Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  Alatea sat in the inglenook for several minutes, trying to understand what her options were or whether, at this point, she had any options left. She’d known from the first that the red-haired woman had spelled danger, no matter what Nicholas had said about her. Now that Lucy had seen her in the presence of a man, Alatea finally saw what the danger was. Certain people had no right to live as they wished to live, and she’d had the misfortune of having been born as one of those wretched people. She had great beauty, but it meant nothing. It was, indeed, what had doomed her from the first.

  At the far end of the house, she heard a door slam. She frowned, rose quickly, and looked at her watch. Nicky should have gone to work. From there he should have gone to the pele project. But when he called her name and sounded panicked in the calling of it, she knew he’d gone elsewhere.

  She hurried to find him. She called out, “Here, Nicky. I’m here.”

  They met in the long oaken corridor, where the light was dimmest. She couldn’t read his face. But his voice frightened her, so intense was it. “It’s down to me,” he said. “I’ve ruined everything, Allie.”

  Alatea thought of the previous day: Nicholas’s distress and the fact that Scotland Yard was in Cumbria looking into the circumstances of Ian Cresswell’s death. For a terrible moment, her conclusion was that her husband was confessing to his cousin’s murder, and she felt light-headed as she was struck with the knowledge of where this terrible admission could take them should they not be able to hide the truth. If terror had a presence, it was there in the darkened corridor with them.

  She took her husband’s arm and said, “Nicky, please. You must tell me very clearly what’s wrong. Then we can decide what to do.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Why? What’s happened? What can be so terrible?”

  He leaned against the wall. She held on to his arm, and she said to him, “Is it this Scotland Yard matter? Have you been to speak to your father? Does he actually think…?”

  “None of that matters,” Nicholas said. “We’re surrounded by liars, you and I. My mother, my father, probably my sisters, that damn reporter from The Source, that filmmaking woman. Only I didn’t see it because I was so intent on proving myself.” He spat the penultimate word. “Ego, ego, ego,” he said, and with each repetition, he hit his forehead with his fist. “All I cared about was proving to everyone— but especially to them— that I’m not the person they used to know. The drugs are gone, the alcohol is gone, and they’re gone forever. And they were meant to see that. Not only my family but the whole bloody world. So I took every opportunity to show myself off and because of that and nothing else, we’re where we are just now.”

  His mention of the filmmaking woman sent fear coursing down Alatea’s spine. More and more, everything was coming down to that woman whom they had blindly admitted into their home with her camera, her questions, and her apocryphal concern. From the first, Alatea had known there was something very wrong about her presence. And now she’d been to Lancaster to see Lucy Keverne. So quick she was to follow the clues. Alatea wouldn’t have thought it was possible. She said, “Where are we, then, ‘just now,’ Nicky?”

  He told her and she tried to follow. He spoke of the reporter from The Source and of that man’s belief that the red-haired woman had come from New Scotland Yard. He spoke of his parents and a confrontation he’d had with them that day over this very matter in the presence of his sister Manette and Freddie McGhie. He spoke of his mother and her admission to having brought Scotland Yard into the mix. And he spoke of the surprise of all of them when he railed about the detective who’d been sent into his house, the woman who’d upset Alatea so very much… And that was where he stopped.

  Alatea said carefully, “What then, Nicky? Did they say something? Did something more occur?”

  His words sounded hollow. “She’s not the Scotland Yard detective at all. I don’t know who she is. But because she’s been hired to come up to Cumbria… to take those photographs… Oh, she claimed she needed none of you, that you weren’t going to be part of that bloody film, but someone had to hire her because there is no filmmaker and she’s not Scotland Yard and do you see why it’s down to me, now, Allie? What’s going to happen is down to me. I thought it was bad enough that my parents wanted a detective to investigate Ian’s death because of me. But then to know that nothing that’s happened here in this house, with that woman, has anything to do with Ian’s death but rather has happened because I agreed, because of my ego… because a stupid story in a stupid magazine gave someone a licence, a clue, a way in…”

  She knew, then, where this was heading. She supposed she’d known where it had been heading all along. She murmured the name: “Montenegro. You think she was hired by Raul?”

