Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(47)

Macaskin swung around as the scullery door opened and St. James stepped out with Strathclyde’s medical examiner. He hurried to join them. Over their shoulders, he could see two other crime-scene men still at work in the small room, doing what they could to collect what evidence had not been obliterated by water and steam.

“Right branch of the pulmonary artery is my guess without a full postmortem,” the examiner murmured to Macaskin. He was stripping off a pair of gloves, which he stuffed into his jacket pocket.

Macaskin directed a querying look at St. James.

“It could be the same killer.” St. James nodded. “Right-handed. One blow.”

“Man or woman?”

St. James blew out a reflective breath. “My guess is a man. But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a woman.”

“But surely we’re talking about considerable strength!”

“Or a rush of adrenaline. A woman could do it if she were driven.”

“Driven?”

“Blind rage, panic, fear.”

Macaskin bit down too hard on his finger. He tasted blood. “But who? Who?” he demanded of no one.



WHEN LYNLEY unlocked the door to Robert Gabriel’s room, he found the man sitting much like a solitary prisoner in a cell. He had chosen the least comfortable chair in the room and he leaned forward in it, his arms on his legs, his manicured hands dangling uselessly in front of him.

Lynley had seen Gabriel on the stage, most memorably as Hamlet four seasons past, but the man close-up was very different from the actor who swept the audience along with him through the tortured psyche of a Danish prince. In spite of the fact that he was not much past forty, Gabriel was starting to look worn out. There were pouches under his eyes, and a fatty layer had begun to take up permanent residence round his waist. His hair was well cut and perfectly combed, but in spite of a gel that attempted to encourage it into a modern style, it was thin upon his skull, artificial-looking as if he had enhanced its colour in some way. At the crown of his head, its thickness barely sufficed to cover a bald spot that made a small but growing tonsure. Youthfully dressed, Gabriel appeared to favour trousers and shirt of a colour and weight that seemed more appropriate to a summer in Miami Beach than a winter in Scotland. They were contradictions, notes of instability in a man one would expect to be self-assured and at ease.

Lynley nodded Havers towards a second chair and remained standing himself. He chose a spot near a handsome hardwood chest of drawers where he had an unobstructed view of Gabriel’s face. “Tell me about Gowan,” he said. The sergeant crackled through the pages of her notebook.

“I always thought my mother sounded just like the police,” was Gabriel’s weary response. “I see I was right.” He rubbed at the back of his neck as if to rid it of stiffness, then sat up in his chair and reached for the travel alarm clock on the bedside table. “My son gave this to me. Look at the silly thing. It doesn’t even keep proper time any longer, but I’ve not been able to bring myself to toss it in the rubbish. I’d call that paternal devotion. Mum would call it guilt.”

“You had a row in the library late this afternoon.”

Gabriel gave a derisive snort. “We did. It seems Gowan believed that I’d been savouring one or two of Mary Agnes’ finer qualities. He didn’t much like it.”

“And had you?”

“Christ. Now you sound like my ex-wife.”

“Indeed. That doesn’t go far to answering my question, however.”

“I’d spoken to the girl,” Gabriel snapped. “That’s all.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. Sometime yesterday. Shortly after I arrived. I was unpacking and she knocked on the door, ostensibly to deliver fresh towels, which I didn’t need. She stayed to chat, long enough to find out if I had any acquaintance with a list of actors who appear to be running neck and neck at the top of her marital-prospect list.” Gabriel waited belligerently and when no additional question came forth he said, “All right, all right! I may have touched her here and there. I probably kissed her. I don’t know.”

“You may have touched her? You don’t know if you kissed her?”

“I wasn’t paying attention, Inspector. I didn’t know I would have to account for every second of my time with the London police.”

“You talk as if touching and kissing are knee-jerk reactions,” Lynley pointed out with impassive courtesy. “What does it take for you to remember your behaviour? Complete seduction? Attempted rape?”

“All right! She was willing enough! And I didn’t kill that boy over it.”

“Over what?”

Gabriel had at least enough conscience to look uncomfortable. “Good God, just a bit of nuzzle. Perhaps a feel beneath her skirt. I didn’t take the girl to bed.”

“Not then, at least.”

“Not at all! Ask her! She’ll tell you the same.” He pressed his fingers to his temples as if to quell pain. His face, bruised from his run-in with Gowan, looked riven by exhaustion. “Look, I didn’t know Gowan had his eye on the girl. I hadn’t even seen him then. I didn’t know he existed. As far as I was concerned, she was free for the taking. And, by God, she didn’t protest. She could hardly do that, could she, when she was doing her best to manage a feel of her own.”