Believing the Lie

BRYANBARROW CUMBRIA

Yaffa Shaw was turning out to be pure gold, much to Zed Benjamin’s surprise and delight. Not only was she amusing to speak to on the phone each day — her performance as a woman besotted should have earned her a BAFTA, he decided — but she was also a twenty-four-carat helpmate in his efforts. He didn’t know how she’d managed it, but she’d sweet-talked her way into looking at Ian Cresswell’s will. Instead of attending university on the previous day, she’d taken the train to York, where a clerk in the probate office had apparently been so smitten by her charms that he’d slipped her the Cresswell document for a look-see and a look-see was all she needed. The woman had a bloody photographic memory, as things turned out. She phoned and recited the bequests, thus saving Zed a trip south and a wait for however long it took for the documents to be copied and posted to him. She was, in short, entirely wonderful.

So he said, “I adore you.”

She said, “I’m blushing,” and to his mother, who was, of course, hovering somewhere nearby, “Your son is actually making me blush, Mrs. B.” She made some kissing noises into the phone.

Zed made some back, forgetting himself in his enthusiasm over her discovery. Then he remembered himself. He also remembered Micah waiting for Yaffa’s return to Tel Aviv. Wasn’t life full of irony? he thought.

After a suitable exchange of auditory hugs and vociferous kisses, they ended their call and Zed reflected on the information he had. Despite Rodney Aronson’s direction as to what he was supposed to be doing in Cumbria, Zed decided that an attack on the opposing army’s flank was in order. He wasn’t going to speak to George Cowley about what he might and might not know about that farm, though. He was going to speak to the man’s son.

Thus he got himself up to Bryanbarrow village early. The Willow and Well, with its windows conveniently situated to give a view of Bryan Beck farm, was not open yet, so Zed had to wait in his car, which he parked to one side of the village green. This was misery for him because of his size, but it couldn’t be helped. Leg cramps and the distinct possibility of deep-vein thrombosis were a small price to pay for an interview that might gain him everything.

Of course, it was raining. It was a wonder to Zed that the entire Lake District wasn’t a swamp, considering the weather. The endless precipitation along with the day’s cold kept steaming up the windscreen of his car as he waited for Daniel Cowley to appear. He kept wiping it off with the back of his hand, which was doing nothing but getting his shirtsleeves wet as the condensation began to drip down his arm.

Finally, the boy appeared. Zed reckoned he went to school in Windermere. This was going to necessitate one of two things: Either his father was going to drive him there or he was going to catch a school bus. It didn’t matter which because in any case, Zed was going to talk to him. He’d waylay him on his way into the school, or he’d offer him a lift as he hoofed it to the bus stop, which sure as hell wasn’t going to be out here in the middle of nowhere.

The latter turned out to be the case. Daniel trudged across the green, around the corner, and out of the village, his head lowered and his trousers and shoes already beginning to pick up mud. Zed gave him ten minutes, reckoning that he was heading for the main road through the Lyth Valley. It was quite a walk.

By the time he pulled up next to Daniel, the boy was thoroughly soaked since, like most boys his age, he wasn’t about to be seen dead or alive carrying an umbrella. Social suicide, that would be. As someone who had endured social suicide on a daily basis during his own school years, Zed understood this completely.

He lowered the window. “You need a lift somewhere?”

Daniel looked over. His eyebrows drew together. He glanced left and right and evaluated the question as the rain continued to pelt him. He finally said, “I remember you. You a pervert or something? Because if you lay a hand on me — ”

“Relax,” Zed told him. “This is your lucky day. I’m into girls. Tomorrow would be risky. Come on. Get in.”

Daniel gave an eye roll at Zed’s weak joke. Then he complied. He dropped into the passenger’s seat and began dripping all over it. He said, “Sorry,” in reference to this.

“Not to worry.”

Zed set off. He was determined to milk the kid for whatever he could, so he drove slowly. He kept his eyes on the road as a way of excusing the lack of speed: paranoid visitor worried about hitting either a sheep or Sasquatch.

Daniel said, “What’re you doing round here again, anyway?”

Zed had already reckoned on his opening, which Daniel himself had inadvertently given him. “You seem worried about the local colour.”

“What?” The boy screwed up his face.

“The pervert remark.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Daniel said with a shrug. “Place’s crawling with them.”

“Well, the whole bloody district’s thick with sheep, eh?” Zed remarked with a wink. “No one’s safe, I reckon.”

