Believing the Lie

WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Zed Benjamin found that he was quite looking forward to his morning chat with Yaffa Shaw, and he wondered if this was what true partnership was like between a man and a woman. If so, he also wondered why, for years, he’d been avoiding it like a Romany beggar on the steps of a church.

When he rang her, she gave the verbal sign that his mother was within listening distance. She said, “Zed, my little puppy, let me tell you all the ways I’ve been missing you,” and she constructed a quick paean to his intelligence, his wit, his affability, and added the warmth of his hugs for good measure.

Zed reckoned his mother would be over the moon at that. “Hmm, I’m missing you as well,” he said in reply, without thinking about the ramifications of such a disclosure. He didn’t, after all, have to respond other than with amused thanks for Yaffa’s continuing to bamboozle his mother during their daily conversations. “If I were there, I’d show you warmth the likes of which you’ve never seen.”

“From far more than hugs, I hope,” Yaffa said.

“That,” Zed told her, “you may rely on.”

She laughed. “You’re a very naughty boy.” And then to his mother, “Mama Benjamin, our Zed’s being rather naughty again.”

“‘Mama Benjamin’?”

“She insisted,” Yaffa said, and before he could comment, she went on. “So tell me what you’ve uncovered, my dear. You’ve moved your story forward a leap, haven’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”

The reality Zed admitted to himself was that this was the real reason for his call. He wanted to crow to the woman who was pretending to be the love of his life, as any man putatively caught within the snares of adoration would wish. He said, “I’ve found the cop.”

“Have you indeed? That’s marvellous, Zed. I knew that you would. And will you phone your editor with this news? Will you” — she made her voice appropriately anxious — “will you come home?”

“Can’t yet. I don’t want to phone Rod, either. I want to have this story signed and sealed so I can hand it over and tell him it’s ready to be run. Word for word with every detail chased down. I’ve spoken to the detective and I’ve struck a deal. We’re going at it as a team.”

“My God.” Yaffa produced breathless admiration. “That’s brilliant, Zed.”

“She’s going to be helping without knowing she’s helping. We’ll track down one story as far as she’s concerned, but I’ll end up with two and one of them is her.”

“The detective’s a woman, then?”

“Detective Sergeant Cotter, she’s called. First name Deb. Got her nailed down. She’s part of the story but she’s not all of it. Turns out she’s looking into the wife, Alatea Fairclough. She’s not onto Nick Fairclough at all. Well, she was at first, but turns out there’s something particularly iffy about the wife. Have to say I reckoned that from the first. It never made sense that someone like Nick Fairclough could have ended up with an Alatea.”

“Oh?” Yaffa sounded interested. “Why is this, Zed?”

“He’s an okay sort of bloke, but she… His wife’s drop-dead gorgeous, Yaf. I’ve never in my life seen anyone like her.”

There was silence from Yaffa’s end. Then a little, “Goodness,” comprised her entire response, and Zed wanted to slap himself sharply. What a bloody gaffe, he thought. He said, “She’s not my type at all, of course. Cool and distant. The sort of woman keeps a man running to do her bidding, if you know what I mean. Sort of a black widow and you’re in the web? You know what black widows do, eh, Yaffa?”

“They attract males to mate with, as I recall,” she said.

“Well right. Of course. But point is, they’re deadly. It’s the old mate-and-die. Or rather, it’s the old mate-and-be-murdered. Gives me the absolute willies, Yaffa. She’s beautiful, but there’s something strange going on with her. One can tell.”

Yaffa seemed to take comfort from this although Zed wondered what it meant that she needed comfort, what with the loathed Micah in Tel Aviv studying to be a physician, a nuclear physicist, a neurosurgeon, and a financial wizard all rolled into one. She said, “You must be careful then, Zed. This could be dangerous.”

“Not a worry there,” he told her. “Plus, I’ve got the Scotland Yard detective with me for added protection.”

“Another woman.” Did Yaffa sound sad?

“A redhead like me, but I like my women dark.”

“Like this Alatea?”

“No,” he said. “Not one bit like this Alatea. Anyway, darling, this detective’s got information by the bucketful. She’s giving it to me in exchange for my sitting on the story for a few more days.”

“But what will you tell your editor, Zed? How long can you hold off giving him something?”

“No problem there. I’ll have Rodney where I want him once I tell him about the deal I’ve struck with the Met. He’ll love that. It’s right up his alley.”

“You be careful, then.”

“Will do, always.”

Yaffa rang off then. Zed was left literally holding the phone. He shrugged and shoved the mobile into his pocket. It was only when he was on his way down to breakfast that he realised Yaf hadn’t made her usual kissy noises at him. It was only when he’d tucked into his plate of watery scrambled eggs that he also realised he wished she’d done so.

MILNTHORPE CUMBRIA

They’d passed a wretched night together. Deborah knew that Simon wasn’t happy with her. They’d had a desultory dinner in the Crow and Eagle’s restaurant, an establishment that wasn’t exactly within breathing distance of being awarded a Michelin rosette. He’d said very little at the meal about the matter of open adoption, which Deborah knew was the source of his displeasure, just a quiet, “I’d have preferred it had you not phoned David quite so soon,” and that was it. What he meant, of course, was that he’d have preferred it had she waited until he could talk her into something that she did not want in the first place.

Deborah had not replied to this at first. Instead, she’d made conversation with him on other matters and waited until they’d returned to their room. There, she’d said, “I’m sorry you’re unhappy about this adoption situation, Simon. But you did tell me the girl wanted to know,” at which he’d observed her with his grey-blue eyes so assessing in that way he had. He’d said, “That’s not really the point, though, is it?”

It was the sort of remark that could make her miserable or fire her anger, depending upon which part of her history with Simon she went to in order to receive it. She could hear it as the wife of a beloved husband whom she’d inadvertently hurt. Or she could hear it as the child who’d grown to adulthood in his house and under his gaze, recognising the disappointed-father tone in his voice. She knew the former but at the moment, she felt the latter. And sometimes it was such a pleasure just to let one’s feelings fly.

So she’d said, “You know, I really hate it when you talk to me like that.”

He’d looked surprised, which added fuel. He’d said, “Talk to you like what?”

“You know like what. You are not my father.”

“Believe me, I’m aware of that, Deborah.”

And that had set her off: that he wouldn’t allow himself to be roused to anger, that anger simply wasn’t part of who he was. It maddened her, and it had always done so. She couldn’t imagine a time when it would not.

Things had developed from there in the way of all arguments. From the manner in which she’d put an end to this matter with David and the girl in Southampton, they’d found themselves examining the myriad ways in which she had apparently long required his benevolent intervention in her life. That took them ultimately into the manner in which he’d dismissed her in the car park during their conversation with Tommy. This was a primary example of why he was required to watch over her, he’d pointed out, since she could not see when she was pigheadedly putting herself into harm’s way.

Of course, Simon hadn’t used the word pigheadedly. That was not his style. Instead, he’d said, “There are times when you don’t see things clearly, and you won’t see things clearly. You have to admit that,” in reference to her insistence in the car park that the route to investigate had everything to do with Alatea Fairclough’s possession of a magazine called Conception. “You’ve reached a conclusion based on your own inclinations,” he said. “You’re letting your judgement become clouded because of what you want instead of relying upon what you know. You can’t do that and be effective in an investigation. And none of that has any importance anyway because you shouldn’t be involved in this matter at all.”

“Tommy asked me — ”

“If this is going to come down to Tommy, he also pointed out that you’ve served your purpose and there’s danger likely if you go any further.”

“Danger from whom? Danger from what? There is no danger. Oh, this is absurd.”

“I agree completely,” he replied. “So we’re finished here, Deborah. We need to return to London. I’ll see to it.”

This positively made her erupt, as he’d known it would. He’d left the room to do whatever he felt needed to be done regarding their departure, and when he’d returned her anger was so icy that she saw no point in speaking to him at all.

In the morning, then, he’d packed up his things. She pointedly did not pack up hers. Instead she’d informed him that unless he wished to carry her over his shoulder all the way to her hire car, she was remaining in Cumbria. She said, “This isn’t finished, Simon,” and when he said, “Isn’t it,” she knew he was referring to more than matters associated with the drowning of Ian Cresswell.

She said, “I want to see this through. Can’t you at least try to see this is something I need to do? I know there’re things connected to this woman…”

It was definitely the wrong route to take. Any mention of Alatea Fairclough would only make Simon think more determinedly that Deborah was blinded by her own desires. He said quietly, “I’ll see you in London then. Whenever you return.” He gave her a half smile that felt like an arrow to her heart. He added, “Good hunting,” and that was that.

All along, Deborah knew that she could have told him about her plans with the reporter from The Source. But had she done that, the fact that she and Zed Benjamin were going to join forces in the investigation would have come out into the open. Then, Simon would have done something to stop this from happening, and telling Tommy would have accomplished it. In keeping the truth from Simon she was actually protecting Tommy from exposure as the Scotland Yard detective. She was, effectively, giving him more time to get to the bottom of things. If Simon couldn’t see that she now had a vital place in this investigation, there was simply nothing she could do about that.

Even as she and her husband had their final words at the Milnthorpe inn, Zed Benjamin was down the road in Arnside, maintaining a position from which he could see the comings and goings at Arnside House. He would text her should Alatea Fairclough leave the property. Move meant she was on the move, heading somewhere in her car. Your way meant she was heading towards Milnthorpe.

This was the beauty of Arnside, Deborah and Zed Benjamin had concluded on the previous day. Although there were narrow lanes leading out of the village that one could take to reach the other side of Arnside Knot and the hamlets beyond Arnside Knot, if one wanted a quick route out of the place, there was but a single good road upon which to travel. That road was the road to Milnthorpe. That road passed by the Crow and Eagle.

When the text message came, Simon had been gone thirty minutes. Deborah examined her mobile with a surge of excitement. Move and Your way comprised the message.

She’d already gathered her necessary belongings. In less than one minute, Deborah was down the stairs and waiting just inside the entrance to the inn with a view to the street. Through the glass half of the door, she saw Alatea Fairclough drive by and make a right turn into the A6. Three cars behind her came Zed Benjamin. Deborah was ready for him when he pulled to the kerb.

“South,” she said.

“I’m on it,” he replied. “Nick took off as well, looking down in the mouth. Heading for the family business, I dare say. Doing his part to keep the country well-supplied with loos.”

“What do you think? Should one of us have been following him?”

He shook his head. “No. I think you’re right. This little lady is at the crux of it all.”

LANCASTER LANCASHIRE

The man was huge, Deborah thought. He filled more than his side of the car. He wasn’t fat, merely enormous. His seat was pushed back as far as it would go, but still he had difficulty keeping his knees out of the way of the steering wheel. Despite his size, he wasn’t an intimidating presence, however. There was an odd kind of gentleness to him, which she reckoned had to make him a fish out of water when it came to his chosen employment.

She was about to comment on this when he made a remark about what he supposed to be her line of work instead. With his eyes on Alatea’s car far ahead of them, he said to Deborah, “Wouldn’t have taken you for a cop. I wouldn’t have known who you were at all if you hadn’t been nosing round Arnside House.”

“What did I do to give the game away, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I just have a sixth sense about this kind of thing.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Can sniff ’em out pretty easily, if you know what I mean. Goes with the territory. Has to, doesn’t it.”

“What territory are we talking about?”

“Journalism. Thing is,” he said expansively, “you have to be able to see more than what’s just on the surface in my line of work. Investigative reporting is about more than sitting at one’s desk and waiting for some bloke’s lifelong enemies to ring up with details of a story that’ll bring down the government. You have to be adept at digging. You have to get into the hunt.”

Deborah found this nonsense impossible to resist. “Investigative reporting,” she said contemplatively. “Is that what you call working for The Source, then? They don’t seem to publish investigative stories about the government very often, do they? If at all.”

“Just using that as an example,” he said.

“Ah.”

“Hey, it’s a living,” he declared, doubtless picking up on her ironic tone. “Anyway, I’m a poet otherwise. And no one supports himself on poetry these days.”

“No, indeed,” Deborah said.

“Look, I know it’s a rag, Sergeant Cotter. But I like to eat and have a roof over my head and this is how I do it. Your line of work isn’t much better, I reckon, looking under stones to dig out society’s scum, eh?”

Mixed metaphor, Deborah thought. Odd for a poet but there you had it. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” she said.

“There’s more than one way to look at everything.”

Up ahead of them, Alatea drove onward. It became apparent soon enough that she was heading for Lancaster. Once in the environs of the city, they had to take care not to be seen by her, so they dropped back with five cars between them.

They wound through the streets. There was no question that Alatea knew exactly where she was going. She ended up in the city centre, in the small car park of a stout brick structure, which Deborah and Zed Benjamin passed by. Thirty yards from this place, Zed pulled to the kerb. Deborah swivelled in her seat to look back at the building. In some forty-five seconds, Alatea came round the corner of it from the direction of the car park and went inside.

“We need to find out what that place is,” Deborah said. Considering Zed’s size, he wasn’t the one to accomplish this task unseen. Deborah got out, said, “Wait here,” and dashed to the other side of the street, where she could keep herself somewhat hidden by using the cars parked there.

She went as far as she needed to go to be able to read the lettering above the building’s entrance. Kent-Howath Foundation for Disabled Veterans it said. A home for soldiers wounded in war.

Deborah considered Alatea’s place of birth, which she knew was Argentina. This took her ineluctably to the Falklands War. She wondered about the likelihood of an Argentine soldier ending up here for some reason, someone whom Alatea was visiting.

She was thinking about other possible wars — the Gulf Wars being the most recent ones — when Alatea emerged. She wasn’t alone, but she wasn’t with anyone who looked remotely like a disabled veteran. She was instead with another woman, tall like Alatea but stocky. Her appearance and ease of movement suggested she was someone who regularly favoured the type of clothing she was wearing at the moment: a colourful long skirt, loose pullover, and boots. Her long hair was unstyled, dark in colour but peppered with grey, and she wore it pulled back from her face and held with a hair slide.

They walked in the direction of the foundation’s car park, talking earnestly. Considering what this meant, Deborah dashed back to where Zed had parked. She got into the car saying, “She’s going to be on the move. She’s got someone with her.”

In response, he fired up the engine and readied himself to follow once more. He said, “What was that place?”

“Disabled soldiers’ home.”

“That who’s with her?”

“No. She’s got a woman with her. I s’pose she could be a soldier, but she’s not disabled as far as I could tell. Here they come. Quickly.” Deborah lunged at Zed. She threw her arms round him and drew him into what she hoped appeared to a passerby as a lovers’ passionate embrace. When over Zed’s shoulder she saw the car pass, she released him and saw that his face was flaming. “Sorry,” she said. “It seemed best.”

He stammered, “Yes. Right. Course,” and he pulled out of the parking space and got back onto Alatea Fairclough’s tail.

They headed out of the city centre. Traffic was heavy, but they managed to keep Alatea’s vehicle within view. Zed Benjamin was the one who twigged first where Alatea was headed. Clear of the centre of Lancaster, it wasn’t long before a hillside topped with a variety of modern-era buildings came into view.

“She’s going to the university,” he said. “This could take us nowhere in our information.”

Deborah didn’t think so. If Alatea was heading towards Lancaster University with a companion, there was going to be a reason why. She had a feeling of what that reason would be, and she reckoned it had nothing to do with a desire to pursue higher education.

Parking in this area while remaining out of sight of their quarry was something of an iffy situation. Vehicles heading to the university were made to use a peripheral road, and once they found themselves upon it, Deborah and her companion discovered that parking was restricted as well. There were cul-de-sacs for it, but very little scope for hiding within them. Obviously, Deborah thought, the university had not been designed with the thought of individuals skulking along on the tail of someone else.

When Alatea turned into one of the cul-de-sacs, Deborah told Zed to let her out of the car. When he started to protest — they were, after all, supposed to be doing this tailing of Alatea Fairclough together and he wasn’t exactly sure of Scotland Yard’s cooperation, he pointed out — she said, “Look. We can’t go in there after them, Zed. Drop me off, and drive on. Park somewhere else. Ring me on my mobile and I’ll tell you where I am. It’s the only thing that’s going to work.”

He didn’t look happy. He didn’t look trustful. That couldn’t be helped. She wasn’t there to earn his personal faith in her character. She was there to get to the bottom of Alatea Fairclough. He’d braked the car, and that was good enough for Deborah. She hopped out, saying, “Ring my mobile,” and she dashed into the cul-de-sac before he could protest.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew he couldn’t be seen by Alatea Fairclough or the gaff would be blown in a very large way. Deborah couldn’t be seen either, but it was going to be far easier for her to hide herself from the Argentine woman and her companion than for Zed to do so.

Following them proved simpler than she had thought it would be. Providence helped. It began to rain. The downpour was sudden and it was heavy, requiring umbrellas. What better way to conceal one’s identity? Deborah fished hers out of her shoulder bag and thus was able to obscure her face and, more important, cover her coppery hair.

She kept a good distance between herself and the other women. They made for the university buildings. There were plenty of students on the purpose-built campus at this time of day, which was a blessing. It was also a blessing that the university — unlike the older institutions in the country — existed largely in a single location, on the top of that hill outside of the city proper.

The two women continued to talk as they walked, heads bent together, sharing an umbrella. Alatea had her arm through the other woman’s. She slipped once, and her companion steadied her. They seemed to be friends.

They didn’t stop in their progress through the campus. They consulted no map. They didn’t ask directions. Deborah felt a flicker of excitement at this.

Her mobile rang. She said into it, hurriedly, “We’re on a central path, a sort of walkway. It goes straight across the campus.”

“Deb?”

Tommy’s voice. Deborah winced and called herself a fool for not having looked at the incoming caller’s identity. She said, “Oh. Tommy. I thought it was someone else.”

“Obviously. Where are you?”

“Why d’you want to know?”

“Because I know you. I saw that expression on your face in the car park yesterday, and I know exactly what it means. You’re doing something we’ve asked you not to do, I take it?”

“Simon’s not my father, Tommy. Is he with you?”

“He’s asked to meet for a coffee in Newby Bridge. Deb, what’re you doing? Where are you? Whose call are you waiting for?”

Deborah considered not only whether to lie to him but also whether she could carry off a lie. She sighed and said, “Lancaster University.”

“Lancaster University? What’s going on?”

“I’m following Alatea Fairclough. She’s come here in the company of a woman from a disabled soldiers’ home. I want to see where they’re going.” She didn’t give him time to consider what this might mean, instead continuing with, “This entire situation has got to do with Alatea Fairclough. Something’s not right, Tommy. I know you can sense it.”

“I’m not sure I sense anything other than the distinct possibility that you’re walking into trouble, Alatea Fairclough or not.”

“There can hardly be trouble in my following them. They don’t know I’m behind them. And even if they work that out…” She hesitated. To tell him more would risk his telling Simon.

He was shrewd as a fox. He said, “You didn’t answer my other question, Deb. Whose call are you waiting for?”

“The journalist.”

“That bloke from The Source? Deb, this is a mad sort of business to be engaging in. Anything can happen.”

“I see nothing worse happening than my photo appearing on the front page of The Source with a caption misidentifying me as Detective Sergeant Cotter. And I see that as hilarious, Tommy. It’s hardly dangerous.”

He was silent for a moment. Ahead, Deborah saw that the women had come to their destination, which was a modern upended box of a building constructed of brick and concrete in the unattractive fashion of the 1960s. Deborah gave them a minute to enter and to get themselves out of the lobby and into a lift. In the meantime, Tommy said, “Deb, have you any idea what it would do to Simon if something happened to you? Because believe me, I have.”

She paused at the building’s front door. She said gently, “Dearest Tommy.” He made no reply. She knew what the question had cost him. She said, “You’re not to worry. I’m quite safe.”

She heard him sigh. “Take care,” he said.

“Of course,” she replied. “And please. Not a word to Simon.”

“If he asks me — ”

“He won’t.” And she rang off.

Immediately her mobile chimed again. Zed Benjamin demanded, “Who the hell were you talking to? I was trying to ring you. Where the hell are you?”

