Payment In Blood

by Elizabeth George

  She referred to her notes. “Sir Kenneth Willingate.”

  “A friend? A colleague?”

  “I’m not altogether sure.” Lady Helen hesitated, trying to decide how to present her last piece of information in such a way that St. James would be drawn into its singularity. She knew how flimsy a detail it was, knew also how she was clinging to it in the hope that it would take them in any direction other than towards Rhys. “I’m probably grasping at straws, Simon,” she continued ingenuously. “But there was one thing about that last call. All the others had been made to cancel appointments that Stinhurst had over the next few days. His secretary merely read the names to me right out of his engagement book. But that last call to Willingate had nothing to do with his engagement book at all. The name wasn’t even written there. So it was either an appointment that Stinhurst had arranged on his own without telling his secretary…”

  “Or it wasn’t in reference to an appointment at all,” Deborah finished for her.

  “There’s only one way we’re going to know,” St. James remarked. “And that’s to bully the information from Stinhurst. Or to track down Willingate ourselves. But we can’t go any further without involving Tommy, I’m afraid. We’re going to have to give him what little information we have and let him take it from there.”

  “But Tommy won’t take it up! You know that!” Lady Helen protested. “He’s looking for a tie to Rhys. He’s going to dog whatever facts he believes will allow him to make an arrest. Nothing else matters to Tommy right now! Or wasn’t this past weekend enough of a demonstration for you? Apart from that, if you involve him, he’s bound to discover that Barbara’s gone her own way on the case…with our help, Simon. You can’t do that to her.”

  St. James sighed. “Helen, you simply can’t have it both ways. You can’t protect them both. It’s going to come down to a decision. Do you take the chance of sacrificing Barbara Havers? Or do you sacrifice Rhys?”

  “I sacrifice neither.”

  He shook his head. “I know how you feel, but I’m afraid that won’t wash.”

  WHEN COTTER showed Barbara Havers into the study, she sensed the tension at once. The room felt alive with it. An abrupt silence, followed by a quick burst of welcoming conversation, revealed the discomfort that the three others were feeling. The atmosphere among them was charged and taut.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  They were, she had to admit, nothing if not an honest group.

  “Simon feels we can’t go further without Tommy.” Lady Helen went on to explain the peculiar telephone message that Stinhurst had sent to Sir Kenneth Willingate.

  “We have no authority to pop into these people’s lives and question them, Barbara,” St. James put in when Lady Helen finished. “And you know they don’t have an obligation to talk to us. So unless Tommy takes it on, I’m afraid we’ve met with a dead end.”

  Barbara reflected on this. She knew quite well that Lynley had no intention of turning away from the East Anglian lead. It was too enticing. He would brush off an abstruse telephone message to an unknown Londoner named Willingate as a waste of his time. Especially, she thought with resignation, since Lord Stinhurst was the man who had sent it. The others were right. They’d come to a dead end. But if she couldn’t persuade them to go on without Lynley, Stinhurst would get away cleanly, without a scratch.

  “Of course, we know that if Tommy discovers you’ve taken part of the case in another direction without his authorisation…”

  “I don’t care about that,” Barbara said brusquely, surprised to find that it was the perfect truth.

  “You may be suspended. Or sent back to uniform. Even sacked.”

  “That isn’t important right now. This is. I’ve spent the whole filthy day chasing spectres in East Anglia without a hope of any of it coming to any good. But we’re onto something here, and I’ve no intention of letting it die simply because someone might put me in uniform again. Or sack me. Or anything else. So if we have to tell him, we tell him. Everything.” She faced them squarely. “Shall we do it now?”

  In spite of her decision, the others hesitated. “You don’t want to think about it?” Lady Helen asked.

  “I don’t need to think about it,” Barbara replied. Her words were harsh, and she didn’t temper them as she continued. “Look, I saw Gowan die. He’d pulled a knife out of his back and crawled across the scullery floor, trying to get help. His skin looked like boiled meat. His nose was broken. His lips were split. I want to find who did that to a sixteen-year-old boy. And if it costs me my job to track the killer down, that’s a very minor cost as far as I’m concerned. Who’s coming with me?”