The boy observed him with that adolescent expression that telegraphed you’re a bloody idiot far more effectively than words would have done.

Zed said, “Just a joke. Too early in the morning. Where can I drop you?”

“Lyth Valley. I catch the school bus there.”

“Where to?”

“Windermere.”

“I can drive you there if you like. No problem. I’m heading that way.”

The boy backed away. Clearly, this was pervert territory. He said, “What d’you want, anyway? You didn’t tell me why you’re in the village again. What’s going on?”

Too clever by seven-eighths, Zed thought. “Bloody hell, relax,” he said. “I’ll drop you off wherever you like. Want to get out now?”

Daniel looked at the rain. He said, “Just don’t try anything. I’ll punch you right in the Adam’s apple and don’t think I won’t. I know how to do it. My dad showed me and believe me, it works. Better than the bollocks. A hell of a lot better.”

“Wonderful skill,” Zed agreed. He had to manoeuvre the kid into the conversation he wanted before they reached the Lyth Valley and he started screaming bloody murder or worse. So he said, “Sounds like he worries about you, your dad.”

“Right. Well. We got perverts living next door to us, don’t we. Pretend they just lodge together, but we know the truth. Dad says you can’t be too careful round blokes like that, and now it’s worse.”

“Why?” Hallelujah, Zed thought.

“’Cause one of them’s dead and the other’s going to be on the look for someone new.”

That sounded like a remark coming directly from the horse’s you-know-what. “I see,” Zed said. “Could be the other’ll just move on, though, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s what Dad’s waiting for,” Daniel said. “He’s buying the farm once it goes up for sale.”

“What, that sheep farm you two live on?”

That was the one, Daniel told him. He brushed his sopping hair from his forehead and settled in for something of a natter. He seemed more comfortable with a subject that didn’t deal with perverts — as he called them — because he adjusted the heat in the car to a tropical level and dug in his rucksack for a banana, which he proceeded to eat. He informed Zed that his dad wanted the farm mostly because he wanted something to pass on to Daniel himself. This, Daniel said, was dead stupid because there was no way in hell that he intended to be a sheep farmer. Daniel wanted out of the Lakes entirely. He wanted to join the RAF. They buzzed the Lake District, did Zed know that? Wicked jets flying about three hundred feet off the ground — okay, maybe five hundred feet — and you’d be walking along when all of a sudden one of them would come roaring down the valley or just above Lake Windermere and it was bloody wicked, it was.

“Told my dad that about a thousand times,” Daniel said. “He thinks he can keep me home, though. All he needs is that farm to do it.”

He loved his dad, Daniel said, but he didn’t want the kind of life his dad had lived. Look at the fact that Daniel’s own mother deserted them. She hadn’t wanted that kind of life either, but still his dad didn’t understand.

“I keep telling him he should do what he’s good at anyway. Everyone should.”

Amen to that, Zed thought. But he said, “What’s that, then?”

Daniel hesitated. Zed glanced at him. The boy looked distinctly uncomfortable. This could be the moment, Zed realised. The kid was about to confess that what George Cowley was good at was offing blokes who lived on the farm he wanted to buy. Silver, gold, platinum, and the rest. Zed was about to be handed the scoop of his life.

“Making dollhouse furniture,” Daniel mumbled.

“Say again?”

“Dollhouse furniture. Furniture that goes into dollhouses. Don’t you know what that is?”

Shit, damn, hell, Zed thought.

Daniel went on. “He’s bloody good at it. Sounds daft, I know, but that’s what he does. Sells it on the Internet as fast as he can make it. I tell him he should be making it full-time instead of walking round in the muck with the bloody sheep. He says it’s a hobby and I should be able to tell the difference between a hobby and someone’s life work.” Daniel shook his head. “For him, it’s that stupid farm or nothing.”

Is it indeed? Zed wondered. And what was Cowley going to do next when he learned the farm legally belonged to Kaveh Mehran via Ian Cresswell’s will?

Daniel pointed to an enormous oak sitting just inside a drystone wall. That was where Zed could set him down, he said. And thanks for the ride, by the way.

Zed pulled over, and Daniel got out. At the same moment, Zed’s mobile rang. He gave it a glance and saw it was London. Rodney Aronson ringing. It was a bit early for Rodney even to be at work, and this didn’t bode well. Good news, though, was that Zed could report progress at last after this conversation with Daniel Cowley.

“Watch your back,” was what Rodney said to him, however, without preamble.