  “Who the hell else could it possibly be? And I did this to you, Allie. How am I supposed to live with that?”

  He pushed past her. He made his way along the corridor and into the drawing room. There, she could see him more clearly in what remained of the daylight. He looked ghastly, and for a completely mad moment she felt herself responsible for this although he and not she had been the one to allow the putative documentary scout into their lives. But she couldn’t help herself. It was the role she played in their relationship, just as his role was to need her so desperately that from the first he had questioned nothing about her as long as he’d been assured of her love. Which was what she herself had been looking for: a place of permanence where she could abide, where no one would ask the kind of dangerous questions that grew from a moment’s wonder.

  Outside, Alatea could see that the afternoon was bringing on mid-autumn’s dusk. The sky and the bay beneath were identical in colour, with grey clouds encroaching on apricot streaks cast across both water and air by the setting sun.

  Nicholas went to the bay window. He sank into one of the two seats there, and he dropped his head into his hands.

  “I’ve failed you,” he said. “I’ve failed myself.”

  Alatea wanted to shake her husband. She wanted to tell him that this was not the time for him to feel himself the sun round which all the brewing troubles revolved. She wanted to shout that he could not possibly begin to understand how bad things were about to become for both of them. But to do any of that was to waste what little ability she had left to come up with a way to forestall an inevitable conclusion of which he was still entirely ignorant.

  Nicholas thought that Raul Montenegro’s reintroduction into her life meant the end of things. He could not possibly have known the truth of the matter: Raul Montenegro was only the beginning.

  BLOOMSBURY

  LONDON

  Barbara took herself to Bloomsbury in order to be in his vicinity when she finally heard from Taymullah Azhar. Faced with her need to get more information on the topic of Raul Montenegro— not to mention sorting out everything that there was to sort out about Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos— she reckoned an Internet café was in order. She’d kill two birds while she waited for Azhar to produce a Spanish translator for her.

  Before Nkata had left the Met’s library, he’d said softly, “Look for key words and follow the trail. It’s not brain surgery, Barb. You’ll get better as you go on.” From this, Barbara reckoned that she was to do searches on the names she came across in the articles she had, regardless of what language the articles were in. When she found an Internet café not far from the British Museum, then, that was what she did.

  It was not the most pleasant environment in which to conduct her Web search. She had stopped to purchase an English/Spanish dictionary on the way to the spot, and now she was sandwiched between an overweight asthmatic in a mohair sweater and a gum-popping goth with a septum ring and a score of eyebrow studs who kept receiving calls on her mobile phone from someone who, apparently, did not believe she was sitting at a computer because each time he rang, she barked, “Well then, come to the bloody place if you don’t believe me, Clive… Don’t be so bloody stoop
id. I’m not fucking e-mailing anyone. I can’t, can I, since you keep bloody ringing me every thirty seconds.”

  In this atmosphere, Barbara tried to concentrate. She also tried to ignore the fact that the mouse looked like it hadn’t been disinfected since the day it had come out of its box. As best she could, she attempted to type without actually touching the keys, hitting them only with her fingernails, although these were mostly too short to make a proper job of it. But she reckoned the keyboard was crawling with everything from the bubonic plague to genital warts, and she didn’t intend to leave the place with her future writ large in the clutches of some disease.

  After a few false trails, she was able to find an article on the mayor of Santa Maria et cetera that included a picture. It looked like an anniversary photograph— perhaps a graduation picture?— but in any case, it was something having to do with the nuclear family because they were all spread out on the steps of an unidentifiable building: the mayor, his wife, and their five sons. Barbara examined this picture.

