A Suitable Vengeance (54 page)

“The protection worked,” St. James said. “People saw him as you wished him to be seen. But in the end, he didn’t need your protection because of the cross-dressing, but because of a story, just as you thought.”

“It was the guns, wasn’t it?” Cambrey asked. “Like I said.”

St. James looked at Lynley as if wanting direction or perhaps permission to add to the man’s mourning. An explanation of the “notes” Cambrey had found in Mick’s desk would do it. Through their real meaning, nearly everything could be revealed. Not only cross-dressing, but dealing drugs as well. Not only spending money frivolously instead of using it to upgrade the newspaper, but filtering much of it off in order to support a double life.

Every delusion, Lynley thought, deserved destruction. Building anything on the foundation of a lie—be it a single relationship or an entire way of life—was to rely upon sand to remain unshifting. While the illusion of solidity might exist for a while, whatever was built would ultimately crumble. The only question seemed to be at what point Harry Cambrey’s inaccurate vision of his son ought to be laid to rest.

Lynley looked at the old man, studying the face that was creased with age and failure, jaundiced by ill health. He saw the stark bones of his chest pressing against his shirt, the ugly nicotine stains on his fingers, the arthritic curl of those fingers as he reached for a bottle of beer on a desk. Let someone else do the telling, he decided.

“We know he was working on a story about a drug called oncozyme,” Lynley said.

St. James followed his lead. “He was spending time in London visiting a company called Islington and a biochemist there called Justin Brooke. Did Mick ever speak of Brooke? Of Islington?”

Cambrey shook his head. “A drug, you say?” He still seemed to be adjusting to the fact that his previous idea about gunrunning had led nowhere.

“We need access to his files—here and in the cottage—if we’re to prove anything,” St. James said. “The man who killed Mick is dead himself. Only Mick’s notes can give us his motive and some sort of foundation to build a case against him.”

“And if the killer found the notes and destroyed them? If they were in the cottage and he pinched them that night?”

“Too many other things have occurred that needn’t have happened had the killer found the notes.” Lynley thought about St. James’ explanation once more: how Brooke tried to eliminate Peter because of something Peter must have seen or heard that evening in Gull Cottage; how he’d taken Deborah’s cameras to get at the film. This second circumstance alone spoke more loudly than anything else in support of the existence of a piece of hard evidence. It had to be somewhere, however disguised. Brooke had known that.

Cambrev spoke. “He kept files in those cabinets”—he nodded in their direction—” and more at the cottage. The police’re done with it and I’ve the key when you’re ready to go there. Let’s get to work.”

There were three cabinets of four drawers apiece. While the business of putting out a newspaper went on round them, Lynley, St. James, Deborah, and Cambrey began going through the drawers one by one. Look for anything, St. James told them, that bore any resemblance to a report on oncozyme. The name of the drug itself, a mention of cancer, a study of treatments, interviews with doctors, researchers, or patients.

The search began through folders, notebooks, and simple scraps of paper. They saw immediately that it would be no easy task. There was no logical manner in which Mick Cambrey had done his filing. It bore signs of neither organisation nor unity. It would take hours, perhaps days, to go through it all, for each piece had to be read separately for the slightest allusion to oncozyme, to cancer, to biochemical research.

They had been at it for over an hour when Julianna Vendale said, “If you’re looking for notes, don’t forget his computer,” and opened a drawer in his desk to reveal at least two dozen floppy disks.

No one groaned, although Deborah looked dismayed and Harry Cambrey cursed. They continued to wade through the detritus of the dead man’s career, interrupted by the telephone just after four o’clock. Someone answered it in one of the cubicles, then stuck his head out the door and said, “Is Mr. St. James here?”

“Salvation,” Deborah sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. “Perhaps someone’s phoning to confess.”