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Scotland Yard knows you’re there. Keep your head down — ”

When it was six feet eight inches in the air? Zed wondered.

“ — and keep your eyes on Nick Fairclough. That’s where you’ll find whoever’s been sent up there to dig into Ian Cresswell’s death.”

BARROW-IN-FURNESS CUMBRIA

Manette didn’t want to face the fact that her former husband hadn’t come home on the previous night. More, she didn’t want to face how she felt about that fact. But it was difficult not to do so.

They’d talked the subject of their broken marriage right into the ground over the years. They’d touched upon every aspect of what had happened to them and what might have happened and what would definitely happen if they didn’t make some sort of change. They’d decided, ultimately, that the lack of romance had done them in, the getting-down-to-business aspect of every part of their lives, and particularly the utter lack of surprise. They’d become a couple who had to check their diaries and make appointments for an interlude of intercourse during which they both had been pretending for ages to feel something that they did not feel for each other. At the end of what had seemed like hundreds of hours of dialogue, they’d decided that friendship was more important than passion anyway. So they’d live as friends and enjoy each other’s company because at the end of the day they’d always enjoyed being together and how many couples could actually say that more than twenty years along the line?

But now Freddie hadn’t come home. And when he was home he’d taken to whistling in the mornings as he got ready for work. Worse, he’d taken to singing while he was in the shower — Freddie, singing, for God’s sake — and he always chose the same damn song, which was driving her bonkers anyway. It was that bloody call to arms from Les Miserables and Manette knew if she had to hear “the blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!” one more time, she might water the meadows of the bathroom with Freddie’s blood.

Only, she wouldn’t. Not Freddie. She would never hurt Freddie.

She went to his office at work. He’d removed his jacket and was bent over his desk in his crisp white shirt and his red necktie with the ducklings on it, and he was reviewing a massive set of computer printouts. More investigation into the books, preparatory to stepping into Ian’s job should her father offer it to him. If he had any sense, he would.

She said from the doorway, “So how was Scorpio?”

Freddie looked up. His expression told her he had no idea what she was talking about but he reckoned it was zodiac signs.

She said, “The nightclub? Where you and the latest date were meeting?”

He said, “Oh! Scorpio.” He laid the printout on his neat-as-a-pin desk. “We didn’t go in, actually. We met at the door.”

“Good Lord, Freddie. Was it directly to bed after that? You’re a sly one.”

He blushed. Manette wondered at what point in their marriage she’d stopped noticing how often he blushed and how the colour washed across his cheeks from his ears after making his ears go completely red at the tips. She also wondered when it was she’d stopped admiring how nicely his ears lay against his head like perfect shells.

He laughed. “No, no,” he said. “But everyone going inside the place looked round nineteen years old and most of them were dressed like the cast of Rocky Horror Picture Show. So we went for a meal at a wine bar. Rigatoni puttanesca. It wasn’t very good. Rather heavy on the putta and light on the nesca as things turned out.” He smiled at his own silly joke and added in his usual appealingly honest fashion, “I didn’t come up with that. Sarah did.”

“That’s her name? Sarah?” At least, Manette thought, it wasn’t another shrub. She’d rather been expecting Ivy or June-short-for-Juniper as his second foray into Internet dating. But of course, ivy wasn’t a shrub, was it? More like a vine. So … She shook herself mentally. What was going on inside her head? She said, “And?” although she didn’t actually want to know. “Are there grisly details? I have no life, as you well know, so I’m taking the opportunity for vicarious excitement.” She sauntered into his office and sat in the chair next to his desk.

He blushed, more deeply this time. “I don’t like to kiss and tell,” he said.

“But you did it, didn’t you?”

“‘Did it’? What kind of term is ‘did it’?”

She cocked her head and sent him a meaningful look. “Freddie…”

“Well, yes. I mean, I explained all that to you: how things are these days. You know. When people go out together. So, well … yes, we did.”

“More than once?” She hated herself for asking, but suddenly she had to know. And the reason she had to know was that in all the years they’d been together — even when they’d been twenty years old and hot for each other during the six months that they had actually been hot for each other — she and Freddie had never locked themselves into a passionate embrace more than once in a twenty-four-hour period.

Freddie’s reaction was a look of gentlemanly shock. He said, “Manette, good Lord. There are some things — ”

“So you did. More than once. More than with Holly? Freddie, are you taking precautions?”

“I think we’ve talked enough about this,” he replied with dignity.

“So what about tonight? Are you seeing someone else tonight? Who is it tonight?”

