A Suitable Vengeance

Before he nodded at the constable to unlock the interrogation room’s door, Lynley looked through the small, thick-glassed window, a plastic tray of tea and sandwiches in his hand. Head bowed, his brother was sitting at the table. He still wore the striped sweatshirt that MacPherson had given him in Whitechapel, but whatever protection it had afforded him earlier was no longer adequate. Peter shook—arms, legs, head, and shoulders. Lynley had no doubt that every internal muscle was quivering as well.

When they had left him in the room thirty minutes before—alone save for a guard outside to make sure he did nothing to harm himself—Peter had asked no questions; he had made neither statement nor request. He merely stood, hands on the back of one of the chairs, glancing over the impersonal room. One table, four chairs, a dull beige linoleum floor, two ceiling lights only one of which worked, a red, dented tin ashtray on the table. All he had done before taking a seat was to look at Lynley and open his mouth as if to speak. His face limned entreaty upon every feature. But he said nothing. It was as if Peter were finally seeing how irreparable was the damage he had done to his relationship with his brother. If he believed that blood tied them inextricably to each other, that he could call upon that blood to save himself in some way, he apparently did not intend to mention the fact now.

Lynley nodded at the constable, who unlocked the door and relocked it once Lynley had entered. Always a sound of grim finality, Lynley found that the key grating upon metal was even more so now that it was being turned against the freedom of his own brother. He hadn’t expected to feel this way. He hadn’t expected to feel the desire to rescue or the exigent need to protect. For some delusional reason, he had actually believed that he would feel a closure had been reached once Peter finally faced the criminal implications of the lifestyle he’d chosen these past few years. But now that the justice system had caught Peter up, Lynley found himself feeling not at all righteously vindicated at having been the brother who had chosen the clean, the moral, the ethical life, the life guaranteed to make him society’s darling. Rather, he felt himself the hypocrite and knew beyond a doubt that if punishment were to be meted out to the greater sinner—the man who had been given the most and had therefore thrown the most away—he would be its rightful recipient.

Peter looked up, saw him, looked away. The expression on his face was not sullen, however. It was dazed by both confusion and fear.

“We both need something to eat,” Lynley said. He sat opposite his brother and placed the tray on the table between them. When Peter made no move towards it, Lynley unwrapped a sandwich, fumbling with the seal. The crinkling of the paper made that curious sound like fire eating wood. It was unusually loud. “The Yard food’s unspeakable. Either sawdust or institutional mush. I had these brought in from a restaurant down the street. Try the pastrami. It’s my favourite.” Peter didn’t move. Lynley reached for the tea. “I can’t recall how much sugar you use. I’ve brought a few packets. There’s a carton of milk as well.” He stirred his own tea, unwrapped his sandwich, and tried to avoid considering the inherent idiocy of his behaviour. He knew he was acting like a hovering mother, as if he believed that food was going to take the illness away.

Peter raised his head. “Not hungry.” His lips, Lynley saw, were cracked, raw from having been bitten during the half hour in which he’d been left alone. In one spot they had begun to bleed although already the blood was drying in a ragged, dark blot. Other blood—in the form of small, crusty scabs—ringed the inside of his nose, while dry skin caked his eyelids, embedding itself between his lashes.

“The appetite goes first,” Peter said. “Then everything else. You don’t realise what’s happening. You think you’re fine, the best you’ve ever been. But you don’t eat. You don’t sleep. You work less and less and finally not at all. You don’t do anything but coke. Sex. Sometimes you do sex. But in the end, you don’t even do that. Coke’s so much better.”

Lynley carefully placed his sandwich, untouched, onto the paper in which it had been wrapped. He was suddenly unhungry And wanting to be nothing more than unfeeling as well. He reached for his tea and circled his hands around it. A dull but comforting warmth emanated from the cup.

“Will you let me help you?”

Peter’s right hand gripped his left. He made no reply.

“I can’t change the kind of brother I was when you needed me,” Lynley said. “I can only offer you what I am right now, however little that may be.”

Peter seemed to withdraw at this. Or perhaps it was that the cold—within and without—was causing him to diminish in size, conserving energy, garnering whatever small resources he had left. When he finally answered, his lips scarcely moved. Lynley had to strain to hear him.

“I wanted to be like you.”

“Like me? Why?”