A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(15)

As Peter searched the street for Sasha’s familiar form—for a glimpse of the old carpetbag satchel she always carried—he took a dirty handkerchief from the hip pocket of his blue jeans and wiped his nose. It was an automatic reaction, done without thought. And the brief spurt of pain that accompanied it was gone in an instant and thus easily ignored as inconsequential. Without looking at the linen or examining the new, rust-coloured stains upon it, he replaced the handkerchief and chewed with rabbit bites on the side of his index finger.

In the distance, at the mouth of the narrow street in which they lived, pedestrians passed in Brick Lane, commuters on their way home for the day. Peter tried to focus upon them, making a deliberate exercise of attempting to pick Sasha out of the bobbing heads on their way to or from Aldgate East Station. She’d come on the Northern, he told himself, make a switch to the Metropolitan and home. So where was she? What was so hard about one buy, after all? Give over the money. Get the stuff. What was taking so long?

He mulled over the question. What was taking Sasha so long? For that matter, what was to prevent the little bitch from taking off with his cash, making the score on her own, and never coming back to the flat at all? In fact, why should she bother to return? She’d have what she wanted. That’s why she continued to hang about.

Peter rejected the idea as completely impossible. Sasha wouldn’t leave. Not now, not ever. She said only last week that she’d never had it as good as she had it from him. Didn’t she beg for it practically every night?

Pensively, Peter wiped his nose on the back of his hand. When had they last done it? Last night, wasn’t it? She was laughing like crazy and he’d caught her up against the wall and…wasn’t that last night? Sammy from across the hall pounding on the door and telling them to hold it down and Sasha shrieking and scratching and gasping for breath—only she wasn’t shrieking, she was laughing—and her head kept bouncing back against the wall and he didn’t finish with her, couldn’t finish, but it didn’t matter at the time because both of them were up in the clouds.

That was it. Last night. And she’d be back when she scored.

With his teeth, he pulled at the rough edge of a fingernail.

So. What if she couldn’t make the buy? She’d talked big enough this afternoon about Hampstead, a house near the heath where deals went down if the money was right so where was she how long could it take to get there and back where the hell was she?

Peter grinned, tasted blood where he’d bitten through the skin. It was time for control. He inhaled. He stretched. He touched his toes.

It didn’t matter, anyway. He had no real need of it. He could stop any time. Everyone knew that. One could stop any time. Still and all, he was something with it. Master manipulator, king of the world.

The door opened behind him and he spun to see that Sasha was back. In the doorway, she pushed her lank hair off her face and watched him warily. Her stance reminded him of a cornered hare.

“Where is it?” he asked.

An emotion flickered across her features. She kicked the door closed and went to the sofa where she sat on its threadbare brown cushions, her back to him, her head dropped forward. Peter felt the skeletal fingers of warning dance against his skin.

“Where is it?”

“I didn’t…I couldn’t…” Her shoulders started shaking.

Control disintegrated in an instant.

“You couldn’t what? What in hell’s going on?” He dashed to the window and inched back the curtain. Christ, had she blown it? Had she been followed by the cops? He peered at the street. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. No unmarked police car held occupants busily observing the building. No van stood illegally against the kerb. No plainclothes policeman loitered beneath the streetlamp. There was nothing.

He turned back to her. She was watching him over her shoulder. Her eyes—like a dog’s curious shade of yellow and brown—were watery, red-rimmed. Her lips trembled with defeat. He knew.

“Jesus Christ!” He flew across the room, shoved her to one side, and grabbed the carpetbag. He dumped its contents onto the sofa and sifted through them. His hands were clumsy, his frantic search useless. “Where the hell…? Where’s the stuff, Sasha? Where is it? Where?”

“I didn’t—”

“Then where’s the cash?” Sirens shrieked in his head. The walls tilted in. “Sasha, what the f*ck have you done with the cash?”

Sasha reared up at that, right off the sofa and across the room. “That’s it?” she shouted. “‘Where the f*ck is the cash?’ Not ‘Where’ve you been?’ Not ‘I’ve been worried.’ But ‘Where the f*ck is the cash?’” She whipped back the sleeve of her stained, purple jersey. Deep scratches covered her jaundiced skin. Bruises were rising to the surface there. “Look for yourself! I was mugged, you little bastard!”

“You were mugged?” The question climbed a scale of disbelief. “Don’t you give me that crap. What’ve you done with my cash?”

“I told you! Your sodding wad of cash was pinched on the bloody platform of the bloody station. I’ve spent the last two hours socialising with the bloody Hampstead police. Ring them yourself if you don’t believe me.” And she began to sob.

He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t. “Christ, you can’t do anything, can you?”