Believing the Lie

10 NOVEMBER

MILNTHORPE

CUMBRIA

When Lynley phoned her early in the morning, he was clever enough to ring the inn and not her mobile. Because of this, Deborah answered. Simon or Tommy, she’d reckoned, would ring the mobile. She’d see the caller’s number and decide whether to answer or not. Even the reporter from The Source rang her mobile. A call on the phone inside her hotel room meant Reception was probably enquiring about the length of her stay.

Thus, Deborah winced as Lynley’s pleasant baritone came over the line. When he said, “Simon’s not happy with either of us,” she could hardly pretend he’d phoned the wrong number.

It was quite early, and she was still in bed. Clever Tommy to have thought of that as well: Catch her before she left the inn, and there was little she could do to avoid him.

She sat up, pulled the blankets closer against the chill, and said as she rearranged the pillows, “Well, I’m not happy with Simon, either.”

“Right. I know. But as it happens, he was correct, Deb. From the start.”

“Oh, isn’t he always?” she said tartly. “What are we talking about anyway?”

“Ian Cresswell’s death. He could have prevented it if he’d been paying closer attention to where he was tying up his scull that night.”

“And we’ve reached this conclusion because…?” Deborah waited to hear him say he’d reached his conclusion because of Simon’s insufferably logical presentation of the facts, but he didn’t go in that direction. Instead he told her about a family imbroglio he’d witnessed among the Faircloughs and a conversation he’d had with Valerie Fairclough afterwards.

He concluded it all with, “So it seems I’ve been brought up here as a means of Valerie’s delving into her husband’s doings. It was a fool’s errand with me as the fool. Hillier as well. I daresay he’s not going to be happy when I tell him how we’ve both been used.”

Deborah shoved off the blankets, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and looked at the clock. She said, “And you believe her?” as she read the time. A phone call from Tommy at six thirty in the morning could mean only one thing and she was fairly certain she knew what that was.

He said, “In the ordinary course of things, I might not. But with the coroner’s conclusion and with Simon’s assessment, along with what Valerie told me— ”

“She could be lying. There are motives, Tommy.”

“Without anything more than motives, there’s no case to present, Deb. That’s how it works. Frankly, people often have motives to do away with other people. They often have the wish to do away with other people. And still they never lift a finger against them. That’s what apparently happened here. It’s time to return to London.”

“Even without putting the matter of Alatea Fairclough to rest?”

“Deb— ”

“Just listen to me for a moment: Everything about Alatea suggests secrecy. People with secrets have motive to do all sorts of things to protect those secrets.”

“That may be, but whatever she might have done or might be doing to protect her secrets— assuming she has them— what she didn’t do was murder Ian Cresswell. That’s why we came up here. We now know the truth. As I said, it’s time to go home.”

Deborah got out of the bed. The room was cold. She shivered and moved to the electric fire. It had clicked off in the night, and she turned it on. There was moisture climbing the window, against which she brushed her hand to look out at the day. It was still quite dark outside, she saw, the road and the pavement wet. The glitter of the street lamps and the traffic lights on the corner winked brightly against it.

She said, “Tommy, those missing pages from Conception magazine have said from the first that something’s going on with Alatea.”

“I don’t disagree,” was his perfectly reasonable reply. “And we have a good idea of what that something is. Conception. But you already knew that. Didn’t Nicholas Fairclough tell you that when you first met?”

“Yes. But— ”

“It’s reasonable that she wouldn’t want to talk about this with a stranger, Deborah. Do you like to talk about it with anyone?”

That was an unfair blow, and he had to know it. But Deborah wasn’t about to let her reaction to the question get the better of her ability to reason. She said, “None of this makes much sense, talking about conception or not. This woman, Lucy Keverne, told me she has her eggs harvested. All right. Perhaps she does. Then what was she doing at Lancaster University in the company of Alatea Fairclough? Why was she in the George Childress Centre with her?”

“Perhaps donating an egg to Alatea,” Lynley said.

“The egg needs to be fertilised. Wouldn’t Nicholas need to be there?”

“Perhaps Alatea had his sperm with her.”

“In a turkey baster, you mean?” Deborah asked pointedly. “So why would Lucy be there as well?”

“To donate eggs on the spot?”

“Really? Fine. All right. Then why wouldn’t Nicholas be there to donate sperm as fresh as possible, real little swimmers, that sort of thing?”

Lynley sighed. Deborah wondered where he was. On a land line somewhere since his sigh had come to her so clearly. This suggested he was still at Ireleth Hall. He said, “Deb, I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s done. I don’t know how it all works.”

“I know you don’t. But I do, believe me. And one thing I know is that even if they do the business with one egg or two dozen from Lucy and sperm from Nicholas, they’re not implanting them in Alatea on the spot. So if Lucy’s a donor as she claims to be and if she’s giving Alatea eggs for some reason and if sperm from Nicholas are being used— ”

“None of it matters,” Lynley cut in firmly. “Because it has nothing to do with Ian Cresswell’s death and we need to get back to London.”

“You need to. I do not.”

“Deborah.” His voice was losing that patient tone. Deborah heard Simon in it. How alike they were at the end of the day, he and Tommy. The differences between them were only superficial.

“What?” she asked sharply.

“I’m heading back to London this morning. You know that’s why I’ve phoned. What I’d like to do is stop in Milnthorpe, follow you to the car hire so you can return your car, then take you back to London with me.”

“Because you don’t trust me to get there on my own?” she demanded.

“I rather wanted the company,” he replied. “It’s a long drive.”

“She said she’d never be a surrogate, Tommy. If all she’s going to do is donate eggs for Alatea to use, why not just say that? Why tell me she wouldn’t discuss it?”

“I have no idea. And it’s not important. It doesn’t matter. Ian Cresswell’s death was no one’s fault but his own. He knew about the loose stones in the boathouse. He didn’t take care. That’s where things lie, Deb, and nothing about this woman in Lancaster is going to change that. So the question is: Why can’t you let it go? And I think we both know the answer to that.”

His words were quiet enough, but they were unlike Tommy. They spoke of the degree to which Simon had persuaded him to take his side. But then, why wouldn’t he? Deborah asked herself. They had years of history, Tommy and Simon. They had decades of history. They shared one terrible automobile accident and the love for a murdered woman as well. These things bound them to each other in ways she would never be able to surmount. That being the case, there was only one alternative.

She said, “Very well. You win, Tommy.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’ll go back to London with you.”

“Deborah…”

“No.” She gave a hearty sigh, one she knew he’d be able to hear. “I do mean it, Tommy. I give up. What time shall we leave?”

“Are you being quite serious?”

“Of course I am. I’m stubborn, but I’m not a fool. If there’s no point carrying on with this business, then there’s no point, is there.”

“You do see— ”

“I do. One can’t argue with forensics. That’s how it is.” She waited a moment for this to sink in. Then she repeated, “When do we leave? You woke me up, by the way, so I’ll need time to pack. To shower. Do my hair. Whatever. I’d like breakfast as well.”

“Ten o’clock?” he said. “Thank you, Deb.”

“I do see it’s better this way,” she lied.

WINDERMERE

CUMBRIA

Zed Benjamin had barely slept. His story was crumbling. What had started out too hot to be handled without oven gloves was fast becoming cold fish on a platter. He hadn’t the slightest clue what to do with the information he had because he had no information that amounted to a blockbuster of a story. In his daydreams it had been an exposé, front page material in which was revealed that a secret investigation launched by New Scotland Yard was digging up dirt about Nicholas Fairclough and about what truly went for his recovery from years of drug abuse, which was the murder of a cousin standing in the way of his success. It was the tale of a bloke who had managed to pull the wool over the eyes of his parents, his family, and his fellows by posing as a do-gooder while all the time engaged in vile machinations to eliminate someone blocking his access to the family fortune. The story was accompanied by photos— DS Cotter, Fairclough, his wife, the pele project, and Fairclough Industries among others— and its length and quality begged for a leap onto page 3 and from there to 4 and 5 as well. All of it rested beneath the byline Zedekiah Benjamin. His name in journalistic lights.

For that to happen, however, the story had to be about Nicholas Fairclough. But, if nothing else, his day with DS Cotter had proved that Nick Fairclough was of no interest to the Met. The day had also proved that Fairclough’s wife was a monumental dead end.

“Nothing, I’m afraid,” was how the red-haired detective had reported upon her interview with the woman they’d followed from the Kent-Howath Foundation for Disabled Veterans to Lancaster University and back again, all in the company of Alatea Fairclough.

“What d’you mean ‘nothing’?” had been Zed’s demand.

She’d said the woman— Lucy Keverne was her name— and Alatea had gone to see a specialist at the university about “female troubles.” They were Lucy’s “female troubles,” evidently, and Alatea had accompanied her as a friend.

“Shit,” he’d muttered. “That’s bloody nowhere, isn’t it?”

“It does put us back to square one,” she replied.

No, he thought. It put her back to square one. It put him in danger of losing his job.

He found that he wanted to talk to Yaffa. She was wise, and if anyone was going to be able to suggest how he could get himself out of this mess and onto a story that Rodney Aronson would find a suitable return for the money invested by The Source, it was going to be Yaffa.

So he rang her. When he heard her voice, he felt nearly overcome with relief. He said, “Morning, darling.”

She said, “Zed, hello,” and, “Mama Benjamin, it’s our lovely man ringing,” to tell him Susanna was somewhere nearby. “I miss you, dearest.” And she laughed at something Susanna said in the distance. She said, “Mama Benjamin tells me to stop trying to ensnare her son. He is an uncatchable bachelor, she tells me. Is that true?”

“Not if you’re trying to do the catching,” he replied. “I’ve never had bait I wanted to bite so badly.”

“You wicked boy!” And to the side, “No, no, Mama Benjamin. I will absolutely not tell you what your son is saying. I will say that he’s making me a bit faint, though.” And to Zed, “You are, you know. I’m quite light-headed.”

“Well, good thing it’s not your head I’m interested in.”

She laughed. Then she said in a completely altered voice, “Ah. She’s gone into the loo. We’re safe. How are you, Zed?”

He found he wasn’t ready for the shift from Yaffa the Putative Lover to Yaffa the Co-conspirator. He said, “Missing you, Yaf. I wish you were with me.”

“Let me help you from a distance. I’m happy to do that.”

For an insane moment, Zed thought she was actually suggesting phone sex, and in his present state, that would have been a welcome diversion. But then she said, “Are you close to the information you need? You must be worried about the story.”

That brought him round, cold water on his ardour. He said with a groan, “That bloody story.” He told her where he was with it. He told her everything, as he’d been doing all along. And as she’d been doing all along, she listened. He concluded with, “So there’s sod-all to report on. I could massage the facts and write that Scotland Yard’s up here investigating Nick Fairclough due to the untimely and suspicious death of his cousin, who happened to hold the purse strings of Fairclough Industries, and we all know what that means, don’t we, gentle readers? But the truth of the matter happens to be that Scotland Yard look like they’re investigating Alatea Fairclough and getting about as far with her as I’ve got with her husband. We’re in the same position, the Met and I. The only difference is this detective can toddle back to London and give the high-ups the all-clear, but if I return without a story, I’m done for.” He heard his tone as he concluded and he said hastily, “Sorry. I’m whingeing a bit.”

“Zed, you can whinge all you need to.”

“Ta, Yaf. You’re… well you’re just how you are.”

He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “Thank you, I think. Now let us put our heads together. When one door closes, another opens.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning perhaps it’s time you did what you were intended to do. You’re a poet, Zed, not a tabloid journalist. Remaining one is going to bleed your soul of its creative power. It’s time for you to write your poetry.”

“No one supports himself on his poetry.” Zed laughed self-derisively. “Look at me. I’m twenty-five years old and I’m living with my mum. I can’t even support myself as a reporter, for the love of God.”

“Ah, Zed. Don’t talk this way. You need only someone to believe in you. I believe in you.”

“Bloody lot of good that does me. You’re going back to Tel Aviv.”

There was a silence at the other end. Into it came the indication of another phone call to Zed’s mobile. He said, “Yaffa? You still there?”

“Oh yes. I’m here,” she said.

The other call was insistent. Rodney, probably. It was close to the time he had to face the music. He said, “Yaffa, I’ve got another call. I probably should— ”

“I don’t have to,” she said quickly. “I don’t even need to. You think about that, Zed.” Then she rang off.

For a moment he stared at nothing at all. Then he took the other call.

It was the Scotland Yard detective. She said, “I’m going to speak to this woman in Lancaster again. There’s more here than meets the eye. It’s time you and I worked together to twist her arm.”

BARROW-IN-FURNESS AND GRANGE-OVER-SANDS

CUMBRIA

One of the last people Manette expected to see turn up on the premises of Fairclough Industries was Kaveh Mehran. As far as she could recall, he’d never been there before. Ian had certainly never taken him round for formal introductions, and Kaveh hadn’t come on his own expecting to be introduced. Nearly everyone knew, of course, that Ian had walked out on his marriage because of a young man. But that was the extent of it. So when Kaveh was shown into her office, she blinked in confusion before she realised he’d probably come to collect Ian’s personal belongings. It needed to be done and no one had yet thought about doing it.

His reason for showing up at the firm, however, turned out to be somewhat different. Tim was missing. He’d jumped out of Kaveh’s car on the previous morning on the way to school, and he’d not returned home last night.

Manette said, “Did something happen? Why did he jump out of your car? Did he go to school? Did you phone the school?”

The school, Kaveh said, had phoned the house yesterday. Tim was absent, and when one of the day pupils didn’t turn up, the school rang the home because… well, because of the sort of school it was, if Manette knew what he meant.

