Believing the Lie

MILNTHORPE AND ARNSIDE CUMBRIA

When they’d laid their plans for taking a few days to help Tommy in Cumbria, Deborah St. James had entertained visions of herself and Simon being domiciled in a hotel draped in a stunning display of Virginia creeper in its autumnal glory, overlooking one of the lakes. She would even have settled for a situation viewing a mere waterfall as the county appeared to have a plethora of them. But where she ended up was an old inn called the Crow and Eagle exactly at the point one would expect an inn to be sitting: at an intersection of two roads down which lorries seemed to rumble at all hours of the night. This intersection was in the middle of the market town of Milnthorpe, so far south of the Lakes as not to be considered part of the Lakes at all, and the only water it boasted was the River Bela — nowhere in view — which appeared to be one of the countless tributaries that debouched into Morecambe Bay.

Simon had seen her expression at the first glimpse of the place. He’d said, “Ah,” and, “Well, we’re not here on holiday, are we, my love, but we’ll take a day or two when we’ve finished. A grand hotel with a view of Windermere, roaring fires, scones, tea, and whatever else.” He’d leered at her playfully.

She’d eyed him and said, “I’m planning to hold you to that, Simon.”

“I’d have it no other way.”

On the evening of their arrival, she’d received on her mobile the call that she’d been awaiting. She answered as she’d been answering every call for the last twenty-four hours, just for the practice. She’d said, “Deborah St. James Photography,” and she’d nodded to Simon when the caller identified himself as Nicholas Fairclough. It hadn’t taken long to make the arrangements: He was willing to meet with her and discuss the project that she had phoned about. He’d said, “But this documentary… it’s not about me, is it? At least not about my private life.” She’d assured him that it was only about the project he had developed for recovering addicts. It would be a preliminary interview, she told him. She would give a report to a filmmaker from Query Productions, who would ultimately make the decision regarding the project’s inclusion in his documentary. “This is purely on spec,” she told him. She liked this jargon. Anything to make her seem like the genuine article to this man. “I’ve no idea if you’d actually be in the film at the end of the day, you understand.” This seemed to relieve him. He sounded quite buoyant when he said, “Right, then. When shall we meet?”

She was readying herself for that meeting now. Simon was on his mobile with the coroner, spinning his own tale about a lecture he would be giving to a class at University College, London. He was, she was finding, far more glib than she. This surprised her, for while he had always been the most confident of men and his credentials were impressive enough to make him confident, his confidence had always seemed to be connected to his relationship with the truth. That he could dissemble so well gave her pause. One didn’t like to know one’s husband was quite so adept at lying when he had to.

Her own mobile rang as she was gathering her things. She looked at the number and recognised it. No need to be Deborah St. James Photography at the moment. The caller was Simon’s brother David.

She knew at once why David was ringing her. She was more or less ready for the call.

“Just thought I’d answer any questions you might have,” was how David brought up the subject. His voice had that encouraging ring to it, jollying her along. “The girl’s quite keen to meet you, Deborah. She’s had a look at your website: the photos and all that. Simon said you were worrying a bit about the London placement since she lives here in Southampton. I daresay she wouldn’t have considered it, but she knows Simon’s my brother, and her father’s worked at the company here for a good twenty years. Part of the accounting department,” he added hastily. That was synonymous with she’s from a good family, as if he felt that the girl’s having a dockworker as a father would constitute the possession of tainted blood.

They wanted her to decide. Deborah understood this. David and Simon both saw the situation as the perfect solution to a problem having gone on for years. They were both the sort of man who takes each difficulty in life as it comes up and deals with it as soon as possible and just as efficiently. Neither of them was like her, projecting into the future and seeing how complicated and potentially heartbreaking was the scenario they were proposing.

She said, “David, I just don’t know. I don’t think it would work. I can’t see how — ”

“Are you saying no?”

That was another one of the problems. Saying no meant no. Asking for more time meant not taking a position. Why on earth, Deborah wondered, could she not take a definite position on this matter? Last chance and only chance seemed like the reasons, but she was still frozen in place, unwilling to speak.

She said she’d ring him back. At the moment, she had to set off for Arnside. A heavy sigh at his end told her he wasn’t happy with this, but he rang off. Simon said nothing, although he’d obviously heard her side of the call as he’d finished with his own. They parted at the sides of their respective hire cars, wishing each other luck.

Deborah’s drive was the lesser one. Nicholas Fairclough lived just on the far outskirts of the village of Arnside, and Arnside was southwest of Milnthorpe, a short distance along the side of a muddy flat of sand that gave onto the Kent Channel. There were fishermen here, positioned along the road and down the bank, although Deborah couldn’t tell exactly where they were fishing. From the car, it didn’t look as if there was any water in the mud flat at all. She could see, however, where the shifting tide from Morecambe Bay had scoured out depressions in the sand, creating banks and drops that suggested danger.

Arnside House was the name of Nicholas Fairclough’s property. It sat at the end of the Promenade, an impressive display of Victorian mansions that had no doubt at one time served as the summer homes of industrialists from Manchester, Liverpool, and Lancaster. Most of these were stately-looking conversions now: flats possessing unimpeded views of the channel, of the railway viaduct that stretched across the water towards Grange-over-Sands, and of Grange-over-Sands itself, just visible today through a mild autumn mist.

Unlike the mansions that preceded it, Arnside House was an unadorned structure, utterly plain and whitewashed over a roughcast exterior that was itself a finishing surface over what was undoubtedly stone or brick. Its windows featured unpainted sandstone surrounds, and its many gables displayed rounded chimneys whitewashed like the rest of the building. Only the rainwater heads were other than plain, and these were highly stylised in a design Deborah recognised as Arts and Crafts. Shades of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, she thought. Once inside the structure, however, she discovered a whimsical blend of everything from the medieval to the modern.

Nicholas Fairclough answered the door. He admitted her into an oak-panelled entrance hall whose marble floor was detailed in a pattern of diamonds, circles, and squares. He took her coat from her and led her down an uncarpeted corridor and past a large room having the look of a medieval banqueting hall, complete with minstrels’ gallery above a fireplace inglenook. This hall was something of a wreck as far as Deborah could tell, and as if in explanation of this, Nicholas Fairclough said, “We’re restoring the old pile bit by bit. That’s going to be last, I’m afraid, as we need to find someone who can cope with the most astounding wallpaper. Peacocks and Petunias, I call it. Peacocks is accurate but I can’t swear to the other. Here, we can talk in the drawing room.”

This was sunshine yellow with a white plaster frieze of hawthorn berries, birds, leaves, roses, and acorns. In any other room, this elaborate decoration would have been the main feature, but the drawing room’s fireplace served as a remarkable focal point of bright turquoise tiles and a hearth that duplicated the diamonds, circles, and squares of the entrance. A fire was burning here and although the fireplace — like the one in the great hall — formed part of an inglenook with bench seats, bookshelves, and stained glass windows, Nicholas motioned Deborah to one of two low-slung chairs in one of the bay windows from which they had a view of the water. A table stood between the chairs, a coffee service and three cups on it, along with a fan of magazines.

“I wanted to speak to you for a moment before I fetch my wife,” Nicholas said. “I must tell you that I’m completely on board with talking to you and with having the project featured in this film if it comes to it. But Allie’s going to take some convincing. I thought I’d give you a heads-up.”

“I see. Can you give me some idea…?”

“She’s rather private,” he said. “She’s from Argentina and she’s self-conscious about her English. Frankly, I think she speaks it perfectly well, but there you have it. Plus…” He tipped his fingers beneath his chin and looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, “She’s protective of me, as well. There’s that.”

Deborah smiled. “This film isn’t an expose or anything, Mr. Fairclough. Although, to be honest it could turn into that if you’re enslaving recovering addicts for your own purposes. I suppose I should ask if you need protecting for some reason?”

She’d meant it lightheartedly, but she couldn’t help noting how seriously he took the question. He appeared to be tossing round a few possibilities, and she found this detail rather telling. He finally said, “Here’s what I think it is. She worries that I’ll be disappointed in some way. And she worries where disappointment will lead me. She wouldn’t say that, but one has a way of knowing these things about one’s wife. After a bit of time together. If you know what I mean.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Two years last March.”

“You’re quite close then.”

“We are indeed, I’m pleased to say. Let me fetch her to meet you. You don’t look all that frightening, do you.”

He sprang up from his chair and left her in the drawing room. Deborah looked around. Whoever had decorated it had an artistic flair that she could well appreciate. The furniture reflected the period from which the house had come, but it managed to remain secondary to the features of the room. Aside from the fireplace, the most notable of these were columns: slender poles surmounted with capitals that were bowls carved with birds and fruits and leaves. They stood at the sides of the bay windows, they formed the ends of the inglenook’s benches, they held up a shelf that ran round the room just beneath the frieze. The restoration of this room alone must have cost a fortune, Deborah reckoned. She wondered where a reformed drug addict had managed to come up with such a sum.

Her gaze went to the bay window. From there it fell upon the table and the coffee service that sat upon it, waiting for someone’s use. The fan of magazines next to this caught her attention, and she idly fingered through them. Architecture, interior design, gardening. And then she came to one that caused her hand to stop abruptly. Conception, this one was called.

Deborah had seen it often enough during the endless appointments she’d had with specialists before receiving the disheartening diagnosis that had sunk her dreams, but she’d never looked through it. It had seemed too much like tempting fate. She picked it up now, however. There might well be, she thought, a form of sisterhood between Nicholas Fairclough’s wife and herself, and this could be useful.

Quickly, she flipped through it. It consisted of the types of articles one might expect in a magazine of such a name. Appropriate diets during pregnancy, antenatal vitamins and supplements, postpartum depression and related problems, midwives, breast-feeding. All of it was here. But in the back was something curious. A number of pages had been torn out.

Footsteps came along the corridor, and Deborah replaced the magazine on the table. She got to her feet and turned as she heard Nicholas Fairclough say, “Alatea Vasquez y del Torres Fairclough,” and added with an appealing, boyish laugh, “Forgive me. I rather love saying that name. Allie, this is Deborah St. James.”

The woman was, Deborah thought, quite exotic: olive skinned and dark eyed, with cheekbones defining an angular face. She had an abundance of coffee-coloured hair so wiry that it sprang from her head in a billowing mass, and enormous gold earrings shone through it when she moved. She was an odd match for Nicholas Fairclough, former drug addict and family black sheep.

Alatea crossed the room to her, a hand extended. She had large hands, but they were long fingered and slim like the rest of her. “Nicky tells me you seem harmless enough,” she said with a smile. Her English was heavily accented. “He has told you I have a concern about this.”

“About my being harmless?” Deborah asked. “Or about the project?”

“Let’s sit and have a chat.” Nicholas was the one to speak, as if worried that his wife wouldn’t understand Deborah’s mild joke. “I’ve made coffee, Allie.”

