A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,74

comfort and peace in the familiar battle of its lines and angles. Utterly unhandsome. A catalogue of agonies lived through and conquered and lived through again. Her heart swelled with love for him. Her throat tightened with the emotion's sudden intensity.

"Have you actually been sitting in this darkness worried about me? How like you, Simon."

"Why do you say that? What did you think I was doing?"

"Tormenting yourself with...things in the past."

"Ah." He drew her into his arms, resting his cheek on the top of her head. "I won't lie to you, Deborah. It's not easy for me, knowing that Tommy was your lover. If it had been some other man, I could have attributed to him all sorts of faults to convince myself that he wasn't worthy of you. But that's not the case, is it? He is a good man. He does deserve you. And no one knows that better than I."

"So you are haunted by it. I thought as much."

"Not haunted. Not at all." His fingers moved lightly down her hair to caress her throat and slip the nightdress from her shoulders. "I was at first. I'll admit that. But frankly, the very first time we made love I realised that I never had to think of you and Tommy again. If I didn't want to. And now," she could feel his smile, "every time I look at you, I'm reminded most decidedly of the present, not the past. And then I find that I want to undress you, breathe the fragrance of your skin, kiss your mouth and breasts and thighs. In fact, the distraction's becoming quite a problem in my life."

"In mine as well."

"Then perhaps, my love," he whispered, "we should concentrate all our energies on seeking a solution." Her hand slid under the covers. He caught his breath at her touch. "That's a good beginning," he admitted and brought his mouth to hers.
Chapter 10
The visitorwas Superintendent Nies. He was waiting in the lounge, three empty pint glasses on a table nearby and a cardboard carton at his feet. He was standing, not sitting, a man wary and watchful and never relaxed. His lips thinned at the sight of Lynley, and his nostrils pinched as if he smelled something foul. He was contempt personified.

"You wanted everything, Inspector," he snapped. "Here it is." He gave the carton a sharp kick, not so much to move it as to direct the other man's attention to it.

No one stirred. It was as if the raw hatred behind Nies's words immobilised them all.

Next to her, Barbara felt Lynley's tension tightening his muscles like a whipcord. His face, however, was without expression as he took the measure of the other man.

"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" Nies persisted nastily. He picked up the carton, dumping its contents onto the carpet. "I expect, when you ask for everything, that you do mean everything, Inspector. Something about you tells me you're a man of your word. Or were you hoping that I'd send it all with someone else so you might avoid having any further chats with me?"

Lynley's eyes dropped to the objects on the floor. A woman's clothing, by their appearance.

"Perhaps you've had too much to drink," he suggested.

Nies took a step forward. Blood rushed to his face. "You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? You'd like to see me giving it over to drink, in my cups with flaming regret for having you in the nick for a few days over Davenport's death. Not exactly the digs his precious lordship was used to, were they?"

Barbara had never recognised so acutely one man's need to strike another or the atavistic savagery that often drives that need to completion. She saw it in Nies now, in his posture, in his hands with their talon-like fingers halfway drawn into a fist, in the cords that stood out on his neck. What she couldn't understand was Lynley's reaction. After the initial flash of tension, he'd become unnaturally unperturbed. That seemed to be the source of Nies's increasing rage.

"Have you solved this case, Inspector?" Nies sneered. "Made any arrests? No, of course not. Not without having all the facts. So let me give you a few and save you a little time. Roberta Teys killed her father. She chopped off his miserable head, sat herself down, and waited to be discovered. And no bloody evidence you can dig out of the blue is ever going to prove this case otherwise. Not for Kerridge. Not for