Well, of course she bloody knew what he meant. The whole family knew what Margaret Fox School was all about. It was hardly a secret.

Kaveh then said that he’d driven the route from Bryanbarrow to Margaret Fox School that morning to see if Tim was, perhaps, hitchhiking there. On the way, he’d stopped in Great Urswick on the chance that Tim had gone to Manette’s home to spend the night or was holed up somewhere on her property without her knowledge. He’d stopped at the school next. And now he was here. Could Tim be here?

“Here?” Manette asked. “D’you mean in the factory? Of course he’s not here. What would he be doing here?”

“Have you seen him at all? Has he phoned? For obvious reasons, I haven’t checked with Niamh.” Kaveh had the grace to look uncomfortable, but Manette knew there was something rather large and important that he wasn’t saying.

“I’ve not heard from him. And he’s not been in Great Urswick. Why’d he jump out of your car?”

Kaveh looked over his shoulder, as if he wanted to close the door to her office. This alone made Manette gird herself for something she wasn’t going to want to hear.

He said, “I think he overheard a conversation I was having with George Cowley.”

“The farmer? What on earth…?”

“It was about the future, the farm. I expect you know Cowley’s wanted the farm for himself.”

“Ian told me, yes. And what of the farm and Mr. Cowley?” And why would Tim care a fig about either? she wondered.

“I mentioned to Mr. Cowley my intentions regarding Bryan Beck farm,” he said. “I suspect Tim overheard.”

“And what are your intentions? Are you thinking of raising sheep yourself?” Manette sounded tart and couldn’t help it. The farm, after all, should have gone to Tim and Gracie. It should not now be the sole property of this man who’d done his best to ruin their lives.

“To keep it, of course. But also… I did tell him that Tim and Gracie would be returning to their mother. Tim may have overheard that.”

Manette drew her eyebrows together. She knew, of course, that this was the logical progression of events. Farm or no farm, Tim and Gracie could hardly continue to live with their father’s lover now that their father was dead. It wouldn’t be easy moving to their mother’s home— Niamh being Niamh— but there wasn’t an alternative as long as they were underage. Tim would understand this. He would doubtless have been expecting it, and he doubtless would also have been preferring it. So would have Gracie. Thus, to have this piece of information set him off to the extent that he would jump out of Kaveh’s car and run off …? This didn’t make sense.

She said, “I don’t mean to be offensive, Kaveh, but I can’t imagine the children would want to live with you now that their dad’s dead. So is there something else…? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Kaveh looked at her squarely. “If there is, I can’t tell you what. Will you help, Manette? I don’t know what else— ”

“I’ll handle it,” she said.

When he’d departed, she phoned the school. For ease of information, she claimed to be Niamh. She learned at once that Tim wasn’t there for a second day. The school was worried, as it would be. Losing one of their pupils could mean all sorts of things and not a single one of them was good.

Manettte phoned Niamh next. The answer machine took the call in Niamh’s irritating purr, doubtless designed as a siren’s song for potential suitors. Manette left a message, but then switched to, “Tim? Are you there, listening to this? If you are, pick up, love. This is your cousin Manette.”

Nothing, but of course, that didn’t mean much. If he was in hiding, he was hardly going to reveal it to someone searching for him. And he would know Manette was looking for him. He would know everyone was looking for him.

There was nothing to do but set out on a search. Manette didn’t want to do it alone, however. She went to Freddie’s office. Not there. She went to Ian’s office, and there Freddie was, beavering away at Ian’s computer, trying to make sense of the money trails. She watched him for a moment before she spoke. She thought, Dear Freddie, and her heart hurt briefly, as if making her aware of its presence for the first time in years.

She said, “Have you a moment, Fred?”

He looked up, smiled. “What’s up?” And then, “What’s happened?” because he read her as well now as he’d read her when they were married.

She told him the gist: Tim was missing, and she needed to make the drive to Niamh’s, which seemed to be the only place left where he could be in hiding. But she didn’t want to make the drive alone. Or better said, she didn’t want to confront Tim alone. Things were iffy with the boy. She felt a little… well, a little in need of backup if it was going to come down to another confrontation with him.

Of course, Freddie agreed. When had Freddie not agreed? He said, “In a tick. Meet you at the car,” and he set about doing whatever he needed to do to close up shop for a while.

He was as good as his word. In less than ten minutes, he was climbing into the passenger seat of her car, saying, “Don’t want me to drive?”

She said, “One of us might have to jump out and tackle him, and I’d rather it was you, if you don’t mind.”

They made good time to Grange-over-Sands, taking the coastal route along the empty bay. When they pulled up in front of Niamh’s white house, it was to see her on the doorstep bidding a fond farewell to the same bloke Manette had encountered the last time she’d been in Grange-over-Sands. Charlie Wilcox of Milnthorpe Chinese takeaway fame, she thought. She murmured his name to Freddie, but she didn’t need to say anything more about the man’s relationship with Tim and Gracie’s mother. Niamh herself was making that clear enough.

She was wearing a dressing gown with enough leg showing through its opening at the moment to indicate she had nothing on beneath it. Charlie was wearing last night’s clothing, an out-on-the-town getup with a jacket and trousers, white shirt, and tie rakishly unknotted round his neck. Niamh cast a quick look in the direction of Manette’s car and then gave herself to a serious good-bye kiss, locking her leg around poor Charlie’s leg and doing a bit of bump and grind against him. Her mouth was so wide upon his she might have been excavating for his wisdom teeth with her tongue.

Manette sighed. She glanced at Freddie. He was blushing. He shot her a look. She shrugged.

They got out of the car as the kiss ended. Charlie was walking dazedly to his Saab still parked in the drive, and he nodded a hello that was utterly unembarrassed. Seemed like he was getting quite comfortable coming and going and doing what Niamh needed to have done, Manette thought. Just like a plumber seeing to the pipes. She snorted at the thought and approached the front door.

Niamh hadn’t closed it. She’d gone inside, however, most likely thinking that Manette and Freddie would do likewise. They did, shutting the door behind them.

Niamh called, “I’ll be with you in a moment. I’m putting on something decent.”

Manette didn’t comment on this. She and Freddie went to the sitting room, which displayed the remains of a tryst: wine bottle, two glasses, a plate bearing crumbs and bits of cheese and chocolate, sofa cushions shoved onto the floor, and a pile of Niamh’s clothing lying nearby. Niamh was, Manette thought, certainly having the time of her life.

“Sorry. Haven’t got to this yet.”

Manette and Freddie turned at the sound of Niamh’s voice. Her “something decent” turned out to be a black leotard, which hugged every curve of her body and did everything possible to emphasise her breasts. These stood to attention like infantrymen in the presence of their commanding general. Their nipples strained against the thin cloth.

Manette glanced at Freddie. He was looking out of the sitting room window, at the fine view of the bay that it provided. With the tide out, plovers and knots by the thousands were in. Freddie wasn’t a bird man, but he was giving them considerable attention. The tips of his ears were absolutely magenta.

Niamh smiled slyly at Manette. She said, “Now. What can I do for you two?” and she bustled round as well as one could be said to bustle in a leotard. She put the cushions back onto the sofa and plumped them nicely, then picked up the wine bottle and glasses and took them into the kitchen. There the remains of a Chinese takeaway dinner were on the worktops and the table. It seemed that Charlie Wilcox was providing all sorts of sustenance, Manette thought. Stupid sod.

Manette said to her, “I phoned. Did you not hear it, Niamh?”

She fluttered her fingers in a pooh-pooh gesture. “I never answer the phone when Charlie’s here,” she said. “Would you? In my position?”

“I’m not sure. Which one is your position? Oh, never mind. I don’t care to know. Yes, I’d answer the phone if I heard the message and the message was about my son.”

Niamh was at the worktop, picking up the takeaway cartons, inspecting them for remains that were salvageable. “What about Tim?” she asked.

Manette felt Freddie come into the kitchen behind her. She moved to one side to give him room. She glanced at him. He stood with his arms crossed inspecting the mess. Freddie wasn’t big on the pickings of daily life being left round to clutter up a place.

Manette gave Niamh the story in brief. One missing son, two days truant from school. “Has he been here?” she finished, fairly sure of the answer.

“Not that I know of,” Niamh said. “I haven’t been home every moment. I suppose he could have come and gone.”

“We’d like to check,” Freddie said.

“Why? D’you think he’s under a bed? Do you think I’m hiding him from you?”

“We think he might be hiding from you,” Manette put in. “And who could blame him? Let’s be honest, Niamh. There’s a limit to what life can ask one boy to endure, and I expect he’s reached his.”

“What, exactly, are you saying?”

“I think you know very well. And with what you’ve been up to— ”

Freddie touched her arm briefly to halt her words. He said reasonably, “Tim might have slipped into the house while you were sleeping. He could be in the garage as well. D’you mind awfully if we have a look? It’ll just take a moment and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

Niamh’s expression said she’d have liked to carry the conversation further, but Manette knew that doing so would lead them in the single direction Niamh would want to go. Ian’s sins against her and against the family constituted the broken record of her life, and she had no wish to repair it. No matter Charlie Wilcox and his Chinese takeaway. Niamh would never get beyond Ian’s betrayal because she had no wish to do so.

She said, “Do as you like, Freddie,” and turned her back to begin putting the kitchen in order.

Searching the house was the business of less than five minutes. It was small, and upstairs there were three bedrooms and a bathroom. Tim would hardly have hidden himself in his mother’s room, since doing so would have risked having to listen to Niamh’s lovemaking, likely to be an acoustically enthusiastic affair. That left his room and Gracie’s room. Manette took these on as Freddie did the honours with Niamh’s garage.

They met back in the sitting room. They shook their heads. Time to move to another location. But Manette felt that she couldn’t do so without a final word with Tim’s mother. Niamh emerged from the kitchen with a cup of coffee. She made no offer of the like to her unwanted visitors. All to the good, Manette thought, as she didn’t want to remain any longer than it would take to say what needed to be said.

This was, “It’s time for the children to come home. You’ve made your point, Niamh, and there’s really no reason to take it further.”

Niamh said, “Oh dear,” and went to a chair, beneath which something had been shoved. She brought it out and shot them a coy smile. “Charlie will have his games,” she said.

Manette saw it was a sex toy, a vibrator by the looks of it, complete with various attachments in various shapes that lay on the floor as well. Niamh scooped these up and placed them along with the vibrator on the coffee table. She said, “What point are you talking about, Manette?”

“You know very well what point I’m talking about. It’s the same point that sent you on your way to the plastic surgeon, and it’s the same point that has that poor stupid bloke sniffing round you every night.”

“Manette,” Freddie murmured.

“No,” Manette said. “It’s time someone took her to task for this nonsense. You have two children and a duty to those children and that has nothing to do with Ian, with his rejection of you, with his love for Kaveh, with— ”

“Stop it!” Niamh hissed. “I will not have that name spoken inside this house.”

“Which one? Ian, the father of your children, or Kaveh, the man he left you for? You were hurt. Fine. All right. Everyone knows it. You had a right to be and, believe me, everyone knows that as well. But Ian’s dead and the children need you and if you can’t see that, if you’re so self-absorbed, if you’re so bloody needy, if you have to continue to prove to yourself over and over that some man— any man, for the love of God— wants you… What on earth is the matter with you? Were you ever a mother to Gracie and Tim?”

“Manette,” Freddie murmured. “Really.”

“How dare you.” Niamh’s voice was fury. “How bloody dare you. To stand there… to tell me… you who threw away a man for— ”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Oh, it never is, is it? You’re perfect, aren’t you, while the rest of us are beneath your contempt. What do you know of what I went through? What do you know of discovering that the man you love has been meeting with other men for years? Public lavatories, city parks, nightclubs where they grope each other and stick their cocks into strangers’ arseholes? Do you know how it feels to have that knowledge descend on you? To realise your marriage has been a sham and, worse, that you’ve been exposed to every possible variety of filthy disease because the man you’ve given your life to has been living a lie for years? Don’t you tell me how to live my life now. Don’t you bloody tell me I’m all about myself, I’m needy, I’m pathetic, I’m whatever else is on your goddamn mind…”

She’d begun to weep as she spoke, and she dashed the tears away from her face. She said, “Get out of here and don’t come back. If you do, Manette, I swear to God I’ll phone the police. I want you out of here and I want you to leave me alone.”

“And Tim? And Gracie? What of them?”

“I can’t have them here.”

It was Freddie who spoke. “What d’you mean?”

“They remind me. Always. I can’t bear it. Them.”

Manette’s lips parted. She took in the meaning behind Niamh’s words. She finally said, “Why on earth did he choose you? Why did he not see?”

“What?” Niamh demanded. “What? What?”

“From the very first, you were totally about yourself. Even now, Niamh. That’s how it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Niamh said.

“Don’t worry about that,” Manette said. “I finally do.”

LANCASTER

LANCASHIRE

Deborah felt a twinge of guilt about Lynley, but a twinge was all she allowed herself to feel. He would arrive at the Crow and Eagle, and she wouldn’t be there, but he wouldn’t know she’d gone to Lancaster since her hire car would still be sitting in the car park. She reckoned he’d think at first she’d gone for a final walk round Milnthorpe, perhaps over to the town’s market square or beyond it to the church to have a look at the graveyard. Or perhaps, he’d think, she’d gone along the route to Arnside for a stroll to watch the marsh birds. For the tide was out, and the mudflats were thickly populated at the moment with flocks of every sort of bird one could think of, wintering in Britain from harsher climes. There was the bank, as well, just across the road from the hotel. He might think she’d be there. Or perhaps still at breakfast. But in any case, it didn’t matter. What mattered is that she wouldn’t be there for him to cart home to Simon. She could have left him a note, of course. But she knew Tommy. One indication that she was on her way to Lancaster for another go with Lucy Keverne on the subject of Alatea Fairclough and he’d be after her like a hound chasing down a hare.

