Payment in Blood

Webberly reached for the warrant card, fi ngered it for a moment before taking it to Lynley. Without formality, he shoved it into the breast pocket of his coat.

“I’m sorry the Stinhurst situation happened,” he said. “I can’t tell you it won’t happen again. But if it does, I should guess you won’t need Sergeant Havers there to remind you that you’re more of a policeman than you ever were a bloody peer.” He turned back to his desk and surveyed its mess. “You’re due time off, Lynley. So take it. Don’t report in till Tuesday.” And then, having said that, he looked up. His words were quiet. “Learning to forgive yourself is part of the job, lad. It’s the only part you’ve never quite mastered.”

HE HEARD the muted shout as he drove up the ramp from the underground car park and pulled onto Broadway. It was fast growing dark. Braking, he looked in the direction of St. James’ Park Station, and among the pedestrians he saw Jeremy Vi

“I’ve done the story on Geoffrey Rintoul,” the journalist panted, managing a smile. “Jesus, what a piece of luck to catch you! I need you to be the source. Off the record. Just to confi rm. That’s all.”

Lynley watched a flurry of snow blow across the street. He recognised a group of secretaries making their end-of-day dash from the Yard to the train, their laughter like music rising into the air.

“There’s no story,” he said.

Vi

“There’s no story, Mr. Vi

“She wanted it!” His voice was a plea. “You know Joy wanted me to follow the story. You know that’s why I was there. She wanted everything about the Rintouls to come to light.”

The case was closed. Her murderer had been found. Yet Vi

“Jer! Jerry! For God’s sake, hurry up! Paulie’s waiting and you know he’ll get himself all hot and bothered if we’re late again.”

The second voice drifted from across the street. Delicate, petulant, very nearly feminine. Lynley tracked it down. A young man- no more than twenty years old-stood in the archway leading into the station. He was stamping his feet, shoulders hunched against the cold, and one of the passageway lights illuminated his face. It was achingly handsome, possessing a Renaissance beauty, perfect in feature, in colour, in form. And a Renaissance assessment of such beauty rose in Lynley’s mind, Marlowe’s assessment, as apt now as it had been in the sixteenth century. To hazard more than for the Golden Fleece.

Finally, then, that last puzzle piece clicked into position, so obvious a piece that Lynley wondered what had kept him from placing it before. Joy hadn’t been talking about Vi

“Jerry! Jemmy!” the voice wheedled again. The boy spun on one heel, an impatient puppy. He laughed when his overcoat billowed out round his body like a circus clown’s garb.

Lynley moved his eyes back to the journalist. Vi

“Wasn’t it Freud who said there are no accidents?” Vi

“She did know?”

“I had no secrets from her. I don’t think I could have had one if I tried.” Vi

“Joy would have understood that, I dare say.”

“God knows. She was the only one in my life who ever did.” His hand dropped from the window. “So I owe her this about the Rintouls, you see. It’s what she would have wanted. The story. The truth.”

Lynley shook his head. “Revenge is what she wanted, Mr. Vi

“So that’s the way it’s to be? Can you really let it end this way, Inspector? After what these people have done to you?” He waved in the direction of the building behind them.

“We do things to ourselves,” Lynley replied. He nodded, raised the window, and drove on.

HE WOULD LATER SEE the trip to Skye as a phantasmagorical blur of continually changing countryside that he was only dimly aware of as he flew towards the north. Stopping merely for food and petrol and once for a few hours of rest at an i

He pulled into the car park of an hotel on the waterfront and sat gazing at the strait, its rippled surface the colour of old coins. The sun was setting, and on the island the majestic peak of Sgurr na Coi

Seeing Helen, Lynley all at once perceived the sheer lunacy of his coming to her now. He knew he was the last person she wanted to see. He knew that she wanted this isolation. Yet none of that mattered as the ferry drew nearer to the mainland and he saw her eyes fall upon the Bentley in the car park above her. He got out, pulled on his overcoat, and walked down to the landing. The wind blew frigidly against him, buffeting his cheeks, whipping through his hair. He tasted the salt of the distant North Atlantic.

When the ferry docked, the lorry started up with a foul emission of smoke, and trundled down the Invergarry road. Arm in arm, the hikers passed him, laughing, a man and a woman who stopped to kiss, then to ponder the opposite shore of Skye. It was hung with clouds, dove grey turning to the lavish hues of sunset.

The drive north from London had given Lynley long hours in which to contemplate what he would say to Helen when he fi nally saw her. But as she stepped from the ferry, brushing her hair from her cheeks, words were lost to him. He wanted only to hold her in his arms and knew beyond a doubt that he did not have that right. Instead, he walked wordlessly at her side up the rise towards the hotel.

They went inside. The lounge was empty, its vast front windows offering a panorama of water and mountains and the sunset-shot clouds of the island. Lady Helen walked to these and stood before them, and although her posture-the slightly bent head, the small curved shoulders-spoke volumes of her desire for solitude, Lynley could not bring himself to leave her with so much left unsaid between them. He joined her and saw the shadows under her eyes, smudges of both sorrow and fatigue. Her arms were crossed in front of her, as if in the need of warmth or protection.