A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,170

of the harbour. "It proves nothing." "When it's in our photographs but missing from the police photographs? That's hardly the case and you know it." Rain pattered on windows. Wind sounded in the chimney. A distant foghorn moaned. Trenarrow moved in his chair, turning back towards the room. He grasped its arms and said nothing. "What happened?" Lynley asked him. "Roderick, for the love of God, what happened?" For a long time, Trenarrow didn't answer. His dull eyes were fixed upon the space between Lynley and St. James. He reached for the pull of the top drawer of the desk and aimlessly played it between his fingers. "Oncozyme," he said.

"Brooke couldn't get enough of it. He was juggling the London inventory books as it was.

But we needed more. If you could only know how many people phoned - still phone - how frantic they are for help. We couldn't get enough. But Mick kept funnelling patients my way." "Brooke eventually substituted something for the onco zyme, didn't he?" St.

James said. "Your first patients went into remission just as Islington's research indicated they would.

But after a while, things started to go wrong." "He'd been sending the drug down from London with Mick. When it became impossible to get and they saw the clinic would have to close, they made a substitution. People who should have gone into remission began to die. Not all at once, of course. But a pattern emerged. I became suspicious.

I tested the drug. It was a saline solution." "And that was the fight." "I went to see him Friday night. I wanted to close the clinic." He stared across the room at the fire. Its glow was reflected in his spectacles like two points of heat. "Mick wasn't at all concerned.

These weren't people to him. They were a source of income. Look, just keep the clinic running until we get more of the stuff, he said. So we lose a few? So what?

Others'll come. People pay anything for the chance of a cure.

What are you so hot about? You're bringing the money in hand over fist and don't pretend you aren't happy as hell about it." Trenarrow looked at Lynley. "I tried to talk to him, Tommy. I couldn't make him see. I couldn't get him to understand.

I kept talking. He kept brushing it off. I finally... I just snapped." "When you saw he was dead, you decided to paint it as a sexual crime," St. James said. "I thought he was after the village women. I thought it would look like someone's husband finally got to him." "And the money in the cottage?" "I took it as well. And then made it look like the room had been searched. I took my handkerchief from my pocket so I wouldn't leave prints. I must have lost the pill case then.

I saw it the moment I knelt by his body later." Lynley leaned forward. "As black as it is, Mick's death started out as an accident, Roderick. An assault, an accident.

But what about Brooke? You were tied together. What did you have to fear from him?

Even if he assumed you'd killed Mick, he'd have kept quiet about it. Bringing you down would only have brought himself down as well." "I had nothing to fear from Brooke,"

Trenarrow said. "Then why - " "I knew he wanted Peter." "Wanted - " "To be rid of him.

He was here Friday night when I got home from the play. We'd never actually met, of course, but he had no trouble finding the villa. He said Mick had been talking in front of Peter. He was worried. He wanted me to do something to tighten Mick's tongue." "Which you'd already done," St. James noted. Trenarrow accepted the grim statement without reaction. "When he heard about the killing the next morning, he panicked.

He came to see me. He thought it was only a matter of time before Peter put together some remarks Mick had made and either went to the police or started sniffing round for someone to blackmail. Peter had a habit to support, he didn't have money, he'd already threatened Mick. Brooke wanted him dead. I wasn't about to let that happen." "God. Oh, God." Lyniey felt the sharp blade of regret pierce through him. "He said there was no risk involved, that he could make it look like an overdose of some sort. I didn't know what he intended, but I thought I could stall him. I told him I had