Deborah told him the truth. She was talking to a DI from the Met. She was standing in front of… Well, the building was called George Childress Centre and she was about to go inside and see what was housed here. He could join her, but she wouldn’t recommend it since, as before, he was rather more difficult to camouflage than she was.

He seemed to see the sense in this. He said, “Ring me when you know anything, then. And this better not be a double cross of some kind or you’re in the paper tomorrow morning and the gaff is blown.”

“Absolutely understood.”

She flipped the phone closed and went inside the building. There were four lifts in the lobby as well as a security guard. She knew she couldn’t bluff her way past the guard for love or money, so she looked round and saw that to one side of the lobby and between two languishing bamboo plants, a glassed-in notice board was hung on the wall. She went to this and studied its information.

It identified offices, surgeries, and what appeared to be laboratories, and above all of these was something that made Deborah whisper, “Yes!” For the building itself fell under the aegis of the Faculty of Science and Technology. When she saw this, Deborah searched the list feverishly and found what she knew at heart would be there. One of the laboratories was dedicated to the study of reproductive science. Her intuition had been correct all along. She was on the right path. Simon had been wrong.

NEWBY BRIDGE CUMBRIA

When Lynley rang off, he looked at his friend. St. James had watched him the entire time he’d been speaking to Deborah, and there were few people Lynley knew who were more adept at reading between the lines than St. James, although there actually wasn’t much reading between the lines that St. James would have had to do. Lynley had framed the conversation with Deborah in such a way that her husband would understand where she was and with whom without Lynley overtly betraying her.

St. James said, “She can be the most maddening woman.”

Lynley raised and lowered his fingers in a gesture that indicated his acceptance of this idea. “Isn’t that the nature of women in general?”

St. James sighed. “I should have put my foot down in some fashion.”

“Good Lord, Simon. She’s an adult. You can hardly drag her kicking and howling back to London.”

“Her point exactly.” St. James rubbed his forehead. He looked as if he hadn’t slept during the previous night. He continued. “It’s unfortunate we needed two hire cars. I’d have been able to give her a clear choice otherwise: Come with me to Manchester airport or find your own way home.”

“I doubt that would have gone down very well. And you know what her reply would have been.”

“Oh yes. That’s the hell of it. I do know my wife.”

“Thank you for coming up here, Simon, for lending a hand.”

“I would have liked to give you a more definitive answer. But it all stacks up the same way, no matter how I look at the facts: an unfortunate accident.”

“Despite the plethora of motives? Everyone seems to have one. Mignon, Freddie McGhie, Nick Fairclough, Kaveh Mehran. God knows who else.”

“Despite,” St. James said.

“And not the perfect crime?”

St. James glanced out of the window at a copper beech hedge aflame with autumn as he considered this. They had met in a rather crumbling Victorian hotel not far from Newby Bridge, where in its lounge they were able to order morning coffee. It was the sort of place about which Helen would have happily declared Lord, how deliciously atmospheric it is, Tommy in order to excuse the hideous carpets, the layer of dust on the wall-mounted deer heads, and the tattered condition of the sofas and armchairs. For a moment, Lynley missed his wife with a crushing force. He breathed through it as he’d learned to do. Everything passes, he thought. This also would.

St. James stirred in his armchair and said, “There were perfect crimes at one time, of course. But today, it’s so difficult that virtually no one can carry one off. Forensic science is too advanced, Tommy. There are ways to pick up trace evidence now that were unheard of even five years ago. Today a perfect crime would have to be one in which no one thinks there was a crime at all.”

“But isn’t that the case here?”

“Not with a coroner’s investigation having been completed. Not with Bernard Fairclough coming to London and getting you involved. A perfect crime now is one in which there’s no suspicion that there could have been a crime. An investigation is neither ordered nor needed, the coroner signs off on the death on the spot, the victim is conveniently cremated within forty-eight hours, and there you have it. But with the situation you’ve got here, all the bases were covered and there was ultimately nothing to suggest Ian Cresswell’s death was anything other than what the coroner decided: an accident.”

“And if Valerie and not Ian was the intended victim?”

“Exactly the same problem, as you know.” St. James took up his coffee. “If this was intentional, Tommy, and if Valerie and not Ian had been the intended victim, you’ve got to agree there are far better ways to be rid of her. Everyone knew Ian used the boathouse as well as Valerie. Why risk killing him if she was supposed to die? And what’s the motive anyway? And even if there is a motive for her death, trying to go at this problem through forensic data isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“Because there is no forensic data.”

“None that suggests this wasn’t what it appears to be: an accident.”

“Something other than that filleting knife could have been used to dislodge the stones, Simon.”

“Of course. But the stones themselves would have borne the marks of a tool being used on them. And they had no marks. You saw that. Beyond that, look how many others were loose. That boathouse has doubtless been an accident waiting to happen for years.”

“No case to present, then.”

“That’s my conclusion.” St. James smiled regretfully. “So I’d have to say to you what I’ve said — quite unsuccessfully — to Deborah. It’s time to go back to London.”

“What about a crime of intent?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning one wishes another dead. One hopes for it. One even plans it. But before the plan can be put into action, an accident supervenes. The intended victim dies anyway. Could we have that here?”

“We could, of course. But even if we do, the point is in this case no guilt can be established, and no one’s behaviour is suggesting guilt.”

Lynley nodded thoughtfully. “Still and all…”

“What?”

“I have the nagging feeling — ” Lynley’s mobile rang. He glanced at the number then said to St. James, “Havers.”

“Could be something new, then.”

“I can only hope.” Lynley answered the call with, “Tell me something, Sergeant. At this point, anything will do.”

CHALK FARM LONDON

Barbara had placed the call to Lynley from her home. She’d been into the Met long before the crack of dawn to engage in some further investigating using the vast resources there. Afterwards, not wishing to be anywhere near the place when acting Detective Superintendent Ardery showed her face, she’d scarpered home. Twelve cups of coffee had seen her through the early morning, and at this point she was so lit up by caffeine that she doubted she’d be able to sleep for days. She was also smoking like a steam engine going full throttle. Her head felt as if her brain were about to begin sending out torpedoes.

The first thing she told Lynley was, “There’s a kid, Inspector. This may be important. This may be nothing. But turns out Vivienne Tully’s got an eight-year-old daughter called Bianca. I think she also knew I was going to show my mug on her doorstep. Her flat was swept clean of everything personal, and she didn’t exactly swoon with shock when I told her I was from the Met. I only found out about the kid because I’m bonding with the building’s porter in a very big way. Expect an announcement soon in that quarter.”

“You got inside, then.”

“My talents, sir, know not a single bound. I live to impress you.” Barbara went on to tell Lynley what she’d learned from Vivienne. She gave him everything from the woman’s education to her employment to her intention to return to New Zealand, land of her birth. “Didn’t deny a thing about Fairclough: knowing him, acting as a board member of his foundation, seeing him regularly for meals and such at Twins. But she threw up a roadblock when it came to why he has a key to her digs.”

“This child, Bianca. Could she be Fairclough’s?”

“Possibly. But she could also be his son’s, Ian Cresswell’s, the prime minister’s, or the Prince of Wales’s for that matter. She could be a wild night on the town, a little whoops, if you know what I mean. Anyway, this Vivienne hasn’t worked for Fairclough for years. She hasn’t worked for him since before she even had the kid. It’d be hard to believe she’s maintained a long-distance romance with him, wouldn’t you say, a long-distance romance enduring enough to have had his kid?”

“Perhaps it’s not a romance that’s been maintained for years, Barbara. Perhaps Bianca’s the result of a chance encounter that brought Vivienne back into Fairclough’s life at some point.”

“What? Like they find themselves in a lift somewhere, lock eyes on each other, and the rest is Bianca? I s’pose that’s possible.”

“He established a foundation,” Lynley pointed out. “He needed board members, and she’s one of them.”

“Can’t be that. Foundation’s been around long before Bianca was a gleam in anyone’s eye. Anyway, accepting a position on the foundation board’s one thing. Getting involved with Fairclough and staying involved with him is another. Why would she want to do that? He’s decades older. I’ve seen his picture as well and believe me, they’re not close to being a physical match. Wouldn’t she have preferred a bloke nearer to her own age and also available? Getting enmeshed with a married bloke is generally boarding a train to nowhere and she seems far too clever for that.”

“In a sensible world she would have understood your point and made a different sort of decision. But if she didn’t, you’ll have to agree that there’re always things making people far less than sensible, Sergeant.”

Barbara heard the murmur of someone’s voice in the background. Lynley identified the voice with, “Simon’s saying that vast amounts of money make people less than sensible all the time.”

“Okay. Right. But if the kid’s Fairclough’s, and if he’s been doing the horizontal rumba with Vivienne Tully for God only knows how long, then why bring in a Scotland Yard investigation into his nephew’s death, which has already been called an accident? He’d have to have known that everyone would be looked into, including himself. What the hell sort of risk is he taking?”

“If it’s unrelated to Cresswell’s death, he may be reckoning on my keeping a lid on this particular aspect of his private life.”

“If it’s unrelated,” Barbara said. “But if it is related, that bloody well explains why Hillier picked you for this particular job, doesn’t it? The earl covering up for the baron. He’d like that touch, Hillier would.”

“I can’t disagree. He’s done it before. Anything else?” Lynley enquired.

“Yeah. I’ve been busy. Kaveh Mehran’s not lying about ownership of that farm. Cresswell left it to him. Interesting bit is when he did it. Prepare for a drum roll: He signed the will one week before he drowned.”

“That’s telling,” Lynley agreed. “Although one would have to wonder at a murderer so dimwitted as to kill someone one week after a will was signed in his favour.”

“There is that,” Havers admitted.

“Anything more?”

“Oh, I’m the early bird, all right. Getting up at ungodly hours of the morning also allows one to make international phone calls whose recipients are easy to reach because they’re still in bed.”

“Argentina?” Lynley guessed.

“In a pie tin. I managed to get through to the home of the mayor of Santa Maria di all the et ceteras. I tried his office first but that turned out to be a case of someone at one end saying quien and que and me on this end shouting, ‘Let me talk to the bloody mayor for God’s sake,’ before I finally worked out the time difference and twigged I was talking to the cleaner. I had to give up that idea, but I did get to the house. And let me tell you, that was not an easy task.”

“I’m all admiration, Barbara. What did you uncover?”

“The fact that no one speaks English in Argentina. Or that everyone pretends not to speak English. Have it either way. I did manage to corner someone I think was Dominga Padilla y del Torres de Vasquez, though. I kept repeating the name and she kept saying si when she wasn’t saying quien. I went with Alatea’s name, then, and this Dominga started babbling. There was a lot of Dios mios and dondes and graciases. So I wager this bird knows who Alatea is. What I need just now is someone who can talk to her.”

“Are you onto that, then?”

“Like I said before, Azhar’s got to know someone at the university.”

“There’ll be someone at the Yard as well, Barbara.”

“With some fishing. But I go that route, and the guv will be all over me like groupies on a rock star. She’s already asked me — ”

“I’ve spoken to her. She knows I have you doing some work for me. Barbara, I’ve got to ask this. Did you tell her?”

Barbara felt deeply affronted. They had years of history, she and the inspector. That he would think she’d betray those years made her back go up. “I bloody well did not.” For that was the God’s truth of the matter. The fact that she’d allowed Isabelle Ardery to work it out for herself without sidetracking her with some sort of red herring was not Barbara’s problem.

Lynley was silent. Barbara had a sudden anguished feeling that they were heading towards a her-or-me moment. This was the very last thing she wanted since if it came down to the superintendent or herself, she knew how unlikely it was that Lynley would make the choice that would put him at odds with his own lover. He was, after all, and she had to face it, a bloke.

So she went back to where they’d gone off track, saying, “Anyway I’d planned to speak to Azhar. If he can come up with someone adept at Spanish, we’ve solved that problem and we’ve got the key to Alatea Fairclough.”

“As to that, there’s something else.” Lynley told her a tale about Alatea Fairclough’s modeling career in her pre-Nicholas Fairclough days. He ended with, “He told Deborah it was ‘naughty underwear’ and said she’s embarrassed and afraid she’ll be found out. Naughty underwear hardly being a crushing issue to anyone but a nun or someone marrying into the royal family, we’re thinking it might be pornography instead.”

“I’ll see what I can do with that as well,” Barbara told him.

They exchanged a few more words during which Barbara tried to read him through his tone. Did he believe what she’d said about Isabelle Ardery and his presence in Cumbria? Did he not? And was it important, in any case, what he believed? When he ended the call, she had no answers. But she had no love for her questions, either.

CHALK FARM LONDON

Barbara heard the sound of raised voices as she approached the ground-floor flat at the front of the property. She was already crossing the patch of lawn to the terrace in front of the flat’s front doors when the unmistakable voice of Taymullah Azhar shouted furiously, “I will take steps, Angelina. I promise you that.” Barbara froze at once. Angelina Upman cried, “Are you actually threatening me?” and Azhar returned at top volume, “You can ask me that? This matter is settled.”

Barbara spun on her heel to beat a quick retreat, but she was too late. Out of the door Azhar strode, his face as black as she’d ever seen it. He clocked her, for there was no place for either of them to hide. He turned away and hurried off the property, setting off down Eton Villas in the direction of Steeles Road.

It was a damn-and-blast moment that got worse immediately. For Angelina Upman came dashing out of the flat as well, as if going after her partner, and she clasped a fist at her mouth when she saw Barbara. They locked eyes. Angelina spun and retreated.

That painted things badly for Barbara. She was caught. Angelina had shown her friendship. Barbara could hardly slink off without asking if she could be of help. This was actually the last option she wanted to choose from the list of alternatives that she rapidly considered. She chose it anyway, however.

Angelina answered immediately when Barbara knocked on the French windows. Barbara said to her, “Sorry. I was coming to ask Azhar…” She ran a hand through her hair and was all at once aware of how different it felt since the previous choppiness of it was gone. This fact seemed to define what she had to do next. She said, “Bloody hell, I’m dead sorry I overheard the row. But I didn’t hear much, just the last bit. I was coming to ask Azhar for a favour.”

Angelina’s shoulders slumped a bit. “I’m terribly sorry, Barbara. We should have kept our voices down but we’re too hot tempered. I brought something up better left unsaid. There are topics Hari won’t discuss.”

“Triggers for a row?”

“Just that, yes.” She blew out a regretful breath. “Anyway. This’ll blow over. It always does.”

“C’n I do anything?”

“If you don’t mind a mess, you might come inside and have a cup of tea with me.” Angelina then grinned and added, “Or a glass of gin, which I could bloody do with, let me tell you.”

“I’ll go for the tea,” Barbara said. “Save the gin for next time.”

Inside the flat, Barbara saw what Angelina had meant by a mess. It looked as if Azhar and his partner had resorted to hurling a few objects at each other in the midst of their row. This seemed so utterly unlike Azhar that Barbara looked from the sitting room to Angelina and wondered if she’d done all the hurling herself. There were scattered magazines, a broken figurine, an upended lamp, a shattered vase, and flowers lying on the floor in a pool of water.

Barbara said, “I c’n help you put this in order as well.”

“Tea first,” Angelina said.

The kitchen was untouched. Angelina made the tea and took it to a small table that sat beneath a high window through which a patch of sunlight gleamed. She said, “Thank God Hadiyyah’s in school. She would have been frightened. I doubt she’s ever seen Hari like that.”

Barbara took the inference. Angelina herself had “seen Hari like that.” She said to her, “Like I said, I was on my way to ask his help.”

“Hari’s? How?”

Barbara explained. Angelina lifted her teacup as she listened. She had lovely hands like the rest of her, and their tapered fingers bore shapely nails of a uniform length. She said, “He’ll know someone. He’ll want to help you. He likes you enormously, Barbara. You mustn’t think that this” — she tilted her head in the direction of the sitting room — “is an indication of anything but two similar temperaments crashing into each other. We’ll both get over it. We usually do.”

“That’s good to know.”

Angelina took a sip of tea. “It’s stupid how arguments between partners grow from nothing. One makes a suggestion that the other doesn’t care for and before you know it, tempers flare. Things get said. It’s ridiculous.”

To this Barbara didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have a partner, had never had one, and had no possibility of some chance encounter leading her to having one. So arguing with one? Hurling objects at one? There was small likelihood that she’d find herself having that experience any time soon. Still, she made a mumbling, “’S hell, that, eh?” and hoped that would suffice.

“You know about Hari’s wife, don’t you?” Angelina asked. “I expect he’s told you: how he left her but there’s never been a divorce.”

Barbara felt a bit prickly with this direction of conversation. “Well. Right. Yeah. I mean, more or less.”

“He left her for me. I was a student. Not his, of course. I’ve no brain for science. But we met at lunch one day. It was crowded, and he asked to share my table. I liked his… well, I quite liked his gravity, his thoughtfulness. I liked his confidence, the way he didn’t feel he had to answer quickly or amusingly in a conversation. He was very real. That appealed to me.”

“I c’n see how it would.” For it appealed to Barbara as well, and long had done. Taymullah Azhar had appeared from the first to be exactly who he seemed to be.

“I didn’t want him to leave her. I loved him — I love him — but to break up a man’s home… I never saw myself as such a woman. But then there was Hadiyyah. When Hari knew I was pregnant, he’d hear of nothing else but our being together. I could have ended the pregnancy, of course. But this was ours, you see, and I couldn’t face not having her.” She leaned forward and briefly touched Barbara’s hand. “Can you imagine a world without Hadiyyah in it?”

It was a simple question with an equally simple answer. “Can’t,” Barbara said.

“Anyway, I’ve wanted her to meet her siblings, Hari’s other children. But he won’t hear of it.”

“That was the row?”

“We’ve gone through it before. It’s the only thing we ever argue about. The answer’s always the same. ‘That will not happen,’ as if he determines the course everyone’s life is supposed to take. When he says that sort of thing, I don’t react well. Nor do I react well when he declares that he and I will not be giving her a sibling either. ‘I have three children,’ he says. ‘I will have no more.’”

“He might change his mind.”

“He hasn’t in years and I can’t think of a single reason why he would.”

“Behind his back, then? Without him knowing?”

“Take Hadiyyah to meet her siblings, you mean?” Angelina shook her head. “I’ve no idea where they are. I’ve no idea what their names are or who their mother is. She might have returned to Pakistan, for all he’s told me about her.”

“There’s always an accidental pregnancy, I suppose. But it’s a bit low, that, eh?”

“He’d never forgive it. And I’ve already asked him to forgive a great deal.”

Barbara thought Angelina might go on at that point, revealing her reasons for having left Azhar and Hadiyyah for her “trip to Canada” as it had long been called. But she didn’t do so. Instead she said, “I love Hari so much, you know. But sometimes I hate him in just the same way.” She smiled at the irony of her own statement. Then she seemed to shrug it off. She said, “Wait an hour then ring him on his mobile. Hari will do whatever he can to grant your favour.”

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Manette had reckoned on the previous day that her father hadn’t been telling the truth about Vivienne Tully. She had also reckoned that emotional cowardice was what was preventing her from pushing the subject further. It was stupid, really, but the fact of the matter was that she hadn’t wanted to show any sign of weakness in her father’s presence. She was still infuriatingly that little girl who believed she could morph herself into the son Bernard Fairclough so wanted if she tried hard enough. Big boys didn’t cry, so neither would she. Thus anything that threatened a wellspring of emotion from her while her father stood there observing, evaluating, and dismissing her was something that had to be avoided.

But the subject wasn’t closed. How could it be? If Ian had been making monthly payments to Vivienne Tully for years, there was more than one reason that Manette had to get to the story behind that: There was also her mother to consider. Her mother, after all, owned Fairclough Industries. It had been her inheritance. Her father might have run it for decades with great success, but it was a private company with a small but powerful board of directors. Her mother and not her father was its chairman. For Valerie’s own father had been no fool. Just because Bernie Dexter had become Bernard Fairclough, this did not mean he had Fairclough blood running through his veins. So there was no way on earth that Valerie’s father would have risked Fairclough Industries falling into the hands of someone who was not a Fairclough born.

