A Suitable Vengeance

3

Peter Lynley hadn't chosen his Whitechapel flat for either amenities or location. Of the former, there were none, unless one could call four walls and two windows – both painted shut – a strong selling feature. As to the latter, the flat indeed had ease of access to an Underground station, but the building itself was of pre-Victorian vintage, surrounded by others of a similar age, and nothing had been done to clean or renovate either buildings or neighbourhood in at least thirty years. However, both the flat and its location served Peter's needs, which were few. And, more importantly, his wallet, which as of today was nearly empty.

The way he had it worked out, they could make it another fortnight if they played it conservatively and held themselves to just five lines a night. All right, perhaps six. Then during the day they'd start looking for work in earnest. A job in sales for him. New performances for Sasha. He had the brains and the personality for sales. And Sasha still had her art. She could use it in Soho. They'd want her there. Hell, they'd probably never seen anything like her in Soho. It would be just like Oxford, with a bare stage, a single spotlight, and Sasha on a chair, letting the audience cut her clothes off, daring them to cut off everything. 'Get in touch with yourself. Know what you feel. Say what you want.' All the time she'd be smiling, all the time superior, all the time the only person in the room who knew how to be proud of who and what

she was. Head high, held confidently, arms at her sides. I am her posture declared. I am. I am.

Where was she? Peter wondered.

He checked the time. His watch was an unattractive, second-hand Timex that managed to exude an air of unreliability simply by existing. He'd sold his Rolex some time ago and had quickly discovered that relying on this current piece for accuracy was just about as ridiculous as relying on Sasha to make a score on her own without latching on to a copper's nark by mistake.

He avoided dwelling upon that thought by shaking his wrist anxiously and peering at the watch. Had its blasted hands even moved in the last half-hour? He held it to his ear, swore in disbelief at the gentle ticking. Could it only have been two hours since she'd left? It seemed like ages.

Restlessly, he got up from the sagging sofa, one of the room's three pieces of fourth-hand furniture, if one didn't count the cardboard cartons in which they kept their clothes or the overturned vegetable-crate that held their only lamp. The sofa unfolded into a lumpy bed. Sasha griped about it daily, saying it was doing in her back, saying she hadn't had a decent hour's sleep in at least a month.

Where was she? Peter went to one of the windows and flicked back its covering, a bedsheet crudely fashioned into a curtain by shoving a rusting rod through its hem. He gazed through the pane. It was grimy inside as well as out.

As Peter searched the street for Sasha's familiar form -for a glimpse of the old carpet-bag satchel she always carried – he took a dirty handkerchief from the hip pocket of his blue jeans and wiped his nose. It was an automatic reaction, done without thought. And the brief spurt of pain that accompanied it was gone in an instant and thus easily ignored as inconsequential. Without looking at the linen or examining the new, rust-coloured stains upon it, he replaced the handkerchief and chewed with rabbit bites on the side of his index finger.

In the distance, at the mouth of the narrow street in which they lived, pedestrians passed in Brick Lane, commuters on their way home for the day. Peter tried to focus upon them, making a deliberate exercise of attempting to pick Sasha out of the bobbing heads on their way to or from Aldgate East Station. She'd come on the Northern, he told himself, make a switch to the Metropolitan and home. So where was she? What was so hard about one buy, after all? Give over the money. Get the stuff. What was taking so long?

He mulled over the question. What was taking Sasha so long? For that matter, what was to prevent the little bitch from taking off with his cash, making the score on her own, and never coming back to the flat at all? In fact, why should she bother to return? She'd have what she wanted. That's why she continued to hang about.

Peter rejected the idea as completely impossible. Sasha wouldn't leave. She said only last week that she'd never had it as good as she had it from him. Didn't she beg for it practically every night?

Pensively, Peter wiped his nose on the back of his hand. When had they last done it? Last night, wasn't it? She was laughing like crazy and he'd caught her up against the wall and… wasn't that last night? Sammy from across the hall pounding on the door and telling them to hold it down, and Sasha shrieking and scratching and gasping for breath – only she wasn't shrieking, she was laughing – and her head kept bouncing back against the wall and he didn't finish with her, couldn't finish, but it didn't matter at the time because both of them were up in the clouds.

That was it. Last night. And she'd be back when she scored.

With his teeth, he pulled at the rough edge of a fingernail.

So. What if she couldn't make the buy? She'd talked big enough this afternoon about Hampstead, a house near the heath where deals went down if the money was right. So where was she? How long could it take to get there and back? Where the hell was she?

Peter grinned, tasted blood where he'd bitten through the skin. It was time for control. He inhaled. He stretched. He touched his toes.

It didn't matter anyway. He had no real need of it. He could stop any time. Everyone knew that. One could stop any time. Still and all, he was something with it. Master manipulator, king of the world.

The door opened behind him, and he spun to see that Sasha was back. In the doorway, she pushed her lank hair off her face and watched him warily. Her stance reminded him of a cornered hare.

'Where is it?' he asked.

An emotion flickered across her features. She kicked the door closed and went to the sofa where she sat on its threadbare brown cushions, her back to him, her head dropped forward. Peter felt the skeletal fingers of warning dance against his skin.

'Where is it?'

'I didn't… I couldn't…' Her shoulders started shaking.

Control disintegrated in an instant.

'You couldn't what? What in hell's going on?' He dashed to the window and inched back the curtain. Christ, had she blown it? Had she been followed by the police? He peered at the street. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. No unmarked police car held occupants busily observing the building. No van stood illegally against the kerb. No plain-clothes policeman loitered beneath the street-lamp. There was nothing.

He turned back to her. She was watching him over her shoulder. Her eyes – like a dog's curious shade of yellow and brown – were watery, red-rimmed. Her lips trembled with defeat. He knew.

'Jesus Christ!' He flew across the room, shoved her to one side, and grabbed the carpet-bag. He dumped its contents on to the sofa and sifted through them. His hands were clumsy, his frantic search useless. 'Where the hell…? Where's the stuff, Sasha? Where is it? Where?'

'I didn't-'

'Then, where's the cash?' Sirens shrieked in his head. The walls tilted in. 'Sasha, what the fuck have you done with the cash?'

Sasha reared up at that, right off the sofa and across the room. 'That's it?' she shouted. ''Where the fuck is the cash?' Not 'Where've you been?' Not 'I've been worried'. But 'Where the fuck is the cash?'' She whipped back the sleeve of her stained, purple jersey. Deep scratches covered her jaundiced skin. Bruises were rising to the surface there. 'Look for yourself! I was mugged, you little bastard!'

'You were mugged}'' The question climbed a scale of disbelief. 'Don't give me that crap. What've you done with my cash?'

'I told you! Your sodding wad of cash was pinched on the bloody platform of the bloody station. I've spent the last two hours socializing with the bloody Hampstead police. Ring them yourself if you don't believe me.' And she began to sob.

He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. 'Christ, you can't do anything, can you?'

'No, I can't. And neither can you. If you'd got it yourself last Friday like you said you would-'

'I told you, God damn it. How many times do I have to repeat it? It didn't work out.'

'So you got me to do it, didn't you?'