Believing the Lie il-17
Page 67
In the bathroom she turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat. She was shivering, not from the cold, for the electric fire had finally warmed the bungalow, but rather from something else far more insidious and more deeply felt than frigid temperature against one’s skin. She looked at herself in the mirror as the steam began to seep from the shower. She studied the person she had become at the behest of others. She thought of the steps that had to be taken to find Hadiyyah and to return the little girl to her father. The steps were many, but Barbara knew the first one.
She went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors, a nice sharp pair that sheared easily through the bones of chickens although she’d never used them for that or, as it happened, for anything else. But they were perfect for the need she had now.
She returned to the bathroom, where she shed her clothes.
She adjusted the temperature of the water.
She stepped into the shower.
There, she began to hack off her hair.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
WHIDBEY ISLAND,
WASHINGTON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As an American writing a series set in the UK, I am continually in the debt of people in England who willingly help me in the early stages of my research. For this novel, I’m extremely grateful to the staff and owners of Gilpin Lodge in Cumbria who provided me a lovely safe haven from which to launch my exploration into the countryside that became the backdrop for this novel. The Queen’s Guide to the Sands — Cedric Robinson — was a generous and invaluable source of information on Morecambe Bay, having spent all of his life living on the bay and most of his life guiding people across its perilous expanse at low tide. Mr. Robinson’s wife Olive graciously welcomed me into their eight-hundred-year-old cottage and allowed me to pick her brains as well as those of her husband during my time in Cumbria. The ever resourceful Swati Gamble of Hodder and Stoughton once again proved that, armed with the Internet and a telephone, nothing is impossible for her.
In the United States, Bill Solberg and Stan Harris helped me in matters pertaining to lakeside life, and a chance encounter with Joanne Herman in the San Francisco greenroom of a Sunday morning talk show put me in possession of her book Transgender Explained for Those Who Are Not. Caroline Cossey’s book My Story elucidated better than anything the pain and confusion of gender dysphoria and the prejudice one faces having made the decision to do something about it.
I’m grateful for the support of my husband, Thomas McCabe, for the always cheerful presence of my personal assistant Charlene Coe, and for the readings of early drafts of this novel done by my longtime cold reader Susan Berner and by Debbie Cavanaugh. My professional life is made smoother through the efforts of my literary agent, Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group, as well as my British publishing team of Sue Fletcher, Martin Nield, and Karen Geary at Hodder and Stoughton. With this novel, I join a new American publishing team at Dutton, and I’m grateful for the confidence in my work expressed by my editor and publisher Brian Tart.
Finally, to my readers who are interested in Cumbria and its crowning jewel — the Lake District — all of the places in this novel are real, as is the case in all my books. I have merely picked them up and moved them when necessary. Ireleth Hall stands in for Levens Hall, the home of Hal and Susan Bagot; the Faircloughs’ boathouse can actually be found in Fell Foot Park; Arnside House stands in for Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts beauty on the shore of Lake Windermere; Bryan Beck farm grew from an Elizabethan manor house called Townend; and Bassenthwaite village became Bryanbarrow village, complete with ducks. Playing God with locations such as these is part of the pleasure of writing fiction.
Elizabeth George
Whidbey Island,
Washington
BELIEVING THE LIE
ALSO BY
ELIZABETH GEORGE
A Great Deliverance
Payment in Blood
Well-Schooled in Murder
A Suitable Vengeance
For the Sake of Elena
Missing Joseph
Playing for the Ashes
In the Presence of the Enemy
Deception on His Mind
In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner
A Traitor to Memory
I, Richard
A Place of Hiding
With No One as Witness
What Came Before He Shot Her
Careless in Red
This Body of Death
NONFICTION
Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach
to Fiction and the Writing Life
ANTHOLOGY
A Moment on the Edge:
100 Years of Crime Stories by Women
Two of the Deadliest
ELIZABETH GEORGE
BELIEVING THE LIE
DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 25 °Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi — 110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, January 2012
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © 2012 by Susan Elizabeth George
Map copyright © by David Cain
Title page photo of Morecambe Bay copyright © by John Sparks/Alamy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK — MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
George, Elizabeth, 1949 —
Believing the lie: an Inspector Lynley novel / Elizabeth George. p. cm.
EISBN: 9781101565797
1. Lynley, Thomas (Fictitious character) — Fiction. 2. Women detectives — England — Fiction. 3. Havers, Barbara (Fictitious character) — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.E478B45 2012 813’.54-dc23 2011032904
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Bembo
Designed by Amy Hill
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental..
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-9202b6-ffc3-cc4c-228e-e336-192a-46eea8
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 20.01.2013
Created using: FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
USER
Document history:
ver. 1.0: создание FB2 из mobi
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защище�
� авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/