A Suitable Vengeance (53 page)

A lightening of her voice—an underlying gentleness—told him what she had not yet said. “He’s asked you again? Good. I’m glad of it. It’s more forgiveness than I deserve.”

She took his arm. “That time is finished, Tommy.” Which was so much her way at the heart of the matter, offering a forgiveness that swept away the anger of half a lifetime.

“That simply?” he asked.

“Darling Tommy, that simply.”

St. James walked some paces behind Lynley and Deborah. He watched their progress, making a study of their proximity to each other. He memorised the details of Lynley’s arm round Deborah’s shoulders, hers round his waist, the angle of their heads as they talked, the contrast in the colour of their hair. He saw how they walked in perfect rhythm, their strides the same length, fluid and smooth. He watched them and tried not to think about the previous night, about his realisation that he could no longer run from her and continue to live with himself, about the moment when his stunned awareness had finally absorbed the fact that he would have to do so.

Any man who had known her less well would have labelled her actions on the previous night as a clever manipulation whose end-product gleaned her the witnessing of a measure of suffering to pay for the suffering he’d inflicted upon her. A confession of her adolescent love for him; an admission of that love’s attendant desire; an encounter that blended the strongest elements of emotion and arousal; an abrupt conclusion when she was certain that he intended no further flight. But even if he wanted to evaluate her behaviour as a manipulative woman’s act of spite, he could not do it. For she had not known he would leave his bedroom and join her in the study, nor could she have anticipated that after years of separation and rejection he would finally let go of the worst of his fears. She had not asked him to join her, she had not asked him to drop onto the ottoman next to her, she had not asked him to take her into his arms. He had only himself to blame for having crossed the boundary into betrayal and for having assumed in the white heat of the moment that she would be willing to cross it as well.

He had forced her hand, he had called for a decision. She had made it. If he was to survive from this time on, he knew he would have to do it alone. Unbearable now, he tried to believe that the thought would become more endurable in time.

Propitiable gods held back the rain although the sky was growing rapidly more tenebrous when they reached the cove. Far out to sea, the sun burst through a ragged tear in the clouds, casting beams like a golden spotlight on the water below. But it was only a momentary break in the weather. No sailor or fisherman would have been deceived by its transitory beauty.

Below them on the beach, two teenaged boys were idly smoking near the rocks. One was tall and big boned with a shock of bright orange hair, the other small and whip-thin with great knobs on his knees. Despite the weather, they were dressed for swimming. On the ground at their feet lay a stack of towels, two face masks, two snorkels. Looking up, the orange-haired boy saw Lynley and waved. The other glanced over his shoulder and tossed his cigarette aside.

“Where do you suppose Brooke threw the cameras in?” Lynley asked St. James.

“He was on the rocks Friday afternoon. My guess is that he’d have edged out as far as he could go and heaved the case into the water. What’s the bottom like?”

“Mostly granite.”

“And the water’s clear. If the camera case is there, they’ll be able to see it.”

Lynley nodded and made the descent, leaving St. James with Deborah on the cliff. They watched as he crossed the narrow strand and shook both boys’ hands. They grinned, the one driving his fingers into his hair and scratching his scalp, the other shifting from foot to foot. They both looked cold.

“Not exactly the best weather for a swim,” Deborah remarked.

St. James said nothing.

The boys pulled on face masks, adjusted their snorkels and headed for the water, one on either side of the rocks. Alongside them, Lynley climbed the granite outcropping and picked his way out to its furthest point.

The surface of the water was extraordinarily calm since a natural reef protected the cove. Even from the cliff, St. James could see the anemones that grew on the outcropping beneath the water, their stamen swaying in the gentle current. Above and around them, broad-leafed kelp undulated. Beneath them, crabs hid. The cove was a combination of reef and tide pools, sea life and sand. It was not the best location for a swim, but it had no match as a site for the disposing of an object one wished to go unrecovered for years. Within weeks, the camera case would be shrouded by barnacles, sea urchins, and anemones. Within months, it would lose both shape and definition, ultimately coming to resemble the rocks themselves.

If the case was there, however, the two boys were having difficulty finding it. Again and again, they bobbed to the surface on either side of Lynley. Each time, they carried nothing with them. Each time, they shook their heads.

“Tell them to go farther out,” St. James shouted when the boys made their sixth return empty-handed.

Lynley looked up, nodded, and waved. He squatted on the rocks and talked to the boys. They dove under the water again. Both were good swimmers. They clearly understood what they were looking for. But neither found a thing.

“It looks hopeless.” Deborah seemed to be speaking more to herself than to St. James. Nonetheless, he replied.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, Deborah. I thought to have recovered at least something for you.” He glanced her way, saw by her expression of misery that she’d read the meaning behind his words.

“Oh, Simon, please. I couldn’t. When it came down to it, I couldn’t do it to him. Can you try to understand?”

“The saltwater would have ruined them anyway. But at least you’d have had something to remind you of your success in America. Besides Tommy, of course.” She stiffened. He knew he had hurt her and felt a whisper of triumph at his power to do so. It was replaced almost immediately by a roar of shame. “That was unforgivable. I’m sorry,” he said.

“I deserve it.”

“No. You don’t deserve it.” He walked away from her, giving his attention back to the cove. “Tell them to finish, Tommy,” he shouted. “The cameras aren’t there.”

Below, the two boys were surfacing once more. This time, however, one of them clutched an object in his hand. Long and narrow, it glinted in the dull light as he handed it to Lynley. Wooden handle, metal blade. Both bearing no sign of having been in the water more than a few days.

“What’s he got?” Deborah asked.

Lynley held it up so that they both could see it from the top of the cliff. St. James felt a quick rush of excitement.

“A kitchen knife,” he said.

