And then he saw it.
Blood. An unmistakable thumbprint upon the door knob. A second smear some eight inches higher, rising at an angle on the door from the jamb.
“Christ.” Lynley used his fist against the door. “Miss Nevin?” he called. Then he shouted, “Vi Nevin!”
There was no answer. There was no sound from within.
Lynley pulled his wallet from his trouser pocket, extracted a credit card, and applied it to the old Banham latch.
CHAPTER 22
“Do you have any idea what you've done? Any idea at all?”
How long had it been since she'd shot up? Martin Reeve wondered. And could he hope against unlikely hope that the pathetic smack-head had hallucinated the encounter and not actually lived it in the first place? Strictly speaking, that was possible. Tricia never answered the door when he wasn't in. Her paranoia was far too advanced for that. So why the hell would she have answered it this time, when nearly everything that comprised their lifestyle was sitting at the edge of a cliff just waiting for someone to make a wrong move and send it hurtling down to the boulders below?
But he knew the answer to that question well enough. She would have answered the door because she was brainless, because she couldn't be trusted to think in a straight line from action to consequence of action for five minutes, because if anyone on the face of the earth even prompted her to think that her pipeline of dope was in danger of being stopped up in some way, she would do anything to prevent that happening, and answering a door was the least of that anything. She would sell her body, she would sell her soul, she would sell them both down the God damn river. Which was, apparently, what the airheaded bitch had actually managed to do while he was out.
He'd found her in their bedroom, nodding away in her white wicker rocker next to the window, with a sword's width of illumination from the streetlight outside falling across her left shoulder and gilding her breast. She was completely nude, and an oval cheval mirror, drawn near to the rocker, reflected the ghostly perfection of her body.
He'd said, “What the hell are you doing, Tricia?” not entirely unpleasantly, since he was, after twenty years of marriage to the woman, quite used to finding his wife in an array of conditions: from dressed to the nines in a little designer number that cost a small fortune, to tucked up in bed at three o'clock in the afternoon wearing Babygro and sucking on a bottle of piña colada. So at first he'd thought she'd arranged herself for his delectation. And while he hadn't been in the mood to fuck her, he'd still been capable of acknowledging that the money he'd spent on Beverly Hills surgeons had been cash invested with visually enjoyable results.
But that thought had died like a candle's flame in a draught when Martin saw how far his wife was gone on the stuff. While her shit-induced semi-somnolence generally inspired him to take her in that master-of-the-rag-doll fashion which he vastly preferred when coupling with any woman openly willing to receive his ministrations, the afternoon and evening hadn't worked out according to his plans, and he knew the workings of his body and his mind well enough to realise that if he roused himself to take another woman today-especially one who wouldn't put up a gratifying fight against him-it wasn't going to be a female whose range of response was similar to that of a bottle of plasma. That would hardly provide him with the distraction he'd been looking for.
So at first he'd dismissed both her and the possibility of receiving a coherent answer to the question he'd asked her. And he'd ignored her altogether when she'd murmured, “Got t'go t'Melbourne, Marty. Got t'get's there straightaway.” Typical strung-out nonsense, he'd thought. He went into the bathroom, turned on the shower to heat up, and lathered his hands beneath the tap, soothing both his knuckles and his face with the creamy soap that Tricia favoured.
By the window, she spoke again, this time louder so as to be heard over the rush of water. “S’ I made some calls. T'see wha’ iss cost us to go. Soon's we can, Marty. Babe? You hear tha?’ Got t'go t'Melbourne.”
He went to the doorway, drying his hands and face gently on a towel. She saw him, smiled, and ran her manicured fingers up her thigh, across her stomach, and teasingly round her nipple. The nipple hardened. She smiled wider. Martin did neither.
“I wonder 'bout the heat in 'stralia,” she said. “I know you don't much fancy heat. Bu’ we got go t'Melbourne 'cause I promised him.”
Martin had begun to take her more seriously at that. It was the him that caught his attention. “What are you talking about, Tricia?”
She said with a pout, “No’ list'ning, Marty. I hate it when you don't listen to me.”
Martin knew the importance of keeping his voice pleasant, at least for the moment. “I am listening, darling. Melbourne. The heat. Australia. A promise. I've heard it all. I just don't understand how it fits together and what it relates to. Perhaps if you'll explain…?”
“What it relates to-” She waved airily round the room at everything and at nothing. Then she changed gears abruptly in that Jekyll-Hyde move so common to loadies, saying scornfully, “You soun' like such a poof, Marty. ‘P'rhaps if you'll 'splain…’”
Martin's reservoir of patience was nearly depleted. Another two minutes of verbal blind man's buff and he was likely to throttle her. “Tricia, if you've something of importance to relate, tell me. Otherwise, I'm taking a shower. All right?”
“Ooohhh,” she mocked. “He's taking a shower. And I 'spect we know why if we sniff him up. We know what we'll smell. So who was it this time? Which one of the ladies di' you have today? An' don' He 'bout it, Marty, 'cause I know what's what with you ‘n’ the girls. They tell me, y'know. They even complain. Which, I 'spect, you'd never think of them doing, would you?”
For a moment Martin considered believing her. God knew there were times when the act of simply demanding and taking what wasn't on offer wasn't enough to satisfy him. Every now and then events piled one upon the other in such a way that only a certain level of ferocity was able to compensate him for his lack of control over the countless daily irritations that swirled round him like gnats. But Tricia didn't know that beyond a shadow of a doubt, and there wasn't a single girl in his stable who'd be stupid enough to tell her. So Martin turned away from his wife without making a response to her remark. He stripped off his shirt in preparation for his shower.
She said from the bedroom, “So say bye-bye. Bye-bye to all this. You ready to do that, Marty?”
He unzipped his trousers and let them drop to the floor. He peeled off his socks. He made no reply.
She went on, calling, “He said if we wen’ t’ stralia, you and me, he'd keep his mug shut 'bout the bus'ness. So I ’spect that's what we got to do.”
“He.” Martin re-entered the bedroom, clad only in his shorts. “He?” he said again. “Tricia, he?” Within his gut, a roiling began: a nascent nausea suggesting that something previously inconceivable might actually have happened in the time during which he'd left his wife alone in the house.
“Righ’,” she said. “Just like a chocolate bar, he was. And just as sweet, I ’spect, if I'd wanted t’ try him. He di'n't come with that cow this time round, so I could've, I s'pose. Only he di'n't come alone.”
Jesus, Martin thought. They'd come back, the bastards. And they'd got into the house. And they'd talked to his airhead nitwit of a wife.
He strode over to the rocker. He knocked her hand from her breast. “Tell me,” he said sharply. “The police were here. Tell me.”