After her phone call to him, Zed Benjamin arrived in record time. She was waiting for him just inside the doorway of the inn— having booked herself in for at least one more night— so she stepped outside and into his car as soon as he’d made the three-point turn that would put them in the direction of Lancaster.

She didn’t tell him she’d lied to him earlier about why Lucy Keverne and Alatea Fairclough had been together at Lancaster University. The way she reckoned it, she didn’t owe any tabloid reporter a thing, be it the truth, a pack of lies, or even a spurious apology.

She made the situation simple for Zed: She reckoned that Lucy Keverne had lied to her on the previous day. Her tale about some kind of female problem needing to be looked into by someone at the university didn’t make sense the more Deborah had thought about it. After all, Lucy had gone to a reproductive centre and why would she need the support of a friend for that? She might want the support of a husband or a partner if she had reproduction on the mind, but a friend …? No, it seemed more likely that there was something more going on between Lucy Keverne and Alatea Fairclough and she— Deborah— needed Zed’s presence in order to find out.

Being orientated towards The Source, Zed immediately jumped to a secret lesbian liaison between Lucy Keverne and Alatea Fairclough. Looking for a connection with the death of Ian Cresswell, he went from there to the dead man knowing about the secret lesbian liaison and threatening to tell Nicholas Fairclough about it. Zed offered several variations on this theme, most of which included Lucy Keverne and Alatea Fairclough managing to do away with Ian Cresswell together, which was fine with Deborah as it kept Zed occupied and away from questioning why on earth a putative detective from New Scotland Yard would welcome The Source into the midst of an ongoing investigation.

What she did tell him was that she reckoned it was going to come down to money. What she didn’t tell him was that if Lucy Keverne had been advertising herself as an egg donor, as she claimed, then she hadn’t been doing it out of the goodness of her heart but rather for the cash. Zed was going to hand over tabloid money for her story, whatever her actual story was. He didn’t know that yet, but he would soon.

The one subject Deborah didn’t think about was why this part of the Cresswell case was important to her. The local coroner had been convinced that the death of Ian Cresswell had been an accident. Simon was absolutely certain of that fact, and it was his job to be certain of such things. Tommy had agreed. It seemed as if the entire reason for Tommy to be in Cumbria had relatively little to do with Ian Cresswell’s death in the first place, so for her to be tenaciously maintaining that there was more here than met the eye was a matter calling for close introspection. Deborah knew that at heart but she didn’t want to go there in mind. The chain of thought created by such self-examination was not going to be pleasant.

At the Kent-Howath Foundation for Disabled Veterans, she said, “Here’s how it has to be,” to which Zed replied, “Wait a bloody minute,” doubtless at the thought that once again he would be playing chauffeur while she gathered information that she might or might not share with him. Well, who could blame him for being miffed? she asked herself. The last time they’d gone this route, he’d ended up with little more than a half-empty tank of petrol.

“I’ll ring you once I have her alone,” she said. “If she sees us both at once, I guarantee, she’ll not say another word about Alatea Fairclough. And why should she? If she’s up to something illegal, she’s hardly going to confess it, is she?”

He didn’t ask why the hell they were there at all, then, which was just as well. Deborah knew she was going to have to do some considerable fancy dancing with Lucy Keverne, and she needed most of her wits to do that, not to create fictive reasons for why Zed had to play the part she was going to orchestrate for him. She didn’t really know if she’d get that far with Lucy Keverne anyway. She was flying without radar on this one.

The same old gentleman who’d welcomed her on the previous day did so today. He remembered her because of her hair, which was one of the few benefits, she reckoned, of being a redhead. He asked if she wanted to speak with Miss Lucy Keverne again. He held up a sheaf of papers and said, “Reading ’er play, I am, and lemme tell you if it’s not a West End winner, then I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

So she was a playwright, Deborah thought, perhaps supporting herself by working here at the disabled soldiers’ home and topping up her funds with the occasional donation of eggs? That was the grimmest sort of news to be had, since perhaps the only action she’d been taking in the company of Alatea Fairclough was in the nature of research. Well, one way or another they had to know, Deborah thought. Meanwhile, she had no intention of letting on that she’d been told about the playwriting. No need to give the woman in advance a direction in which to spin her story.

Lucy’s face registered surprise when she walked into the lobby and saw who was waiting to speak to her. Then her face altered at once to suspicion.

Deborah didn’t give her a chance to speak first. She quickly strode to her and placed a hand on her arm. She said to her quietly, “Here’s what you need to know, Ms. Keverne. New Scotland Yard is here in Cumbria and so is a reporter from The Source. One way or another you’re going to end up telling your story— the true one this time— and it’s up to you how and when you want to tell it.”

Lucy said, “I can’t— ”

“You’ve no choice any longer. I deceived you yesterday. I apologise for that, but I’d hoped to get to the root of the matter without bringing in anyone who might make you uncomfortable. Obviously, Alatea Fairclough’s being investigated. The trail has led directly to you.”

“I’ve done nothing illegal.”

“So you say,” Deborah said. “And if that’s the case— ”

“It is.”

“— then you can decide which route has more to offer you.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed. The word offer had done the trick. “What are you talking about?”

Deborah looked round furtively and said with great meaning, “We can’t speak here in the lobby.”

“Come with me, then.”

Even better, Deborah thought.

This time, they didn’t go to the garden but rather to an office, which seemed to be her own. There were two desks in it, but the other wasn’t occupied. Lucy closed the door behind them and stood in front of it. She said, “Who’s offering what?”

“Tabloids pay for their stories. You must know that.”

“Is that who you are?”

“A tabloid journalist? No. But I’ve got one with me, and if you’ll consent to talk to him, I’m here to make sure you get paid for what you have to say. My part is to assess the value of the story. You tell me, I negotiate with him.”

“That can’t possibly be how it works,” Lucy said shrewdly. “What are you, then? An agent for The Source? Some kind of… what? News scout or something?”

“I’m not sure it matters who I am,” Deborah said. “I think it matters more what I have to offer. I can ring the DI from New Scotland Yard who’s here in Cumbria on a matter of murder or I can ring a journalist who’ll walk in, listen to your story, and pay you for it.”

“Murder? What’s going on?”

“That’s not important at the moment. This situation between you and Alatea Fairclough is. You must decide. What’s it to be? A visit from New Scotland Yard or a journalist happy to hear what you have to say?”

Lucy Keverne thought this over while outside the office, some sort of trolley trundled down the corridor. She finally said, “How much, then?” and Deborah breathed more easily now that Lucy was swimming closer to the bait.

She said, “I suppose that depends on how sensational your story is.”

Lucy looked towards a window that faced the garden in which she and Deborah had spoken on the previous day. A gust of wind shuddered the slim branches of a Japanese maple outside, dislodging the rest of the leaves still clinging to it stubbornly. Deborah waited with please please please running through her mind. This was, she knew, the only option left to get at the truth. If Lucy Keverne didn’t go for it, there was nothing more to do but return to London as bidden.

Lucy finally said, “There is no story. At least, there is no story that could possibly interest The Source. All there is is an arrangement between two women. I’d make more of it if I could, believe me, because I could use the money. I’d prefer not to work here. I’d prefer to sit at home and write my plays and send them off to London and see them produced. But that’s not happening any time soon, so I work here in the mornings and I write in the afternoons and occasionally I top up my income by donating eggs, which was why I placed the advertisement in Conception magazine. I told you this.”

“You also told me you would never consider being a surrogate.”

“All right. That part wasn’t true.”

“So why did you lie about this yesterday?”

“Obviously, it was a private matter. It’s still a private matter.”

“And the money?”

“What about it?”

“As I understand how everything works,” Deborah pointed out, “you’re paid for allowing your eggs to be harvested. But if you’re a surrogate for someone, you receive nothing. Just your expenses. Eggs equal profit while surrogacy comes from the goodness of your heart. Isn’t that how it works?”

Lucy was silent. Into her silence, Deborah’s mobile rang. She jerked it impatiently from her shoulder bag and saw the incoming number.

“Are you playing me for a bloody idiot?” Zed demanded when she answered. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I’m going to have to ring you back,” she said.

“No sodding way. I’m coming in.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“No? Well, it’s the best I’ve come up with. And when I get there, there’d better be a story waiting for me and it’d better have to do with Cresswell’s murder.”

“I can’t promise— ” But he ended the call before she could finish. She said to Lucy, “The Source reporter is on his way in. This is out of my hands unless you wish to tell me more, something I can spin to keep him away from you. It’s to do with money, I expect. You’ve agreed to be a surrogate for Alatea, and Alatea is willing to pay you more than just your expenses, isn’t she? That would put you on the wrong side of the law. It explains why you misdirected me yesterday.”

Lucy said with some passion, “Look at me. Look at this job. All I need is time to finish my play, to have it workshopped, to be able to revise it, and I don’t have time and I don’t have money and the surrogacy agreement between us was going to give me both. So you can make a story out of that if you’d like, but I hardly think it’ll sell any papers. Do you?”

She was, of course, dead right. Scion of Fairclough Fortune in Illegal Surrogacy Deal might sell some newspapers, but the story would have legs only if there existed a bouncing baby whose winsome picture could be run along with the tabloid’s disclosure, along with a typical tabloid caption, something like Purchased Baby Fairclough, Sold by Surrogate Mum for £50,000. The story of an illegal deal going unfulfilled couldn’t even be sold to any tabloid since there would be nothing to prove it save Lucy’s claim, which would be denied by Alatea Fairclough. The story of a deal in which an infant could be produced as proof would be hot and lively, but since there was no baby to speak of, there was also no story.

On the other hand, Deborah now knew why Alatea Fairclough was in a panic about her. The only question was whether Ian Cresswell had discovered this situation in some manner and had threatened Alatea in the one way she could be threatened by him: through money. If Lucy was to be paid for the surrogacy, then the money would have had to come through Ian Cresswell. He had been the man in control of the Fairclough fortune. Unless she had funds of her own, Alatea would have had to strike some kind of deal with Ian.

This of course brought up Nicholas Fairclough’s role in the surrogacy arrangement. He would have had to know and to agree, which meant he would have had to be part of digging up the funds to pay for everything.

She said to Lucy, “What about Nicholas, Alatea’s husband?”

Lucy said, “He only— ” but that was as far as she got.

The maddening Zed Benjamin burst into the room. He said to Deborah, “Enough of these Scotland Yard double crosses. We’re doing this together or not at all.”

Lucy cried, “Scotland Yard double crosses? Scotland Yard?”

Zed said to her, jerking his thumb at Deborah, “Who the hell d’you think you’ve been talking to here? Lady Godiva?”

ARNSIDE

CUMBRIA

Alatea had managed to send Nicholas off to work. He hadn’t wanted to go and chances were very good, she knew, that he wouldn’t stay there. But the only thing she had to cling to at this point was a semblance of normalcy, and what constituted normal was Nicky heading to Barrow and after that to the pele project.

He’d been unable to sleep again. He was filled with remorse, seeing himself as the person who was bringing Raul Montenegro down upon her.

Nicky knew they’d been lovers, she and Raul. She’d never lied about that. He’d also known she was on the run from Montenegro. In a world in which fixated stalking had become just one more thing a woman had to worry about, Nicky had had no trouble believing that she needed to be protected from this multimillionaire from Mexico City, a powerful man determined to have what she’d promised him, a man in whose home she’d lived for five years.

But Nicky had never known everything about her, about Raul, and about what they’d been to each other. The only one who knew the story from start to finish was Montenegro himself. He’d changed his life to be with her; he’d altered hers to bring her into a world she’d had no chance to make her own before she’d met him. But there had been elements of Raul that he’d never made quite clear to her, just as there had been elements of herself that she’d never made quite clear to him. The result had been a nightmare from which the only chance of awakening was to run.

She was pacing and considering her final options when Lucy Keverne rang. She made her announcement tersely: The woman from the previous day had returned, and she hadn’t come alone. “I had to tell her the truth, Alatea. Or at least a version of it. She left me no choice.”

“What do you mean? What did you tell her?”

“I kept it simple. I told her that you’ve had trouble becoming pregnant. She does think your husband knows, however. I had to make her think that.”

“You didn’t tell her about the money, did you? How much I’m paying… Or the rest… She doesn’t know the rest?”

“She knows about the money. She worked that out easily enough because I’d told her about the egg harvesting yesterday and she knew money was connected to that, so she reckoned there had to be money connected to the surrogacy, and I could hardly deny it.”

“But did you tell her— ”

“That’s all she knows. I needed money. End of story.”

“Not about— ”

“I didn’t tell her how, if that’s what you’re worried about. She doesn’t know— and no one will ever know, I swear it— about faking the pregnancy. That part is yours and mine to hold: the ‘friendship’ between us, the holiday together too close to the due date, the delivery of the baby… She knows nothing of that and I didn’t tell her.”

“But why did you— ”

“Alatea, she gave me no choice. It was either tell her or face arrest, and that would hardly put me into the position of helping you later, when all this dies down. If it dies down…”

“But if she knows and then there’s a baby later on…” Alatea went to the bay window and sat. She was in the yellow drawing room, its cheerful colour doing little to mitigate the dull grey day outside the house.

“There’s more, Alatea,” Lucy said. “I’m afraid there’s more.”

Alatea’s lips felt stiff as she said, “What? What more?”

