Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  “Why not?”

  “She’s fragile, Tommy. Always has been. She had a head injury as a child and ever since … She’s incapacitated. Her knees, her surgery… No matter… She wouldn’t have been able to manage it.”

  Lynley pressed him. “If she somehow were able, has she a motive? Is there something I should know about her relationship with her mother? With her cousin? Were they close? Were they enemies?”

  “In other words, did she have a reason to want Ian dead?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  Fairclough took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Ian advised me on financial matters, as you know. He was in charge of all finances. That was his job. He was good at that and I needed him.”

  “I understand,” Lynley said.

  “He’d insisted for a while— perhaps three years— that I cut Mignon off. He never understood that the girl can’t work. She’s never been able. Ian’s point was that giving her money was what had crippled her and she was otherwise perfectly fine. It was a bone of contention between us. Not a big one and it only came up once or twice a year. But I had no intention of… I just couldn’t. When your child’s been badly injured… When you have children of your own, you’ll understand, Tommy.”

  “Did Mignon know about Ian’s wanting to cut her off?”

  Fairclough nodded, reluctantly. “He spoke to her. When I wouldn’t agree to stopping her allowance, he went to see her. He talked to her about ‘bleeding money from her father,’ as he put it. Mignon told me. She was hurt, of course. She told me I could cut her off at once. She invited me to do it, in fact.”

  “I daresay she knew you wouldn’t.”

  “She’s my child,” Fairclough said.

  “And your other children? Had Manette a reason to want Ian out of the picture?”

  “Manette adored Ian. I think at one time she would have liked to marry him. Long before Kaveh, of course.”

  “And his feelings for her?”

  Fairclough finished off his sherry and went to pour another. He motioned the decanter in Lynley’s direction. Again Lynley demurred. “He was fond of Manette,” Fairclough said. “But that was the extent of it.”

  “She’s divorced, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. Her former husband works for me. Freddie McGhie. So does she for that matter.”

  “Is there any reason Freddie McGhie might have wanted Ian out of the way? You did tell me that you haven’t definitely fixed on a successor at Fairclough Industries. How do things stand with Ian gone?”

  Fairclough said nothing at first. It seemed to Lynley that they were getting close to something Fairclough preferred to ignore. Lynley raised an eyebrow. Fairclough said, “As I’ve said, I’ve not decided. Either Manette or Freddie could take over. They know the business. They’ve worked for me their entire careers. Freddie especially would be a good choice, despite being Manette’s ex. He knows every department and he’s worked in them all. I’d prefer a member of the family, as would Valerie, but if no one has the experience and the proper outlook, Freddie would be the logical one to take up the reins.”

  “Would you consider Nicholas?”

  “That would be madness, with his history. But he’s trying to prove himself to me.”

  “What did Ian think about that?”

  “He reckoned Nick would fail. But as Nick had promised me that he was a changed man once and for all, I wanted to give him a chance to demonstrate it. He’s working his way up from the bottom at the business. I rather admire him for that.”

  “Is that the deal you struck with him?”

  “Not at all. It was his idea. I expect it’s what Alatea advised him to do.”

  “So it’s possible he could take over the company?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Fairclough said. “As I said, it’s not been decided.”

  “But you must have given thought to it at one point or another, else why have me come up here and look into Nicholas?”

  Fairclough was silent. It was answer enough. Nicholas was, after all, the son. And the son, not the meek, was generally the one to inherit the earth.

  Lynley went on. “Anyone else with a motive to be rid of Ian? Anyone you can think of with an ax to grind, a secret to keep, an issue to clear?”

  “No one at all, as far as I know.” Fairclough sipped his sherry, but his eyes stayed on Lynley’s over the rim of the glass.

  Lynley knew he was lying, but he didn’t know why. He also felt they hadn’t got to the bottom of why he himself was there in the first place: at Ireleth Hall, investigating something that had already been resolved in a way that should have relieved the man. Lynley said, “Bernard, no one is actually in the clear on this except those who had no access to the boathouse. You’ve a decision to make if you want the truth, whatever it is.”

