For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(77)

“Behave,” she told him. “This isn’t a run.”

But of course, he would think they were meant to run here. It was water after all. It was what he was used to.

Ahead of them, a lone rower was bringing in a scull, moving against the wind and the current at a furious clip. Justine could imagine that she heard him breathing, for even at this distance and in the failing light she could see the sheen of sweat on his face and she could well envision the heaving of chest that must accompany it. She walked to the edge of the river.

He didn’t look up at once as he brought the craft in. Rather, he remained bent over the oars, his head resting on his hands. His hair—thinning at the top and curly elsewhere—was damp and clung to his skull like a new-born’s ringlets. Justine wondered how long he had been rowing and whether the activity had done anything at all to assuage whatever emotion he might have felt when first he heard about Elena’s death. And he had heard about it. Justine knew that from watching him. Although he rowed daily, he wouldn’t have still been here in the dusk, the wind, and the stinging cold, had he not needed to find a physical manner in which he could purge himself of his feelings.

At Townee’s whimper to be off and running, the man looked up. For a moment, he said nothing. Nor did Justine. The only sound between them was the scuffling of the dog’s nails on the path, the warning honk of ducks who felt the other animal’s proximity, and the blare of rock and roll music coming from one of the boathouses. U2, Justine thought, a song she recognised but could not have named.

He got out of the scull and stood on the bank next to her, and she realised, irrelevantly, that she’d forgotten how short he was, perhaps two inches shorter than her own five feet nine.

He said with a futile gesture at the scull, “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You might have gone home.”

He gave a virtually soundless laugh. It was a reply not of humour, but affirmation. He touched his fingers to Townee’s head. “He looks good. Healthy. She took good care of him.”

Justine reached into her pocket and pulled out the hand-out which had flown against her. She gave it to him. “Have you seen this?”

He read it. He ran his fingers over the black print and then across the picture of Elena.

“I’ve seen it,” he said. “That’s how I found out. No one phoned. I didn’t know. I saw it in the senior combination room when I went in for coffee about ten o’clock this morning. And then—” He looked across the river to Midsummer Common where the girl was leading her horse in the direction of Fort St. George. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“Were you home Sunday night, Victor?”

He didn’t look at her as he shook his head.

“Was she with you?”

“For a time.”

“And then?”

“She went back to St. Stephen’s. I stayed in my rooms.” He finally looked her way. “How did you know about us? Did she tell you?”

“Last September. The drinks party. You made love to Elena during the party, Victor.”

“Oh God.”

“In the bathroom upstairs.”

“She followed me up. She came in. She..” He rubbed his hand along his jawline. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved that day, for the stubble was thick, like a bruise on his skin.

“Did you take off all your clothes?”

“Christ, Justine.”

“Did you?”

“No. We stood against the wall. I lifted her up. She wanted it that way.”

“I see.”

“All right. I wanted it as well. Against the wall. Just like that.”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

“Yes. She told me.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did you plan to do about it?”

He’d been looking at the river, but now he turned back to her. “I planned to marry her,” he said.

It wasn’t the answer she had come prepared to hear, although the more she thought about it, the less it surprised her. It did leave, however, a slight problem unresolved.

“Victor,” she said, “where was your wife Sunday night? What was Rowena doing while you were having Elena?”





11





Lynley was relieved to find Gareth Randolph in the offices of DeaStu, Cambridge University’s odd acronym for the Deaf Students’ Union. He had tried his room at Queens’ College first, only to be directed to Fenners, the central gymnasium for University sports where the boxing team worked out for two hours each day. There, however, in the smaller of the two gyms where he was assailed by the eye-prickling smells of sweat, damp leather, athletic tape, chalk, and unwashed workout clothes, Lynley had questioned a lorry-sized heavyweight who had pointed his side-of-beef fist in the direction of the exit and said that the Bant—apparently a reference to Gareth’s bantam-weight—was sitting by the phones at DeaStu, hoping for a call about the bird who got killed.

“She was his woman,” the heavyweight said. “He’s taking it hard.” And he drove his fists like battering rams into the punching bag which hung from the ceiling, putting his shoulders into each blow with such force that it seemed as if the floor shook beneath him.