Believing the Lie il-17

by Elizabeth George

  The woman was, Deborah thought, quite exotic: olive skinned and dark eyed, with cheekbones defining an angular face. She had an abundance of coffee-coloured hair so wiry that it sprang from her head in a billowing mass, and enormous gold earrings shone through it when she moved. She was an odd match for Nicholas Fairclough, former drug addict and family black sheep.

  Alatea crossed the room to her, a hand extended. She had large hands, but they were long fingered and slim like the rest of her. “Nicky tells me you seem harmless enough,” she said with a smile. Her English was heavily accented. “He has told you I have a concern about this.”

  “About my being harmless?” Deborah asked. “Or about the project?”

  “Let’s sit and have a chat.” Nicholas was the one to speak, as if worried that his wife wouldn’t understand Deborah’s mild joke. “I’ve made coffee, Allie.”

  Alatea poured. She wore gold bangles on her wrists — first cousins to her earrings — and they slid down her arm as she reached for the coffeepot. Her gaze seemed to fall on the magazines as she did this, and for a moment she hesitated. She cast a glance at Deborah. Deborah smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging fashion.

  Alatea said, “I was surprised about this film of yours, Ms. St. James.”

  “It’s Deborah. Please.”

  “As you wish, of course. It is small up here, what Nicholas is doing. I did wonder how you learned about him.”

  Deborah was ready for this. Tommy had done his homework on the Faircloughs. He’d found a logical point of entry for her. “It wasn’t me, actually,” she said. “I just go where I’m pointed and do the preliminary research for the filmmakers at Query Productions. I’m not sure exactly how they decided upon you” — with a nod at Nicholas — “but I think it had to do with an article about your parents’ house.”

  Nicholas said to his wife, “It was that sidebar again, darling.” And to Deborah, “There was a piece written about Ireleth Hall, my parents’ place. It’s an historic old pile on Lake Windermere with a topiary garden round two hundred years old that my mother’s brought back. She mentioned this place — our home — to the reporter and as it’s a bit of an architectural conversation piece, he trotted over to have a look. Not sure why. Perhaps it was a historical-restorations-are-in-the-blood-of-the-Faircloughs kind of thing. This place was given to us by my father and I reckoned taking it on was better than looking a gift horse. I think Allie and I would have preferred something new with all the mod cons in working order, though. Isn’t that the case, darling?”

  “It’s a beautiful home,” Alatea said in reply. “I feel fortunate to live here.”

  “That’s because you always insist upon seeing the glass half-full,” Nicholas told her, “which makes me a very lucky man, I suppose.”

  “One of the film producers,” Deborah said to Alatea, “brought up the Middlebarrow Pele Project at an early meeting we had in London, when we were looking at all the possibilities. Frankly, no one knew what a pele tower was, but there were several people who knew about your husband. Who he is, I mean. As well as other things.” She didn’t elaborate upon those things. It was obvious to them all what they were.

  “So this film,” Alatea said, “I do not have to be involved? It is, you see, a matter of my English — ”

  Which sounded, Deborah thought, not only excellent but charming.

  “ — and the fact that Nicky has done all of this on his own.”

  “I wouldn’t have done it without you in my life,” Nicholas put in.

  “But that is another matter entirely.” She turned as she spoke and her hair lifted, that billowing effect caused by its wiry nature. “The pele project… this is about you and what you have done and what you are achieving on your own. I am only your support, Nicky.”

  “As if that’s not important,” he said, rolling his eyes at Deborah as if to add, “You see what I have to put up with?”

  “Nonetheless, I have no real part and I want no part.”

  “You’ve no worries on that score,” Deborah assured her. Anything to get their agreement, she thought. “And really, I do want to stress that nothing may come of this anyway. I don’t make the decisions. I only do the research. I create a report, take pictures to accompany it, and everything goes to London. The people at the production company decide what will be in the film.”

  “See?” Nicholas said to his wife. “No worries.”

