Payment In Blood Part 21

"It depends on the level of importance attached to the man's position," St. James replied. "Consider Profumo's case as an example. He was secretary of state for war, carrying on a relationship with Christine Keeler, a call girl who also just happened to be seeing a man called Yevgeni Ivanov."

"Who was attached to the Soviet emba.s.sy but was reportedly a Soviet intelligence agent," Vinney added and smoothly continued. "In an interview with the police on an entirely different matter, Christine Keeler volunteered the information that she had been asked to discover from John Profumo the date on which certain atomic secrets were to be pa.s.sed to West Germany by the Americans."

"A lovely person," Lady Helen commented.

"This leaked to the press-as perhaps she intended-and things heated up for Profumo."

"And for the government as well," Havers said.

Vinney nodded his agreement. "The Labour party demanded that Profumo's relationship with Keeler be debated before the House of Commons while the Liberal party demanded the prime minister's resignation because of it."

"Why?" Deborah asked.

"They claimed that as head of security services, the prime minister was either aware of all the facts on Profumo's relationship with the call girl and was hiding them or he was guilty of incompetence and neglect. However," Vinney finished, "the truth well might be that the prime minister merely felt he could not survive another serious case involving the resignation of one of his ministers, as would likely occur if Profumo's behaviour was examined closely. So he gambled that nothing against Profumo would come out. If the Profumo affair came to light so soon after the Va.s.sall case, chances are the prime minister would have to resign."

"Va.s.sall?" Lady Helen's body tensed. White-faced, she leaned forward in her chair.

Vinney looked at her, clearly perplexed by her reaction to his words. "William Va.s.sall. He was sentenced to prison in October of sixty-two. He was an Admiralty clerk who was spying for the Soviets."

"My G.o.d. My G.o.d!" Lady Helen cried. She got to her feet, spun to St. James. "Simon! It's the line from the play that all the Rintouls reacted to. 'Another Va.s.sall.' The character was running off with no time to return to London. He said he wouldn't become another Va.s.sall. And they knew what it meant when they heard it. They knew! Francesca, Elizabeth, Lord and Lady Stinhurst! All of them knew! This was no call-girl relationship! It was nothing of the sort!"

St. James was already pushing himself out of his chair. "Tommy will move on this, Helen."

"On what?" Deborah cried.

"On Geoffrey Rintoul, my love. Another Va.s.sall. It seems that Geoffrey Rintoul was a Soviet mole. And G.o.d help them, but every member of his family and a good part of the government appeared to know it."

LYNLEY HAD left the doors open between his dining and drawing rooms, largely so that he could hear the music from his stereo while he was eating dinner. For the past few days, food had held little attraction for him.Tonight was no different. Because of this, he pushed most of his lamb aside uneaten and instead gave himself over to the pa.s.sion of a Beethoven symphony that swelled from the next room. He moved away from the table and leaned back in his chair with his legs stretched out before him.

In the last twenty-four hours, he had avoided thinking about what the case he was building against Rhys Davies-Jones was going to do to Helen Clyde. Steadfastly forcing himself to keep moving forward from fact to fact, he had managed to keep Helen out of his mind entirely. But she intruded now.

He understood her unwillingness to believe in Davies-Jones' guilt. She was, after all, involved with the man. But how would she react when she was faced with the knowledge-irrefutable and supported by a score of facts-that she had been cold-bloodedly used to facilitate a murder? And how could he possibly protect her from the devastation that knowledge was going to cause in her life? In thinking about this, Lynley found that he could no longer avoid looking directly at the truth of how d.a.m.nably much he missed Helen and how irrevocably he might lose her if he continued his pursuit of Davies-Jones to its logical conclusion.

"My lord?" His valet was standing hesitantly in the doorway, rubbing the top of his left shoe against the back of his right leg as if in the need to make adjustments to his already immaculate appearance. He ran a hand over the top of his perfectly groomed hair.

