A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(14)
The woman smiled. “I’m a wreck myself until after nightfall. I never bother much in the light of day. What’s the point, I say. Anyway, you’re a perfect vision as far as I’m concerned. How d’you like the drink?”
“It’s not quite like anything I’ve ever tasted.”
“Special, isn’t it? I ought to bottle the stuff.”
“Yes. Well, it’s good. Very good. Thank you. I’m terribly sorry about the row.”
“It was a great one. I couldn’t help overhearing most of it—walls being what they are—and for a bit I thought it might come to blows. I’m just next door.” She cocked her thumb to the left. “Tina Cogin.”
“Deborah Cotter. I moved in last night.”
“Is that what all the thumping and pounding was about?” Tina grinned. “And to think I was imagining some competition. Well, none of that talk. You don’t look the type to be on the game, do you?”
Deborah felt herself colouring. Thank you hardly seemed an appropriate response.
Apparently finding reply unnecessary, Tina busied herself looking at her reflection in the glass that covered one of Deborah’s photographs. She rearranged her hair, examined her teeth, and ran a long fingernail between the front two. “I’m a ruin. Makeup just can’t do it all, can it? Ten years ago, a bit of blusher was all it took. And now? Hours in front of a mirror and I still look like hell when I’m done.”
A knock sounded on the door. Sidney, Deborah decided. She wondered what Simon’s sister would say about this unexpected visitor to her flat who was currently studying the photograph of Lynley as if she were considering him a source of future income.
“Would you like to stay for tea?” Deborah asked her.
Tina swung from the picture. One eyebrow lifted. “Tea?” She said the word as if the substance had not passed her lips for the better part of her adult life. “Sweet of you, Deb, but no. Three in this kind of situation is a bit of a crowd. Take it from me. I’ve tried it.”
“Three?” Deborah stammered. “It’s a woman.”
“Oh, no!” Tina laughed. “I was talking of the table, love. It’s a bit small, you see, and I’m all elbows and thumbs when it comes to tea. You just finish that drink and return the glass later. Right?”
“Yes. Thank you. All right.”
“And we’ll have a nice little chat when you do.”
With a wave of her hand, Tina opened the door, swept past Sidney St. James with an electric smile, and disappeared down the hall.
CHAPTER 3
Peter Lynley hadn’t chosen his Whitechapel flat for either amenities or location. Of the former, there were none, unless one could call four walls and two windows—both painted shut—a strong selling feature. As to the latter, the flat indeed had ease of access to an underground station, but the building itself was of pre-Victorian vintage, surrounded by others of a similar age, and nothing had been done to clean or renovate either buildings or neighbourhood in at least thirty years. However, both the flat and its location served Peter’s needs, which were few. And more importantly, his wallet, which as of today was nearly empty.
The way he had it worked out, they could make it another fortnight if they played it conservatively and held themselves to just five lines a night. All right, perhaps six. Then during the day, they’d start looking for work in earnest. A job in sales for him. New performances for Sasha. He had the brains and the personality for sales. And Sasha still had her art. She could use it in Soho. They’d want her there. Hell, they’d probably never seen anything like her in Soho. It would be just like Oxford, with a bare stage, a single spotlight, and Sasha on a chair, letting the audience cut her clothes off, daring them to cut off everything. “Get in touch with yourself. Know what you feel. Say what you want.” All the time she’d be smiling, all the time superior, all the time the only person in the room who knew how to be proud of who and what she was. Head high, held confidently, arms at her sides. I am, her posture declared. I am. I am.
Where was she, Peter wondered.
He checked the time. His watch was an unattractive, second-hand Timex that managed to exude an air of unreliability simply by existing. He’d sold his Rolex some time ago and had quickly discovered that relying on this current piece for accuracy was just about as ridiculous as relying on Sasha to make a score on her own without latching onto a copper’s nark by mistake.
He avoided dwelling upon that thought by shaking his wrist anxiously and peering at the watch. Had its blasted hands even moved in the last half hour? He held it to his ear, swore in disbelief at the gentle ticking. Could it only have been two hours since she’d left? It seemed like ages.
Restlessly, he got up from the sagging sofa, one of the room’s three pieces of fourth-hand furniture, if one didn’t count the cardboard cartons in which they kept their clothes or the overturned vegetable crate that held their only lamp. The sofa unfolded into a lumpy bed. Sasha griped about it daily, saying it was doing in her back, saying she hadn’t had a decent hour’s sleep in at least a month.
Where was she? Peter went to one of the windows and flicked back its covering, a bedsheet crudely fashioned into a curtain by shoving a rusting rod through its hem. He gazed through the pane. It was grimy inside as well as out.