but I think somehow he knew and was determined to wait until I was ready to open my heart to him. So he wrote, he phoned, he laid a real foundation. And when he took me to bed, I wanted to be there. I'd finally let you go.'

'Deborah, please. It's all right. I understand.' He stopped looking at her. Turning his head was the only movement he seemed capable of making. He stared at the items he'd placed on the bed.

'You'd rejected me. I was angry. I was hurt. I got over you in the end, but for some reason I believed that I had to show you how things were now. I had to make you see that, if you didn't want me, someone else did. So I put that photograph on the wall in my flat. Tommy didn't want me to. He asked me not to. But I pointed out the composition, the colour, the texture of the curtains and the blankets, the shapes of clouds in the sky. "It's just a photograph," I said. "Are you embarrassed about what it implies about us?'"

For a moment, she said nothing more. St James thought she was finished, and he looked up to see that her hand was at her throat, her fingers pressing along her collarbone. 'What a terrible lie to tell Tommy. I just wanted to hurt you. As deeply as I could.'

'God knows I deserved it. I hurt you as well.'

'No. There's no excusing a need for retaliation like that. It's adolescent. Disgusting. It says things about me that make me ill. I'm so sorry. Truly.'

It's nothing. Really. Do forget it, little bird. He couldn't bring himself to say it. He couldn't say anything. He couldn't bear the thought that, through his own cowardice, he had driven her to Lynley. It was more than he could suffer. He despised himself. As he watched, seeking words that he didn't know, feeling wrenched by emotions he couldn't bear to possess, she placed the photographs on the edge of the bed, pressing their corners down to keep them from curling.

'Do you love him?'

She had gone to the door, but she turned to answer. 'He's everything to me,' she said. 'Loyalty, devotion, affection, warmth. He's given me things-'

'Do you love him?' The question was shaken this time. 'At least can you say that you love him, Deborah?'

For a moment he thought she might leave without answering. But he saw Lynley's power sweep right through her body. Her chin raised, her shoulders straightened, her eyes shone with tears. He heard the answer before she gave it. 'I love him. Yes. I love him. I do.' And then she was gone.

He lay in bed and stared at the shifting patterns of black shadow and dim light on the ceiling. The night was warm, so his bedroom window was open, the curtains were undrawn, and he could hear, occasionally, cars rumbling along Cheyne Walk just a block away, the noise of their engines amplified by the open expanse of the river. His body should have been tired – demanding sleep – but instead it ached, muscles excruciatingly tense in his neck and shoulders, hands and arms feeling strung with external nerves, chest sore and constricted as if pressed by a weight. His mind was a maelstrom in which were swirling fragments of former conversations, half-formed hazy fantasies, things needing to be said.

He tried to think of anything other than Deborah. A fibre analysis he needed to complete, a deposition he was due to give in two weeks, a conference at which he was to present a paper, a seminar in Glasgow he had been asked to teach. He tried to be what he had been during her absence, the cool scientist meeting commitments and facing responsibilities, but instead he saw the man he really was, the coward who filled his life with denial and distraction to avoid running the risk of vulnerability.

His entire life was a lie, founded on noble aphorisms in which he knew he did not believe. Let her go. Let her find her own way. Let her have a world of expanding horizons filled with people who could give her riches far beyond the paucity of what he had to offer. Let her find a kindred soul with whom she could share herself, one unburdened by the weaknesses that plagued his own life. But even this listing of the specious regulations that had governed his behaviour still left him safe from having to confront the final truth.

Fear dominated him. It left him useless. Any action he chose could be the source of rejection. So he chose by not choosing, by letting time pass, by believing that conflicts, difficulties and turmoil would sort themselves out on their own in the long run. And indeed they had done so. Loss was the result.

Too late he saw what he should have seen all along: that his life with Deborah had been a long-forming tapestry in which she had held the thread, had created the design, and had ultimately become the fabric itself. That she should leave him now was a form of dying, leaving him not death's peace of the void but an infinite hellfire of recrimination, all of it the product of his contemptible fear. That the years had passed and he had not told her how he loved her. His heart soared in her presence, but he would not say the words. Now he could only thank God that she and Lynley planned to take up a new life in Cornwall after their marriage. If she was gone from his presence, what remained of life here would at least be bearable.