Lynley stood to stretch. He walked to the window. Outside, a gentle rain was continuing to fall. It was hours before dark, but in two of the buildings across Paul Lane lamps had been lit. In one of the cottages, a family sat round a table drinking afternoon tea and eating biscuits from a tin. In another, a young woman cut a man’s hair. She was concentrating on the sides, standing in front of him to examine her work. He sat patiently for a moment, then pulled her between his legs and kissed her soundly. She cuffed his ears, laughed, gave herself to his embrace. Lynley smiled, turning back to the office.

He saw St. James watching him from the cubicle in which he spoke on the phone. His face looked troubled. Contemplatively, he was pulling at his lip. Whomever he was speaking to was doing much of the talking. Only at long intervals did St. James say a few words. When at last he hung up, he spent what seemed like two or three minutes looking down at the phone. He picked it up once as if to make a call, but then replaced the receiver without having done so. At last he came out to rejoin the others.

“Deborah, can you manage for a bit on your own? Tommy and I need to see to something.”

She looked from him to Lynley. “Of course. Shall we go on to the cottage when we’ve finished here?”

“If you will.”

Without another word, he headed for the door. Lynley followed. He said nothing on the way down the stairs. Near the bottom, they skirted two children who were running a collection of small metal lorries along the banister. They stepped past the crowded doorway of the Anchor and Rose, stepped into the street. They turned up the collars of their coats against the rain.

“What is it?” Lynley asked. “Who was on the phone?”

“Helen.”

“
Helen?
Why on earth—”

“She’s found out about the list of Cambrey’s prospects, Tommy, and about the telephone messages on the machine in his flat.”

“And?”

“It seems they all have one thing in common.”

“From the expression on your face, it’s not cocaine, I take it.”

“Not cocaine. Cancer.” St. James walked towards Paul Lane, his head bent into the rain.

Lynley’s eyes went to the harbour, to the huddled seabirds in a mass on the quay, protected from harm by their very numbers. He turned from them and looked at the rain-misted hills above the village. “Where are we going?” he called to his friend.

St. James paused, saying over his shoulder, “We need to talk to Dr. Trenarrow.”

It hadn’t been easy for Lady Helen to uncover the truth that lay behind the list of prospects, St. James explained. The first dozen names she tried gave her nothing to go on, and more importantly no piece of leading information upon which she could hang any enquiry at all. The recipient of each one of her phone calls was tight-lipped to begin with, becoming even more so the moment she mentioned the name Michael Cambrey. Considering their reactions, that they had heard of Mick in some fashion or another was a fact beyond doubt. As was their determination to reveal nothing substantial about what their connection to Cambrey was. Had he interviewed them for a story? she would ask. Had he been seeking testimony of some sort? Had he visited their homes? Had he written them letters? No matter which tack she tried, the persona she adopted to try it, the subject matter she attempted to pursue, they were always one step ahead of her, as if the first person on the list had telephoned the rest and warned them of an impending call. Not even the mention of Cambrey’s murder was enough to jar an admission from anyone. Indeed, the few times she tried that as an opening gambit—posing as a reporter seeking information for a feature story on another journalist’s death—the result had been an even stonier reticence than her previous fabrications had inspired.

It was not until she reached the fifteenth name, that the direction of these fruitless conversations changed. For the fifteenth name belonged to Richard Graham. And he was dead. As was the sixteenth name, Catherine Henderford. And the seventeenth, Donald Highcroft. As well as the eighteenth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth. All of them dead of cancer. Lung, ovarian, liver, intestinal. And all of them dead within the last two months.

“I went directly back to the first name on the list,” Lady Helen had said. “Of course, I couldn’t phone him myself, so I went to Chelsea and had Cotter do it for me. We invented the name of an organisation. Cancer Cooperative, something like that. Checking in to see how the patient was doing, Cotter said. Right down the list. They’d all had cancer. And those that were alive were all in remission, Simon.”

The two callers who had left their messages on the answering machine in Mick Cambrey’s flat had placed their calls about cancer as well. The exception being that they were willing, even eager, to talk to Lady Helen. They had phoned Mick’s number in answer to an advertisement that had run for months in the Sunday
Times
—“You CAN beat cancer!”—followed by a telephone number.