  One fact was obvious immediately, with or without a translation: In the roll of the genetic dice, the five sons of Esteban and Dominga had hit the jackpot. Barbara read their names: Carlos, Miguel, Angel, Santiago, and Diego. They were a handsome lot, ranging in the photo from nineteen years old down to seven years old. But a scrutiny of the article told Barbara that the picture had been taken twenty years earlier, so any of them could easily have been married at this point, perhaps one of them to Alatea. The next step, according to Nkata’s explanation of how these things worked, would be to check on the five sons. Carlos would be first. All Barbara had to do was cross her fingers.

  No luck, though, as far as any marriage went. She found Carlos far more easily than she would have thought possible, but he appeared to be a Catholic priest. There was an article that seemed to be about his ordination, and the entire family posed with him again, this time on the steps of a church. His mother was clinging to his arm, gazing up at him adoringly; his father was grinning, a cigar clutched in his hand; his brothers were looking vaguely embarrassed at all the attendant religious hoopla. So much for Carlos, Barbara thought.

  She went on to Miguel. Again, it didn’t take long. Indeed, it was so easy that Barbara wondered why she hadn’t been checking up on her neighbours for years. In the case of Miguel, she found his engagement picture. The wife-to-be looked vaguely like an Afghan hound, all hair and thin face with a suspicious lack of forehead suggesting a paucity of marbles in the prefrontal lobe. Miguel himself was a dentist, Barbara decided. Either that or he was in need of dental work. Her Spanish dictionary was a little iffy on the topic. But at any rate, it didn’t seem to matter. It took her no step closer to discovering anything about Alatea Fairclough.

  She was about to go on to Angel when her mobile chimed out the first two lines of “Peggy Sue.” She flipped it open, said, “Havers,” and heard Azhar— at long last— telling her that he had found someone who could translate Spanish for her. “Where are you at present?” he asked.

  “Internet caff,” she told him. “I’m down the street from the BM. I c’n come to you. Easier than anything. Cafeteria near your office or something?”

  He was silent for a moment, perhaps thinking about this. At last he said there was a wine bar in Torrington Place, near Chenies Mews and Gower Street. They would meet her there in a quarter of an hour.

  “Right,” she said. “I’ll find it.” She printed the documents she’d so far found and went to the till, where the shop assistant named an exorbitant price for them and said, “Colour printer, luv,” when Barbara protested.

  “Colour robbery more like it,” Barbara said. She took her copies in a paper bag and made it over to Torrington Place, where the wine bar was easy to spot and Azhar was waiting inside with a leggy girl in a cashmere jacket upon whose shoulders spilled a luxury of dark curls.

  Her name was Engracia, no last name provided, and she was a graduate student from Barcelona. The girl smiled at Azhar as he passed this information to Barbara. “I will do what I can to help you,” she said, although Barbara reckoned it was Azhar to whom she wished to be useful, and who could blame her? They made a nice-looking couple. But then, so did Azhar and Angelina Upman. So would Azhar and pretty much anyone.

  She said, “Ta,” to the girl. “In my next life I plan to be multilingual.”

  “I shall leave you to it, then,” Azhar said.

  “Heading back?” Barbara asked him.

  “Heading home,” he replied. “Engracia, my thanks.”

  “De nada,” she murmured.

  At one of the tables inside the wine bar, Barbara handed over the documents, beginning with the article that accompanied the photograph of the mayor and his family. She said, “I got a Spanish/English dictionary, but it wasn’t much help. I mean, it was… a bit. But looking up every word…”

  “Of course.” Engracia read for a moment, holding the article in one hand while she played with a gold hoop earring with the other. After a moment, she said, “This is connected to an election.”

  “For mayor?”

  “Si. The man— Esteban— he runs for mayor of the town and this article introduces him to people. It’s an article without import… how do you call this?”

  “A puff piece?”