She’d talked everything over with Freddie. Thankfully, he’d not had a date with Sarah on the previous night, although he’d had a lengthy conversation with the woman, his hushed voice sounding amused and affectionate. Manette had gritted her teeth through this, and when her jaw had begun to ache and the conversation did not end, she’d gone into the sitting room and used the treadmill till the sweat ran down her chest and soaked her jersey. Finally, Freddie had wandered in, his face slightly flushed and the tips of his ears quite pink. She would have concluded they’d had telephone sex, but Manette didn’t see that as Freddie’s style.

She ran for another five minutes to make her workout look legitimate. Freddie mouthed wow in ostensible admiration for her endurance and took himself into the kitchen. There she found him bent over a book of crossword puzzles, looking thoughtful and tapping the non-business end of a Biro against his lip.

She said to him, “Not going out tonight?”

He said, “Giving it a bit of a rest.”

“The old prong tired, is he?”

Freddie blushed. “Oh no. He’s very up for the job.”

“Freddie McGhie!”

Freddie’s eyes got wide and then he caught the innuendo. “Lord. Didn’t mean it that way,” he laughed. “We decided — ”

“You and the lady or you and the prong?”

“Sarah and I decided to slow things just a bit. Seems that a relationship should have more to it than tearing off one’s clothes within ten minutes of hello.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Manette said without thinking.

“Are you? Why?”

“Oh, well… I…” She thought for a moment and came up with, “I don’t want you to make a mistake. To be hurt. You know.”

He gazed at her. She felt the heat climb her chest and ease its way up her neck. A change of subject was needed and Manette’s conversation with Bernard was just the ticket.

Freddie had listened in that Freddie way: giving her his complete attention. When she was finished, he said, “I think we both must talk to him at this point, Manette.”

Manette was surprised by the strength of her gratitude. Still, she knew that they had only one option when it came to getting information from her father. It was likely that Mignon had managed to learn whatever it was she’d learned via either her impressive skills with the Internet or her dexterous turning of the screws of their father’s guilt. Mignon had never been wrong about their father’s preference for Nicholas. She’d merely dealt with that preference in a fashion that served her own ends from the first, becoming more expert at this the older she grew. But neither Manette nor Freddie possessed that sort of manipulative expertise. The way Manette saw it, only Valerie’s presence and Valerie’s learning about the money drain would move Bernard now. There was simply too much on the line — the ruin of an entire firm, just for starters — to let matters lie. If Manette’s father wasn’t willing to look into the money situation, to sort it out, and to stop it, she knew her mother certainly would be.

They set off for Ireleth Hall in midmorning. Soon enough the rain began to fall. Late autumn and it poured buckets in Cumbria. In another month, it would begin to snow. They’d get a bit where they lived in Great Urswick. Farther north, the steep, narrow passes over the fells would close until next spring.

When Freddie parked the car near the vast front door of Ireleth Hall, Manette turned to him. “Thanks for this, Freddie,” she said.

He said, “Eh?” and looked genuinely perplexed.

“For coming along with me. I do appreciate it.”

“Tosh. We’re in this together, old girl.” And before she could reply, Freddie was out of the car and coming round to open her own door. “Let’s beard the lion before we lose our nerve. If things get bad we can always ring your sister and request an interesting diversion.”

Manette chuckled. Freddie did know her family, didn’t he. Well, of course he did. He’d been a member of it for nearly half his life. She said without thinking of the implications, “Why on earth did we ever divorce, Freddie?”

“Continual failure on someone’s part to recap the toothpaste as I recall,” he replied lightly.

They didn’t knock upon the door, merely entering the long, rectangular hall where the autumn chill suggested a fire needed to be lit in the enormous fireplace. Manette shouted out a hello that seemed to echo off the walls. Freddie did likewise, calling out Bernard’s and Valerie’s names.

Valerie was the one who replied. They heard her walking along the corridor upstairs. In a moment, she came down. She smiled and said, “What a nice surprise to see you. Together as well.” She said the last as if expecting from them a happy announcement of the reconciliation type. Not very likely, Manette thought. Her mother didn’t know about Freddie and his wildly successful foray into the world of Internet dating.

Manette saw that Valerie’s assumption could be extremely useful in this moment, though. She reached for her former husband’s hand and said coyly, “We were hoping to have a word with you and Dad. Is he around?”

Valerie looked even more pleased. She said, “Goodness. He must be. Let me see if I can find him. Freddie dear, will you light that fire? Shall we meet in here or would you prefer — ”

“Here’s just fine,” Manette said. She held on to Freddie’s hand and looked at him, “Isn’t it, Freddie?”

Freddie was, as always, blushing, which Manette considered a perfect touch. As her mother left the room he said, “I say, old girl,” to which Manette replied, “Thanks for playing along,” before she lifted his hand and gave it a swift and affectionate kiss. “You’re a brick. Let’s see to the fire. Mind the flue’s open.”

By the time Valerie returned with Bernard, the fire was roaring and Manette and Freddie were standing in front of it, toasting their backsides. To Manette, it was fairly clear from the expression on her parents’ faces that they’d had a brief conversation about the nature of what Freddie and she had come to talk about. Her father wore a look of anticipation that equaled her mother’s. No surprise there, really. They’d both adored Freddie from the day Manette had brought him home for an introduction.

Her father offered coffee. Her mother offered toasted tea cakes, chocolate gateau, biscotti from a bakery in Windermere. Both Manette and Freddie demurred politely. Manette said, “Let’s sit, though,” and led Freddie to one of the sofas perpendicular to the fireplace. Her parents took the other. Both of them, interestingly, sat on the edge as if ready to spring up and run at the least provocation. It was either that or being ready to dash off for a bottle of the bubbly. Hope did always spring eternal, Manette thought, when it came to what people believed was possible.

She said, “Freddie?” as an indication to him to take the bull by the horns.

He said, looking from her father to her mother, “Bernard, Valerie, it’s about Ian and the books.”

Alarm swept across Bernard’s features. He looked at his wife as if drawing the conclusion that he’d been bushwhacked by her in a scheme with their daughter, while Valerie looked mystified although she said nothing, merely waiting for more information. Manette didn’t know if Freddie noticed this. It didn’t matter much, because he went on directly, saying, “I know this isn’t going to go down well in some quarters, but we have to sort out a way to deal with Mignon’s monthly payments. Or, preferably, to stop them altogether. And we have to get to the bottom of this matter of Vivienne Tully. What with the money that’s gone into Arnside House and the money to Mignon and the money to Vivienne… I’d love you to think Fairclough Industries is awash with cash, but the truth is that along with the expense of the children’s garden here at the hall, we’re going to have to cut back somewhere. And sooner rather than later.”

It was all so vintage Freddie, Manette thought. He was earnest and truthful, guileless to a fault. There was no possible way her father could argue that this outlay of money was not Freddie’s concern. Freddie was not accusing him of anything. In addition, no one was more appropriate than Freddie to be looking through the books to see where the business stood after Ian’s death anyway.

She waited for her father’s response. So did Freddie. So did Valerie. The fire crackled and popped and a log rolled off the grate. Bernard took this opportunity to temporise. He took up the tongs and the hearth brush and dealt with the problem while the three of them watched him.

Valerie said, when he turned back to them, “Tell me about the money going out to Vivienne Tully, Freddie,” although when she said it, her eyes were fixed on her husband.

Freddie said affably, “Well, it’s a bit peculiar. It’s evidently been going on for years, increasing incrementally. I’ve more documentation from Ian’s computer accounts to sort through, but from what I’ve gathered so far, it seems like a large pile of money went out to her — via a bank transfer — some years ago, then a gap of a few years with nothing going out to her, and then a monthly allowance of some sort appears to have begun.”

“When would this have been?” Valerie asked steadily.

“Round eight and a half years ago. Now, I know she sits on the board of the foundation, Bernard — ”

“I beg your pardon?” Valerie turned to her husband and said his name as Freddie continued with, “But that position, as with all charitable boards, would be unpaid save for expenses, of course. Only, what she’s being paid far exceeds any expenses unless” — and here he chuckled and Manette wanted to kiss him for the sheer innocence of that chuckle — “she’s dining out every night with potential donors and sending their children to public schools to boot. That not being the case-”

“I’m getting the picture,” Valerie said. “Aren’t you, Bernard? Or is the truth of the matter that there’s no picture for you to get?”

Bernard was looking at Manette. Of course he would want to know what she had told Freddie and what sort of game they were playing with him now. He would feel betrayed as well. What he’d told her on the previous day, he’d told her in confidence. Well, had he told her everything, Manette thought, she might have kept the truth to herself. But he hadn’t done, had he? He’d told her just enough to appease her in that moment, or so he had believed.

Bernard tried to present his earlier excuse, saying, “I’ve no idea why there were payments to Vivienne. It’s possible that Ian felt he had to…” He stumbled here, looking for a reason. “Perhaps this was a means of protecting me.”

“From what, exactly?” Valerie asked. “As I recall, Vivienne accepted employment in a more senior position with a firm in London. She wasn’t dismissed. Or was she? Is there something I don’t know?” And then to Freddie, “Exactly how much money are we talking about?”

Freddie named the sum. Freddie named the bank. Valerie’s lips parted. Manette could see the whites of her teeth, gritted together. Her gaze fixed on Bernard. He looked away.

Valerie said to him, “How would you prefer me to interpret this, Bernard?”

Bernard said nothing.

She said, “Shall I believe she’s been blackmailing Ian for some reason? Perhaps he was cooking the books and she knew it so he cooked them some more, benefitting her? Or perhaps she promised to take herself out of the picture and say nothing to Niamh of his sexual proclivities as long as he paid her… although that wouldn’t explain why he continued to pay her once he left Niamh for Kaveh, would it, darling? So let’s go with the first idea. Freddie, is there any indication Ian was cooking the books?”

“Well, only in that the payments to Mignon have increased as well. But as to any money going his own way, there’s nothing — ”

“Mignon?”

“Right. Her allowance has taken a rather large jump,” Freddie said. “Problem with that, the way I see it, is that the jump doesn’t actually match necessary expenses, if you know what I mean. Of course there was the surgery, but that would have been one payment, wouldn’t it? And considering she lives right here on the property, what has she got in the way of actual expenses? I know she does tend to spend a bit on her Internet shopping, but really, how much can that cost? Well, of course, I suppose it could cost a fortune, couldn’t it, if one became addicted to shopping on the Internet or something, but…”

Freddie babbled on a bit. Manette knew he could feel the tension between her parents and she knew his babbling was a reaction to this. He had to have known that they’d be walking into a minefield, talking to her parents together about the money going out to Vivienne and to Mignon, but in his Freddie innocence, he hadn’t considered exactly how many mines lay within that field, waiting to explode.

There was silence at the end of Freddie’s remarks. Valerie had her gaze concreted on Bernard. Bernard ran his hand back over his head. He opted for an attempt at redirection, saying to Manette, “I wouldn’t have thought this was possible for you.”

“What?” Manette said.

“You know very well. I thought our relationship was rather different to what it apparently is. My error, I see.”

To which Freddie said quickly, “I say, Bernard, this has nothing to do with Manette,” and with such firmness that Manette looked at her former husband. Freddie put his hand on hers and squeezed it, going on to say, “Her concerns are completely legitimate, in the circumstances. And she only knows about the payments because I told her. This is a family business — ”

“And you’re not family,” Bernard snapped. “You were once, but you took yourself out of that position and if you think — ”

“Do not,” Manette cut in, “talk to Freddie that way. You’re lucky to have him. We’re all lucky to have him. He appears to be the only honest person working in a position of responsibility at the company.”

“Does that include you, then?” her father asked.

“I’m not sure that matters,” Manette told him, “because it certainly includes you.” Perhaps, she thought, she would have said nothing at the end of the day, not wishing to be the one to devastate her own mother. But her father’s remarks to Freddie took things too far in Manette’s eyes, although she didn’t pause to consider why this was the case since the only thing her father had actually said was the absolute truth: Freddie wasn’t a member of the family any longer. She’d seen to that. She said to her mother, “I think Dad has something he’d like to say, something he’d like to explain about himself and Vivienne Tully.”

“I’m taking that point very well, Manette,” Valerie said. And to Freddie, “Stop the payments to Vivienne at once. Contact her through the bank to which the payments have gone. Tell them to inform her it’s my decision.”

Bernard said, “That’s not — ”

“I don’t care what it is and it isn’t,” Valerie said. “Nor should you. Or have you a reason to be paying her that you’d care to explain?”

Bernard’s expression was agonised. Had things been different, Manette thought she might actually have felt sorry for him. She gave passing consideration to what shits men were, and she waited for her father to attempt to lie his way out of this situation as he was surely going to do, in the hope that she would say nothing about their conversation and what he’d admitted to her about his affair with Vivienne Tully.

But Bernard Fairclough had always been the luckiest bastard on the planet, and that proved to be the case in that moment. For the door burst open as they sat there waiting for Bernard to answer, and the wind swept in. As Manette turned, thinking she and Freddie had left it off the latch, her brother Nicholas strode into the room.

LANCASTER LANCASHIRE

Deborah knew the only course open to her was to speak to the woman with Alatea Fairclough. If indeed she was correct in her surmise that what was going on with Alatea had to do with conceiving a child, then she seriously doubted that Alatea was going to be willing to talk about it, especially to someone who’d already been found out as misrepresenting her true purpose in Cumbria. Nor was she likely to unburden herself to a tabloid journalist. Thus, the other woman seemed like the only possibility to get to the bottom of Alatea’s odd behaviour and to learn whether it had anything to do with the death of Ian Cresswell.

She rang Zed on his mobile. He barked, “You took your bloody sweet time. Where the hell are you? What’s going on? We had a deal and if you’re reneging — ”

She said, “They’ve gone into a science building.”

“Well, that’s got us nowhere in a basket. Could be she’s just taking a course. Mature student, right? The other could be doing the same thing.”

“I must talk to her, Zed.”

“I thought you already went that route with no result.”

“I don’t mean Alatea. Obviously, she’s not going to talk to me any more than she’s going to talk to you. I mean the other, the woman she fetched from the disabled soldiers’ home. She’s the one I need to talk to.”

“Why?”

And here was where things got tricky. “They seem to have a relationship of some sort. They were talking quite companionably all the way from the car park to the science building. They seemed like friends, and friendships mean confidences shared.”

“They also mean keeping those confidences to oneself.”

“Of course. But I find that, outside of London, the Met have a certain cachet with people. Say ‘Scotland Yard CID’ and show your identification and suddenly what was sworn to secrecy gets offered for police consumption.”

“Same thing with a reporter’s work,” Zed noted.

Was he joking? Deborah wondered. Probably not. She said, “I take your point, of course.”

“Then — ”

“I think I might be a less threatening presence.”

“How so?”

“It seems obvious. First, it would be two against one: two complete strangers confronting a woman about her friendship with another woman. Second… Well, there’s your size, Zed, which you have to admit could be rather threatening.”

“I’m a lamb. She’ll see that.”

“Perhaps she would. But then there’s the entire matter of who we are. She’ll want to see our identification. Picture the result. I show her mine, you show her yours, and what’s she going to think — let alone do — when she sees the Met in bed with The Source? It wouldn’t work. The only route we have is for me to talk to this woman privately, see where that takes us, and share the information with you.”

“And how’m I s’posed to know you’ll do that? I see this as a bloody good route to a double cross.”

“With your ability to break the story of Scotland Yard’s presence up here on the front page of The Source at any moment? Believe me, Zed, I’m hardly going to play games with you.”

He was silent. Deborah had retreated a safe distance from the George Childress Centre. She had it in sight, but she didn’t want to risk being seen by Alatea Fairclough should she and the other woman emerge. The way she reckoned, the safest route to take at this point was to return to the disabled soldiers’ home and to wait there for Alatea and her companion to turn up. It could take hours, obviously, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice but a long wait in Zed’s car.

Which was what she told him. She also said that if he had any other ideas she would be happy to entertain them.

Luckily, he hadn’t. He wasn’t stupid. He did see that a direct confrontation of the two women together, right on the campus of the University of Lancaster, bore the distinct possibility of getting them nowhere. Superficially at least, the women were engaged in nothing that even looked suspicious. “Aha! What’re you two doing together?” was a very likely route to “None of your business.”

Zed saw that, although he made it clear to Deborah that he also didn’t like it. It wasn’t his style, he told her, to sit and wait. Journalists didn’t do that. Journalists dug and confronted and got the story. That was at the very core of what a journalist was. That was part of the rich tradition of the profession.

Deborah wanted to scoff at that one, but she made various murmurs of assent. Too right, yes indeed, I understand. But at the moment they didn’t even know the name of the woman with whom Alatea had come to the university, and without this at the very least, neither one of them could dig for anything.

She brought Zed round to her way of thinking, albeit reluctantly. He finally said he would meet her at the same spot where she’d hopped out of the car earlier. They’d head back to the disabled soldiers’ home and there they would wait for the return of Alatea Fairclough and her companion. They’d lay their plans during their wait, he said. And there would be a plan, Sergeant Cotter. No way was he going to miss out on this story because of some double dealing at her end.

“There’ll be no double dealing,” Deborah said. “I recognise that you’ve got me in a tricky spot if I don’t work with you, Zed.”

He chuckled. “That’s what good reporters do.”

“Yes, I’m definitely learning that,” she told him.

They rang off. Deborah waited a few more minutes to see if Alatea and her companion might emerge. They did not. From Deborah’s recollection of the notice board inside the building’s lobby, there were no lecture halls within. It was given over to offices and laboratories. This meant that Alatea and the other woman were probably not there as mature students, as Zed had suggested. And since reproductive science was one of the disciplines studied there, Deborah was certain she was on the track of what Alatea Fairclough had to hide.

VICTORIA LONDON

Barbara Havers had to return to the Yard. She needed Winston Nkata’s expertise, and other than a return to Victoria Street, the only way she reckoned she could get it was to convince him to disappear for a few hours and to meet her somewhere with access to the Web. She didn’t have that at her bungalow. She didn’t even own a laptop, having long considered them a drain on the time of the individuals who possessed them. The whole world of the information superhighway was too bloody much for her. She’d liked things better when everything had been controlled simply by on and off switches and when the push-button telephone and telly remotes were as far as technology had gone. Make a few calls and put the burden of information searching on someone else. That was the ticket.

Now, however, things were different. It was the investigator’s mental shoe leather that got worn down, not the real thing. But while she was finally, albeit reluctantly, developing her capabilities in the area of digging through the ether of the World Wide Web, she was nowhere close to Winston’s level. How did one locate naughty underwear ads featuring a specific model? That was the question. He would have the answer.

She reckoned she could phone him, but that wouldn’t be the same. She needed to see what was on the screen as a result of his relentless Googling, clicking, and double-clicking.

So she took herself back to New Scotland Yard. She rang him from the lobby. Meet me in the library, she told him. They had a cloak-and-dagger state of affairs going on. The guv needed to be kept in the dark.

“Barb…,” he replied.

Barbara knew exactly what it meant when Winston used that tone. But she also knew how to quell his concerns.

“The inspector needs some information,” she said. Winnie, she knew, would do anything for Lynley. “You c’n break away, can’t you? It won’t take long.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Looking up dirty pictures.”

“On a Met computer? You gone dead mad?”

“Hillier’s orders,” she said. “Really, Winnie, d’you think I actually want to do this? The inspector’s following up on something. It’ll probably turn out to be a fat old cow modelling bras and knickers.”

He said he’d meet her in the library. But he also said — and this was Winston through and through — that if he ran into the guv and she wanted to know where he was heading, he would tell her the truth.

“But you will try to avoid her, won’t you?” Barbara clarified. “The inspector’s already in trouble with her for bringing me into this. I bring you into it as well and she’s going to go for his jugular.”

That did it, as she hoped it would. He would avoid Isabelle Ardery as best he could.

He was, apparently, successful in this. When Barbara reached the Met’s library on the twelfth floor, Nkata was waiting. He confessed that he’d run into Dorothea Harriman, however, and this wasn’t good news. The departmental secretary had methods of discovery so advanced that she’d probably read Winston’s intentions about the library by looking at his shoelaces. Well, it couldn’t be helped.

