Believing the Lie (24 page)

Deborah watched as he picked his way through the rubble. He yelled, “Hey, Joe! What d’we hear from that stonemason?”

Deborah wandered in the direction of the large tent, identified by a sign in front of it reading
Eat and Meet.
Inside, a bearded man
in a knitted cap and heavy coat—too heavy for the weather, but he seemed to have no body fat at all to insulate his bones—was setting up for a meal. He had positioned large pots over spirit warmers, and a fragrance came from them, redolent of red meat and potatoes. He saw Deborah, and his eyes lit on the camera in her hands.

Deborah said pleasantly, “Hello. Not to worry. I’m just having a look round.”

“Th’ always are,” he muttered.

“Lots of visitors?”

“Always someone comin’ hereabouts. Himself needs the funds.”

“Oh. I see. Well, I’m not a potential donor, I’m afraid.”

“Nor was the last. Doesn’t matter to me. I get food and the meetings and ’f someone wants to ask me do I think this’ll work, I say it will.”

Deborah approached him. “But you don’t believe in this process?”

“Didn’t say that. And doesn’t matter what I believe. Like I say, I get food and the meetings and that’s enough for me. Don’t mind the meetings as much as I reckoned I would, so that’s not half-bad. Dry place to sleep as well.”

“During the meetings?” Deborah asked him.

He looked up sharply. He saw her smile and he chuckled. “Anyway, like I said, they’re not half-bad. Bit much with the God bit, bit more with the acceptance bit, but I can cope. Maybe it’ll sink in. Willing to try it. Ten years sleeping rough…it’s enough.”

Deborah joined him then at the serving table. He had a large box on a chair next to it, and from this he began taking out cutlery, tin plates, plastic drinking glasses, cups, and a mound of paper napkins. He began to arrange these on the table, and Deborah helped him.

“Teacher,” he said quietly.

She said, “What?”

“That’s what I was. Secondary comprehensive in Lancaster. Chemistry. I bet you didn’t reckon that, did you?”

“No. I didn’t.” Her words were equally quiet.

He gestured towards the outdoors. “All shapes and sizes,” he said. “We got a surgeon, a physicist, two bankers, and an estate agent out there. And those’re just the ones willing to say what they left behind.
The others…? They’re not ready yet. Takes time to admit how far you’ve fallen. You don’t have to make those table napkins so neat. We’re not the Ritz.”

“Oh. Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Like Himself,” he said. “Can’t hide your roots.”

Deborah didn’t bother to tell him that her own roots came from the soil of what in another century would have been called “being in service.” Her father had long been employed by the St. James family, and he’d spent the last seventeen years of his life caring for Simon while pretending not to be caring for Simon. It was a very delicate balancing act that had him referring to his own son-in-law as Mr. St. James. Deborah made a murmur of quasi-agreement and said, “You sound fond of him.”

“Himself? Decent bloke. Bit too trusting, but good to the core.”

“You think he’s being taken advantage of? I mean, with these gentlemen here.”

“Not hardly. Most of them know they’ve got something good going and ’less they’re too far gone with the drink or with drugs, they’re going to hang on here as long as they can.”

“Then who?”

“Taking advantage?” He eyed her directly, a very meaningful look. Deborah saw that he had a cataract forming in his left eye and she wondered how old he was. With ten years of life on the street as part of his C.V., it would be nearly impossible to determine his age from his appearance.

“People come round with promises and he believes ’em. He’s naïve that way.”

“It’s to do with money? Donations?”

“Sometimes. Other times, they want something off him.” Again, that meaningful look.

Deborah realised that he was placing her in the category of people wanting something from Nicholas Fairclough. It wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion, considering who she was supposed to be. Still, she said, “Such as?”

“Well, he’s got a good story to tell, doesn’t he? He thinks if he tells it, it’ll bring in money to help this place. Only it doesn’t always
work that way, does it. Most of the time it comes to nothing. We had a newspaper bloke here four times promising a story and Himself saw bags of money coming in to help us out when the story got printed. Bloody nothing came of it and we’re back where we started, scrabbling for funds. That’s what I mean. A bit naïve.”

Deborah said, “Four times?”

“Eh?”