Alatea poured. She wore gold bangles on her wrists — first cousins to her earrings — and they slid down her arm as she reached for the coffeepot. Her gaze seemed to fall on the magazines as she did this, and for a moment she hesitated. She cast a glance at Deborah. Deborah smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging fashion.

Alatea said, “I was surprised about this film of yours, Ms. St. James.”

“It’s Deborah. Please.”

“As you wish, of course. It is small up here, what Nicholas is doing. I did wonder how you learned about him.”

Deborah was ready for this. Tommy had done his homework on the Faircloughs. He’d found a logical point of entry for her. “It wasn’t me, actually,” she said. “I just go where I’m pointed and do the preliminary research for the filmmakers at Query Productions. I’m not sure exactly how they decided upon you” — with a nod at Nicholas — “but I think it had to do with an article about your parents’ house.”

Nicholas said to his wife, “It was that sidebar again, darling.” And to Deborah, “There was a piece written about Ireleth Hall, my parents’ place. It’s an historic old pile on Lake Windermere with a topiary garden round two hundred years old that my mother’s brought back. She mentioned this place — our home — to the reporter and as it’s a bit of an architectural conversation piece, he trotted over to have a look. Not sure why. Perhaps it was a historical-restorations-are-in-the-blood-of-the-Faircloughs kind of thing. This place was given to us by my father and I reckoned taking it on was better than looking a gift horse. I think Allie and I would have preferred something new with all the mod cons in working order, though. Isn’t that the case, darling?”

“It’s a beautiful home,” Alatea said in reply. “I feel fortunate to live here.”

“That’s because you always insist upon seeing the glass half-full,” Nicholas told her, “which makes me a very lucky man, I suppose.”

“One of the film producers,” Deborah said to Alatea, “brought up the Middlebarrow Pele Project at an early meeting we had in London, when we were looking at all the possibilities. Frankly, no one knew what a pele tower was, but there were several people who knew about your husband. Who he is, I mean. As well as other things.” She didn’t elaborate upon those things. It was obvious to them all what they were.

“So this film,” Alatea said, “I do not have to be involved? It is, you see, a matter of my English — ”

Which sounded, Deborah thought, not only excellent but charming.

“ — and the fact that Nicky has done all of this on his own.”

“I wouldn’t have done it without you in my life,” Nicholas put in.

“But that is another matter entirely.” She turned as she spoke and her hair lifted, that billowing effect caused by its wiry nature. “The pele project… this is about you and what you have done and what you are achieving on your own. I am only your support, Nicky.”

“As if that’s not important,” he said, rolling his eyes at Deborah as if to add, “You see what I have to put up with?”

“Nonetheless, I have no real part and I want no part.”

“You’ve no worries on that score,” Deborah assured her. Anything to get their agreement, she thought. “And really, I do want to stress that nothing may come of this anyway. I don’t make the decisions. I only do the research. I create a report, take pictures to accompany it, and everything goes to London. The people at the production company decide what will be in the film.”

“See?” Nicholas said to his wife. “No worries.”

Alatea nodded but she didn’t look convinced. Still she gave her blessing with the words, “Perhaps you should then take Deborah to see the project, Nicky. That seems like a good place to begin.”

ARNSIDE CUMBRIA

When her husband had left with the red-haired woman, Alatea sat for a moment looking at the fan of magazines on the table in the bay window’s alcove. They had been gone through. While this shouldn’t have been odd, considering the woman had been waiting for Nicholas to fetch his wife for an introduction and it was natural for one to flip idly through magazines while waiting, there was nonetheless very little that did not set Alatea’s nerves on edge these days. She told herself that it meant absolutely nothing that Conception was now on the top of the stack. While it was a little embarrassing that a stranger might conclude that Alatea was obsessed with the subject of the magazine, it hardly meant anything would come of her conclusion. This woman from London was not here to talk to her or to wander through the labyrinth of her personal history. She was here because of what Nicholas was doing. And it was likely that she wouldn’t have been here at all had Nicholas been just some ordinary individual trying to develop yet another way to help addicts turn their lives around. The fact that he wasn’t just some ordinary bloke, the fact that the misdeeds of his misspent youth had garnered him so much publicity because of his father… That was what made the story a good one: the son of Lord Fairclough, self-redeemed from a life of dissolution.

Alatea hadn’t known about the Baron Fairclough of Ireleth part of Nicholas’s past when she’d first met him, or she would have run from his presence. Instead, she’d known only that his father was a manufacturer of everything imaginable that one might find in a bathroom, a fact that Nicholas had made light of. What he hadn’t mentioned was his father’s title, his father’s service to the cause of pancreatic cancer, and his father’s subsequent position of prominence. So she’d been prepared to meet a man prematurely aged by his son’s having thrown away twenty years of his life. She’d not been prepared to meet the vital presence that was Bernard Fairclough. Nor had she been altogether prepared for that way Nicholas’s father looked at her through his heavy-framed spectacles. “Call me Bernard,” he’d said, and his eyes had gone from her own to her bosom and back again. “Welcome to the family, my dear.”

She was used to men’s eyes on her bosom. That had not been the problem. It was natural. Men were men. But men didn’t usually then gaze upon her with speculation on their faces. What is someone like you doing with my son? was the unspoken question Bernard Fairclough had asked her.

She had seen that look each time Nicholas had introduced her to a member of his family. To them all, she and her husband were unsuited and although she wanted to make her physical appearance the reason for her unsuitability as the wife of Nicholas Fairclough, she reckoned it was more than that. They thought of her as a gold digger. She was not from their country, they knew nothing about her, her courtship had been disturbingly brief. To them this meant she was after something, undoubtedly the family fortune. Especially did Nicholas’s cousin Ian think this, because he was the man in charge of Bernard Fairclough’s money.

What Nicholas’s family didn’t think was that she could possibly be in love with him. She’d so far expended a great deal of effort to assure them of her devotion. She’d given them not a single reason to doubt her love for Nicholas, and ultimately, she’d come to believe she’d soothed the concerns of them all.

There was no reason their concerns should not be soothed, for she did love her husband. She was devoted to him. God in heaven, she was hardly the first woman on earth who had fallen in love with a man less attractive than herself. It happened all the time. So for every person to gaze upon her so speculatively… This had to stop, but she wasn’t sure how to halt it.

Alatea knew that she had to resolve her anxieties about this and other matters in some way. She had to stop starting at shadows. It was not a sin to enjoy the life she had. She hadn’t sought it. It had come to her. That had to mean it was the path that she was intended to follow.

Still, there was the magazine mixed among the others on the table and now on the top of them. Still, there was the way the woman from London had looked at her. How did they really know who this woman was, why she was here, and what she intended? They didn’t. They had to wait to find out. Or so it seemed.

Alatea picked up the coffee service on its tray. She carried it into the kitchen. She saw next to the telephone the scrap of paper upon which she’d first written the message from Deborah St. James. She hadn’t taken note of the name of the company Deborah St. James represented when she’d taken the message, but the woman herself had mentioned it, thank God, so Alatea had a place to start.

She went to the second floor of the house. Along a corridor where servants once had slept, she had designated a tiny bedroom as their design centre while she and Nicholas worked upon the house. But she also used the room as her lair and it was here that she kept her laptop.

It took forever to access the Internet from this location, but she managed to do so. She stared at the screen for a moment before she began to type.

BRYANBARROW CUMBRIA

It had been easy to bunk off school. Since no one with any brains would actually want to cart him all the way to Ulverston and beyond and since Kaveh did have brains, it had been a simple matter. Lie in bed, clutch the stomach, say Cousin Manette had served him something that must have been bad on the previous evening, claim he had already been sick twice during the night, and act appreciative when Gracie reacted as he’d known she’d react. She’d flown to Kaveh’s bedroom and he’d heard her crying out, “Timmy’s been sick! Timmy’s not well!” and he did feel a very small twinge of guilt because he knew from Gracie’s voice that she was afraid. Poor dumb kid. It didn’t take a genius to know she was worried that someone else from her family might suddenly kick the bucket.

She needed to get a grip, did Gracie. People died all the time. One couldn’t prevent that by hovering round them and doing their breathing, eating, sleeping, and shitting for them. Besides, as far as Tim was concerned, Gracie had bigger worries now than the potential death of someone else in her life. She had the worry of what the hell was going to become of her now their dad was dead and their mother wasn’t making the slightest move to claim them.

Well, at least they weren’t the only ones with that worry, he thought. For it was only a matter of time before Kaveh got both the word and the boot, and then it would be out on the street for him. Find a new place to live and a new dick to fuck you. Go back to whatever hole you’d been living in when Dad first found you, Kaveh my man.

Tim could hardly wait for that moment. And he wasn’t the only one, as things turned out.

That morning old George Cowley had waylaid Kaveh on his way to the car with Gracie in tow. Cowley looked like shit from what Tim could see from his bedroom window, but Cowley always looked like shit so it didn’t mean much to see him with his braces forgotten and his fly so undone that part of his shirt was hanging out of it like a tattersall flag. He must’ve seen Kaveh and Gracie from the window of his hovel and come running to have it out with the bloke.

Tim couldn’t hear what they were saying but he reckoned he knew the topic well enough. For Cowley hitched up his sagging trousers and adopted a posture that suggested a confrontation was in the offing. If that was the case, there was only one reason for confronting Kaveh about anything: Cowley wanted to know when Kaveh was planning to vacate the premises. He wanted to know when Bryan Beck farm was going on to the block.

Outside, Gracie had her rucksack at her feet and was waiting for Kaveh to unlock the car door for her. She was ping-ponging her gaze between Kaveh and Cowley, and Tim could see from her expression that she was scared. Gracie scared created a twinge in Tim, suggesting he ought to go outside and see if there was something he could do to come between Cowley and Kaveh or at least to get Gracie away from them. But doing that would bring himself to the closer attention of Kaveh, who might then tell him to get himself ready to be carted down to Margaret Fox School, and that was the last thing he wanted since he had things to do today.

Tim turned from the window and crossed the room to his bed. He threw himself down on it. He was waiting for the sound of Kaveh’s car, which would indicate that Tim was finally alone for the day. When he heard its muted roar — Kaveh was always too heavy on the accelerator, as if he thought the engine needed to be thoroughly flooded before putting the car into gear — Tim reached for his mobile. He began to punch in the number.

So yesterday had been a waste. He’d flipped out with Cousin Manette, and that was bad. What was good in the bad was that he’d not gone so far as to hurt her seriously. He’d come to his senses right at the moment he was about to fall upon her and choke the bloody life out of her and enjoy doing it just to get her to stop being so fucking concerned about him. His vision had gone black and he couldn’t even see the stupid cow on the ground in front of him. He’d dropped to his knees then and had beaten his fists on the wooden jetty instead of on her and damn it all if she hadn’t rolled over and pulled him to her and tried to soothe him. Tim didn’t know where his father’s cousin had developed her skill in the turn-the-other-cheek department. Her ability to forgive and forget was a strong indication that she had more than one screw loose in a place where screws didn’t belong at all.