“Actually, I’m seeing Sarah again.”

Manette crossed one leg over the other. She wished for a cigarette. She’d smoked when she was in her twenties and although she hadn’t thought about cigarettes in years, she suddenly wanted the comfort of doing something with her hands. As it was, she reached for a container of paper clips and played with it. She said, “I’m curious about this. Since you’ve done it already and that’s been got out of the way, what comes next? Family photos? Or do you get on to surnames and communicable diseases?”

He looked at her strangely. Manette reckoned he was evaluating her remark, weighing it and matching its weight to a response that equaled but did not exceed it. Before he could say what she knew he was about to say — “You’re upset about this. Why? We’ve been divorced for ages and we’ve decided on friendship but I never intended to be celibate for the rest of my life” — she went on with, “Well, will you be home tonight at all or should I expect you to be spending it with Sarah again?”

He shrugged, but still his face maintained that expression, which was something stuck between curious and confused. He said, “I don’t know, actually.”

“Of course. How could you? Sorry. Anyway, I hope you bring her home. I’d like to meet her. Just give me fair warning so I don’t show up at the breakfast table without my knickers on.”

“Will do. Of course. I mean, the other night was rather a spontaneous thing. I mean, with Holly. I didn’t quite know then how these things tend to develop. Now that I do… well, of course, there are arrangements, aren’t there? And explanations and whatnot?”

It was Manette’s turn to look curious. It wasn’t like Freddie to stumble round with his words. She said, “What’s going on? God, Freddie, you didn’t run off and do something… something rather mad, did you?” She didn’t know what that madness would have been. But madness of any kind was out of character for Freddie. He was an arrow, straight and true.

He said, “No, no. It’s just that I didn’t tell her about… well, about you.”

“What? You didn’t say you’re divorced?”

“She knows that, of course. But I didn’t tell her that you and I… well, that we live in the same house.”

“Holly knew, though. That didn’t seem to be a problem for her. Lots of blokes have female flatmates and such.”

“Yes, of course. But Sarah… It felt different being with Sarah. It felt like a risk that I didn’t want to take.” He picked up the printouts and he tapped them neatly together on the top of his desk. He said, “I’ve been out of action for ages, Manette, as you well know. I’m going by feel with these women.”

She said tartly, “I’m sure you are.”

She’d actually come to his office to talk to him about Tim and Gracie and about her conversation with her father as well. But now, that conversation didn’t feel right to Manette. And as Freddie himself had just pointed out, in a new situation one was wise to go by feel. She got to her feet.

She said, “I won’t expect to see you, then. Just take care, all right? I wouldn’t like to see you… I don’t know… hurt or anything.” Before he could reply, she got herself out of his office and set off in search of her brother. She told herself that Freddie had his own life and she had hers and it was time she did something about that latter fact, just as Freddie was doing. She didn’t know what that something was going to be, though. She couldn’t imagine launching herself into the unknown world of Internet dating. Into bed with total strangers to see if a proper fit existed? She shuddered. To her that seemed to be a recipe for being cooked in a serial killer’s oven, but perhaps she’d been watching too many detective programmes on the telly over the years.

She found Nicholas in the shipping department, a warehouse that served as a modest step up from where he’d laboured the previous six months. Then he’d been working on the tops of cisterns, the bowls of toilets, and kitchen sinks, seeing to the application of porcelain to the moulded clay and sliding them into the enormous kiln. In that part of the factory, the heat was intolerable and the noise was just as bad, but Nicholas had been successful there. In fact, he’d been successful in every job he’d been placed in during the last two years.

Manette knew he was working his way through all possible jobs in the factory. She’d developed a grudging admiration for this although the why of his doing it gave her a bit of concern. Surely he couldn’t think that a few years of puttering round Fairclough Industries superseded the decades she and Freddie had worked there? Surely he didn’t expect to be named managing director once their father stepped aside? The thought was ludicrous.

Today’s employment for Nicholas involved bathroom basins, Manette saw. At the loading dock, with a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, he was comparing sizes and styles on shipping boxes to sizes and styles on an order. The basins had been delivered on a pallet by a forklift. Once Nicholas had checked them off, he would load them into a waiting lorry, the driver of which had reversed it to the shipping gate and was waiting round, smoking and generally being unhelpful.

Because the huge shipping doors were open to the lorry, it was cold in the warehouse. It was noisy as well because there was music blasting from speakers in the building, as if someone’s proclivity for Carlos Santana oldies might raise the ambient temperature a bit.

