Believing the Lie (76 page)

“Quite late,” he was saying. “Shall I come to you anyway? I’ve no idea of the time and perhaps you’d rather…Yes. All right…Quite anxious as well. Isabelle, I’m terribly sorry how this has…Indeed. Very well. Later, then. Right…” He listened for a moment and evidently felt Deborah’s presence for he turned in his chair and saw her approaching. He said, “She’s just arrived so I daresay we’ll be off in a few moments,” with a raised eyebrow in Deborah’s direction, to which she nodded. “Very good,” he said. “Yes. I have the key with me.”

He rang off. Deborah wasn’t sure what to say. Two months earlier, she’d concluded that Tommy was sleeping with his superior officer. What she hadn’t worked out was how she felt about the fact. It was a given that Tommy had to move on with his life, but
the
how
of his moving on was something that made her unsure of her footing with him.

She settled for, “Could I have a coffee before we leave, Tommy? I promise to swill it like a priest going after the altar wine.”

“Swilling won’t be necessary,” he replied. “I’ll have another. I’d prefer both of us wide awake for the drive. It’s going to be a long one.”

She sat as he went to place the order. He’d been doodling on a paper napkin, she saw, as he’d spoken to Isabelle Ardery in London. He’d sketched a rough cottage in a wide meadow somewhere, with two smaller buildings and a stream nearby and hillsides rising on either side. Not bad by the look of it, she thought. She’d never considered Tommy as an artist.

“A second calling,” she said to him, indicating the sketch when he turned to the table.

“One of a thousand similar places in Cornwall.”

“Thinking of going home?”

“Not quite yet.” He sat, smiled at her fondly, and said, “Someday, I suppose.” He reached for the napkin, folded it, and put it into the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’ve rung Simon,” he told her. “He knows we’ll be coming home.”

“And?”

“Well, of course, he finds you the most maddening sort of woman. But, then, don’t we all?”

She sighed, saying, “Yes. Well. I think I’ve made things worse, Tommy.”

“Between you and Simon?”

“No, no. I’ll put that right. It does help to be married to the most tolerant man on the planet. But I’m talking about Nicholas Fairclough and his wife. I’ve had an awkward conversation with her, followed by an awkward conversation with her husband.”

She told him about both conversations, sketching in all the details as she remembered them, including the reactions of both Alatea and her husband. She explained Alatea’s offer of jewellery and money and she included the revelation about the man Montenegro. Tommy listened as he always had done, his brown eyes fixed on hers. Their
coffee service came as she was talking. He poured them both a cup as she was concluding.

Her final words were, “So all along, Alatea apparently thought I was talking about this Raul Montenegro while I thought we were talking about the reporter from
The Source
. I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered much, except for the fact that I told her he was in Windermere—at least I think that’s where he went when he dropped me here after Lancaster—and when I told her that, she simply panicked, obviously thinking I meant Montenegro. Nicholas panicked as well.”

Lynley added a packet of sugar to his coffee. He stirred it, looking thoughtful all the while. Indeed, he looked so thoughtful that Deborah understood something she should have recognised earlier.

She said to him, “You know what’s actually going on with these people, don’t you, Tommy? I expect you’ve known from the first. Whatever it is, I wish you’d told me. At least I could have refrained from blundering in and doing whatever it is I’ve now managed to do to them.”

Lynley shook his head. “Actually, no. I think I’ve known less than you since I’d not met Alatea before today.”

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“She’s quite…” He seemed to search for a better word, perhaps a more accurate one. He lifted his fingers as if to say that any choice he made would not do her justice. He settled on, “Rather amazing, actually. Had I not known about her before going to see her, I would never have believed she began life as a man.”

Deborah felt her jaw loosen with the surprise that swept through her. She said, “What?”

“Santiago Vasquez y del Torres. That’s who she was.”

“What do you mean
was
? Is she impersonating…?”

“No. She had surgery, financed by this bloke Montenegro. His intention, apparently, was to have her play his female lover in public to maintain his reputation and social position but, in private, to make love to her as a male to a male.”

