Believing the Lie (42 page)

He said nothing at first. She watched him. He moved his gaze from her, and it seemed he was thinking about her question and all the different answers he might give. At first he said, “Manette came to see me. In the shipping department.”

“Are there problems there?”

“It’s Tim and Gracie. She wanted us to take them.”

“Take them? What do you mean?”

He explained. She heard but didn’t hear because all the time she was busy trying to evaluate his tone. He spoke of his cousin Ian; of Ian’s wife, Niamh; and of Ian’s two children. Alatea, of course, knew all of them, but she had not known of Niamh’s intentions towards her own flesh and blood. It was inconceivable to her that Niamh would use her children in this way, as chess pieces in a game that by all rights should have been over. She wanted to weep for Tim and Gracie and she felt the imperative of doing something for them as
much as Nicholas obviously felt it. But for this to have disturbed his sleep, to have made him ill…? He wasn’t telling her everything.

“Manette and Freddie are the best ones to take them,” he concluded. “I’m no match for Tim’s problems, but Manette and Freddie are. She’d get through to Tim. She’d be good at that. She doesn’t give up on anyone.”

“So it seems there’s a solution, yes?” Alatea said hopefully.

“Except that Manette and Freddie have split up so that throws a spanner,” Nicholas said. “Their situation’s odd. It’s also unstable.” He was silent again for a moment, and he used the moment to top up his cold coffee with more cold coffee, into which he stirred a heaped teaspoonful of sugar. “And that’s too bad,” he went on, “because they belong together, those two. I can’t think why they split up in the first place. Except they never had kids and I think perhaps that wrecked them after a time.”

Oh God, this was the crux, Alatea thought. This was where it all headed in the end. She had known it would, if not with Nicholas then with someone else.

She said, “Perhaps they didn’t want children. Some people don’t.”

“Some people, but not Manette.” He glanced at her. His face was drawn. From this, Alatea knew he wasn’t telling her the truth. Tim and Gracie might indeed be in need of a stable place to live, but that was not what was bothering her husband.

She said, “There’s more, though.” She drew out a chair from the table and sat. “I think, Nicky, that you had better tell me.”

It had long been a strong part of their relationship that from the first Nicholas had told her everything. He’d insisted upon it because of how he’d lived in his past, which had been in a world of lies, experiencing a life defined by hiding his drug use in any way he could. If he didn’t tell her everything now—despite what that “everything” might comprise—his withholding of information would be more damaging to their marriage than whatever the information itself was. Both of them knew it.

He finally said, “I believe my father thinks I killed Ian.”

This was so far from what Alatea had been expecting that she was
rendered speechless. There
were
words somewhere inside her, but she couldn’t find them, at least not in English.

Nicholas said, “Scotland Yard’s up here looking into Ian’s death. Considering it was ruled an accident, there’s only one reason that Scotland Yard’s turned up. Dad can pull strings when he wants to. I reckon that’s what he did.”

“That’s impossible.” Alatea’s mouth felt dry. She wanted to reach for Nicholas’s coffee and drink it down, but she stopped herself from even moving, so unsure was she of her ability to keep the sudden trembling of her body under her control. “How do you know this, Nicky?”

“That journalist.”

“What…? Are you talking about that man? That same man? The one who came here…? The story that never was a story at all?”

Nicholas nodded. “He’s back. He told me. Scotland Yard’s here. The rest is clear enough: I’m the person they’re interested in.”

“He said that? The journalist said that?”

“Not in so many words. But from everything that’s gone on, it’s obvious.”

There was something more here that he wasn’t telling her. Alatea could read it in his face. She said, “I don’t believe it. You? Why on earth would you have hurt Ian? And why would your father think you could?”

He shrugged. She saw that he was struggling with a conflict that he couldn’t bear to reveal and she herself struggled to understand what it was and what it could mean to both of them. He was deeply depressed or deeply grieved or deeply—very deeply—something else.

She said, “I think you should speak to your father. You must do this straightaway. This reporter, Nicky, he doesn’t mean you well. And now this woman who says she’s from the film company that doesn’t exist…You must talk to your father at once. You must hear the truth of the matter. It’s the only answer, Nicky.”