He turned his head on the pillow and looked at the glowing red numbers of the digital clock. It was ten past three. The effort to sleep was useless. He could at least admit that. He switched on the light.

The stack of photographs still lay on the table next to the bed where he had placed them over two hours ago. In what he knew quite well was an act of deliberate avoidance – more cowardice for which he would despise himself with the dawn – he picked them up. As if this action could eradicate Deborah's words, as if the knowledge of how she had once wanted him were not tearing at his soul, he began to examine them, a study in detachment with his world in ruins.

Without emotion, he looked at the corpse, its mutilation, its position near the sofa. He observed the debris that lay in the room: the letters and envelopes; the pens and pencils; the notebooks and folders; the scraps of paper covered with writing; the poker and fire irons tumbled to the floor; the computer – switched on – with black floppy disks spread out on the desk. And then closer to the corpse, the glint of silver – perhaps a coin – half-hidden under his thigh; the five-pound note, a small wedge torn from it, lying disregarded near his hand on the floor; above him the mantel on which he had struck his head; to the right the hearth to which he had fallen. St James flipped through the photographs again and again, looking for something he could not have identified even if he saw it. The computer, the disks, the folders, the notebooks, the money, the mantel. He thought only of Deborah.

Giving up the game, he admitted that there would be neither sleep, nor peace, nor even the possibility of a moment's distraction. He could only make the hours till dawn slightly more livable. He reached for his crutches and swung out of bed. Throwing on his dressing gown, belting it clumsily, he headed for the door. There was brandy in the study. It would not be the first time he had sought its oblivion. He made his way down the stairs.

The study door was partially closed, and it swung inwards noiselessly upon his touch. A soft glow – dancing between gold and dusky rose – came from two candles that should have stood on the overmantel but had been placed side by side and lit upon the hearth. Hands clasped round her knees, Deborah sat on the ottoman and watched the candles' flames. Seeing her, St James wanted to retreat. He thought about doing so. He didn't move.

She looked towards the door, looked away again quickly when she saw it was he. 'Couldn't sleep,' she said unnecessarily as if she thought she needed to explain her presence in his study – wearing dressing gown and slippers – after three in the morning. 'I can't think why. I ought to be exhausted. I feel exhausted. But I couldn't sleep. Too much excitement these past few days.'

Her words were casual enough, well chosen and indifferent. But there was something hesitant in her voice. It tried and failed to ring true. Hearing this, he made his way across the room and lowered himself on to the ottoman next to her. It was the sort of gesture he'd never made before. In the past, her place had been on the ottoman, while he sat above her, in the chair or on the sofa.

'I couldn't sleep either,' he said, laying his crutches on the floor. 'I thought I'd have a brandy.'

'I'll get it for you.' She began to rise.

He caught her hand, stopped her. 'No. It's all right.' And when she kept her face averted, 'Deborah.'

'Yes?'

The single word was calm. Her curly mass of hair hid her face from view. She made a quick movement, like a lifting of her body, and he thought it was prelude to rising and leaving. But, instead of doing so, he heard her take a choked breath and realized with a swift dawning surprise that she was struggling not to cry.

He touched her hair, so tentatively that he knew she couldn't possibly feel that he had done so. 'What is it?'

'Nothing.'

'Deborah-'

'We were friends,' she whispered. 'You and I. We were mates. I wanted that back. I thought if I talked to you tonight… but I just couldn't find it. It's gone. And I… it hurts so much to know that. If I talk to you, if I see you, I still feel torn. I don't want that feeling. I can't face it again.'

Her voice broke. Without a thought, he encircled her shoulders with his arm. It didn't matter what he said.

Truth or lie made no difference. He had to say something to alleviate her pain.

'We'll survive all this, Deborah. We'll find our way back. We'll be what we were. Don't cry.' Roughly, he kissed the side of her head. She turned into his arms. He held her, stroked her hair, rocked her, said her name. And all at once felt flooded by peace. 'It doesn't matter,' he whispered. 'We'll always be mates. We'll never lose that. I promise.'

