A Suitable Vengeance (56 page)

Lynley listened, coming to terms with the truth. They’d all been at the dinner to hear the conversation. They’d all laughed at the absurdity of tourists in the mines. He said the name, two words that acted as final acceptance of what his heart told him was an incontrovertible fact. “Wheal Maen.” St. James looked at him. “At dinner Saturday night. Aunt Augusta was up in arms about sealing Wheal Maen.”

“This is supposition,” Trenarrow broke in sharply. “Supposition and madness. Beyond our oncozyme connection, you’ve nothing else to go on besides what you’re inventing right here in this room. And once our mutual history is out in public, Tommy, who’s going to believe this story? If, indeed, you actually want our mutual history to be known.”

“It comes down to that in the long run, doesn’t it?” Lynley asked. “It always begins and ends with my mother.”

For an instant, he allowed himself to see past the call for justice to its attendant scandal. He could have ignored Trenarrow’s use of oncozyme, his illegal clinic, and the exorbitant price that patients no doubt paid for treatment there. He could have overlooked all this and allowed his mother to remain in ignorance for the rest of her life. But murder was different. It demanded retribution. He could not ignore that.

Lynley saw how the next few months would play out. A court of law, his accusations, Trenarrow’s denial, the sort of case the defence would build with his mother caught in the middle and ultimately named as the reason behind Lynley’s public denunciation of her long-time lover.

“He’s right, St. James,” Lynley said hollowly. “This is conjecture. Even if we got the cameras from the mine, the main shaft’s been flooded for years. The film’s ruined by now, no matter what was on it.”

St. James shook his head. “That’s the only thing Dr. Trenarrow didn’t know. The film’s not in the camera. Deborah gave it to me.”

Lynley heard the swift breath hiss between Trenarrow’s teeth. St. James went on.

“And the evidence is there, isn’t it?” St. James asked. “Your silver pillbox under Mick Cambrey’s thigh. You may be able to explain away everything else, you may be able to accuse Tommy of attempting to fabricate evidence in order to separate you from his mother. But you’ll never be able to deal with the fact that in the photograph of the body, the pillbox is there. The very same one you took from your pocket only minutes ago.”

Trenarrow looked at the misty view of the harbour. “It proves nothing.”

“When it’s in our photographs but missing from the police photographs? That’s hardly the case and you know it.”

Rain pattered on windows. Wind sounded in the chimney. A distant foghorn moaned. Trenarrow moved in his chair, turning back towards the room. He grasped its arms and said nothing.

“What happened?” Lynley asked him. “Roderick, for the love of God, what happened?”

For a long time, Trenarrow didn’t answer. His dull eyes were fixed upon the space between Lynley and St. James. He reached for the pull of the top drawer of the desk and aimlessly played it between his fingers.

“Oncozyme,” he said. “Brooke couldn’t get enough of it. He was juggling the London inventory books as it was. But we needed more. If you could only know how many people phoned—still phone—how frantic they are for help. We couldn’t get enough. But Mick kept funnelling patients my way.”

“Brooke eventually substituted something for the oncozyme, didn’t he?” St. James said. “Your first patients went into remission just as Islington’s research indicated they would. But after a while, things started to go wrong.”

“He’d been sending the drug down from London with Mick. When it became impossible to get and they saw the clinic would have to close, they made a substitution. People who should have gone into remission began to die. Not all at once, of course. But a pattern emerged. I became suspicious. I tested the drug. It was a saline solution.”

“And that was the fight.”

“I went to see him Friday night. I wanted to close the clinic.” He stared across the room at the fire. Its glow was reflected in his spectacles like two points of heat. “Mick wasn’t at all concerned. These weren’t people to him. They were a source of income. Look, just keep the clinic running until we get more of the stuff, he said. So we lose a few? So what? Others’ll come. People pay anything for the chance of a cure. What are you so hot about? You’re bringing the money in hand over fist and don’t pretend you aren’t happy as hell about it.” Trenarrow looked at Lynley. “I tried to talk to him, Tommy. I couldn’t make him see. I couldn’t get him to understand. I kept talking. He kept brushing it off. I finally…I just snapped.”