“She had a reporter with her. The choice she gave me was to talk to him or to have Scotland Yard— ”

“Oh my God.” Alatea slumped in the chair, her head lowered, her hand holding her brow.

“But why is Scotland Yard interested in you? And why is The Source trying to write about you? I have to ask because the one thing you promised— you guaranteed this, Alatea— was that no one could possibly root out the deception. Now between Scotland Yard and a tabloid, we both stand in very good stead to be— ”

“It’s not you. It’s not me,” Alatea told her. “It’s Nicky. It’s the fact that his cousin drowned.”

“What cousin? When? What’s this got to do with you?”

“Nothing. It’s got nothing to do with me and nothing to do with Nicky. It’s just what brought Scotland Yard up here in the first place. The journalist was here to do a story on Nicky and the pele project, but that was weeks ago and I don’t know why he’s come again.”

“This is a mess,” Lucy said. “You do know that, don’t you? Look. I do think I’ve managed to keep the reporter from getting a story out of all this. What’s there to report? You and I talking about a surrogacy arrangement? There’s no story in that. But as to the woman… She claimed that she could produce the detective from Scotland Yard with a wave of her hand and he said that she was the detective, which she denied. But she wouldn’t say more and by that time things were falling apart and… For the love of God, who was this woman, Alatea? What does she want with me? What does she want with you?”

“She’s gathering her information,” Alatea said. “She’s making sure she knows who I am.”

“What do you mean, who you are?”

The instrument of another, she thought, eternally never who I wish to be.

VICTORIA

LONDON

Barbara Havers spent the morning keeping her nose to Isabelle Ardery’s assigned grindstone, which had a great deal to do with meeting a clerk from the CPS on the invigorating subject of comparing all the statements taken from everyone connected to the summer death of a young woman in a north London cemetery. She hated this kind of work, but she did everything save salute when Ardery gave it to her. Better to prove herself in ways beyond her manner of dress, she reckoned, which was today letter perfect, as a matter of fact. She’d donned her A-line skirt, navy tights, and perfectly polished court shoes— well, there was one little scuff but some spit had taken care of that— and she’d topped this with a new wool sweater that was finely knitted and not, mind you, of her usual heavy-gauge fisherman’s variety. Over that she’d shrugged into a subtle plaid jacket and she’d even put on the single piece of jewellery she owned, which was a filigree necklace purchased the previous summer at Accessorize in Oxford Street.

Hadiyyah had heartily approved of her ensemble that very morning, which told Barbara she was developing more skill in the putting-oneself-together-professionally department. She’d come to Barbara’s bungalow as Barbara was indulging in the last bit of her Pop-Tart, and heroically she’d ignored the fag smouldering in the ashtray in favour of complimenting Barbara on her growing talents in fashion.

Barbara noted that Hadiyyah was not wearing her school uniform, and she asked about this. “Holiday today?”

Hadiyyah bounced from foot to foot, hands on the back of one of the two chairs at Barbara’s kitchen table, which was little larger than a chopping board and generally did duty as that as well. The little girl said, “Mummy and I… It’s special, Barbara. It’s for Dad and I must take the day off school. Mummy phoned and said I was ill today but it was only the littlest lie because of what we have planned. It’s a surprise for Dad.” She hugged herself in glee. “Oh just wait, wait, wait,” she cried.

“Me? Why? Am I part of the surprise?”

“I want you to be. So Mummy says you can know but you mustn’t say a word to Dad. D’you promise? See, Mummy says she and Dad had a row— well, adults do row sometimes, don’t they— and she wants to give him a cheer-you-up surprise. So that’s what we’re doing today.”

“Taking him somewhere? Surprising him at work?”

“Oh no. The surprise’ll be when he gets home.”

“Special dinner, I’ll bet.”

“Much, much better than that.”

To Barbara’s way of thinking, there wasn’t anything better than a special dinner, especially if she wasn’t the one who had to cook it. She said, “What then? Tell me. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

“D’you promise and double promise?” Hadiyyah asked.

“Triple promise if that will do it.”

Hadiyyah’s eyes danced along with her feet. She pushed away from the table and spun so that her hair flew round her shoulders like a cape. She said, “My brother and sister! My brother and sister! Barbara, did you know I have a brother and a sister?”

Barbara felt the smile melt from her face. She forced it back on. “A brother and sister? Really? You have a brother and a sister?”

“I do, I do,” Hadiyyah cried. “See, Dad was married once before and he didn’t like to tell me ’cause I s’pose he thought I was too young. But Mummy told me and she said it’s not such a bad thing to be married once before, is it, and I said no, of course it isn’t ’cause lots of kids have parents who aren’t married any longer and I know them from school. So Mummy said well that’s what happened with Dad only his family got so cross with him that they didn’t want him to see his children anymore. And that’s not nice, is it?”

“Well, I suppose not,” Barbara said, but she was developing a very bad feeling about where this was heading and what the possible outcome would be. And how the hell had Angelina Upman tracked these people down? she wondered.

“So …” Hadiyyah allowed a dramatic pause.

“Yes?” Barbara prompted.

“So Mummy and I are going to fetch them!” she cried. “Won’t that be a wonderful surprise! I get to meet them, and I’m ever so excited to have a brother and a sister I never knew. And Dad gets to see them next and he’ll be ever so excited as well ’cause Mummy says he’s not seen them in years and she doesn’t know how old they are, even, except she thinks that one of them is twelve and the other is fourteen. Imagine, Barbara, I got an older brother and sister. D’you think they’ll like me? I hope so ’cause I know I’ll like them.”

Barbara’s mouth had gone so dry that she could hardly move her jaw, so tightly were her cheeks adhering to her teeth. She gulped a mouthful of tepid coffee and said, “Well, well, well,” which was just about the only thing she could manage while her brain was racing with thoughts of the bloody-hell-what-should-I-do variety. Friendship demanded that she warn Azhar of the impending disaster about to befall him: Angelina Upman presenting him with a fait accompli that he would have had neither time nor opportunity to prevent. But did friendship extend that far? she asked herself. And if she told him, what would he do and what effect would whatever he did have on Hadiyyah, who was, as far as Barbara could see, the most important person involved?

Ultimately, Barbara had done nothing because she couldn’t come up with a plan that didn’t culminate in utter havoc being wrought upon too many lives. Talking to Angelina felt like a betrayal of Azhar. Talking to Azhar felt like a betrayal of Angelina. It seemed the better course to stay out of it altogether and let nature— or whatever it was— take its course. She’d have to be there to sweep up the pieces but perhaps there would be no pieces to sweep up. Hadiyyah, after all, deserved to know her brother and sister. Perhaps everything would come out of the wash of affairs smelling sweet as roses in June. Perhaps.

Thus Barbara had taken herself to work as usual. She’d made certain Superintendent Ardery got the complete eyeful of her day’s ensemble, although she’d presented herself to Dorothea Harriman for a thumbs-up first. Harriman had been copious in her praise— “Detective Sergeant Havers, your hair… your makeup… stunning…” — although when she’d gone on to talk about a new mineral-based foundation that Barbara had to try and did the detective sergeant want to pop out at lunchtime and see if they could find it locally, Barbara drew the line. She’d said thanks, made her bow to Superintendent Ardery, who’d handed her the demands from the CPS while she spoke to someone on the phone about, “What sort of cock-up is this, anyway? Are you people ever on top of things over there?” which Barbara assumed had to do with SO7 and matters pertaining to forensics. She herself got down to work with the CPS clerk and it was some time later when she was finally able to resume the work she’d been doing for Lynley.

This was easier than before since Ardery had to leave to attend to the cock-up apparently and if it was a forensics cock-up, she’d be across the river for God only knew how long. The moment Barbara learned she was out of the building— it always paid to be on friendly terms with the blokes who manned the Yard’s underground car park access— she was out of there like a cannonball and on her way to the Met’s library, excuses made to the CPS bloke, who was happy enough to take a very long lunch hour.

Barbara took her English/Spanish dictionary with her. Having gathered enough information on the first two sons of Esteban Vega y de Vasquez and Dominga Padilla y del Torres de Vasquez— the first two sons being the priest Carlos and the dentist Miguel— and having seen a good enough photo of Miguel’s wife to know that no amount of plastic surgery in the world could have turned her into Alatea Fairclough, Barbara was ready to move on to Angel, Santiago, and Diego to see what she could unearth. If none of them had a connection with Alatea, then she was going to have to look at the rest of the extended family, and from what the Spanish student had told her on the previous day, there could be hundreds of them.

As it turned out, there was very little on Angel, who, despite his name, appeared to be the black sheep of the family. Using her dictionary and moving at a pace so tedious that she thought her outrageously expensive Knightsbridge haircut might grow out before she discovered anything useful, she ultimately was able to put together the fact that he’d caused a car crash that had crippled his passenger for life. The passenger had been a fifteen-year-old girl.

Barbara followed this lead— the fifteen-year-old girl being at least the first female she’d come across aside from Miguel’s unfortunate wife— but she came up with nothing but a dead end. No photo was available of her and while there was one of Angel, he appeared to be round nineteen years old and it didn’t matter anyway because after the accident, he dropped directly off the media map. If he was North American and preferably from the United States, at that point he would either have gone into a rehab programme or discovered Jesus, but this was South America and whatever happened to him after that accident, the available media didn’t talk about it. Too small a fish, probably. They’d quickly moved on to other things.

So did she. Santiago. She found a story about the boy’s first communion. At least she reckoned it was his first communion because he was standing in a neat arrangement of children in suits (the boys) and bride getups (the girls) and either the Moonies had decided to begin marrying them off when they were round eight years old or this was a group of children who, as Catholics in Argentina, had just been elevated to worthy recipients of the Sacrament. It was rather odd that there would be a story about a group first communion, so Barbara struggled through a bit of it. She got the gist: that the church had burned down and they’d been forced to have their first communion in a city park. Or so it seemed to Barbara’s extremely limited skill with Spanish. Truth was, the church could have been destroyed by a flood. Or even an earthquake. Or perhaps they’d tented the place for termites because God, God, God this was tedious work having to translate everything a single word at a time.

She squinted at the photo of the children and looked at it one girl at a time. She brought out the Internet picture she had of Alatea Fairclough and she began to compare it to each of the girls. Their names were listed and there were only fifteen of them and certainly she could do an Internet search on each of them but that would take hours and she didn’t have hours because once Superintendent Ardery returned, if she wasn’t beavering away at the witness statements she’d been ordered to deal with at the side of the CPS clerk, there would be hell to pay.

She considered choosing the most likely suspect among the girls and having an age progression done upon her. But she hardly had the time and she certainly didn’t have the authority. So she went back to the Santiago trail because if he had nothing more to offer her, there was nothing else to do other than to move on to Diego.

She found an older picture of Santiago playing Othello sans black pancake in the eponymous play as an adolescent. There was a final picture of him with the school football team and an enormous trophy, but then there was nothing. Just like Angel of the car crash, he fell off the radar. It was as if once the boys reached mid-adolescence, if they hadn’t accomplished something important— preparing for the priesthood or for dentistry being cases in point— then the local news media lost interest in them. Either that or they became useless to their father politically. Because, after all, he was a politician, with a politician’s bent for trotting out his family in election years to demonstrate their essential wholesomeness for the voters.

Barbara thought about this: family, politics, the voting public. She thought about Angel. She thought about Santiago. She stared at every photo she’d come up with and she ended with the children in the park at their first communion. Finally, she picked up the photograph of Alatea Fairclough again.

“What is it?” she whispered. “Tell me your secrets, luv.”

But there was nothing. A string of noughts stretched out to infinity.

She muttered a curse and reached for the mouse to log off the Internet and get back to Diego— the final brother— later. But then she looked a last time at the football photo, then at Othello. From them she went to Alatea Fairclough. Then Alatea on Montenegro’s arm. Then she went back to the first communion. Then she riffled through the photos of Alatea Fairclough’s modelling years. She went back and back and back through those photos, back through time, back to the first one she could find. She studied it. She finally saw.

Eyes on the terminal’s screen, she reached for her mobile. She punched in Lynley’s number.

BRYANBARROW

CUMBRIA

“Can she be forced?” Manette asked Freddie. They were coursing through the Lyth Valley at a good speed, with Freddie behind the wheel. They’d just made the turn into the southwest end of it, where the emerald fields spread out behind crusty drystone walls on either side of the road and the fells rose above them with peaks that wore the grey shawls of cloud on their shoulders. It would be misty up there, and soon it would be misty on the valley floor as well. A good fog was probably going to develop as the day wore on.

Manette had been consumed by their conversation with Niamh Cresswell. How, she wondered, could she have known Niamh for so many years without really knowing her at all?

Freddie, it seemed, had been thinking thoughts unrelated to Niamh and their call upon her because he glanced Manette’s way and said, “Who?”

“Niamh, Freddie. Who else? Can she be forced to take the children back?”

Freddie looked doubtful. “I don’t know the law when it comes to parents and children. But, really, old girl, what sort of plan would that be, to get the law involved?”

“Oh Lord, I don’t know. But we should at least find out what the options are. Because the very idea that she’d just leave Tim and Gracie to their fate… especially little Gracie… Good God, Freddie, does she expect them to go into care? Can she give them into care, for that matter? Can’t someone force her…?”

“Solicitors, judges, and social services?” Freddie asked. “How d’you see that sort of thing affecting the children? Tim’s in a bad enough way already, what with Margaret Fox School and all that. I daresay knowing his mum has been forced by a court to take him back would send the poor lad right over the edge.”

“Perhaps my mum and dad, then…?” Manette suggested. “With that enormous play area she’s building…? Mum and Dad could take them. They’ve got the space, and the kids would love to be near the lake and to use the play area, certainly.”

