A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(98)

Across the room, he stood at the wardrobe with Lady Helen at his side. He had taken down the four hatboxes from the top shelf, had opened and placed them on the floor in a line. He was bending over one of these, separating the folds of white tissue paper. From the centre of the nest which the paper created, he withdrew a wig. Long black hair, wispy fringe. He balanced it on his fist.

Deborah gaped at it. Lady Helen sighed.

“Wonderful,” she said. “The woman actually wears a wig? So what little we know of her—not to mention Deborah’s description—must be virtually meaningless. She’s a chimera, isn’t she? False fingernails. False hair.” She glanced at the chest of drawers. Something seemed to occur to her, for she went to them, pulled one open, and fingered through the undergarments. She held up a black brassiere. “False everything else.”

St. James joined them. He took the wig from Lynley and carried it to the window where he opened the curtains and held it under the natural light. The texture told him that the hair was real.

“Did you know she wore a wig, Deb?” Lynley asked.

“No, of course not. How could I have known?”

“It’s a high quality piece,” St. James said. “You’d have no cause to think it a wig.” He examined it closely, running his fingers across the inner webbing. As he did so, a hair came loose, not one of those which comprised the wig, but another shorter hair that had detached itself from the wearer, becoming caught up in the webbing. St. James plucked it completely free, held it up to the light, and handed the wig back to Lynley.

“What is it, Simon?” Lady Helen asked.

He didn’t reply at once. Instead, he stared at the single hair between his fingers, realising what it had to imply and coming to terms with what that implication had to mean. There was only one explanation that made any sense, only one explanation that accounted for Tina Cogin’s disappearance. Still, he took a moment to test his theory.

“Have you worn this, Deborah?”

“I? No. What makes you think that?”

At the desk, he took a piece of white paper from the top drawer. He placed the hair on this and carried both back to the light.

“The hair,” he said. “It’s red.”

He looked up at Deborah and saw her expression change from wonder to realisation.

“Is it possible?” he asked her, for since she was the only one who had seen them both, she was also the only one who could possibly confirm it.

“Oh, Simon. I’m no good at this. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“But you saw her. You were with her. She gave you a drink.”

“The drink,” Deborah said. She dashed from the room. In a moment, the others heard her door crash back against the wall of her flat.

Lady Helen spoke. “What is it? You can’t possibly be thinking Deborah has anything to do with all this. The woman’s incognita. That’s all it is, plain and simple. She’s been in disguise.”

St. James placed the piece of paper on the desk. He placed the hair on top of it. He heard over and over that single word. Incognita, incognita. What a monumental joke.

“My God,” he said. “She was telling everyone she met. Tina Cogin. Tina Cogin. The name’s a bloody anagram.”

Deborah flew into the room, in one hand the photograph she had brought with her from Cornwall, in the other hand a small card. She handed both to St. James.

“Turn them over,” she said.

He didn’t have to do so. He knew already that the handwriting would be identical on each.

“It’s the card she gave me, Simon. The recipe for her drink. And on the back of Mick’s picture…”

Lynley joined them, taking the card and the photograph from St. James. “God almighty,” he murmured.

“What on earth is it?” Lady Helen asked.

“The reason Harry Cambrey’s been building Mick’s reputation as a real man’s man, I should guess,” St. James said.



Deborah poured boiling water into the teapot and carried it to the small oak table which they had moved into the sitting area of her flat. They took places round it, Deborah and Lynley sitting on the day bed, Lady Helen and St. James on ladder-back chairs. St. James picked up the savings book which lay among the other items attached to Mick Cambrey’s life and his death: the manila folder entitled prospects, the card upon which he’d written the phone number of Islington-London, the Talisman sandwich wrapper, his photograph, the recipe for the drink which he’d given to Deborah on the day that he’d appeared—as Tina Cogin—at her door.

“These ten withdrawals from the account,” Lady Helen said, pointing to them. “They match what Tina—what Mick Cambrey paid in rent. And the time works right with the facts, Simon. September through June.”

“Long before he and Mark began dealing in cocaine,” Lynley said.

“So that’s not how he got the money for the flat?” Deborah asked.

“Not according to Mark.”

Lady Helen ran her finger down the page which listed the deposits. She said, “But he’s put money in every two weeks for a year. Where on earth did it come from?”

St. James flipped to the front of the book, scanning the entries. “Obviously, he had another source of income.”

The amount of money comprising each deposit, St. James saw, was not consistent. Sometimes it was significant, other times barely so. Thus, he discounted the second possibility that had risen in his mind upon noting the regularity of the payments into Mick’s account. They couldn’t be the result of blackmail. Blackmailers generally increase the cost of suppressing a damaging piece of information. Greed feeds on itself; easy money begs for more.