They set to work. Winston’s capable fingers flew across the keys. Once he had the spelling of Alatea Fairclough’s lengthy birth name, he was unstoppable. Screen after screen flashed by. Barbara didn’t attempt to keep up. Winston didn’t explain what he was doing or where they were heading on the Web. He just glanced at things, made a decision of some sort, hit a few more keys, and off they went. He would have done fine in forensic computer work, Barbara reckoned. She was about to tell him this, when a furious “Sergeants Havers and Nkata,” told her that Dorothea Harriman had let something drop and Isabelle Ardery had managed to unearth them.

Nkata swung round from the computer. If a black man could have been said to go pale, that was what happened. Barbara herself went empty. What was it with the bloody superintendent? she wondered. Was this about Lynley and where he was and why he wasn’t performing nightly between her legs? Or was it about holding the rest of them beneath her thumbnail, like insects about to be pinned to a board?

Winston stood slowly. He looked at Barbara. She said, “I borrowed Winston for a few minutes, guv. Something I needed to look up and he’s clever with this stuff. I can do it, but it takes me forever and I’m generally hopeless when it comes to figuring where to go next.”

Isabelle looked her over. Her gaze rested most meaningfully on Barbara’s tee-shirt, which was perfectly readable since she’d flung her donkey jacket on a nearby chair. Christ died for our sins… Let’s not disappoint him clearly did not amuse.

Ardery said, “Holiday’s over, Sergeant Havers. I want you back at work and wearing something appropriate within an hour.”

Barbara said, “Due respect, guv — ”

“Don’t push this, Barbara,” Isabelle told her. “You may have six days, six weeks, or six months of holiday time due, but it seems rather obvious that you’re not on holiday. That being the case, get back to work.”

“I was only going to say — ”

“Sergeant Havers!” Isabelle barked this time. “Do it now.”

Barbara said it in a rush. “Guv, I can’t get home and change my clothes and be back in an hour. It’s impossible. Plus I need to get over to University College. If you’ll let me have a day — this day, this one day more, I swear — I’m out of here in thirty seconds and I’m back tomorrow dressed like…” She couldn’t come up with a name. “Like whoever.” She wanted to add “Picture me gorgeous” but she reckoned the superintendent would respond with “I’d rather picture you dead,” so she let that one go. She did add, “I twisted Winston’s arm, guv. Please don’t take things out on him.”

“Things?” the superintendent snapped. “What things would those be, Sergeant Havers?”

Next to her, Barbara heard Winston moan, just a small sound that the superintendent didn’t take note of, thank God. She said, “I don’t know. Just… whatever… things. Stress of the job. Life.”

“Referring to what?” Isabelle was furious now. Barbara wondered how much further she could dig herself.

“Guv, I don’t know,” she said, although being without Lynley to bonk was fairly high on her list. “I didn’t mean anything by that, anyway. Just something to say.”

“Yes? Well, don’t play round with ‘just something to say,’ all right? Finish what you’re doing here, then get out of this building. I’ll see you here tomorrow morning and if I do not, you’ll be a traffic warden in Uzbekistan by tomorrow afternoon. Is that clear?”

“Don’t know how it could be clearer,” Barbara said.

“And you,” Isabelle said to Winston, “are coming with me.”

“No sign of knickers,” was what Nkata said in response, although he said it quickly and he said it to Barbara, adding, “Check out Raul Montenegro,” before he left her.

Barbara waited till the superintendent and Nkata had left the Met library. She cursed her bad luck when it came to Ardery. She was going to have to start walking the perfectly straight and the excruciatingly narrow with the superintendent. Failing that, she had little doubt that Isabelle would be only too happy to drop-kick her bum into another time zone.

She replaced Winston at the computer terminal. She gazed at the screen. She read what was there — damn if it wasn’t in bloody Spanish again — but she found the name Winston had mentioned before being carted off. Raul Montenegro popped out from a jumble of other words. Okay, Barbara thought, let’s follow that lead.

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Throughout the years, Manette had seen her younger brother in many different states, from stone-cold sober to barely conscious. She’d seen him regretful. She’d seen him earnest. She’d seen him manipulative, mournful, agitated, anxious, pleasantly high, and unpleasantly paranoid. But she’d never seen him as angry as he was when he burst through the door to Ireleth Hall, letting it crash back behind him.

As entrances went, it was damn effective. It left all of them gaping. Most conveniently, it left Bernard Fairclough in the welcome state of not having to answer any further questions about Vivienne Tully and the payments made into her bank account.

“Nicky, what’s wrong?” Valerie demanded.

“Are you all right?” Bernard said. “Where’s Alatea? Has something happened to her?”

“Nothing’s happened to Alatea.” Nicholas’s voice was brusque. “Let’s talk about Scotland Yard, all right? You won’t mind that, will you? Will you, Manette? What about you, Freddie? I s’pose I can assume the whole collection of you are in on this.”

Manette looked at her father. She wasn’t about to take this on. She closed her fingers over Freddie’s hand to indicate to him he wasn’t to say anything either. She felt him look at her, but he said nothing. Instead, his hand turned and he wove his fingers with hers.

Bernard said, “What are you talking about, Nick? Sit down. You look awful. Are you not sleeping?”

“Don’t start the bloody false concern with me,” he cried. “There’s someone up here from London to investigate me, and if you’re about to suggest you know nothing about it, that’s just not on.” He strode to the fireplace. He towered over his father. “What the hell did you think? That I wouldn’t notice? That I wouldn’t work it out? That I’m so bloody addle-brained from drugs and done up with booze that I wouldn’t wonder why… Christ in heaven, I ought to kill you and have done with it. It’d be easy enough, wouldn’t it? I’ve apparently got such talents in the area of homicide that one more dead body in the boathouse would hardly count.”

“Nicholas!” Valerie rose from the sofa. “Stop this at once.”

“Oh, you’re part of it, are you?” He sneered at her. “I would’ve thought you — ”

“Not part of it. All of it,” Valerie said. “Are you listening to me? I’m all of it.”

That brought him to silence. Manette felt the shock of her mother’s words, like a ball of ice forming within her stomach. But confusion replaced shock soon enough. It was easier to be confused by the declaration than it was to follow it to its logical conclusion.

“Valerie,” her husband said quietly. “This isn’t necessary.”

“I’m afraid it is at this point.” She said to Nicholas, “The police are here because of me. Your father fetched them at my request. It was not his idea. Do you understand? He went to London. He did the legwork because he knows someone at New Scotland Yard. But it was no more his idea than” — she gestured to Manette and Freddie, still holding each other’s hand on the sofa — “than it was your sister’s. Or Mignon’s. Or anyone else’s. I wanted this, Nicholas. No one else.”

Nicholas looked like a man who’d taken a mortal blow. He finally said, “My own bloody mother. Did you actually think… You thought…?”

“It’s not quite what you’re concluding,” she said.

“That I might… that I could have…” Then he hit his fist on the mantelpiece. Manette winced at the force he used. “I’d kill Ian? That’s what you think? That I was capable of murder? What’s the matter with you?”

“Nick. Enough.” Bernard had spoken. “If nothing else, you’ve a history of — ”

“I goddamn know my history. I lived it. You bloody well don’t need to recite it for me. But unless I spent a decade or two of my history in some sort of fugue, I don’t recall ever lifting a hand against anyone.”

“No one,” Valerie said, “lifted a hand against Ian, either. That’s not how he died.”

“Then what the hell — ”

“Valerie,” Bernard said. “This will make things worse.”

“They can’t get worse,” Nicholas said. “Unless there’s another reason Mother wanted Scotland Yard up here. Want me to think that, do you? Are they investigating Manette? What about Mignon? What about Fred? Or has he just continued running to do Manette’s bidding as usual?”

Manette said, “Don’t you dare take this out on Freddie. And yes the detective has been to see us. And the first we knew there was a detective was when we had a Scotland Yard ID shoved under our noses.”

“Well at least you got that much,” he said. And to his mother, “Have you any idea — any bloody idea at all — ”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry. But there are things beyond your hurt — ”

“Like what?” he shouted. And then the pieces seemed to fall into place. “Is this about the family business? Who gets what. Who runs what. Who has the power. And when and how.”

“Nicholas, please. There are other things — ”

“D’you think I care about any of that? D’you think I want it? D’you think that’s why I’m here, back at home? I don’t give a toss who runs the business. Give it to Manette. Give it to Freddie. Give it to someone off the street. Do you have any idea what this has done to Alatea, having someone actually come into our home, someone prowling round pretending to be… This… this investigator of yours has lied to us from the first, Mother. Do you understand that? She’s come to the house, she’s told a stupid tale about why she’s here, she’s frightened Allie, who now, apparently, thinks… Oh God, I don’t know what she thinks, but she’s in a state and if she thinks I’m using… Don’t you see what you’ve done? My own wife… If she walks out on me…”

“She?” Bernard spoke. “‘She’s come to the house’? Nick, what are you talking about?”

“What the hell do you think I’m talking about? Your sodding Scotland Yard investigator.”

“It’s a man,” Valerie said. “Nicholas, it’s a man, not a woman. It’s a man …We know nothing about — ”

“Oh too right, Mum.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Manette told her brother.

“He has someone with him,” Bernard added. “But it’s another man, Nick. A forensic specialist. Another man. If a woman’s been to Arnside House to talk to you and Alatea, it’s to do with something else entirely.”

Nicholas blanched then. He was making connections rapidly. Manette could see that much as the thoughts passed quickly across his face.

Unaccountably he said, “Montenegro.”

“Who?” Bernard asked.

But as swiftly as Nicholas had entered Ireleth Hall, just as swiftly he left it.

LANCASTER LANCASHIRE

Deborah’s two hours in a parked car with Zed Benjamin were broken only by a single call on her mobile. She thought it might be Simon, and she glanced to see, rapidly assessing whether she should answer or let it go to her voice mail rather than risk something less than an “official” conversation in the presence of the journalist. It was Tommy, though. She reckoned she could work with that.

She said to Zed, “My guv,” and when she answered she said, “Inspector Lynley. Hullo.”

“That’s a formal touch.”

“All due respect,” Deborah told him cheerfully. She felt Zed’s eyes on her. She kept her own fixed on the disabled soldiers’ home.

“If only I received that at work,” Tommy said. Then, “I’ve met up with Simon.”

“I thought you might have done.”

“He’s unhappy with both of us. With me for getting you into this. With you for not getting out of it. Where are you now?”

“Still in Lancaster.”

“How did you get there?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Deborah, Simon’s rung me from your hotel.”

“You said you saw him.”

“This was afterwards. He went back to the hotel, you were gone, but your hire car’s there. He’s obviously concerned.”

“Not enough to ring me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Deb. Have some pity on the man. He knows you’re in a temper. He knows you won’t answer the phone if you see he’s the caller. How did you get to Lancaster?”

She had no choice, but she did need to be careful with her phrasing. “Mr. Benjamin from The Source is working with me at the moment, sir.”

She heard his mild curse so she quickly went on. “I’m waiting to speak to the woman who was with Alatea. They paid a call upon someone at the Faculty of Science and Technology and we need to know why.”

“Deb.” She could hear in his voice that he wasn’t sure what approach to take with her just now. What would work? he was wondering. An appeal to her wiser nature? A veiled reference to their own past as lovers? It was an interesting position for him to be in, she reckoned.

He said, “You know Simon wants you back in London. He’s worried.”

“I don’t think London’s wise at the moment. I’m very close to something here.”

“That’s exactly what he’s worried about. You’ve been too close to a murderer once before.”

Guernsey, she thought. Like Bogart and Bergman when it came to Paris, she and Simon would always have Guernsey. All right, she’d been hurt. But she hadn’t died. She hadn’t even been close to dying. And this was different since she had no intention of ending up inside an earthen chamber with someone in possession of an antique hand grenade. She said, “This is important somehow. A loose end needing to be tied.”

“It’s hard to disagree with the science behind someone’s death, Deb. Simon’s conclusions are sound.”

“Perhaps. But there’s more here than his conclusions,” she said.

“I don’t disagree. You’re obviously finding Alatea Fairclough one of them. I have Havers on her in London, by the way.”

“So you see — ”

“As I said, I don’t disagree. It’s Simon I’m concerned about, frankly.”

“So you do think he could be wrong?”

“He’s far too preoccupied with you. That sometimes blinds someone to what’s right in front of them. Still and all, I can’t allow you — ”

“No one’s allowing anything.”

“Dreadful choice of words. I can see we’re going to go round and round. If nothing else, I do know you. All right, have a care. Will you do that much?”

“I will. What about you?”

“There are a few loose ends on my end as well. I’ll be doing some tying. You will ring me if there’s any reason at all, won’t you?”

“Definitely, Inspector.” She rang off at that. She glanced at Zed Benjamin to see if she’d carried off the conversation without raising his suspicions. But he was in the process of sinking down into his seat as best as he could. He nodded in the direction of the soldiers’ home. Alatea Fairclough and her companion were just making the turn into the car park.

Deborah and Zed remained where they were, and in less than a minute, the other woman came round the side of the building and went inside. Shortly thereafter, Alatea drove out of the car park, heading off in a direction that suggested she was going to retrace her route to Arnside. This was well and good, Deborah thought. It was time to see what she could get from this other woman.

She said to Zed, “I’m off.”

He said, “Quarter of an hour and I’m ringing you on your mobile.”

She said, “You can do that, of course. But do consider you’re my ride back to Milnthorpe so I’m hardly likely to jeopardise that.”

Zed grumbled a bit. He said at the least he was getting out of the bloody car and having a stretch because two hours of waiting in, virtually, a doubled-up position had taken their toll. Deborah said this was fine with her, it was a good idea, she’d be in contact with him should he wander far while she was inside the soldiers’ home.

“Oh, don’t,” Zed said, “worry your head on that score. I’ll be close by.”

Deborah had little doubt about that. He’d lurk in the bushes if he could do so, one ear pressed to a convenient window. But she knew this was as close as she was going to get to a compromise with the man, so she said she’d be as quick as she could, and she crossed the street.

Inside the Kent-Howath Foundation for Disabled Veterans, she decided on a direct approach, having very little other choice in the matter as she didn’t possess police identification. She approached a reception desk and worked upon her most pleasant smile. She said to the receptionist — an antique soldier himself, by the look of him — that she’d just seen a woman come into the building: “rather tall, brown hair tied back, long skirt, boots…?” She was certain this woman was a schoolmate of her own elder sister, and she would very much like to have a moment to speak with her. She knew this was a silly request. After all, the woman might turn out to be a total stranger. On the other hand, if she was who Deborah thought she was …

“You mean Lucy, I expect,” the elderly man said. He was wearing a military uniform. It hung upon him like a bride to her husband on her wedding night. His neck rose from its collar, corrugated with flesh. “She’s our social lady. Games and exercises and groups and the like. Going to the pageant at Christmas. That sort of thing.”

“Lucy, yes. That was her name indeed,” Deborah said. “Is there any chance …” She cast a hopeful look at him.

“Always a chance for a pretty gel,” he said. “Where’d you get all that lovely hair, eh?”

“Grandmother on my father’s side,” Deborah told him.

“Lucky you. Always had an eye for the ginger, me.” He reached for a phone and punched in a number. He said, “Gorgeous woman out here asking for you, darling,” and then he listened for a moment and added, “No. Someone new this is. How’d you get so popular, eh?” He chuckled at something she apparently said, rang off, and told Deborah that she’d be right out.

Deborah said confidentially, “This is terrible of me, but I can’t exactly recall her surname.”

“Keverne,” he said. “Lucy Keverne. That’d be what she was then and what she is now as she’s not married. Doesn’t even have a boyfriend. I keep trying, but she says I’m too young for her, she does.”

Deborah pooh-poohed this idea as was expected of her and went to wait on a wooden bench across from the receptionist’s desk. She gave scattered thoughts to what on earth she was going to say to Lucy Keverne, but she had little time to consider her approach. It wasn’t a minute later that the woman she’d seen with Alatea Fairclough came out into reception. She looked, understandably, a little puzzled, as she no doubt would be. Deborah reckoned that entertaining sudden visitors at her place of employment wasn’t a regular feature of her job.

Up close to her, Deborah could see that she was younger than she’d previously thought when viewing her from a distance. Her hair had grey strands wound through it, but these were premature, for her face was of a woman in her twenties. She wore fashionable glasses that complemented her pleasant features.

She cocked her head at Deborah and said, “How may I help you?” as she extended her hand. “Lucy Keverne.”

“Is there a place we can talk?” Deborah asked. “It’s rather a private matter.”

Lucy Keverne frowned. “A private matter? If you’re here to discuss the placement of a relative, I’m not the person you should speak to.”

“No, it’s not that. This rather relates to Lancaster University,” Deborah said. It was a stab in the semi-darkness, the George Childress Centre into which she and Alatea had gone providing the only bit of light.

It turned out to be a good stab. “Who are you?” Lucy sounded a bit alarmed. “Who sent you?”

“Is there somewhere we can go?” Deborah said. “Have you an office?”

Lucy Keverne glanced at the receptionist as she considered the various options. She finally said to Deborah, “Come with me, then,” and she took her towards the rear of the building where a sunroom looked out into a garden, which was unexpectedly large. They didn’t take seats in the sunroom, however. It was already occupied. Several elderly gents were nodding over newspapers and two others were playing cribbage in a corner.

Lucy took her through the glass doors and out into the garden. She said, “Who gave you my name?”

“Is that important?” Deborah asked her. “I’m looking for some help. I thought you might be it.”

“You’re going to need to be more specific.”

“Of course,” Deborah said. “Reproduction would be what I’m talking about. I’ve been trying to conceive a baby for years now. It turns out I have a condition that prevents gestation.”

“I’m sorry. That must be very difficult for you. But why would you think I could help you?”

“Because you went into the George Childress Centre with another woman, and I was there. I followed you here once you left the campus, hoping to speak to you.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed as she evaluated this. She would have to consider the potential for danger. They were speaking in a form of code, all of which was perfectly legal at the moment. A few steps in the wrong direction, however, and they could be walking on the other side of the law of the land.

“There were two of us,” Lucy said, not unwisely. “Why follow me? Why not follow her?”

“I took a chance.”

“And? Did I look more fertile to you?”

“More at ease. Far less desperate. After a few years one gets to know the look. There’s a hunger. It transmits from one woman to another, like a form of biological code. I don’t know how else to explain it. If you haven’t experienced it, you wouldn’t recognise it. I have, so I do.”

“All right. I can see that’s possible, but I don’t know what you want from me.”

The truth was what she wanted. But Deborah wasn’t quite sure how to get at it. She opted again for a form of her own truth. “I’m looking for a surrogate,” she said. “I think you can help me find one.”

“What sort of surrogate?”

“Are there different sorts?”

Lucy considered Deborah. They’d been walking on one of the garden paths, heading towards a large urn that marked one end of the garden, but now Lucy faced Deborah and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. She said, “You’ve not done much homework in this area, have you?”

“Clearly not.”

“Well, I suggest you do so. There are egg donors, sperm donors, surrogacy involving the gestational mother’s egg and donor sperm, surrogacy involving gestational mother’s egg and the natural father’s sperm, surrogacy with the biological mother’s egg and donor sperm, surrogacy with the biological mother’s egg and the natural father’s sperm. If you’re going to go down this route in one form or another, you have to begin with an understanding of how it all works. And,” she added, “all of the legalities relating to it.”

Deborah nodded, hoping she looked thoughtful. “Are you… Do you… I mean, I’m not sure how to ask this, but which route do you generally take?”

“I’m an egg donor,” she said. “Usually, I’m harvested.”

Deborah shuddered at the term, so impersonal, so clinical, so… so agricultural. But usually suggested that Lucy Keverne was open to other possibilities as well. She said to her, “And when it comes to surrogacy?”

“I’ve never been a surrogate before.”

“Before? So with this woman you accompanied to the university…?”

Lucy didn’t reply at once. She looked at Deborah as if trying to read her. She said, “I’m not prepared to talk about her. This is a confidential matter. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course. I see.” Deborah thought a bit of hand wringing would do at this point, plus an expression of desperation, which wasn’t at all difficult for her to manufacture. She said, “I’ve spoken to clinics, of course. What they’ve told me is that I’m on my own when it comes to surrogacy. I mean when it comes to finding a surrogate.”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “That’s how it is.”