Freddie slowed the car. Up ahead, a flock of sheep were being moved from one paddock into another in a manner typical to Cumbria: They were in the middle of the road with a border collie directing them and the farmer strolling along behind. The pace was, as always, glacial.

Freddie changed gears and said to Manette, “Tim’s a bit old for play areas, wouldn’t you say, Manette? And anyway, what with this business with Vivienne Tully just coming to light, having the kids move into Ireleth Hall might be even worse for them than… well, than whatever other arrangement can be made.”

“Of course, you’re right.” Manette sighed. She thought about everything she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours about her parents, but especially about her father. She said, “What d’you think she’s going to do?”

“Your mother?” He shook his head. “No idea.”

“I’ve never understood what attracted her to Dad in the first place,” Manette said. “And believe me, I haven’t a clue what Vivienne saw in him. Or continues to see in him, because it’s looking like she’s been seeing him for years. Why on earth would she ever have found Dad attractive? It can’t be money. The money’s mother’s, not his, so if they’d divorced he’d do fine but he wouldn’t have been exactly rolling in the dosh. I mean, of course he’s always had access to it and perhaps Vivienne never knew it wasn’t actually his…?”

“It’s unlikely that she even thought of money when it came to your dad,” Freddie replied. “I expect it was his self-assurance. Women like that in a man, and your father’s always had self-assurance in spades. I wager it’s what attracted your mother to him.”

Manette glanced his way. He was still watching the sheep on the road, but the tips of his ears were giving him away. There was more here than met the eye, so she said, “And…?”

“Hmm?”

“The self-assurance bit.”

“Right. Well. I’ve always admired that about your father. Honestly? Wished I had just a bit of what he’s got.” The ears got redder.

“You? Not self-assured? How can you say that? And look at all the women who’ve been crawling on their knees across broken glass to get at you lately.”

“That sort of thing is easy, Manette. It’s the biological imperative. Women want a man without knowing why they want him. All he has to do is perform. And if a man can’t perform when a woman’s pulling his trousers down to have a ride on the pogo stick— ”

“Freddie McGhie!” Manette laughed, in spite of herself.

“It’s true, old girl. The whole species dies out if the bloke can’t do it when a woman’s getting him ready for it, so that’s all it is. Biology. The performance is rote. Technique isn’t, of course, but any bloke can learn a decent technique.” The sheep ahead of them reached the next field, where the gate stood open between the drystone walls. The border collie expertly got them through, and Freddie put the car back into gear. He said, “So we can say your dad developed a good technique, but he had to have something to attract women in the first place, and that’s his confidence. He has the sort of confidence that makes a man believe he can do anything. And not only does he believe he can do anything, but he proves it to people.”

Manette could see how this was the case, certainly when it came to her parents’ relationship. Their initial meeting was part of family lore, that fifteen-year-old boy strutting up to eighteen-year-old Valerie Fairclough and announcing his intentions towards her. She’d been intrigued by his cockiness in a world where his kind generally knew where to find their forelocks. That feeling of intrigue was all Bernie Dexter had required. The rest was history.

She said, “But, Freddie, you can do anything, as well. Have you never believed that about yourself?”

He shot her a diffident smile. “Couldn’t hang on to you, could I? And what Mignon said yesterday …? I always knew you preferred Ian. P’rhaps that was the crux of our problems.”

“That isn’t true,” Manette protested. “The seventeen-year-old girl I was might have preferred Ian. The woman I became preferred no one but you.”

“Ah,” he said. But he said nothing more.

Nor did she, although she could feel an uneasiness come between them, a tension that hadn’t been there before. She kept quiet as they made the turn that would take them up to Bryanbarrow village and, ultimately, to Bryan Beck farm.

When they arrived, it was to see a removals van in front of the cottage where George Cowley and his son, Daniel, lived. When they parked and began to approach the old manor house, Cowley came out of the cottage and, apparently seeing them, strolled over to have a word. It was brief enough to begin with: “Got what he wanted all along, I dare say.” He spat unappealingly on the stone path that led past Gracie’s trampoline to the front door. “See how he likes to have a farm not bringing in a bloody penny and he’ll be changing his tune.”

“I beg your pardon?” Freddie was the one to speak. He didn’t know George Cowley and while Manette knew him by sight, she’d never actually spoken to the man.

“He’s got Big Plans, he has,” Cowley said, using uppercase by means of his intonation. “We’re finished here, me an’ Dan. We take our sheep with us, and let him see how he likes it. And let him see his way to finding another farmer willing to rent the land and live in that hovel over there and pay through the nose for the pleasure. Him and his wife and family.”

Manette wondered if the cottage was actually large enough for a man, his wife, and a family as well, but she didn’t say anything. Just, “Is Tim here, Mr. Cowley? We’re looking for him.”

“Don’t know, do I?” George Cowley said. “Something wrong with that kid anyways. And the other’s an odd one, ’s well. Jumping on that trampoline for hours. Bloody glad, I am, to be gone from this place. You see that bollock licker, you tell him I said so. You tell him I don’t believe his nonsense for a bloody minute, no matter what he’s got up his sleeve.”

“Certainly. Will do,” Freddie said. He took Manette’s arm and steered her to the front door. Under his breath he said, “Best give him a very wide berth, hmm?”

Manette agreed. Clearly, the man was a bit off his nut. What on earth had he been talking about?

No one was at home in the old manor house, but Manette knew where a spare key was kept, beneath a lichen-covered concrete mushroom half-buried in the garden at the base of an old wisteria, leafless now with its massive trunk climbing towards the roof. Key in their possession, they entered. The door took them through a passage and into the kitchen, where everything was pin-neat and the old woodwork of the sagging cabinets had been polished to a glow. The place looked better than it had looked prior to Ian’s death. Clearly, Kaveh or someone else had been at work upon it.

This gave Manette a feeling of disquiet. She was of a mind that devastating grief should produce in someone an equal devastation of spirit, of the sort that precluded doing one’s house up as if in the expectation of visitors. But nothing was out of place in this room, not a single cobweb clung to the heavy oak ceiling beams, and even in the hidden area high above the old fireplace where meat had once hung to be smoked and preserved during long winters, it appeared that someone had used a mop and a cleaning agent on the smoky walls.

Freddie said, “Well, no one can claim he’s letting the place go to ruin, eh?” as he looked round.

Manette called out, “Tim? Are you here?”

This was mostly for effect, since she knew very well that even if Tim was present, he was hardly going to come leaping down the stairs or in from the fire house, open-armed in greeting. Nonetheless, they checked the place systematically as they went: The hallan was empty, the fire house was as well. Like the kitchen, every room into which they popped their heads was neat and clean. It all looked as it had when Ian had been alive, only better kept up, as if a photographer might be arriving at any moment to shoot pictures for a magazine article on Elizabethan buildings.

They went up the stairs. A building of this age would have hidey-holes aplenty, and they did their best to search them out. Freddie voiced his opinion that Tim was long gone and who could really blame him after what he’d been going through. But Manette wanted to make absolutely sure. She looked under beds and poked into wardrobes and even pressed on some of the ancient paneled walls to see if there were hidden chambers. She knew she was being ridiculous but she couldn’t help herself. There was something essentially wrong with the entire picture of Bryan Beck farm, and she was intent upon understanding what it was because for all they knew the real truth was that Kaveh had done something to Tim to drive him off and then had made a show of looking for him afterwards.

Tim’s bedroom was the last place they looked, and here too all was in order. The fact that it was the bedroom of a fourteen-year-old boy was nowhere in evidence, although his clothing still hung in the wardrobe, and his tee-shirts and jerseys were folded within the chest of drawers.

“Ah,” Freddie said, approaching a table that did service as a desk beneath a window. On this sat Tim’s laptop computer, its top open as if it had been recently used. “This might give us something,” he told Manette. He sat down, stretched his fingers, and said, “Let’s see what we can see.”

Manette went to his side and said, “We don’t have his password. What do we know about delving into other people’s computers without passwords?”

Freddie looked at her and smiled. “Ah, you of little faith,” he said. He began to whittle away at the problem, which didn’t turn out to be much of a problem at all. Tim’s computer was set to remember his password. They needed only his user name, which Manette knew since she had done her best to e-mail Tim regularly. The rest, as Freddie said, was bingo.

He chuckled at the ease of it all and said to Manette, “I do wish your back had been turned, old girl. You might actually have thought I was some sort of genius.”

She squeezed his shoulder. “You’re genius enough for me, my dear.”

As Freddie set about examining e-mails and trails to various websites, Manette looked at what was on the desk along with the computer. School books, an iPod with its docking station and speakers, a notebook filled with disturbing pencil drawings of grotesque alien beings consuming various body parts of humans, a book on bird watching— where had that come from? she wondered— a pocket knife that she unfolded to see a chilling brown crust of blood on its largest blade, and a map printed from the Internet. She took this last and said, “Freddie, could this be— ?”

Car doors slammed outside the house. Manette leaned over the table to look out of the window. She thought it likely that Kaveh had returned, that, perhaps, he’d found Tim himself and had brought him home, in which case she and Freddie would need to be off the boy’s computer posthaste. But the arrivals weren’t Kaveh, as things turned out. They were, instead, an older Asian couple, possibly Iranian like Kaveh. With them was a teenage girl, who looked up at the manor house with a long-fingered hand pressed against her lips. She shot a glance at the older couple. The woman took her arm and together all three of them approached the front door.

They had to belong to Kaveh in some fashion, Manette thought. There were few enough Asians in this part of Cumbria, and hardly any at all in the countryside. They’d come on a surprise visit, perhaps. They’d come to call on their way from Point A to Point Z. Who knew why they’d come? It didn’t matter because they’d knock on the door and no one would answer and then they’d skedaddle so that she and Freddie could get on with things.

But that didn’t happen. Apparently with a key in their possession, they let themselves inside. Manette murmured, “What on earth…?” And then, “Freddie, someone’s arrived. It’s an older couple and a girl. I think they belong to Kaveh. Shall I…?”

Freddie said, “Damn. I’m getting somewhere here. Can you… I don’t know …Can you handle them in some way?”

Manette left the room quietly, closing the door behind her. She made a suitable amount of noise as she descended the stairs. She called out, “Hullo? Hullo? C’n I help you?” and she came face-to-face with everyone in the passage between the kitchen and the fire house.

The best course was bluffing, Manette decided. She smiled as if there was nothing unusual in her being inside the manor house. She said, “I’m Manette McGhie. I’m Ian’s cousin. You must be friends of Kaveh? He’s not here at the moment.”

They were more than friends of Kaveh, as it happened. They were his parents come up from Manchester. They’d brought his fiancée, newly come from Tehran, to see what was going to be her home in a few short weeks. She and Kaveh had not yet met. It was not the usual done thing for her future in-laws to bring the bride to call, but Kaveh had been anxious— well, what bridegroom wouldn’t be?— and so here they were. Just a little premarital surprise.

The girl’s name was Iman and she’d dropped her gaze in an appealingly diffident fashion while all this was being said. Her hair— copious, lustrous, and black— fell forward to hide her face. But the glimpse Manette had caught of it had been enough to see she was very pretty.

“Kaveh’s fiancée?” Manette’s smile froze as she took this on board. At least there was an explanation now for the pristine state of the house. But as to everything else, these waters were deep and this poor girl was probably going to drown in them. Manette said, “I had no idea Kaveh was engaged. Ian never told me about that.”

Whereupon the waters became deeper still.

“Who is Ian?” Kaveh’s father asked.

En route to London

When his mobile rang, Lynley was nearly seventy miles from Milnthorpe, fast approaching the junction for the M56, and more than a little disturbed. He’d been played for a fool by Deborah St. James, and he was far from happy about it. He’d turned up at the Crow and Eagle as agreed at half past ten, expecting to find her with her bags packed and ready for the drive back to London. He’d not been concerned at first when she was not waiting for him in the lobby since he’d seen her hire car in the car park, so he knew she was somewhere about the place.

“If you’d ring her room please,” he’d said to the receptionist, a girl in a crisp white blouse and black wool skirt who’d done so obligingly with a “Who shall I tell her…?”

“Tommy,” he said, and he saw the flash of a knowing look strike her features. The Crow and Eagle was, perhaps, a hotbed of hot beds— as Sergeant Havers would have put it— a central location for daily assignations among the landed gentry. He added, “Fetching her for the drive back to London,” and then was immediately irritated with himself for doing so. He walked away and studied the ubiquitous rack of brochures featuring tourist highlights in Cumbria.

The receptionist cleared her throat after a moment and said, “No answer, sir. Could be she’s in the dining room?”

But she wasn’t. Nor was she in the bar, although what Deborah would have been doing in the bar at half past ten in the morning was a mystery to him. Since her car was there, right next to where he’d parked the Healey Elliott, he sat down to wait. There was a bank across the street from the hotel, a market square in the town, a old church with an appealing graveyard …He reckoned she could be having a final look round the place before the long drive.

It didn’t occur to him for some ten minutes that if the receptionist had been ringing Deborah’s room, she clearly hadn’t yet checked out of the hotel. When it did occur to him, he moved fairly rapidly from there to a conclusion of “Bloody maddening woman.”

He rang her mobile at once. Of course, it went immediately to her voice mail. He said, “You must know I’m rather unhappy with you at the moment. We had an arrangement, you and I. Where the hell are you?” but there was nothing more to add. He knew Deborah. There was no point in trying to move her from the obdurate stand she had taken with regard to matters in Cumbria.

Still he had a look round the town for her before he left, telling himself he owed Simon that much. This ate up more of his day and accomplished nothing save an extended study of Milnthorpe, which, for some reason, appeared to have a plethora of Chinese takeaways round the market square. He finally returned to the inn, wrote her a note, left it with the receptionist, and went on his way.

