Yet London had continued to persevere, renewing itself as it had done for two thousand years. Boadicea's tribesmen had not vanquished it, neither the plague nor the Great Fire had subdued it, so the firestorm of the Blitz could not have hoped to defeat it. Because out of pain, destruction, and loss it always managed to rise anew.
So perhaps it could be argued that strife and travail could lead one to greatness, Lynley thought, that ones sense of purpose, once tested by adversity, became reliably firm and one's understanding of the world, once questioned in the midst of sorrow and misconception, was forever enhanced. But the thought that bombs ultimately led to peace as a woman's labour led to birth was not enough to dispel the gloom and dread that he was feeling. Good could come out of bad, it was true. It was the hell in between that he didn't want to ponder.
At six that morning he'd phoned DI Hanken and told him that “some crucial information uncovered by the London officers working the case” required his presence back in town. He would be communicating with Derbyshire as soon as he followed up on that information. To Hanken's logical query about the necessity of Lynley's traveling to London when he had two officers already working there and could—with a simple telephone call—garner two or even two dozen more, Lynley replied that his team had uncovered a few details that were making it look as if London and not Derbyshire was where the facts were leading. It seemed reasonable, he said, for one of the two ranking officers on the case to assess and assemble these facts in person. Would Hanken make available to him a copy of the post-mortem report? he asked. He also wanted to hand that document over to a forensic specialist, to see if Dr. Myles's conclusion about the murder weapon was accurate.
“If she's made an error about the knife—the length of the blade, for example—I'd like to know that at once,” he said.
How would a forensic specialist be able to discern an error in the report without seeing the body, the x-rays, the photographs, or the wound itself? Hanken queried.
This, Lynley told him, was no ordinary specialist.
But he asked for copies of the x-rays and the photographs as well. And a quick stop at the Buxton station on his way to the airport had put everything into his possession.
For his part, Hanken was going to start a search for the Swiss Army knife and the Maiden girl's missing rain gear. He would also be talking personally to the masseuse who'd seen to Will Upman's ostensibly tense muscles on Tuesday night. And if time allowed, he'd pay a call at Broughton Manor to see if Julian Britton's father could confirm his son's alibi or that of his niece.
“Look hard at Julian,” Lynley told him. “I've found another of Nicola's lovers.” He went on to summarise his previous night's conversation with Christian-Louis Ferrer.
Hanken whistled. “Are we going to be able to find a bloke anywhere who wasn't shafting this bird?”
“I expect we might be looking for the bloke who thought that he was the only one.”
“Britton.”
“He said he proposed and she refused. But we have only his word for that, don't we? It's a good way to take the spotlight off himself: saying he wanted to marry her when he wanted—and did—something else entirely.”
Now in London, Lynley unlocked the front door and shut it quietly behind him. He called his wife's name. He was half expecting Helen to be out already—somehow knowing his intention to return without having been told and seeking to avoid him in the aftermath of their earlier disagreement—but as he crossed the entry to the stairs, he heard a door crash shut, a man's voice say, “Whoops. Sorry. Don't know my own strength, do I,” and a moment later Denton and Helen came towards him from the direction of the kitchen. The former was balancing a stack of enormous portfolios across his arms. The latter was following him, a list in her hand. She was saying, “I've narrowed things down somewhat, Charlie. And they were willing to part with the sample books till three o'clock, so I'm depending on you to give me input.”
“I hate flowers and ribbons and that sort of rubbish,” Denton said. “All twee, that is, so don't even show it to me. Makes me think of my gran.”
“So noted,” Helen replied.
“Cheers.” Denton saw Lynley then. “Look what the morning's brought, Lady Helen. Good. You won't be needing me, then, will you?”
“Needing you for what?” Lynley asked.
Helen, hearing him, said, “Tommy! You're home? That was a quick trip, wasn't it?”
“Wallpaper,” Denton said in reply to Lynley's question. He gestured with the portfolios he was carrying. “Samples.”
“For the spare rooms,” Helen added. “Have you looked at the walls in there lately, Tommy? The paper looks as if it hasn't been changed since the turn of the century.”
“It hasn't.”
“Just as I suspected. Well, if we don't get it changed before she gets here, I'm afraid your aunt Augusta will change it for us. I thought we might head her off. I had a look through the books at Peter Jones yesterday, and they were good enough to let me pinch a few at closing time. Just for today though. Wasn't that kind of them?” She started up the stairs, saying over her shoulder, “Why're you back so soon? Have you sorted everything out already?”
Denton trailed her. Lynley made a third in their little procession, suitcase in his hand. He'd followed some information to London, he told his wife. And there were documents he wanted St. James to look over. “The post-mortems. Some photos and x-rays,” he said.
“Arguments among the experts?” she asked, a reasonable assumption. It wouldn't have been the first time St. James had been requested to mediate a dispute among scientists.
“Just some questions in my own mind,” Lynley told her, “as well as a need to look over some information Winston's managed to gather.”
“Ah.” She looked over her shoulder and offered him a fleeting smile. “It's quite nice to have you back.”