  “What sort of decision?”

  “If you actually do want to get to the bottom of the matter, you’re going to have to agree to let me be who I am.”

  “And that is?”

  “A cop.”

  FLEET STREET

  CITY OF LONDON

  Barbara Havers chose a pub near Fleet Street, one of the watering holes that had long ago been a gathering place for journalists in the heyday of the newspaper business when nearly every tabloid and broadsheet had its headquarters in the immediate vicinity. Things had changed, with property in the Canary Wharf area luring more than one news organisation to the east end of the city. But not all had heeded that siren call of lower rents, and one in particular had stubbornly remained, determined to be close to the action. That was The Source, and Barbara was waiting for her source at The Source to show up. She’d phoned and asked him for a meeting. He’d been reluctant till she let him set the time and offered lunch. He’d still been reluctant till she mentioned Lynley. That got his attention. He asked, “How is he?” and Barbara could tell the reporter was hoping for something suitable to whet the readers’ appetite in the Recovery from Personal Tragedy department. It wouldn’t make the front page, but he could hope for page 3 plus photos, if the details were good.

  She’d said, “I’m not prepared to say a word about a word over the phone. C’n you meet?”

  That had done the trick. She hated to use Lynley that way— she hated to use him any way if it came down to it— but as he himself was the one who was asking her for information, she reckoned she was on the safe side of what was appropriate between friends.

  Isabelle Ardery had been more difficult to deal with. When Barbara phoned to ask for the time off that she was owed, Ardery had been at once suspicious, as her questions of “Why? Where are you going?” indicated. Barbara had known the acting detective superintendent was probably going to be the difficult nail to pound into the board, so she’d had her excuse ready.

  “Haircut,” she said. “Or perhaps I should say hairstyle. I’ve found a place in Knightsbridge.”

  “So you just need the day,” Ardery had clarified.

  “So far,” Barbara replied.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Sergeant?” There was that suspicion again. The super needed to do something about the sharpness in her voice if she wanted to hide her paranoia, Barbara thought.

  She said, “Have some mercy, guv. If I end up looking like last night’s dinner, I’ll have to find someone to repair the damage. I’ll be in touch. I’m owed the time anyway.”

  This was no lie, and Ardery knew that. Besides, she herself had been the one to order— in the guise of making a recommendation— an improvement in Barbara’s personal appearance. The superintendent had reluctantly agreed, although she’d added, “No more than two days,” to make certain Barbara knew which one of them was in charge.

  On her way to the pub, Barbara had taken care of another of Lynley’s requests. She’d searched out the latest edition of Conception magazine, finding it at King’s Cross Station, where a WH Smith provided every journal imaginable in the railway terminal. That had been convenient since Barbara’s underground route f
rom Chalk Farm took her through King’s Cross Station anyway. So all it had involved was a brief stop there, not to mention putting up with an evaluative glance from the young man behind the till when she paid for the journal. She could see it in his eyes and in the ever-so-slightly-amused movement of his mouth: Conception? You? Not bloody likely. She’d wanted to pull him over the counter by the neck of his white shirt, but the dirty ring round its collar stopped her. No need to expose herself so closely to someone whose personal hygiene didn’t extend to washing his clothes regularly, she’d decided.

  She was leafing through Conception as she waited in the pub. She was wondering where they found all the perfect babies to photograph, along with all the mothers who looked dewy fresh and not at all like what they probably were, which was haggard with lack of sleep. She’d ordered herself a jacket potato topped with chili con carne and she was dipping into this and reading about the care of one’s nipples during breast-feeding— who knew it was so painful? she wondered— when her inside guy at The Source showed up.