“They’ve said a friend, a sister, a cousin, even one’s own mother. But how does someone like me approach all this? What do I do? Begin every conversation from now on with ‘Hullo, would you consider carrying my baby for me?’” And then quite surprisingly, Deborah did feel the desperation of her position, exactly what she wished to project to Lucy Keverne. She blinked hard, feeling tears rise to her eyes. She said, “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

And this, apparently, moved Lucy Keverne, for she put her hand on Deborah’s arm and drew her in the direction of a bench near a pond on which a skin of autumn leaves was floating. She said, “It’s a stupid law. It’s supposed to prevent women from carrying babies for profit. It’s supposed to protect women altogether. Of course, it’s a law made by men. I always find that rather ironic, to tell you the truth: men making laws for women. As if they know the first thing about protecting us from anything when most of the time they’re the source of our problems in the first place.”

“May I ask…” Deborah fished in her bag for a tissue. “You said that you’re an egg donor… But if you knew someone… Someone close to you… Someone in need… If someone asked you… Would you…” Hesitant woman in pursuit of help, she thought. No one else would be likely to ask this question directly of a total stranger.

Lucy Keverne didn’t look wary, but she hesitated. Clearly, Deborah thought, they were getting close to whatever relationship she had with Alatea Fairclough. It seemed to Deborah that Lucy herself had already named the possibilities: Alatea either needed her for her eggs or she needed her to be a surrogate. If there was another possibility, Deborah couldn’t see it. Surely they hadn’t been together to pay a social call upon someone in the George Childress Centre at Lancaster University.

Lucy said, “As I said, I’m an egg donor. Anything else is more than I’d take on.”

“You’d never be a surrogate then?” Hopeful, hopeful, presenting an earnest expression, Deborah thought.

“I’m sorry. No. It’s just… Too close to the heart, if you understand what I mean. I don’t think I could do it.”

“Would you know anyone? Anyone I could speak to? Anyone who might consider…?”

Lucy looked at the ground, at her boots. They were attractive boots, Deborah thought, Italian by the look of them. Not inexpensive. Lucy finally said, “You might want to look in Conception magazine.”

“You mean surrogates advertise in it?”

“God no. That’s illegal. But sometimes someone… You might possibly track down a donor that way. If a woman is willing to donate eggs, she might be willing to do more. Or she could well know someone who’d help you.”

“By carrying a baby.”

“Yes.”

“It must be… well, extraordinarily expensive.”

“No more than having your own child aside from the in vitro part of it. The surrogate herself can only ask you for reasonable expenses. Anything more than that is, of course, against the law.”

“So one has to find a woman of extraordinary compassion, I daresay,” Deborah said, “for her to be willing to put herself through that in the first place. And then to hand the baby over. It would take someone special.”

“It would, yes. That’s what it amounts to.” Lucy Keverne stood then and offered Deborah her hand to shake. She said, “I hope I’ve been some help to you.”

She had, in some ways, Deborah thought. But in other ways there were miles still to go. Nonetheless she stood and expressed her gratitude. She knew more now than she’d known before. How it related to the death of Ian Cresswell — even if it related — was still unclear.

VICTORIA LONDON

The name Raul Montenegro took Barbara Havers a few steps forward. She got onto a photograph of the bloke, along with an article written, alas, in Spanish. She followed a few links by means of this article and finally found herself looking at Alatea Vasquez y del Torres. She was quite a creation, looking like a South American film star. It was difficult to understand what she was doing in the photo on the arm of a bloke who resembled a toad, warts and all.

This was Raul Montenegro. He was a good eight inches shorter than Alatea, and an even better thirty years older. He wore a frightening Elvis Presley rug and he had a growth on his nose the approximate size of Portugal. But he was grinning like a cat with the cream, the canary, and sixteen mice, and Barbara had a feeling his expression was all about possessing the woman on his arm. Of course, Barbara couldn’t be sure of that, and there was only one way to know for certain.

She printed the page in question and she dug her mobile out of her shoulder bag. She rang Azhar at University College London.

He would help her, of course, he told her when she had him on his mobile. Latching on to a Spanish speaker would not be a problem at all.

Barbara asked should she come to Bloomsbury. Azhar said he would let her know. It would take him some time to locate the person he had in mind who could do the translation she needed. Where was Barbara?

In the bowels of the beast, she told him.

Ah, he said. You’re at work, then? Is it best if we come to you?

Just the opposite, Barbara told him. My life is safer if I do a runner.

Then he would ring her as soon as possible, knowing that their meeting would have to take place elsewhere, Azhar told her. And then he said carefully, “I must apologise, as well.”

“Why?” Barbara asked. And then she remembered: his morning altercation with Angelina. She said, “Oh. You mean the row. Well, it happens, doesn’t it? I mean, two people living together… One always wants to think love conquers all. Books and films and happily-ever-after with the love of one’s life. I don’t know much in that department, but what I do know tells me the ever-after’s a road with potholes no matter who you are. Seems to me the way of the wise is to hold on to what’s there, even though it’s not always easy, eh? I mean, what else is there at the end of the day but what we have with our fellows?”

He was silent. In the background Barbara could hear the noise of crockery and raised conversation. He must have taken her call in a cafeteria or a restaurant. This made her think of food and the fact that she hadn’t had any for hours.

He finally said, “I shall ring you back presently.”

“Sounds good to me,” she told him. “And, Azhar…?”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for helping me out.”

“That,” he told her, “will always be my pleasure.”

They rang off and Barbara considered the likelihood of another run-in with the superintendent if she went in search of food. This would take her to the canteen if she had something relatively nutritious in mind. Otherwise, there were vending machines. Or there was leaving the Yard altogether and waiting somewhere for Azhar’s return call. There was also having a smoke, which sounded bloody good to her at that point. This meant slinking off surreptitiously and hoping not to get caught in the stairwell. Or it meant going outside. Decisions, decisions, Barbara thought. She decided to buck up and stay and see if there was anything more that she could dig up by plugging away at Raul Montenegro.

BRYANBARROW CUMBRIA

Tim decided to go to school without protest because Kaveh was going to have to drive him. It was the only way he was going to get Kaveh alone. And alone was where he wanted the bloke because there was no way the two of them were going to have the little talk they needed to have if Gracie was there. Gracie was already upset enough. She didn’t need to hear that Kaveh had future plans with a wife, with parents, and with Bryan Beck farm that involved the elimination of irritating impediments with the surname Cresswell.

So he surprised Kaveh by getting out of bed on time and getting himself organised to go to Margaret Fox School for Terminal Nutcases such as himself. He helped Gracie get ready by setting out all her breakfast choices and making her a tuna and sweet corn sandwich, which he packed into a lunch bag along with an apple, a packet of crisps, and a banana. She thanked him with a dignity that told him she was still grieving for Bella, so one of the things he did instead of eating his own breakfast was to go to the garden and dig the doll’s coffin out of the soil so that he could stuff her into his rucksack and ultimately get her repaired in Windermere. He replaced the coffin and the soil and made it look the way Gracie had left it after Bella’s funeral. Then he returned to the house in time to bolt down a piece of Marmite toast before they had to leave.

He didn’t say anything to Kaveh while Gracie was in the car. Instead, he waited till they’d dropped her off at her C of E school in Crosthwaite and were well on their way up the Lyth Valley. At that point, he leaned against the passenger door and studied the bloke. What came into his head was the mental picture of Kaveh taking it from his father and both of them sweating so that the dim light in the room shone slick on their skin. Only it wasn’t a mental picture at all but really a memory because he’d seen it all through a sliver of open doorway and he’d been a witness to that moment of ecstasy and collapse, with his dad calling out hoarsely oh God, yes. The whole sight had been sickening to Tim, filling him with loathing and hate and horror. But it had touched something else as well, had stirred in him something unexpected, and the truth of the matter was that just for a moment the blood in him had rushed and heated. So afterwards, he’d used a pocket knife to cut himself and he’d poured vinegar on the wound to cleanse his hot and sinful blood.

But he could see how it had all come about and in the car he noted that Kaveh was young and handsome. A bent man like his dad would have fallen hard for that. Even, as things were apparently turning out, if Kaveh wasn’t so bent himself.

Kaveh glanced at Tim as they headed towards Winster. Loathing, after all, was something one could feel in the air. Kaveh said rather uneasily, “It’s good you’re going to school this morning, Tim. Your dad would be pleased.”

“My dad,” Tim said, “is dead.”

Kaveh said nothing. He shot another look at Tim, but the road was narrow and curved and he couldn’t afford more than just that look, which Tim knew was an attempt to assess how he was feeling and what he was likely to do.

“Which makes things real good for you,” Tim added.

“What?” Kaveh said.

“Dad being dead. That makes things exceptionally good.”

Kaveh surprised him then. They were coming up to a lay-by, and he pulled into it and crushed the brake with his foot. The morning traffic was heavy. Someone honked and gave Kaveh two fingers, but he either didn’t notice or he didn’t care.

“What,” Kaveh asked him, “are you talking about?”

“Dad, dead, and good for you, you mean?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. What are you talking about?”

Tim looked out of the window. There was little enough to see. Next to the car was a drystone wall, and the wall grew ferns like the plumes on ladies’ hats. There were probably sheep somewhere behind that wall, but he couldn’t see them. He could only see the rise of one of the fells in the distance and a wispy crown of cloud encircling its summit.

“I asked you a question,” Kaveh said. “Answer it please.”

“I don’t have to answer questions,” Tim said. “Not from you and not from anyone.”

“You do when you make an accusation,” Kaveh told him. “And that’s what you’ve done. You can try to pretend you haven’t, but that’s not going to work. So why don’t you tell me what you mean.”

“Why don’t you keep driving?”

“Because, like you, I don’t have to.”

Tim had desired this confrontation, but now he wasn’t sure he really did want it after all. There he was in an enclosed car with the man for whom his father had destroyed their entire family and wasn’t there a sense of menace here? Wasn’t the case that if Kaveh Mehran had been capable of walking into Tim’s birthday party and laying down the bald facts like a hand of cards, he was capable of pretty much anything?

No. Tim told himself he would not be afraid because if anyone was going to be afraid, it was Kaveh Mehran. Liar, cheat, rotter, and everything else.

He said, “So when’s the wedding, Kaveh? And what’re you planning to tell the bride? ’S she going to be brought into the picture of what you’ve been up to in this part of the world? Or is that why you’re getting rid of me and Gracie? I don’t s’pose we’ll be invited to the wedding. Guess that’d be a bit much. Gracie’d like to be a bridesmaid, though.”

Kaveh said nothing. Tim had to credit him for thinking a bit instead of blurting out something like his plans being none of Tim’s business. He was probably madly going through responses since the one thing he didn’t know was how Tim had managed to winkle out the truth.

Tim added, “Did you give Mum the news? Let me tell you, that’s not exactly going to make her day.”

What surprised Tim was what he was feeling as he spoke. He didn’t know what to call it. It was filling him up inside and making him want to do something to make it go away, but he couldn’t name what the feeling was, and he didn’t want to. He hated it when he felt something as a result of what other people did. He hated that he reacted to things. He wanted to be like a sheet of glass with everything rolling off him like rain and the fact that he wasn’t, that he hadn’t managed it yet, that there was no indication that he’d ever manage it …This knowledge was just as bad as feeling something in the first place. It spoke of a kind of condemnation: an eternal hell of being at the mercy of everyone else and no one being at the mercy of him.

“You and Gracie belong with your mother,” Kaveh said, choosing what was the easiest route for their conversation. “I’ve been happy to have you with me. I’d continue to be happy to have you with me, but — ”

“But the wife might not be so happy about that,” Tim sneered. “And with the parents as well, I guess the place would start getting a little crowded, wouldn’t it? Man, this worked out perfect for you, didn’t it? Like you even had it planned.”

Kaveh went perfectly still. Only his lips moved. They formed words and the words were, “What exactly are you talking about?”

There was something behind those words that was unexpected, that sounded like anger but more than anger. Tim thought in that instant that danger was anger with a d in front of it and maybe that’s where danger came from, born out of anger and what people did when anger came upon them, people like Kaveh. But he didn’t care. Let the bloke do anything and what difference did it make? He’d already done his worst.

“I’m talking,” Tim said, “about the fact that you’re getting married, having decided — I s’pose — that taking it up the shoot from a bloke got you what you’d wanted from the first and now that you have it, you’re ready to move on. You reckoned the farm is a good enough payment for what you had to do to get it, so you can bring on the wife and the kiddies now. Only, of course, there’s the problem of me and what I might say in front of the wife and in front of the parents, like ‘What about you and blokes, Kaveh? What about you and my dad? Why’d you change over to ladies, then? Arsehole getting stretched out of shape or something?’”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaveh said. He glanced over his shoulder at the coming traffic. He signaled his intention to rejoin the stream of cars.

“I’m talking about you taking it from my dad,” Tim said. “Up the arse, night after night. You think some woman’s going to want to marry you if she knows what you’ve been up to, Kaveh?”

“‘Night after night,’” Kaveh said, his brow furrowing. “‘Taking it’ from your dad. What are you talking about, Tim?” He began to move the car to the edge of the lay-by.

Tim reached over and killed the engine with a twist of the key. “You and my dad fucking each other,” Tim said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Kaveh’s jaw actually dropped. “Fucking… What’s wrong with your head? What’ve you been thinking? That your father and I…?” Kaveh made an adjustment to his seat, as if with the intention of settling in for a proper natter with Tim. He went on. “Your father was dear to me, Tim, a close and dear friend. I held him in the highest esteem, and we loved each other as close friends do. But that there might have been more than that… That he and I were… Are you thinking we were homosexual lovers? How could you have come to think that? I had a room in his house, only as his lodger. You know that.”

Tim stared at the man. His face was perfectly serious. He was lying with such skill and such grace that for a moment Tim could actually almost quite nearly be poised on the edge of believing that everyone including himself had been completely wrong about Kaveh and about Tim’s father and most of all about what they’d been to each other. Except Tim had been there the night his father had declared his love for Kaveh Mehran in front of his wife and his children. And Tim had seen his father with Kaveh. So he knew the truth.

“I watched you,” he said. “Through the door. Didn’t know that, did you? Makes your situation a bit different, doesn’t it? You up on your hands and knees and Dad giving it to you in the arse and both of you liking it just fine. I watched you. Okay? I watched you.”

Kaveh looked away from him for a moment. Then he sighed. Tim thought he was going to say something along the lines of being caught out and Tim needing to keep mum on the subject round Kaveh’s family please. But Kaveh, it seemed, was full of surprises. He brought out another for Tim’s entertainment. He said, “I used to have the same sort of dreams when I was your age. They’re very real, aren’t they? They’re called waking dreams. They generally happen at the moment your body is making the transition from waking to sleeping and they seem so real that one actually thinks what’s happening in them is life itself. People believe all sorts of things because of waking dreams: they’ve been abducted by aliens, they’ve seen someone in the bedroom with them, they’ve had a sexual experience with a parent or a teacher or even a mate, and on and on. But all the time they’re merely asleep. As you were, of course, when you saw what you think you saw between your father and myself.”

Tim’s eyes widened. He wet his lips to respond but Kaveh went first.

“The fact that what you dreamed you saw between us was sexual in nature comes from the age you are, Tim. At fourteen a boy is all hormones and desire. And this is due to how his body’s changing. He has dreams of sex, often. Often he ejaculates during them. And this could be — and probably is — an embarrassment to him if no one has explained it’s perfectly normal. Your dad did explain this, didn’t he? He ought to have done. Or perhaps your mum?”

Tim’s next breath felt like a stab, not only in the lungs but in the brain and right to the centre of who he knew he was and not to the centre of whoever Kaveh was making him out to be. He said, “You fucking liar,” and to his horror, he felt tears rising and God how he knew that Kaveh would use them. He could even see the endgame now, how it would all play out no matter which way he turned or what he threatened or what, indeed, he said to anyone, but especially what he said or might say to Kaveh’s parents and his intended bride.

And there was no one else to tell those people the truth about Kaveh. No one would be motivated to do it, and even if that were not the case, Kaveh’s relations would themselves not be the least motivated to believe what strangers reported to them without a shred of proof. Plus, Kaveh was the consummate liar, wasn’t he. He was the consummate con man and the consummate player in the chess game of life. Tim could speak the truth, he could rant, he could rail. Kaveh would know how to twist his words.

You must excuse young Tim, Kaveh would declare solemnly. You must not worry what he says and does. He goes to a special school, you know, for children who are disturbed in one way or another. There are times when he makes claims, when he does things… He ripped his little sister’s favourite doll to pieces, for example, and just the other day or week or month or whatever I found him trying to kill the ducks in the village stream.

And people would believe him, of course. First, because people always believed what they wanted and needed to believe. Second, because every bloody word he said would be the truth. It was as if Kaveh had planned his whole game from the first, the very moment he locked eyes on Tim’s dad.

Tim reached for the handle of the door. He grabbed up his rucksack and jerked the door open.

“What are you doing?” Kaveh demanded. “Stay in the car. You’re going to school.”

“And you’re going to hell,” Tim said. He leaped out and slammed the car door behind him.

VICTORIA LONDON

Raul Montenegro certainly wasn’t a dead end, Barbara Havers concluded. An hour or more of following various links connected to his name could easily have gleaned her half a ream of paper eaten up with printing stories about the bloke, so she tried to be selective. It was all in Spanish, but there were enough words similar to English for Barbara to be able to make out that Montenegro was a very big nob in industry and the industry in which he operated had something to do with natural gas in Mexico. From this she concluded that somehow Alatea Fairclough, nee Alatea Vasquez y del Torres, had got herself from Argentina to Mexico for reasons that remained unclear. She had moved herself either from a town still unknown to Barbara or, what was more likely considering the reaction of the woman to whom Barbara had attempted to speak in Argentina, she’d disappeared from Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos. There, perhaps, she had lived as a member of the mayor’s extended family as a niece or a cousin or, equally perhaps and probably more likely, she had been married to one of his five sons. At least that would explain all the excited quiens and dondes Barbara had heard on the other end of the line when she’d managed to get someone within the mayor’s house to speak to her. Had Alatea done a runner from her marriage to one of the sons of the mayor, that son of the mayor might well like to know where she’d ended up. Especially, Barbara thought, if he and Alatea were still legally married.

All this was supposition, of course. She needed Azhar to get back to her with someone who could translate Spanish, and so far she’d heard not a word from him. So she kept struggling and following leads and vowing to take a tutorial from Winston Nkata on the use and abuse of the World Wide Web.

She also learned that Raul Montenegro was rolling in barrels of lolly. She got this from an online edition of Hola!, that journalistic mother ship from which Hello! had been launched. The two magazines were identical in their dedication to glossy photographs of celebrities of all ilks, all of whom possessed the kind of white teeth one needed to don sunglasses to gaze upon, all of whom dressed in designer gear and posed either at their own palatial estates or — if they lived too modestly for the magazine’s readers — at expensive period hotels. The only difference was in the subjects of the stories, since with the exception of film actors or members of various and sometimes obscure European royal families, Hola! generally appeared to feature individuals from Spanish-speaking countries, Spain itself being the most frequently used. But Mexico had been included more than once, and there was Raul Montenegro with his frightening nose showing off his estate, which appeared to be somewhere along the coast of Mexico where there were many palm trees, lots of other colourful vegetation, and a host of nubile girls and boys willing to lounge at his poolside. There was also a shiny photo of Montenegro at the helm of his yacht, with various members of his youthful male crew striking crewlike poses around him in their very tight white trousers and equally tight blue tee-shirts. What Barbara gathered from all this was that Raul Montenegro liked to be surrounded by youth and beauty since both at his home and on his yacht, there was no one who wasn’t occupying a place somewhere on the scale between beautiful and lightning-struck gorgeous. Where, she wondered as she looked at the pictures, did these amazing-looking people come from? She reckoned one never saw so many tan, lithe, supple, and scrumptious human beings in one place outside of a casting call. Which, of course, made her wonder if all these individuals were indeed auditioning for something. If they were, she also reckoned she knew what that something was. Money always had a way of singing a siren song, didn’t it? And if nothing else, Raul Montenegro appeared to be swimming in money.

