the lock. He swung the door open. They walked inside.
'All right. He had his own key,' Lady Helen said. 'But, really, Tommy, where does that get us? It can't be a surprise. We already knew he'd been here. Deborah told us that. So all we know beyond that fact is that he was special enough to Tina Cogin to merit a key to her door.'
'It changes the nature of their relationship, Helen. This obviously isn't a call girl and her client. Prostitutes don't generally give out their keys.'
From his position near the tiny kitchen, St James was scrutinizing the room. Its furnishings were expensive, but they told little about the inhabitant. And there were no personal objects on display: no photographs, no mementoes, no collection of any kind. Indeed, the entire bed-sitting room had the look of having been put together by a decorator for a hotel. He walked to the desk.
The red light of the answering machine was blinking, indicating a message. He pushed the button. A man's voice said, 'Colin Sage. I'm phoning about the advert,' and he gave a number for a return call. A second message was much the same. St James wrote down the numbers and gave them to Lady Helen.
'An advertisement?' she asked. 'That can't be how she makes her arrangements.'
'You said there was a savings book?' St James replied.
Deborah came to his side. 'Here,' she said. 'There's this as well.'
From a drawer she took both the savings book and a manila folder. He looked at the latter first, frowning down at the neatly typed list of names and addresses. Mostly London. The furthest was Brighton. Behind him, he heard Lynley going through the chest of drawers.
'What is this?' Meditatively St James asked the question of himself, but Deborah replied.
'We thought of clients at first. But, of course, that can't be. There are women on the list. And, even if there weren't any women at all, it's hard to imagine anyone managing to…' She hesitated. St James looked up. Her cheeks had coloured.
'Service this many men?' he asked.
'Well, of course, she's indicated on the tab that they're just prospects, hasn't she? So at first we thought that she was using the list to… before we actually opened up the file and saw… I mean, how exactly would a prostitute build up a clientele? Through word of mouth?' Her colour deepened. 'Lord. Is that a dreadful sort of pun?'
He chuckled at the question. 'What did you imagine she was doing with this list — sending out brochures?'
Deborah gave a rueful laugh. 'I'm hopeless at this sort of thing. A hundred clues shrieking to be noticed, and I can't make sense of a single one.'
'I thought you'd decided she wasn't a prostitute. I thought we'd all decided that.'
'It's just something about the way she talked and her appearance.'
'Perhaps we can let go of whatever her appearance might have suggested,' Lynley said.
Across the room, he stood at the wardrobe with Lady Helen at his side. He had taken down the four hatboxes from the top shelf, had opened and placed them on the floor in a line. He was bending over one of these, separating the folds of white tissue paper. From the centre of the nest which the paper created, he withdrew a wig. Long black hair, wispy fringe. He balanced it on his fist.
Deborah gaped at it. Lady Helen sighed.
'Wonderful,' she said. 'The woman actually wears a wig! So what little we know of her — not to mention Deborah's description — must be virtually meaningless. She's a chimera, isn't she? False fingernails. False hair.' She glanced at the chest of drawers. Something seemed to occur to her, for she went to them, pulled one open, and fingered through the undergarments. She held up a black brassiere. 'False everything else.'
St James joined them. He took the wig from Lynley and carried it to the window where he opened the curtains and held it under the natural light. The texture told him that the hair was real.
'Did you know she wore a wig, Deb?' Lynley asked.
'No, of course not. How could I have known?'
'It's a high-quality piece,' St James said. 'You'd have no cause to think it a wig.' He examined it closely, running his fingers across the inner webbing. As he did so, a hair came loose — not one of those which comprised the wig, but another shorter hair that had detached itself from the wearer, becoming caught up in the webbing. St James plucked it completely free, held it up to the light, and handed the wig back to Lynley.
'What is it, Simon?' Lady Helen asked.
He didn't reply at once. Instead, he stared at the single hair between his fingers, realizing what it had to imply and coming to terms with what that implication had to mean. There was only one explanation that made any sense, only one explanation that accounted for Tina Cogin's disappearance. Still, he took a moment to test his theory.
'Have you worn this, Deborah?'
'I? No. What makes you think that?'
At the desk, he took a piece of white paper from the top drawer. He placed the hair on this and carried both back to the light.
'The hair,' he said. 'It's red.'
He looked up at Deborah and saw her expression change from wonder to realization.
'Is it possible?' he asked her, for since she was the only one who had seen them both she was also the only one who could possibly confirm it.
'Oh, Simon. I'm no good at this. I don't know. I don't know.'
'But you saw her. You were with her. She gave you a drink.'
'The drink,' Deborah said. She dashed from the room. In a moment, the others heard her door crash back against the wall of her flat.
Lady Helen spoke. 'What is it? You can't possibly be thinking Deborah has anything to do with all this. The woman's incognita. That's all it is, plain and simple. She's been in disguise.'
St James placed the piece of paper on the desk. He placed the hair on top of it. He heard over and over that single word. Incognita, incognita. What a monumental joke.
'My God,' he said. 'She was telling everyone she met. Tina Cogin. Tina Cogin. The name's a bloody anagram.'
Deborah flew into the room, in one hand the photograph she had brought with her from Cornwall, in the other hand a small card. She handed both to St James.
'Turn them over,' she said.
He didn't have to do so. He knew already that the handwriting would be identical on each.
'It's the card she gave me, Simon. The recipe for her drink. And on the back of Mick's picture…'
Lynley joined them, taking the card and the photograph from St James. 'God almighty,' he murmured.
'What on earth is it?' Lady Helen asked.
'The reason Harry Cambrey's been building Mick's reputation as a real man's man, I should guess,' St James said.
Deborah poured boiling water into the teapot and carried it to the small oak table which they had moved into the sitting area of her flat. They took places round it, Deborah and Lynley sitting on the day bed, Lady Helen and St James on ladder-back chairs. St James picked up the savings book which lay among the other items attached to Mick Cambrey's life and his death: the manila folder entitled Prospects, the card upon which he'd written the phone number of Islington-London, the Talisman sandwich wrapper, his photograph, the recipe for the drink which he'd given to Deborah on the day that he'd appeared — as Tina Cogin — at her door.
'These ten withdrawals from the account,' Lady Helen said, pointing to them. 'They match what Tina — what Mick Cambrey paid in rent. And the time works right with the facts, Simon. September to June.'
'Long before he and Mark began dealing in cocaine,' Lynley said.
'So that's not how he got the money for the flat?' Deborah asked.
'Not according to Mark.'
Lady Helen ran her finger down the page which listed the deposits. She said, 'But he's put money in every two weeks for a year. Where on earth did it come from?'
St James flipped to the front of the book, scanning the entries. 'Obviously, he had another source of
