Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  “I am,” Kaveh said.

  “Thinking of raising sheep, are you?” Cowley sounded amused by the entire idea. He probably pictured Kaveh mincing round the farmyard in pink Wellies and a lavender waxed jacket or something like.

  “I’d actually hoped you’d continue renting the land as you’ve been doing,” Kaveh said. “It’s worked out so far. I don’t see why it can’t continue to do so. Besides the land’s quite valuable if it ever came to a sale of it.”

  “And you reckon I’d never have the funds to make it mine,” Cowley concluded. “Well, d’you have the funds to buy it up yourself, laddie? I reckon not. This whole place’ll go on the block in a few months’ time and I’ll be there with the money.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t be going on the block at all,” Kaveh said.

  “Why’s that, then? You’re not claiming he left it to you?”

  “As it happens, he did.”

  George Cowley was silent, digesting this unexpected bit of news. He finally said, “You’re taking the piss.”

  “As it happens, I’m not.”

  “No? So where d’you plan to come up with the death duties, eh? That’ll take a real pile of dosh.”

  “Death duties aren’t actually going to be a problem, Mr. Cowley,” Kaveh said.

  There was another silence. Tim wondered what George Cowley was making of all this. For the first time, he also wondered how Kaveh Mehran fit into the picture of his father’s death. It had been an accident, plain and simple, hadn’t it? Everyone had said so, including the coroner. But now it didn’t seem so simple at all. And the next thing that came out of Kaveh’s mouth made the matter complicated beyond Tim’s imagining.

  “My family will be joining me here as well, you see. Our combined resources will see to it that death duties— ”

  “Family?” Cowley scoffed. “What’s the meaning of family in the light of day to your sort, eh?”

  Kaveh didn’t reply for a moment. When he spoke, then, his tone was deathly formal. “Family means my parents, for one. They’ll be coming up from Manchester to live with me. Along with my wife.”

  The walls seemed to shimmer around Tim. The earth itself seemed to tilt. Everything he’d thought he’d known was suddenly thrown into a vortex where words meant something far beyond what they’d meant for all of his fourteen years and what he thought he’d actually understood was obliterated by the uttering of one declaration.

  “Your wife.” Cowley said it flatly.

  “My wife. Yes.” The sound of movement, Kaveh crossing to the window perhaps, or to the desk at one side of the room. Or even standing at the hearth of the fireplace, one arm on the mantel, looking like someone who knew he was holding all the good cards in the deck. “I’ll be marrying next month.”

  “Oh, too right.” Cowley snorted. “She know about your little ‘situation’ here, this next-month wife of yours?”

  “Situation? What on earth do you mean?”

  “You little pixie. You know ’xactly what I mean. You two arse bandits, you an’ Cresswell. Wha’s this, eh? Think the whole village didn’t know the truth?”

  “If you mean that the village knew Ian Cresswell and I shared this house, of course they knew. Beyond that, what else is there?”

  “Why, you little bum fucker. You trying to say— ”

  “I’m trying to say that I’ll be marrying, my wife will live here along with my parents, and then our children. If there’s something not clear to you in that, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “What about them kids? You think one’f them won’t tell this next-month wife of yours what’s up with you?”

  “Are you talking about Tim and Gracie, Mr. Cowley?”

  “You goddamn bloody well know I am.”

  “Aside from the fact that my fiancée doesn’t speak English and wouldn’t understand a word they said to her, there’s nothing for them to tell anyone. And Tim and Gracie are going back to their mother. That’s already in the works.”

  “That’s that, then?”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “You’re a real deep one, then, aren’t you, lad? Had this planned from the first, I expect.”

  What Kaveh said in answer, Tim did not catch. He’d heard all that he needed to hear. He stumbled from the passageway into the kitchen and from there out of the house.