Beau Brummel of Eaton Terrace, Lynley thought, and said encouragingly, "Denton?" when it appeared that the young man might go on with his grooming indefinitely.

"Lady Helen Clyde's just in the ante, my lord. With Mr. St. James and Sergeant Havers." Denton's expression was a model of nonchalance, something he no doubt considered suitable to the occasion. However, his tone conveyed some considerable surprise, and Lynley wondered how much Denton already knew-in that omniscient way of servants-about his rift with Lady Helen. He had, after all, been seeing Lady Helen's Caroline rather seriously for the past three years.

"Well, don't leave them standing in the hall," Lynley said.

"The drawing room, then?" Denton enquired solicitously. Much too solicitously for Lynley's liking.

He rose with a nod, irritably thinking, I hardly expect they want to see me in the kitchen.

The three of them were standing in a fairly tight knot at one end of the room when he joined them a moment later. They had chosen a position beneath the portrait of Lynley's father, and under the cover of the music, they were speaking to one another in hushed, urgent voices. But his entrance brought their conversation to an end. And then, as if his presence were a stimulus to do so, they began to shed their coats, hats, gloves, and m.u.f.flers. The action had the appearance of buying a bit of time. Lynley turned off the stereo, replaced the alb.u.m in its jacket, and faced them curiously. They seemed unnaturally subdued.

"We've come across some information that you need to have, Tommy," St. James said, in very much the manner of a planned introduction.

"What sort of information?"

"It concerns Lord Stinhurst."

Lynley's eyes went at once to Sergeant Havers. She met them unflinchingly. "Are you part of this, Havers?"

"Yes, I am. Sir."

"It's my doing, Tommy," St. James said before Lynley could speak again. "Barbara found Geoffrey Rintoul's grave on the Wester-brae grounds, and she showed it to me. It seemed worth looking into."

Lynley maintained his calm with an effort. "Why?"

"Because of Phillip Gerrard's will," Lady Helen said impulsively. "Francesca's husband. He said he wouldn't allow himself to be buried on the grounds of Westerbrae. Because of the telephone calls Lord Stinhurst placed on the morning of the murder. They weren't only to cancel his appointments, Tommy. Because-"

Lynley looked at St. James, feeling the blow of treachery strike him from the single most unexpected quarter. "My G.o.d. You've told them about my conversation with Stinhurst."

St. James had the grace to drop his eyes. "I'm sorry. Truly. I felt I had no choice."

"No choice," Lynley repeated incredulously.

Lady Helen took a hesitant step towards him, her hand extended. "Please, Tommy. I know how you must feel. As if we're all against you. But that isn't it at all. Please. Listen."

Compa.s.sion from Helen was just about the last thing Lynley could bear at the moment. He struck out at her cruelly, without a thought. "I think we're all perfectly clear on where your interests lie, Helen. You can hardly be the most objective a.s.sessor of truth, considering your involvement in this case."

Lady Helen's hand fell. Her face was stricken with pain. St. James spoke, his voice cold with quick anger. "Nor can you, Tommy, if the truth be faced among us." He let a moment pa.s.s. Then he went on in a different tone, but as implacably as before. "Lord Stinhurst lied to you about his brother and his wife. First and last. A good possibility is that Scotland Yard knew he planned to do so and sanctioned it. The Yard chose you deliberately to handle this case because you were the most likely person to believe whatever Stinhurst told you. His brother and his wife never had an affair, Tommy. Now do you want to hear the facts, or shall we be on our way?"

Lynley felt as if ice were melting into his bones. "What in G.o.d's name are you talking about?"

St. James moved towards a chair. "That's what we've come to tell you. But I think we all could do with a brandy."