Manette approached her brother. He looked up and gave her a nod of hello. Above the music, she shouted, asking him if she could have a word. His response of, “It’s not near my break time,” irritated her.

She said, “For God’s sake, Nick. I think you can take five minutes without being sacked.”

“We have a shipment going out. He’s waiting.” By he Nicholas meant the lorry driver, who didn’t look exactly desperate to be on his way. He’d gone to the driver’s side of the lorry and had opened its door, true. But he emerged with a Thermos from which he poured himself something that steamed in the air. He looked happy enough for the break in his routine.

She said, “I need to speak to you. It’s important. Ask permission if you want to. Or shall I do that for you?”

Her brother’s supervisor was approaching anyway. He tilted his hard hat back on his head, greeted her, and called her Mrs. McGhie, which rather stabbed at her heart although it was indeed her legal surname. She said, “C’n I have a word with Nicholas, Mr. Perkins? It’s rather important. A family matter.” She said this last as a way of reminding the man — as if he needed reminding — who Nicholas was.

Mr. Perkins looked towards the lorry and clocked the lounging driver before saying, “Five, Nick,” and moving off.

Manette led the way to a quieter location, which turned out to be round the side of the warehouse. This was the gathering place for smokers, she saw, for although none were present at the moment, the ground was littered with evidence of their presence. She made a mental note to talk to Freddie about this. Then she crossed out the note and made a second one telling herself to handle it on her own.

She said to her brother, “It’s Tim and Gracie,” and she gave him the story with all its ins and outs: Niamh’s intentions, Kaveh’s responsibilities, their father’s position in the matter, Tim’s distress, Gracie’s future needs. She ended with, “We need to do something about all this, Nick. And we need to do it soon. If we wait, there’s no telling what Tim might get up to. He’s that damaged by what’s gone on.”

Her brother removed the gloves he was wearing. From a pocket, he took out a tube of thick lotion. He began to apply this to his hands. She gave idle thought to the reason for this: keeping them soft for Alatea, no doubt. Alatea was a woman for whom a man would want to have soft hands, indeed. Nicholas said, “Isn’t it Niamh’s job to handle how the children are coping and everything else along those lines?”

“Well of course it is, in the natural course of events. Mothers are the carers and their children receive the care. But Niamh’s not going the natural course, not that she ever has since Ian left her, as you very well know.” Manette watched her brother massage the lotion into his hands. For nearly two years, he’d been doing manual labour not only at the factory but also out on the pele project near Arnside, but one would never know it from looking at his fingers, his nails, and his palms. They were like a woman’s, only larger. “Someone has to step up to the mark. Believe it or not, Niamh has every intention of leaving those children with Kaveh Mehran.”

“He’s a good bloke, Kaveh. I quite like him. Don’t you?”

“It’s not about liking him. For God’s sake, Nick, he’s not even their family. Look, I’m as liberal minded as anyone and while they were living with their father, that was fine by me. Better with Ian in a household where there was love enough to go round than with Niamh breathing fire, brimstone, and revenge all over them. But it’s not working out, and Tim’s — ”

“It has to have time to work out, doesn’t it?” Nick said. “It seems to me that Ian’s not been gone long enough for anyone to decide what’s best for his children.”

“That may be the case, but in the meantime, they should be with family. If not with their mother then with one of us. Nick, I know there was no love lost between you and Ian. He was hard on you. He didn’t trust you. He discouraged Dad from trusting you as well. But one of us must provide those children with a sense of security, of familiarity and — ”

“Why not Mum and Dad, then? God knows they have enough space at Ireleth Hall.”

“I’ve spoken to Dad and got nowhere.” Manette felt a growing need to bend her brother’s will to her own. This should have been a simple matter because talking Nicholas into something had always been child’s play, which was one of the reasons his youth had been such a troubled one. Anyone could have talked him into anything. She said, “Look, I know what you’re trying to do and I admire you for it. So does Dad. So do we all. Well, except Mignon, but you’re not to take that personally since she doesn’t know anyone exists on the planet other than herself.”

He glanced her way. He gave her a smile. He knew Mignon as well as she did.

She said, “This would be another plank in the structure you’re building for yourself, Nick. If you do this — if you take the children — it makes your position stronger. It shows commitment. It shows how capable you are of taking on more responsibility. Plus, you’re closer to Margaret Fox School than Kaveh and you can take Tim there on your way to work.”

