Believing the Lie il-17

by Elizabeth George

  But no matter the words of her husband, who had lived his life in this strange part of the world, to Alatea the thought was madness. She was in the sand up to her thighs, so no quick movement out of the scour was possible. This meant lying on the top of the sand. And she could not bring herself to do it. She told herself to. She said aloud, “You must, you must,” but all she could think of as she settled more slowly downward was the insidious movement of the sand inching up her supine body, crawling into her ears, touching her cheeks, slithering like menace incarnate towards her nose.

  She wanted to pray but her mind would not produce the appropriate words that could effect a miracle. Instead, what it produced were images, and central to them was Santiago Vasquez y del Torres, thirteen years old, a runaway only as far as the closest city to Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos. There in a church he had stowed himself for refuge, dressed in Elena Maria’s clothing, face painted with Elena Maria’s cosmetics, a shoulder bag containing some little money and a change of clothing and three tubes of lipstick, and a scarf covering hair that was too long for a boy and too short for a girl.

  When the priest found her, he called her my child and daughter of our Heavenly Father and he asked her if she was there to confess. And confession seemed like the path she should take — “Go, Santiago. Go where God points,” Elena Maria had whispered — so Santiago Vasquez y del Torres had confessed. Not to sin but to his need for help because if he could not be what he needed to be, he knew he would end his life.

  The priest listened. He spoke gently of the grave sin of despair. He said that God did not create mistakes. Then he said, “Come with me, child,” and together they walked to the rectory, where Santiago was given absolution for whatever sin he had committed in running from his home and a meal of beef and boiled potatoes, which he ate slowly as he looked round the simple kitchen, where the priest’s housekeeper eyed him with thick black eyebrows drawn together and a furrowed brow. When he was finished with his meal, he was led to a parlour to rest, my dear child, for your journey has been a long and difficult one, has it not? And yes it had, oh it had. So he lay on a sofa covered in corduroy and he fell asleep.

  His father awakened him. Face like a stone mask, he’d said, “Thank you, Padre,” and he’d taken his wayward son by the arm. “Thank you for everything,” and he’d made a hefty donation to the church or perhaps to the betraying priest himself, and home they had gone.

  A beating would change him, his father decided. So would being locked into a room until he saw clearly the crime he had committed not only against God’s law but also against his family and their good name. And nothing would change about his situation — “Do you understand me, Santiago?” — until he agreed to stop this mad behaviour.

  So Santiago had tried on manhood, for all the ill-fitting suit of clothes it was. But pictures of naked ladies shared in secret with his brothers only made him want to be like the ladies, not to have them, and when his brothers touched themselves in guilty pleasure at the sight of these women, the thought of touching himself in a similar way made him both nauseous and faint.

  He did not develop as a boy: hairy of arm and leg and chest, bearded and needing to shave. It was so clear that something was wrong with him, but the only answer seemed to be toughening him up with contact sports, with hunting, with rock climbing, with daredevil skiing, with anything, in short, that his father could think of to make him into the man he was intended by God to be.

  For two long years Santiago made the attempt. For two long years Santiago saved every bit of money he could. At fifteen, then, he ran for the final time, and he made it by train to Buenos Aires, where no one knew he was not a female unless he wished to make the fact known to them.

  Alatea recalled the train ride: the sound of the engine and the scenery passing. She recalled her head against the cool glass of the window. She recalled her feet upon her suitcase. She remembered her ticket being punched and the man saying, Gracias, senorita, and being senorita from that time forward as the train carried her away from her home.

  She could almost hear the train at this moment, so vivid was the memory of that time and that place. It rumbled and roared. It gushed and it thundered. It took her relentlessly into her future and even now she was on it, escaping her past.

  When the first of the water hit her, she understood that what she’d been hearing was the tide. She realised then what that siren had meant. This was the tidal bore coming, coming as fast as a horse could gallop. And while the water meant that she would soon be free of the scour that held her fast, she understood that there were things from which she would never be free.

  She thought of how thankful she was that she would not suffocate in the sand, as she had feared she might. As the first of the water crashed against her body, she understood also that she would not drown. For one did not drown in water such as this. One merely lay back and fell asleep.

  11 NOVEMBER

  ARNSIDE

  CUMBRIA

  There had been nothing, really, that could be done. All of them had known it. All of them had pretended otherwise. The Coast Guard went out into the fog, taking the route from Walney Island into Lancaster Sound. But it was miles from there into Morecambe Bay and miles farther into the channel of the River Kent. She could have been anywhere, and this was something that everyone had known as well. If it had been the tidal bore alone, there might have been a chance — slight though it was — that she could be found. But with the tidal bore conjoining the fog, the situation had been without hope from the very first. They did not find her.