CHAPTER

26

A
lazy rain had begun to fall by the time they reached the harbour car park in Nanrunnel. It was no precursor of a Cornish southwester, but rather the herald of a brief summer shower. Thousands of gulls accompanied it, screaming in from the sea to seek havens on chimney tops, along the quay, and upon the decks of boats secured to the harbour walls.

On the path that skirted the circumference of the harbour, they passed overturned skiffs, lopsided piles of fishing nets redolent with the odours of the sea, and waterside buildings whose windows reflected the unchanging grey mask of the weather. Not until they reached the point at which the path inclined between two buildings as it led into the village proper did any of them speak. It was then that Lynley noticed that the cobbled pavement was already slick with rain. He glanced uneasily at St. James.

The other man answered his look. “I can manage it, Tommy.”

They’d talked little about the knife. Just that it was obviously a kitchen utensil, so if it had been used on Mick Cambrey and if Nancy could identify it as having come from the cottage, it served as further evidence that the crime against her husband had not been planned. Its presence in the cove did nothing to absolve Justin Brooke from blame. Rather, the knife merely changed his reason for having gone there in the first place. Not to rid himself of Deborah’s cameras but to rid himself of something far more damning.

Thus the cameras remained a piece still not tucked into position in the jigsaw of the crime. They all agreed that it was reasonable to continue to conclude Brooke had taken them from Deborah’s room. But where he had disposed of them was once again as elusive a location as it had been two days ago.

Rounding the corner of an antique silver shop on the Lamorna Road, they found the streets of the village deserted. This was an unsurprising summertime phenomenon in an area where the vicissitudes of the weather often forced holiday makers to be flexible in matters concerning how they spent their time. Where sun would see them strolling the village streets, exploring the harbour, and taking pictures on the quay, rain usually provoked a sudden need to try their luck in a game of chance, a sudden hunger for tucking into a fresh crab salad, a sudden thirst for real ale. An inclement afternoon was a welcome boon to the proprietors of bingo parlours, restaurants, and pubs.

This proved to be the case at the Anchor and Rose. The pub teemed with fishermen forced to shore by the weather as well as day visitors seeking shelter from the rain. Most of them were packed into the public bar. The formal lounge beyond it was largely empty.

In any other circumstances, two such diverse groups, inhabiting the same watering hole, would hardly be likely to blend into a cohesive unit. But the presence of a teenaged mandolin player, a fisherman conversant with the Irish whistle, and a pale-legged man wearing running shorts and playing the spoons had broken the barrier of class and experience, melding what should have been motley into montage.

In the wide bay window overlooking the harbour, a leather-skinned fisherman—backlit by the dull light outside—engaged a fashionably clad tot in a game of cat’s cradle. His weathered hands held out the string to the child; his broken teeth flashed in a grin.

“Go on, Dickie. Take it. You know how to play,” Mummy coaxed the little boy.

Dickie cooperated. Approving laughter ensued. The fisherman rested his hand on the child’s head.

“It’s a photograph, isn’t it?” Lynley said to Deborah in the doorway where they stood watching.

She smiled. “What a wonderful face he has, Tommy. And look how the light just barely strikes the side of it.”

St. James was on the stairs, climbing up to the newspaper office. Deborah followed, Lynley behind her.

“You know,” she went on, pausing briefly on the landing, “I was worried for a time about the scope for my photographs in Cornwall. Don’t ask me why. I’m a creature of habit, I suppose, and my habit has been to do most of my work in London. But I love it here, Tommy. There’s a photograph everywhere. It’s grand. Truly. I’ve thought that from the first.”

At her words, Lynley felt shamed by his earlier doubts. He paused on the steps. “I love you, Deb.”

Her expression softened. “And I you, Tommy.”

St. James had already opened the door of the newspaper office. Inside, two telephones were ringing, Julianna Vendale was typing at a word processor, a young photographer was cleaning half a dozen camera lenses lined up on a desk, and in one of the cubicles three men and a woman leaned into a circle of conversation. Harry Cambrey was among them.
Advertising and Circulation
was painted in faded black letters on the upper half of the wood and glass door.

Harry Cambrey saw them and left his meeting. He was wearing suit trousers, a white shirt, a black tie. As if in the need to explain this, he said, “Buried him this morning. Half past eight.”

Odd, Lynley thought, that Nancy hadn’t mentioned it. But it explained the acceptance with which she had greeted their presence. There was a degree of finality to burial. It didn’t end sorrow, but it did make easier the acknowledgement of loss.

“Half a dozen coppers hanging about in the graveyard,” Cambrey continued. “First thing they’ve done besides trying to stick the killing on John Penellin. And isn’t that a thought? John killing Mick.”

“Perhaps he had a motive after all,” St. James said. He handed Mick Cambrey’s set of keys to his father. “Mick’s dressing. Would a man be driven to kill another man over that?”

Cambrey’s fist closed over the keys. He turned his back on his employees and lowered his voice. “So. Who knows about it?”

“You covered up well. Nearly everyone sees Mick exactly as you painted him. A real man’s man, an insatiable womaniser.”

“What the hell else could I do?” Cambrey asked. “God damn, he was my son. He was a
man
.”

“Whose main source of arousal was dressing like a woman.”

“I never could break him. I did try.”

“So this wasn’t something recent?”

Shoving the keys into his pocket, Cambrey shook his head. “He’d been doing it all his life, off and on. I’d catch him at it. Whip his arse. Push him buck naked into the street. Tie him to a chair and paint his face and make like I’d plan to cut off his cock. But nothing made a difference.”

“Save his death,” Lynley said.

Cambrey didn’t seem to care about the implication behind Lynley’s words. He merely said, “I protected the lad as best I could. I didn’t kill him.”