Payment In Blood

by Elizabeth George

  BARBARA HAVERS picked up the telephone in Lynley’s office on the second ring. It was a quarter past seven, and she had been sitting at his desk for over two hours, smoking so steadily that her throat was raw and her nerves strung to breaking. She was so relieved to hear Lynley’s voice at last that her release of tension gave way to hot anger. But her imprecations were interrupted by the intensity of his voice.

  “Havers, where’s Constable Nkata?”

  “Nkata?” she repeated stupidly. “Gone home.”

  “Get him. I want him at Onslow Square. Now.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette and reached for a piece of paper. “You’ve found Davies-Jones?”

  “He’s in Helen’s flat. I want a tail on him, Havers. But if it comes to it, we’re going to have to bring him in.”

  “How? Why?” she demanded incredulously. “We’ve virtually nothing to work with in spite of this Hannah Darrow angle which God knows is about as thin as what we have on Stinhurst. You told me yourself that every single one of them save Irene Sinclair was involved in that Norwich production in seventy-three. That still includes Stinhurst. And besides, Macaskin—”

  “No arguments, Havers. I’ve no time at the moment. Just do as I say. And once you’ve done it, telephone Helen. Keep her talking to you for at least thirty minutes. More if you can. Do you understand?”

  “Thirty minutes? What am I supposed to do? Tell her the flipping story of my life?”

  Lynley made a sound of furious exasperation. “God damn it, do as I say for once! Now! And wait for me at the Yard!”

  The line went dead.

  Havers placed the call to Constable Nkata, sent him on his way, slammed down the receiver, and stared moodily at the papers on Lynley’s desk. They comprised the final information from Strathclyde CID—the report on fingerprints, the results of having used the fibre-optic lamp, the analysis of blood stains, the study of four hairs found near the bed, the analysis of the cognac Rhys Davies-Jones had taken to Helen’s room. And all of it amounted to a single nothing. Not one shred of evidence existed that could not be argued away by the least skilled barrister.

  Barbara faced the fact that Lynley was as yet unaware of. If they were going to bring Davies-Jones—or anyone else—to justice, it was not going to be on the strength of anything they could get from Inspector Macaskin in Scotland.

  HER NAME was Lynette. But as she sprawled beneath him, writhing hotly and moaning appreciatively at his every thrust, Robert Gabriel had to school himself to remember that, had to discipline himself not to call her something else. After all, there had been so many over the past few months. Who could possibly be expected to keep them all straight? But at the appropriate moment, he recalled who she was: the Agincourt’s nineteen-year-old apprentice set designer whose skin-tight jeans and thin yellow jersey now lay in the darkness on the floor of his dressing room. He had discovered soon enough—and with considerable joy—that she wore absolutely nothing beneath them.

  He felt her fingernails clawing at his back and made a sound of delight although he would have vastly preferred some other method of her signalling her mounting pleasure. Still, he continued to ride her in the manner she seemed to prefer—roughly—and tried his best not to breathe in the heavy perfume she wore or the vaguely oleaginous odour that emanated from her hair. He murmured subtle encouragement, keeping his mind occupied with other things until she had taken satisfaction and he might then seek his own. He liked to think he was considerate that way, better at it than most men, more willing to show women a good time.

  “Ohhhh, don’t stop! I can’t stand it! I can’t!” Lynette moaned.

  Nor can I, Gabriel thought as her nails danced abrasively down his spine. He was three-quarters of the way through a mental recitation of Hamlet’s third soliloquy when her ecstatic sobbing reached its crescendo. Her body arched. She shrieked wildly. Her nails sank into his buttocks. And Gabriel made a mental note to avoid teenagers henceforth.

  That decision was affirmed by Lynette’s subsequent behaviour. Having taken her pleasure, she became an inert object, passively and not so patiently waiting for him to finish with his own. Which he did quickly, groaning out her name with feigned rapture at the appropriate moment and all the time as eager to bring this encounter to an end as she seemed to be. Perhaps the costume designer would be a likelier possibility for tomorrow, he thought.