WHILE ST. JAMES outlined the information they had gathered on Geoffrey Rintoul, Barbara Havers watched Lynley, gauging his reaction. She knew how resistant he would be to the facts, considering Rintoul's privileged background and how closely it resembled Lynley's own. Everything in Lynley's upper-cla.s.s const.i.tution was going to act in concert, provoking him to disclaim each of their facts and conjectures. And the policewoman in Barbara knew exactly how insubstantial some of their facts were. The inescapable reality was that if Geoffrey Rintoul had indeed been a Soviet mole-working for years within that sensitive area of the Defence Ministry-the only way they would know for a certainty would be if his brother Stuart admitted it to them.

Ideally, they needed access to an MI5 computer. Even a file on Geoffrey Rintoul marked inaccessible would verify that the man had been under some sort of investigation by the counterintelligence agency. But they had no access to such a computer and no source within MI5 who could validate their story. Even Scotland Yard's Special Branch would be of no service to them if the Yard itself had sanctioned Lord Stinhurst's fabrication about his brother's death in Scotland in the first place. So it all came down to Lynley's ability to see past his tangle of prejudices against Rhys Davies-Jones. It all came down to his ability to look the truth squarely in the face. And the truth was that Lord Stinhurst, not Davies-Jones, had the strongest possible motive for wanting Joy Sinclair dead. Provided with the keys to Joy's room by his own sister, he had murdered the woman whose play-cleverly revised without his prior knowledge-had threatened to reveal his family's darkest secret.

"So when Stinhurst heard the name Va.s.sall in Joy's play, he had to know what she was writing about," St. James concluded. "And consider how Geoffrey Rintoul's background supports his having been a spy for the Soviets, Tommy. He went to Cambridge in the thirties. We know that Soviet recruiting went on like the devil during that period. Rintoul read economics, which no doubt made him even more receptive to arguments in favour of the teachings of Marx. And then his behaviour during the war. Requesting rea.s.signment to the Balkans gave him contact with the Russians. I shouldn't be at all surprised to discover that his control was in the Balkans as well. No doubt that's when he received his most important instructions: to work his way into the Ministry of Defence. G.o.d knows how much sensitive data he supplied the Soviets over the years."

No one said anything when St. James finished speaking. Their attention was on Lynley. They had taken their seats under the portrait of the seventh Earl of Asherton, and as they watched, Lynley lifted his eyes to his father's face as if in the need of counsel. His expression was unreadable.

"Tell me again what Stinhurst's message was to Willingate," he said at last.

St. James leaned forward. "He said that resurfacing forced him to put Willingate off a second time this month. And to telephone Westerbrae if that presented a problem."

"Once we discovered exactly who Willingate is, the message began to make more sense," Barbara continued. She felt a sense of urgency, a need to convince. "He seemed to be telling Willingate that the fact that Geoffrey Rintoul had been a mole had surfaced for the second time, the first time being on that New Year's Eve of 1962. So Willingate was to telephone Westerbrae to a.s.sist with a problem. The problem being Joy Sinclair's death and the script she was writing that exposed all the details of Geoffrey's unsavoury past."

Lynley nodded.

Barbara went on. "Of course, Lord Stinhurst couldn't telephone Willingate himself, could he? Any research into the Westerbrae telephone records would have shown us that call. So he placed the one call to his secretary. She did the rest. And Willingate, understanding the message, did telephone him, sir. Twice, I should guess. Remember? Mary Agnes told me she heard two calls come in. They had to be from Willingate. One to find out what in G.o.d's name had happened. And the second to tell Stinhurst what he'd managed to set up with Scotland Yard."

"Remember as well," St. James said, "that according to Inspector Macaskin, Strathclyde CID never requested the Yard's a.s.sistance in the case at all. They were merely informed that the Yard would take over. It seems likely that Willingate arranged all that, telephoning someone in high command at the Yard to set the investigation up and then getting back to Stinhurst with the details of who the investigating officer would be. No doubt Stinhurst was more than ready for your appearance on the scene, Tommy. And he had all day to plan out a story that you, a fellow peer, would be likely to believe. It had to be a personal story, one that, as a gentleman, you would be unlikely to repeat. What better choice than his wife's allegedly illegitimate child? It was insidiously clever. He simply didn't take into account that you would confide in me. Nor that I-not very much of a gentleman myself, I'm afraid- would break your confidence. And I'm sorry I did that. Had there been any other way, I'd have said nothing. I hope you believe me."