Deborah swallowed. “Dear God.” She thought about Lancaster, about Lucy Keverne, about what she and Alatea Fairclough could
have and must have actually planned between them. She said, “But Nicholas…Surely he knows?”

“She hasn’t told him.”

“Oh, surely, Tommy, he’d be able to tell. I mean…Good heavens…There’d be signs, wouldn’t there? There’d be marks of incisions, scars, whatever.”

“In the hands of a world-class surgeon? With all the tools at hand? With lasers to deal with potential scarring? Deborah, everything would be altered. Even the Adam’s apple can go. If the man’s appearance was feminine to begin with—because of an extra X chromosome perhaps—then the shift to female would be even simpler.”

“But not to tell Nicholas? Why wouldn’t she have told him?”

“Desperation? Worry? Fear of his reaction? Fear of rejection? With Montenegro looking for her and apparently having the funds to go on looking indefinitely, she would need a safe place. To achieve it, she allowed Nicholas to believe what he wanted to believe about her. She married, giving her the right to remain in England once she came here.”

Deborah saw how this fitted in with what Tommy and Simon had come to Cumbria to do. She said, “Ian Cresswell? Did she murder him? Did he know?”

Lynley shook his head. “Consider her, Deborah. She’s something of a masterpiece. No one would know unless there was a reason to delve back into her past, and there was no reason. For all intents and purposes, she’s Nicholas Fairclough’s wife. If anyone bore looking into with regard to Ian’s death, it would have been Nicholas. As things happened, we didn’t need to go that far because Simon was right from the first and so was the coroner. There’s not a single sign of Ian Cresswell’s death being anything other than an accident. Someone may have wanted him to die. His death might have been a convenience to more than one person. But no one orchestrated it.”

Deborah said, “And now that terrible reporter’s going to write his story about this surrogacy situation and Alatea’s photo will be in the paper and I’m
responsible.
What can I do?”

“Appeal to his better angels?”

“He works for
The Source
, Tommy.”

“There is that,” he admitted.

Her mobile rang. Deborah hoped it was Zed Benjamin, reporting on a change of heart. Or perhaps Simon, telling her he understood the passions that had driven her to make such a mess of things at Arnside House. But it turned out to be Nicholas Fairclough, and he was in a panic. “What’ve you
done
to her?”

Deborah’s first horrified thought was that Alatea Fairclough had harmed herself. She said, “What’s happened, Mr. Fairclough?” and she looked at Tommy.

“She’s gone. I’ve searched the house and the grounds. Her car is still here and she couldn’t have passed us in the driveway without being seen. I’ve walked the length of the seawall as well. She’s gone.”

“She’ll be back. She won’t have gone far. How could she have done, with the weather so bad?”

“She’s gone onto the sands.”

“Surely not.”

“I tell you, she’s gone onto the sands. She has to have done. It’s the only place.”

“She’s taken a walk, then. To have a think. She’ll be back soon and when she comes back, you can tell her I was talking about the reporter from
The Source
, not Raul Montenegro.”

“You don’t understand,” he cried. “God in heaven, you don’t understand! She’s not coming back. She can’t come back.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because of the fog. Because of the quicksands.”

“But we can—”

“We can’t! Don’t you see what you’ve done?”

“Please, Mr. Fairclough. We can find her. We can phone…There’s going to be someone—”

“There’s no one. Not for this,
not
for this.”

“This? What’s this?”

“The tidal bore, you stupid woman. The floodwaters are coming. The siren’s just gone off. Today’s a tidal bore.”

WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA

When her mobile phone finally vibrated, Manette was in a welter of nerves. She was lurking in the car park of the business centre, close to a wheelie bin. Tim had gone inside a business called Shots!—a photographic studio by the look of the front window, which displayed enormous enlargements of the village of Ambleside in autumn—and he’d been followed some minutes later by a harried-looking woman with two children in tow. That woman had left moments later on the arm of an Anglican priest, and they’d all climbed into a Saab estate car and vanished, upon which time someone within Shots! had switched the
Open
sign to
Closed
and Manette had given up on Freddie and phoned the police.