  LAKE WINDERMERE

  CUMBRIA

  St. James had decided there was a final possibility in this matter of Ian Cresswell’s drowning. It was a tenuous one at best, but as it existed, he knew he had to set out to see about it. He required a single sporting implement to do so.

  There was no angling shop in either Milnthorpe or Arnside, so he drove the distance to Grange-over-Sands and made his purchase in a concern called Lancasters. Lancasters sold everything from baby clothes to gardening tools and it was strung along the sloping high street as a series of shops that had obviously been snapped up by the eponymous and enterprising Lancaster family over the last hundred years in a remarkable and successful project of expansion, one shop now tumbling into the next. The governing philosophy behind them all seemed to be that what wasn’t sold within the place didn’t need to be bought. This being a part of the world given to fishing, what they did have was a fillet knife exactly like the one that Lynley had brought up from the water inside the Ireleth Hall boathouse.

  St. James made his purchase of this, rang Lynley on his mobile, and told him he was heading to Ireleth Hall. He also phoned Deborah, but she wasn’t answering. He wasn’t surprised, as she would have seen he was the caller and she wasn’t happy with him at the moment.

  Nor, particularly, was he happy with her. He loved his wife deeply, but there were moments when the fact that they couldn’t see eye-to-eye on something made him despair of their entire marriage. This despair was always a fleeting thing, a feeling that he generally reflected upon later and chuckled over when both his temper and Deborah’s had cooled. Why were we so caught up in that? he would wonder. Matters so crucial one day were mere bagatelles the next. This one didn’t seem so insignificant, however.

  He took the most direct route to Lake Windermere although at another time he would have quite enjoyed taking a diversion and cruising up through the Lyth Valley. Instead, he sped along the northeastern route and ended up at the very tip of Lake Windermere, where the mass of end moraines at Newby Bridge spoke of glaciers, an ice age, and a time long ago when the village had stood at the southernmost point of the lake itself, which now lay some distance away. Then he sped north. Within moments, Lake Windermere came into view: a broad unwrinkled sheet of grey-blue reflecting the autumn-hued trees that formed woodlands along its shores.

  Ireleth Hall was not far from this point, a few miles beyond the area where the Victorian beauties of Fell Foot Park offered walks and vistas that at this time of year were growing cold and forbidding but in spring would be a palette of nodding daffodils and colourful rhododendrons that grew to the height of buildings. He passed by this place and entered one of dozens of arboreal tunnels along the road: auburn and ochre where still there were leaves on the trees, skeletal branches where there were now none.

  The gates were closed at Ireleth Hall, but there was a bell buried within the ivy that climbed the stone plinth forming part of its boundary wall. St. James clambered out of his hired car and rang it. As he did so, Lynley pulled up behind him in the Healey Elliott.

  This made entry easy. A moment of disembodied conversation with someone who answered the bell, Lynley saying over St. James’s shoulder, “It’s Thomas Lynley,” and that was that. They were inside, the gates creaking open like something from an old horror film, then creaking closed behind them.

  They went directly to the boathouse. This was, St. James told his friend, the only other possibility in what went for his part of the investigation. While no one would ever be able to proclaim that all the circumstances surrounding Ian Cresswell’s death had been completely straightforward, if there was anything to persuade
the coroner to reopen the matter, this was how they would find it. And even this guaranteed nothing, he said.

  For his part, Lynley declared he’d be more than happy to close matters up here and return to London as soon as possible. St. James shot him a querying look at this remark. Lynley said, “The guv’s not happy with me.”

  “Hillier hoping for something different from what you’re coming up with?”

  “No. Isabelle. She’s not happy Hillier’s roped me into this situation.”

  “Ah. Not good.”

  “Decidedly not good.”

  They said nothing more on the matter, but St. James wondered about Lynley’s relationship with Isabelle Ardery. Together they’d come to see him on matters concerning an earlier case they’d worked on, and St. James was not so oblivious of the world around him that he could not see the spark that existed between them. But involvement with a superior officer was a dangerous proposition. Indeed, Lynley’s involvement with anyone at the Met was a dangerous proposition.