  Loud voices in the hallway precluded an answer. The door swung open and Jeremy Vinney pushed past Cotter. He was breathless, red-faced. His trouser legs were soaked up to his knees, and his ungloved hands looked raw from the cold.

  “Couldn’t get a taxi,” he panted. “Ended up running all the way from Sloane Square. Was afraid I might miss you.” He stripped off his coat and threw it down on the couch. “Found out who the fellow in the photograph was. Had to let you know at once. Name’s Willingate.”

  “Kenneth?”

  “The same.” Vinney bent with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Not all. Not who the bloke is that makes it so interesting. It’s what he is.” He flashed a quick smile. “Don’t know what he was in 1963. But right now he’s the head of MI5.”

  13

  THERE WASN’T a person in the room who did not understand the full range of implications behind Jeremy Vinney’s words. MI5: Military Intelligence, section five. The counterintelligence agency of the British government. It was suddenly clear why Vinney had come bursting in upon them, certain of his welcome, completely assured that he bore information vital to the case. If he had been a suspect before, surely this new twist took him out of the running entirely. As if convinced of this, he went on.

  “There’s more. I was intrigued by our conversation this morning about the Profumo-Keeler case in 1963, so I went through the morgue to see if there was any article alluding to a possible connection between their situation and Geoffrey Rintoul’s death. I thought that perhaps Rintoul had been involved with a call girl and was trotting back to London to see her the night he was killed.”

  “But Profumo and Keeler seem like such ancient history,” Deborah remarked. “Surely that sort of scandal wouldn’t affect a family’s reputation now.”

  Lady Helen agreed, but her comments were obviously reluctant. “There’s truth to that, Simon. Murder Joy. Destroy the scripts. Murder Gowan. All because Geoffrey Rintoul was seeing a call girl twenty-five years ago? How can one argue that as a credible motive?”

  “It depends on the level of importance attached to the man’s position,” St. James replied. “Consider Profumo’s case as an example. He was secretary of state for war, carrying on a relationship with Christine Keeler, a call girl who also just happened to be seeing a man called Yevgeni Ivanov.”

  “Who was attached to the Soviet embassy but was reportedly a Soviet intelligence agent,” Vinney added and smoothly continued. “In an interview with the police on an entirely different matter, Christine Keeler volunteered the information that she had been asked to discover from John Profumo the date on which certain atomic secrets were to be passed to West Germany by the Americans.”

  “A lovely person,” Lady Helen commented.

  “This leaked to the press—as perhaps she intended—and things heated up for Profumo.”

  “And for the government as well,” Havers said.

  Vinney nodded his agreement. “The Labour party demanded that Profumo’s relationship with Keeler be debated before the House of Commons while the Liberal party demanded the prime minister’s resignation because of it.”

  “Why?” Deborah asked.

  “They claimed that as head of security services, the prime minister was either aware of all the facts on Profumo’s relationship with the call girl and was hiding
them or he was guilty of incompetence and neglect. However,” Vinney finished, “the truth well might be that the prime minister merely felt he could not survive another serious case involving the resignation of one of his ministers, as would likely occur if Profumo’s behaviour was examined closely. So he gambled that nothing against Profumo would come out. If the Profumo affair came to light so soon after the Vassall case, chances are the prime minister would have to resign.”

  “Vassall?” Lady Helen’s body tensed. White-faced, she leaned forward in her chair.

  Vinney looked at her, clearly perplexed by her reaction to his words. “William Vassall. He was sentenced to prison in October of sixty-two. He was an Admiralty clerk who was spying for the Soviets.”

  “My God. My God!” Lady Helen cried. She got to her feet, spun to St. James. “Simon! It’s the line from the play that all the Rintouls reacted to. ‘Another Vassall.’ The character was running off with no time to return to London. He said he wouldn’t become another Vassall. And they knew what it meant when they heard it. They knew! Francesca, Elizabeth, Lord and Lady Stinhurst! All of them knew! This was no call-girl relationship! It was nothing of the sort!”