“A reporter was here four times and no story came out of it? That’s unusual, quite an investment of time with no payoff for anyone. It must have been a true disappointment. What sort of reporter invests all that time in preparing a story without writing it?”

“That’s what I want to know. Said he was from
The Source
in London, but no one was checking his credentials so he could’ve been anyone. What
I
think is he was here to find dirt on Himself, hoping to make him look bad. Greasing his own career—this bloke—if you know what I mean. But Himself, he doesn’t see it that way. ‘The time wasn’t right’ is how he puts it.”

“But you don’t agree.”

“Way I see it, he needs to be careful. He never is and that’s going to be a problem for him. Not now, then later. A problem.”

WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA

Yaffa Shaw had been the one to suggest to Zed that more might be in order than his merely hanging about the Willow and Well in Bryanbarrow village waiting for a miraculous revelation to drop into his lap, like the appearance of a Scotland Yard detective complete with magnifying glass in hand and meerschaum pipe clenched between his lips, all the better to identify him. They’d had their regular conversation after Zed had written up his notes regarding everything the old farmer George Cowley had alluded to on the green. He’d made note also of the fact that the man’s teenage son had seemed more than uncomfortable with his father’s rant. Could
be, he decided, that another chat was in order but this time with Daniel Cowley and not his father.

Yaffa, playing the part of his concerned potential life partner since his mum was in the room—when
wasn’t
she in the room when it came to his love life? Zed wondered wryly—pointed out that Ian Cresswell’s death and George Cowley’s intentions might be in conflict with each other instead of what Zed had concluded, which was that they were directly related.

At first, Zed bristled at this. He was, after all, the investigative reporter. She, on the other hand, was merely a student at university attempting to accelerate her course so as to get back to Micah, the medical school boyfriend in Tel Aviv. He said, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Yaf,” without realising at first that the nickname had risen unbidden to his lips. “Sorry. Yaffa,” he said, correcting himself.

She said, “I like the other. It makes me smile.” And then obviously to his mother in explanation to what had to have been Susanna Benjamin’s breathless question about why Yaffa Shaw was smiling while in conversation with her beloved Zed, “Oh, Zed called me Yaf. I thought it was rather sweet.” And then to Zed, “Your mum says
sweet
is your middle name. She says that behind that giant exterior of yours, you’re a cream puff.”

“God.” Zed groaned. “Can you get her to leave the room? Or should I just ring off and we can consider the duty done for today?”

“Zed! Stop it!” She laughed. She had, he’d discovered, a most pleasant laugh. She said to his mother, “This man is making kissing noises. Does he always do that when he’s speaking on the phone to a woman?…He doesn’t? Hmmm. I wonder what he’ll say next.”

“Tell her I’m asking you to take off your knickers or something,” Zed said.

“Zedekiah Benjamin! Your mum is standing right here.” And then, “He’s being very naughty.” And then a moment later to Zed and in an altered tone, “She’s gone. Really, though, Zed, she’s very sweet, your mum. She’s started bringing me hot milk and biscuits at night. While I’m studying.”

“She knows what she wants. She’s been working at it for years. So. Everything going all right, then?”

“Fine. Micah did phone, and I brought him into the picture. Now he’s pretending to be brother Ari, phoning from Israel to see how his baby sister is doing with her studies.”

“Right. Well. Good.” And really, that should have been it since their only obligation to each other was a twice-daily phone call taking place somewhere in his mother’s vicinity.

Yaffa, however, took them back to what she’d been saying earlier in their conversation. “What if things aren’t how they look?”

“Like us, you mean?”

“Well, I’m not talking about us, but it’s a case in point, isn’t it? What I mean is what if there’s an inherent irony here that in and of itself could sex up your story about Nicholas Fairclough?”

“The Scotland Yard bloke—”

“Beyond the Scotland Yard bloke. Because listen to what you’ve told me about it all: one man is dead, another man wants the farm that the dead man occupied. Still another man lives on the farm with the dead man’s children. Now what does that suggest to you?”

The truth was that it suggested nothing, but Zed was suddenly aware that Yaffa was ahead of him on the curve of the story. He hemmed and hawed and cleared his throat.

She said, mercifully, “There’s more here than meets the eye, Zed. Did the dead man leave a will?”

