In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(155)

No. He had nothing to worry about in the long run. And he was as likely to have to go to Australia as to the moon. Things might be a little unpleasant for a while. Certain newspaper editors might have to be paid to quash a story here and there. But that would be the extent of it aside from the cash he'd also probably have to pay out to his solicitor. And that likely—and significant—expenditure pissed him off in a very big way. So much so, in fact, that when he thought about it, when he added it all up, when he dwelt for so much as a nanosecond on the f*cking cause of all these added aggravations Jesus he just wanted to crush in her face break open her nose blacken her eyes ram himself into her when she was dry and unwilling and likely to scream and beg him to stop so that just for a moment he'd be so supreme that no one no one no one in his life would ever again look at him and think he was less than or smaller than or weaker than or God God God how he wanted to hurt her and mutilate everyone else who said Martin Reeve without Mister in front of it who smiled from faces with eyes of derision who crossed his path without stepping aside who dared to even think—Tricia had ceased moving. She wasn't thrashing. Her legs were motionless. Her arms had gone limp.

Martin looked down at her, down at his hand whose thumb and index finger made a half circle high on his wife's throat.

He jumped up, jumped off her, backed away in a rush. She was white in the moonlight, as still as marble.

“Tricia,” he said hoarsely. “God damn you. Bitch!”

Lynley's credit card was sufficient to slide the latch of the lock from its housing. The maisonette's door swung open. Inside, all was darkness. There was no sound save what drifted upwards from the drinks party going on in the ground floor flat.

“Miss Nevin?” Lynley called.

There was no response.

The light from the corridor provided a glowing parallelogram on the floor. In it, a large cushion lay, half in and half out of its yellow cover of fine brocade. Next to this, a pool of spilled liquid had soaked into the carpet in an alligator shape, while just beyond, the drinks trolley stood upended and surrounded by its bottles, its decanters—now upstoppered and emptied—its glasses, and its jugs.

Lynley reached for a switch on the wall to the right of the door. He flipped it on. Recessed lights sprang to Life in the ceiling, revealing the extent of the chaos beneath them.

From what he could see from the doorway, the maisonette was in ruins: sofa and love seat overturned with cushions torn from their covers, pictures off the walls and looking as if they'd been broken deliberately across someone's knee, stereo system and television flung to the floor and destroyed—the backings on everything from the speakers to the television hacked away—a portfolio ripped into two pieces with its photographs left scattered round the room. Not even the fitted carpet had escaped, jerked back from the wall with the sort of strength that spoke of a rage long anticipated and fully indulged.

The devastation in the kitchen was similar: crockery lying shattered on the white-tiled floor, shelves swept clean of every object which now lay where it had apparently fallen, either on work tops or broken beneath them. The refrigerator had been dealt with as well, if only in part: Everything from the freezer was dewing with moisture among the rest of the detritus while the contents of the crisping drawers were smashed like victims of runaway lorries, leaving smears of their juices on the tiles, in the grout, and against the cupboard doors.

From the ruins of a bottle of ketchup and ajar of mustard, footprints led from the kitchen towards the outer corridor. One of them was perfectly formed, as if brushed onto the tiles with dark orange paint.

Along the ascent of the stairs, pictures torn from the walls had met a fate similar to those in the sitting room, and as he climbed, Lynley felt the burning of a slow, hard anger begin in the middle of his chest. It mixed there, however, with the chill of fear. And he found himself praying that the condition of the maisonette meant Vi Nevin had been absent from the building when the intruder—so obviously bent upon harming her—had taken out his frustration on her possessions.

He called her name again. Again there was no reply. He flicked on the light in the first of the bedrooms. Illumination fell upon utter ruin. Not one stick of furniture had been left untouched.

He murmured, “Christ.” Which was when the pulsation from the music below ceased abruptly as, perhaps, a new selection of entertainment was made.

And then, in that sudden quiet, he heard it. A scrabbling, like rodents running on wood. It came from the bedroom in which he was standing, from behind the beds mattress which canted drunkenly against one of the walls. In three strides he was at it. He shoved it aside. He said, “Jesus God,” and bent to the battered form whose hair—so long, so Alice-in-Wonderland blonde where it wasn't blood-soaked—told him that Vi Nevin had indeed been at home when vengeance had come calling in Rostrevor Road.

The scrabbling had come from her fingernails, plucking spasmodically at the white baseboard which was splodged with her blood. And the blood itself came from her head, particularly from her face, which had been bashed repeatedly, destroying the little-girl prettiness that had been her hallmark and her stockin-trade.

Lynley held her small hand. He didn't want to take the risk of moving her. Had he been willing to do so, he would have grabbed her up once he'd phoned for help and cradled her battered body until the ambulance arrived. But he couldn't tell how—or if—she was injured internally, so he simply held on to her hand.