  St. James was already pushing himself out of his chair. “Tommy will move on this, Helen.”

  “On what?” Deborah cried.

  “On Geoffrey Rintoul, my love. Another Vassall. It seems that Geoffrey Rintoul was a Soviet mole. And God help them, but every member of his family and a good part of the government appeared to know it.”

  LYNLEY HAD left the doors open between his dining and drawing rooms, largely so that he could hear the music from his stereo while he was eating dinner. For the past few days, food had held little attraction for him. Tonight was no different. Because of this, he pushed most of his lamb aside uneaten and instead gave himself over to the passion of a Beethoven symphony that swelled from the next room. He moved away from the table and leaned back in his chair with his legs stretched out before him.

  In the last twenty-four hours, he had avoided thinking about what the case he was building against Rhys Davies-Jones was going to do to Helen Clyde. Steadfastly forcing himself to keep moving forward from fact to fact, he had managed to keep Helen out of his mind entirely. But she intruded now.

  He understood her unwillingness to believe in Davies-Jones’ guilt. She was, after all, involved with the man. But how would she react when she was faced with the knowledge—irrefutable and supported by a score of facts—that she had been cold-bloodedly used to facilitate a murder? And how could he possibly protect her from the devastation that knowledge was going to cause in her life? In thinking about this, Lynley found that he could no longer avoid looking directly at the truth of how damnably much he missed Helen and how irrevocably he might lose her if he continued his pursuit of Davies-Jones to its logical conclusion.

  “My lord?” His valet was standing hesitantly in the doorway, rubbing the top of his left shoe against the back of his right leg as if in the need to make adjustments to his already immaculate appearance. He ran a hand over the top of his perfectly groomed hair.

  Beau Brummel of Eaton Terrace, Lynley thought, and said encouragingly, “Denton?” when it appeared that the young man might go on with his grooming indefinitely.

  “Lady Helen Clyde’s just in the ante, my lord. With Mr. St. James and Sergeant Havers.” Denton’s expression was a model of nonchalance, something he no doubt considered suitable to the occasion. However, his tone conveyed some considerable surprise, and Lynley wondered how much Denton already knew—in that omniscient way of servants—about his rift with Lady Helen. He had, after all, been seeing Lady Helen’s Caroline rather seriously for the past three years.

  “Well, don’t leave them standing in the hall,” Lynley said.

  “The drawing room, then?” Denton enquired solicitously. Much too solicitously for Lynley’s liking.

  He rose with a nod, irritably thinking, I hardly expect they want to see me in the kitchen.

  The three of them were standing in a fairly tight knot at one end of the room when he joined them a moment later. They had chosen a position beneath the portrait of Lynley’s father, and under the cover of the music, they were speaking to one another in hushed, urgent voices. But his entrance brought their conversation to an end. And then, as if his presence were a stimulus to do so, they began to shed their coats, hats, gloves, and mufflers. The action had the appearance of buying a bit of time. Lynley turned off the stereo, replaced the album in its jacket, and faced them curiously. They seemed unnaturally subdued.

  “We’ve come across some information that you need to have, Tommy,” St. James said, in very much the manner of a planned introduction.

  “What sort of information?”

  “It concerns Lord Stinhurst.”

  Lynley’s eyes went at once to Sergeant Havers. She met them unflinchingly. “Are you part of this, Havers?”

  “Yes, I am. Sir.”

  “It’s my doing, Tommy,” St. James said before Lynley could speak again. “Barbara found Geoffrey Rintoul’s grave on the Westerbrae grounds, and she showed it to me. It seemed worth looking into.”

  Lynley maintained his calm with an effort. “Why?”

  “Because of Phillip Gerrard’s will,” Lady Helen said impulsively. “Francesca’s husband. He said he wouldn’t allow himself to be buried on the grounds of Westerbrae. Because of the telephone calls Lord Stinhurst placed on the morning of the murder. They weren’t only to cancel his appointments, Tommy. Because—”

  Lynley looked at St. James, feeling the blow of treachery strike him from the single most unexpected quarter. “My God. You’ve told them about my conversation with Stinhurst.”