At any rate, getting into Windermere had been out of the question. Tim had done his part and sobbed awhile. Then he finally calmed down. There they remained on the jetty dock for a good thirty minutes with Cousin Manette holding him and murmuring about things being fine and all right and you and me will go camping up Scout Scar just you wait and see and then who knows what will happen maybe your dad will come back to life like anyone really wanted him to and maybe your mum will develop a different personality which was just as unlikely. Whatever, Tim thought. Who bloody cared anyway. The important thing was not to have to spend the night in Great Urswick, and he’d managed that.

where r u he thumbed into the mobile. 2day ok he added.

There was no reply.

couldnt was his second message. No ride 2 W. There was no need to add the information about Manette, her tent, and all the rest. The fact was he’d not had a way to get to Windermere once Manette had carted him to Great Urswick and it would have taken him hours to thumb it.

There was still no reply. Tim waited. His gut started to feel like there was actually bad food inside of it as he’d claimed, and he swallowed a lump of desperation. No, he told himself immediately, he wasn’t desperate. He wasn’t anything.

He rolled off the bed, tossing the mobile on the bedside table. He went to his laptop and accessed his e-mail. No message.

It was, he decided, time to push matters along. No way in hell was anyone walking away from a bargain Tim had struck. He’d kept his half of it and it was time the other half was kept as well.

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Lynley had rooted a small pocket torch from the glove box of the Healey Elliott, and he was walking down to the boathouse for a closer look at the dock when his mobile rang. It was Isabelle, he saw. Her first words to him were, “Tommy, I need you in London.”

Logically he thought something had come up, which was what he asked her.

She said, “I’m not talking about professional need. There are certain actions I don’t want another member of the team to engage in for me.”

He smiled at that. “Well, that’s good to hear. I didn’t much fancy sharing you with DI Stewart.”

“Don’t push your luck. When will you be back?”

He looked out at the lake. He’d come through the plantation of poplars and he stood on the path with the morning sun falling on his shoulders. It was looking like a very fine day. For a moment he gave casual thought to what it would be like to be sharing the day with Isabelle. He said, “I don’t know, actually. I’ve only just got started.”

“What about a brief encounter? I’m missing you, and I don’t like to miss you. When I miss you, you start preying on my mind. I can’t have that and do my job properly.”

“A brief encounter would solve that for you?”

“It would. I have no defence to offer: I enjoy you in bed.”

“At least you’re forthright.”

“And I always will be. So have you the time? I can come to you this afternoon — ” She paused and he pictured her checking her diary for a time. When she went on, he knew he’d been right. “Round half past three,” she added. “Can you free yourself then?”

“I’m not near London, I’m afraid.”

“Really? Where are you?”

“Isabelle….” He wondered if she’d been trying to trick him. Dangling the prospect of sex to divert him first and then sweeping in for an inadvertent admission on his part regarding his location. “You know I can’t say.”

“I know you’ve been instructed by Hillier to keep your mouth shut. I wouldn’t expect that to apply to me. Would it have applied — ” She stopped herself. She said, “Never mind,” and that told him what she’d been on the edge of asking: Would it have applied to your wife? But she wouldn’t say that. They never mentioned Helen because to mention Helen ran the risk of taking their relationship in a direction that led from the purely sexual to an area she’d indicated from the first she had no intention of going. “At any rate, this is ridiculous,” she said. “What does Hillier think I’m going to do with the information?”

“I don’t expect it’s personal,” he said. “I mean, the fact that he doesn’t want you to know. He doesn’t want anyone to know. To be honest, I never thought to ask him why.”

“That doesn’t seem like you. Did you want to leave London for some reason?” And then quickly, “Never mind. This is the sort of conversation that can get us in trouble. I’ll speak to you later, Tommy.”

She rang off. He was left with the mobile in his hand. He put it back in his pocket and continued to the boathouse. Best to keep his mind in the here and now, he thought. Isabelle was right about conversations that could muddy the waters of what was going on between them.

The boathouse, he found, was kept unlocked. The time of day made its interior darker than it had been on Lynley’s previous visit, so he was glad he’d brought the torch and he switched it on. It was quite cool within: the result of the water, the stones, and the time of year. The air bore the tang of damp wood and algae. He worked his way round to the spot where Ian Cresswell’s scull was tied.

There, he knelt. He used the torch’s light against the edges of the stones that formed three sides of the gap remaining when the other two had gone into the water. There was little enough to see. Mortar was a rough surface anyway, and years of wear and usage had caused cracks, gouges, and splintered edges in more spots than just this one place. But what he was looking for was an indication of some tool used to ease the process of disintegration along: a chisel, perhaps, a screwdriver, a wedge. Anything would have done the job. Anything would also have left a mark.

He could see nothing. He realised that a closer examination under full light was going to be necessary, rather hard to pull off if the pretence he was merely a visitor was to be maintained. He also realised that his previous conclusion about the missing stones was now confirmed: They had to get them up and out of the water. The prospect wasn’t a pleasant one. The water wasn’t deep, but it would be frigid.

He switched off the torch and left the boathouse. He paused and looked out at the lake. No one was on it, and its surface was a perfect plane that reflected the glowing autumnal trees on its shoreline and above them the cloudless sky. He turned from this view and looked in the direction of the house. It was not visible from where he stood although anyone on the path through the plantation of poplars could easily see it. There was, however, another spot from which the boathouse could probably be seen: The top floor and roof of a square tower rose above a rise of land just south of the poplars. This was the folly where Mignon Fairclough lived. She’d not turned up to dinner on the previous night. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind a morning call upon her now.

The folly was a duplication of the defensive pele towers in the district. It was the sort of structure people had once added to their properties to give them a bit of faux history, although, in the case of Ireleth Hall, faux history had hardly been necessary. Nonetheless, at some point in time the folly had been constructed and now it stood four floors tall, with a crenellated roof that suggested access was available at that level as well. And from the roof the view would be all encompassing, Lynley reckoned. One would be able to see Ireleth Hall, the drive up to it, its grounds, and the lake, as well as the boathouse.

When he knocked on the door, he heard a woman call out from inside, “What? What?” in some exasperation. He reckoned he was disturbing Mignon in the midst of whatever it was that she did — he hadn’t yet learned her occupation — and he called out, “Miss Fairclough? Sorry. Am I disturbing you?”

Her answer sounded surprised. “Oh! I thought it was Mother again,” and in a few moments the door swung open to reveal one of Bernard Fairclough’s twin daughters. She was supporting herself on a zimmer frame, a woman who’d taken her diminutive height from her father and not her mother. She was swathed in various robes and gowns that gave her a bit of an artistic flair at the same time as effectively shrouding her body. She was also, Lynley noted, fully made up as if planning to go out sometime during the day. She’d done her hair as well, but she’d chosen a rather childlike style. It was held off her face like Alice in Wonderland with a band of blue ribbon, although unlike Alice’s its colour was dull brown and not blond.

She said, “You’re the Londoner, I take it. What’re you doing prowling round this morning? I saw you down at the boathouse again.”

“Did you?” Lynley wondered how she’d managed that. Three flights of stairs with a zimmer frame. He also wondered why she’d managed it. “I was getting some air,” he said. “I saw the tower from the boathouse and came to introduce myself. I expected to meet you at dinner last night.”

“Not up to it, I’m afraid,” she said. “Still recovering from a bit of surgery.” She looked him over and made no effort to hide her inspection. He thought she was about to say, You’ll do, or ask him to open his mouth for a look at his teeth but instead she said, “You may as well come in.”

“Am I disturbing you?”

“I was online but it can wait.” She stepped back from the door.

Once inside, he could see the entire ground floor at a glance. It comprised a sitting room, a kitchen, and an area for Mignon’s computer. It also seemed to be acting as a storage facility for boxes upon boxes stacked in virtually every open area upon the floor. They were sealed and at first he thought she might be in the process of moving house till a glance told him they were all packages addressed to her, with packing slips encased in plastic upon them.

The computer, he saw, was on. The screen of its monitor was lit and the format told him she’d been in the midst of reading and responding to e-mails. She saw the direction of his glance and said, “Virtual living. I find it vastly preferable to the real thing.”

“A modern-day version of pen pals?”

“Lord no. I’m having quite a torrid affair with a gentleman in the Seychelles. At least that’s where he says he’s from. He also says he’s married and a teacher in a dead-end job. Poor bloke went there for a sense of adventure and ended up finding the only adventure available was on the Internet.” She smiled briefly and insincerely. “Of course, he could be lying about everything since as far as he knows I’m a fashion designer terribly busy with getting ready for my next catwalk show. Last time I was a missionary physician doing noble work in Rwanda and before that… let me see… Oh yes. I was an abused housewife seeking someone to understand my plight. As I said, it’s virtual living. Anything is possible. It’s open season on the truth.”

“Can’t that sort of thing backfire?”

“That’s half the fun. But I’m careful and once they start talking about getting together in one port or another, I end it with a bang.” She moved towards the kitchen, going on to say, “I should offer you coffee or something. I’ve only the instant kind, I’m afraid. Would you like a cup? Or tea? I’ve only bags. I could do you a cup of either.”

“Coffee is fine. But I hate to trouble you.”

“Do you indeed? How well-bred of you to say so.” She was out of his line of vision in the kitchen banging about, so he took the opportunity to look round the place. Aside from the plethora of boxes, there was unwashed crockery on most available surfaces. The plates and bowls looked to have been there for some time because when he lifted one, it left a perfect ring beneath it that was untroubled by the dust that formed a fine down elsewhere.

He moved closer to the computer. She hadn’t been lying, he saw at a glance. God how I know what you mean, she had written. There are times when life gets in the way of what’s really important. In my case, we used to do it every night. And now I’m lucky for once a month. But you should talk to her about it. Really. Of course, I say that and don’t myself talk to James. How I wish. But never mind. What I wish can’t happen. If only, though.

“We’ve advanced to the point of revealing our miserable marriages,” Mignon said behind him. “Really, it’s incredible. The process is always exactly the same. You think someone along the line would have a bit of imagination when they’re setting about seduction, but they never do. I’ve got the kettle on. Coffee’ll be just a minute. I’ll need you to carry your own cup.”

Lynley joined her in the kitchen. It was tiny but kitted out with everything one would need. He saw she would have to do some washing up soon, however. There were very few plates left and she was using the last available mug for his coffee. She was having nothing herself. He said, “Wouldn’t you prefer a real relationship?”

She eyed him. “Like my parents’, perhaps?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “They seem quite devoted.”

“Oh yes. They are. Perfectly devoted, entirely compatible, and everything else that goes along with it. Just look at them. Billing and cooing. Did they do that bit for you?”

“I’m not sure I’d recognise a bill or a coo.”

“Well, if they didn’t engage in a few rounds of it yesterday, they’ll show you today, I’m sure. Watch for an exchange of looks suggesting deep waters. They’re good at that.”