“Speaking of that,” Nicholas pointed out, “you’re closer to Margaret Fox School than I am. You’re practically in the neighbourhood. Why not you, then?”

“Nick …” Manette knew she was going to have to tell him the truth, so she made it brief. Freddie and dating and the new world of sex as soon as possible, which ended up with previously unknown women at the breakfast table. Hardly a suitable situation into which one might bring children, was it?

Nicholas had kept his eyes fastened on her face as she told him this. He said, “I’m sorry,” when she was finished, and he went on lest she think he was saying he was sorry as a way of refusing her request to take on the children. “I know what Freddie really means to you, Manette, even if you don’t,” were his words.

She looked away, blinking hard. She said, “Be that as it may… You see…”

“I’ve got to get back to work.” He put his arm round her and kissed the side of her head. He said, “Let me talk to Allie about this, okay? Something’s bothering her at the moment. I don’t know what. She hasn’t said yet, but she will. We don’t have secrets between us, so she’ll bring me into the picture in a bit. Until then, you’ll have to give me some time, okay? I’m not saying no about Tim and Gracie.”

ARNSIDE CUMBRIA

He knew nothing about fishing, but that was hardly the point. Zed Benjamin understood that the point was not to catch fish or even hope to catch fish but rather to look like he was fishing. So he’d borrowed a rod from the tottering owner of his B amp; B, who gave him chapter and verse on her late husband and the wasted hours he’d spent with his fishing line in the waters of this lake, that stream, or whatever bay. She handed over a tackle basket, as well, along with a slicker that fit Zed’s arm but nothing else and a pair of Wellingtons that were altogether useless to him. She pressed a folding stool upon him and wished him luck. Her husband, she told him, had had virtually none. According to her, the man had caught fifteen fish in twenty-five years. He could see the record if he wanted to because she’d kept it, every time the bloody man left the house and returned empty-handed. Could be he’d been having an affair, she said, because when one really put one’s head to the matter-

Zed had thanked her hastily and had driven to Arnside, where he found, with thanks to God, that the tide was in. He’d established himself on the seawall path, just beneath Nicholas Fairclough’s house, and there he’d cast his line into the water. The line was baitless. The last thing he wanted was actually to catch a fish and have to do something with it. Like touch it.

Now that Scotland Yard knew that he was in the vicinity, he had to take care. Once they clocked him — whoever they were — his job was going to be even more difficult. He needed to know exactly who they were — assuming it was a they, because didn’t they work in teams like on the telly? — because if he could suss them out before they sussed him out, his position to strike a deal was going to be a hell of a lot stronger. For if they were here on the sly, then the last thing they would want was to have their mugs printed on the front page of The Source, alerting Nicholas Fairclough to their presence, not to mention to their intentions.

Zed had reckoned they’d turn up at Arnside House eventually. He was there to take note when that occurred.

The stool had been an excellent idea. After he took up his position along the seawall, he alternated between standing and taking a load off as the hours passed. But nothing of a suspicious nature or any nature at all happened across the lawn at Arnside House, and he was growing rather desperate to learn something — anything — useful to his story when Alatea Fairclough finally came outside.

She walked straight towards him and his thought was Bloody, bloody, double bloody hell. He was about to be discovered before he’d learned a damn thing useful, and wasn’t that just how his luck was running these days? But she stopped far short of the seawall and stood looking out at the endlessly undulating mass of the bay. Her expression was sombre. Zed reckoned she was thinking about all the people who’d met an untimely end in this area, like those poor Chinese sods — more than fifty of them — caught in the darkness in the incoming tide and phoning home like E.T., desperate for rescue that did not come. Or the bloke and his son caught by the tide and a sudden fog bank and disoriented round by foghorns that seemed to come from everywhere. Considering this, Zed reckoned the edge of Morecambe Bay was a perishing depressing place to live, and Alatea Fairclough looked about as perishing depressed as one could get.

Hell, he thought, was she considering the possibilities of offing herself out there in the treacherous waters? He hoped not. He’d be meant to rescue her, and they’d both likely die if it came to that.

He was too far to hear its ringing, but Alatea’s mobile phone seemed to go off, because she took it from the jacket she was wearing and flipped it open. She spoke to someone. She began to pace. Ultimately, she looked at her watch, which glittered on her wrist even at this distance. She glanced round as if worried she might be observed and Zed ducked his head.