  “Ohhh, tha’ was a bit all right, wasn’t it?” Lynette said with a yawn when it was over. She sat up, swung her legs off the couch, and groped on the floor for her clothes. “’Ave you the time?”

  Gabriel glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. “A quarter past nine,” he replied, and in spite of his desire that she be on her way so that he could have a thorough wash, he ran his hand up her back and murmured, “Let’s have another go tomorrow night, Lyn. You drive me mad,” just in case the costume designer proved unattainable.

  She giggled, took his hand, and placed it on her melonsized breast. Even at her age, it was beginning to sag, the result of her eschewing undergarments. “Can’t, luv. Me ’usband’s on the road tonight. But ’e’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Gabriel sat up with a jerk. “Your husband? Christ! Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

  Lynette giggled again, squirming into her jeans. “Didn’t ask, did you? ’E drives a lorry, gone at least three nights a week. So…”

  God, a lorry driver! Twelve or thirteen stone of muscle with the IQ of a good-sized vegetable marrow.

  “Listen, Lynette,” Gabriel said hastily, “let’s cool this thing off, shall we? I don’t want to come between you and your husband.”

  He felt rather than saw her careless shrug. She pulled on her jersey and shook back her hair. Again, he caught its odour. Again, he tried not to breathe.

  “’E’s a bit thick,” she confided. “’E’ll never know. There’s nothing to worry about as long as I’m there when ’e wants me.”

  “Still and all,” Gabriel said, unconvinced.

  She patted his cheek. “Well, you jus’ let me know if you want another tumble. You aren’t ’alf bad. A bit slow, is all, but I s’pose that’s due to your age, isn’t it?”

  “My age,” he repeated.

  “Sure,” she said cheerfully. “When a bloke gets along in years, things take a bit of time to heat up, don’t they? I understand.” She scrambled on the floor. “Seen my ’and-bag? Oh, ’ere it is. I’m off then. P’raps we’ll ’ave a go on Sunday? My Jim’ll be back on the road by then.” That being her sole form of farewell, she made her way to the door and left him in the dark.

  My age, he thought, and he could hear his mother’s cackle of ironic laughter. She would light one of her foul Turkish cigarettes, regard him speculatively, and try to keep her face vacant. It was her analyst’s expression. He hated her when she wore it, cursing himself for having been born to a Freudian. What we’re dealing with, she would say, is typical in a man your age, Robert. Midlife crisis, the sudden realisation of impending old age, the questioning of life’s purpose, the search for renewal. Coupled with your over-active libido, this propels you to seek new ways of defining yourself. Always sexual, I’m afraid. That appears to be your dilemma. Which is unfortunate for your wife, as she seems to be the only steadying influence available to you. But you are afraid of Irene, aren’t you? She’s always been too much woman for you to cope with. She made demands on you, didn’t she? Demands of adulthood that you simply couldn’t face. So you sought out her sister—to punish Irene and to keep yourself feeling young. But you couldn’t have everything, lad. People who want everything generally end up with nothing.

  And the most painful fact was that it was true. All of it. Gabriel groaned, sat up, began the search for his clothes. The dressing-room door opened.

  He had only time to look in that direction, to see a thick shape against the additional darkness of the hallway outside his door. He had only a moment to think, Someone’s shut off all the corridor lights, before a figure stormed across the roo
m.

  Gabriel smelled whisky, cigarettes, the acrid stench of perspiration. And then a rain of blows fell, on his face, against his chest, savagely pounding into his ribs. He heard, rather than felt, the cracking of bones. He tasted blood and ate the torn tissue in his mouth where his cheek was driven into his teeth.

  His assailant grunted with effort, spewed spittle with rage, and finally rasped on the fourth vicious blow between Gabriel’s legs, “Keep your soddin’ piece in your trousers from now on, man.”

  Gabriel thought only, Absolutely no teenagers next time, before he lost consciousness.

  LYNLEY REPLACED the telephone and looked at Barbara. “No answer,” he said. Barbara saw the muscle in his cheek contract. “What time did Nkata first phone in?”

  “A quarter past eight,” she replied.

  “Where was Davies-Jones?”

  “He’d gone into an off-licence near Kensington Station. Nkata was in a call box outside.”

