A Suitable Vengeance

hardly know what they've developed, would they?'

'Would it be safe to assume that someone at one of these associate labs would have access to results? Not only that local lab's results but London's results as well.'

'Of course.'

'And he or she might recognize an inconsistency? Perhaps some detail glossed over in the rush to market a new product?'

Malverd's benign expression altered. He thrust out his chin and pulled it back as if adjusting his spinal cord. 'That's hardly likely, Mr St James. This is a place of medicine, not a science fiction novel.' He got to his feet. 'I must get back to my own lab now. Until we've a new man to take over Twenty-Five, I'm in a bit of a frazzle. I'm sure you understand.'

St James followed him out of the office. Malverd handed the secretary both of the engagement diaries and said, 'They were in order, Mrs Courtney. I do congratulate you on that.'

She responded coldly as she took the diaries from him. 'Mr Brooke kept everything in order, Mr Malverd.'

St James heard the name with a rush of surprise. 'Mr Brooke?' he asked. It couldn't be possible.

Malverd proved that it was. He led him back into the lab. 'Justin Brooke,' he said. 'Senior biochemist in charge of this lot. Bloody fool was killed last weekend in an accident in Cornwall. I thought at first that's why you'd come.'

22

Before he nodded at the constable to unlock the interrogation room's door, Lynley looked through the small, thick-glassed window, a plastic tray of tea and sandwiches in his hand. Head bowed, his brother was sitting at the table. He still wore the striped sweatshirt that MacPherson had given him in Whitechapel, but whatever protection it had afforded him earlier was no longer adequate. Peter shook – arms, legs, head and shoulders. Lynley had no doubt that every internal muscle was quivering as well.

When they had left him in the room thirty minutes before – alone save for a guard outside to make sure he did nothing to harm himself – Peter had asked no question; he had made neither statement nor request. He merely stood, hands on the back of one of the chairs, glancing over the impersonal room. One table, four chairs, a dull beige linoleum floor, two ceiling lights only one of which worked, a red, dented tin ashtray on the table. All he had done before taking a seat was to look at Lynley and open his mouth as if to speak. His face limned entreaty upon every feature. But he said nothing. It was as if Peter were finally seeing how irreparable was the damage he had done to his relationship with his brother. If he believed that blood tied them inextricably to each other, that he could call upon that blood to save himself in some way, he apparently did not intend to mention the fact now.

Lynley nodded at the constable, who unlocked the door and relocked it once Lynley had entered. Always a sound of grim finality, Lynley found that the key grating upon metal was even more so now that it was being turned against the freedom of his own brother. He hadn't expected to feel this way. He hadn't expected to feel the desire to rescue or the exigent need to protect. For some delusional reason, he had actually believed that he would feel a closure had been reached once Peter finally faced the criminal implications of the lifestyle he'd chosen these past few years. But, now that the justice system had caught Peter up, Lynley found himself feeling not at all righteously vindicated at having been the brother who had chosen the clean, the moral, the ethical life, the life guaranteed to make him society's darling. Rather, he felt himself the hypocrite and knew beyond a doubt that if punishment were to be meted out to the greater sinner – the man who had been given the most and had therefore thrown the most away – he would be its rightful recipient.

Peter looked up, saw him, looked away. The expression on his face was not sullen, however. It was dazed by both confusion and fear.

'We both need something to eat,' Lynley said. He sat opposite his brother and placed the tray on the table between them. When Peter made no move towards it, Lynley unwrapped a sandwich, fumbling with the seal. The crinkling of the paper made that curious sound like fire eating wood. It was unusually loud. 'The Yard food's unspeakable. Either sawdust or institutional mush. I had these brought in from a restaurant down the street. Try the pastrami. It's my favourite.' Peter didn't move. Lynley reached for the tea. 'I can't recall how much sugar you take. I've brought a few packets. There's a carton of milk as well.' He stirred his own tea, unwrapped his sandwich, and tried to avoid considering the inherent idiocy of his behaviour. He knew he was acting like a hovering mother, as if he believed that food was going to take the illness away.

Peter raised his head. 'Not hungry.' His lips, Lynley saw, were cracked, raw from having been bitten during the half-hour in which he'd been left alone. In one spot they had begun to bleed, although already the blood was drying in a ragged, dark blot. Other blood – in the form of small, crusty scabs – ringed the inside of his nose, while dry skin caked his eyelids, embedding itself between his lashes.

'The appetite goes first,' Peter said. 'Then everything else. You don't realize what's happening. You think you're fine, the best you've ever been. But you don't eat. You don't sleep. You work less and less and finally not at all. You don't do anything but coke. Sex. Sometimes you do sex. But in the end you don't even do that. Coke's so much better.'

Lynley carefully placed his sandwich, untouched, on the paper in which it had been wrapped. He was suddenly unhungry. And wanting to be nothing more than unfeeling as well. He reached for his tea and circled his hands around it. A dull but comforting warmth emanated from the cup.

'Will you let me help you?'

Peter's right hand gripped his left. He made no reply.

'I can't change the kind of brother I was when you needed me,' Lynley said. 'I can only offer you what I am right now, however little that may be.'

Peter seemed to withdraw at this. Or perhaps it was that the cold – within and without – was causing him to diminish in size, conserving energy, garnering whatever small resources he had left. When he finally answered, his lips scarcely moved. Lynley had to strain to hear him.

'I wanted to be like you.'

'Like me? Why?'

'You were perfect. You were my standard. I wanted to be like you. When I found I couldn't, I just gave it up. If I couldn't be you, I didn't want to be anything.'

Peter's words sounded the sure ring of finality. They sounded not only like the end of an interview that had barely begun, but also like the end of any possibility to put things right between them. Lynley sought something - words, images, a common experience – that would allow him to reach back through those fifteen years and touch the little boy he had abandoned at Howenstow. But he could find nothing. There was no way to go back and no way to make amends.

He felt leaden. He reached in his jacket pocket, brought out his cigarette case and lighter, and lay them on the table. The case had been his father's, and the elaborately engraved A on the cover had worn through time. Portions of it had disappeared altogether, but the case was familiar to him, dear to him, nicked and dented with age though it was. He wouldn't have considered replacing it with another. Staring at it – small rectangular symbol of everything he had run from, all the areas of his life he had chosen to deny, the welter of emotions he had refused to face – he found the words.

'It was knowing that she was sleeping with Roderick while Father was alive. I couldn't stand that, Peter. It didn't matter to me that they'd fallen in love, that they hadn't set out to but that it just happened between them. It didn't matter that Roderick had every intention of marrying her when she was free. It didn't matter that she still loved Father – and I knew she loved him, because I saw how she acted with him even after she'd begun the affair with Roderick. Still, I didn't understand, and I couldn't abide my own blind ignorance. How could she love them both? How could she be devoted to one – take care of him, bathe him, read to him, see to him hour after hour and day after day, feed him, sit with him… all of that – and still sleep with the other? And how could Roderick go into Father's bedroom – talk to him about his condition – and all the time know that he would be having Mother directiy afterwards? I couldn't understand it. I didn't see how it was possible. I wanted life simple, and it wasn't. They're savages, I thought. They have no sense of propriety. They don't know how to behave. They have to be taught. I'll teach them. I'll show them. I'll punish them.' Lynley took a cigarette and slid the case across the table to his