“When you saw he was dead, you decided to paint it as a sexual crime,” St. James said.

“I thought he was after the village women. I thought it would look like someone’s husband finally got to him.”

“And the money in the cottage?”

“I took it as well. And then made it look like the room had been searched. I took my handkerchief from my pocket so I wouldn’t leave prints. I must have lost the pill case then. I saw it the moment I knelt by his body later.”

Lynley leaned forward. “As black as it is, Mick’s death started out as an accident, Roderick. An assault, an accident. But what about Brooke? You were tied together. What did you have to fear from him? Even if he assumed you’d killed Mick, he’d have kept quiet about it. Bringing you down would only have brought himself down as well.”

“I had nothing to fear from Brooke,” Trenarrow said.

“Then why—”

“I knew he wanted Peter.”

“Wanted—”

“To be rid of him. He was here Friday night when I got home from the play. We’d never actually met, of course, but he had no trouble finding the villa. He said Mick had been talking in front of Peter. He was worried. He wanted me to do something to tighten Mick’s tongue.”

“Which you’d already done,” St. James noted.

Trenarrow accepted the grim statement without reaction. “When he heard about the killing the next morning, he panicked. He came to see me. He thought it was only a matter of time before Peter put together some remarks Mick had made and either went to the police or started sniffing round for someone to blackmail. Peter had a habit to support, he didn’t have money, he’d already threatened Mick. Brooke wanted him dead. I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

“God. Oh, God.” Lynley felt the sharp blade of regret pierce through him.

“He said there was no risk involved, that he could make it look like an overdose of some sort. I didn’t know what he intended, but I thought I could stall him. I told him I had a better plan and asked him to meet me on the cliff after the party Saturday night.”

“And then you killed him?”

“I’d taken the knife, but he was drunk. It was easy enough to shove him over the edge and hope it would look like an accident.” For a moment Trenarrow fell silent. He studied a few folders, a magazine, three photographs, a pen that were arranged on his desk. “I didn’t regret that. Not for a moment. I still don’t.”

“But he’d already passed the drug on to Sasha. It was ergotamine and quinine. He told her to give it to Peter.”

“I’ve been too late every way I’ve turned. What a mess. What a blasted horror.” Trenarrow began uselessly to gather a few papers, arranging them in a pile, tapping them together. He fondly looked round the room. He said, “I wanted this for her. I couldn’t offer her Gull Cottage. What a ludicrous thought. But she would have come here. And oncozyme made it possible, so it seemed a double good. Can you understand that? People, who otherwise faced death, would live and be cured, while your mother and I would finally be together. I wanted this for her.” He held the papers in one hand and with the other slid open the middle drawer of his desk. “Had oncozyme existed then, I would have saved him, Tommy. Without hesitation. Without a second thought. No matter what I felt for your mother. I hope you believe me.” He placed the papers in the drawer, rested his hand on top of them. “Does she know about this?”

Lynley thought of his father, wasting away. He thought of his mother, trying to make the best of her life. He thought of his brother, growing up at Howenstow alone. He thought of Trenarrow. It was an effort to speak. “She doesn’t know.”

“Thank God.” Trenarrow’s hand slithered in and then out of the drawer. A dull glint upon metal. He held a revolver. “Thank God,” he said again and levelled it at St. James.

“Roderick.” Lynley stared at the gun. Wild thoughts—disconnected—darted through his brain. A black market purchase, a wartime antique, the gun room at Howenstow. Of course he’d have prepared for this moment. They’d been signalling to him that it was coming for days. Their questions, their interviews, their telephone calls. “Roderick, for God’s sake:”

“Yes,” Trenarrow said. “I suppose that’s right.”

Lynley quickly shifted his eyes. St. James’ face hadn’t changed; it didn’t show even a shadow of emotion. A movement at the edge of his vision and Lynley looked back to the gun. Trenarrow’s finger was easing towards the trigger.