When his phone rang on the approach to the M56, then, he thought at first it was Deborah, ready to be profuse with her apologies. He answered without glancing at the incoming number, barking, “What?” only to hear Sergeant Havers’s voice instead.

She said, “Right. Well. Hullo back at you. Which one is it, then? Did you have a personality transplant or a toss-and-turn night?”

He said, “Sorry. I’m on the motorway.”

“Heading…?”

“Home, where else?”

“Not a good idea, sir.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Just ring me when you can talk. Find a services area. I don’t want you crashing that expensive motor of yours. I’ve already got the Bentley on my conscience.”

The next services area was a Welcome Break, and he had to travel some way to find it. It was a quarter of an hour before he got there, but the car park wasn’t crowded and there was virtually no one inside the unappealing sprawl of sticky-floored cafeteria, shops, newsagents, and children’s play area. He bought himself a coffee and took it to a table. He rang Havers’s mobile.

“Hope you’re sitting down,” were her words when she answered.

“I was sitting down the first time we spoke,” he reminded her.

“Okay, okay.” She brought him up to the minute on what she’d been doing, which appeared mostly to be keeping out of Isabelle Ardery’s sight in order to do research on the Internet, for which she seemed to be developing a distinct liking. She talked about a Spanish graduate student; her neighbour Taymullah Azhar, with whom Lynley was acquainted; the town of Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos; and finally the five sons of the mayor of that town. She ended with the purpose of her call, always someone who liked to build to dramatic moments:

“And here’s the situation in a nutshell. There is no Alatea Vasquez y del Torres. Or perhaps better put: There is and there isn’t an Alatea Vasquez y del Torres.”

“Hadn’t you already established that Alatea’s probably from another part of the family?”

“To borrow unblushingly from rock ’n’ roll history, sir: That was yesterday and yesterday’s gone.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Alatea’s from this part of the family. She’s just not Alatea.”

“Who is she, then?”

“She’s Santiago.”

Lynley tried to take this in. Around him, a cleaner was industriously mopping the floor, casting meaningful glances in his direction as if with the hope he’d vacate the premises, giving access to the floor beneath his chair. He said, “Barbara, what on earth do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say, sir. Alatea is Santiago. Santiago is Alatea. Either that or they are identical twins, and if I remember my biology correctly, there is no such thing as identical twins of the male-female sort. A biological impossibility.”

“So we’re talking about… What, exactly, are we talking about?”

“Cross-dressing, sir. Impeccable female impersonation. A tasty secret one would hope to keep from the family, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say, yes. In certain circumstances. But in these circumstances— ”

Havers cut in. “Sir, here’s how it is: The trail on Santiago goes dead when he’s about fifteen years old. That’s when, I daresay, he started passing himself off as someone called Alatea. He ran away from home round then as well. I got that, among other details, from a phone call to the family.”

She began to tell him what she’d learned from her earlier meeting with the graduate student Engracia after that call the young woman had placed to Argentina: the family wanted Alatea to come home; her father and her brothers now understood; Carlos— “He’s the priest,” Havers reminded Lynley— made them understand; everyone was praying for Alatea’s return; they’d been searching for years; she must not continue to run; Elena Maria’s heart was broken—

“Who’s Elena Maria?” Lynley felt as if his head were filling with wet cotton wool.

“Cousin,” Havers said. “Way I figure it, Santiago did a runner because he liked to cross-dress, which— let’s face it— probably didn’t go down a treat with his brothers and his dad. Latin types, you know? Macho and all that, if you’ll pardon the stereotyping. Anyway, somewhere along the line he met up with Raul Montenegro— ”

“Who the dickens— ”

“Rich bloke in Mexico City. Rolling in enough lolly to build a concert hall and name it for his mum. Anyway, Santiago meets him, and Raul likes him, as in Raul likes him, because Raul likes to bat for the same side, if you know what I mean. And he prefers his partners young and nubile. From what I’ve seen in photos, he prefers them well oiled as well, but that’s neither here nor there, eh? Anyway, we’ve got heaven in a basket for these two blokes. On the one hand we have Santiago, who likes dressing up and making himself up like a woman, which, over time, he’s learned to do bloody well. On the other hand, we have Raul, who meets Santiago and has no problem whatsoever with Santiago’s dressing habits since he— Raul— is bent like a twig but would rather not have anyone actually know that. So he takes up with Santiago, who, when he’s fixed himself up, looks like a gorgeous dolly bird, and Raul can even take him out in public. They keep company, so to speak, until something better comes along.”

“That something better being…?”

“Nicholas Fairclough, I expect.”

Lynley shook his head. It was all so wildly improbable. He said, “Havers, tell me: Are you surmising all this, or do you actually have any real facts?”

She was unoffended. “Sir, it all fits. Santiago’s mum knew exactly who we were talking about when Engracia asked her about Alatea. She didn’t know who Engracia was other than someone looking for Alatea, so she also wouldn’t have known that we’d already turned up the fact that there were only sons in the family. Since we knew there were only sons, Engracia and I both thought Alatea was someone else in the extended family— just like you did— but when I followed the trail on Santiago and then went back in time with Alatea’s modeling pictures to find the youngest ones of her… Believe me, sir, she’s Santiago. He ran off to take up life as a woman with no one the wiser because of how he looks, and once he met Raul Montenegro, he was set. Things probably just went swimmingly between them— Alatea and Raul— till Nicholas Fairclough came along.”

Lynley had to admit there were possibilities in this. For Nicholas Fairclough, former drug addict and drunk, was probably not going to want his parents to know that he was now living with a man posing as his wife, with a false marriage certificate the only documentation that would give this person the right to remain in the country anyway.

“Could Ian Cresswell somehow have discovered all this?” Lynley said, more to himself than to Havers.

“Give that barker a bone,” was how Havers put her agreement to this consideration. “’Cause all things considered, sir, when he first saw her, who’d have known what he was looking at better than Ian Cresswell?”

MILNTHORPE

CUMBRIA

Deborah was feeling rotten even before the receptionist at the Crow and Eagle handed her Tommy’s message. For everything that she’d been trying to do was falling apart at the seams.

She’d tried to draw the horrible reporter from The Source along the primrose path of there being no story to be got from what they learned from Lucy Keverne in Lancaster. Since Zed Benjamin still thought of Deborah as the Scotland Yard detective he’d assumed her to be from the first, she had hoped that when she said, “Well, my work here is finished,” he’d go along and conclude his own work was finished in Cumbria as well. After all, if the putative detective had decided there was no case to answer, it stood to reason there was also no story.

But that was not how Zed Benjamin looked at matters, as things turned out. He said the story was just beginning.

This had filled Deborah with horror at what she might be exposing Alatea and Nicholas Fairclough to, so she had asked Zed Benjamin what sort of story he thought he had. “Two people want to pay a woman more than they’re supposed to pay her to be a surrogate mother for their child,” she pointed out. “How many people like that are there in the country? How many people don’t have a friend or a relative who’s willing to be a surrogate for free, just for compassion’s sake? It’s a ridiculous law and there’s no story to write.”

But again, that wasn’t how Zed Benjamin saw it. The law itself was the story, he declared. It produced desperate women looking for desperate remedies using desperate means to attain them.

Deborah said, “Pardon me for saying so, Mr. Benjamin, but I hardly think The Source is going to issue a clarion call for women’s reproductive issues upon your recommendation.”

“We’ll see,” he’d promised.

They’d parted ways at the door to her lodgings, and she’d trudged inside, only to be given a sealed envelope with her name written on the outside in a cursive she recognised from years of receiving letters from Tommy while she studied photography in California.

The message was brief: Deb, What can I say? Tommy. And it was true enough. What could he say? She’d lied to him, she’d ignored his phone call on her mobile, and now he was as upset with her as Simon was. What a mess she’d made of things.

She went to her room and began to pack up her belongings. As she did so, she considered the various ways in which she’d utterly bollocksed up everything. First, there was the matter of Simon’s brother, David, whom she’d strung along by refusing to make up her mind about the open adoption he was trying to arrange purely out of a desire to help them. Then there was Simon, whom she’d alienated in any number of ways but particularly by being so bloody minded about remaining in Cumbria when it was clear that their real business in the county— which had been to assist Tommy with his enquiry into Ian Cresswell’s death— was completed. Finally, there was Alatea Fairclough, whose hopes for a surrogacy were now probably dashed by Deborah’s bashing into her private affairs when all she wanted was what Deborah herself wanted: the chance to bring a child into the world.

Deborah stopped packing for a moment and lowered herself to the bed. She thought about how much of her life had been dominated over the last few years by something completely out of her control. It was beyond her power to grant her own wish. She could do nothing to make herself a mother simply because she wanted to be one. Alatea Fairclough had probably gone through exactly what she herself was going through.

Deborah could see at last why the South American woman had been so fearful of her presence and so reluctant to talk to her. She and her husband were set to pay someone to carry a baby for them and for all she knew, Deborah had been sent there to Cumbria by Lancaster University’s reproduction scientists to sniff out the truth behind her arrangement with Lucy Keverne before they went forward with all the procedures required for a surrogate pregnancy. And there’d be a handful of them, no doubt about it. None of which would begin until the scientists and the doctors were certain about Alatea Fairclough and the surrogate.

So Deborah had been dogging the poor woman since the moment she herself had set foot in Cumbria when all along, she and Alatea Fairclough had in common the most agonising of desires, something granted so easily to other women, something often even deemed a “mistake” in the lives of other women as well.

Deborah realised she owed apologies everywhere for how she’d conducted herself over the past few days. She had to begin those apologies with one to Alatea Fairclough. Before leaving Cumbria for the south, she resolved, that was what she was going to do.

MILNTHORPE

CUMBRIA

So much of what Zed had said to the Scotland Yard detective was bluster, and he knew it. After he dropped her off at her hotel, he didn’t return to Windermere. Instead, he went across the main road through Milnthorpe and made his way to the street that ran east to west along the market square. There was a Spar shop at a junction where another street led off to a grim-looking housing estate of unremittingly grey roughcast, and he parked nearby and went inside. It was cluttered and hot and it suited both his mood and his thoughts.

He browsed aimlessly for a few minutes before caving in and buying a copy of The Source. This he carried the short distance to Milnthorpe Chippy, which stood not far from an impressive butcher shop in whose front window an array of venison pies was displayed.

Inside the chippy, Zed bought a double order of haddock and chips and a Fanta Orange. Once he had his food arranged on the table in front of him, he unfolded The Source, and he girded himself to look at the day’s lead story and, worse, at its byline.

That louse Mitchell Corsico had both. It was a nothing story, a real piece of rubbish: A very minor member of the royal family had been outed with a bastard child who was mixed-race, photos included. She was a girl. She was five years old. She was also pretty in that way that mixed-race people often are, having received the best of every chromosome from her progenitors. Her royal father could not accede to the throne unless the present monarch and family and extended family were all partying on a ship in the Atlantic the moment that it hit an iceberg, and that detail robbed the story not only of legs but also toes. However, this fact clearly was of no matter to Mitchell Corsico or, obviously, to Rodney Aronson, who would have made the decision to give the tale the front page, no matter how minor the minor member of the royal family was.

The front page suggested this could well be the explosive revelation of the year, the decade, or even the century, and The Source was squeezing it like the udders of a dying cow. Rodney had given it the full treatment: three-inch headline, photos grainy and otherwise, the byline for Mitch, and a jump to page 8— now that said volumes about what Rodney really thought he was offering for public consumption, didn’t it?— where the story went into the uninspiring background of the child’s mother and the even less inspiring background of the minor royal, who, unlike a lot of the monarchical family, at least had been born with a chin.

Of course, the tabloid had to take care, political correctness being all the rage. But really, it was a who-bloody-gives-a-toss piece to offer to the public anyway. Zed’s conclusion was that it had to have been a very slow day in the sewers for this to be what Rodney had come up with.

Zed reckoned this might actually put him in a good position to snag the front page when he lined up his Cumbria facts and worked them into a story. So he pushed The Source to one side, doused his haddock and chips with malt vinegar, popped open his Fanta Orange, and began to sort through what he’d gathered on Nick Fairclough and the delectable Alatea.

Big was not a word that could be used to describe the story he had. The Scotland Yard detective had been right in that. Nick Fairclough and his wife were going to pay a woman more than just her expenses to have a baby for them, and while this wasn’t legal, it also wasn’t a story. The question was how to make it into one, a sensational one, or at least a member-of-the-royal-family-has-a-bastard-child one.

Zed considered his options, which were all those details he had to work with. Essentially, he had eggs, sperm, man, woman, another woman, and money. Whose eggs, whose sperm, which man, which woman, and whose money? were the various topics to be massaged into an epic piece of journalism.

Here, too, there were possibilities. Perhaps poor Alatea’s eggs were not good enough (was there such a thing? he wondered) to do what they needed to do, such as to drop (did they drop?) into her wherever to meet up with Nick’s you-know-what. Since they weren’t good enough, someone else’s eggs had to be used. But Nick and Alatea didn’t want the family wise to this for reasons of …what? Inheritance? What were the laws on inheritance these days? Was there an inheritance involved, anyway, beyond a firm manufacturing toilets and other unappealing products, the mention of which could turn the story into a real boffola with Zed the butt of every joke in Fleet Street? Or perhaps Nick’s swimmers weren’t up to the job? Years of drug use had rendered them too weak to make the journey or to do much poking when they reached the destination? So someone else’s swimmers were being used with the resulting baby being passed off as a bona fide Fairclough? That would be nice.