  The RNLI had attempted to help as well, once there was enough water for them to set out. But they hadn’t got far before they knew that it was a body they would be looking for. With this the case, for them to remain out in the fog ran the risk of there being more bodies to find at the end of the day, and to compound the tragedy was foolish. Only the Guide to the Sands could assist, they reported to Lynley upon their return to land, for the Guide’s job in a situation such as this was to speculate on the probable places that a body would wash up. His job was to help them find the body as quickly as possible because if they did not find it when the fog lifted, there was a very good chance they would not find it at all. The water would wash it away, and the sand would bury it. Some things out in Morecambe Bay were never found and some things lay buried for one hundred years. It was the nature of the place, the Guide to the Sands told them.

  Lynley and Deborah had gone into Arnside House at last, after hours upon hours of stoking the bonfire, even after the point when the tidal bore had surged into and then filled the channel and all of them knew there was not a single hope left. But Nicholas wouldn’t leave the fire, so they continued to feed it with him, even as they cast worried looks upon his devastated face. He wasn’t ready to stop until evening, when exhaustion had combined with knowledge and the dawning of grief to rob him of the desire to continue. Then he’d stumbled towards the house, and Lynley and Deborah had followed him as the people of Arnside village parted to let them pass and their words of sympathy had matched the looks of sorrow on their faces.

  Inside the house, Lynley had phoned Bernard Fairclough. He reported only the barest of facts: that his son’s wife was missing and probably drowned out in Morecambe Bay. Apparently out for a walk, Lynley told them, and caught up in the tidal bore.

  “We’ll be there at once,” Bernard Fairclough had said. “Tell Nicholas we’re on our way.”

  “They’ll want to know if I’m going to use now,” Nicholas said numbly when Lynley relayed his father’s message. “Well, who wouldn’t worry that I might, with my history, eh?” He went on to say that he would not see them. Or anyone else, if it came to that.

  So Lynley had waited and when Nicholas’s parents arrived, he gave them the information. And he himself decided that his part in all this was not to betray Alatea. He would hold her secrets in his heart. He would take her secrets to his grave. He knew that Deborah would do the same.
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br />   It was too late by then to begin the journey back to London, so he and Deborah had returned to the Crow and Eagle, booked two rooms, had a largely silent dinner, and had gone to bed. In the morning, when he could bear to talk, he phoned New Scotland Yard. There were, he saw, seven messages on his mobile phone. He didn’t listen to any of them. He rang Barbara Havers instead.

  He told her briefly what had happened. She was silent except for the occasional, “Oh damn” and “Oh hell, sir.” He told her that they would need to get word to Alatea’s family in Argentina. Could Barbara find the graduate student once again and make the necessary phone call? Yes, she could, she told him. She was that bloody sorry about the way things had worked out, as well.

  Havers said, “How are you, sir? You don’t sound good. Anything else I c’n do at this end?”

  “Tell the superintendent that I was detained in Cumbria,” he said. “I’ll be on my way in an hour or two.”

  “Anything else I should tell her?” Havers asked. “Want me to let her know what’s happened?”

  Lynley considered this only briefly before he made his decision. “Best to let things lie as they are,” he said.

  She said, “Right,” and rang off.

  Lynley knew he could trust her to do as he’d asked, and it occurred to him, then, that he’d not thought at all about ringing Isabelle. Either on the previous night or this morning upon waking from a very bad sleep, he’d not considered her.

  Deborah was waiting for him when he descended the stairs into reception at the Crow and Eagle. She was very ill looking. Her eyes grew bright with tears when she saw him, and she cleared her throat roughly to keep them from falling.

  She was sitting on a wooden bench opposite the reception desk. He sat next to her and put his arm round her shoulders. She sagged into him, and he kissed the side of her head. She reached for his other hand and held it, and he felt the change in both of their bodies as they began to breathe as one.

  He said, “Don’t think what you’re thinking.”

  “How can I not?”

  “I’m not sure. But I know that you mustn’t.”

  “Tommy, she would never have gone out into the bay if I hadn’t been pursuing this whole mad surrogate mother business. And that had nothing to do with Ian Cresswell’s death, which you and Simon knew all along. I’m at fault.”

  “Deb darling, secrets and silence caused all of this. Lies caused this. Not you.”

  “You’re being very kind.”

  “I’m being truthful. It was what Alatea couldn’t bear to tell him about herself that took her onto the sands. It was that information that took her to Lancaster in the first place. You can’t make her secrets and her death your fault because they’re not, and that’s how it is.”

  Deborah said nothing for a moment. Her head was bent and she seemed to be studying the toes of her black leather boots. She finally murmured, “But there’re things one must be silent about, aren’t there?”

  He thought about this, about everything that remained and would remain forever unspoken between them. He replied with, “And who knows that better than we two?” and when he loosened his arm from her shoulders, she looked at him. He smiled at her fondly. “London?” he said.

  “London,” she replied.

  ARNSIDE

  CUMBRIA

  No matter Nicholas’s desire for solitude, Valerie had insisted to her husband that they would remain in Arnside House the rest of that night. She’d phoned Manette to give her the news, telling her to stay away. She’d phoned Mignon as well but with little worry that Mignon would bring herself all the way to Arnside since she’d been holed up in her tower from the moment she’d understood that her parents had no intention of continuing to be at her monetary, emotional, and physical beck and call. Mignon hardly mattered to Valerie at this point, anyway. Her concern was Nicholas. Her worry was what he might do in the wake of this disaster.