He raised his head. His eyes were liquid. Her heart constricted
with her love for this man, troubled soul to her own troubled soul. He said, “Well, I’ve definitely decided against being part of that documentary film that she was here about. I’ve told her that, by the way, so there’s one less thing for either of us to deal with.” His lips curved but it was a poor effort at a smile. It was meant to encourage her, to tell her all would be well soon enough.

Both of them knew this was a lie, however. But like everything else, neither one of them would be willing to admit that.

MILNTHORPE
CUMBRIA

“I wouldn’t want to have to write it on an envelope, but they probably have some Spanish abbreviation if you’re sending a letter there,” Havers said. She was referring to the town in Argentina that she’d managed to come up with as being the likeliest origin of Alatea Vasquez y del Torres. “Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos,” she had just announced to Lynley over his mobile phone. “We’re talking about a burg that’s touching all the spiritual bases. It must be in an earthquake zone and hoping for divine intervention in case of the worst.”

Lynley could hear her smoking on the other end. No surprise. Havers was always smoking. She wouldn’t be at the Met, then. Or if she was, she was phoning from a stairwell where, he knew, she occasionally skulked for an illegal hit of the weed. He said to her, “Why this town, Barbara?” and to St. James, who had joined him to lean against the Healey Elliott, “She’s onto Alatea Fairclough.”

“Who’re you talking to?” Havers enquired irritably. “I bloody well hate three-way conversations.”

“St. James is here. I’ll switch it to the speaker if I can work out how to do that.”

“Oh, that’ll happen on a snowy day in hell,” she said. “Give it to Simon, sir. He can do it for you.”

“Havers, I’m not entirely—”

“Sir.” It was her patient-as-a-saint voice. There was nothing for it. He handed the mobile over to St. James. One or two buttons and both of them were listening to Havers in the car park of the Crow and Eagle.

“It’s the mayor,” Havers said. “I know this is spitting in the dark, sir, but the mayor’s a bloke called Esteban Vega y de Vasquez and his wife’s called Dominga Padilla y del Torres de Vasquez. I reckoned it could be a put-it-all-together-and-what’ve-you-got situation. Some of the surnames are the same as Alatea’s.”

“That’s a stretch, Barbara.”

“This came from the Internet?” St. James asked.

“Bloody hours on it. And since everything’s in sodding Spanish, I’m only guessing he’s the mayor. He could be the dog catcher but there was a picture of him and I can’t think why the dog catcher’d be handing over the keys to the city to anyone in some picture. Well, except maybe to Barbara Woodhouse.”

“She’s dead,” Lynley said.

“Whatever. So there’s a picture of him and he’s in his mayor kit and there’s his wife and they’re posing with someone and I can’t—of course—read the caption since it’s in Spanish, in which language I can actually say
una cerveza por favor
but, believe me, nothing else. But the names are in the caption. Esteban and Dominga and all the rest. So far, that’s our best bet, I reckon, because I haven’t been able to find anything else even close.”

“We’ll need someone to translate,” Lynley noted.

“What about you, Simon? Spanish among your many talents?”

“Only French,” St. James said. “Well, there’s Latin as well, but I’m not sure how much use that would be.”

“Well, we got to find someone. And we need someone else to tell us how these people come up with their surnames because I bloody don’t know and can’t work it out.”

“It has to do with forebears,” Lynley said.

“Got that much, I think. But what is it? Do they just keep lining them up back through history? Wouldn’t want to have to write that on my passport application if you know what I mean.”

Lynley was thinking about the language and who would serve
their purposes as a translator. There would, of course, be someone in the Met, but he wasn’t sure how many more people he could afford to bring in on this before Isabelle traced the lot of them back to him.

He said, “What about Alatea Fairclough herself? What’ve you come up with on that score when you work her into this town of Santa Maria et cetera? You’re assuming she’s the mayor’s daughter, I take it?”

Havers said, “Can’t go that way at all, sir. They seem to have five sons.” She inhaled on the other end of the line and blew smoke noisily into the mobile phone. Lynley heard the rustling of paper and knew she was leafing through her notebook as well. She went on to say, “Carlos, Miguel, Angel, Santiago, and Diego. At least I reckon there are five sons. Considering the way these people string together their names, it could be one bloke, I s’pose.”