“All form and no substance?”

“I didn’t say that. Devoted was what I said. They’re devoted and compatible, with all the trimmings. I think it’s to do with the fact that my father’s rarely here. It’s quite perfect for them both. Well, for him at least. As for Mother, she doesn’t complain and why should she? As long as she can fish, go to lunch with friends, manage my life, and spend vast amounts of her money on the gardens, I expect her existence is fine. And it is her money. Not Dad’s, by the way, but he’s never minded that as long as he has free use of it. Not what I would want in a marriage but as I don’t want a marriage at all, who am I to judge theirs?”

The water came to a boil and the kettle clicked off. Mignon set about the exercise of making him a cup of coffee, although she didn’t bother to do it deftly. She spooned in a heap of the instant powder, leaving a trail of it between jar and mug, and when she stirred it, the liquid slopped over the edge of the mug and onto the worktop. She used the same spoon to dig into a sugar bowl, did a bit more slopping, added milk, and slopped some more. She handed over the mug without wiping off the excess coffee and said in what Lynley judged the understatement of the year, “Sorry. I’m not at all domestic.”

“Nor am I,” he responded. “Thank you.”

She hobbled back to the sitting room, tossing over her shoulder, “What sort of car is that, by the way?”

“Car?”

“That amazing thing you’re driving. I saw it when you arrived yesterday. Quite stylish but it must absolutely swill petrol like a camel at the oasis.”

“Healey Elliott,” he told her.

“Never heard of it.” She found a chair unburdened by magazines and boxes. She deposited herself into it with a thud and said to him, “Find a spot. Move anything. It hardly matters.” And as he was searching for a place to sit, “So what were you doing at the boathouse? I saw you there yesterday with my father. What’s the attraction?”

He made a note about being more careful in his movements. It was appearing that aside from occupying herself with the Internet, Mignon spent her time in observation of what was going on round the property. He said, “I’d thought about taking that scull out on the lake but my natural bent towards sloth got the better of me.”

“Just as well.” She jerked her head in the general direction of the boathouse. “Last person who used it drowned. I reckoned you were tiptoeing down there to have a look at the scene of the crime.” She chuckled grimly.

“Crime?” He took a sip of the coffee. It was ghastly.

“My cousin Ian. Surely you’ve been informed. No?” She told him much of what he already knew, as blithely as she’d told him everything else. He wondered about her general frankness of conversation. In his experience, such commitment to ostensible veracity hid, in reality, a wealth of information.

Ian Cresswell had definitely been murdered, as far as Mignon was concerned. Her reasoning was that, as far as she knew, people rarely died just because someone else wished them to. To his raised eyebrow upon hearing this, she went on. Her brother Nicholas had had to stumble along in Cousin Ian’s sainted footsteps for most of his life. From the moment dear Ian had arrived from Kenya to take up residence with the Fairclough family upon the death of his mother, it had been Ian this and Ian that and why can’t you be more like Ian? First-class pupil at St. Bees, he was, first-class athlete, first-class nephew to his uncle Bernard, shining star, blue-eyed boy, never put so much as a toenail wrong.

“I reckoned when he dumped his family and took up with Kaveh, that would open Dad’s eyes to our darling Ian. I’m sure Nicky felt the same. But even deserting his family didn’t do it. And now Kaveh’s working for my mother and who orchestrated that if not Ian, hmm? No, nothing poor Nicky’s done in his life has been enough to shine a light on him that was brighter than the light shone on Ian. And nothing Ian did dimmed his own light in my father’s eyes. It does make one wonder.”

“About?”

“All sorts of delicious things.” Her face wore an I’ll-say-no-more expression: saintly and pleased simultaneously.

“So Nicholas killed him?” Lynley enquired. “I assume he stood to gain somehow.”

“As to the killing part, personally, I wouldn’t be the least surprised. As to the gaining… Lord knows.” She also seemed to be saying she wouldn’t much blame Nicholas for anything that might have happened to Ian Cresswell, and this, along with her remarks about the man himself, was something that bore looking into. As did, Lynley thought, the terms of Cresswell’s will.

He said, “It does seem a risky way to go about killing him, though, wouldn’t you say?”

“Why?”

“I understand your mother uses the boathouse nearly every day.”

Mignon straightened in her chair, receiving this news. She said, “And you’re implying…?”

“That your mother might have been a target for murder, assuming in the first place that someone was targeted for murder at all.”

“No one would be the least interested in seeing my mother die,” Mignon declared. She felt the need, apparently, to tick off on her fingers every person devoted to her mother, and topping the list was her father again, and all those claims of his devotion to Valerie.

Lynley thought of Hamlet and ladies protesting too much. He also thought of rich people and what they did with their money and how money bought everything from unwilling silence to reluctant cooperation. But all of this begged the question of what Bernard Fairclough had then intended by coming to London and requesting someone to look into the death of his nephew.

Too clever by half came to mind. Lynley just wasn’t certain where the expression ought to be applied.

GRANGE-OVER-SANDS CUMBRIA

Manette Fairclough McGhie had long believed there was no one on earth more manipulative than her own sister, but now she had other ideas. Mignon had used a simple accident at Launchy Gill to control their parents for more than thirty years: slip on the boulders too near the waterfall, knock your head, sustain a skull fracture, and my God, you’d think the world had ended. But really, Mignon was nothing at all in comparison to Niamh Cresswell. Mignon used people’s guilt, fear, and anxiety to get what she wanted. But Niamh used her own children. And this, Manette decided, was going to stop.

So she took the day off from work. She had a good reason, being bruised and sore from Tim’s attack on her on the previous afternoon. But even had he not kicked her kidneys and her spine so savagely, she would have come up with something. Fourteen-year-old boys did not behave as Tim was behaving without good reason. She’d known, of course, that something more serious than confusion over his father’s life choices was behind Tim’s attack on her as well as his placement in Margaret Fox School. She just hadn’t known the reason was his own miserable excuse for a mother.

Niamh’s home was just outside of Grange-over-Sands, some distance from Great Urswick. It was part of a neat and newish housing estate that curled down a hillside overlooking an estuary in Morecambe Bay. The houses here reflected someone’s taste for things Mediterranean: They were uniformly a blinding white, uniformly trimmed in dark blue, with uniformly simple front gardens heavily given to gravel and shrubbery. They were of various sizes and, true to form, Niamh possessed the largest of them with the best view of the estuary and the wintering birds who domiciled there. This was the home to which Niamh had decamped upon Ian’s desertion of his family. Manette knew from talking to Ian after the divorce that Niamh had been adamant about moving house. Well, who could blame her, really? Manette had thought at the time. The memories within the former home would have been painful, and the woman had two children to care for in the aftermath of the nuclear explosion that had occurred in the centre of her family. She’d have wanted something nice, at least, to help cushion the blow of such a transition in Tim and Gracie’s lives.

That conclusion of Manette’s, however, existed before she had learned that Tim and Gracie weren’t living with their mother at all but rather with their father and his lover. She’d adjusted her thinking to What the hell is going on? ultimately letting the question go when Ian had told her it was what he wanted as well: having his children with him. Upon Ian’s death, Manette had thought that Niamh would naturally have taken the children home with her. That she had evidently not done so brought up What the hell is going on? once again. This time, she intended to have the question answered.

Niamh’s estate car was in front of the house, and she came at once to the door when Manette knocked. Her expression was expectant, but this expression altered when she saw that her caller was Manette. Had Niamh not been wearing enough scent to knock over a pony as well as a hot-pink cocktail dress showing a copious amount of cleavage, that altered expression alone would have told Manette someone else was due to arrive quite soon.

Niamh said, “Manette,” as a means of greeting. She did not step back from the doorway in unspoken welcome.

No matter, Manette thought. She stepped forward, giving Niamh no choice but to go chest-to-chest with her or to move out of the way. Niamh chose the latter option, although she did not close the door behind them as she followed Manette into the body of the house.

Manette made for the sitting room with its broad windows overlooking the estuary. She gave a passing glance to the mass of Arnside Knot far across the bay and passing thought to the fact that with a powerful enough telescope one would have been able to see not only where the trees of the knot opened up to the crown of bare land and a few wind-scarred conifers at its summit but also lower down the hill and into her brother Nicolas’s sitting room.

She turned and faced Niamh. The other woman was watching her but, oddly, her glance shifted several times from Manette to the doorway leading into the kitchen. It was as if someone was hiding in there, which hardly made sense considering Niamh’s previous look of expectation. So Manette said, “I could do with a coffee. Mind if I…” and strode in that direction.

Niamh said, “Manette, what do you want? I would have appreciated a phone call to tell me — ”

But Manette was in the kitchen at that point, putting on the kettle as if she lived here. On the worktop she saw the reason for Niamh’s shifty eyes. A bright red tin bucket stood upon it, filled with a variety of items. A black sticker with white letters formed a flag on the bucket and Bucket of Love was printed across this. That this intriguing object had just arrived by post was indicated by an open box on the worktop as well. It took no advanced degree in human sexuality to understand that the bucket’s contents constituted a variety of suggestive toys meant to be used by a couple looking for spice to add to their sex life. Very interesting, Manette thought.

Niamh pushed past her, snatched up the Bucket of Love, and replaced it in the box. She said, “Fine. Now what do you want? And I’ll make the coffee if it’s quite all right with you.” She fetched a cafetiere, which she slammed onto the worktop. She did the same with a small bag of coffee and a mug with I’ve been to Blackpool! fading round its middle.

“I’ve come about the children,” Manette said. There was no point in preliminaries that she could see. “Why aren’t they back with you yet, Niamh?”

“I don’t see that it’s any of your business. Did Timothy tell you something yesterday?”

“Tim attacked me yesterday. I think you and I can agree that’s hardly normal behaviour for a fourteen-year-old boy.”

“Ah. So that’s what this is about. Well, you wanted to fetch him from school. It didn’t work out? How awful for you.” Niamh said this last in a tone that indicated Tim’s attack upon Manette had been nothing of the sort. She spooned coffee into the cafetiere and fetched milk from the fridge. She said, “But you can’t be that surprised, Manette. He’s in Margaret Fox School for a reason.”

“And we both know what that reason is,” Manette replied. “What the hell is going on?”

“What’s going on, as you put it, is the fact that Timothy’s behaviour hasn’t been normal, as you also put it, for quite some time. I expect you can work out why.”

God, Manette thought, it was going to be the same song and dance as it always was with Niamh: Tim’s birthday and the surprise guest showing up. Wonderful moment to learn one’s father has a lover of the same sex or of any sex. Manette wanted to strangle Niamh. How much more mileage was the bloody woman intending to get from what Ian and Kaveh had done? Manette said, “It wasn’t Tim’s fault, Niamh.” To which she added, “And do not attempt to derail this conversation in your usual fashion, all right? That may have worked with Ian, but I assure you it’s not going to work with me.”