Her conversation with Superintendent Connie Calva was as unproductive as it was brief, and Manette ended it by wanting to hurl her mobile onto the tarmac of the car park. She told the head of Vice about the business centre and what was going on and how the
Open
sign had been turned to
Closed
and they both knew what that meant, didn’t they, because Tim Cresswell, aged fourteen, was here to film one of those horrible, soul-destroying pieces of filth and the police had to come and they had to come
now
.

But Connie Calva said they had to get Tim’s laptop to Barrow, where the forensic computer specialist would go through it and discover the exact location from which Toy4You had been sending his e-mails, whereupon they would apply for a search warrant and—

“Bugger that for a lark!” Manette whispered fiercely. “I’m telling you exactly where he is, exactly where this Toy4You monster is, exactly where they’re going to film, and you bloody goddamn better get someone over here to deal with this.
Now.
”

To this Superintendent Calva had replied in the nicest possible voice, which indicated she was used to speaking with people on the edge, which was something they probably taught in training college. It was a case of Mrs. McGhie, I know you’re upset and worried but the only way to bring down something like this so that the entire
thing doesn’t get thrown out of court on its ear is to do it within the confines of the law. I know you don’t like this and I certainly don’t like it. But we have no choice.

Manette said, “Bugger the confines of the bloody law!” and she ended the call.

Then she rang Freddie because God only knew where he was. He answered at once, saying, “Damn it, Manette. I rang you. You were supposed to—”

“Talking to the police,” she cut in. “I had to. Freddie, he’s in a photo studio. Where
are
you?”

“Walking back from the railway station. Where are you?”

“The business centre.” She told him the route, surprising herself with her own memory.

He repeated it back to her and she said, “Hurry. Please do hurry. Freddie, the police won’t come. When I rang them, they said they need a search warrant, they need to take that computer to Barrow, they need to…God, I don’t know what. And he’s
in
there and they’re going to film him. I just know it, but I couldn’t make her see.”

“Darling, I’m on my way,” he said.

“I’ll try to get inside the shop,” she told him. “I’ll bang on the door. They’ll stop what they’re doing, won’t they? Surely?”

“Manette, do nothing. Do you understand me? These are dangerous people. I’m on my way. Wait.”

Manette didn’t know how she could. But she rang off after promising him that until he arrived…There was no way she could do that, although she tried. Three minutes of waiting did her in.

She ran to the front door. It was locked, as she knew it would be, but that was of no account. She banged upon it. She rattled it. It was mostly glass, but the glass was thick and the door was unmoving, even in its jamb. And as for the noise possibly disturbing the action inside Shots!—whatever that action was—she could see how unlikely the case was that she was achieving that. For a door behind the shop counter was also closed, and if they were filming within the building, noise would also be associated with that.

She bit her nails. She looked around. She thought of the possibilities and came up with the back of the business centre. For the
shops in the centre would have more than one door, surely? In case of fire, only one means of egress from a place of business had to be illegal, didn’t it?

She dashed round the back, only to encounter a line of doors and all of them unmarked. She hadn’t thought to count up the shops in front in order to do the same in the rear, so she went back round the front at a run to do so, just as Freddie came tearing into the car park.

She flung herself towards him. He was breathing like a mountaineer without oxygen. He gulped out, “Treadmill. Starting tomorrow,” and then, “Which one? Where?” as she clung to his arm.

She told him that the door was locked, that there was an inner door, that there were also doors round the back. She said that she could bang on the back door and Freddie could wait at the front door for all of them to come pounding out of the place to make a run for it. When they did that—

“Absolutely not,” he said. “We’re not about to set these people off. They’ve a lot vested in not getting caught. We need the police.”

“But they won’t come!” she wailed. “I told you that. They won’t come unless they get a bloody warrant.”

Freddie looked round the car park. He spied the heavy wheelie bin. He said to Manette, “Oh, I think we can give them a reason to come.”

He trotted over to the wheelie bin and put his shoulder to it. She saw what he intended and joined him in the effort. They began to roll the bin towards the shops, picking up speed on a slope of the car park. As they approached the front of Shots!, Freddie murmured, “Give it your best now, darling. And hope he set the burglar alarm.”