A Suitable Vengeance (2 page)

Tina watched him. Anticipation curled in her stomach as she waited for the moment when he would see her through the smoke and the dancers. Oblivious of her presence, however, he looked only at the door, running his fingers through close-cropped blond hair in nervous agitation. For several minutes Tina studied him with interest, seeing him order and down two drinks in rapid succession, noting how his mouth became harder as he glanced at his watch and his need expanded. From what she could see, he was dressed quite badly for the brother of an earl, wearing a tattered leather jacket, jeans, and a T-shirt bearing the faded inscription
Hard Rock Cafe
. A gold earring dangled from one pierced earlobe, and from time to time he reached for this as if it were a talisman. He gnawed continually at the fingers of his left hand. His right fist jumped in spasms against his hip.

He stood abruptly as a group of boisterous Germans entered the club, but he fell back into his chair when it became apparent that the person he sought was not with them. Shaking a cigarette from a pack that he removed from his jacket, he felt in his pockets but brought forth neither lighter nor matches. A moment later, he shoved back his chair, stood, and approached the bar.

Right to mama, Tina thought with an inward smile. Some things in life are absolutely meant to be.

By the time her companion nosed the Triumph into a parking space in Soho Square, Sidney St. James could see for herself how finely strung his nerves had become. His whole body was taut. Even his hands gripped the steering wheel with a telling control which was inches short of snapping altogether. He was trying to hide it from her, however. Admitting need would be a step towards admitting addiction. And he wasn’t addicted. Not Justin Brooke, scientist,
bon vivant
, director of projects, writer of proposals, recipient of awards.

“You’ve left the lights on,” Sidney said to him stonily. He didn’t respond. “I said the lights, Justin.”

He switched them off. Sidney sensed—rather than saw—him turn in her direction, and a moment later she felt his fingers on her cheek. She wanted to move away as they slid down her neck to trace the small swell of her breasts. But instead she felt her body’s quick response to his touch, readying itself for him as if it were a creature beyond her control.

Then a slight tremor in his hand, child of anxiety, told her that his caress was spurious, an instant’s placation of her feelings prior to making his nasty little purchase. She pushed him away.

“Sid.” Justin managed a respectable degree of sensual provocation, but Sidney knew that his mind and body were taken up with the ill-lit alleyway at the south end of the square. He would want to be careful to hide that from her. Even now he leaned towards her as if to demonstrate that foremost in his life at the moment was not his need for the drug but his desire to have her. She steeled herself to his touch.

His lips, then his tongue moved on her neck and shoulders. His hand cupped her breast. His thumb brushed her nipple in deliberate strokes. His voice murmured her name. He turned her to him. And as always, it was like fire, like loss, like a searing abdication of all common sense. Sidney wanted his kiss. Her mouth opened to receive it.

He groaned and pressed closer to her, touching her, kissing her. She snaked her hand up his thigh to caress him in turn. And then she knew.

It was an abrupt descent to reality. She pushed herself away, glaring at him in the dim light from the streetlamps.

“That’s wonderful, Justin. Or did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

He looked away. Her wrath increased.

“Just go buy your bloody dope. That’s why we’ve come, isn’t it? Or was I supposed to think it was for something else?”

“You want me to go to this party, don’t you?” Justin demanded.

It was an age-old attempt to shift blame and responsibility, but this time Sidney refused to play along. “Don’t you hit me with that. I can go alone.”

“Then why don’t you? Why did you phone me, Sid? Or wasn’t that you on the line this afternoon, honey-tongued and hot to get yourself laid at the evening’s end?”

She let his words hang there, knowing they were true. Time after time, when she swore she’d had enough of him, she went back for more, hating him, despising herself, yet returning all the same. It was as if she had no will that was not tied to his.

And for God’s sake, what was he? Not warm. Not handsome. Not easy to know. Not anything she once dreamed she’d be taking into her bed. He was merely an interesting face on which every single feature seemed to argue with all the others to dominate the bony skull beneath it. He was dark, olive skin. He was hooded eyes. He was a thin scar running along the line of his jaw. He was nothing,
nothing
…except a way of looking at her, of touching her, of making her thin boyish body sensual and beautiful and flaming with life.

