Lynley stopped, frozen. His body was rigid. His voice all at once was perfectly calm. "Are you certain? . . . Listen to me, Peter, you must pull yourself together ... I understand, but you mustn't touch anything. Do you understand me, Peter? Don't touch anything. Leave her alone. . . . Now, give me your address ... All right. Yes, I've got it. I'll be there at once."
He replaced the phone. It seemed that entire minutes passed before he turned back to the others.
"Something's happened to Sasha."
"I think he's on something," Lynley said.
Which would explain, St. James thought, why Lynley had insisted that Deborah and Helen remain behind. He wouldn't want either of them to see his brother in that condition, especially Deborah. "What happened?"
Lynley pulled the car into Sussex Gardens, cursing when a taxi cut him off. He headed towards the Bayswater Road, veering through Radnor Place and half a dozen side streets to avoid the worst of the afternoon crush.
"I don't know. He kept screaming that she was on the bed, that she wasn't moving, that he thought she was dead."
"You didn't want him to phone the emergency number?"
"Christ, he could be hallucinating, St. James. He sounded like someone going through the D.T.'s. Damn and blast this bloody traffic!"
"Where is he, Tommy?"
"Whitechapel."
It took them nearly an hour to get there, battling their way through a virtual gridlock of cars, lorries, buses, and taxis.
Lynley knew the city well enough to run through countless side streets and alleys, but every time they emerged onto a main artery, their progress was frustrated again. Midway down New Oxford Street, he spoke.
"I'm at fault here. I've done everything but buy the drugs for him."
"Don't be absurd."
"I wanted him to have the best of everything. I never asked him to stand on his own.
What he's become is the result. I'm at fault here, St. James. The real sickness is mine."
St. James gazed out the window and sought a reply. He thought about the energy people expend in seeking to avoid what they most need to face. They fill their lives with distraction and denial, only to find at an unexpected eleventh hour that there is in reality no absolute escape. How long had Lynley been engaged in avoidance? How long had he himself done the same thing? It had become a habit with both of them.
In scrupulously avoiding what they needed to say to each other, they had learned to adopt evasion in every significant area of their lives.
He said, "Not everything in life is your responsibility, Tommy."
"My mother said practically the same thing the other night."
"She was right. You punish yourself at times when others bear equal responsibility. Don't do that now."
Lynley shot him a quick look. "The accident. There's that as well, isn't there? You've tried to take the burden from my shoulders all these years, but you never will, not completely. I drove the car, St. James. No matter what other facts exist to attenuate my guilt, the primary fact remains. I drove the car that night. And when it was over, I walked away. You didn't."
"I've not blamed you."
"You don't need to do so. I blame myself." He turned off New Oxford Street and they began another series of side street and back alley runs, edging them closer to the City and to Whitechapel which lay just beyond it. "But at least I must let go of blaming myself for Peter if I'm not to go mad. The best step I can take in that direction at the moment is to swear to you that no matter what we find when we get to him, it shall be Peter's responsibility, not mine."
They found the building on a narrow street directly off Brick Lane, where a shouting group of Pakistani children were playing football with a caved-in ball. They were using four plastic rubbish sacks for goal posts, but one sack had split open and its contents lay about, smashed and trodden under the children's feet.
The sight of the Bentley called an abrupt halt to the game, and St. James and Lynley climbed out of the car into a curious circle of faces. The air was heavy, not only with the apprehension that accompanies the appearance of strangers in a closely-knit neighbourhood but also with the smell of old coffee grounds, rotting vegetables, and fruit gone bad. The shoes of the football players contributed largely to this pungent odour.
They appeared to be caked with organic refuse.
"Wha's up?" one of the