St. James' last remark bore the sound of conclusion. But after it, Lynley merely reached for the brandy. He poured himself more and pa.s.sed the decanter on to St. James. His hands did not shake, his face did not change. Outside, a horn honked twice on Eaton Terrace. An answering shout rose from a house nearby.

Feeling a rising need to force him into taking a position, Barbara spoke. "The question we were trying to answer on the way here, sir, is why the government would involve themselves in a case like this now. And the answer seems to be that in 1963 they engaged in a cover-up of Rintoul's activities-probably using the Official Secrets Act-in order to spare the prime minister the embarra.s.sment of having a Soviet spy discovered in the high reaches of government so soon upon the heels of the Va.s.sall situation and the Profumo scandal. Since Geoffrey Rintoul was dead, he could do the Defence Ministry no further damage. He could only be of damage to the prime minister himself if the news of his activities leaked. So they kept that from happening. And now, they'd apparently prefer not to have that old cover-up exposed. I suppose it would be rather embarra.s.sing for them. Or maybe they've debts to be paid to the Rintoul family and this is how they're paying them. At any rate, they've covered up again. Only..." Barbara paused, wondering how he would take the final bit of information, knowing only that in spite of their rows and the often insurmountable differences between them, she couldn't be the one to give him such pain.

Lynley took the opportunity himself. "I was to do it for them," he said hollowly. "And Webberly knew it. Right from the beginning."

In the devastation behind the words, Barbara recognised what Lynley was thinking- that this situation proved he was merely an expendable object to his superiors at the Met; that his was not a career with either value or distinction, so that if it were destroyed by the exposure of his even unconscious attempt to cover up the trail of Stinhurst's guilt in a murder investigation, there would be no real loss to anyone when he was dismissed. Never mind the fact that none of this was true. Barbara knew even a moment's belief in it would corrosively erode his pride.

In the past fifteen months, she had loved and hated and come to understand him. But never before had she perceived that his aristocratic background was a source of anguish to him, a burden of family and blood that he managed to carry with an una.s.suming dignity, even in the moments when he most longed to shrug it off.

"How could Joy Sinclair have known all this?" Lynley asked. His face was impeccably, painfully controlled.

"Lord Stinhurst told you that himself. She was there the night Geoffrey died."

"And I didn't even notice that there was nothing about Joy's play in her study." Lynley's voice was heavy with reproach. "Christ, what kind of police work is that?"

"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 m.u.f.flers. The atmosphere was fraught with words needing to be spoken. Lynley took his time about replacing the brandy decanter, gathering the small crystal balloon gla.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.trated the point for Barbara with rare lucidity. She saw the gulf widen between Lynley and Lady Helen, felt its painful impa.s.sability 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 t.i.tle and wealth: Winston Nkata. Once a mainstay of the Brixton Warriors-one of the city's most violent black gangs-the twenty-fiveyear-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 d.a.m.n 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 a.s.sistants 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.

Stinhurst was cooperative enough when Lynley requested a private place to talk. "Come into my office," he said. "Shall my wife..." He hesitated meaningfully.

Lynley, however, had already decided exactly how Lady Stinhurst's presence could be turned to his advantage. Part of him-the better part, he thought-wanted to let her go in peace, and shrank from making her a chessman in the game of fact and fiction. But the other part of him needed her as a tool of blackmail. And he hated that part of himself, even as he knew he would use her.

"I'd like Lady Stinhurst there as well," he said briefly.