Or perhaps it was all about the money that was going to be paid to Lucy Keverne? With Nick’s history, wasn’t it possible that he was selling a little something on the side— other than toilets— to collect enough money to pay the woman? Could the doctors be on the take as well? That was another possibility.

By the time Zed had finished his double order of haddock and chips, he’d reached the conclusion that the best angle from which to write the tawdry tale of buying a baby-making machine— which was how he was going to sell it to Rodney— was to begin with Nick Fairclough. His reasoning behind this was simple enough. He knew human nature, perhaps not perfectly but well enough. And what he knew about human nature told him that the moment he and the Scotland Yard detective had left Lucy Keverne, she’d picked up the phone to ring Alatea Fairclough and to let her know the worst.

That left him with Nick and putting a little pressure on him for the real tale behind the deal with the woman in Lancaster.

He gathered up his copy of The Source and returned to his car. He glanced at his watch and saw from the time of day that Nicholas Fairclough would probably be at the Middlebarrow Pele Project. So to the pele project Zed would go.

His route took him past the Crow and Eagle and onto the route that led to Arnside. He zipped alongside Milnthorpe Sands, which were indeed sands at the moment— albeit soupy ones— because the tide was gone as if it had never been, leaving the River Kent a narrow gleam of water at the edge of which curlews, plovers, and redshanks high-stepped in their endless search for food. Beyond, from the direction of Humphrey Head, the fog was beginning to creep towards the shore. The mist was heavy, and the air was laden. Moisture clung to cottage windows and dripped from trees. The road was wet and slick.

At the pele project, Zed parked not far from the tower itself. He saw no one working at present. But when he got out of the car into the damp air, he heard at once a burst of raucous male laughter, and he followed this to its source, which turned out to be the dining tent. Within, all of the men were gathered. They sat at the tables, but they were not eating. Their attention was fixed on an older bloke who stood before them in a posture of ease, with one foot up on a chair and his elbow resting on his knee. He appeared to be telling the others some sort of tale. The others appeared to be enjoying it mightily. They were also enjoying cups of coffee and tea, and their cigarette smoke made the atmosphere eye stinging.

Zed clocked Nick Fairclough at the same instant that Nick Fairclough clocked him. He’d been sitting at the far side of the tent, his chair tipped back and his feet on the tabletop, but he dropped the chair legs to the ground as his eyes met Zed’s. He came rapidly over to the tent’s entrance.

He took Zed by the arm and directed him outside. He said, “It’s not an open meeting,” and he didn’t sound particularly friendly about it. At this Zed concluded that he’d witnessed a bit of what kept the men on the straight and narrow: Alcoholics Anonymous, Jonesing Johnnies United, Hogs for Hope, or whatever it was. He also concluded that he wasn’t going to be welcomed back into Nicholas Fairclough’s life with open arms. Well, that couldn’t be helped.

“I’d like a word,” Zed said to him.

Fairclough tilted his head towards the tent, replying, “I’ve a meeting, as you saw. It’ll have to wait.”

“Don’t think that’s possible, actually.” Zed took out his notebook to underscore the declaration.

Fairclough’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this about?”

“Lucy Keverne.”

“Who?”

“Lucy Keverne. Or perhaps you know her by another name? She’s the surrogate you and your wife are employing.”

Fairclough stared at him and Zed recognised immediately what the look on the other man’s face was telling him. The expression itself said, Are you mad? The reason for the question, however, had nothing whatsoever to do with madness.

“Surrogate?” Fairclough said. “Surrogate for what?”

“What do you think?” Zed said. “A surrogate mother. I’d like to talk to you about the deal you and your wife have struck with Lucy Keverne to carry your child.”

“Deal?” Nicholas Fairclough said. “There is no deal. What the hell are you talking about?”

Zed felt the pleasure of the moment wash through him at the same time as bingo chimed in his mind. He had his story.

“Let’s take a little walk,” he said.

BRYANBARROW

CUMBRIA

Manette was still trying to take in the information as she climbed the stairs, having settled Kaveh’s parents and his fiancée in the fire house and having assembled for them tea and biscuits, which she’d delivered on a tray she’d rustled out of a kitchen cupboard. God alone could explain why she’d done the bit with the tea, she thought, but at the end of the day she reckoned good manners, in conjunction with habit, would always out.

They’d cleared up the confusion about who, exactly, Ian Cresswell had been in Kaveh’s life, at least as far as his parents had known. A few moments’ discussion of this matter had produced the revelation that, in his parents’ minds, Kaveh merely lodged chastely with the owner of a farm and the Christian name of said owner had never yet been mentioned in any phone calls, notes, cards, or letters from their son. Miracle of miracles, the farm owner had supposedly left the farm to Kaveh in his will when he himself had— as they say in the vernacular— unexpectedly bought the farm. More miracle of miracles, this at last freed Kaveh to marry, since he now had a home into which he could welcome his wife. Of course, he’d not needed a home, as Mum and Dad had tried to point out to him time and again, year after year, since he and his wife could live with his parents in a manner traditional to their people in Iran, where extended families dwelt together for generations. But Kaveh had been a modern young man with the ideas of a modern British young man, and British young men did not bring wives home to live with their parents. It was not the done thing. Although, truth to tell, the opposite was going to happen: Kaveh was insisting that his parents join him and his soon-to-be-wife on the farm. It was, they said, a successful conclusion to a decade of badgering him to give them grandkids.

The amount that these good people did not know about their son was staggering, and Manette made the quick decision not to be the person to burst their bubble. She felt a tug of guilt about poor Iman and the future that lay before her marrying a man who would most likely set out to lead a double life not unlike the one Ian himself had led. But what could she do about it? And if she did something— such as saying, “Excuse me, don’t you know Kaveh’s been having it off with blokes for years?”— where would that take them aside from into an imbroglio that was not her concern? Kaveh could do what he liked, she decided. His family would discover the truth eventually. Or they would remain blissfully or purposefully ignorant of the matter. Her job at the moment was to find Tim Cresswell. But at least she knew why Tim had run off. Doubtless, Kaveh had filled him in on his upcoming nuptials. That would have pushed the poor lad over the edge.

But into what? was the question. She returned to Tim’s bedroom to see if Freddie was making any headway into answering it.

He was, apparently. He was still at Tim’s laptop, but he’d turned it away from the door, so someone entering the room couldn’t see its screen. That someone being her, Manette reckoned. His face was grave.

She said, “What is it?”

“Pornography. It goes back quite a way in time.”

“What sort are we talking about?” She made a move to go round his chair, which he’d also shifted so that he could see when she came into the room. He held up his hand. “You don’t want to see this, darling.”

“Freddie, what is it?”

“It starts out mild, not much more than what you’d see if a boy managed to get his hands on one of those magazines they keep encased in black wrappers. You know what I mean. Naked women showing off their privates in rather more detail than is actually attractive photographically. Boys do this kind of thing all the time.”

“Did you?”

“Well… Yes and no. I was more of a breast man, frankly. Their artful presentation and all that. But times do change, eh?”

“And then?”

“Well, I met my first girlfriend when I was young enough for this to be— ”

“Freddie, dear, I’m talking about the computer. Is there something more? You said it starts out mild.”

“Oh. Yes. But then it goes on to men and women engaged… Well, you know.”

“Still normal curiosity, perhaps?”

“I’d say. But then it changes to men with men.”

“Because of Ian and Kaveh? Perhaps because of his own doubts?”

“Always a possibility. A likelihood, even. Tim would have wanted to understand. Himself, them, whatever.” But Freddie sounded so sombre when he said all this that Manette knew there was more.

She said, “And then what, Freddie?”

“Well, then it switches from photographs to film. Live action. And the actors— or whoever they are— change as well.” He rubbed at his chin and she could hear the scritch of his palm against the whiskers on his flesh and it came to her how comforting a sound that was, although she couldn’t have told him why.

She said, “Do I want to know how the actors change?”

“Men and boys,” he said. “Young boys, Manette. They look round ten to twelve years old. And the films themselves…” Freddie hesitated before he looked at her squarely, his dark eyes reflecting the depth of his concern. “Young boys ‘performing’ on older men, sometimes alone but more often in groups. I mean, it’s always just one young boy but sometimes there’s more than one man. There’s even… well, it’s a mockery of the Last Supper except it isn’t feet-washing that ‘Jesus’ is engaged in and ‘Jesus’ looks round nine years old.”

“Dear God.” Manette tried to put it together: why Tim’s interest would have gone from naked women displaying their genitals to male/female sex to male/male sex and then eventually to man/young boy sex. She didn’t know enough about young adolescent males to understand if this was natural curiosity or something more sinister. She feared the latter. Who wouldn’t? she thought. She said, “What d’you think we should…?” but had no way to frame the rest of the question because she didn’t know what the next step was beyond handing it all over to the police and a child psychologist and hoping for the best from there. She said, “I mean, for him to be searching this stuff out… We’ll have to tell Niamh, at the very least. But of course, what good will that do?”

Freddie shook his head. “He’s not been searching, Manette.”

“I don’t understand. You just said— ”

“Aside from the pictures of women and men and the male/male sex, which we might be able to attribute to his confusion about his father and Kaveh, he’s not been searching at all.”

“Then…?” She twigged. “He’s been sent this stuff?”

“There’s a trail of e-mails from someone calling himself Toy4You. They lead all the way back to a chat room for photography. I should guess that various routes through that chat room lead on to types of photography or photographic models or quirky photography or nude photography or any number of potential subjects from which users can then go into more-private chat rooms for more-private chats. The Web is called the Web for a reason. Threads lead everywhere. You just have to follow them.”

“What does this Toy4You have to say?”

“What you’d expect of a slow seduction. ‘Bit of harmless fun,’ ‘shows affection,’ ‘between consenting adults, of course,’ ‘must be of age,’ and then the switch to ‘Have a look at this and tell me what you think,’ ‘would you ever consider,’ et cetera.”

“Freddie, what’s Tim saying in reply?”

Freddie tapped his fingers on the desk. He appeared to be trying to formulate an answer. Either that or he was attempting to put together the pieces. Manette prompted him by saying his name again. He finally said, “Tim actually appears to be striking a bargain with this person.”

“With Toy4You?”

“Hmm. Yes. The bloke— I assume it’s a bloke— says in the last one, ‘You do something like this and I’ll do whatever you want.’”

“What’s ‘this’?” Manette asked, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“He’s referring to another video attached.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Garden of Gethsemane,” Freddie said. “But the Roman soldiers don’t make any arrest.”

Manette said, “My God.” And then with her eyes widening and her hand lifted to cover her mouth, “‘I’ll do anything you want’? Freddie, oh my God, do you think Tim arranged for this person to kill Ian?”

Freddie rose quickly, the chair scraping the floor. He came to her and said, “No, no,” and touched her cheek briefly. “That last one… It postdates Ian’s drowning. Whatever Tim wants, it’s something besides his father’s death. And it looks to me like he’s going to receive it in exchange for being part of a pornographic film.”

“But what could he want? And where is he? Freddie, we have to find him.”

“We do indeed.”

“But how…?” Then she recalled the map she’d seen and she rustled for it again among the items that had been on Tim’s desk. She said, “Wait, wait,” and then she found it. But a glance told her the map was going to be of little use. For it was an enlarged section of some unnamed town and unless Freddie knew where Lake, Oldfield, Alexandra, Woodland, and Holly Roads were, they were going to have to waste time trying to rustle up a street atlas, sort out how to use this information on the Internet, or perform some magical feat to discover what town in Cumbria contained these places.

She said, “It’s nothing, nothing. It’s just streets, Freddie,” and she shoved the map at him. She said, “What next? We must find him. We must.”

He gave the map a glance and folded it quickly. He unplugged the laptop and said, “Let’s be off.”

“Where?” she asked. “Where on earth… Do you know?” God, she thought, why had she ever divorced this man?

“No idea,” he said. “But I’ve a notion who will.”

ARNSIDE

CUMBRIA

Lynley made excellent time. The Healey Elliott had been designed originally as a racing car, and despite its age it did not disappoint. He had no flashing lights to use, but the time of day and year did not make them necessary. He was coursing off the motorway in an hour’s time, at which point the slickness of the streets and the heaviness of the mist encouraged him to have care with regard to his speed.

The difficult bit was getting from the motorway over to Milnthorpe and from Milnthorpe to Arnside. Off the motorway, the roads were narrow, not one of them was straight, there were few lay-bys into which slow drivers could pull to allow him to pass, and every farmer in Cumbria appeared to have chosen this day to move his tractor like a lumbering pachyderm from one spot to another.

Lynley felt a sense of rising urgency. It had to do with Deborah. God only knew what she would stumble into at this point, but she was obstinate enough to do something mad that would put her straight into the path of danger. How, he wondered, did Simon manage not to wring her neck?

Along the route from Milnthorpe to Arnside, at last, he saw the fog. Unlike the little cats’ feet of the poem, this bank of grey was moving across the empty plain of Morecambe Bay’s ebbed tide with startling swiftness, as if pulled along by unseen horses dragging a mantle of coal smoke behind them.

He slowed at Arnside village. He’d not been to Arnside House, but he knew where it was from Deborah’s description. He passed a pier jutting into the wide and waterless channel of the estuarial River Kent and he braked to allow a woman with a pushchair to cross the street, a child hanging on to her trousers with a mittened hand and otherwise bundled against the chill. As they crossed— taking their bloody time about it, he thought, and why was it that when one was in a hurry, all occasions conspired against one?— he read the sign warning all the dangers of this place. Fast Rising Tides! it shouted, Quicksands! Hidden Channels! Danger! Beware! Why on earth, he wondered futilely, would someone want to bring up children here when one wrong move at one wrong time of day would snatch them towards a watery end?

