A Suitable Vengeance

Uttered so simply as a declaration of fact, the statement might have been a blow to his brother. Peter recoiled. His raw lips trembled. He covered his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. And then only, “Tommy.”


Lynley said nothing more until his brother lowered his hand. He was alone in the interrogation room with Peter solely because of Inspector MacPherson’s compassion. MacPherson’s partner, Sergeant Havers, had protested vociferously enough when Lynley had asked for these few minutes. She had cited regulations, procedures, Judge’s Rules, and civil law until MacPherson had silenced her with a simple “I dae know the law, lass. Gie me credit for that, if ye will,” and sent her to sit by a phone and await the results of the toxicological analysis of the powder they had found in Peter’s Whitechapel room. After which, MacPherson himself had lumbered off, leaving Lynley at the interrogation room’s door, and saying, “Twenty minutes, Tommy” over his shoulder. So in spite of what needed to be said about the years of suffering he and Peter had caused each other, there was little enough time for gathering information and none at all for restoring the relationship they had destroyed. That would have to wait.

“I need to ask you about Mick Cambrey,” Lynley said. “About Justin Brooke as well.”

“You think I killed them.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. The only thing that matters is what Penzance CID think. Peter, you must know I can’t let John Penellin take the blame for Mick’s death.”

Peter’s eyebrows drew together. “John’s been arrested?”

“Saturday night. You’d already left Howenstow when they came for him, then?”

“We left directly after dinner. I didn’t know.” He touched a finger to the sandwich in front of him and pushed it aside with a grimace of distaste.

“I need the truth,” Lynley said. “It’s the only thing that’s going to help anyone. And the only way to get John released—since he doesn’t intend to do anything to help himself—is to tell the police what really happened on Friday night. Peter, did you see Mick Cambrey after John went to Gull Cottage?”

“They’ll arrest me,” he mumbled. “They’ll put me on trial.”

“You’ve nothing to fear if you’re innocent. If you come forward. If you tell the truth. Peter, were you there? Or did Brooke lie about that?”

Escape was well within Peter’s reach. A simple denial would do it. An accusation that Brooke had lied. Even a manufactured reason why Brooke might have done so since the man himself was dead and couldn’t refute it. Those were the possibilities of response. As was a decision to help a man who had been part of their extended family for Peter’s entire life.

Peter licked his dry lips. “I was there.”

Lynley didn’t know whether to feel relief or despair. He said, “What happened?”

“I think Justin didn’t trust me to see to things on my own. Or else he couldn’t wait.”

“For the coke?”

“He’d had a stash with him at Howenstow.” Briefly, Peter related the scene that had occurred between Sidney and Justin Brooke on the beach. “She threw it in the water,” he concluded. “So that was that. I’d already phoned Mark about getting some more, but I didn’t have enough money and he wouldn’t trust me for it, not even for a few days.”

“So instead you went to Mick?” A positive answer would be the first fissure in the tale Brooke had told. But it was not forthcoming.

“Not for coke,” Peter said, unconsciously corroborating the first part of Brooke’s story. “For cash. I remembered he did the pay envelopes for the newspaper on alternate Fridays.”

“Did you know Mick was a cross-dresser as well?”

Peter smiled wearily. There was an element of grudging admiration in it, a ghost of the little boy he had been. “I always thought you’d make a decent detective.”

Lynley didn’t tell him how little of his own talent for inference and deduction had gone into the discovery of Mick Cambrey’s second life in London. He merely said, “How long have you known?”

“About a month. I bought from him occasionally in London when my other sources were dry. We’d meet in Soho. There’s an alley near the square where deals go down. We’d meet in a club there. I’d buy a gram, half a gram, less. Whatever I could afford.”

“That seems damn risky. Why not meet at your flat? At his?”

Peter shot him a look. “I didn’t even know he had a flat. And I sure as hell didn’t want him to see mine.”

“How would you get in touch? How would you make the arrangements?”

“Like I said. Sometimes my other sources went dry. So I’d phone him in Cornwall. If he was due to come to London, we’d set up a buy.”

“Always in Soho?”

“Always the same place. At this club. That’s where I found out about the cross-dressing.”