“It’s my wife,” one of the callers had said when Lady Helen phoned him. “One gets so desperate. We’ve tried diets, meditation, prayer, group therapy. Mind over matter. Every kind of drug. When I saw the advert, I thought what the hell. But no one returned my call.”

Because Mick never received it. Because Mick was dead.

“What was Mick doing, Simon?” Lady Helen had asked at the end of her story.

The answer was simple. He’d changed from journalist to merchant of dreams. He was selling hope. He was selling the possibility of life. He was selling oncozyme.

“He’d learned about oncozyme in his interview with Trenarrow,” St. James said to Lynley as they passed the Methodist church on their way up Paul Lane. The wind had picked up. The rain was beading his hair. “He followed the story to Islington-London where Brooke gave him more details. I should imagine the two of them hatched the scheme between them. It was simple enough, noble if one disregards the fact that they were probably making a fortune from the effort. They were providing cancer patients with a miracle drug, years before the drug would be legally approved and available for use. Look at the countless terminally ill people with nothing more to hang onto but the hope that something might work. Think of what people get involved with in an attempt to put themselves into remission: macrobiotic diets, laetrile, psychic healers. Mick was taking no risk that there’d be a lack of interest. Nor did he have to worry that people might not be willing to pay whatever price he was asking for the chance of a cure. He had only two problems. The first would be getting his hands on a steady supply of the drug.”

“Justin Brooke,” Lynley said.

St. James nodded. “For payments in cash initially. In cocaine later on, I expect. But once Mick had the oncozyme, he had to find someone who would administer it. Monitor the dosage. Assess the results. For part of the profits, of course. No one would take such a risk without some sort of payoff.”

“Good God. Roderick.”

“Trenarrow’s housekeeper told Cotter that he spends a great deal of time visiting at a convalescent home in St. Just. I didn’t think much of it at the time except Trenarrow himself told me that experimental drugs are often used on terminal patients. Look at how those two pieces of information fit together to explain what’s been going on. A small clinic in St. Just where Trenarrow sees a select group of patients, filtered his way by Mick Cambrey. An illegal clinic—posing as a very private convalescent home—where people pay a hefty fee to be injected with oncozyme. And then the profits get divided three ways: Cambrey, Brooke, and Trenarrow.”

“Mick’s bankbook in London?”

“His share of the pickings.”

“Then who killed him? Why?”

“Brooke. Something must have gone wrong with the deal. Perhaps Mick got greedy. Or perhaps he made a slip of the tongue in Peter’s presence that put them all in jeopardy. Perhaps that’s the reason Brooke was after Peter.”

Lynley paused momentarily, gripped St. James’ arm. “Peter told me that Mick made a remark. Blast, I can’t remember it exactly. Peter threatened to blackmail him about his cross-dressing and about cocaine. But Mick didn’t care. He advised Peter to look for another source. He said something about people being willing to pay a hell of a lot more to stay alive than to have a secret kept.”

“And Justin heard that, didn’t he? He must have known that Mick was inches away from telling the tale to Peter.”

“He wanted to leave the cottage. He wanted Peter to leave.”

“You can see why. Brooke stood to lose everything if Mick started playing fast and loose with their secret. His career, his reputation as a scientist, his job at Islington. He stood to go to jail if it all came out. He must have returned to the cottage after Peter left. He and Mick must have got into it. Things escalated between them—God knows they were both breaking enough laws to be as tightly strung as the devil—and Justin took a swing at him. That did it.”

“And Trenarrow?” Lynley paused once again opposite the primary school grounds.

St. James looked past him. The stage of the open air theatre was still set up. Performances of one sort or another would continue through the summer. Now, however, the grounds were sodden by rain. “Trenarrow knows about everything. I’d wager he’d known the moment he was introduced to Brooke at Howenstow on Saturday night. I should guess he’d never actually seen Brooke before then. Why should he have when Mick was playing the middleman? But the moment he was introduced, he must have put together the rest. Mick’s death, everything.”