What was interesting, though, was that Alatea Fairclough nee all the rest of her names did not appear in any of the Hola! pictures. Barbara compared the dates on the magazine with the date on the article she’d found with the photo of Alatea hanging on to Montenegro’s arm. The Hola! photos predated the other, and Barbara wondered if Montenegro had changed his stripes once he had Alatea on his arm. Alatea had the kind of looks that allowed a woman to lay down the law: You want me? Get rid of the others. Otherwise, believe me, I can easily move on.

Which brought Barbara back to the situation in Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos, whatever that situation might be. She had to find out, so she printed out the Hola! article and went back to Mayor Esteban Vega y de Vasquez of Santa Maria di and all the rest of it. Tell me your tales, senor, she thought. At this point, pretty much anything would do.

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

“I’ve pulled Barbara Havers from your… Am I to call this ‘your case’ or what, Thomas?”

Lynley had veered to the side of the road to take the call on his mobile. He was on his way back to Ireleth Hall to go over St. James’s conclusions with Bernard Fairclough. He said, “Isabelle,” on a sigh. “You’re angry with me. With very good reason. I’m terribly sorry.”

“Yes. Well. Aren’t we both. Barbara’s brought Winston into things, by the way. Is that down to you as well? I put a stop to it, but I wasn’t happy to find them cheek-to-cheek over a computer terminal on the twelfth floor.”

Lynley lowered his head, looked at his hand on the steering wheel of the Healey Elliott. He was still wearing his wedding ring and had not been able in the months since Helen’s death even to think about removing it. It was a plain gold band, engraved inside: her initials and his and the date of their marriage.

More than anything on earth, he wanted her back. That desire would continue to govern every decision he made until he was able finally and forever to let her go by embracing the fact of her death instead of struggling with its grim reality day after day. Even when he was with Isabelle, Helen was there: both the spirit of her and the delightful essence of who she had been. This was no one’s fault, least of all Isabelle’s. It was simply, ineluctably, how things were.

He said, “No. I didn’t ask Winston’s help. But please, Isabelle, don’t blame Barbara for this. She’s only been trying to track down some information for me.”

“On this matter in Cumbria.”

“On this matter in Cumbria. I’d thought, as she had time off coming — ”

“Yes. I do see what you thought, Tommy.”

He knew Isabelle was both wounded and hating the fact that she was wounded. When people felt like that, they needed to wound in turn, and he recognised that as well as understood it. But all of this was unnecessary at the moment, and he wanted, perhaps futilely, to make her see that. He said, “None of this was meant as a betrayal.”

“And what makes you think I’m seeing it that way?”

“Because in your position, I’d see it that way myself. You’re the guv. I’m not. I have no right to make requests of members of your team. Had there been any other way that I could have got the information quickly, believe me, I would have used it.”

“But there was another way, and that’s what concerns me. That you didn’t see that other way and that you apparently still don’t see it.”

“You mean that I could have come to you. But I couldn’t, Isabelle. I had no choice in the matter once Hillier gave the order. I was on the case and no one was to know about it.”

“No one.”

“You’re thinking of Barbara. But I didn’t tell her. She worked it out because it came down to Bernard Fairclough and things I needed to know about him, things in London and not in Cumbria. As soon as she looked into him for me, she put it together. Tell me. What would you have done in my position?”

“I’d like to think I would have trusted you.”

“Because we’re lovers?”

“Essentially. I suppose that’s it.”

“But it can’t be,” he said. “Isabelle, think about things.”

“I’ve done little else. And that’s a real problem, as you can imagine.”

“I can. I do.” He knew what she meant, but he wanted to forestall her although he could not have said exactly why. He thought it had something to do with the vast emptiness of his life without Helen and how, ultimately, as social creatures mankind did not do well in isolation. But he knew this might be the crassest form of self-delusion, dangerous both to himself and to Isabelle. Still, he said, “There has to be a separation, doesn’t there? There must be a surgical cut — if you will — between what we do for the Met and who we are when we’re alone together. If you go forward in this job as superintendent, there are going to be moments when you’re put in a position of knowledge — by Hillier or by someone else — that you can’t share with me.”

“I’d share them anyway.”

“You wouldn’t, Isabelle. You won’t.”

“Did you?”

“Did I…? What d’you mean?”

“I mean Helen, Tommy. Did you share information with Helen?”

How could he possibly explain it? he wondered. He hadn’t had to share information with Helen because Helen had always known. She’d come to him in the bath and pour a bit of oil on her hands and work on his shoulders and murmur, “Ah, David Hillier again, hmm? Really, Tommy. I tend to think that never has knighthood caused such inflation in a man’s self-esteem.” He might then talk or he might not but the point was it didn’t matter to Helen. What he said was a matter of indifference to her. Who he was was everything.

He hated missing her most of all. He could bear the fact that he’d been the one to decide upon when her life — such as it had been at that point, maintained by hospital machinery — would end. He could bear that she’d carried their child with her into the grave. He was coming to terms with the horror of her death’s being a senseless street murder that had come from nothing and resulted in nothing. But the hole that losing her had created within him… He hated it so much that there were moments when its presence brought him perilously close to hating her.

Isabelle said, “What am I to make of your silence?”

He said, “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just thinking.”

“And the answer?”

He’d honestly forgotten the question. “To?”

“Helen,” she said.

“I wish there were one,” he replied. “God knows I’d give it if I knew where to find it.”

She altered then, on the edge of a coin, in that way of hers that somehow kept him unbalanced with her but still bound to her. She said quietly, “God. Forgive me, Tommy. I’m devastating you. You don’t need that. I’m ringing you when I’m meant to be doing other things anyway. This isn’t the time for this conversation. I was upset about Winston and that’s not down to you. We’ll speak later.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Have you any idea when you’ll be back?”

That was, he thought wryly, the question in a nutshell. He looked out of the window. He was on the A592 in a heavily wooded area where the trees seemed to grow thickly right down to the shore of Lake Windermere. A few last leaves still stubbornly clung to the maples and the birches here, but another good storm would finish them off. He said, “Soon, I expect. Tomorrow, perhaps. The day after. I’ve had Simon with me and he’s finished his part with the forensics. Deborah’s still onto something, though. I’ll need to be here to see that part through. I’m not sure it relates, but she’s being stubborn and I can’t let her stay here alone in case things go badly in some way.”

She was quiet for a moment and he waited for her to make one of two choices dictated by his mention of Simon and Deborah. When she made it, he wanted to think it had been effortless for her, but he knew how unlikely this was. She said, “It’s good they’ve been able to help you, Tommy.”

“It is,” he said.

“We’ll speak when you return.”

“We will.”

They rang off then, and he spent a moment in the lay-by looking at nothing. There were facts and feelings that had to be sorted out, and he knew he would have to get to them. But for the moment, there was Cumbria, along with what needed to be sorted out here.

He drove the rest of the distance to Ireleth Hall and found the gates standing open. When he reached the hall, he saw that a car was parked in front of it. He recognised this as one of the two vehicles he’d seen in Great Urswick. Fairclough’s daughter Manette would be here, then.

She’d not come alone, he discovered. She had her former husband with her, and Lynley found them with Manette’s parents in the great hall, in the aftermath of what apparently had been a visit from Nicholas. When Lynley and Fairclough exchanged a look, Valerie was the one to speak.

“I’m afraid we haven’t been entirely truthful with you, Inspector,” she said. “And it’s looking more and more like this is the moment for truth.”

Lynley looked at Fairclough again. Fairclough looked away. Lynley knew he’d been used for some reason unspoken at the moment, and at this he felt the inner burning that comes from the most useless sort of anger. He said, “If you’d care to explain,” to Valerie.

“Of course. I’m the reason you’ve been brought up to Cumbria, Inspector. No one knew this except Bernard. And now Manette, Freddie, and Nicholas know it.”

For an utterly mad moment Lynley thought the woman was actually confessing to murdering her husband’s nephew. The setting, after all, was perfect for it, in the best tradition of more than one hundred years of tea-in-the-vicarage and murder-in-the-library paperback novels sold in railway stations. He couldn’t imagine why she might be confessing, but he’d also never been able to understand why the characters in those novels sat quietly in the drawing room or the sitting room or the library while a detective laid out all the clues leading to the guilt of one of them. No one ever demanded a solicitor in the midst of the detective’s maundering. He’d never been able to sort that one out.

Valerie clarified quickly, probably in answer to the confusion on his face. It was simple enough: She and not her husband had been the one who wanted to have the death of Ian Cresswell more closely looked into.

That, Lynley thought, explained a great deal, particularly when he considered what they’d uncovered about Fairclough’s private life. But it did not go the entire distance. Why still hung out there waiting for an answer. Why Valerie and not Bernard? was foremost. Why at all? was next since a conclusion of murder most likely would have meant that a member of her own family was culpable.

Lynley said, “I see. I’m not sure it matters entirely.” He went on to explain the results of his examination of everything connected to the death in the boathouse. Everything he had looked at and everything looked at by Simon St. James was in agreement with the coroner’s conclusion. A tragic accident had taken Ian Cresswell’s life. It could have happened to anyone using the boathouse. The dock’s stones were ancient; some were loose. Those that had been dislodged had not been tampered with. Had Cresswell been getting out of a different sort of boat, he might have merely stumbled. But getting out of a scull was trickier. The combination of its delicate balance and the dock’s loose stones had done him in. He’d pitched forward, hit his head, gone into the water, and drowned. No foul play had been involved.

In these circumstances, Lynley thought, one would expect a general sigh of relief to go around the room. One would expect something along the lines of “thank goodness” from Valerie Fairclough. But what came next was a long, tense silence in which he finally realised that something more than Ian Cresswell’s death had been the real reason for the investigation. And into this silence the front door opened, and Mignon Fairclough came into the hall.

She pushed her zimmer frame in front of her. She said, “Freddie, can you manage the door, darling? It’s a bit awkward for me,” and as Freddie McGhie rose to do so, Valerie cut in with a sharp, “I expect you can cope quite well on your own, Mignon.”

Mignon tilted her head and managed an arch look at her mother. She said, “Very well, then,” and made something of a minor production out of turning herself and her zimmer and dealing with the door. She said, “There, then,” when it was closed and she’d turned back to them. “Such an excitement of comings and goings today, my darlings. Manette and Freddie a deux. My heart flutters with all the possibilities attendant on that. Then Nick roars up. Then Nick roars away. And now our handsome Scotland Yard detective is back among us, pitter-pattering our collective hearts. Forgive the idle curiosity, Mother and Dad, but I couldn’t bear to be outside looking in another moment with everything that’s going on round here.”

“It’s just as well,” Valerie said to her. “We’re discussing the future.”

“Whose, may I ask?”

“Everyone’s. Including yours. I’ve just learned today that for quite some time you’ve had something of pay rise in your monthly stipend. That’s at an end. As is the entire allowance.”

Mignon looked startled. Clearly, this was a turn of events she hadn’t anticipated. “Mother, darling, well obviously… I’m disabled. I can hardly go out like this and expect to become gainfully employed. So you can’t — ”

“But that’s where you’re wrong, Mignon. I can. And I do.”

Mignon looked round, apparently for the source of this sudden alteration to her circumstances. She settled her gaze on Manette. Her eyes narrowed and she said, “You little bitch. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“I say, Mignon,” Freddie declared.

“I expect you do,” Mignon replied to him. “What else will you say when we begin to talk about her and Ian, Freddie?”

“There is no me and Ian and you know it,” Manette cut in.

“There’s a shoe box crammed with letters, darling, some of them burned but the rest in very good condition. I can easily fetch them. Believe me, I’ve been waiting years to do so.”

“I had an adolescent infatuation with Ian. Make more of it if you like. It won’t get you far.”

“Not even the bits about ‘wanting you more than I’ll ever want anyone’ and ‘darling Ian please be my first’?”

“Oh please,” Manette said in disgust.

“I could go on, you know. I’ve endless bits memorised.”

“And none of us want to hear them,” Valerie snapped. “Enough has been said. We’re finished here.”

“Not nearly as finished as you think.” Mignon made her way to the sofa on which her sister and Freddie McGhie were sitting. She said, “If you don’t mind, darling Freddie…,” and began to lower herself. He had no choice but to have her in his lap or to move. He opted for the second and joined his former father-in-law at the fireplace.

Lynley could see everyone regrouping mentally. All of them seemed to know something was coming, although he reckoned that no one knew what it was. Mignon had obviously been gathering information for years on the members of her family. She’d not had to use it in the past, but now she seemed to be preparing to do so. She cast one look at her sister and another at her father. She kept her eyes on him and, with a smile, said, “You know, I don’t think things are going to change quite so much, Mother. And neither does Dad, I daresay.”

Valerie took this on board easily enough. She said, “Vivienne Tully’s payments are being stopped as well, if that’s what you’re getting at. And it is what you’re getting at, isn’t it, Mignon? You’ve been holding Vivienne Tully over your father’s head for years, I expect. No wonder so much money’s gone out to you.”

“And this is turn-the-other-cheek time?” Mignon asked her mother. “Is that where we are? Where you are? With him?”

“Where I am, as you put it, with your father is none of your business. No one’s marriage is your business.”

“So let me make sure I understand,” Mignon said. “He carries on with Vivienne Tully in London, he buys her flat, he has a bloody second life there with her… and I’m to pay because I had the common decency not to tell you about it?”

“Please don’t paint yourself as the noble character in this situation,” Valerie said.

“Here, here,” murmured Freddie.

Valerie continued. “You know very well why you didn’t tell me about it. The information was useful and you’re a common blackmailer. You ought to get down on your very capable knees and thank God I’m not asking the inspector to arrest you. Beyond that, everything about Vivienne Tully is a matter between your father and me. It doesn’t concern you. She doesn’t concern you. The only thing that ought to concern you is what you intend to do with your life because it’s beginning tomorrow morning and I expect it to look very different from how it looks just now.”

Mignon then turned to her father. She was in that moment every inch the woman holding all the valuable cards in the deck. She said to Fairclough, “Is that how you want it to be, then?”

“Mignon,” he murmured.

“You’ve got to say. Now’s the moment, Dad.”

“Don’t take this further,” Bernard said to her. “It’s not necessary, Mignon.”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“Valerie.” Bernard appealed to his wife. He was, Lynley thought, a man who was watching his life as he’d known it come tumbling down. “I think all points have been touched upon. If we can agree upon — ”

“Upon what?” Valerie broke in sharply.

“Upon showing a modicum of mercy here. That terrible fall all those years ago. Launchy Gill. She’s not been well. She’s never been the same. You know she’s not capable of supporting herself.”

“She’s as capable as I am,” Manette put in. “She’s as capable as anyone in this room. Honestly, Dad, Mum’s right, for God’s sake. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense. That has to be the most expensive fractured skull in history, considering how Mignon’s played it.”

Valerie, however, was watching her husband. Lynley could see that sweat had appeared on Fairclough’s forehead. His wife apparently saw this as well because she turned to Mignon and said quietly, “Let’s have the rest, then.”

“Dad?” Mignon said.

“For God’s sake, Valerie. Give her what she wants.”

“I will not,” she said. “I absolutely will not.”

“Then it’s time we had a chat about Bianca,” Mignon declared. Her father shut his eyes.

“Who’s Bianca?” Manette demanded.

“Our baby sister, as it happens,” Mignon replied. She turned to her father. “Care to talk about this, Dad?”

ARNSIDE CUMBRIA

When Lucy Keverne phoned her, Alatea Fairclough was alarmed. Their arrangement was that Lucy would never phone, either Alatea’s mobile or the land line at Arnside House. Lucy had the numbers of course, because giving her the numbers had been one of the ways in which Alatea had made a stab at legitimatising that which could never be legitimate between them. But she’d impressed upon her from the first that ringing the number could bring an end to everything, and neither of them wanted that.

“What shall I do in case of an emergency?” Lucy had asked, not unreasonably.

“Then, of course, you must phone. But you’ll understand, I hope, if at the moment I can’t speak to you.”

“We’ll need some sort of code for that.”

“For what?”

“For your not being able to speak at the moment. You can’t just say ‘I’m not able to speak to you now,’ if your husband’s in the room. That would be rather obvious, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course. Yes.” Alatea had thought about it. “I shall say, ‘No, I’m sorry. I’ve sent for no package.’ And then I’ll ring you back as soon as I’m able. But it might not be at once. It might not be until the next day.”

They’d agreed to this arrangement, and as things developed between them, Lucy had had no reason to phone. Because of this, all the uneasiness Alatea naturally felt in embarking upon a confidential journey with this woman had faded over time. So when Lucy rang not terribly long after their rendezvous in Lancaster, Alatea knew that something had gone wrong.

How badly wrong became clear within moments. They’d been seen at the university together, Lucy told her. They’d been seen inside the George Childress Centre. It was probably nothing, but a woman had followed them from the university back to the disabled soldiers’ home. She wanted to talk about surrogacy. She was looking for a surrogate mother to carry her child. Again, it could be nothing. But the fact that this woman had settled on Lucy to talk to instead of Alatea …

“She claimed you have the ‘look,’” Lucy said. “She claimed it was a ‘look’ she recognised well because she knows she has it herself. And because of this she reckoned I was the one to talk to about the possibility of surrogacy and not you, Alatea.”

Alatea had taken the call in the inglenook of the main hall. It was a sheltered place, topped by a whimsical minstrel’s gallery, and she liked it because it gave her a choice between the L-shaped window seat at one end of the inglenook, looking out on the lawn, or the confines of a pew-like shelter at the other side of the fireplace, one that hid her from anyone who might come into the hall.

She was alone. She’d been leafing through a design book relevant to the restoration of Arnside House, but she’d been thinking not of the house but rather of the progress she and Lucy were making. She’d been considering how each step of the process was going to be successfully managed. Very soon now, she’d decided, Miss Lucy Keverne, a struggling playwright from Lancaster who made ends meet by working as a social director in the Kent-Howath Foundation for Disabled Veterans, would come into her life as a newfound friend. From that point forward, things would be easier. They would never be perfect, but that was of no account. One had to learn how to live with imperfection.

When Lucy mentioned the woman who’d followed them, Alatea knew at once who this woman had to be. She thus put the pieces together very quickly, and she arrived at the only possible conclusion: She herself had been followed from Arnside and the red-haired woman called Deborah St. James — she of the faux documentary film — had done the following.

Alatea’s earlier fears had revolved around the newspaper reporter. She’d seen The Source, and she knew its appetite for scandal was insatiable. The man’s first visit to Cumbria had been an ordeal for her, his second a torment. But the worst his presence had ever suggested was a photograph that might lead to discovery. With the red-haired woman, discovery was here, just a knock-on-the-door away.

“What did you tell her?” Alatea asked, as calmly as she could manage.

“The truth about surrogacy, but she already knew most of it.”

“Which truth are we talking about?”

“The various ways and means, the legalities, that sort of thing. I’d thought at first there was nothing in it. It rather made sense in a bizarre sort of way. I mean, when women are desperate…” Lucy hesitated.

Alatea said quietly, “Go on. When they’re desperate…?”

“Well, they will go to extremes, won’t they? So, considering everything, how extreme was it, really, that a woman who’s gone to the George Childress Centre for a consultation would see us at some point in one corridor or another, perhaps as she’s coming out of someone’s office…”

“And what?”

“And think there was a chance. I mean, essentially that’s how you and I met.”

“No. We met via an advertisement.”

“Yes. Of course. But the feeling is what I’m talking about. That sense of desperation. Which was what she described. So I believed her at first.”

“At first. Then what?”

“Well, that’s why I’ve rung you. When she left, I walked with her to the front of the building. The way one does, you know. She headed up the street and I thought nothing of it, but I walked to a window along the corridor and happened to see — quite by chance — that she’d reversed directions. I thought she intended to come back for another word, but she passed altogether and got into a car some way down the street.”

“Perhaps she’d forgotten where she’d parked,” Alatea said, although she reckoned there was more to come, something that had further intrigued Lucy. And so there was.

