In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(173)

The light changed, and as he drove off, Martin's sense of grievance against the police began to grow in him. He was doing the whole shitting city one hell of a favour, he decided, and no one—least of all the cops—seemed to realise or appreciate that. His girls didn't clutter up the sidewalks making deals with clients, and they sure as hell didn't pollute the landscape by dressing like something out of an adolescent's wet dream. They were refined, educated, attractive, and discreet, and if they did take money for engaging in the odd sexual encounter or two and if they did pass on a percentage to him, who made it possible for them to be in the company of wealthy and successful men who were willing to recompense them richly for their services, who the hell cared? Who the hell did it hurt? No one. The bottom line was that sex had a place in men's lives that it did not have in the lives of women. For men it was a signature act, primal and necessary to their identity. Their wives grew tired of it or bored by it, but the men did not. And if someone was prepared to provide those men with access to women who welcomed their attentions, women willing to allow their bodies to be the soft and pliable wax into which those men poured their juices not to mention left the indelible impression of their very characters, why couldn't money be exchanged for such a service? And why couldn't someone—like himself—with the organisational skills and the vision to recruit exceptional women for the entertainment of exceptional men be allowed to make a living doing it?

If the laws had been written by visionaries like himself and not by a group of spineless jerks who were more concerned with being able to feed at the public trough than they were with being even marginally realistic about activities participated in by consenting adults, Martin thought, then he wouldn't have been in the position he was in at this very moment. He wouldn't be scrambling for someone who could vouch for his whereabouts and get the police off his back, because the police would never have been on his back in the first place. And even if they had come calling and had asked their questions and made their demands, they wouldn't have had a single thing to hold over his head to gain cooperation because he wouldn't have been living on the wrong side of the law in the first place.

And what sort of country was it, anyway, where prostitution was legal but living off prostitution wasn't? What was prostitution but a means of livelihood? And who the hell were they kidding trying to regulate it from Westminster, when three-quarters of those hypocrites who planted their asses on those green leather benches were screwing their eyeballs out with any secretary, student, or parliamentary assistant who appeared even remotely willing?

Fuck it, the entire situation made him want to punch holes through walls. And the more he thought of it, the angrier he became. And the angrier he became, the more he focused on the cause of all his current troubles. Forget Maiden and Nevin, he realised. They were taken care of, after all. They hadn't been the ones to spill their miserable guts to the cops. Tricia, on the other hand, remained to be dealt with.

He spent the rest of the drive considering how best to do this. What he came up with wasn't pleasant, but when was it pleasant when a notable figure on the social scene loses his wife to heroin despite his best efforts to save her from herself and to shield her from the displeasure of her family and the censure of an unforgiving public?

He felt his mood lift. His lips curved upwards, and he began to hum. He made the turn from Lansdowne Walk into Lansdowne Road.

And there he saw them.

Four men were mounting the front steps to his house, with PLAINCLOTHES COPS written all over them. They were beefy, tall, and designed to tyrannise. They looked like gorillas in fancy dress.

Martin hit the accelerator. He swerved into the drive. He was out of the Jaguar and up the steps in their wake before they had a chance to ring the bell. “What do you want?” he demanded.

Gorilla One removed a white envelope from the pocket of a leather bomber jacket. “Search warrant,” he said.

“What? Search for what?”

“Are you opening the door or are we breaking it down?”

“I'm phoning my solicitor.” Martin shoved past them and unlocked the door.

“Whatever you want,” Gorilla Two said.

They followed him inside. Gorilla One gave instructions as Martin raced for the phone. Two of the cops were right on his heels and into his office. The other two pounded up the stairs. Shit, he thought, and he shouted, “Hey! My wife's up there!”

“They'll say hello,” Gorilla One said.

As Martin frantically punched in the phone number, One began removing books from the shelves and Two went for a filing cabinet. “I want you f*ckers out of here,” Martin told them.

“Right,” said Two, “I s'pose you do.”

“And we all want something,” said One with a smirk.

Upstairs, a door crashed back against a wall. Muffled voices accompanied the noise of furniture being roughly shoved round a room. In Martin's office the cops made their search with a minimum of effort and a maximum of mess: They strewed books on the floor, took pictures from the walls, and emptied the filing cabinet in which Martin kept scrupulous records for the escort service. Gorilla Two bent and, with cigar-stub fingers, began sifting through them.

“Shit,” Martin hissed, receiver to his ear. Where was that f*cker Polmanteer?

On the other end of the line the phone at his solicitor's home double-rang four times. His answer machine clicked on. Martin cursed, disconnected, and tried the solicitor's mobile. Where would he be on a Sunday, for God's sake? The slimy bastard couldn't have gone to church.