  “And he was alone? He hadn’t taken Helen with him? You’re certain of that?”

  “He was alone, sir.”

  “But you spoke to her, Havers? You did speak to Helen after Davies-Jones left her flat?”

  Barbara nodded, feeling a growing concern for him that she would have rather lived without. He looked completely worn out. “She phoned me, sir. Right after he’d left.”

  “Saying?”

  Barbara patiently repeated what she had told him once already. “Only that he’d gone. I did try to keep her on the line for thirty minutes when I first phoned, just as you asked. But she wouldn’t have it, Inspector. She only said that she’d got company and could she telephone me later. And that was it. I don’t think she wanted my help, frankly.” Barbara watched the play of anxiety cross Lynley’s face. She finished by saying: “I think she wanted to handle it alone, sir. Perhaps…well, perhaps she doesn’t see him as a killer yet.”

  Lynley cleared his throat. “No. She understands.” He pulled Barbara’s notes across his desk towards him. They contained two sets of data, the results of her interrogation of Stinhurst and the final information from Inspector Macaskin at Strathclyde CID. He put on his spectacles and gave himself over to reading. Outside his office, night subdued the normal jangle of noises in the department. Only the occasional ringing of a telephone, the quick raising of a voice, the congenial burst of laughter told them that they were not alone. Beyond, snow muffled the sounds of the city.

  Barbara sat opposite him, holding Hannah Darrow’s diary in one hand and the playbill from The Three Sisters in the other. She had read them both, but she was waiting for his reaction to the material she had prepared for him during his absence in East Anglia and his entanglement in traffic on the way back to London.

  He was, she saw, frowning as he read and looking as if the past few days had made demands upon him that were scarring their way into his very flesh. She averted her eyes and made an exercise out of considering his office, pondering the ways it reflected the dichotomy of his character. Its shelves of books bowed to the proprieties of his job. There were legal volumes, forensic texts, commentaries upon the judges’ rules, and several works from the Policy Studies Institute, evaluating the effectiveness of the Metropolitan Police. They composed a fairly standard collection for a man whose interest was well focussed on his career. But the office walls inadvertently cut through this persona of professionalism and revealed a second Lynley, one whose nature was filled with convolutions. Little enough hung there: two lithographs from America’s Southwest that spoke of an abiding love of tranquillity, and a single photograph that disclosed what had lain long at the heart of the man.

  It was of St. James, an old picture taken prior to the accident that had cost him the use of his leg. Barbara noticed the overtly innocuous details: how St. James stood, his arms crossed, leaning against a cricket bat; how the left knee of his white flannels bore a large, jagged tear; how a grass stain made a cumulous shadow on his hip; how he laughed unrestrainedly and with perfect joy. Summer past, Barbara thought. Summer dead forever. She knew quite well why the photograph hung there. She moved her eyes away from it.

  Lynley’s head was bent, supported by his hand. He rubbed three fingers across his brow. It was some minutes before he looked up, removed his spectacles, and met her gaze. “We’ve nothing here for an arrest,” he said, gesturing at the information from Macaskin.

  Barbara hesitated. His passion on the telephone earlier that evening had so nearly convinced her of her own error in seeking an arrest of Lord Stinhurst that even now she thought twice before pointing out the obvious. But there was no need to do so, for he went on to speak of it himself.

  “And God knows we can’t take Davies-Jones on the strength of his name in a fifteen-year-old playbill. We may as well arrest any one of them if that’s all the evidence we have.”

  “But Lord Stinhurst burnt the scripts at Westerbrae,” Barbara pointed out. “There’s still that.”

  “If you want to argue that he killed Joy to keep her silent about his brother, yes. There is still that,” Lynley agreed. “But I don’t see it that way, Havers. The worst Stinhurst really faced was familial humiliation if the entire story about Geoffrey Rintoul became known through Joy’s play. But Hannah Darrow’s killer faced exposure, trial, imprisonment if she wrote her book. Now, which motive seems more logical to you?”

  “Perhaps…” Barbara knew she had to suggest this carefully, “we’ve a double motive. But a single killer.”

  “Stinhurst again?”

