A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,3

it. Look, you can't go on like this. What are you pending on it now? Fifty pounds a day? One hundred? More? ustin, we can't even go to a party without you - "

He dropped her wrist abruptly. "Then get out. Find some ne else. Leave me bloody well alone."

It was the only answer. But Sidney knew she couldn't do it and she hated the fact that she probably never would.

I only want to help." Then shut up, all right? Let me go down that sodding alley, make the buy and get out of here." He shoved open the door and slammed it behind him.

Sidney watched him walk halfway across the square before she opened her own door.

"Justin - "

"Stay there." He sounded calmer, not so much because he was feeling any calmer, she knew, but because the square was peopled with Soho's usual Friday night throng and Justin Brooke was not a man who generally cared for making public scenes.

She ignored his admonition, striding to join him, disregarding the certain knowledge that the last thing she ought to be doing was helping him get more supplies for his habit. She told herself instead that if she weren't there, sharply on the lookout, he might be arrested or duped or worse.

"I'm coming," she said when she reached him.

The whipcord of tension in his features told her he had moved beyond caring.

"As you like." He headed towards the gaping darkness of the alley across the square.

Construction was underway there, making the alley mot darker and narrower than usual.

Sidney made a moue of c| taste at the smell of urine. It was worse than she had expect it to be.

Buildings loomed up on either side, unlit and unmarked. Grills covered their windows and their entryways hous shrouded, moaning figures who conducted the sort of illicit business which the nightclubs of the district seemed eager to promote.

"Justin, where're you planning to - "

Brooke raised a cautionary hand. Up ahead, a man's hoar cursing had begun to fill the air.

It came from the far end c the alley where a brick wall curved round the side of a nighj club to form a sheltered alcove. Two figures writhed upon til ground there. But this was no love tryst. This was assaull and the bottom figure was a black-clad woman who appearei to be no match in either size or strength for her furious assailanl "You filthy ..."

The man - blond by the appearance of him and wildly angry by the sound of his voice -

pounded his fists against the woman's face, ground them into her arms| slammed them into her stomach.

At this, Sidney moved, and when Brooke tried to sto| her, she cried out, "No! It's a woman," and ran towards th^ alley's end.

She heard Justin's sharp oath behind her. He overtook her less than three yards away from the couple on the ground.

"Keep back. Let me see to it," he said roughly.

Brooke grabbed the man by his shoulders, digging into thej leather jacket he wore. The action of pulling him upward freed his victim's arms, and she instinctively brought them up to protect her face. Brooke flung the man oackwards.

"You idiots! Do you want the police after you?"

Sidney pushed past him. "Peter!" she cried. "Justin, it's Peter Lynley!"

Brooke looked from the young man to the woman who on her side, her dress dishevelled and her stockings in ers. He squatted and grabbed her face as if to examine the mt of her injuries.

"My God," he muttered. Releasing her, he stood, shook head, and gave a short bark of laughter.

Below him, the woman drew herself to her knees. She ached for her handbag, retching momentarily.

Then - most oddly - she began to laugh as well.
Chapter 2
PART II

LONDON AFTERNOONS

Chapter 2

Lady Helen Clyde was surrounded by the trappings of death.

Crime scene exhibits lay upon tables; photographs of corpses hung on the walls; grisly specimens sat in glass-fronted cupboards, among them one particularly gruesome memento consisting of a tuft of hair with part of the victim's scalp still attached. Yet despite the macabre nature of the environment, Lady Helen's thoughts kept drifting to food.

As a form of distraction, she consulted the copy of a police report that lay on the worktable before her. "It all matches up, Simon." She switched off her microscope. "B

negative, AB positive, O positive. Won't the Met be happy about that?"

"Hmmm," was her companion's only response.

Monosyllables were typical of him when he was involved in work, but his reply was rather aggravating