  She smiled. She had very nice teeth and very smooth skin. She wore lipstick but it was barely noticeable, so perfectly had it been chosen. “Yes. A puff piece,” she replied. “It says in the town there is such a large family of the mayor that if his family members all vote, he will win the election. But that, I believe, is a joke because it also says the town’s population is seventy-five thousand people.” Engracia read a bit further and said, “There is information about his wife, Dominga, and about her family. Both families have lived in Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos for many years, many generations.”

  “What about the boys?”

  “The boys… Ah. Carlos is a seminarian. Miguel wishes to be a dentist. Angel”— she pronounced it Ahnhail— “plans to study architecture and the other two boys are too young to know, although Santiago says he wants to be an actor and Diego…” She read further and chuckled. “It says he wishes to be an astronaut in the unlikely event that Argentina develops a space programme. That is a little joke, I think. The reporter was humouring him.”

  There wasn’t a lot of grist in all that, Barbara reckoned. She brought out the next pieces, both of them about Raul Montenegro. She handed them over with, “What about these?” And she asked Engracia if she wanted a glass of wine or something since they were taking up space in the wine bar, which wasn’t going to turn out to be a popular move if they didn’t place an order.

  Engracia said mineral water would be nice, and Barbara fetched it for her along with a glass of the house plonk for herself. When she returned with the drinks, she saw that Engracia was concentrating on the article whose accompanying photo had Alatea hanging on Montenegro’s arm. This, she said, was an article about a very important fund-raiser in Mexico City, having to do with the construction of a symphony music hall. The man was the biggest contributor to this project and consequently would have the honour of naming the music hall.

  “And?” Barbara said, expecting the hall to be named for Alatea since she was looking so pleased as she hung on his arm.

  “Magdalena Montenegro Centre for Music,” Engracia said. “Named for his mama. Latin men are close to their mothers, as a rule.”

  “What about the woman with him in the picture?”

  “It says only that she is his companion.”

  “Not his wife? Lover? Partner?”

  “Only his companion, I’m afraid.”

  “Could be a euphemism for lover or partner?”

  Engracia studied the photo a moment. “This is difficult to say. But I do not think so.”

  “So she could have been merely his evening’s companion? Even an escort he hired for the night?”

  “It is possible,” Engracia said. “She cou
ld even be someone who stepped into the picture with him at the moment, I suppose.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Barbara muttered. And when Engracia looked remorseful, as if she’d somehow failed, Barbara said, “Oh, sorry. Not you. Just life.”

  “I see this is important to you. Can I help in some other way?” Engracia asked.

  Barbara thought about this. There was something else. She calculated the time difference and said, “Let me make a phone call,” and she took out her mobile. “They don’t speak English at the other end, so if you c’n talk to whoever answers …”

  She explained to Engracia that they were phoning the mayor’s home in Santa Maria et cetera. The four-hour time difference made it early afternoon there. Her job was to see if there was information to be had about one Alatea Vasquez y del Torres should someone answer the phone.

  “The woman in the picture,” Engracia said with a nod at the article about Raul Montenegro.

  “That would be the case,” Barbara told her.

  When the call went through and the phone began ringing, she handed the mobile over to the Spanish girl. What happened next was rapid-fire Spanish during which Barbara caught only Alatea’s name. Coming from Argentina, though, she could hear the sound of a woman’s voice. It was high and excited, and she could see from Engracia’s intent expression that something was developing from this call to Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos.

  There was a pause in the dialogue and Engracia glanced at Barbara. She said, “That was a cousin, Elena Maria.”

  “Do we have the wrong number, then?”

  “No, no. She’s at the house visiting. Dominga— the mayor’s wife?— this is her aunt. She’s gone to fetch her. She’s most excited to hear Alatea’s name.”

  “Pay dirt,” Barbara murmured.

  “This is…?”

  “Sorry. Just an expression. We might be getting somewhere.”

  She smiled. “Ah. ‘Pay dirt.’ I like this very much.” Then her expression altered as a distant voice bridged the thousands of miles between London and Argentina. The rapid-fire Spanish began again. There were many comprendos and many more sis. A few sabes? and several no sabos and then gracias over and over again.