Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(88)
“The gentlemen from MI5 don’t leave calling cards when they’ve searched a house, Tommy,” St. James said. “There was no evidence of a search. You couldn’t have known they had been there. And after all, you hadn’t gone looking for information about the play.”
“All the same, I shouldn’t have been blind to its absence.” He smiled grimly at Barbara. “Good work, Sergeant. I can’t think where we’d be if I hadn’t had you along.”
Lynley’s praise brought Barbara no joy. Never had she felt so completely wretched about having been in the right. “What shall we…?” She hesitated, unwilling to take any more authority from him.
Lynley got to his feet. “We’ll go for Stinhurst in the morning,” he said. “I should like the rest of the night to think about what needs to be done.”
Barbara knew what he really meant: to think about what he himself was going to do, faced with the knowledge of how Scotland Yard had used him. She wanted to say something to lighten the blow. She wanted to say that in spite of the plan to make him instrumental in a cover-up, it hadn’t come off; they had proved themselves superior to it. But she knew that he would see through the words to the truth beneath them. She had proved herself superior to it. She had saved him from his own black folly.
With nothing more to be said, they began putting on their coats, pulling on gloves, adjusting hats and mufflers. The atmosphere was fraught with words needing to be spoken. Lynley took his time about replacing the brandy decanter, gathering the small crystal balloon glasses onto a tray, turning out the lights in the room. He followed them into the hall.
Lady Helen was standing in a pool of light near the door. She had said nothing for an hour, and now she spoke tentatively as he came to join them. “Tommy…”
“Meet me at the theatre at nine, Sergeant,” Lynley said abruptly. “Have a constable with you to take Stinhurst in.”
If she had not already realised how inconsequential her triumph really was in this game of detection, that brief exchange would have illustrated the point for Barbara with rare lucidity. She saw the gulf widen between Lynley and Lady Helen, felt its painful impassability like a physical wound. She said only, “Yes, sir,” and reached for the door.
“Tommy, you can’t ignore me any longer,” Lady Helen insisted.
Lynley looked at her then for the first time since St. James had begun speaking in the drawing room. “I was wrong about him, Helen. But you need to know the worst of my sin. I wanted to be right.”
He nodded good night and left them.
WEDNESDAY DAWNED under a leaden sky, the coldest day yet. The snow along the pavement had developed a hard, thin crust, grimy from soot and the exhaust of the city traffic.
When Lynley pulled up in front of the Agincourt Theatre at eight forty-five, Sergeant Havers was already waiting in front of it, bundled up to her eyebrows in her usual unbecoming brown wool, with a young police constable at her side. Lynley noted grimly that Havers had put some considerable thought into her selection of a constable, choosing the one least likely to be cowed by Stinhurst’s title and wealth: Winston Nkata. Once a mainstay of the Brixton Warriors—one of the city’s most violent black gangs—the twenty-five-year-old Nkata, through the patient intercession and continuing friendship of three hard-nosed officers in A7 Branch, was now an aspirant to the highest reaches of CID. Living proof, he liked to say, that if they can’t arrest you, they’ll damn well convert you.
He flashed Lynley one of his high-voltage smiles. “’Spector,” he called, “why you never drive that baby in my neighbourhood? We like to burn pieces that nice.”
“The next riot, let me know,” Lynley responded drily.
“Next riot, we send out invitations, man. Make sure everybody have a chance to be there.”
“Ah. Yes. Bring your own brick.”
The black man threw back his head and laughed unrestrainedly as Lynley joined them on the pavement. “I like you, ’Spector,” he said. “Give me your home address. I think I got to marry your sister.”
Lynley smiled. “You’re too good for her, Nkata. Not to mention about sixteen years too young. But if you behave yourself this morning, I’m sure we can come to a suitable arrangement.” He looked at Havers. “Has Stinhurst arrived yet?”
She nodded. “Ten minutes ago.” In answer to his unasked question, she replied, “He didn’t see us. We were having coffee across the way. He had his wife with him, Inspector.”
“That,” Lynley said, “is a stroke of luck. Let’s go in.”
Inside, the theatre buzzed with the activity attendant to a new production. The auditorium doors were open; conversation and laughter mixed with the noise of a crew at work, taking measurements for a set. Production assistants hurried by with clipboards in their hands and pencils behind their ears. In a corner by the bar, a publicist and a designer held a huddle over a large sheet of paper onto which the latter was sketching advertising draughts. It was altogether a place of creativity, humming with excitement, but this morning Lynley did not find himself at all regretful that he would be the instrument of bringing all these people’s pleasure to an end. As would be the case once Stinhurst faced arrest.
They were walking towards the door to the production offices at the far side of the building when Lord Stinhurst came out of it, followed by his wife. Lady Stinhurst was speaking in an agitated rush, twisting a large diamond ring on her finger. She stopped everything—ring-twisting, speaking, walking—when she saw the police.