A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(86)

St. James went back to the article, a technical treatise on an extracellular matrix protein called proteoglycans. Despite his own extensive background in science, it made little sense to him.

“Not quite what one would call light reading, is it?”

St. James looked up. Dr. Trenarrow stood in the doorway. He was wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit. He’d pinned a small rosebud to its lapel.

“It’s certainly beyond me,” St. James replied.

“Any word of Peter?”

“Nothing yet, I’m afraid.”

Trenarrow shut the door and gestured St. James into one of the room’s wingback chairs.

“Coffee?” he asked. “I’ve been discovering it’s one of Dora’s few specialities.”

“Thank you, no. She’s your housekeeper?”

“Using the term in the loosest possible fashion.” He smiled briefly, without humour. The remark seemed largely an effort to be light-hearted, an effort he dismissed with his very next words. “Tommy told us last night. About Peter seeing Mick Cambrey the night he died. About Brooke as well. I don’t know where you stand in all this, but I’ve known that boy since he was six years old, and he’s not a killer. He’s incapable of violence, most especially the sort that was done to Mick Cambrey.”

“Did you know Mick well?”

“Not as well as others in the village. Just as his landlord. I let him Gull Cottage.”

“How long ago was that?”

Trenarrow began an automatic answer, but then his brow furrowed, as if he’d suddenly wondered about the nature of the question. “About nine months.”

“Who lived there before him?”

“I did.” Trenarrow made a quick movement in his chair, an adjustment in position that betrayed irritation. “You can’t have come here on a social call at this time of morning, Mr. St. James. Did Tommy send you?”

“Tommy?”

“No doubt you know the facts. We’ve years of bad blood between us. You’re asking about Cambrey. You’re asking about the cottage. Are these questions his idea or yours?”

“Mine. But he knows I’ve come to see you.”

“About Mick?”

“Actually, no. Tina Cogin’s disappeared. We think she may have come to Cornwall.”

“Who?”

“Tina Cogin. Shrewsbury Court Apartments. In Paddington. Your telephone number was among her things.”

“I haven’t the slightest…Tina Cogin, you say?”

“She’s not a patient of yours? Or a former patient?”

“I don’t see patients. Oh, perhaps the occasional terminal case who volunteers for an experimental drug. But if Tina Cogin was one of them and she’s disappeared…Excuse me for the levity, but there’s only one place she’d be disappearing to and it wouldn’t be Cornwall.”

“Then you may well have seen her in a different light.”

Trenarrow looked perplexed. “Sorry?”

“She may be a prostitute.”

The doctor’s gold-rimmed spectacles slid fractionally down his nose. He knuckled them back into place and said, “And she had my name?”

“No. Just your number.”

“My address?”

“Not even that.”

Trenarrow pushed himself out of his chair. He walked over to the window behind the desk. He spent a long moment studying the view before he turned back to St. James. “I’ve not set foot in London in a year. Perhaps more. But I suppose that makes little enough difference if she’s come to Cornwall. Perhaps she’s making house calls.” He smiled wryly. “You don’t really know me, Mr. St. James, so you have no way of knowing if I’m telling you the truth. But let me say that it’s not been my habit to pay a woman for sex. Some men do it without flinching, I realise. But I’ve always preferred love-making to grow out of a passion other than avarice. This other—the negotiating first, the exchange of cash later—that’s not my style.”

“Was it Mick’s?”

“Mick’s?”

“He was seen leaving her flat Friday morning in London. He may well have given her your number, in fact. Perhaps for some sort of consultation.”

Trenarrow’s fingers went to the rosebud on his lapel, touching its tightly furled petals. “That’s a possibility,” he said thoughtfully. “Although referrals generally come from physicians, it is a possibility if she’s seriously ill. Mick knew cancer research is my line of work. He’d done an interview with me shortly after he took over the Spokesman. It’s not inconceivable that he might have given her my name. But Cambrey and a prostitute? That’s going to put a wrench in his reputation. His father’s been fanning the fires of Mick’s sexual profligacy for the last year at least. And believe me, nothing he’s said has ever alluded to Mick having to pay for a woman’s favours. According to Harry, so many women were throwing themselves at the poor lad that he barely had time to pull his trousers up before someone was moaning to have them back down. If involvement with a prostitute led to Mick’s murder, it’ll be sad times for Harry. He seems to be hoping it was from a row with a dozen or two jealous husbands.”

“Or one jealous wife?”