  Alatea nodded but she didn’t look convinced. Still she gave her blessing with the words, “Perhaps you should then take Deborah to see the project, Nicky. That seems like a good place to begin.”

  ARNSIDE

  CUMBRIA

  When her husband had left with the red-haired woman, Alatea sat for a moment looking at the fan of magazines on the table in the bay window’s alcove. They had been gone through. While this shouldn’t have been odd, considering the woman had been waiting for Nicholas to fetch his wife for an introduction and it was natural for one to flip idly through magazines while waiting, there was nonetheless very little that did not set Alatea’s nerves on edge these days. She told herself that it meant absolutely nothing that Conception was now on the top of the stack. While it was a little embarrassing that a stranger might conclude that Alatea was obsessed with the subject of the magazine, it hardly meant anything would come of her conclusion. This woman from London was not here to talk to her or to wander through the labyrinth of her personal history. She was here because of what Nicholas was doing. And it was likely that she wouldn’t have been here at all had Nicholas been just some ordinary individual trying to develop yet another way to help addicts turn their lives around. The fact that he wasn’t just some ordinary bloke, the fact that the misdeeds of his misspent youth had garnered him so much publicity because of his father… That was what made the story a good one: the son of Lord Fairclough, self-redeemed from a life of dissolution.

  Alatea hadn’t known about the Baron Fairclough of Ireleth part of Nicholas’s past when she’d first met him, or she would have run from his presence. Instead, she’d known only that his father was a manufacturer of everything imaginable that one might find in a bathroom, a fact that Nicholas had made light of. What he hadn’t mentioned was his father’s title, his father’s service to the cause of pancreatic cancer, and his father’s subsequent position of prominence. So she’d been prepared to meet a man prematurely aged by his son’s having thrown away twenty years of his life. She’d not been prepared to meet the vital presence that was Bernard Fairclough. Nor had she been altogether prepared for that way Nicholas’s father looked at her through his heavy-framed spectacles. “Call me Bernard,” he’d said, and his eyes had gone from her own to her bosom and back again. “Welcome to the family, my dear.”

  She was used to men’s eyes on her bosom. That had not been the problem. It was natural. Men were men. But men didn’t usually then gaze upon her with speculation on their faces. What is someone like you doing with my son? was the unspoken question Bernard Fairclough had asked her.

  She had seen that look each time Nicholas had introduced her to a member of his family. To them all, she and her husband were unsuited and although she wanted to make her physical appearance the reason for her unsuitability as the wife of Nicholas Fairclough, she reckoned it was more than that. They thought of her as a gold digger. She was not from their country, they knew nothing about her, her courtship had been disturbingly brief. To them this meant she was after something, undoubtedly the family fortune. Especially did Nicholas’s cousin Ian think this, because he was the man in charge of Bernard Fairclough’s money.

  What Nicholas’s family didn’t think was that she could possibly be in love with him. She’d so far expended a great deal of effort to assure them of her devotion. She’d given them not a single reason to doubt her love for Nicholas, and ultimately, she’d come to believe she’d soothed the concerns of them all.

  There was no reason their concerns should not be soothed, for she did love her husband. She was devoted to
him. God in heaven, she was hardly the first woman on earth who had fallen in love with a man less attractive than herself. It happened all the time. So for every person to gaze upon her so speculatively… This had to stop, but she wasn’t sure how to halt it.

  Alatea knew that she had to resolve her anxieties about this and other matters in some way. She had to stop starting at shadows. It was not a sin to enjoy the life she had. She hadn’t sought it. It had come to her. That had to mean it was the path that she was intended to follow.

  Still, there was the magazine mixed among the others on the table and now on the top of them. Still, there was the way the woman from London had looked at her. How did they really know who this woman was, why she was here, and what she intended? They didn’t. They had to wait to find out. Or so it seemed.