God, she was a beautiful woman, he thought. He couldn’t understand how she had ended up here, in the back of beyond, when a woman like her belonged on a catwalk or at least in a catalogue wearing skimpy knickers like those Agent Provocateur models with their sumptuous bosoms bursting out of brassieres and the brassieres always matching their knickers and the knickers themselves showing lots and lots of firm and delicious thigh so that one could so easily imagine all the delights of-

Zed brought himself up short. What the hell was going on with him? He was being completely unfair to womankind, thinking like this. He was particularly being unfair to Yaffa, who was back in London working on his behalf and helping out with the insanity of his mother and… But what was the point of thinking about Yaffa since Micah was on the back burner of her life, studying medicine in Tel Aviv like the good son of a mother, which Zed himself was not?

He bashed his forehead with the heel of his palm. He took a chance and cast a look back at Alatea Fairclough. She was heading back towards the house now, her phone call finished.

For a time, that appeared to be the highlight of Zed’s day. Wonderful, he thought. Another nought to add to the noughts of his accomplishments in Cumbria. He spent another two hours pretending to fish before he began to pack it in and consider what to do next.

Things changed, however, as he was trudging back in the direction of the Promenade and his car, which he’d left in Arnside village. He’d just reached the end of the seawall that defined the boundary of Arnside House when a car approached and made the turn into the driveway.

It was driven by a woman. She looked as if she knew where she was going. She pulled up to the front of the house and got out, and Zed crept — as well as a man six feet eight inches tall can actually creep — back the way he’d come.

Like him, she was a redhead. She was casually dressed in jeans, boots, and a thick wool sweater the colour of moss. He expected her to walk directly to the front door, some friend of Alatea’s come to call, he reckoned. But she did not do so. Instead, she began to prowl round the house like a third-rate burglar. Moreover, she took out a digital camera from her shoulder bag and started taking pictures.

Ultimately, she approached the front door and rang the bell. She waited, looking round her as if to see if anyone — like Zed himself — might be lurking in the shrubbery. While she waited, she took out her mobile and seemed to check it for text messages or something. Then the front door opened and without an exchange of more than ten words, Alatea Fairclough let her into the house.

But she sure as bloody hell did not look happy about having to do so, Zed realised. He also realised with a surge of pure joy that his wait had paid off. He had the scoop he needed. He had the sex in the story. He had the identity of the detective sent up from London from New Scotland Yard.

ARNSIDE CUMBRIA

When Alatea answered the door, Deborah instantly read the alarm in her expression. It was out of all proportion to the appearance on her doorstep of anyone other than a surprise visitor intent upon harming her, so for a moment Deborah was taken aback. She scrambled for words and came up with, “I have a feeling Mr. Fairclough isn’t at home, but it’s not Mr. Fairclough I need anyway.”

This promptly made things worse. “What do you want?” Alatea said abruptly. She looked beyond Deborah’s shoulder as if expecting someone else to come charging round the corner of the building. “Nicky’s at work.” She glanced at her watch, an enormous gold and rhinestone affair that suited her well but would have looked ridiculous on a woman less dramatic in appearance. “He’ll be on his way to the pele project by now.”

“Not a problem,” Deborah said cheerfully. “I was taking some shots of the exterior, to give the producer an idea of setting and where he can conduct his interviews. The lawn’ll work wonderfully, especially if the tide’s in when they’re here. But there’s always a chance it’ll be pouring buckets, isn’t there? So I’m hoping to get some shots of the interior of the house as well. Would that be all right? I don’t want to trouble you. It shouldn’t take long. It’ll be very informal.”

Alatea’s throat worked with a swallow. She didn’t move from the doorway.

“A quarter of an hour, I expect.” Deborah tried to sound jolly: nothing to fear from me. “It’s the drawing room I’m interested in, actually. There’s good ambient light and some background interest as well.”

Reluctant didn’t do justice to the manner in which Alatea admitted Deborah into the house. Deborah could feel tension virtually oozing from the woman, and she was forced to wonder if Alatea had a man other than her husband inside somewhere, playing at Polonius behind a convenient arras.

They went towards the yellow drawing room, passing the main hall, whose sliding doors were closed. These revealed more impressive panelling along with windows combining translucent glass and stained glass fashioned in the shape of red tulips and green leaves. Someone, Deborah decided, could indeed have been lurking in that room, but she couldn’t imagine who it might be.