“Frankly, I don’t wish to talk about Ian. You’ve no worry on that score.”

What a laugh, Manette thought. This would be an exciting change in her cousin’s wife since Ian and his outrage against her had been the sole subject of Niamh’s conversation for the last year. Well, she was going to take Niamh at her word. She was here to talk about Tim, anyway. She said, “Excellent. I’ve no wish to talk about Ian either.”

“Really?” Niamh examined her fingernails, which were perfectly groomed like the rest of her. “Now that’s a change. I thought Ian was one of your favourite topics.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please. You may have been trying to hide it all these years, but it was never a secret to me that you wanted him.”

“Ian?”

“If he left me, you assumed it would be for you. Really, Manette, by all accounts, you should be as enraged as I am that he chose Kaveh as his next life’s partner.”

God, God, God, Manette thought. Niamh had actually managed to slither away from the subject of Tim as smoothly as if she’d been oiled. She said, “Oh stop it. I can see what you’re doing. It’s not going to work. I’m not leaving till we talk about Tim. Now you can have that conversation with me or we can play cat and mouse for the rest of the day. But something” — with a meaningful glance at the box containing the Bucket of Love — “tells me you’d like me to make myself scarce. And that’s not going to happen simply because you manage to raise my ire.”

Niamh said nothing to this. She was saved by the bell of coffee making. The electric kettle clicked off and she busied herself with filling the cafetiere and stirring the grounds.

Manette said, “Tim’s a day pupil at Margaret Fox School. He’s not a boarder. He’s meant to come home at night to his parents. But he’s still going home to Kaveh Mehran, not to you. What’s that supposed to be doing for his mental state?”

“What’s what doing to his mental state, Manette?” Niamh turned from the coffee. “The fact that he’s going home to Ian’s precious Kaveh or going home at all instead of staying there in lockdown like a criminal?”

“Home is here, not in Bryanbarrow. You know that very well. If you could have seen the state he was in yesterday… God in heaven, what’s wrong with you? This is your son. Why haven’t you moved him home? Why haven’t you moved Gracie home? Are you punishing them for some reason? Is this some sort of game you’re playing with their lives?”

“What do you know about their lives? What have you ever known? You’ve only been involved with them — when you’ve been involved at all — because of Ian. Dear beloved sainted Ian who can do no wrong to any bloody Fairclough. Even your father took his side when he left me. Your father. Ian with a halo on his head walks out of that door hand-in-hand — or should I say hand-on-arse — with some … some… some Arab barely out of nappies and your father does nothing. None of you do. And now he’s working for your mother as if he did absolutely nothing at all to destroy my life. And you accuse me of playing games? You question what I’m doing when the lot of you did nothing at all to make Ian come home where he belonged, where his duty was, where his children were, where I… I…” She grabbed a kitchen towel because the tears that had come to her eyes were threatening to spill over. She caught them before they damaged her eyeliner or made a streak through her makeup. This done, she threw the kitchen towel in the rubbish and drove the palm of her hand down upon the cafetiere, separating the coffee from its grounds and putting a full stop to her own remarks.

Manette watched her. For the first time things were becoming clear. She said, “You’re not bringing them home, are you? You’re intending Kaveh to keep them. Why?”

“Drink your bloody coffee and leave,” Niamh replied.

“Not till we get things perfectly clear. Not till I understand every nuance of what you have in mind. Ian’s dead, so that’s ticked off your list. Now it’s Kaveh. Kaveh’s not too likely to die, though, unless you kill him — ” Manette’s words halted of their own accord. She and Niamh were left staring at each other.

Niamh turned away first. “Leave,” she said. “Just go. Leave.”

“What about Tim? What about Gracie? What happens to them?”

“Nothing.”

“Which means you leave them with Kaveh. Until someone forces your hand legally or otherwise, you leave them in Bryanbarrow. Permanently. So Kaveh gets the full experience of what he destroyed. Those two children — who are, by the way, perfectly innocent in this entire matter — ”

“Don’t be so certain of that.”

“What? Are you claiming now that Tim… My God. You get worse and worse.”

There was, Manette knew, no further point in their conversation. Coffee be damned, she began to head towards the front door and she was nearly there when footsteps came up the two exterior steps and someone called out, “Nee? Pet? Where’s my girl?”

A man stood at the door, a pot of chrysanthemums in his hands and on his face a look of such eagerness that Manette knew she was looking at the sender of the Bucket of Love. He was there to play with its contents, she reckoned. A slight sheen of anticipation glistened on his pudgy face.

He said, “Oh!” and looked over his shoulder as if thinking he’d come to the wrong house.

Then over Manette’s shoulder, Niamh said, “Come in, Charlie. Manette is just leaving.”

Charlie. He looked vaguely familiar. Manette couldn’t place him, however, till he nodded at her nervously and passed her in the doorway. His proximity brought his scent quite close, and the scent was cooking oils and something else. At first Manette thought of fish and chips, but then she realised he was the owner of one of the three Chinese takeaways in the market square in Milnthorpe. She’d been in there more than once on her way home from Arnside and Nicholas’s house, scoring a meal for Freddie. She’d never seen this man out of his kitchen uniform spattered with grease and copious amounts of soy sauce. But here he was, eager to do a job that didn’t at all involve slopping chop suey into takeaway cartons.

As he entered the house, he said, “You look good enough to eat,” to Niamh.

She giggled. “Hope so. Have you brought your appetite?”

Both of them laughed. The door closed on them, allowing them to get down to business.

Manette felt white heat wash over her. Something, she decided, would have to be done about her cousin Ian’s wife. She was wise enough to understand, however, that it might well be a leave-her-to-God situation completely beyond her powers to effect. But what she could effect was a change in Tim and Gracie’s lives. And that was something she could see to herself.

WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Getting possession of the forensic reports had not been a difficult matter, and this ease of acquisition had been largely due to St. James’s reputation as an expert witness. There was, of course, no actual need for his expertise in this matter because the ruling had already been made by the coroner, but a phone call and a spurious tale about a university presentation on basic forensics had been enough to put all the relevant documents into his hands. These confirmed what Lynley had told him about the death of Ian Cresswell, with a few additional salient details. The man had suffered a severe blow to the head — in the near region of the left temple — which had been enough to render him unconscious and fracture his skull. The apparent source of the blow was the stone dock and although his body had been in the water for approximately nineteen hours when it had been found, it had — at least according to the forensic report — still been possible to make a comparison between the wound on his head and the shape of the stone that he had ostensibly hit on the dock before tumbling into the water.

St. James frowned. He wondered how this was possible. Nineteen hours in the water would do much to alter the inflicted wound, making information about it useless unless some sort of reconstruction had been managed. He looked for this, but he didn’t see one. He made a note and continued reading.

Death had been by drowning as an examination of the lungs had confirmed. Bruising on the right leg suggested that Cresswell’s foot may have become caught in the scull’s stretcher as he lost his balance, capsizing the craft and holding the victim beneath the water for a time until — perhaps due to the gentle action of the lake over the hours — his foot had ultimately become dislodged and his body had floated freely next to the dock.

Toxicology showed nothing unusual. Blood alcohol indicated that he’d been drinking but he was not drunk. Everything else in the report indicated that he was a fine specimen of a man in the range of forty to forty-five years, in perfect health and superb physical condition.

Since it had been an unwitnessed drowning, a coroner’s ruling had been required. This had necessitated an inquest, preceded by an investigation by the coroner’s officers. They had testified at the inquest, as had Valerie Fairclough, the forensic pathologist, the first policeman on the scene, and the subsequent officer called in to confirm the first policeman’s conclusion that no SOCO were needed as no crime had occurred. The end product of all this was the ruling of death by accidental drowning.

As far as St. James could see, there was nothing untoward in any of this. However, if mistakes had been made, they’d been made at the initial stage of the process and that was with the first policeman on the scene. A conversation with this police constable was in order. This demanded a trip to Windermere, from where the officer had originally come.

The man’s name was PC William Schlicht, and from the look of him when he came into Reception at the Windermere station to meet St. James, he was fresh out of the nearest training facility. This would explain why he’d called in another officer to confirm what he’d concluded. It had likely been the first death scene PC Schlicht had encountered and he wouldn’t have wanted to start his career off with a gross error. Aside from that, the death had occurred on the estate of a well-known and semi-public figure. The newspapers in the area would have found this of interest, and the PC would know that eyes were upon him.

Schlicht was a slight man. But he was also wiry and athletic in appearance, and his uniform looked as if he starched and ironed it every morning, as well as polished its buttons. He seemed to be in his early twenties, and his expression was one of a man extremely eager to please. Not the best attitude in a policeman, St. James thought. It put one in the position of being easily manipulated by outside forces.

“A course you’re teaching?” PC Schlicht said after their exchange of greetings. He’d taken St. James beyond Reception, into the station itself, and he led him to a coffee room/lunch room where a refrigerator bore a sign reading Put your *#%*# name on your lunch bag! and an old coffeemaker circa 1980 was sending forth an odour reminiscent of coal mines in the nineteenth century. Schlicht had been in the midst of eating what looked like leftover chicken pie from a plastic container. A smaller pot of raspberry fool sat next to this, awaiting consumption as his dessert.

St. James made the appropriate noises of agreement upon the mention of the putative course. He lectured frequently at University College London. Should PC Schlicht wish to do some checking up on him, everything he was claiming about his visit to Cumbria was verifiable. St. James told the PC to go on with his lunch, please, as he merely wished to confirm a few details.

“I reckon someone like you would look for a fancier case to pre sent in a lecture, if you know what I mean.” Schlicht lifted a leg over the seat of his chair to sit. He scooped up his cutlery and tucked back into his meal. “The Cresswell situation was a straightforward business from the start.”

“You must have had one or two doubts, though,” St. James said, “since you called in another officer.”

“Oh, that.” Schlicht waved his fork in acknowledgement. He then confirmed what St. James had suspected: It had been his first death scene, he didn’t want a blot on his copy book, and the family was quite well-known in the area. He added, “Not to mention rich as the dickens, if you know what I mean,” and he grinned as if the wealth of the Faircloughs demanded that a certain conclusion was in order from the local police. St. James said nothing, merely looking questioning. Schlicht said, “The rich have their ways, you know? Not like you and me, they are. You take my wife: She finds a body in our boathouse — not that we have a boathouse in the first place, mind you — and let me tell you, she’d be screaming down the walls and running in circles and no phone call to nine-nine-nine she made would even be understandable, if you get my meaning. That one” — by whom St. James concluded he was referring to Valerie Fairclough — “is cool as cream. ‘There appears to be a dead man floating in my boathouse’ is how she puts it, ’cording to the dispatch bloke who phoned up the station, and she goes right on to give the address without being asked, which is a bit odd ’cause you’d think under the circumstances she’d need to be asked or reminded or something. And when I get there, she’s not waiting on the drive or pacing in the garden or tapping her toe on the front steps or anything you’d expect in such a situation, is she? No. She’s inside the house and she comes out dressed like she’s going to some posh afternoon tea or something and I wonder, I do, what she went down to the boathouse for in the first place dressed like that. She tells me straightaway and without my asking that she was down there to go out on the lake and do a bit of fishing. Dressed like that, mind you. She says she does it all the time: two, three, perhaps four times a week. All hours, it doesn’t matter to her. She likes to be out on the water, she says. She says she didn’t expect to find a body floating there and she knows who it is: her husband’s nephew. She takes me down there to have a look. We’re walking on our way when the ambulance shows up and she waits for them to join us.”