  Alatea picked up the coffee service on its tray. She carried it into the kitchen. She saw next to the telephone the scrap of paper upon which she’d first written the message from Deborah St. James. She hadn’t taken note of the name of the company Deborah St. James represented when she’d taken the message, but the woman herself had mentioned it, thank God, so Alatea had a place to start.

  She went to the second floor of the house. Along a corridor where servants once had slept, she had designated a tiny bedroom as their design centre while she and Nicholas worked upon the house. But she also used the room as her lair and it was here that she kept her laptop.

  It took forever to access the Internet from this location, but she managed to do so. She stared at the screen for a moment before she began to type.

  BRYANBARROW

  CUMBRIA

  It had been easy to bunk off school. Since no one with any brains would actually want to cart him all the way to Ulverston and beyond and since Kaveh did have brains, it had been a simple matter. Lie in bed, clutch the stomach, say Cousin Manette had served him something that must have been bad on the previous evening, claim he had already been sick twice during the night, and act appreciative when Gracie reacted as he’d known she’d react. She’d flown to Kaveh’s bedroom and he’d heard her crying out, “Timmy’s been sick! Timmy’s not well!” and he did feel a very small twinge of guilt because he knew from Gracie’s voice that she was afraid. Poor dumb kid. It didn’t take a genius to know she was worried that someone else from her family might suddenly kick the bucket.

  She needed to get a grip, did Gracie. People died all the time. One couldn’t prevent that by hovering round them and doing their breathing, eating, sleeping, and shitting for them. Besides, as far as Tim was concerned, Gracie had bigger worries now than the potential death of someone else in her life. She had the worry of what the hell was going to become of her now their dad was dead and their mother wasn’t making the slightest move to claim them.

  Well, at least they weren’t the only ones with that worry, he thought. For it was only a matter of time before Kaveh got both the word and the boot, and then it would be out on the street for him. Find a new place to live and a new dick to fuck you. Go back to whatever hole you’d been living in when Dad first found you, Kaveh my man.

  Tim could hardly wait for that moment. And he wasn’t the only one, as things turned out.

  That morning old George Cowley had waylaid Kaveh on his way to the car with Gracie in tow. Cowley looked like shit from what Tim could see from his bedroom window, but Cowley always looked like shit so it didn’t mean much to see him with his braces forgotten and his fly so undone that part of his shirt was hanging out of it like a tattersall flag. He must’ve seen Kaveh and Gracie from the window of his hovel and come running to have it out with the bloke.

  Tim couldn’t hear what they were saying but he reckoned he knew the topic well enough. For Cowley hitched up his sagging trousers and adopted a posture that suggested a confrontation was in the offing. If that was the case, there was only one reason for confronting Kaveh about anything: Cowley wanted to know when Kaveh was planning to vacate the premises. He wanted to know when Bryan Beck farm was going on to the block.

  Outside, Gracie had her rucksack at her feet and was waiting for Kaveh to unlock the car door for her. She was ping-ponging her gaze between Kaveh and Cowley, and Tim could see from her expression that she was scared. Gracie scared created a twinge in Tim, suggesting he ought to go outside and see if there was something he could do to come between Cowley and Kaveh or at least to get Gracie away from them. But doing that would bring himself to the closer attention of Kaveh, who might then tell him to get himself ready to be carted down to Margaret Fox School, and that was the last thing he wanted since he had things to do today.

  Tim turned from the window and crossed the room to his bed. He threw himself down on it. He was waiting for the sound of Kaveh’s car, which would indicate that Tim was finally alone for the day. When he heard its muted roar — Kaveh was always too heavy on the accelerator, as if he thought the engine needed to be thoroughly flooded before putting the car into gear — Tim reached for his mobile. He began to punch in the number.