  Mitchell Corsico came into the pub in his usual getup. He always wore a Stetson, jeans, and cowboy boots, but Barbara saw he’d added a fringed leather jacket. God, she thought, chaps and six-guns were probably next. He saw her, jerked his head in a nod, and approached the bar to place his order. He looked at the menu for a moment, tossed it down, and told the publican what he wanted. He paid for it as well, and this Barbara took for a positive sign till he walked to her table and said, “Twelve pounds fifty.”

  She said, “Bloody hell, what did you order?”

  “Did I have a limit?”

  She muttered and pulled out her purse. She dug for the cash and shoved it over as he reached for a chair and mounted it like a cowboy onto a horse. She said, “Where’s Trigger?”

  “Say what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “That’s bad for your arteries,” he noted with a nod at her potato.

  “And you ordered…?”

  “All right. Never mind. What’s up?”

  “Back-scratch situation.”

  She saw the wariness across his features. Who could blame him? Corsico was the one who was usually coming to the cops for information and not the reverse. But hope passed crossed his features as well because he knew his stock was very low at the Yard. He’d been embedded with the police during the hunt for a serial killer nearly a year earlier, and he wasn’t popular because of that.

  Still, he was careful. He said, “I don’t know. Let’s see. What d’you need?”

  “A name.”

  He remained noncommittal.

  “There’s a reporter from The Source been sent up to Cumbria. I need to know who he is and why he’s there.” At this, he began to reach into his jacket pocket, so she said, “Uh, we haven’t started scratching yet, Mitch. Hold Trigger’s rein, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh. A horse.”

  “Yeah. Just like Silver. Hi ho, and all that. I’d expect you to know this, all things considered. So who’s gone up there? And why?”

  He considered. After a moment during which his meal arrived— roast beef and Yorkshire bloody pud and all the trimmings, and Barbara reckoned he didn’t eat like that unless someone else was footing the bill— he said, “I need to know what’s in it for me.”

  “That’s going to depend on the value of your information.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he said.

  “Not usually. But things have changed. New super looking over my shoulder. I have to be careful.”

  “An exclusive with DI Lynley would do.”

  “Ha! Not bloody likely.”

  He started to rise. Barbara knew it was show because there was no way in hell he was going to walk off and leave his roast beef and Yorkshire pud languishing uneaten at the table. But she played along and said, “All right. I’ll do what I can. So you do what you can. Who’s been sent to Cumbria?”

  He spilled the beans as she reckoned he would. He gave her everything: Zedekiah Benjamin, a story on Nicholas Fairclough, a rejection by the editor, and a reporter’s determination to mould the story into something suitable for The Source instead of what he’d turned in at first, which appeared to be a puff piece that belonged in Hello! He’d been up to Cumbria at least three times now— maybe four— trying to sex up the story enough for Rodney Aronson, but he was apparently slow on the uptake. He’d not been getting anywhere till Ian Cresswell drowned.

  This was an interesting bit, Barbara thought. She asked for the dates of Zedekiah Benjamin’s sojourns in Cumbria and she learned that two of those sojourns had occurred in advance of the Cresswell drowning. The second of these had ended just three days prior to the death, at which point Benjamin had apparently returned to London with his tail between his legs, having failed to suss out the sex that his editor required.

  She said, “What happens to this bloke if he doesn’t find the sex?”

  Corsico did the knife-across-the-throat business and topped that by flipping his thumb over his shoulder in case Barbara was too dim to work out what he meant. She nodded and said, “Know where he’s staying up there?”

  Corsico said he didn’t. But he added that Benjamin wouldn’t exactly be difficult to spot if he was lurking in the bushes near someone’s house.

  “Why?” Barbara asked.

  Because, Corsico said, he was six feet eight inches tall with a head of hair so red it looked like his skull was on fire.

  “Now,” he concluded, taking out his notebook, “my back’s itching.”

  “I’ll have to scratch it later,” she replied.

