A Suitable Vengeance

“Well, of course, there were changes in all of our lives, weren’t there? I expect he hadn’t thought much about my running round the house until I wasn’t here to do it any longer. But he got used to it in time. Anyone can see—”

“You know, luv,” her father interrupted, “you’ve never in your life been one to talk false to yourself. I’m sorry to see you start doing it now.”

“Talk false? Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I do that?”

“You know the answer. Way I see it, Deb, you and Mr. St. James both know the answer more’n quite well. All it takes is one o’ you to be brave enough to say it and the other brave enough to stop living a lie.”

He put their wine glasses on the tray and took it from her hands. She had inherited her mother’s height, Deborah knew, but she’d forgotten how that only made it easier for her father to look directly into her eyes. He did so now. The effect was disconcerting. It drew a confidence from her when she wanted to avoid giving it.

“I know how you want it to be,” she said. “But it can’t be that way, Dad. You need to accept it. People change. They grow up. They grow apart. Distance does things to them. Time makes their importance to each other fade away.”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“This time.” She saw him blink rapidly at the firmness of her voice. She tried to soften the blow. “I was just a little girl. He was like my brother.”

“He was that.” Cotter moved to one side to let her pass.

She felt bereft by his reaction. She wanted nothing so much as his understanding but didn’t know how to explain the situation in any way that would not destroy the dearest of his dreams. “Dad, you must see that it’s different with Tommy. I’m not a little girl to him. I never was. But to Simon, I’ve always been…I’ll always be…”

Cotter’s smile was gentle. “You’ve no need to convince me, Deb. No need.” He straightened his shoulders. His tone became brisk. “At least we need to get some food in the man. Will you take a tray up? He’s still in the lab.”

It was the least she could do. She followed him down the stairs to the kitchen and watched him put together a tray of cheese, cold meats, fresh bread, and fruit, which she carried up to the lab where St. James was sitting at one of the worktables, gazing at a set of photographed bullets. He held a pencil, but it lay unused between his fingers.

He’d turned on several lights, high intensity lamps scattered here and there throughout the sprawling room. They created small pools of illumination within great caverns of shadow. In one of these, his face was largely screened by the darkness.

“Dad wants you to eat something,” Deborah said from the doorway. She entered the room and set the tray on the table. “Still working?”

He wasn’t. She doubted that he’d got a single thing done in all these past hours he’d spent in the lab. There was a report of some sort lying next to one of the photographs, but its front page didn’t bear even a crease from having been folded back. And although a pad of paper lay beneath the pencil he held, he’d written nothing upon it. So all of this was rote behaviour on his part, a falling back on his work as an act of avoidance.

It all involved Sidney. Deborah had seen that much in his face when Lady Helen told him she hadn’t been able to find his sister. She had seen it again when he had returned to her flat and placed call after call, trying to locate Sidney himself. Everything he had done from that moment—his journey to Islington-London, his discussion with Tommy about Mick Cambrey’s death, his creation of a scenario to fit the facts of the crime, his need to get back to work in the lab—all of this was diversion and distraction to escape the trouble that had Sidney at its core. Deborah wondered what St. James would do, what he would allow himself to feel, if someone had hurt his sister. Once again, she found herself wanting to help him in some way, giving him a peace of mind that appeared to elude him.

“It’s just a bit of meat and cheese,” she said. “Some fruit. Bread.” All of which was obvious. The tray was lying in his line of vision.

“Tommy’s gone?” he asked.

“Ages ago. He went back to Peter.” She drew one of the lab stools to the other side of the table and sat facing him. “I’ve forgotten to bring you something to drink,” she said. “What would you like? Wine? Mineral water? Dad and I had coffee. Would you like a coffee, Simon?”

“Thank you, no. This is fine.” But he made no move to eat. He straightened on the stool, rubbed the muscles of his back.

The darkness did much to alter his face. Harsh angles were softened. Lines disappeared. The years drained away, taking with them the evidence of their companion pain. He was left looking younger and far more vulnerable. He seemed all at once so much easier to reach, the man to whom Deborah had once said anything at all, without fear of either derision or rejection, secure in the knowledge that he would always understand.