“She knew then, for a certainty, that the man in the water was dead.”

Schlicht paused, fork midflight to his lips. “She did, that. ’Course, he was floating facedown and he’d been in the water a good long while. Those clothes of hers, though. They do say something, don’t they?”

Still, Schlicht said, it was cut-and-dried as far as he could tell when they got to the boathouse, despite any oddity in Valerie Fairclough’s attire and behaviour. The scull was capsized, the body was floating next to it, and the condition of the dock with its missing stones told the tale of what had happened. Nonetheless, he put in a call for a DI to have a look just to be on the safe side of things, and the DI in question — a woman called Dankanics — came along, had a look, and agreed with how all evidence seemed to Schlicht. The rest had been more or less routine: filling out paperwork, making reports, showing up at the inquest, et cetera.

“Did DI Dankanics go over the scene with you?”

“Right. She had a look. We all did.”

“All?”

“Ambulance crew. Mrs. Fairclough. The daughter.”

“Daughter? Where was she?” This was odd. The scene should have been secured. That it had not been was highly irregular, and St. James wondered if this irregularity was the result of Schlicht’s inexperience, DI Dankanics’s possible indifference, or something else.

“Don’t know exactly where she was when she saw the commotion,” Schlicht replied, “but what brought her down to the boathouse was the noise. The ambulance had its siren going all the way to the house — those blokes like their siren like I like my dog, let me tell you — and she heard it and came along with her zimmer.”

“Disabled, is she?”

“Looks that way. So that was that. The body got carted off for autopsy, DI Dankanics and I took statements, and…” He frowned.

“Yes?”

“Sorry. I’d forgotten the boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Turns out the dead bloke was a poofter. His partner was working on the property. Not at that exact moment, mind you, but he came driving in as the ambulance was driving out. ’Course he wanted to know what was going on — who wouldn’t, human nature, eh? — and Mrs. Fairclough told him. Took him to one side and had a word and down he goes.”

“He fainted?”

“Face-flat onto the gravel. We didn’t know who he was at first and the fainting bit seemed off-kilter for some bloke just driving up to the house and hearing there’s been a drowning. So we asked who he was and she told us — this is Valerie — that this bloke did landscapes and the like and the other bloke, the dead one in the boathouse, was his partner. Partner as in partner, if you take my meaning. Anyway, he came round soon enough and he starts blubbing. He says it’s his fault the other bloke drowned, which we take up with some interest — this is me and Dankanics — but it turns out they’d had words on the previous evening about tying the knot. The dead bloke had wanted a civil ceremony with everything front and centre and all aboveboard while the living bloke liked things as they were. And Christ, if that bloke wasn’t howling his head off. Makes you wonder, if you know what I mean.”

St. James didn’t, exactly, although like Alice he was finding the information curiouser and curiouser. He said, “As to the boathouse itself…”

“Hmm?”

“Was everything in order? Aside from the missing stones on the dock, of course.”

“Far as Mrs. Fairclough could tell.”

“What about the boats themselves?”

“They were all inside.”

“As usual?”

Schlicht knotted his eyebrows. He’d finished with his chicken pie and was prising the lid from the raspberry fool. “Not sure I receive your meaning.”

“Were the boats always kept in the order they were in when you saw the body? Or was that order arbitrary?”

Schlicht’s lips rounded into a whistle, but he made no sound. He also gave no reply for a moment, but St. James could tell that in spite of his informal manner of address, he was not a fool. “That’s something,” he said, “that we didn’t ask. Bloody hell, Mr. St. James. I hope it doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

For an arbitrary order suggested a likely accident. Anything else suggested murder.

MIDDLEBARROW FARM CUMBRIA

The Middlebarrow Pele Project was situated to the east of the hill that comprised Arnside Wood, which gave entrance to a protected area called Arnside Knot. Deborah St. James and Nicholas Fairclough skirted this hill on the way to the project, curving through the upper part of Arnside village and then down again, following signs that directed them towards a place called Silverdale. As they drove, Nicholas Fairclough chatted in what seemed to Deborah to be a habitually friendly manner. He appeared open and forthright, the least likely individual to have planned the murder of his own cousin, had it actually been a murder. He made no mention of Ian Cresswell’s death, of course. The drowning of the man — as unfortunate as it was — bore no relationship to the ostensible reasons for Deborah’s visit to this place. She wasn’t sure she was meant to keep it this way, however. It seemed to her that one way or another she had to bring Cresswell into the picture.

This wasn’t her forte. Chatting up people in general was difficult for her, although she’d improved over the years since she’d learned the value of having her photographic subjects relax while she snapped their pictures. But that kind of chatting up was, at least, honest in its own way. This brand of chatting up — when she was pretending to be someone she utterly was not — left her in a quandary.

Luckily, Nicholas didn’t appear to notice. He was too intent upon reassuring her of his wife’s support of the work he was doing.

“She’ll be standoffish till you get to know her,” he told Deborah as they zipped along the narrow road. “It’s her nature. You’re not to take it personally. Allie doesn’t trust people much as a rule. It’s to do with her family.” He cast her a smile. He had an oddly youthful face — like a boy’s when he hasn’t come into his manhood yet — and Deborah reckoned he’d remain young looking right to the grave. Some people were lucky that way. “Her dad’s the mayor of the town she was born in. In Argentina. He’s been mayor for years, so she grew up in the spotlight there and she had to learn to monitor everything she did. So she always thinks someone’s watching her, to catch her out doing… I don’t know what. Anyway, it makes her skittish at first. Everyone has to earn her trust.”

“She’s quite attractive, isn’t she,” Deborah said. “I expect that could be a problem for someone in the limelight, even in a small town. All eyes on her, if you know what I mean. Where in Argentina is she from?”

“Santa Maria di something. I always forget. It’s about ten words long. It’s in the foothills of wherever. Sorry. All the Spanish names flummox me. I’m completely hopeless with languages. I can barely speak English. Anyway, she doesn’t like the place. She says it felt like an outpost on the moon. I expect it’s not that big, eh? She ran off from home when she was something like fifteen years old. She made it up with her family after a bit, but she never went back.”

“Her family must miss her.”

“That,” he said, “I wouldn’t know. Although I expect they would do, wouldn’t they?”

“You’ve not met them, then? They didn’t attend your wedding?”

“Actually, there wasn’t much of a wedding. Just Allie and me and city hall in Salt Lake City. Someone to do the ceremony and two women we carted in off the street to be witnesses. Afterwards, Allie wrote to tell her parents we’d done the deed, but they didn’t write back. They’re cheesed off about it, I expect. But they’ll come round. People always do. Especially” — he grinned — “when there’s a grandchild on the way.”

That explained the magazine she’d seen. Conception with its countless stories on antenatal this and postnatal that. “You’re expecting? Congrat — ”

“Not yet. But any day now.” He tapped his fingers a bit on the steering wheel. “I’m very lucky,” he said. Then he pointed out an autumnal woodland to the east of the road on which they were driving, a rich panoply of umber and gold deciduous trees contrasting against the green of conifers. “Middlebarrow Wood,” he told her. “You can see the pele tower from here.” He pulled into a lay-by to give her a view.

The tower, Deborah saw, was on a rise of land that looked rather like the prehistoric barrows one found all round the countryside in England. Behind this rise, the woods began, although the tower itself was out in the open. This would have given it a superior position should any border reivers have come calling, a regular occurrence during the centuries when the border between England and Scotland continually shifted. The intent of the reivers was always the same. They were marauders who had taken advantage of the lawlessness of that period of time, perfecting the art of stealing cattle and oxen, invading homes, and stripping their victims of everything they owned. Their objective was always plunder and getting back to their own homes without being killed in the process. If they themselves had to kill to accomplish this, they did so. But that hadn’t been their first priority.

The pele towers had been an answer to the question of protection from the reivers. The best of them were indestructible, with stone walls far too thick to be harmed and windows just wide enough for an archer to fire from, and separate floors for animals, their owners, their household activities, and their defence. But the towers had fallen out of use as time went on, after the border was finally firmly established, along with laws and the advent of lawmen willing to make those laws more than someone’s passing fancy. Once the towers fell out of use, their materials were employed for other buildings. Or the towers themselves were subsumed into larger structures, becoming part of a great house, a vicarage, or a school.

Middlebarrow Tower was of the first type. It stood tall, with most of its windows intact. A short distance from it and across a field, a group of old farm buildings gave testimony to what some of the tower’s original stones had been used for. Between the tower and these farm buildings, a camp had been set up. It was equipped with small tents, honey pots, and several makeshift sheds with a larger tent to accommodate the twelve-step programme, Nicholas Fairclough said. This was also the dining tent. Meals and twelve-stepping went hand in hand.

Nicholas pulled back into the road, which descended to a lane leading off towards the tower. The tower, he said, was on the private land of Middlebarrow farm. He’d got the farmer to consent to the project — not to mention to consent to the presence of the recovering addicts who were currently living and working there — once he saw the benefits of a restored tower that could be used as anything from a holiday rental to a tourist attraction.

“He’s settled on turning the place into a camping site,” Nicholas told her. “It’ll bring him some extra money during the season, and he’s happy enough to put up with us if that’s the end product. That was Allie’s idea, by the way, approaching the farmer with the possibilities for the tower if he’d let us renovate it. She was involved with the pele project in its initial stages.”

“But not now?”

“She likes to be in the background. Plus… well, I daresay when the addicts began to arrive, she was a bit more comfortable being at home than hanging about here.” They pulled onto the site where work was in progress, and Nicholas added, “No need to be wary, though. These blokes are far too used up — and far too ready for a change in their lives — to be harmful to anyone.”

But they were not, Deborah found, far too used up to work. A team leader had been assigned to the project, and when Nicholas introduced him as Dave K — “It’s traditional not to use surnames,” he told her — it was clear that work leading to hunger leading to meals leading to twelve-stepping and then to sleep was the order of the day. Dave K had a roll of plans with him, and he unscrolled them on the bonnet of Nicholas Fairclough’s car. With a nod at Deborah meant, she assumed, to convey acknowledgement of the introduction, he lit a cigarette and used it as a pointer as he spoke to Nicholas about the project.

