“And we all want something,” said One with a smirk.
Upstairs, a door crashed back against a wall. Muffled voices accompanied the noise of furniture being roughly shoved round a room. In Martin's office the cops made their search with a minimum of effort and a maximum of mess: They strewed books on the floor, took pictures from the walls, and emptied the filing cabinet in which Martin kept scrupulous records for the escort service. Gorilla Two bent and, with cigar-stub fingers, began sifting through them.
“Shit,” Martin hissed, receiver to his ear. Where was that fucker Polmanteer?
On the other end of the line the phone at his solicitor's home double-rang four times. His answer machine clicked on. Martin cursed, disconnected, and tried the solicitor's mobile. Where would he be on a Sunday, for God's sake? The slimy bastard couldn't have gone to church.
The mobile brought him no better results. He slammed down the receiver and rooted in his desk for the solicitor's card. Gorilla Two elbowed him to one side. He said, “Sorry, sir. Can't let you remove—”
“I'm not removing a fucking thing! I'm looking for my solicitor's pager.”
“Wouldn't keep it in your desk, would he?” One asked from the shelves, where he continued his work. Books thunked to the floor.
“You know what I mean,” Martin said to Two. “I want the number of his pager. It's on a card. I know my rights. Now, step aside or I won't be responsible—”
“Martin? What is it? What's going on? There're men in our room and they've emptied the wardrobe and … What's going on?”
Martin spun round. Tricia was in the doorway, unshowered, undressed, and unpainted. She looked like the hags who sat on their sleeping bags and begged money in the subway at Hyde Park Corner. She looked like what she was: a smack-head.
His hands started to burn once again. He dug his nails into his palms. Tricia had been the single cause of his every difficulty for the last twenty years. And now she was the cause of his downfall.
He said, “God damn it. God damn it. You!” And he plunged across the room. He grabbed her by the hair and managed to ram her head against the door jamb before the cops were on him. “Stupid cunt!” he shouted as they dragged him off her. And then to the police, “All right. All right” as he shook off their hold on him. “Call your asshole boss. Tell him I'm ready to deal.”
CHAPTER 25
t was nearly midday before Simon St. James was able to give his time to the Derbyshire post-mortem reports that Lynley had sent him via Barbara Havers. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking for. The examination of the Maiden girl appeared in order. The conclusion of epidural haematoma was consistent with the blow to her skull. That it had been administered by a right-handed person attacking her from above was consistent with the hypothesis that she'd been running and had tripped—or been tackled—in her flight across the moor in the darkness. Apart from the blow to her head and the scrapes and contusions one would expect to find after a rough fall on uneven ground, there was nothing on her body that suggested anything curious. Unless, of course, one wanted to consider the extraordinary number of holes she'd had pierced in everything from her eyebrows to her genitals as a point of interest. And that hardly seemed a reasonable route to go when driving needles through various body parts had long ago become one of the relatively few acts of defiance left to a generation of young people whose parents had already engaged in them all.
From his reading of the Maiden report, it seemed to St. James that all the bases had been covered: from the time, cause, and mechanism of death to the evidence—or lack thereof—of a struggle. X-rays and photographs had been duly taken, and the body had been examined from top to bottom. The various organs had been studied, removed, and commented upon. Samples of body fluids had been sent to toxicology for their findings. At the end of the report, the opinion was stated briefly and clearly: The girl had died as the result of a blow to the head.
St. James went through the findings once more to make sure he hadn't missed any pertinent detail. Then he turned to the second report and immersed himself in the death of Terence Cole.