“A will?” What the hell had a will to do with anything? Where was the sex in that?

“Yes. A will. There’s potential conflict there, d’you see? George Cowley assumes the farm is going to be his for the taking now because now it will go on the block. But what if that’s not the case? What if that farm is paid for free and clear and Ian Cresswell left it to someone? Or what if he put a name besides his own on the deed? What irony, hmm? George Cowley is thwarted once again. It’s even more ironic if, perhaps, this man George Cowley had something to do with Ian Cresswell’s death, isn’t it?”

Zed saw she was right. He also saw she was clever and on his side as well. So after they rang off, he set about delving into the matter of Ian Cresswell and a will. It didn’t take long for him to find out that there was indeed a will because wisely Cresswell had registered
it online and the information was there for all to see: A copy of this document was at his solicitor’s office in Windermere. Another copy—since the bloke was dead—would be available through the probate registry but scoring a look at that would eat up valuable time, not to mention a trip all the way to York, so he knew he had to get either a peek or the information itself in another way.

It would have been nothing short of pure delight for the will to be viewable online, but the lack of privacy in the UK—which was becoming pandemic considering global terrorism, permeable national borders, and the easy access to explosives courtesy of the world’s arms manufacturers—had not extended to the requirement that one’s last will and testament had to be offered up for public consumption. Still, Zed knew that there was a way to get to it and he also knew which single person on the planet was likely to be able to put his fingers on the document that he needed.

“A will,” Rodney Aronson said when he caught up with the editor in his London office. “You’re telling me you want to look at the dead man’s will. I’m in the middle of a meeting here, Zed. We’ve a paper to produce. You do know that, don’t you?”

Zed reckoned that his editor was also in the middle of consuming a chocolate bar, for over the phone he could hear the wrapper being crinkled even as Rodney Aronson spoke.

He said, “The situation is more complicated than it looks, Rod. There’s a bloke up here wanting to put his mitts on that farm owned by Ian Cresswell.
Expecting
it to go on the block, he is. It seems to me that he’s got one hell of a motive to do the chop on our guy—”

“Our
guy
, as you say, is Nick Fairclough. The story you’re writing is about him, no? That’s the story we’re looking for the sex in and the sex is the cops. But it’s only sex in the Fairclough story if they’re
investigating
Fairclough. Zed, my man, do I have to do your job for you, or can you possibly jump on board the moving train?”

“I get it. I know. I’m fully on board. But as no cops have shown a face yet—”

“That’s what you’re doing up there? Waiting for cops to show their faces? Jesus Christ, Zed. What sort of reporter are you? Let me spell it out, all right? If this bloke Credwell—”

“Cresswell. Ian Cresswell. And he’s got a farm up here and his kids are living on it with some bloke, far as I can tell. So if the farm was left to this bloke or even to the kids and—”

“I don’t bloody care who the farm was left to, who it belongs to, or whether it dances the tango when no one’s looking. And I don’t bloody care if this Cresswell was murdered. What I care about is what the cops are doing up there. If they’re not prowling round Nicholas Fairclough, then your story is dead and you’re on your way back to London. D’you understand that or do I have to go at it another way?”

“I understand. But—”

“Good. Now get back onto Fairclough and stop bothering me. Or come back to London, have done with the whole thing, and get a job writing greeting cards. The kind that rhyme.”

That last was a particularly low blow. Nonetheless, Zed said, “Right.”

But it wasn’t right. Nor was it good journalism. Not that
The Source
actually practised good journalism, but given a story that was virtually dropping into their laps, one might think it actually possible.

Fine, Zed thought. He would get back to Nicholas Fairclough and Scotland Yard. But first he was determined to find out about that farm and about the terms of that bloody will because he had a gut feeling that that information was crucial to more than one person in Cumbria.

MILNTHORPE
CUMBRIA

Lynley met with St. James and Deborah in the public bar of their hotel. Over glasses of a rather indifferent port, they went over the information they’d gathered. St. James was of the same mind, Lynley discovered, as he himself was. They had to bring up the missing stones from the dock and St. James had to look at them. He wouldn’t
mind having a look at the boathouse itself as well, he told Lynley, but he didn’t know how an arrangement for this could be made without tipping their hand.