  “He did direct The Three Sisters in Norwich, Inspector. He could be the man Hannah Darrow met. And he could have gotten the key to Joy’s bedroom door from Francesca.”

  “Look at the facts that you’ve forgotten, Havers. Everything about Geoffrey Rintoul had been removed from Joy’s study. But everything related to Hannah Darrow—everything that led us right to her death in 1973—was left in plain sight.”

  “Of course, sir. But Stinhurst could hardly have asked the boys at MI5 to collect everything about Hannah Darrow as well. That hardly applied to the government’s concern, did it? It wasn’t exactly an Official Secret. And besides, how could he have known what she had gathered on Hannah Darrow? She merely mentioned John Darrow at dinner that night. Unless Stinhurst—all right, unless the killer—had actually been inside Joy’s study prior to the weekend, how would he know for sure what material she had managed to gather? Or managed not to gather, for that matter.”

  Lynley stared past her, his face telling her that he was caught up in a sudden thought. “You’ve given me an idea, Havers.” He tapped his fingers against the top of his desk. His eyes dropped to the journal in Barbara’s hand. “I think we’ve a way to manage it all without a single thing from Strathclyde CID,” he said at last. “But we’ll need Irene Sinclair.”

  “Irene Sinclair?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “She’s our best hope. She was the only one of them not in The Three Sisters in 1973.”

  DIRECTED BY a neighbour who had been drawn into staying with and calming her children, they found Irene Sinclair not at her home in Bloomsbury but in the waiting area of the emergency room at the nearby University College Hospital. When they walked in, she jumped to her feet.

  “He asked for no police!” she cried out frantically. “How did you…what are you…? Did the doctor phone you?”

  “We’ve been to your home.” Lynley drew her to one of the couches that lined the walls. The room was inordinately crowded, filled with an assortment of illnesses and accidents manifesting themselves in selected cries and groans and retchings. That pharmaceutical smell so typical of hospitals hung heavily in the air. “What’s happened?”

  Irene shook her head blindly, sinking onto the couch, cradling her cheek with her hand. “Robert’s been beaten. At the theatre.”

  “At this time of night? What was he doing there?”

  “Going over his lines. We’ve a second reading tomorrow morning and he said that he wanted a feeling for how he sounded on the sta
ge.”

  Lynley saw that she didn’t believe the story herself. “Was he on the stage when he was attacked?”

  “No, he’d gone to his dressing room for something to drink. Someone switched off the lights and came upon him there. Afterwards, he managed to get to a phone. Mine was the only number he could remember.” This last statement had the ring of excusing her presence.

  “Not the emergency number?”

  “He didn’t want the police.” She looked at them anxiously. “But I’m glad you’ve come. Perhaps you can talk some sense into him. It’s only too clear that he was meant to be the next victim!”

  Lynley drew up an uncomfortable plastic chair to shield her from the stares of the curious. Havers did likewise.

  “Why?” Lynley asked.

  Irene’s face looked strained, as if the question confused her. But something told Lynley it was part of a performance designed specifically and spontaneously for him. “What do you mean? What else could it be? He’s been beaten bloody. Two of his ribs are cracked, his eyes are blackened, he’s lost a tooth. Who else could be responsible?”

  “It’s not the way our killer’s been working, though, is it?” Lynley pointed out. “We’ve a man, perhaps a woman, who uses a knife, not fists. It doesn’t really look as if anyone intended to kill him.”

  “Then what else could it be? What are you saying?” She drew her body straight to ask the question, as if an offence had been given and would not be brooked without some form of protest.

  “I think you know the answer to that. I imagine you’ve not told me everything about tonight. You’re protecting him. Why? What on earth has he done to deserve this kind of devotion? He’s hurt you in every possible way. He’s treated you with a contempt that he hasn’t bothered to hide from anyone. Irene, listen to me—”

  She held up a hand and her agonised voice told him her brief performance was at an end. “Please. All right. That’s more than enough. He’d had a woman. I don’t know who she was. He wouldn’t say. When I got there, he was still…he hadn’t…” She stumbled for the words. “He couldn’t manage his clothes.”