At his words, he felt her arms slip round him. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest. He felt her heart beating, felt his own heart pounding, and accepted the fact that he had lied to her again. They would never be friends. Friendship was absolutely impossible between them when with so simple a movement -her arms slipping round him – every part of his body lit on fire for her.

Half a dozen admonitions rang out in his head. She was Lynley's. He had hurt her quite enough already. He was betraying the oldest friendship in his life. There were boundaries between them that couldn't be crossed. His resolve was acceptance. We aren't meant to be happy. Life isn't always fair. He heard each one of them, vowed to leave the room, told himself to release her, and stayed where he was. Just to hold her, just to have her like this for one moment, just to feel her near him, just to catch the scent of her skin. It was enough. He would do nothing else… save touch her hair again, save brush it back from her face.

She lifted her head to look at him. Admonitions, intentions, boundaries and resolves were shot to oblivion. Their cost was too high. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Just the moment, now, with her.

He touched her cheek, her brow, traced the outline of her lips. She whispered his name, a single word that finally obliterated fear. He wondered how he had ever been afraid to lose himself in the love of this woman. She was himself. He saw that now. He accepted that truth. It was a form of fulfilment. He brought his mouth to hers.

Nothing existed save being in his arms. Nothing mattered save the warmth of his mouth and the taste of his tongue. It was as if only this single moment counted, allowing her life to be defined by his kiss.

He murmured her name, and a sure current passed between them, gathering force from the wellspring of desire. It swept away the past and took in its flow every belief, every intention, every aspect of her life but the knowledge that she wanted him. More than loyalty, more than love, more than the promise of the future, she wanted him. She told herself that this had nothing to do with the Deborah who was Tommy's, who slept in Tommy's bed, who would be Tommy's wife. This had to do only with a settling of accounts, one hour in which she would measure her worth.

'My love,' he whispered. 'Without you-'

She drew his mouth back to hers. She bit his lips gently and felt them curve in a smile. She wanted no words. In their place, she wanted only sensation. His mouth on her neck, describing a curve to the hollow of her throat; his hands on her breasts, teasing and caressing, dropping to her waist to the belt of her dressing gown, loosening it, pushing the gown from her shoulders, slipping the thin straps of her nightdress down the length of her arms. She stood. The nightdress slid to the floor. She felt his hand on her thigh.

'Deborah.'

She didn't want words. She bent to him, kissed him, felt him drawing her down to him, heard her own sigh of pleasure as his mouth found her breast.

She began to touch him. She began to undress him.

'I want you,' he whispered. 'Deborah. Look at me.'

She couldn't. She saw the candles' glow, the stone surround of the fireplace, the bookshelves, the glint of a single brass lamp on his desk. But not his eyes or his face or the shape of his mouth. She accepted his kiss. She returned his caress. But she did not look at him.

'I love you,' he whispered.

Three years. She waited for the rush of triumph, but it didn't come. Instead, one of the candles began to gutter, spilling wax in a messy flow on to the hearth. With a hiss, the flame died. The burned wick sent up a wisp of smoke whose smell was sharp and disturbing. St James turned to the source.

Deborah watched him do so. The single small flame of the remaining candle flickered like wings against his skin. His profile, his hair, the sharp edge of his jaw, the curve of his shoulder, the sure, quick movement of his lovely hands… She got to her feet. Her fingers trembled as she put on her dressing gown and fumbled uselessly with its slippery satin belt. She felt shaken to her core. No words, she thought. Anything else, but no words.

'Deborah…'

She couldn't.

'For God's sake, Deborah, what is it? What's wrong?'

She made herself look at him. His features were washed by a storm of emotion. He looked young and so vulnerable. He looked ready to be struck.

'I can't,' she said. 'Simon, I just can't.'

She turned away from him and left the room. She ran up the stairs. Tommy, she thought.

As if his name were a prayer, an invocation that could keep her from feeling both unclean and afraid.