“That’s what I thought at first. But when she got to the proper car, it turned out that she hadn’t come alone. I couldn’t see who was with her, but when she reached the car, the door swung open as if someone had pushed it from inside. So I continued to watch till the car drove by. She wasn’t driving. It was a man. That made it all suspicious, you see. I mean, if she had her husband with her, why not come to talk to me together? Why not mention him? Indeed, why not say he was waiting in the car? Why not say he was in agreement with her in the matter? Or he was against her in the matter? Or he was anything at all? But she said nothing. So on top of her story of having stumbled upon us, the fact that there was a man — ”

“What did he look like, Lucy?”

“I didn’t get a good look, merely a quick glimpse. But I thought it best to ring you because… Well, you know. We’re on very thin ice as things stand and — ”

“I can pay more.”

“That’s not why I’m ringing. Good heavens. That’s all been agreed to. I’m not about to squeeze more money out of you. Of course, money’s always nice, isn’t it, but we’ve agreed on a sum and I’m not the sort to go back on my word. Still, I wanted you to know — ”

“We must get on with it, then. And soon. We must.”

“Well, that’s just the thing, you see. I’m suggesting we slow things down a bit. I think we need to make sure this woman — whoever she is — is completely out of the picture. Perhaps then in a month or two — ”

“No! We’ve made our arrangements. We can’t.”

“I think we should, Alatea. I think we must. Look at it this way: Once we know it was just a one-off — this woman turning up — a strange coincidence meaning nothing, then we’ll move forward. I’m at bigger risk than you, after all.”

Alatea felt numb, someone straitened on all sides with those sides pressing in till she reached the point when she’d no longer be able even to breathe unconstricted. She said, “I’m in your power, of course.”

“Alatea. My dear. This isn’t about power. This is about safety. Yours and mine. This is about dancing round the law. I daresay this is also about a number of other things as well, but we’ve no need to touch on those.”

“What sort of things?” Alatea demanded.

“Nothing. Nothing. It’s just a turn of phrase. Listen, I must get back to work. We’ll speak in a few days. Till then, you’re not to worry, all right? I’m still on board. Just not at this precise moment. Not till we know for certain that this woman’s appearance in my life meant nothing.”

“How will we know that?”

“As I said. We’ll know it if I don’t see her again.”

Lucy Keverne rang off then, amid urgings and murmurings that Alatea was not to worry, was to remain calm, was to have a care. She — Lucy — would be in touch. They would be in touch. Everything would go according to plan.

Alatea sat in the inglenook for several minutes, trying to understand what her options were or whether, at this point, she had any options left. She’d known from the first that the red-haired woman had spelled danger, no matter what Nicholas had said about her. Now that Lucy had seen her in the presence of a man, Alatea finally saw what the danger was. Certain people had no right to live as they wished to live, and she’d had the misfortune of having been born as one of those wretched people. She had great beauty, but it meant nothing. It was, indeed, what had doomed her from the first.

At the far end of the house, she heard a door slam. She frowned, rose quickly, and looked at her watch. Nicky should have gone to work. From there he should have gone to the pele project. But when he called her name and sounded panicked in the calling of it, she knew he’d gone elsewhere.

She hurried to find him. She called out, “Here, Nicky. I’m here.”

They met in the long oaken corridor, where the light was dimmest. She couldn’t read his face. But his voice frightened her, so intense was it. “It’s down to me,” he said. “I’ve ruined everything, Allie.”

Alatea thought of the previous day: Nicholas’s distress and the fact that Scotland Yard was in Cumbria looking into the circumstances of Ian Cresswell’s death. For a terrible moment, her conclusion was that her husband was confessing to his cousin’s murder, and she felt light-headed as she was struck with the knowledge of where this terrible admission could take them should they not be able to hide the truth. If terror had a presence, it was there in the darkened corridor with them.

She took her husband’s arm and said, “Nicky, please. You must tell me very clearly what’s wrong. Then we can decide what to do.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Why? What’s happened? What can be so terrible?”

He leaned against the wall. She held on to his arm, and she said to him, “Is it this Scotland Yard matter? Have you been to speak to your father? Does he actually think…?”

“None of that matters,” Nicholas said. “We’re surrounded by liars, you and I. My mother, my father, probably my sisters, that damn reporter from The Source, that filmmaking woman. Only I didn’t see it because I was so intent on proving myself.” He spat the penultimate word. “Ego, ego, ego,” he said, and with each repetition, he hit his forehead with his fist. “All I cared about was proving to everyone — but especially to them — that I’m not the person they used to know. The drugs are gone, the alcohol is gone, and they’re gone forever. And they were meant to see that. Not only my family but the whole bloody world. So I took every opportunity to show myself off and because of that and nothing else, we’re where we are just now.”

His mention of the filmmaking woman sent fear coursing down Alatea’s spine. More and more, everything was coming down to that woman whom they had blindly admitted into their home with her camera, her questions, and her apocryphal concern. From the first, Alatea had known there was something very wrong about her presence. And now she’d been to Lancaster to see Lucy Keverne. So quick she was to follow the clues. Alatea wouldn’t have thought it was possible. She said, “Where are we, then, ‘just now,’ Nicky?”

He told her and she tried to follow. He spoke of the reporter from The Source and of that man’s belief that the red-haired woman had come from New Scotland Yard. He spoke of his parents and a confrontation he’d had with them that day over this very matter in the presence of his sister Manette and Freddie McGhie. He spoke of his mother and her admission to having brought Scotland Yard into the mix. And he spoke of the surprise of all of them when he railed about the detective who’d been sent into his house, the woman who’d upset Alatea so very much… And that was where he stopped.

Alatea said carefully, “What then, Nicky? Did they say something? Did something more occur?”

His words sounded hollow. “She’s not the Scotland Yard detective at all. I don’t know who she is. But because she’s been hired to come up to Cumbria… to take those photographs… Oh, she claimed she needed none of you, that you weren’t going to be part of that bloody film, but someone had to hire her because there is no filmmaker and she’s not Scotland Yard and do you see why it’s down to me, now, Allie? What’s going to happen is down to me. I thought it was bad enough that my parents wanted a detective to investigate Ian’s death because of me. But then to know that nothing that’s happened here in this house, with that woman, has anything to do with Ian’s death but rather has happened because I agreed, because of my ego… because a stupid story in a stupid magazine gave someone a licence, a clue, a way in…”

She knew, then, where this was heading. She supposed she’d known where it had been heading all along. She murmured the name: “Montenegro. You think she was hired by Raul?”

“Who the hell else could it possibly be? And I did this to you, Allie. How am I supposed to live with that?”

He pushed past her. He made his way along the corridor and into the drawing room. There, she could see him more clearly in what remained of the daylight. He looked ghastly, and for a completely mad moment she felt herself responsible for this although he and not she had been the one to allow the putative documentary scout into their lives. But she couldn’t help herself. It was the role she played in their relationship, just as his role was to need her so desperately that from the first he had questioned nothing about her as long as he’d been assured of her love. Which was what she herself had been looking for: a place of permanence where she could abide, where no one would ask the kind of dangerous questions that grew from a moment’s wonder.

Outside, Alatea could see that the afternoon was bringing on mid-autumn’s dusk. The sky and the bay beneath were identical in colour, with grey clouds encroaching on apricot streaks cast across both water and air by the setting sun.

Nicholas went to the bay window. He sank into one of the two seats there, and he dropped his head into his hands.

“I’ve failed you,” he said. “I’ve failed myself.”

Alatea wanted to shake her husband. She wanted to tell him that this was not the time for him to feel himself the sun round which all the brewing troubles revolved. She wanted to shout that he could not possibly begin to understand how bad things were about to become for both of them. But to do any of that was to waste what little ability she had left to come up with a way to forestall an inevitable conclusion of which he was still entirely ignorant.

Nicholas thought that Raul Montenegro’s reintroduction into her life meant the end of things. He could not possibly have known the truth of the matter: Raul Montenegro was only the beginning.

BLOOMSBURY LONDON

Barbara took herself to Bloomsbury in order to be in his vicinity when she finally heard from Taymullah Azhar. Faced with her need to get more information on the topic of Raul Montenegro — not to mention sorting out everything that there was to sort out about Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos — she reckoned an Internet cafe was in order. She’d kill two birds while she waited for Azhar to produce a Spanish translator for her.

Before Nkata had left the Met’s library, he’d said softly, “Look for key words and follow the trail. It’s not brain surgery, Barb. You’ll get better as you go on.” From this, Barbara reckoned that she was to do searches on the names she came across in the articles she had, regardless of what language the articles were in. When she found an Internet cafe not far from the British Museum, then, that was what she did.

It was not the most pleasant environment in which to conduct her Web search. She had stopped to purchase an English/Spanish dictionary on the way to the spot, and now she was sandwiched between an overweight asthmatic in a mohair sweater and a gum-popping goth with a septum ring and a score of eyebrow studs who kept receiving calls on her mobile phone from someone who, apparently, did not believe she was sitting at a computer because each time he rang, she barked, “Well then, come to the bloody place if you don’t believe me, Clive… Don’t be so bloody stoopid. I’m not fucking e-mailing anyone. I can’t, can I, since you keep bloody ringing me every thirty seconds.”

In this atmosphere, Barbara tried to concentrate. She also tried to ignore the fact that the mouse looked like it hadn’t been disinfected since the day it had come out of its box. As best she could, she attempted to type without actually touching the keys, hitting them only with her fingernails, although these were mostly too short to make a proper job of it. But she reckoned the keyboard was crawling with everything from the bubonic plague to genital warts, and she didn’t intend to leave the place with her future writ large in the clutches of some disease.

After a few false trails, she was able to find an article on the mayor of Santa Maria et cetera that included a picture. It looked like an anniversary photograph — perhaps a graduation picture? — but in any case, it was something having to do with the nuclear family because they were all spread out on the steps of an unidentifiable building: the mayor, his wife, and their five sons. Barbara examined this picture.

One fact was obvious immediately, with or without a translation: In the roll of the genetic dice, the five sons of Esteban and Dominga had hit the jackpot. Barbara read their names: Carlos, Miguel, Angel, Santiago, and Diego. They were a handsome lot, ranging in the photo from nineteen years old down to seven years old. But a scrutiny of the article told Barbara that the picture had been taken twenty years earlier, so any of them could easily have been married at this point, perhaps one of them to Alatea. The next step, according to Nkata’s explanation of how these things worked, would be to check on the five sons. Carlos would be first. All Barbara had to do was cross her fingers.

No luck, though, as far as any marriage went. She found Carlos far more easily than she would have thought possible, but he appeared to be a Catholic priest. There was an article that seemed to be about his ordination, and the entire family posed with him again, this time on the steps of a church. His mother was clinging to his arm, gazing up at him adoringly; his father was grinning, a cigar clutched in his hand; his brothers were looking vaguely embarrassed at all the attendant religious hoopla. So much for Carlos, Barbara thought.

She went on to Miguel. Again, it didn’t take long. Indeed, it was so easy that Barbara wondered why she hadn’t been checking up on her neighbours for years. In the case of Miguel, she found his engagement picture. The wife-to-be looked vaguely like an Afghan hound, all hair and thin face with a suspicious lack of forehead suggesting a paucity of marbles in the prefrontal lobe. Miguel himself was a dentist, Barbara decided. Either that or he was in need of dental work. Her Spanish dictionary was a little iffy on the topic. But at any rate, it didn’t seem to matter. It took her no step closer to discovering anything about Alatea Fairclough.

She was about to go on to Angel when her mobile chimed out the first two lines of “Peggy Sue.” She flipped it open, said, “Havers,” and heard Azhar — at long last — telling her that he had found someone who could translate Spanish for her. “Where are you at present?” he asked.

“Internet caff,” she told him. “I’m down the street from the BM. I c’n come to you. Easier than anything. Cafeteria near your office or something?”

He was silent for a moment, perhaps thinking about this. At last he said there was a wine bar in Torrington Place, near Chenies Mews and Gower Street. They would meet her there in a quarter of an hour.

“Right,” she said. “I’ll find it.” She printed the documents she’d so far found and went to the till, where the shop assistant named an exorbitant price for them and said, “Colour printer, luv,” when Barbara protested.

“Colour robbery more like it,” Barbara said. She took her copies in a paper bag and made it over to Torrington Place, where the wine bar was easy to spot and Azhar was waiting inside with a leggy girl in a cashmere jacket upon whose shoulders spilled a luxury of dark curls.

Her name was Engracia, no last name provided, and she was a graduate student from Barcelona. The girl smiled at Azhar as he passed this information to Barbara. “I will do what I can to help you,” she said, although Barbara reckoned it was Azhar to whom she wished to be useful, and who could blame her? They made a nice-looking couple. But then, so did Azhar and Angelina Upman. So would Azhar and pretty much anyone.

She said, “Ta,” to the girl. “In my next life I plan to be multilingual.”

“I shall leave you to it, then,” Azhar said.

“Heading back?” Barbara asked him.

“Heading home,” he replied. “Engracia, my thanks.”

“De nada,” she murmured.

At one of the tables inside the wine bar, Barbara handed over the documents, beginning with the article that accompanied the photograph of the mayor and his family. She said, “I got a Spanish/English dictionary, but it wasn’t much help. I mean, it was… a bit. But looking up every word…”

“Of course.” Engracia read for a moment, holding the article in one hand while she played with a gold hoop earring with the other. After a moment, she said, “This is connected to an election.”

“For mayor?”

“Si. The man — Esteban — he runs for mayor of the town and this article introduces him to people. It’s an article without import… how do you call this?”

“A puff piece?”

She smiled. She had very nice teeth and very smooth skin. She wore lipstick but it was barely noticeable, so perfectly had it been chosen. “Yes. A puff piece,” she replied. “It says in the town there is such a large family of the mayor that if his family members all vote, he will win the election. But that, I believe, is a joke because it also says the town’s population is seventy-five thousand people.” Engracia read a bit further and said, “There is information about his wife, Dominga, and about her family. Both families have lived in Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos for many years, many generations.”

“What about the boys?”

“The boys… Ah. Carlos is a seminarian. Miguel wishes to be a dentist. Angel” — she pronounced it Ahnhail — “plans to study architecture and the other two boys are too young to know, although Santiago says he wants to be an actor and Diego…” She read further and chuckled. “It says he wishes to be an astronaut in the unlikely event that Argentina develops a space programme. That is a little joke, I think. The reporter was humouring him.”

There wasn’t a lot of grist in all that, Barbara reckoned. She brought out the next pieces, both of them about Raul Montenegro. She handed them over with, “What about these?” And she asked Engracia if she wanted a glass of wine or something since they were taking up space in the wine bar, which wasn’t going to turn out to be a popular move if they didn’t place an order.

Engracia said mineral water would be nice, and Barbara fetched it for her along with a glass of the house plonk for herself. When she returned with the drinks, she saw that Engracia was concentrating on the article whose accompanying photo had Alatea hanging on Montenegro’s arm. This, she said, was an article about a very important fund-raiser in Mexico City, having to do with the construction of a symphony music hall. The man was the biggest contributor to this project and consequently would have the honour of naming the music hall.

“And?” Barbara said, expecting the hall to be named for Alatea since she was looking so pleased as she hung on his arm.

“Magdalena Montenegro Centre for Music,” Engracia said. “Named for his mama. Latin men are close to their mothers, as a rule.”

“What about the woman with him in the picture?”

“It says only that she is his companion.”

“Not his wife? Lover? Partner?”

“Only his companion, I’m afraid.”

“Could be a euphemism for lover or partner?”

Engracia studied the photo a moment. “This is difficult to say. But I do not think so.”

“So she could have been merely his evening’s companion? Even an escort he hired for the night?”

“It is possible,” Engracia said. “She could even be someone who stepped into the picture with him at the moment, I suppose.”

“Damn, damn, damn,” Barbara muttered. And when Engracia looked remorseful, as if she’d somehow failed, Barbara said, “Oh, sorry. Not you. Just life.”

“I see this is important to you. Can I help in some other way?” Engracia asked.

Barbara thought about this. There was something else. She calculated the time difference and said, “Let me make a phone call,” and she took out her mobile. “They don’t speak English at the other end, so if you c’n talk to whoever answers …”

She explained to Engracia that they were phoning the mayor’s home in Santa Maria et cetera. The four-hour time difference made it early afternoon there. Her job was to see if there was information to be had about one Alatea Vasquez y del Torres should someone answer the phone.

“The woman in the picture,” Engracia said with a nod at the article about Raul Montenegro.

“That would be the case,” Barbara told her.

When the call went through and the phone began ringing, she handed the mobile over to the Spanish girl. What happened next was rapid-fire Spanish during which Barbara caught only Alatea’s name. Coming from Argentina, though, she could hear the sound of a woman’s voice. It was high and excited, and she could see from Engracia’s intent expression that something was developing from this call to Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos.

There was a pause in the dialogue and Engracia glanced at Barbara. She said, “That was a cousin, Elena Maria.”

“Do we have the wrong number, then?”

“No, no. She’s at the house visiting. Dominga — the mayor’s wife? — this is her aunt. She’s gone to fetch her. She’s most excited to hear Alatea’s name.”

“Pay dirt,” Barbara murmured.

“This is…?”

“Sorry. Just an expression. We might be getting somewhere.”

She smiled. “Ah. ‘Pay dirt.’ I like this very much.” Then her expression altered as a distant voice bridged the thousands of miles between London and Argentina. The rapid-fire Spanish began again. There were many comprendos and many more sis. A few sabes? and several no sabos and then gracias over and over again.

When the call was completed, Barbara said, “Well? Yes? What’ve we got?”

“A message for Alatea,” Engracia said. “This woman Dominga says to tell Alatea she must come home. She says to tell her that her father understands. She says the boys also understand. Carlos, she says, has made all of the family pray and what they pray for is for her safe return.”

“Did she happen to mention who the hell she is?”

“A member of the family, it seems.”

“A sister who didn’t get in that old picture? A sister born after the picture was taken? A wife of one of the boys? A cousin? A niece? What?”

“She did not say, at least not clearly. But she told me the girl ran from her home when she was fifteen. They thought she went to Buenos Aires and they search for her there for many years. Particularly Elena Maria searches. Dominga said Elena Maria’s heart was broken and Alatea must be told that as well.”

“How many years are we talking about that she’s been gone, then?”

“Alatea? Thirteen,” Engracia said.

“And she ended up in Cumbria,” Barbara murmured. “By what route and how the hell…?”

She’d been speaking to herself but Engracia replied, reaching for one of the copied articles she’d already looked at. Barbara saw it was the piece on Raul Montenegro. Engracia said, “Perhaps this man helped her? If he has enough money to pay for a symphony music hall, he has more than enough to purchase a ticket to London for a beautiful woman, no? Or a ticket to any place else. Indeed, to any place she might like to go.”

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

They were like a tableau for thirty seconds or so, although the thirty seconds seemed much longer. During this period, Mignon directed her gaze from one person to another and her face blazed with a triumph that she’d obviously been waiting years to feel. Manette felt like a character in the midst of a stage play. This was the climax of the drama, and everything afterwards was going to provide them with the catharsis guaranteed in all Greek tragedies.

Valerie was the first person to move. She stood and said in that well-bred fashion of hers that Manette knew so well, “Please excuse me,” and she began to leave the great hall.

Mignon said in a burble of laughter, “Don’t you want to know more, Mum? You can’t leave now. Wouldn’t you like to have it all?”

Valerie hesitated, then turned and looked at Mignon. “You make a very good case for strangling one’s children at birth,” she said, and she left them.

The inspector followed her. Obviously, new light was being shed upon everything and there was now a very good chance, Manette thought, that he was reconsidering whatever conclusions he’d drawn about Ian’s death. She was doing the same herself because if Ian had known about this child of her father’s… if he’d made some kind of threat regarding this child and what he knew about her… if, indeed, it had come down to a choice between the truth being revealed or a lie continuing to be lived… Manette saw how her cousin’s life had been in danger, and she reckoned the detective saw it as well.

She didn’t want to believe what Mignon had revealed about this child Bianca, but she could see by the expression on her father’s face that Mignon’s revelation was the truth. She didn’t know how she felt about this, and she didn’t know when she might even be able to sort through her feelings in the matter. But she saw how Mignon felt about it: just another reason to blame their father for whatever she believed had been lacking in her life.