  As they walked to the boathouse, Lynley told St. James of his meeting with Bernard Fairclough’s daughter Manette and her husband, explaining what they had revealed about the money that Ian Cresswell had been paying out. Either Bernard Fairclough had been a party to all of this or he had not, Lynley said. But whatever the case, Cresswell seemed to have known things that could have spelled danger for him. Had Fairclough not known about these payouts or at least some of these payouts, then in Fairclough lay the danger once he’d discovered them. Had Ian tried to put a stop to some of the payments he was making, then in the recipients of those payments lay the danger.

  “It all seems to come down to money in the end,” Lynley said.

  “That’s the case more often than not, isn’t it?” St. James noted.

  Inside the boathouse, there was no need for additional light. What St. James intended did not require it, and the ambient light reflecting off the lake from the bright day outside was sufficient. St. James was there to examine the condition of the rest of the stones comprising the dock. If more of them were loose than just the two that had become dislodged, then he was of the opinion that what had happened to Ian had been mere chance.

  The scull was there, but the rowingboat was not. Valerie, it seemed, was out on the water. St. James went to the area where her boat had been tied. Sensible, he thought, to check here first.

  He used his hands and his feet, working his way along. He knelt awkwardly, saying, “I can manage,” to Lynley when the other man made a move to help him. Things seemed quite solid until he got to the fifth large stone along his way, which felt as loose as a seven-year-old’s baby incisor. The sixth and seventh wobbled as well. Then the next four were fine while the twelfth was barely hanging on. It was on this twelfth one that St. James applied the fillet knife he’d bought in Grange-over-Sands. Using this on what remained of the grout in order to get the stone into a position from which it would easily tumble into the water upon the slightest touch was simple. The blade slid in, St. James did a bit of jemmying with it, and the job was done. One foot placed on it— here Lynley did the honours— and into the water it went. It was not difficult to see how someone getting out of a scull and placing all his weight upon a stone similarly jemmied would have produced what had happened to Ian Cresswell. The real question was whether the other loose stones— weighted by Lynley but unassisted by St. James’s fillet knife— would fall into the water as well. One of them did. Three of them didn’t. Lynley sighed, shook his head, and said, “At this point, I’m quite open to suggestions. I won’t argue if going home to London is one of them.”

  “We need direct light.”

  “For what, at this point?”

  “Nothing in here. Come with me.”

  They left the boathouse. St. James brought the fillet knife up between them. They both had a look at it and the conclusion required no microscopic examination in a forensic lab. From its use on the grout, it was deeply scratched and scored. But the one that Lynley had earlier brought up from the water had been completely unmarked.

  Lynley said, “Ah. I do see.”

  “This clarifies matters, I think, Tommy. It’s time Deborah and I went back to London. I’m not saying at this point that those stones couldn’t have been loosened in another way. But the fact that the knife you brought up from the water was unmarked suggests the drowning was indeed an accident or something else was used to dislodge one of those stones. And unless you intend to cart everything from the property off to forensics for some kind of match-up with the stones that went into the water— ”

  “I’ll need another route,” Lynley finished for him. “Or I can close this up and head back myself.”

  “Unless Barbara Havers gives you something, I daresay that’s the case. It’s not a bad result, though, is it? It’s just a result.”

  “It is.”

  They stood silently looking out at the lake. A rowingboat was approaching them with a woman skillfully at the oars. Valerie Fairclough was dressed for fishing but she’d evidently had no luck. When she neared them, she showed her empty bucket and called out cheerfully, “It’s good we’re not starving round here. I’ve become rather hopeless in the last few days.”

  “There are more loose stones on the dock inside,” Lynley called back. “We’ve made several a bit worse. Have a care. We’ll help you.”