  ARNSIDE KNOT

  CUMBRIA

  The rain had begun during Alatea’s walk. She was prepared for it, though, having seen the nasty bank of clouds approaching Arnside across Morecambe Bay, coming from the direction of Humphrey Head. What she hadn’t anticipated was the strength of it. She’d known from the wind it would be coming on quickly. The fact that it altered from a quarter of an hour’s downpour to a tempest was the surprise.

  She was halfway to her destination when the pelting began. She could have turned for home, but she did not. It seemed to her a necessity that she complete the climb to the top of Arnside Knot. She told herself grimly that she might be struck by lightning there, and at the moment this sort of end to her life didn’t actually seem like such a bad thing. She’d be done in an instant, over, out. It would be a form of the ultimate knowing in a situation in which not knowing was slowly eating her up.

  The rain had abated when she began the final ascent among the auburn-coated Scottish steers that grazed freely on the hillside. Her feet sought safe purchase in the areas of limestone scree, and she grasped the trunks of the bent, wind-scarred conifers to aid her as she reached the top. Once there, she found she was breathing less heavily than she had done in earlier climbs. Soon, she told herself, she’d probably be able to jog to the top of Arnside Knot and arrive there no worse for the exertion.

  From the top of the knot, she could see it all: two hundred and eighty degrees of panorama that comprised everything from the speck that was Piel Island Castle to the undulating mass of Morecambe Bay and the fishing villages strung along its shore. This vista offered endless sky, treacherous waters, and landscape of every variety. What it did not offer, however, was a glimpse into the future, and Alatea had come out into the uncertain weather in an attempt to run from what she knew she could not hope to escape indefinitely.

  She’d told Nicholas part of what she’d discovered in her research, but she had not told him all of it. “She’s a freelance photographer, not a location scout at all,” she’d informed him. Her nerves were on edge, and she’d had a bit of sherry to still them. “Come, look, Nicholas. She has a website.”

  It had been a simple matter to find out what she needed to know about Deborah St. James. The Internet was a bottomless pit of information and one did not need to be a genius in order to use it. Find a search engine, type in a name. In the world as it was at present, one could r
un but one could not hide.

  Deborah St. James wasn’t even trying to hide. What Do You Want Photographed? was part of her website design, which contained various links showing the nature of her work. She was an art photographer, if that was the word for it. She took the kinds of photos sold in galleries: landscapes, portraits, still lifes, dramatic action shots, spontaneous moments of life captured in the streets. She worked largely in black and white, she’d had several gallery shows, and she’d been featured in photographic competitions. She was obviously good at what she did but what she did not do was scout locations for anyone, let alone for a company called Query Productions.

  There was no such company. Alatea had discovered that as well. But that was what she did not tell her husband because she knew intuitively where telling Nicholas that part of the information was going to lead. A logical question had to be asked and Nicholas would ask it: So what is she doing here, then? Alatea didn’t want him to ask that because they’d have to look at the answers. What Do You Want Photographed? said it all. The real matter before them— or before Alatea herself if the truth be told— was what Deborah St. James intended to do with the pictures.

  Yet that was far too fragile a subject to entertain with her husband, so Alatea had said to Nicholas, “I’m not comfortable having her round here, Nicky. There’s something about her that I don’t like.”

  Nicholas frowned. They’d been in bed and he’d turned on his side to face her, propping his head on his hand. He didn’t have his glasses on, which meant he couldn’t see her properly, but he still looked as if he was studying her face and what he apparently thought he saw there made him say with a smile, “Because she’s a photographer or because she’s a woman? Because, darling wife, let me tell you this: If it’s the woman part that you’re concerned about, you’re never going to have a single worry on that score.” He’d scooted over to her to prove this declaration and she’d allowed this. She’d wanted it, even, for the sheer diversion from her thoughts that love with Nicholas produced. But afterwards the worry and the fear came sweeping back like the tidal bore in Morecambe Bay. There was no escape and the fast-rising tide threatened to drown her.