And suddenly before him was the possibility again, a thematic repetition he could not avoid. It was every foul wish in absolute spades.

There was only a split second to make a decision. Choose, he told himself fiercely. And he did so.

“Roderick, you can’t hope—”

Lynley’s words were cut off by the bellow of the gun.

Deborah pressed her fists against the small of her back to ease her tired muscles. The room was warm, and in spite of the window that was cracked open against the rain, the smoke from Harry Cambrey’s cigarettes made the air malodorous, eye-stinging, and stuffy.

In the office, everyone had continued with his work. Telephones rang intermittently, word processor keys tapped, drawers opened and shut, footsteps creaked across the floor. Deborah had explored the contents of one entire filing cabinet, achieving nothing more than three paper cuts between her fingers and print stains across the palms of her hands. From the sounds Harry Cambrey was making—a groan, a sigh, a muttered oath—it didn’t seem that he was having any better luck.

She stifled a yawn, feeling completely drained. She’d slept only an hour or two after dawn, and even then the fractured dreams she’d experienced had left her physically depleted and emotionally worn. The effort not to think about last night had taken its toll. Now she only wanted sleep, partly as succour but mostly as escape. Even as she thought about it, her eyelids grew heavy. The rain on the roof was wonderfully soporific, the room was warm, the murmur of voices so soothing…

A howl of sirens on the street below slapped her fully awake. First one, then a second. A moment later, a third. Julianna Vendale left her desk and went to the window. Deborah joined her as Harry Cambrey pushed himself to his feet.

An ambulance was just making the turn from the Penzance Road onto Paul Lane. Some distance ahead of it, where Paul Lane began the ascent into the hills, two police cars sped through the rain. Simultaneously, a telephone began to ring in the newsroom. Julianna took the call. The conversation was mostly one-sided. Her comments were terse, consisting only of, “When?…Where?…Fatal?…All right. Yes. Thanks.”

She hung up and said to Cambrey, “There’s been a shooting at Trenarrow’s.”

Deborah had time to feel only a frisson of danger, saying only, “Trenarrow?” before Harry Cambrey moved.

He bolted for the door, grabbing two cameras and a mackintosh on his way. He threw open the door and shouted over his shoulder to Julianna Vendale, “Stay by the phones!”

As he clattered down the stairs and into the street, another police car shot past. Oblivious of the rain, patrons of the Anchor and Rose as well as some of the inhabitants of Paul Lane began to stream out of buildings and take up the chase. Harry Cambrey was caught up in their midst, cameras banging against his thighs, struggling to make his way through the crush. From the window Deborah watched. She looked for them vainly, a blond head and a black one. Surely, they would be among the crowd. Having heard the name Trenarrow, they would be heading towards the villa.

A voice barked out from the street. “Don’t know. Dead, we think.”

The words were electrifying. Hearing them, Deborah saw Simon’s face. She remembered the way he’d looked at Tommy—grim with decision—before he’d taken him from the office. With a rush of horror she thought: They went to see Trenarrow.

She dashed from the room and flew down the stairs. She shoved her way through the throng of people still gathered in the doorway of the pub and stumbled outside. Rain pelted her. A passing car honked its horn. Its tyres hit a puddle which sent up a spume of spray. But none of this existed. She knew only the need to find Trenarrow’s home. She felt only the terror of a shooting.

In the past three years, Lynley had only alluded to the discord in his life. And even then, the allusion was made in actions, not in words. A preference for spending Christmas with her rather than with his family; a letter from his mother gone unopened for weeks; a telephone message never returned. But as they’d walked together to the cove this afternoon, he’d told her that he’d put all of it to rest—the enmity, the discord, the bitterness, the anger. To have something happen now was obscene.
Not dead. No
.

The words carried her towards the hillside. Rainwater shooting from an unguttered rooftop struck her cheeks and blinded her momentarily as she headed up the incline. She paused and cleared her vision, with the crowd surging round her, dashing towards the flash of blue lights in the distance. The air was alive with speculations on death. If there was a body to be seen or blood to be smelled, here existed the populace that would do the honours.