The woman and child crossed safely to the pavement on the other side of the road. He went on. Through the village, down the Promenade with its display of Victorian mansions lined up on a rise of land overlooking the water, and then he was on the drive into Arnside House, where the Promenade ended. The building was set at an angle that made the most of its view, across an expanse of lawn from the water. That view was obscured today as the fog became more and more like wet cotton wool, once singed by fire.

Arnside House itself looked deserted, with no lights burning in the windows despite the gloom of the day. He couldn’t decide if this was bad or good. No car meant, at least, there was a very good chance that Deborah had not bulldogged her way into a bad situation. The best scenario of all would be no one at home, but he couldn’t rely on that.

He braked the Healey Elliott at the top of the driveway, where the gravel shaped into a winnow for parking. When he got out of the car, he found that the air had altered in the few hours he’d been gone. It felt nearly tubercular in his lungs. He moved through it like someone separating curtains, along the path to the heavy front door.

He heard the bell ring somewhere inside the place. He expected no answer, but this was not the case. He heard footsteps against a stone entry, and the door swung open. Then he faced the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

He was unprepared for the shock of Alatea Fairclough: the tawny skin, the wealth of wild, curly hair captured in tortoiseshell slides, the large dark eyes and sensuous mouth, the shape of a woman who was entirely woman. Only her hands betrayed her, and even then it was only by their size.

He had no trouble at all seeing how Alatea and Nicholas Fairclough had duped everyone around them. Had Barbara Havers not sworn this woman was, in fact, Santiago Vasquez y del Torres, Lynley would not have believed it. Truth to tell, he still couldn’t. So he was careful with his words.

“Mrs. Fairclough?” he said. When she nodded, he took out his identification. He said, “DI Thomas Lynley, New Scotland Yard. I’ve come to talk to you about Santiago Vasquez y del Torres.”

She went white so quickly that Lynley thought she would faint. She took a step away from the door.

He repeated the name. “Santiago Vasquez y del Torres. It seems the name’s familiar to you.”

She felt behind her for the oak bench that ran the length of one of the panelled walls of the entrance. She lowered herself onto it.

Lynley shut the door behind him. There was little light. What there was came from four small windows in the entrance, all of them stained glass in a stylised pattern of red tulips surrounded by greenery, which cast a subtle glow against the skin of the woman— or, he thought, whatever she was— who sat slumped on the bench.

He still wasn’t certain of his facts, but he chose to take a stab at being direct and waiting for the consequences. So he said, “We must speak. I’ve reason to believe you’re Santiago Vasquez y del Torres from Santa Maria de la Cruz, del los Angeles, y de los Santos in Argentina.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Is that your true name?”

“Not since Mexico City.”

“Raul Montenegro?”

She reared up at that, her back against the wall. “Has he sent you? Is he here?”

“I’ve not been sent by anyone.”

“I don’t believe you.” She rose then. She hurried past him, nearly losing her footing on the step that gave access through a doorway into a dark corridor panelled, like the entrance, in oak.

He followed her. A short distance along the corridor, she slid open two pocket doors with stained glass panes of lilies surrounded by drooping fronds, and she passed through them and into a hall. It was half restored and half in tatters, an odd mixture of medieval revival and Arts and Crafts, and there she made for an inglenook fireplace, where she sat in the most sheltered corner, drawing her knees up to her face.

“Please leave me,” she said, although she seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him. “Please leave.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“You must leave. Don’t you see? No one here knows. You must leave at once.”

Lynley thought it unlikely that no one knew. Indeed, he thought it wildly improbable. He said, “I daresay Ian Cresswell knew.”

At that she raised her head. Her eyes were luminous, but her expression was shifting from distraught to confused. “Ian?” she said. “There’s no possible way. How could he ever have known?”

“As a homosexual man, still in the closet, his was a double life. He would have come into contact with people like you. It would have been easier for him than for other people to recognise— ”

“Is that what you think I am?” she asked. “A homosexual man? A transvestite? A cross-dresser?” A dawning knowledge came over her face. She added, “You’re thinking that I killed Ian, aren’t you? Because he… what? He discovered something? Because then he threatened to betray me if I didn’t… what? Pay him money that I didn’t have? Oh my God, had that only been the case.”

Lynley found himself quite down the rabbit hole. The nature of her initial response to the name Santiago Vasquez y del Torres had indicated she was indeed the long-ago adolescent boy who’d run off from the town of his birth and somehow ended up on the arm of one Raul Montenegro. But her reaction to the suggestion that Ian Cresswell had come to know who and what she was was beginning to alter Lynley’s thoughts on the subject.

She said, “Ian didn’t know. No one here knew. Not a single person.”

“Are you telling me that Nicholas doesn’t know?” Lynley stared at her. He tried to take her in. Making sense of what she was telling him demanded he take a leap into an area that was completely unknown to him. He was like a blind man trying to get himself to a hidden doorway in a room cluttered with furniture whose misshapen nature only confused him. He said, “If that’s the case, I don’t quite understand. How could Nicholas not have known?”

“Because,” she said, “I never told him.”

“But I daresay his own eyes…” And then Lynley began to understand what she was actually revealing about herself. If she’d never told Nicholas Fairclough about Santiago Vasquez y del Torres, and if Nicholas Fairclough’s own eyes hadn’t told him, there was only one reason for this.

“Yes,” she said, apparently reading the dawning knowledge on his features. “Only my immediate family in Argentina know, along with one cousin, Elena Maria. And Elena Maria, she always knew. Right from the first, even when we were children.” Alatea pushed her hair from her face, a distinctly feminine gesture that was discommoding to Lynley, putting him off balance, as perhaps she intended. “She shared with me: her dolls when we were children, her clothes and her makeup when we grew older.” Alatea looked away for a moment, then back at him directly, her expression earnest as she said, “Can you understand this? It was a way for me just to be. It was the only way for me just to be, and this Elena Maria understood. I don’t know how or why, but she simply did. Before anyone, she knew who and what I was.”

“A woman.” Lynley finally put it into words. “Trapped in a man’s body. But still a woman.”

“Yes,” Alatea agreed.

Lynley took this in. He could see that she was waiting for his reaction, perhaps steeling herself to whatever it would be: revulsion, confusion, curiosity, disgust, pity, abhorrence, interest, acceptance. She’d been one of five brothers in a world where being male equated with being accorded privileges that women had had to fight for and were still fighting for. She would know that most men would never comprehend why any man from that world would wish to change the gender into which he’d been born. Yet this, apparently, was what she had done, as she went on to clarify, saying:

“Even when I was Santiago, I was a woman. I had the body of a male. But I was not male. To live like that… belonging nowhere… having a body that is not your own body… so that you look upon it with loathing and would do anything to alter it in order to be who you are…”

“So you became a woman,” Lynley said.

“I transitioned,” she said. “This is what it’s called. I left Santa Maria because I wished to live as a woman and could not do it there. Because of my father, his position, our family. Many things. And then came Raul. He had the money I needed to become a woman and he had his own needs. So we made a deal, he and I. No one else was involved and no one else knew.” She looked at him, then. Over the years, he’d seen the various expressions that flitted across the faces of desperate, crafty, or sly people when they attempted to play with the truth. They always thought they could hide who they were, but only the sociopath ever succeeded. Because the reality was that eyes were indeed windows into the soul, and only the sociopath was soulless.

There was a bench seat opposite Alatea’s position in the inglenook. Lynley went to it and sat. He said, “The death of Ian Cresswell— ”

“I had nothing to do with that. If I were to kill anyone, it would be Raul Montenegro, but I don’t want to kill him. I never wanted to kill him. I just wanted to flee him, and even then it wasn’t because Raul’s intention was to betray who I am. He wouldn’t have done that because he needed to have a woman on his arm. Not a real woman, you see, but a man who could pass as a woman, to safeguard his reputation in his world. What he didn’t understand and what I didn’t tell him was that I didn’t want to pass as a woman because I already was one. I only needed surgery to make it so.”

“He paid for it?”

“In exchange, he thought, for the perfect relationship between two men, one of whom looks to all of the world like a woman.”

“A homosexual relationship.”

“A form of one. Which really cannot exist when one of the partners is not of the same sex, you see. Our problem— mine and Raul’s— was that we did not clearly understand each other before we began this… this venture. Or perhaps I deliberately misunderstood what he wanted from me because I was desperate and he was my only way out.”

“Why do you think he’s pursuing you now?”

She said without irony or self-congratulation, “Wouldn’t you, Thomas Lynley? He spent a great deal of money to make me, and he’s had little enough return on his investment.”

“What does Nicholas know?”

“Nothing.”

“How can that be?”

“I had the final surgery many years ago in Mexico City. When I knew I could not be what Raul wanted me to be, I left him. And Mexico. I was here and there, never remaining any place long. Finally, I was in Utah. And so was Nicky.”

“But you would have had to tell him— ”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because…” Well, it was obvious. There were certain things her body was never going to be able to do.

She said, “I thought I could go forever as a woman without Nicky knowing. But then he wished to come home to England, and he wished even more to make his father proud. He saw a single way to do it, a certain guarantee of his father’s happiness. We would do what neither of his sisters had managed to do. We would have a child and give Bernard a grandchild and this would heal forever the damage Nicky had done to his relationship with his father— and his mother— during all his years of addiction.”

“So now you must tell him.”

She shook her head. “How can I tell him of such betrayal? Could you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I could love him. I could be a lover to him. I could make a home for him and do everything a woman might do for a man. Except this one thing. And to submit to a doctor’s examination as to why I haven’t yet become pregnant…? I’ve lied to Nicky from the first because I was used to lying, because that’s what we do, because that’s what we have to do to get on in the world. It’s called stealth and it’s how we live. The only difference between me and the rest of the people who have transitioned from male to female is that I hid it from the man I love because I thought if he knew he would not wish to marry me and take me to a place where Raul Montenegro would never find me. That was my sin.”

“You know you must tell him.”

“I must indeed do something,” she said.

ARNSIDE

CUMBRIA

He was drawing his car keys from his pocket when Deborah drove her hire car up to Arnside House. He remained where he was, and their eyes locked on each other. She pulled up next to the Healey Elliott, got out, and stood there looking at him for a moment. At least, he thought, she had the grace and decency to look regretful.

She said, “I’m so sorry, Tommy.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well.”

“Have you waited all this time?”

“No. I was on my way back to London, about an hour from here. Barbara rang my mobile. There were a few loose ends. I thought it best to tie them.”

“What sort of loose ends?”

“None that actually have anything to do with Ian Cresswell’s death as things turn out. Where have you been? Lancaster again?”

“You know me too well.”

“Yes. There’ll always be that between us, won’t there?” He looked past her to see that during his time inside Arnside House, the fog had reached the seawall. It was beginning to billow up and over it, reaching long cold fingers onto the lawn. He needed to leave at once in order to reach the motorway before the mist became impenetrable. But with it fast making all of Cumbria dangerous, he didn’t see how he could in conscience depart unless Deborah was with him.

Deborah said, “I needed to speak to her one more time— Lucy Keverne— but I knew you’d not allow it.”

Lynley raised an eyebrow. “I don’t ‘allow’ or not allow anything. You’re a free agent, Deborah. I told you on the phone I merely wanted your company on the drive back to town.”

She dropped her head. That red hair of hers— always her most becoming feature— swung down from her shoulders and he saw how quickly it was being affected by the mist. Curls of it were separating, forming other curls. Medusa, he thought. Well, she’d always had that effect on him, hadn’t she?

“As it turns out, I was right,” she said. “I mean, there was more to the story than Lucy Keverne told me. I’m just not sure it would go far as a motive for anyone to murder Ian Cresswell.”

“What is it, then?”

“That Alatea was indeed going to pay her to carry a baby, more than her expenses, that is. So… Well, I suppose the story’s not as sensational as I thought it might be. I can’t really imagine anyone committing murder over it.”

This told Lynley that Lucy Keverne— whoever she was— either didn’t know the full truth about Alatea Fairclough or she’d not told the full truth to Deborah. For the actual story was sensational in spades. Driven by those three prongs that dominated human behaviour— sex, power, and money— the story gave anyone in possession of it reason to ride it as far as it would go. But to murder as well? Deborah was probably correct in this. The one part of the story Ian Cresswell might have been murdered over was the part of the story Lucy Keverne had not known, if Alatea Fairclough was to be believed. And he thought she was.

“And now?” he said to Deborah.

“Actually, I’ve come to apologise to Alatea. I’ve made her life a misery for these past days, and I think I’ve put paid to her plans with Lucy as well. I didn’t intend to, but that infernal reporter from The Source burst into our conversation and announced that I was the Scotland Yard detective in Cumbria to investigate Ian Cresswell’s death and— ” She sighed. She shook her hair off her shoulders and fingered it back in a gesture exactly like Alatea’s. She said, “If I’ve made Lucy afraid to carry this baby for Alatea, Tommy, I’ve done her a serious wrong. She’ll have to go back to square one and find another surrogate. I thought… Well, we have something in common, she and I, don’t we? This business about babies. I wanted to tell her that much at least. Along with an apology. And the truth about who I am.”

She meant well, Lynley thought, but he couldn’t help wondering if she would make things worse for Alatea. He didn’t see how. Deborah didn’t know the full truth and he wasn’t about to tell her. There was no need at this point. His business was finished here, Ian Cresswell was gone, and who Alatea Fairclough was and what she would reveal to her husband were matters for a divinity, which he certainly was not.

Deborah said, “Will you wait for me? I’ll not be long. Perhaps at the hotel?”