The spare rooms in need of refurbishment were on the second floor of the house. Lynley left his suitcase inside the door of their bedroom and then joined his wife and Denton up above. Helen was laying sample sheets of wallpaper out on the bed in the first of the rooms, removing the portfolios from Denton's outstretched arms one at a time and making her selections with infinite care. The younger man was wearing an expression of long-suffering patience throughout this activity. But he brightened considerably when Lynley walked into the room.
He said hopefully, “Here he is. So if you won't be needing me … ?” to Lynley's wife.
“I can't stay, Denton” was Lynley's reply.
The other man drooped.
“A problem?” Lynley said. “Have you a sweet young thing waiting somewhere today?” It wouldn't be unusual. Denton's pursuit of ladies was the stuff of legend.
“I've the half-price ticket booth waiting,” Denton answered. “I hoped to make it in advance of the crowd.”
“Ah, yes. I see. Not another musical, I hope?”
“Well …” Denton looked embarrassed. His love of the spectacles posing regularly as West End theatre soaked up a good part of his wages each month. He was almost as bad as a cocaine addict when it came to greasepaint, dimmed lights, and applause.
Lynley took the portfolios from Denton's arms. “Go,” he said. “God forbid that we keep you from experiencing the latest theatrical extravaganza.”
“It's art,” Denton protested.
“So you keep telling me. Go. And if you buy the accompanying CD, I'll ask you not to play it when I'm home.”
“He's a real culture snob, isn't he?” Denton asked Helen, his voice confidential.
“As ever there was.”
She continued laying wallpaper samples out on the bed once Denton had left them. She rejected three samples, replaced them with three others, and took another portfolio from her husband's arms. She said, “You don't need to stand there holding them, Tommy. You've work to do, haven't you?”
“It can wait a few minutes.”
“This will take far longer than a few minutes. You know how hopeless I
am when it comes to making up my mind about anything. I had thought of something rather pretty with flowers. Subdued and calming. You know what I mean. But Charlie's put me off that idea. God forbid we ask him to escort Aunt Augusta into a room he considers twee. What about this one, unicorns and leopards? Isn't it ghastly?”
“But suitable for guests whose visits one wishes to curtail.”
Helen laughed. “There is that.”
Lynley said nothing until she'd made her selections from all the portfolios he was holding. She covered the bed with them and went on to litter most of the floor. All the time he thought how strange it was that two days previously they'd been at odds with each other. He felt neither irritation nor animosity now. Nor did he feel that sense of betrayal that had triggered within him such righteous indignation. He experienced only a quiet surging of his heart towards hers, which some men might have identified as lust and dealt with accordingly but which he knew had nothing to do with sex and everything on earth to do with love.
He said, “You had my number in Derbyshire. I gave it to Den-ton. To Simon as well.”
She looked up. A lock of chestnut hair caught at the corner of her mouth. She brushed it away.
“You didn't ring,” he said.
“Was I meant to ring?” There was nothing coy about the question. “Charlie gave me the number, but he didn't say you'd asked me to—”
“You weren't supposed to ring. But I hoped you would. I wanted to talk to you. You left the house in the middle of our conversation the other morning, and I felt uneasy with the way things were left between us. I wanted to clear the air.”
“Oh.” The word was small. She went to the room's old Georgian dressing table and sat tentatively on the edge of its stool. She watched him gravely, a shadow playing across her cheek where her hair shielded her face from a shaft of sunlight that streamed in through the window. She looked so much like a schoolgirl waiting to be disciplined that Lynley found himself reassessing what he'd believed were his rational grievances against her.
He said, “I'm sorry about the row, Helen. You were giving your opinion. That's more than your right. I jumped all over you because I wanted you on my side. She's my wife, I thought, and this is my work and these are the decisions that I'm forced to take in the course of my work. I want her behind me, not in front of me blocking my way. I didn't think of you as an individual in that moment, just as an extension of me. So when you questioned my decision about Barbara, I saw red. My temper got away from me. And I'm sorry for it.”
Her gaze lowered. She ran her fingers along the edge of the stool and examined their route. “I didn't leave the house because you lost your temper. God knows I've seen you lose it before.”
“I know why you left. And I shouldn't have said it.”
“Said … ?”
“That remark. The tautology bit. It was thoughtless and cruel. I'd like to have your forgiveness for having said it.”
She looked up at him. “They were only words, Tommy. You don't need to ask forgiveness for your words.”
“I ask nonetheless.”
“No. What I mean is that you're already forgiven. You were forgiven at once if it comes to that. Words aren't reality, you know. They're only expressions of what people see.” She bent and took up one of the wallpaper samples, holding it the length of her arm and evaluating it for some moments. His apology, it seemed, had been accepted. But he had the distinct feeling that the subject itself was miles away from being put at rest between them.
Still, following her lead, he said helpfully in reference to the wallpaper, “That looks like a good choice.”
“Do you think so?” Helen let it fall to the floor. “Choices are what defeat me. Having to make them in the first place. And having to live with them afterwards.”