She felt defeated. The air in the car seemed stiflingly hot.

“Sometimes I think of telling them,” she said. “They say that’s the only way to cure it, you know.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She saw his fingers curl.

“Important people in the user’s life find out. His family. His employers. So he bottoms out. Then he—”

Justin’s hand flashed, caught her wrist, twisted her hand. “Don’t even think of telling anyone. Don’t even think of it. I swear if you do, Sid…if you do…”

“Stop it. Look, you can’t go on like this. What are you spending on it now? Fifty pounds a day? One hundred? More? Justin, we can’t even go to a party without you—”

He dropped her wrist abruptly. “Then get out. Find someone else. Leave me bloody well alone.”

It was the only answer. But Sidney knew she couldn’t do it and she hated the fact that she probably never would.

“I only want to help.”

“Then shut up, all right? Let me go down that sodding alley, make the buy and get out of here.” He shoved open the door and slammed it behind him.

Sidney watched him walk halfway across the square before she opened her own door. “Justin—”

“Stay there.” He sounded calmer, not so much because he was feeling any calmer, she knew, but because the square was peopled with Soho’s usual Friday night throng and Justin Brooke was not a man who generally cared for making public scenes.

She ignored his admonition, striding to join him, disregarding the certain knowledge that the last thing she ought to be doing was helping him get more supplies for his habit. She told herself instead that if she weren’t there, sharply on the lookout, he might be arrested or duped or worse.

“I’m coming,” she said when she reached him.

The whipcord of tension in his features told her he had moved beyond caring.

“As you like.” He headed towards the gaping darkness of the alley across the square.

Construction was underway there, making the alley mouth darker and narrower than usual. Sidney made a moue of distaste at the smell of urine. It was worse than she had expected it to be.

Buildings loomed up on either side, unlit and unmarked. Grills covered their windows and their entryways housed shrouded, moaning figures who conducted the sort of illicit business which the nightclubs of the district seemed eager to promote.

“Justin, where’re you planning to—”

Brooke raised a cautionary hand. Up ahead, a man’s hoarse cursing had begun to fill the air. It came from the far end of the alley where a brick wall curved round the side of a nightclub to form a sheltered alcove. Two figures writhed upon the ground there. But this was no love tryst. This was assault, and the bottom figure was a black-clad woman who appeared to be no match in either size or strength for her furious assailant.

“You
filthy
…” The man—blond by the appearance of him and wildly angry by the sound of his voice—pounded his fists against the woman’s face, ground them into her arms, slammed them into her stomach.

At this, Sidney moved, and when Brooke tried to stop her, she cried out, “No! It’s a woman,” and ran towards the alley’s end.

She heard Justin’s sharp oath behind her. He overtook her less than three yards away from the couple on the ground. “Keep back. Let me see to it,” he said roughly.

Brooke grabbed the man by his shoulders, digging into the leather jacket he wore. The action of pulling him upward freed his victim’s arms, and she instinctively brought them up to protect her face. Brooke flung the man backwards.

“You idiots! Do you want the police after you?”

Sidney pushed past him. “Peter!” she cried. “Justin, it’s Peter Lynley!”

Brooke looked from the young man to the woman who lay on her side, her dress dishevelled and her stockings in tatters. He squatted and grabbed her face as if to examine the extent of her injuries.

“My God,” he muttered. Releasing her, he stood, shook his head, and gave a short bark of laughter.

Below him, the woman drew herself to her knees. She reached for her handbag, retching momentarily.

Then—most oddly—she began to laugh as well.

PART II

LONDON AFTERNOONS

CHAPTER

1

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

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

“Hmmm,” was her companion’s only response.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Managing quite well,” was Cotter’s oblique reply from three floors below.

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

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

Lady Helen descended the stairs. Cotter waved her off.

“I c’n manage,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

“I want the trouble. As much as do you.”

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

“Deborah’s coming home?” Lady Helen kept her voice low. Cotter did likewise.

“She is. Tonight.”