  So yesterday had been a waste. He’d flipped out with Cousin Manette, and that was bad. What was good in the bad was that he’d not gone so far as to hurt her seriously. He’d come to his senses right at the moment he was about to fall upon her and choke the bloody life out of her and enjoy doing it just to get her to stop being so fucking concerned about him. His vision had gone black and he couldn’t even see the stupid cow on the ground in front of him. He’d dropped to his knees then and had beaten his fists on the wooden jetty instead of on her and damn it all if she hadn’t rolled over and pulled him to her and tried to soothe him. Tim didn’t know where his father’s cousin had developed her skill in the turn-the-other-cheek department. Her ability to forgive and forget was a strong indication that she had more than one screw loose in a place where screws didn’t belong at all.

  At any rate, getting into Windermere had been out of the question. Tim had done his part and sobbed awhile. Then he finally calmed down. There they remained on the jetty dock for a good thirty minutes with Cousin Manette holding him and murmuring about things being fine and all right and you and me will go camping up Scout Scar just you wait and see and then who knows what will happen maybe your dad will come back to life like anyone really wanted him to and maybe your mum will develop a different personality which was just as unlikely. Whatever, Tim thought. Who bloody cared anyway. The important thing was not to have to spend the night in Great Urswick, and he’d managed that.

  where r u he thumbed into the mobile. 2day ok he added.

  There was no reply.

  couldnt was his second message. No ride 2 W. There was no need to add the information about Manette, her tent, and all the rest. The fact was he’d not had a way to get to Windermere once Manette had carted him to Great Urswick and it would have taken him hours to thumb it.

  There was still no reply. Tim waited. His gut started to feel like there was actually bad food inside of it as he’d claimed, and he swallowed a lump of desperation. No, he told himself immediately, he wasn’t desperate. He wasn’t anything.

  He rolled off the bed, tossing the mobile on the bedside table. He went to his laptop and accessed his e-mail. No message.

  It was, he decided, time to push matters along. No way in hell was anyone walking away from a bargain Tim had struck. He’d kept his half of it and it was time the other half was kept as well.

  LAKE WINDERMERE

  CUMBRIA

  Lynley had rooted a small pocket torch from the glove box of the Healey Elliott, and he was walking down to the boathouse for a closer look at the dock when his mobile rang. It was Isabelle, he saw. Her first words to him were, “Tommy, I need you in London.”

  Logically he thought something had come up, which was what he asked her.

  She said, “I’m not talking about professional need. There are certain actions I don’t want another member of the team to engage in for me.”

  He smiled at that. “Well, that’s good to hear. I didn’t much fancy sharing you with
DI Stewart.”

  “Don’t push your luck. When will you be back?”

  He looked out at the lake. He’d come through the plantation of poplars and he stood on the path with the morning sun falling on his shoulders. It was looking like a very fine day. For a moment he gave casual thought to what it would be like to be sharing the day with Isabelle. He said, “I don’t know, actually. I’ve only just got started.”

  “What about a brief encounter? I’m missing you, and I don’t like to miss you. When I miss you, you start preying on my mind. I can’t have that and do my job properly.”

  “A brief encounter would solve that for you?”

  “It would. I have no defence to offer: I enjoy you in bed.”

  “At least you’re forthright.”

  “And I always will be. So have you the time? I can come to you this afternoon — ” She paused and he pictured her checking her diary for a time. When she went on, he knew he’d been right. “Round half past three,” she added. “Can you free yourself then?”

  “I’m not near London, I’m afraid.”

  “Really? Where are you?”

  “Isabelle….” He wondered if she’d been trying to trick him. Dangling the prospect of sex to divert him first and then sweeping in for an inadvertent admission on his part regarding his location. “You know I can’t say.”

  “I know you’ve been instructed by Hillier to keep your mouth shut. I wouldn’t expect that to apply to me. Would it have applied — ” She stopped herself. She said, “Never mind,” and that told him what she’d been on the edge of asking: Would it have applied to your wife? But she wouldn’t say that. They never mentioned Helen because to mention Helen ran the risk of taking their relationship in a direction that led from the purely sexual to an area she’d indicated from the first she had no intention of going. “At any rate, this is ridiculous,” she said. “What does Hillier think I’m going to do with the information?”