  His message to them via the detective from New Scotland Yard had been terse but forthright. He wanted to see no one. That had been all.

  Valerie had said to Lynley, “She’ll have people in Argentina. We’ll need to let them know. There will be arrangements…”

  Lynley had told her that the Met would handle informing Alatea’s people since he had an officer who had tracked them down. As for arrangements, perhaps they all ought to wait to see if a body could be found.

  She hadn’t thought of that: that there might not be a body. There had been a death so there would be a body, she wanted to insist. After all, a body was a form of finality. Without one, how would grief ever be navigated?

  When Lynley had left with the woman he’d introduced as Deborah St. James — unknown to Valerie and, frankly, unimportant at this point save the knowledge that she’d been present during the time of Alatea’s disappearance — Valerie climbed the stairs and made her way to Nicholas’s room. She’d said to the panels of his door, “We’re here, darling. Your father and I. We’ll be downstairs,” and she’d left him alone.

  Throughout the long night, she and Bernard had sat in the drawing room, a fire burning in the grate. Near three in the morning, she’d thought she heard movement above them on the first floor of the house, but it turned out to be only the wind. The wind blew away the fog and brought with it the rain. The rain beat against the windows in steady waves and Valerie thought aimlessly about heaviness enduring for a night but joy coming in the morning. Something that came from the Book of Common Prayer, she recalled. But the words did not apply in this terrible case.

  She and Bernard did not speak. He attempted to draw her into conversation four times, but she shook her head and held up her hand to make him stop. When he finally said, “For the love of God, Valerie, you must talk to me sometime,” she understood that in spite of everything that had passed in the last twelve or more hours, Bernard actually wanted to talk about them. What was wrong with the man? she asked herself wearily. But then, hadn’t she always known the answer to that?

  It was just after dawn when Nicholas came into the drawing room. He’d moved so quietly, she hadn’t heard him and he was standing in front of her before she realised it was not Bernard who’d entered the room. For Bernard had never left the room, although that too was something she hadn’t taken note of.

  She started to get to her feet. Nicholas said, “Don’t.”

  She said, “Darling,” but she stopped when he shook his head. He had one eye closed as if the lights in the room were painful to him, and he cocked his head as if this would help bring her into focus.

  He said, “Just this. It’s not my intention.”

  Bernard said, “What? Nick, I say…”

  “It’s not my intention to use again,” he said.

  “That’s not why we’re here,” Valerie said.

  “So you stayed because …?” His lips were so dry they seemed to stick together. There were hollows beneath his eyes. His cherub hair was flat and matted. His spectacles were smudged.

  “We stayed because we’re your parents,” Bernard said. “For the love of God, Nick — ”

  “It’s my fault,” Valerie said. “If I hadn’t brought the Scotland Yard people up here to investigate, upsetting you, upsetting her — ”

  “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” Bernard said. “Your mother is blameless. If I hadn’t given her cause to want an investigation, no matter the bloody reason — ”

  “Stop.” Nicholas raised his hand and dropped it in an exhausted movement. He said, “Yes. It’s your fault. Both of you. But that doesn’t really make a difference now.”

  He turned and left them in the drawing room. They heard him shuffle along the corridor. In a moment they heard him trudging up the stairs.

  They went home in silence. As if knowing they were coming down the long drive from the road — perhaps she’d been watching for them from the roof of the tower, where, Valerie now knew, she’d doubtless been skipping up the stairs to spy upon everyone for years — Mignon stood waiting for them. She
’d wisely discarded the zimmer frame, no doubt understanding that her jig was decidedly up, and she was wrapped up in a wool coat against the cold. The morning was fine as it sometimes is after a good rain, and the sun was as bright as an undashed hope, casting gold autumn light on the lawns and the deer grazing upon them in the distance.

  Mignon advanced on the car as Valerie got out. She said, “Mother, what happened? Why did you not come home last night? I was sick with worry. I couldn’t sleep. I nearly phoned the police.”

  Valerie said, “Alatea…”

  “Well of course Alatea,” Mignon declared. “But why on earth did you and Dad not come home?”

  Valerie gazed at her daughter, but she couldn’t quite seem to make her out. Yet hadn’t that always been the case? Mignon was a stranger and the workings of her mind were the foreign country in which she dwelt.

  “I’m far too tired to speak to you now,” Valerie told her, and headed for the door.

  “Mother!”

  “Mignon, that’s enough,” her father said.

  Valerie heard Bernard following. She heard Mignon’s wail of protest. She paused for a moment then turned back to her. “You heard your father,” she said. “Enough.”

  She went into the house. She was monumentally exhausted. Bernard said her name as she made for the stairs. He sounded tentative, unsure in ways that Bernard Fairclough had never been unsure.

  She said, “I’m going to bed, Bernard,” and she climbed the stairs to do so.