  St. James had the grace to drop his eyes. “I’m sorry. Truly. I felt I had no choice.”

  “No choice,” Lynley repeated incredulously.

  Lady Helen took a hesitant step towards him, her hand extended. “Please, Tommy. I know how you must feel. As if we’re all against you. But that isn’t it at all. Please. Listen.”

  Compassion from Helen was just about the last thing Lynley could bear at the moment. He struck out at her cruelly, without a thought. “I think we’re all perfectly clear on where your interests lie, Helen. You can hardly be the most objective assessor of truth, considering your involvement in this case.”

  Lady Helen’s hand fell. Her face was stricken with pain. St. James spoke, his voice cold with quick anger. “Nor can you, Tommy, if the truth be faced among us.” He let a moment pass. Then he went on in a different tone, but as implacably as before. “Lord Stinhurst lied to you about his brother and his wife. First and last. A good possibility is that Scotland Yard knew he planned to do so and sanctioned it. The Yard chose you deliberately to handle this case because you were the most likely person to believe whatever Stinhurst told you. His brother and his wife never had an affair, Tommy. Now do you want to hear the facts, or shall we be on our way?”

  Lynley felt as if ice were melting into his bones. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  St. James moved towards a chair. “That’s what we’ve come to tell you. But I think we all could do with a brandy.”

  WHILE ST. JAMES outlined the information they had gathered on Geoffrey Rintoul, Barbara Havers watched Lynley, gauging his reaction. She knew how resistant he would be to the facts, considering Rintoul’s privileged background and how closely it resembled Lynley’s own. Everything in Lynley’s upper-class constitution was going to act in concert, provoking him to disclaim each of their facts and conjectures. And the policewoman in Barbara knew exactly how insubstantial some of their facts were. The inescapable reality was that if Geoffrey Rintoul had indeed been a Soviet mole—working for years within that sensitive area of the Defence Ministry—the only way they would know for a certainty would be if his brother Stuart admitted it to them.

  Ideally, they needed access to an MI5 computer. Even a file on Geoffrey Rintoul marked inaccessible would verify that the man had been under
some sort of investigation by the counterintelligence agency. But they had no access to such a computer and no source within MI5 who could validate their story. Even Scotland Yard’s Special Branch would be of no service to them if the Yard itself had sanctioned Lord Stinhurst’s fabrication about his brother’s death in Scotland in the first place. So it all came down to Lynley’s ability to see past his tangle of prejudices against Rhys Davies-Jones. It all came down to his ability to look the truth squarely in the face. And the truth was that Lord Stinhurst, not Davies-Jones, had the strongest possible motive for wanting Joy Sinclair dead. Provided with the keys to Joy’s room by his own sister, he had murdered the woman whose play—cleverly revised without his prior knowledge—had threatened to reveal his family’s darkest secret.

  “So when Stinhurst heard the name Vassall in Joy’s play, he had to know what she was writing about,” St. James concluded. “And consider how Geoffrey Rintoul’s background supports his having been a spy for the Soviets, Tommy. He went to Cambridge in the thirties. We know that Soviet recruiting went on like the devil during that period. Rintoul read economics, which no doubt made him even more receptive to arguments in favour of the teachings of Marx. And then his behaviour during the war. Requesting reassignment to the Balkans gave him contact with the Russians. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that his control was in the Balkans as well. No doubt that’s when he received his most important instructions: to work his way into the Ministry of Defence. God knows how much sensitive data he supplied the Soviets over the years.”

  No one said anything when St. James finished speaking. Their attention was on Lynley. They had taken their seats under the portrait of the seventh Earl of Asherton, and as they watched, Lynley lifted his eyes to his father’s face as if in the need of counsel. His expression was unreadable.

  “Tell me again what Stinhurst’s message was to Willingate,” he said at last.

  St. James leaned forward. “He said that resurfacing forced him to put Willingate off a second time this month. And to telephone Westerbrae if that presented a problem.”