Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(116)

“You! Stop!” Another constable charged round the corner from the high street, less than thirty yards from the Mercedes. At the shout, however, the black-garbed figure spun to the right and continued his flight up the hill.

But the pause at the car had cost him time and distance, and Lynley was gaining on him, was close enough to hear the roaring of his lungs as he surged towards a narrow stone stairway that led to the hillside and the neighbourhood above. He took the steps three at a time, stopping at the top where a metal basket of empty milk bottles stood outside the shadowed arch of a front door. Grabbing this, he hurled it down the steps in his wake before running on, but the shattering glass served only to frighten several neighbourhood dogs who set up a tremendous howling. Lights went on in the buildings that lined the stairs, making Lynley’s going easier and the broken glass nothing to contend with at all.

At the top of the stairs, the street was sided by enormous beech and sycamore trees that filled it with looming shadows. Lynley paused there, listening against the night wind and the howling animals for the sound of flight, looking for movement in the darkness. Havers came up next to him, still cursing as she gasped for breath.

“Where’s he—”

Lynley heard it first, coming from his left. The dull thud against metal as the runner—his vision impaired by the ski mask—fell against a dustbin. It was all Lynley needed.

“He’s heading for the church!” He spun Havers back to the stairs. “Go for the others,” he ordered. “Tell them to head him off at St. John’s! Now!”

Lynley didn’t wait to see if she would obey. The pounding footsteps ahead of him drew him back into the chase, across Holly Hill to a narrow street where he saw in a moment of triumph that every advantage was going to be his. A series of high walls along one side, an open green on the other. The street offered absolutely no protection. In an instant he saw his man some forty yards ahead, turning into a gateway that was open in the wall. When he reached the gate himself, he saw that the snow had gone uncleared in the drive, that elongated footprints led across a broad lawn into a garden. There, a struggling form battled a hedge of holly, his clothes snagging on the spiny leaves. He gave a raw cry of pain. A dog began to bark furiously. Floodlights switched on. On the high street below, the sirens started, grew maddeningly loud as the police cars approached.

This last seemed to give the man the rush of adrenaline he needed to free himself from the bushes. As Lynley closed in, he cast a wild glance towards him, gauged his proximity, and tore himself from the plants’ painful embrace. He fell to his knees—free—on the other side of the hedge, scrambled back up, ran on. Lynley spun in the other direction, saw a second gate in the wall, and ploughed his way to it through the snow at the cost of at least thirty seconds. He threw himself into the street.

To his right, St. John’s Church loomed beyond a low brick wall. There, a shadow moved, crouched, leaped, and was over it. Lynley ran on.

He took the wall easily himself, landing in the snow. In an instant he saw a figure moving swiftly to his left, heading for the graveyard. The sound of sirens grew nearer, the sound of tyres against wet pavement echoed and shrieked.

Lynley fought his way through a snowdrift up to his knees, gained hold on a spot of cleared pavement. Ahead, the dark shape began dodging through the graves.

It was the kind of mistake Lynley had been waiting for. The snow was deeper in the graveyard, some tombstones were buried completely. Within moments, he heard the other man thrashing frantically as he crashed into markers, trying to make his way across to the far wall and the street beyond it.

Nearby, the sirens stopped, the blue lights flashed and twirled, and police began to swarm over the wall. They were carrying torches which they shone on the snow, white light arcing out to catch the runner in its glare. But it also served to illuminate the graves distinctly, and he picked up his pace, dodging sarcophagi and monuments, as he headed for the wall.

Lynley stuck to the cleared path which wound through the trees, thickly planted pines that spread their needles on the pavement, providing a rough surface for his shoes against the ice. He gained time from ease of movement here, precious seconds that he used to locate his man.

He was perhaps twenty feet from the wall. To his left two constables were fighting their way through the snow. Behind him, Havers was on his path through the graves. To his right was Lynley, on a dead run. There was no escape. Yet, with a savage cry that seemed to signal a final surge of strength, he made a leap upwards. But Lynley was on him too quickly.

The man whirled, swung wildly. Lynley loosened his grasp to dodge the punch, giving the other a second’s opportunity to climb the wall. He made his vault, caught at the top, gripped fiercely, lifted his body, began to go over.

But Lynley countered. Grabbing at his black sweater, he pulled him back, locked his arm round the man’s neck, and flung him into the snow. He stood panting above him as Havers arrived at his side, wheezing like a distance runner. The two constables ploughed their way up and one of them managed to say, “You’re done for, son,” before he gave way to a fit of coughing.

Lynley reached forward, yanked the man to his feet, pulled off his ski mask, jerked him into the torchlight.

It was David Sydeham.





17


“JOY’S DOOR wasn’t locked,” Sydeham said.

They sat at a metal-legged table in one of the interrogation rooms at New Scotland Yard. It was a room designed to allow no escape, bearing not a single decorative appointment that might give flight even to imagination. Sydeham did not look at any of them as he spoke, not at Lynley, who sat across from him and worked to draw together all the details of the case; not at Sergeant Havers, who for once took no notes but merely interjected questions to add to their body of knowledge; not at the yawning shorthand typist—a twenty-two-year veteran of police work who recorded everything with an expression of boredom that suggested she had already heard every entanglement possible in the kinds of human relationships that end in violence. Faced with the three of them, Sydeham had turned his body to give them the benefit of his profile. His eyes were on a corner of the room where a dead moth lay, and he stared at it as if seeing there a re-creation of the past days of violence.