A Suitable Vengeance

Deborah poured the tea. St. James scooped up his customary four spoonfuls of sugar before Lady Helen shuddered and handed the bowl to Deborah. She picked up the manila folder.

“Mick must have been selling his share of the cocaine in London. Surely if he’d been doing so in Nanrunnel, someone would have discovered it eventually. Mrs. Swann, for instance. I can hardly think she would have let something like that go unnoticed.”

“That makes sense,” Lynley agreed. “He had a reputation as a journalist in Cornwall. He’d hardly have jeopardized it by selling cocaine there when he could just as easily have done so here.”

“But I’ve got the impression he had a reputation here in London as well,” St. James said. “He’d worked here, hadn’t he, before returning to Cornwall?”

“But not as Tina Cogin,” Deborah pointed out. “Surely he must have sold the drugs as a woman.”

“He became Tina in September,” Lady Helen said. “He took this flat in September. He began selling the following March. Plenty of time to amass a list of buyers.” She tapped her fingers against the folder. “We were wondering what was meant by prospects, weren’t we? Perhaps now we know. Shall we see what sort of prospects these really are?”

“If they’re prospective cocaine buyers,” Lynley said, “they’re hardly going to admit the fact.”

Lady Helen smiled serenely. “Not to the police, Tommy darling. Of course.”

St. James knew what that angelic smile meant. If anyone could wrangle information from a total stranger, it would be Lady Helen. Light-hearted chitchat leading down the primrose path to disclosure and cooperation was her special talent. She had already proved that with the caretaker of Shrewsbury Court Apartments. Obtaining the key to Mick’s flat had been child’s play for her. This list of prospects was merely one step advanced, a moderate challenge. She would become Sister Helen from the Salvation Army, or Helen the Saved from a drug rehabilitation programme, or Helen the Desperate looking for a score. But ultimately, in some way, she would ferret out the truth.

“If Mick was selling in London, a buyer may have followed him to Cornwall,” St. James said.

“But if he was selling as Tina, how would someone know who he really was?” Deborah asked.

“Perhaps he was recognised. Perhaps a buyer, who knew him as Mick, saw him when he was posing as Tina.”

“And followed him to Cornwall? Why? Blackmail?”

“What better way to get cocaine? If the buyer was having a hard time coming up with the money, why not blackmail Cambrey for a payment in drugs?” St. James picked up items one by one. He studied them, fingered them, dropped them back on the table. “But Cambrey wouldn’t want to risk his reputation in Cornwall by giving in to the blackmail. So he and the buyer argued. He was hit. He struck his head and died. The buyer took the money that was in the cottage sitting room. Anyone who’s desperate for drugs—and who’s just killed a man—is hardly going to draw the line at taking money lying right in the open.”

Lynley got up abruptly. He walked to the open window and leaned on the sill, looking down at the street. Too late, St. James recognised whose portrait he had been painting with his series of conjectures.

“Could he have known about Mick?” Lynley asked. No one answered at first. Instead, they listened to the rising sound of traffic in Sussex Gardens as afternoon commuters began to make their way towards the Edgware Road. An engine revved. Brakes screeched in reply. Lynley repeated the question. He did not turn from the window. “Could my brother have known?”

“Possibly, Tommy,” St. James said. When Lynley swung to face him, he went on reluctantly. “He was part of the drug network in London. Sidney saw him not that long ago in Soho. At night. In an alley.” He paused thoughtfully, remembering the information his sister had given him, remembering her fanciful description of the woman Peter had been assaulting. Dressed all in black with flowing black hair.

He had the impression that Lady Helen was recalling this information even as he did, for she spoke with what seemed a determination to relieve Lynley’s anxiety by looking for another focus for the crime. “Mick’s death might revolve round something entirely different. We’ve thought that from the first and I don’t think we ought to dismiss it now. He was a journalist, after all. He might have been writing a story. He could even have been working on something about transvestites.”

St. James shook his head. “He wasn’t writing about transvestites. He was a transvestite. The expense of the flat tells us that. The furniture. The woman’s wardrobe. He wouldn’t need all that just to gather information for a story. And there’s the newspaper office to consider as well, with Harry Cambrey finding the underwear in Mick’s desk. Not to mention the row the two of them had.”

“Harry knew?”

“He seems to have figured it out.”