weapons of his own and the nerve to use them.
“Did you look for a connection between them, Mr. Shepherd? Did you ever dig for a less salubrious truth than the one you came up with?”
“My investigation stood firm on its own,” he said. “Clitheroe saw it that way. Coroner saw it that way. Whatever connection I may have failed to see, I’ll put money on its linking someone else to his death, not Juliet Spence. Now if you’ll excuse me…” He swung himself into the car and jammed the key into the ignition. The engine roared. The headlamps flared. He ground the gears as he shifted to reverse.
Lynley leaned into the car for another few words, which St. James couldn’t hear beyond “…this with you…” as he pressed something into Shepherd’s hand. Then the car slid down the driveway to the street, the gears ground another time, and the constable soared off.
Lynley watched him go. St. James watched Lynley. His face was grim. “I’m not enough like my father,” Lynley said. “He would have dragged him bodily into the street, stepped on his face, and probably broken six or eight of his fingers. He did that once, you know, outside a pub in St. Just. He was twenty-two. Someone had made fast and loose with Augusta’s affections and he took care of the situation. ‘No one breaks my sister’s heart,’ he said.”
“That doesn’t solve much.”
“No.” Lynley sighed. “But I’ve always thought it would feel so damn good.”
“Anything atavistic generally does, for the moment. It’s what follows that causes complications.”
They went back down the drive where Lynley picked up the odd bits carton. Perhaps a quarter of a mile down the road, they could see the tail lights of the Land Rover gleaming. Shepherd had pulled to the verge for some reason. His headlamps illuminated the gnarled form of a hedgerow. They watched for a moment to see if he would drive on. When he didn’t, they began their walk back to the inn.
“What next?” St. James asked.
“London,” Lynley said. “It’s the only direction I can think of at the moment, as strong-arming suspects doesn’t appear to be something that’s going to have any appreciable effect.”
“Will you use Havers?”
“Speaking of strong-arming.” Lynley chuckled. “No, I’ll have to see to it myself. Since I’ve sent her to Truro on my credit cards, I don’t imagine she’ll be hell-bent on getting down there and back in the customary twenty-four police hours. I’d say three days… with first-class accommodations all the way, no doubt. So I’ll handle London.”
“What can we do to help?”
“Enjoy your holiday. Take Deborah on a drive. Cumbria, perhaps.”
“The lakes?”
“That’s a thought. But I understand Aspatria’s quite nice in January.”
St. James smiled. “That’s going to be one hell of a day trip. We’ll have to be up by fi ve. You’ll owe me for this. And if there’s nothing to be uncovered about the Spence woman there, you’ll owe me in spades.”
“As always.”
Ahead of them, a black cat slinked out from between two buildings, something grey and limp between its jaws. This the animal deposited on the pavement and began tapping gently in the mindlessly cruel way of all cats, hoping for more tormenting play before a fi nal pounce ended the captive’s fruitless hope for survival. As they approached, the animal froze, hunched over its prize, fur bristling, waiting. St. James glanced down to see a small rat blinking hopelessly from between the cat’s paws. He thought about frightening the cat away. The game of death it played was unnecessarily heartless. But rats, he knew, were breeders of disease. It was best — if not most merciful — to let the cat continue.
“What would you have done had Polly named Shepherd?” St. James asked.
“Arrested the bastard. Turned him over to Clitheroe CID. Had his job.”
“And since she didn’t name him?”
“I’ll have to come at it from another direction.”
“To step on his face?”
“Metaphorically. I’m my father’s own son in wish, if not in deed. It’s nothing I’m proud of. But there it is.”
“So what did you give Shepherd just before he drove off?”
Lynley adjusted the carton beneath his arm. “I gave him something to think about.”
Colin remembered with perfect clarity the final time his father had struck him. He was sixteen years old. Foolish, too hot-headed to think of the consequences of defi ance, he had risen angrily and bodily to his mother’s defence. Shoving his chair back from the dinner table — he could still recall the sound it made as it scraped across the floor and slammed into the wall — he’d shouted, Just leave her alone, Pa! and grabbed his father’s arms to keep him from slapping her face another time.
Pa’s rage always took root in something inconsequential, and because they never knew when to expect his anger to fl are into violence, he was that much more terrifying. Anything could set him off: the condition of a beef joint at dinner, a button missing from his shirt, a request for money to pay the gas bill, a comment about the hour at which he had arrived home the previous night. This particular evening it was a telephone call from Colin’s biology master. Another exam failed, lessons incomplete, was there a problem at home, Mr. Tranville wondered.
His mother had revealed that much over the dinner table, tentatively, as if attempting to telegraph her husband a message she was unwilling to say in front of their child. “Colin’s teacher asked if there were problems, Ken. Here at home. He said counselling might—”
Which was as far as she’d got. Pa said, “Counselling? Did I hear you right? Counselling?” in a tone that should have told her that she’d have been wiser to eat quietly and keep the telephone call to herself.
But instead, she said, “He can’t study, Ken, if things are in chaos. You see that, don’t you?” in a voice that pleaded for reason but only succeeded in betraying her fear.
Pa thrived on fear. He loved to feed twigs of intimidation into its fire. He set down his knife first, then his fork. He pushed back his chair from the table. He said, “Tell me about all this chaos, Clare.” When she read his intentions and said she supposed it was nothing, really, his father said, “No. Tell me. I want to hear.” When she didn’t cooperate, he got up. He said, “Answer me, Clare,” and when she said, “Nothing. Do eat your meal, Ken,” he was on her.
He’d only managed to strike her three times — one hand twisted in her hair and the other smacking harder each time she cried out — when Colin grabbed him. His father’s response was the same as it had been from Colin’s childhood. Women’s faces were meant to be abused with the open hand. On boy children a real man used his fi sts.
The difference this time was that Colin was bigger. And while he was as afraid of his father as he’d always been, he was also angry. Anger and fear washed his body with adrenaline. When Pa struck him, for the first time in his life, Colin struck back. It had taken more than five minutes for his father to beat him into submission. He did it with his fists, his belt, and his feet. But when it was over, the delicate balance of power had shifted. And when Colin said, “I’ll kill you next time, you fi lthy bastard. Just see if I won’t,” he saw for an instant, reflected on his father’s face, that he too was capable of inspiring fear.
It had been a source of pride to Colin that his father had never struck his mother again, that his mother had filed for divorce a month later, and most of all that they were rid of the bastard because of
On the side of the road leading out of Win-slough, Colin sat in the Land Rover and rolled between his palms the piece of material from Polly’s skirt which the inspector had pressed into his hand. All of it had been such a pleasure: feeling the sting of her flesh against his palm, tearing the material so easily from her body, tasting the salty sweat of her terror, hearing her cries, her pleas, and especially her choked sob of pain — no moan of sexual arousal now, Polly, is this what you wanted, is this how you hoped it would happen between us? — and finally accepting the triumph of her numb defeat. He slammed into her, he ploughed her, he mastered her, all the time saying cow bitch sow cunt in his father’s voice.
He’d done it all in a storm of blind rage and desperation, frantic to keep the memory and the truth of Annie at bay.
Colin pressed the piece of material to his closed eyes and tried not to think about either of them, Polly or his