Deborah wandered from the car. The tower, she saw, was huge, a bulky mass of a building that looked like the makings of a Norman castle, complete with crenellation. Upon a casual glance, it didn’t appear in need of a great deal of restoration, but when Deborah walked round the other side of the structure, she saw what had become of it during the centuries it had lain available for anyone to maraud upon it.

The project was going to be enormous. Deborah couldn’t think how they were going to manage the scope of work needing to be done. There were no floors to the building, one of the four external walls was missing, and another wall was partially collapsed. Removing debris alone was going to take ages and then there was the not small matter of obtaining materials to replace those that had long ago been carted off to become part of other buildings in the district.

She gazed upon it with a photographer’s eye. In the same fashion, she examined the men who were working there, most of whom seemed to be the age of pensioners. She didn’t have any of her cameras with her aside from a small digital one to keep her position as a filmmaker’s research scout on the up-and-up. She took this from her bag and applied herself to recording what was round her.

“It’s really the act of creation that heals. The process not product, I mean. Of course, at first they focus on the product. That’s human nature. But in the end they’ll come to see that the real product is self-belief, self-esteem, self-knowledge. Whatever you want to call it.”

Deborah turned. Nicholas Fairclough had come up beside her. She said, “To be honest, your workers don’t look strong enough to do much, Mr. Fairclough. Why are there no younger men to help them?”

“Because these are the blokes who need saving the most. Here and now. If someone doesn’t reach out to them, they’re going to die on the streets in the next couple of years. My thinking is that no one deserves to die like that. There’re programmes all over the country — all over the world — for young people, and believe me I know, because I spent time in a lot of them. But for blokes like this? Shelters for the night, sandwiches, hot soup, Bibles, blankets, whatever. But not belief. They’re not so far gone that they can’t read pity at fifty yards. Feel that way towards them and they’ll take your money, use it to get high, and spit on your charity. ’Scuse me for a moment, okay? Have a look round if you like. I need to talk to one of them.”

Deborah watched as he picked his way through the rubble. He yelled, “Hey, Joe! What d’we hear from that stone mason?”

Deborah wandered in the direction of the large tent, identified by a sign in front of it reading Eat and Meet. Inside, a bearded man in a knitted cap and heavy coat — too heavy for the weather, but he seemed to have no body fat at all to insulate his bones — was setting up for a meal. He had positioned large pots over spirit warmers, and a fragrance came from them, redolent of red meat and potatoes. He saw Deborah, and his eyes lit on the camera in her hands.

Deborah said pleasantly, “Hello. Not to worry. I’m just having a look round.”

“Th’ always are,” he muttered.

“Lots of visitors?”

“Always someone comin’ hereabouts. Himself needs the funds.”

“Oh. I see. Well, I’m not a potential donor, I’m afraid.”

“Nor was the last. Doesn’t matter to me. I get food and the meetings and ’f someone wants to ask me do I think this’ll work, I say it will.”

Deborah approached him. “But you don’t believe in this process?”

“Didn’t say that. And doesn’t matter what I believe. Like I say, I get food and the meetings and that’s enough for me. Don’t mind the meetings as much as I reckoned I would, so that’s not half-bad. Dry place to sleep as well.”

“During the meetings?” Deborah asked him.

He looked up sharply. He saw her smile and he chuckled. “Anyway, like I said, they’re not half-bad. Bit much with the God bit, bit more with the acceptance bit, but I can cope. Maybe it’ll sink in. Willing to try it. Ten years sleeping rough… it’s enough.”

Deborah joined him then at the serving table. He had a large box on a chair next to it, and from this he began taking out cutlery, tin plates, plastic drinking glasses, cups, and a mound of paper napkins. He began to arrange these on the table, and Deborah helped him.

“Teacher,” he said quietly.

She said, “What?”

“That’s what I was. Secondary comprehensive in Lancaster. Chemistry. I bet you didn’t reckon that, did you?”

“No. I didn’t.” Her words were equally quiet.

He gestured towards the outdoors. “All shapes and sizes,” he said. “We got a surgeon, a physicist, two bankers, and an estate agent out there. And those’re just the ones willing to say what they left behind. The others…? They’re not ready yet. Takes time to admit how far you’ve fallen. You don’t have to make those table napkins so neat. We’re not the Ritz.”

“Oh. Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Like Himself,” he said. “Can’t hide your roots.”

Deborah didn’t bother to tell him that her own roots came from the soil of what in another century would have been called “being in service.” Her father had long been employed by the St. James family, and he’d spent the last seventeen years of his life caring for Simon while pretending not to be caring for Simon. It was a very delicate balancing act that had him referring to his own son-in-law as Mr. St. James. Deborah made a murmur of quasi-agreement and said, “You sound fond of him.”

“Himself? Decent bloke. Bit too trusting, but good to the core.”

“You think he’s being taken advantage of? I mean, with these gentlemen here.”

“Not hardly. Most of them know they’ve got something good going and ’less they’re too far gone with the drink or with drugs, they’re going to hang on here as long as they can.”

“Then who?”

“Taking advantage?” He eyed her directly, a very meaningful look. Deborah saw that he had a cataract forming in his left eye and she wondered how old he was. With ten years of life on the street as part of his C.V., it would be nearly impossible to determine his age from his appearance.

“People come round with promises and he believes ’em. He’s naive that way.”

“It’s to do with money? Donations?”

“Sometimes. Other times, they want something off him.” Again, that meaningful look.

Deborah realised that he was placing her in the category of people wanting something from Nicholas Fairclough. It wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion, considering who she was supposed to be. Still, she said, “Such as?”

“Well, he’s got a good story to tell, doesn’t he? He thinks if he tells it, it’ll bring in money to help this place. Only it doesn’t always work that way, does it. Most of the time it comes to nothing. We had a newspaper bloke here four times promising a story and Himself saw bags of money coming in to help us out when the story got printed. Bloody nothing came of it and we’re back where we started, scrabbling for funds. That’s what I mean. A bit naive.”

Deborah said, “Four times?”

“Eh?”

“A reporter was here four times and no story came out of it? That’s unusual, quite an investment of time with no payoff for anyone. It must have been a true disappointment. What sort of reporter invests all that time in preparing a story without writing it?”

“That’s what I want to know. Said he was from The Source in London, but no one was checking his credentials so he could’ve been anyone. What I think is he was here to find dirt on Himself, hoping to make him look bad. Greasing his own career — this bloke — if you know what I mean. But Himself, he doesn’t see it that way. ‘The time wasn’t right’ is how he puts it.”

“But you don’t agree.”

“Way I see it, he needs to be careful. He never is and that’s going to be a problem for him. Not now, then later. A problem.”

WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Yaffa Shaw had been the one to suggest to Zed that more might be in order than his merely hanging about the Willow and Well in Bryanbarrow village waiting for a miraculous revelation to drop into his lap, like the appearance of a Scotland Yard detective complete with magnifying glass in hand and meerschaum pipe clenched between his lips, all the better to identify him. They’d had their regular conversation after Zed had written up his notes regarding everything the old farmer George Cowley had alluded to on the green. He’d made note also of the fact that the man’s teenage son had seemed more than uncomfortable with his father’s rant. Could be, he decided, that another chat was in order but this time with Daniel Cowley and not his father.

Yaffa, playing the part of his concerned potential life partner since his mum was in the room — when wasn’t she in the room when it came to his love life? Zed wondered wryly — pointed out that Ian Cresswell’s death and George Cowley’s intentions might be in conflict with each other instead of what Zed had concluded, which was that they were directly related.

At first, Zed bristled at this. He was, after all, the investigative reporter. She, on the other hand, was merely a student at university attempting to accelerate her course so as to get back to Micah, the medical school boyfriend in Tel Aviv. He said, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Yaf,” without realising at first that the nickname had risen unbidden to his lips. “Sorry. Yaffa,” he said, correcting himself.

She said, “I like the other. It makes me smile.” And then obviously to his mother in explanation to what had to have been Susanna Benjamin’s breathless question about why Yaffa Shaw was smiling while in conversation with her beloved Zed, “Oh, Zed called me Yaf. I thought it was rather sweet.” And then to Zed, “Your mum says sweet is your middle name. She says that behind that giant exterior of yours, you’re a cream puff.”

“God.” Zed groaned. “Can you get her to leave the room? Or should I just ring off and we can consider the duty done for today?”

“Zed! Stop it!” She laughed. She had, he’d discovered, a most pleasant laugh. She said to his mother, “This man is making kissing noises. Does he always do that when he’s speaking on the phone to a woman?… He doesn’t? Hmmm. I wonder what he’ll say next.”

“Tell her I’m asking you to take off your knickers or something,” Zed said.

“Zedekiah Benjamin! Your mum is standing right here.” And then, “He’s being very naughty.” And then a moment later to Zed and in an altered tone, “She’s gone. Really, though, Zed, she’s very sweet, your mum. She’s started bringing me hot milk and biscuits at night. While I’m studying.”

“She knows what she wants. She’s been working at it for years. So. Everything going all right, then?”

“Fine. Micah did phone, and I brought him into the picture. Now he’s pretending to be brother Ari, phoning from Israel to see how his baby sister is doing with her studies.”

“Right. Well. Good.” And really, that should have been it since their only obligation to each other was a twice-daily phone call taking place somewhere in his mother’s vicinity.

Yaffa, however, took them back to what she’d been saying earlier in their conversation. “What if things aren’t how they look?”

“Like us, you mean?”

“Well, I’m not talking about us, but it’s a case in point, isn’t it? What I mean is what if there’s an inherent irony here that in and of itself could sex up your story about Nicholas Fairclough?”

“The Scotland Yard bloke — ”

“Beyond the Scotland Yard bloke. Because listen to what you’ve told me about it all: one man is dead, another man wants the farm that the dead man occupied. Still another man lives on the farm with the dead man’s children. Now what does that suggest to you?”

The truth was that it suggested nothing, but Zed was suddenly aware that Yaffa was ahead of him on the curve of the story. He hemmed and hawed and cleared his throat.

She said, mercifully, “There’s more here than meets the eye, Zed. Did the dead man leave a will?”

“A will?” What the hell had a will to do with anything? Where was the sex in that?

“Yes. A will. There’s potential conflict there, d’you see? George Cowley assumes the farm is going to be his for the taking now because now it will go on the block. But what if that’s not the case? What if that farm is paid for free and clear and Ian Cresswell left it to someone? Or what if he put a name besides his own on the deed? What irony, hmm? George Cowley is thwarted once again. It’s even more ironic if, perhaps, this man George Cowley had something to do with Ian Cresswell’s death, isn’t it?”

Zed saw she was right. He also saw she was clever and on his side as well. So after they rang off, he set about delving into the matter of Ian Cresswell and a will. It didn’t take long for him to find out that there was indeed a will because wisely Cresswell had registered it online and the information was there for all to see: A copy of this document was at his solicitor’s office in Windermere. Another copy — since the bloke was dead — would be available through the probate registry but scoring a look at that would eat up valuable time, not to mention a trip all the way to York, so he knew he had to get either a peek or the information itself in another way.