With Constable Nkata posted outside the door and instructions to Stinhurst's secretary to put no calls through that were not for the police, Lynley and Havers joined Lord Stinhurst and his wife in the producer's office. It was a room much like the man himself, coldly decorated in black and grey, fitted out with a compulsively neat hardwood desk and luxuriously upholstered wingback chairs, the air holding an almost imperceptible odour of pipe tobacco. The walls were hung with tastefully framed posters of former Stinhurst productions, proclamations of over thirty years of success: Henry V, London; The Three Sisters, Norwich; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Keswick; A Doll's House, London; Private Lives, Exeter; Equus, Brighton; Amadeus, London. At one side of the room were grouped a conference table and chairs. Lynley directed them towards these, unwilling to allow Stinhurst the comfort and command of facing the police across the width of his polished desk.

As Havers rooted for her notebook, Lynley took out the photographs of the inquest as well as the enlargements which Deborah St. James had made. He laid them out on the table wordlessly. If everything St. James had said was true, Stinhurst had no doubt telephoned Sir Kenneth Willingate yesterday afternoon. He would be well fortified for this coming interview. Through a long, sleepless night Lynley had carefully reviewed the various ways he might head off another well-crafted set of lies. He had come to the realisation that Stinhurst did have at least one Achilles' heel. Lynley aimed his first remark in its direction.

"Jeremy Vinney knows the entire story, Lord Stinhurst. I don't know whether he'll write it since for the moment he has no hard evidence to back it up. But I have no doubt that he intends to start looking for that evidence." Lynley straightened the photographs with deliberate attention. "So you can tell me another lie. Or we can explore in detail the one you created for me this past weekend at Westerbrae. Or you can tell the truth. But let me point out to you that had you told me the truth about your brother in the first place, it would probably have gone no further than St. James, in whom I confided. But because you lied to me, and because that lie didn't fit in with your brother's grave in Scotland, Sergeant Havers knows about Geoffrey, as does St. James, as does Lady Helen Clyde, as does Jeremy Vinney. As will everyone with access to my report at Scotland Yard once I file it." Lynley saw Stinhurst's eyes go to his wife. "So what's it to be?" he asked, relaxing into his chair. "Shall we talk about that summer thirty-six years ago when your brother Geoffrey was in Somerset and you travelled the country in the regionals and your wife-"

"Enough," Stinhurst said. He smiled icily. "Hoist with my own petard, Inspector? Bravo."

Lady Stinhurst's hands writhed in her lap. "Stuart, what is all this? What have you told them?"

The question could not have come at a better time. Lynley waited for the man's response. After a long and thoughtful perusal of the police, Stinhurst turned to his wife and began to speak. However, when he did so, it was to prove beyond a doubt that he was a master player in the game of disarmament and surprise.

"I told him you and Geoffrey were lovers," he said. "I claimed that Elizabeth was your child, and that Joy Sinclair's play was about your affair. I told them that she had revised her play without my knowledge to revenge herself upon us for Alec's death. G.o.d forgive me, at least that last part was true enough. I'm sorry."

Lady Stinhurst sat in uncomprehending silence, her mouth contorting with words that would not emerge. One side of her face seemed to collapse with the effort. Finally she managed, "Geoff? You never thought that Geoffrey and I...oh my G.o.d, Stuart!"

Stinhurst started to reach towards his wife, but she cried out involuntarily and shrank from the gesture. He withdrew fractionally, leaving his hand lying on the table between them. The fingers curled, then tightened into the palm.

"No, of course not. But I needed to tell them something. I needed...I had to keep them away from Geoff."

"You needed to tell them...But he's dead." Her face transformed with growing revulsion as she took in the enormity of what her husband had done. "Geoff's dead. And I'm not. Stuart, I'm not! You made a wh.o.r.e out of me to protect a dead man! You sacrificed me! My G.o.d! How could you have done that?"

Stinhurst shook his head. His words were laboured. "Not a dead man. Not dead at all. But alive and in this room. Forgive me if you can. I was a coward, first, last, and always. I was only trying to protect myself."

"From what? You've done nothing! Stuart, for G.o.d's sake. You did nothing that night! How can you say-"

"It isn't true. I couldn't tell you."