Warning flares shot up in Lynley's consciousness. His wife hadn't come into their marriage the most eager of brides. Indeed, it had taken some time to persuade her that marriage was in her interests at all. The youngest of five sisters who'd married in every possible circumstance, from into the Italian aristocracy to on the land to a Montana cattleman, she'd been a witness to the vicissitudes and vagaries that were the offspring of any permanent attachment. And she'd never prevaricated about her reluctance to become a party to what might take from her more than it could ever give. But she'd also never been a woman to let momentary discord prevail over her common sense. They'd exchanged a few harsh words, that was all. Words didn't necessarily presage anything.
Still, he said to counter the implication in her statements, “When I first knew that I loved you—have I ever told you this?—I couldn't understand how I'd managed to go so long blind to the fact. There you were, a part of my life for years, but you'd always been at the safe distance of a friend. And when I actually knew that I loved you, risking having more than your friendship seemed like risking it all.”
“It was risking it all,” she said. “There's no going back after a certain point with someone, is there? But I don't regret the risk for a moment. Do you, Tommy?”
He felt a rush of relief. “Then we're at peace.”
“Were we anything else?”
“It seemed—” He hesitated, uncertain how to describe the sea change he was experiencing between them. He said, “We've got to expect a period of adjustment, haven't we? We aren't children. We had lives that were independent of each other before we married, so it's going to take some time to adjust to lives that include each other all the time.”
“Had we.” She said it as a statement, reflectively. She looked up from the wallpaper samples, to him.
“Had we what?”
“Independent lives. Oh, I see that you did. Who would ever argue with that? But as to the other half of the equation …” She made an aimless gesture at the samples. “I would have chosen flowers without a moment's hesitation. But flowers, I'm told by Charlie, are twee. You know, I never actually considered myself hopeless in the arena of interior design. Perhaps I've been kidding myself about that.”
Lynley hadn't known her for more than fifteen years to fail in understanding her meaning now. “Helen, I was angry. Angry, I'm the first to climb on the highest horse I can find. But as you pointed out, what I said was words. There's no more truth in them than there's truth in suggesting I'm the soul of sensitivity. Which, as you know, I'm not. Full stop.”
As he spoke, she'd begun setting the floral samples to one side. As he finished, she paused. She looked at him, head cocked, face gentle. “You don't really understand what I'm talking about, do you? But then, how could you? In your position I wouldn't understand what I was talking about either.”
“I do understand. I corrected your language. I was angry because you weren't taking my side, so I responded as I believed you'd responded: to the form instead of to the substance beneath it. In the process, I hurt you. And I'm sorry for that.”
She got to her feet, sheets of wallpaper held to her chest. “Tommy, you described me as I am,” she said simply. “I left the house because I didn't want to listen to a truth I've avoided for years.”
CHAPTER 15
omen had always been a mystery to him. Helen was a woman. Ergo, Helen would always be a mystery. So Lynley thought as he worked his way from Belgravia to Westminster and New Scotland Yard. He'd wanted to continue their discussion, but she'd said gently, “Tommy darling, you've come back to London with work to do haven't you? You must do it. Go on. We'll talk later.”
A man who'd generally managed to obtain what he desired in fairly short order after desiring it, Lynley chafed at any kind of postponement. But Helen was right. He'd already tarried at home longer than he'd originally intended. So he kissed her and set off for the Yard.
He found Nkata on the telephone in his office. He was jotting something into his notebook, saying, “Describe it for me as best you can, then … Well, what sort of collar does it have, f'r instance? Are there snaps or a zip? … Look, anything you give me is more than I have right now …. Hmmm? Yeah. Okay. Righ
t. I'll hold …. Put her on as well. Cheers.” He looked up as Lynley entered the room. He began to remove himself from the chair behind the desk.
Lynley waved him back into place. He went round to stand behind him, where he could see a column of postcards that had been arranged on his leather blotter. The cards ran along one edge of this, samples of the lot that—according to Nkata—had been taken from Terry Cole's flat.
Lynley saw that punishment was offered on some of the cards; domination was promised on others; still others suggested that one's ultimate fantasies could be fulfilled. Mention was made of bubble baths, massages, video services, torture chambers. Some cards offered the use of animals; a few noted that costumes could be provided. Many had photographs depicting such delights as were on offer from the Transsexual Black She-Male or The Ultimate Domina or a Hot Stunning Thai Girl In short, there was something for every taste, inclination, and perversion. And since the cards looked too fresh from the printer to have spent any time Blu Tacked to the walls of a phone box prior to being collected by a sweaty-palmed teenager with masturbation in mind, the only conclusion to be reached from the presence of several thousand of such cards beneath his bed was that Terry Cole had not been a collector but, rather, a distributor—a part of the great machine that peddled sex in London.
This, at least, explained the cash that Cilia Thompson claimed the boy had carried. Card boys who worked quickly enough putting up cards in phone boxes all round central London could earn a substantial living because the going rate was one hundred pounds for every five hundred cards the boy managed to place. And the service of a card boy was absolutely essential: Agents of British Telecom removed the cards daily, so they always had to be replaced.
Two of these cards had been isolated from the column on Lynley's blotter and lay in the centre of his desk. One displayed the photo of a putative schoolgirl; one bore only print. Lynley picked them up and examined them—feeling heart-sore—as Nkata continued his call.