It would have been nothing short of pure delight for the will to be viewable online, but the lack of privacy in the UK — which was becoming pandemic considering global terrorism, permeable national borders, and the easy access to explosives courtesy of the world’s arms manufacturers — had not extended to the requirement that one’s last will and testament had to be offered up for public consumption. Still, Zed knew that there was a way to get to it and he also knew which single person on the planet was likely to be able to put his fingers on the document that he needed.

“A will,” Rodney Aronson said when he caught up with the editor in his London office. “You’re telling me you want to look at the dead man’s will. I’m in the middle of a meeting here, Zed. We’ve a paper to produce. You do know that, don’t you?”

Zed reckoned that his editor was also in the middle of consuming a chocolate bar, for over the phone he could hear the wrapper being crinkled even as Rodney Aronson spoke.

He said, “The situation is more complicated than it looks, Rod. There’s a bloke up here wanting to put his mitts on that farm owned by Ian Cresswell. Expecting it to go on the block, he is. It seems to me that he’s got one hell of a motive to do the chop on our guy — ”

“Our guy, as you say, is Nick Fairclough. The story you’re writing is about him, no? That’s the story we’re looking for the sex in and the sex is the cops. But it’s only sex in the Fairclough story if they’re investigating Fairclough. Zed my man, do I have to do your job for you, or can you possibly jump on board the moving train?”

“I get it. I know. I’m fully on board. But as no cops have shown a face yet — ”

“That’s what you’re doing up there? Waiting for cops to show their faces? Jesus Christ, Zed. What sort of reporter are you? Let me spell it out, all right? If this bloke Credwell — ”

“Cresswell. Ian Cresswell. And he’s got a farm up here and his kids are living on it with some bloke, far as I can tell. So if the farm was left to this bloke or even to the kids and — ”

“I don’t bloody care who the farm was left to, who it belongs to, or whether it dances the tango when no one’s looking. And I don’t bloody care if this Cresswell was murdered. What I care about is what the cops are doing up there. If they’re not prowling round Nicholas Fairclough, then your story is dead and you’re on your way back to London. D’you understand that or do I have to go at it another way?”

“I understand. But — ”

“Good. Now get back onto Fairclough and stop bothering me. Or come back to London, have done with the whole thing, and get a job writing greeting cards. The kind that rhyme.”

That last was a particularly low blow. Nonetheless, Zed said, “Right.”

But it wasn’t right. Nor was it good journalism. Not that The Source actually practised good journalism but given a story that was virtually dropping into their laps, one might think it actually possible.

Fine, Zed thought. He would get back to Nicholas Fairclough and Scotland Yard. But first he was determined to find out about that farm and about the terms of that bloody will because he had a gut feeling that that information was crucial to more than one person in Cumbria.

MILNTHORPE CUMBRIA

Lynley met with St. James and Deborah in the public bar of their hotel. Over glasses of a rather indifferent port, they went over the information they’d gathered. St. James was of the same mind, Lynley discovered, as he himself was. They had to bring up the missing stones from the dock and St. James had to look at them. He wouldn’t mind having a look at the boathouse itself as well, he told Lynley, but he didn’t know how an arrangement for this could be made without tipping their hand.

“I daresay it’ll be tipped eventually,” Lynley said. “I’m not sure how long I can carry off the pretence of idle curiosity for the benefit of anyone who happens to be watching. Fairclough’s wife knows, by the way. He did tell her.”

“That makes things a bit easier.”

“Relatively, yes. And I agree with you, Simon. We need you inside that boathouse for more reasons than one.”

“Meaning?” Deborah asked the question. She had her digital camera on the table next to her glass of port, and she’d brought a small notebook out of her shoulder bag as well. She was, Lynley saw, taking seriously her part in this little investigation of theirs. He smiled at her, grateful for the first time in months to be in the presence of longtime friends.

“Ian Cresswell didn’t take the scull out on a regular basis,” Lynley told her. “But Valerie Fairclough takes her boat out several times a week. While the scull was indeed tied at the spot where the stones were loose on the dock, it wasn’t a set position for it. People on the estate seem to tie up the watercraft wherever there’s an opening.”

“But someone seeing the scull in place could have loosened the stones while he was out on the lake that night, yes?” Deborah said.

“That would make it someone on the estate at that moment,” her husband said. “Was Nicholas Fairclough there that night?”

“If he was, no one saw him.” Lynley turned to Deborah. “What sort of reading did you get off Fairclough?”

“He seems perfectly lovely. And his wife’s quite beautiful, Tommy. I can’t exactly gauge the effect she has on men, but I’d guess she could make a Trappist monk give up his vows without much effort on her part.”

“Something between her and Cresswell, then?” St. James offered. “With Nicholas taking issue over it?”

“Hardly, as the man’s homosexual,” said Lynley.

“Or bisexual, Tommy.”

“And there’s something else,” Deborah went on. “Two things, actually. They might not be important at all, but if you want me to look for things intriguing…”

“I do,” Lynley said.

“Then there’s this: Alatea Fairclough has a copy of Conception magazine. It’s got pages torn out of the back, and we might want to put our hands on a copy and have a look at what they are. Nicholas told me they’ve been trying to conceive.”

St. James stirred. His expression said that the magazine meant nothing and would have meant nothing to anyone else save Deborah, whose own concerns about conceiving would probably cloud her judgement.

Lynley saw that Deborah read her husband as well as he himself had done because she said, “This isn’t about me, Simon. Tommy’s looking for anything unusual and what I was thinking… What if his drug use has made Nicholas sterile but Alatea doesn’t want him to know that? A doctor may have told her but not him. Or she might have convinced a doctor to lie to him, for his ego, to keep him on the straight and narrow. So what if, knowing he can’t give her children, she asked Ian to lend a hand in the matter, if you know what I mean?”

“Keeping it in the family?” Lynley asked. “Anything’s possible.”

“And there’s something else,” Deborah said. “A reporter from The Source-”

“Jesus God.”

“ — has been there four times, ostensibly doing a story on Nicholas. Four times but nothing’s come of it, Tommy. One of the blokes at the Middlebarrow Pele Project told me.”

“If it’s The Source, there’s dirt on someone’s shoe soles,” St. James pointed out.

Lynley thought about whose shoe soles those might be. He said, “Cresswell’s lover has evidently been on the estate — on the grounds of Ireleth Hall — for some time now, working on a project for Valerie. He’s called Kaveh Mehran.”

“PC Schlicht mentioned him,” St. James said. “Has he got motive?”

“There’s the will and insurance to be looked into.”

“Anyone else?”

“With motive?” Lynley told them about his meeting with Mignon Fairclough: her insinuations about her parents’ marriage followed by her denial of those insinuations. He also told them about the holes in the background of Nicholas Fairclough that she’d been only too happy to fill in. He ended with, “She’s rather a piece of work and I have the impression she’s got a hold over her parents for some reason. So Fairclough himself might bear looking into.”

“Blackmail? With Cresswell somehow in the know?”

“Emotional or otherwise, I daresay. She lives on the property but not in the house. I suspect Bernard Fairclough built her digs for her and I wouldn’t be surprised if one reason was to get her out of his hair. There’s another sister as well. I’ve yet to meet her.”

He went on to tell them that Bernard Fairclough had put a videotape into his hands. He’d suggested Lynley watch it because if there was indeed someone behind Ian’s death, then he needed to “see something rather telling.”

This turned out to be a video of the funeral, made for the purpose of sending to Ian’s father in Kenya, too frail to make the trip to say farewell to his son. Fairclough had watched it at Lynley’s side, and as things turned out, it was what he didn’t see that he wanted to point out. Niamh Cresswell, Ian’s wife of seventeen years and the mother of his two children, had not attended. Fairclough pointed out that, at least to be of support to those grieving children, she might have turned up.

“He gave me a few details on the end of Ian Cresswell’s marriage.” Lynley told them what he knew, to which St. James and Deborah said simultaneously, “Motive, Tommy.”

“Hell hath no fury. Yes. But it’s not likely that Niamh Cresswell could prowl round the grounds of Ireleth Hall without being seen and so far no one’s mentioned her being there.”

“Still and all,” St. James said, “she’s got to be looked into. Revenge is a powerful motive.”

“So is greed,” Deborah said. “But then, so are all the deadly sins, aren’t they? Why else be deadly?”

Lynley nodded. “So we’ll have to see if she benefits in any way other than vengeance,” he said.

“We’re back to the will. Or an insurance policy,” St. James said. “That information’s not going to be easy to suss out while keeping your head down about why you’re really here in Cumbria, Tommy.”

“Not for me going at it directly. You’re right about that,” Lynley said. “But there’s someone else who can do it.”

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

By the time they’d concluded their meeting, it was too late for Lynley to place the call he needed to make. So instead he phoned Isabelle. Truth was, he was missing her. Truth was, he was also glad to be away from her. This wasn’t due to any disinclination on his part for her company. This was, instead, due to his need to know how he felt about her when they were apart. Seeing her every day at work, seeing her several nights each week, made it nearly impossible for him to sort through his feelings for the woman aside from those that were clearly sexual. At least now he had a feeling to name: longing. Thus he knew he missed her body. What remained to be seen was whether he missed the rest of the package comprising Isabelle Ardery.

He waited till he’d got back to Ireleth Hall to place the call from his mobile. He stood just to the side of the Healey Elliott, and he punched in the number and waited for it to go through. He thought about how he was all at once wishing that she were with him. There had been something in the easy conversation between himself and his friends and something more in the way Simon and Deborah communicated with each other that made him want that for himself once again: that familiarity and assurance. He understood that, more specifically, what he really wanted was a return to the way he and his wife had talked to each other in the morning, over dinner at night, in bed together, even as one or the other of them bathed. For the first time as well, however, he realised that Helen herself didn’t need to be that woman but that someone else — somewhere else — could. This felt, in part, like a betrayal of a most beloved wife, cut down through no fault of her own by a senseless act of violence. Yet he also understood that this feeling was part of getting on with life, and he knew Helen would have wanted that for him as much as she’d wanted their life together.

The ringing stopped on the other end, in London. He heard, “Damn,” faintly, then the sound of Isabelle’s mobile hitting something, and then there was nothing at all.

He said, “Isabelle? Are you there?” and he waited. Nothing. Again he said her name. When there was no response, he ended the call, the connection apparently gone.

He punched in her number again. The ringing began. It continued. Perhaps she was in the car, he thought, unavailable. Or in the shower. Or engaged in something that made it impossible-

“’Lo? Tommy? Joo jus’ call?” And then a sound he didn’t want to hear: something knocking against the side of her mobile, a glass, a bottle, what did it matter. “I’s thinking of you an’ here you are. How’s tha’ for mental tepe… tele … telepathy?”

“Isabelle…” Lynley found he couldn’t say more. He ended the call, put the mobile in his pocket, and returned to his room in Ireleth Hall.