“So where does Alatea fit in?”

“Way I see it, she could be the wife of one of them.”

“A wife on the run?”

“Sounds very good to me.”

“What about a relative?” St. James asked. “A niece, a cousin.”

“I reckon that’s possible as well.”

“Are you working that angle?” Lynley asked her.

“Haven’t been. Can do. But no way can I delve because like I said this stuff’s in Spanish,” she reminded him. “’Course, the Yard’ll have a program to translate. You know. Something buried on the computers somewhere, away from the prying eyes of the likes of us who might actually need to use it sometime. I c’n talk to Winston. He’ll know how to do it. Should I ask him?”

Lynley thought about this. He was back to what he’d considered earlier: the impact on Isabelle Ardery if she discovered he’d bled another member of her team away for his own purposes. The results of that manoeuvre wouldn’t be pretty. There had to be another way to get round the problem of the Spanish language. Where he didn’t want to go in his own thoughts at the moment was why it mattered to him how Isabelle would react. It wouldn’t have mattered to him how a superior officer might have reacted before this. The fact that
he was worried now put him on the edge of a dangerous escarpment that he didn’t want to be on at this juncture in his life.

He said, “There has to be another way, Barbara. I can’t get Winston into this as well. I’m not authorised.”

Havers didn’t point out to him that he hadn’t been authorised to get her help either. She just said, “Let me…Well, I could ask Azhar.”

“Your neighbor? He speaks Spanish?”

“He does practically everything else,” she said ironically. “But I reckon if he doesn’t speak Spanish, he can get me someone from the university who does. A professor, probably. A graduate student. Worse comes to worst, I c’n walk over to Camden Lock Market and listen to the tourists—if there are any at this time of year—and put my fingers on someone speaking Spanish and drag ’em to the nearest Internet café for a look at the information on the Net. I mean, there are ways, sir. I s’pose we don’t need Winston.”

“Ask Azhar,” Lynley said, and he added, “if that doesn’t put you in a difficult position.”

“Why would that put me in a difficult position, sir?” Barbara’s tone was suspicious and with good reason.

Lynley didn’t reply. There were things between them that they didn’t discuss. Her relationship with Taymullah Azhar was one of them. “Anything else?” he asked her.

“Bernard Fairclough. He’s got a set of keys to the flat of a woman called Vivienne Tully. I’ve been there but so far no luck in seeing her. Picture of her that I tracked down makes her youngish, trendy clothes, good skin, good figure, edgy hairstyle. Another woman’s basic nightmare, essentially. All I know about her is that she once worked for him, she now works in London, and she likes ballet because that’s where she was yesterday. Either at a dance class or watching a performance. Her housekeeper didn’t speak English, so we did it with sign language. Lots of moving body parts if you know what I mean. Bloody hell, sir, have you noticed how few people actually
do
speak English in London these days? Have
you
noticed, Simon? I feel like I’m living in the bloody lobby of the bloody United Nations.”

“Fairclough has a key to her flat?”

“Sounds cosy, eh? I’ve another trip to Kensington on the agenda. I reckon she bears a little arm twisting. I haven’t got onto the Cresswell will yet—”

No matter, Lynley told her. She could verify details, but they had that information in hand. They’d learned there was insurance that the ex-wife had come into. And according to the partner, the farm had been left to him in Cresswell’s will. What she
could
do, though, was confirm these details. The date of the will might be helpful, too. Could she see to that?

Could and would, she told him. “What about the kids?”

“Apparently, Cresswell assumed the insurance money would also benefit them. That doesn’t appear to be the case, however.”

Havers whistled. “Always good to follow the money.”

“Isn’t it just.”

“Which reminds me,” she said, “that bloke from
The Source
? Have you run into him yet?”

“Not yet,” Lynley said. “Why?”

“Because there’s more to him than meets the eye as well. Turns out he was up there for three days directly
before
Ian Cresswell drowned. With him needing to beef up his story for the paper, seems like murder’s a good way to do it.”

“We’ll take that on board,” Lynley told her, “but he’d have had to get onto the Fairclough property, get down to the boathouse, fiddle with the dock, and get off the property, all unseen. You mentioned he was a big bloke, didn’t you?”