  They went back inside. She glided in silently and docked the rowingboat in the exact spot where the stones were loose. Lynley said, “You’ve managed to choose the very worst spot. Was this where you set out?”

  “It was,” Valerie said. “I hadn’t noticed. Are they bad?”

  “Over time they’ll give way.”

  “Like the others?”

  “Like the others.”

  Her face relaxed. She didn’t smile but her relief was palpable. St. James took note of this and he knew Lynley did likewise as Valerie Fairclough handed her fishing gear over to him. Lynley set this to one side, then extended his hand and helped Valerie Fairclough from the boat. He made the introductions between the woman and St. James.

  St. James said, “You found Ian Cresswell’s body, as I understand.”

  “I did, yes.” Valerie removed the hat she’d been wearing, a baseball cap that covered her fine grey hair. This was youthfully styled and she ran her fingers through it.

  “You phoned for the police as well,” St. James said.

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’m rather wondering about that,” St. James said. “Are you heading to the house? May we walk with you?”

  Valerie glanced at Lynley. She didn’t look wary. She had far too much control for that. But she’d be wondering why Lynley’s friend the expert witness from London wanted to have a chat, and she’d know quite well the topic wasn’t going to be her momentary lack of success as an angler. She said graciously, “Of course you may,” but that quick movement at the corners of her blue eyes told a different story about how she actually felt.

  They set off up the path. St. James said to her, “Had you been fishing that day?”

  “When I found him? No.”

  “What took you out to the boathouse?”

  “I was having a walk. I do that in the afternoons, generally. Once the weather gets bad with the winter, I’m rather more confined than I like to be, as we all are, so I try to get out as much as I can while the days are still fine.”

  “Around the property? Into the woods? On the fells?”

  “I’ve lived here all my life, Mr. St. James. I walk wherever my fancy takes me.”

  “On that day?”

  Valerie Fairclough glanced at Lynley. She said to him, “Would you like to clarify?” which was, naturally, a well-bred way of asking why she was being grilled by his friend.

  St. James said, “This is my interest, rather than Tommy’s. I’ve spoken to Constable Schlicht about the day Ian Cresswell was found. He told me two curious things about the phone call to nine-nine-nine, and I’ve been trying to understand the
m ever since. Well, actually, only one of the things he told me was about the phone call. The other was about you.”

  Now the wariness was plain to see. Valerie Fairclough stopped on the path. She ran her hands down the sides of her trousers, a movement that St. James could tell was meant to settle her nerves. He knew Lynley was aware of this from the look Lynley cast him, which was one that told him to go on in order to get what he could from her.

  “And what did the constable tell you?” Valerie said.

  “He’d had a conversation with the bloke at dispatch. This would be the person who took the nine-nine-nine call about Ian Cresswell’s drowning. He learned that whoever made that call was remarkably calm, considering the circumstances.”

  “I see.” Valerie spoke pleasantly enough, but the fact that she’d stopped moving along the path suggested there were elements of Ian Cresswell’s death that she didn’t want St. James and Lynley to uncover. One of them, St. James knew, was now out of their sight line. The folly built for their daughter Mignon was no longer in view.

  “‘There appears to be a dead man floating in my boathouse,’ is roughly what was said,” St. James told Valerie.

  She glanced away. A ripple on the surface of her face was not unlike a ripple on the surface of the lake behind them. Something swimming beneath the water or a gust of wind across it but in either case, the moment comprised an instant in which her placidity failed her. She raised a hand to her forehead and brushed an errant hair away. She’d not put her baseball cap back on her head. The sunlight struck her face, showing the fine lines of an ageing that she seemed intent upon keeping at bay.

  She said, “No one knows exactly how they’ll react in that kind of situation.”

  “I entirely agree. But the second odd thing about that day was how you were dressed when you met the police and the ambulance on the drive. You weren’t dressed for walking, certainly not for an autumn walk and certainly not for anything other than a walk through the rooms of your house, I expect.”