Mignon said to him happily, “Oh my, Dad. Well, at least you and I are going down in this ship together, aren’t we? I do expect there’s some consolation in that for you. To be doomed but to see your favourite child — that would be me, wouldn’t it? — doomed alongside you? Rather like King Lear and Cordelia. Only… Who’s playing the Fool?”

Bernard’s lips were as thin as a bowl of workhouse gruel. He said, “I think you’re rather mistaken, Mignon, although you’ve got the serpent’s-tooth part of it bang on the money.”

She wasn’t the least taken aback. “D’you think marital forgiveness actually runs that far?”

He said, “I don’t think you know the first thing about marriage or forgiveness.”

At this Manette glanced at Freddie. He was watching her, his dark eyes concerned. She understood he was worried for her, anxious about how she was taking in being a witness to her family’s destruction. Before her eyes, the world as she’d known it was undergoing a cataclysmic change. She wanted to tell him she could cope with that, but she knew she didn’t want to cope alone.

Mignon said to their father, “Did you really think you could keep Bianca a secret forever? My God, what an enormous ego you have. Tell me, Dad, what was poor little Bianca to make of everything when she learned about her father and his other family? His legitimate family. But you hadn’t got that far along in your consideration of the future, had you? As long as Vivver was willing to play the game your way, you probably didn’t think one moment beyond what kind of fuck she was and how often you could manage it.”

“Vivienne,” her father replied, “is going home to New Zealand. And this conversation is quite finished.”

“I’ll say when it’s finished,” Mignon told him. “Not you. Never you. She’s younger than we are, this Vivienne of yours. She’s younger than Nick.”

Bernard walked to the front door then, passing Mignon to do so. She tried to grab his arm, but he shook her off. Manette expected her sister to use that gesture as an opportunity to topple from the sofa to the floor and proclaim herself the victim of abuse, but instead, she merely carried on talking. She said, “I’ll speak to Mother. I’ll tell her the rest. How long you’ve been having an affair with Vivienne Tully: Is it ten years, Dad? Longer than that? How old she was when it all began: She was twenty-four, wasn’t she? Or was she younger? How Bianca came about: She wanted her, didn’t she? She wanted a baby and you did as well, didn’t you, Dad? Because when Bianca was born, Nick was still out there doing his Nick thing and you were still hoping that someone, somewhere, some bloody time was going to give you a decent male child, weren’t you, Dad? And won’t Mother just love hearing that?”

Bernard said, “Do your worst, Mignon. It is, I think, what you’ve always wanted.”

“I hate you,” she said.

“As always,” he replied.

“Did you hear me? I hate you.”

“For my sins,” Bernard said, “believe me, I know. And perhaps I deserve it. Now leave my house.”

There was a moment of impasse during which Manette thought her sister might refuse. Mignon stared at her father as if waiting for something that Manette knew very well was never going to appear. Finally, she shoved her zimmer to one side. She smiled, rose, and strolled easily out of her father’s life.

When the door was closed upon her, Bernard took a linen handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his glasses with it, then he used it against his face. Manette could see that his hands were shaking. Everything was on the line for him, not the least a marriage of more than forty years.

He finally looked from Manette to Freddie and back to Manette. He said, “I’m so sorry, my dear. There are so many things…”

“I’m not sure they matter any longer.” How odd, Manette thought. She’d waited most of her life for this moment: with herself in a superior position and Bernard made vulnerable, with Bernard looking at her and actually seeing her, not as a daughter, not as a substitute for the kind of son he’d wished for, but as a person in her own right, fully capable of anything he himself could do. She no longer knew why all of that had been so important to her. She only knew that she didn’t feel what she’d expected to feel with his recognition of her washing over her at last.

Bernard nodded. He said, “Freddie…”

Freddie said, “If I’d been told, I would have probably stopped it all from happening. But then, I don’t know, do I? I’m not sure.”

“You’re a good, honest man, Fred. Stay that way.” Bernard excused himself and went to the stairs. He climbed them heavily and Manette and Freddie listened to his footfalls. Eventually, they faded. A door closed quietly somewhere above them.

“We should probably leave, old girl,” Freddie said to Manette. “If you’re able, that is.”

He came to her and she allowed him to help her to her feet, not because she needed it but because it felt good to feel someone solid at her side. They left the great hall and went outdoors. It wasn’t until they were in the car and heading along the drive in the direction of the gate that she began to weep. She tried to do this silently, but Freddie glanced in her direction. He pulled the car over at once and stopped. Gently, he took her into his arms.

He said, “It’s a tough one. Seeing one’s parents like that. Knowing how one has demolished the other. I expect your mother knew something wasn’t quite right, but perhaps it was easier just to ignore it. That’s the way these things are sometimes.”

She cried against his shoulder but she shook her head.

He said, “What? Well, of course, your sister’s mad as a rabid dog, but there’s nothing much new in that, is there? I do wonder, though, how you managed to emerge so… well, so normal, Manette. It’s rather miraculous when you think about it.”

At this, she wept harder. It was all too late: what she now knew, what she should have seen, and what she finally understood.

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Lynley found Valerie Fairclough walking along one of the paths already laid out in the unfinished children’s garden. When he joined her, she began to speak as if they had been interrupted in the midst of a conversation about this very spot. She pointed out where work on the wrecked ship had already begun and told him about the ropes, swings, and sand that would be a feature of it. She indicated the spot designated for monkey bars and a roundabout. She took him past the smaller children’s section, where horses, kangaroos, and large frogs already stood on their heavy spring bases, waiting for riders who would laugh and crow with the simple fun of bouncing upon them. There would be a fort as well, she said, because boys loved forts to play soldiers in, didn’t they? And for the girls there would be a playhouse stocked with everything in miniature that one would find in a real house because wasn’t the truth of the matter — and all sexism aside — that girls liked to play inside houses and make up games in which they were married with children and a husband who came home at night and presided over dinner?

She laughed mirthlessly when she said that last bit. Then she went on to say that the children’s area would be, in short, every child’s dream place to play.

Lynley thought it all quite odd. What she was building was more suitable for a public park than a private home. He wondered what her expectation of its use really was, whether she had a larger picture in mind, one that meant opening Ireleth Hall to the public in the manner of so many great houses across the country. It was quite as if she’d known an enormous change was coming and was preparing for it.

He said to her, “Why did you arrange for me to come to Cumbria?”

Valerie looked at him. At sixty-seven years old, she was a striking woman. In her youth she would have possessed great beauty. Beauty and money: a powerful combination. She could have chosen from a score of men of similar background to her own, but she had not done so.

“Because I’ve suspected for quite some time.”

“What?”

“Bernard. What he was up to. I didn’t know for certain that he was ‘up to’ Vivienne Tully, of course, but I probably should have realised that as well. When he didn’t mention her after the second time she and I met, those trips to London of his that became more frequent, so many things associated with his foundation that needed his attention … There are always signs, Inspector. There are always clues, red flags, whatever you wish to call them. But it’s generally easier to ignore them than to face the unknown that’s going to arise out of the wreckage of a forty-two-year marriage.” She picked up a discarded plastic coffee cup, something left by one of the workers. She frowned at this and crushed it into her pocket. She shaded her eyes and looked out at the lake, at storm clouds that were brewing on the hills to the west. “I am surrounded by liars and knaves. I wanted to smoke them out of their hiding places. You” — and here she cast him a small smile — “you were my fire, Inspector.”

“What of Ian?”

“Poor Ian.”

“Mignon could have killed him. She had motive, a very strong motive if it comes to that. By your own admission, she was in the boathouse. She could have gone in there earlier and loosened the stones somehow, in an undetectable way. She could even have been in there when he returned. She could have pulled him from the scull, pushed him from it…”

“Inspector, that sort of revenge is far beyond Mignon’s ability to plan. Besides, she would have seen no immediate monetary gain in that. And the only thing Mignon has ever been able to see clearly is the monetary gain of the moment.” She turned from the lake, then, and looked at Lynley. She said, “I knew the stones were loose. I’d told Ian as much, more than once. He and I were the only ones who used the boathouse regularly, so I told no one else. There was no need. I warned him to take care getting in and out of his scull. He said not to worry, that he would take care and when he had a moment, he’d fix the dock. But I think that night he had other things on his mind. He must have done. It was quite out of the ordinary that he came to row that late anyway. I think he wasn’t paying close enough attention. It was always an accident, Inspector. I knew that from the first.”

Lynley considered this. “And that filleting knife I found in the water with the stones?”

“I threw it there. Just to keep you here, in case you decided too soon it was an accident.”

“I see,” he said.

“Are you terribly angry?”

“I ought to be.” They turned and headed back towards the house. Above the walls of the topiary garden, the towering mass of shaped shrubbery loomed and behind it Ireleth Hall itself, sand coloured and teeming with history. He said, “Didn’t Bernard think it unusual?”

“What?”

“Your asking for an investigation into his nephew’s death.”

“Perhaps he did, but what could he say? ‘I don’t want that’? I would have asked why. He would have tried to explain. Perhaps he would have said it was unfair to Nicholas, to Manette, to Mignon to suspect them, but I would have argued it’s better to know the truth about one’s children than to live a lie and that, Inspector, would have taken us far too close to the truth Bernard himself didn’t want me to know. He had to run the risk you wouldn’t unearth Vivienne. He really had no choice in the matter.”

“For what it’s worth, she’s returning to New Zealand.”

She made no response to this. She took his arm as they worked their way along the path. She said, “What’s odd is this: After more than forty years of marriage, a man often becomes a habit. I must consider whether Bernard is a habit I would prefer to break.”

“Might you?”

“I might. But first I want the time to think.” She squeezed his arm and looked up at him. “You’re a very handsome man, Inspector. I’m sorry you lost your wife. But I hope you don’t intend to remain alone. Do you?”

“I haven’t thought about it much,” he admitted.

“Well, do think about it. We all have to choose eventually.”

WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Tim spent hours in the business centre waiting for the time to be right. It hadn’t taken him that long to reach the town once he’d left Kaveh that morning. He’d leaped over a drystone wall and jogged across a lumpy paddock in the direction of dense woods comprising fir trees and birches. He’d remained there — in a shelter of autumn-hued bracken backed by the trunk of a fallen spruce — until he was certain Kaveh had driven off, and then he’d worked his way over to the road to Windermere, where two lifts took him to the middle of town, at which point he began his search.

He’d had no luck in finding a restorer of broken toys. At long last, he’d had to settle upon an establishment called J. Bobak amp; Son, a shop dedicated to the repair of all things electrical. Inside this place three aisles crammed with broken kitchen appliances led to the back, where J. Bobak turned out to be a woman with grey plaits, a lined face, and bright pink lipstick that ran up the cracks above her lips while Son turned out to be a kid in his twenties with Down’s syndrome. She was tinkering with something that looked like a miniature waffle iron. He was working on an old-time wireless that was nearly the size of a Mini. All round both Son and his mother stood various appliances in various stages of repair: television sets, microwaves, mixers, toasters, and coffeemakers, some of which looked as if they’d been waiting for expert electrical ministrations for a decade or more.

When Tim presented J. Bobak with Bella, she’d shaken her head. This poor lump of arms and legs and body couldn’t be repaired at all, he was told, even if J. Bobak amp; Son repaired toys, which they did not. At least, she couldn’t be repaired in a way that would be pleasing to her owner. He’d be better off saving his money to buy a new doll. There was a toy shop-

It had to be this doll, he told J. Bobak. He knew it was rude to interrupt and the expression on J. Bobak’s face indicated she was about to tell him so. He went on to explain the doll belonged to his little sister and their dad had given it to her and their dad was dead. This got to J. Bobak. She laid the doll’s pieces out on the shop counter and pursed her bright pink lips thoughtfully. Her son came to join her. He said, “Hi,” to Tim, and “I don’t go to school any longer but you’re supposed to be in school, eh? Betcher doing a bunk today.” His mum said, “Trev, you see to your own job, luv. There’s a good boy,” and patted him on his shoulder as he snuffled noisily against his arm and went back to the enormous radio.

She said to Tim, “Sure you don’t want to buy a new doll, luv?”

As could be, Tim told her. Could she repair it? There was no other shop. He’d tried all over town.

She said reluctantly that she’d see what she could do, and Tim told her he would give her the address where the doll had to be sent when it was completed. He took out a crumpled wad of bank notes and some coins, all of which he’d cadged over time from his mother’s bag, his father’s wallet, and a tin in the kitchen where Kaveh kept pound coins to use when he ran out of money and hadn’t thought to stop at the cash point in Windermere on his way home from work.

J. Bobak said, “What? You not coming back for it yourself?”

He said no. He wouldn’t be here in Cumbria by the time the doll was repaired. He told her to take as much money as she liked. She could send any change back with the doll. Then he gave her Gracie’s name and the address, which was simple enough. Bryan Beck farm, Bryanbarrow, near Crosthwaite. Gracie might well be gone by then, but even if she’d returned to their mother, certainly Kaveh would send the doll on. He’d do that much, no matter what sort of lie he was living with his pathetic little wife at that point. And she’d be pleased to see it, would Gracie. Perhaps she’d even forgive Tim for having wrecked the poor doll in the first place.

That done, he’d found his way to the business centre and there he stayed. On his way, with what remained of his money he bought a packet of jam mallows, a Kit Kat bar, an apple, and a nachos kit of chips and salsa and refried beans, and, squatting between a filthy white Ford Transit and a wheelie bin overloaded with soaking Styrofoam, he ate it all.

When the car park began to empty as people left the various businesses for the day, he ducked behind the wheelie bin and kept out of sight. He fixed his eyes upon the photo shop and just before the hour when it was to close, he went across to it and opened the door.

Toy4You was taking the cash drawer out of the till. His hands full, he didn’t have the chance to remove his name tag. Tim saw part of it, William Con-, before the man flicked away. He ducked into the back and when he returned, he was without the cash drawer and without the name tag. He was also without good humour.

He said, “I told you I’d text. What’re you doing here?”

Tim said, “It happens tonight.”

Toy4You said, “Get this straight: I’m not playing power games with some fourteen-year-old. I told you I’d let you know when I had it set up.”

“Set it up now. You said not alone this time and that means you know someone. Get him over here. We’re doing it now.” Tim pushed past the man. He saw Toy4You’s face darken. It didn’t matter to Tim if it came to blows. Blows were just fine. One way or another, things were going to be concluded.

He went into the back room. He’d been here before, so nothing about it surprised Tim. It wasn’t a large space, but it was divided into two distinct sections. The first was for digital printing, supplies, and articles relating to the photographic business. The second, at the far end of the room, was a studio in which subjects posed for their pictures in front of various backgrounds.

At the moment, the studio took the form of a photographic parlour from another century, the sort of place where people used to pose stiffly, sitting or standing or both. It contained a chaise longue, two plinths upon which sat artificial ferns, several overstuffed chairs, thick faux curtains drawn back with fancy tasselled cords, and a backdrop. The backdrop made it look as if anyone posing had dragged their furniture outside to the top of a cliff: It comprised a painted landmass ending in a deep sky filled with cumulus clouds.

Tim had learned that this setup was all about contrast. And contrast, he’d also learned, was all about two things being in direct opposition to each other. When this had been explained to him on his first visit, he’d thought immediately of the contrast between what he’d once counted upon as his life — a mum, a dad, a sister, and a house in Grange-over-Sands — and what his life had been reduced to, which was nothing. Entering the space now, he thought about the contrast between how Kaveh Mehran had lived with his dad at Bryan Beck farm and how Kaveh Mehran intended to live in what was going to go for the next phase of his miserable excuse for a life. When this thought came upon him, Tim forced himself to think instead of the real contrast that lay ahead, which was the contrast between the mock innocence of this setting for photos and what the photos themselves consisted of.

Toy4You had explained all this to him the first time he had posed for the pictures as he had been instructed to pose. Certain kinds of people, he’d been told, liked to look at or purchase photos of nude young boys. They liked the boys posing in certain ways. They liked to see certain body parts. Sometimes it was just the suggestion of a body part, and sometimes it was the real thing. Sometimes they wanted a face included in the picture. Sometimes they didn’t. A pout was good. So was something Toy4You referred to as a you-can-have-it look. Make a stiffie for the camera, and it was even better. Certain people would pay a good sum of money for a picture of a boy, a pout, desire in the eyes, and a decent stiffie as well.

Tim had gone along. He, after all, had been the one to start this ball rolling towards its destination. But money wasn’t what he’d wanted. He’d wanted action and so far that action had been denied him. That was going to change.

Toy4You had followed him into the back room. He said to Tim, “You need to leave. I can’t have you here.”

Tim said, “I already told you. Call your friend or whoever it is. Tell him I’m ready. Tell him to get down here. We’re doing the pictures now.”

“He’s not about to do that. No fourteen-year-old tells him how to run his affairs. He tells us when the time is right. We don’t tell him. What is it about this that you don’t understand?”

“I don’t have the time,” Tim protested. “The time is now. I’m not waiting any longer. If you want me doing it with some bloke, then this is your chance because you’re not getting another.”

“That’s the way it is, then,” Toy4You said with a shrug. “Now get out.”

“What? You think you’ll find someone else to do it? You think it’ll be that easy?”

“There are always kids looking for money,” he said.

“For a picture, maybe. They’ll take your money for a picture. They’ll stand there naked and maybe they’ll even do it hard. But the rest? You think someone’ll do the rest? Someone besides me?”

“And you think you’re the only one who’s found me online? You think this is a bit of work I’ve just taken up recently for my health or something? You think you’re the first? The one and only? There’re dozens of you out there and they’re willing to do it the way I want it done because they want the money. They don’t make the rules, they follow the rules. And one of the rules is that they don’t show up — this is twice now, you little bugger — and make demands.”

Toy4You had been standing among the supplies, but he came forward as he spoke. He wasn’t big and Tim had always reckoned he could take him down if that was going to be necessary, but when the man grabbed him by the arm, Tim felt a strength emanating from him that he hadn’t suspected was there.

“I don’t play games,” Toy4You told him. “I don’t get manipulated by little bits of boy-ass like you.”

“We had a deal and — ”

“Bugger your deal. It’s over. It’s off.”

“You promised. You said.”

“I don’t need this shit.”

Toy4You jerked him, hard. Tim saw that he meant to eject him from the premises. That couldn’t happen. He’d worked too hard and he’d done too much. He pulled away.

He cried, “No! I want it to happen, and I want it now,” and he began to tear at his clothes. He pulled off his anorak, his heavy sweater. Buttons flew from his shirt as he ripped it off. He began to shout. “You promised. If you don’t do it, I’ll go to the cops. I swear. I will. I’ll tell them. What I did. What you want. The pictures. Your friends. How to find you. It’s all on my computer and they’ll know and — ”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Toy4You looked back over his shoulder, in the direction of the shop. He strode to the doorway that had brought them both into the back room and he slammed it shut. He returned to Tim. He said, “Christ, calm down. All right. But it can’t happen now. Can’t you get that?”

“I want… I swear… The cops’ll come.”

“All right. The cops. I get it. I believe you. Just calm the fuck down. Look. I’m going to make the call. Now. In front of you. I’ll set it up for tomorrow. We’ll do the pictures then.” He appeared to think for a moment, then he looked Tim over. He said, “It’ll be film, though. Live action. And all the way this time. You understand?”

“But you said — ”

“I’m taking a risk here!” Toy4You roared. “You’ll make it worth my while. Do you want it or not?”

Tim flinched, cowed. But he knew fear only for a moment before he said, “I want it.”

“Good. Two blokes as well. Do… you… get… it? You and two blokes and the real thing, live on film. Do you know what that means? Because no way in hell are we starting this and finding out midway that you’ve changed your mind. You and two blokes. Say you understand.”

Tim licked his lips. “Me and two blokes. I understand.”

Toy4You looked him over, as if expecting something to ooze from his pores that would indicate the future. Tim stood his ground. Toy4You nodded sharply and punched in some numbers on the phone.

Tim said, “And after… when it’s over… you promise…”

“I promise. When it’s over, you die. Just like you want it. However you want it. You get to make the rules for that.”