She made light chat. The house was remarkable, she told Alatea. Had it been featured in any magazines? The Arts and Crafts movement was so clean and sympathetic, wasn’t it? Was Alatea interested at all in a documentary about the restoration of this building? Had she been approached by any of the myriad television programmes that featured period homes? To all of this, Alatea’s answers were monosyllabic. Bonding with the woman was not going to be a simple matter, Deborah concluded.

In the drawing room, she switched to another topic. How did Alatea like living in England? It had to be very different from what she was used to in Argentina, Deborah expected.

Here, Alatea looked startled. “How do you know I’m from Argentina?”

“Your husband told me.” Deborah wanted to add, Why? Is there a problem with your being from Argentina? but she did not. Instead, she examined the room. The object was to get Alatea over to the bay window where the magazines were, so Deborah took a few shots of prospective areas in which interviews could occur, easing over in that direction.

When she got there, though, the first thing she saw was that Conception was gone from the fan of journals. This was going to make things tricky but not impossible. Deborah took a photo of the two chairs and the low table in front of the bay window, adjusting for the light outside so as to show both interior and exterior equally. She said as she did so, “You and I have something in common, Mrs. Fairclough.” She looked up from her camera and offered a smile.

Alatea was standing by the door as if ready to bolt. She gave a polite smile and looked supremely doubtful. If they had something in common, it was clear she hadn’t a clue what it was, aside from being women who were, at the moment, standing in the same room of her house.

Deborah said, “We’re both trying for a baby. Your husband told me. He saw I’d seen the magazine. Conception?” She added a helpful lie, “I’ve been reading it for ages. Well, for five years now. That’s how long Simon and I — that’s my husband — have been trying.”

Alatea said nothing to this, but Deborah saw her swallow as her eyes moved to the table where the magazine had lain. Deborah wondered if she’d removed it herself or if Nicholas had done so. She wondered, too, if Nicholas worried about his wife’s state of mind and state of body as Simon worried about her own.

She said, as she took another photo, “We started out au naturel, Simon and I, hoping that nature would take its course. We went from there to monitoring. Everything from my monthly cycles to my daily temperature to the phases of the moon.” She forced a chuckle. It wasn’t pleasant to reveal this sort of thing to anyone, but Deborah saw the importance of doing so and, even, the potential for comfort that such a revelation could bring. “Then, there were the tests,” she said, “which Simon less than adored, I can tell you. After that were the endless discussions about alternatives, visits to specialists, and talks about the other possibilities for parenthood.” She paused in her photographing to say to Alatea with a shrug, “Turns out I’ll never carry a baby to term. Something’s wrong with the way I was manufactured. We’re onto adoption now, or something else. I’d like surrogacy but Simon’s not on board.”

The Argentine woman had come into the room, closer now but still at a distance. Her colour had altered, Deborah saw, and she was clasping and unclasping her elegant hands. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

Deborah knew what she was looking at. She’d felt the same for years. She said quickly, “I’m terribly sorry. As I said, I saw the magazine when I was here earlier. Your husband said you and he were trying. He said you’d been married two years, and… Mrs. Fairclough, I’m very sorry. I hadn’t meant to upset you. Please. Here. Sit down.”

Alatea did sit, although not where Deborah would have wished it. She chose the inglenook of the fireplace, a padded seat just beneath a stained glass window that sent light streaming onto her crinkly hair. Deborah approached her but remained a safe distance, saying, “It’s difficult. I know. I actually lost six before I found out the truth about my body. They might be able to do something about it someday, all things about science considered. But by then I’ll probably be too old.”

A tear streaked down Alatea’s cheek. She adjusted her position, as if this would keep her from shedding more tears in front of a relative stranger.

Deborah said, “I find it odd that something so simple for some women is a complete impossibility for others.”

Deborah kept expecting the other woman to respond in some way other than with tears, to admit to a fellow feeling somehow. But Alatea did not, and the only thing left was for Deborah to admit the why behind her intense desire to have a child, which had to do in part with the fact that her husband was disabled — a cripple, he called himself — and in part with what that disabling had done to his sense of himself as a man. But she had no intention of going to that place in conversation with Alatea Fairclough. It was difficult enough admitting it to herself.

So she settled on another course altogether. She said, “I think this room has better possibilities for a filmed interview than what I saw outside. And actually, where you’re sitting is a wonderful location, because of the light. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take a quick photo of you there to illustrate — ”

“No!” Alatea leaped to her feet.

Deborah took a step backwards. “It’s for — ”

“No! No! Tell me who you are!” Alatea cried. “Tell me why you’re really here! Tell me, tell me!”