Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  “Shut the door,” he said to the reporter. “Take a seat. Give me a second here.” He admired the creamy nature of his concoction and turned off the machine. He carried his drink to the desk and sat. “Death is sex,” he said. “I reckoned you’d work that out for yourself, but it seems you can’t. Got to tell you, Zedekiah, this line of work might not be for you.”

  Zed looked at him. He looked at the wall. He looked at the floor. He finally said, “Death is sex,” so slowly that Rodney wondered if the man’s brains had gone the way of his footwear because for some reason he was wearing not respectable shoes but instead very odd-looking sandals with tire treads for soles, along with striped socks that appeared to be handmade from remnants of yarn.

  “I told you the story needed sex. You went up there a second time and tried to find it. That you failed to find it I can understand, more or less. But what I can’t understand is how you failed to see the moment of potential rescue when it came. You should’ve been in here like a flash yelling eureka or cowabunga or praise Jesus, I’m saved. Well, probably not that last, all things considered, but the point is you got handed a way into the story— and this would be a way to save it and to justify the expense the paper went to in sending you up there in the first place— and you missed it. Completely. The fact that I had to discover it myself concerns me, Zed. It really does.”

  “She still wouldn’t talk to me, Rodney. I mean, she talked but she didn’t talk. She says she’s not what’s important. She’s his wife, they met, they fell in love, they married, they came back to England, and there’s an end to her part of the tale. From what I can tell, she’s entirely devoted to him. But everything he’s done, he’s done himself. She did tell me that it would benefit him— encourage was the word she used— if the story featured his recovery alone and not her part in it. She said something like, ‘You need to understand how important it is for Nicholas to be acknowledged as having achieved this on his own.’ She meant his recovery. I did get that the reason for her wanting the recognition to go to him has to do with his relationship with his dad, and I shaded the story that way, but there didn’t seem to be anything more— ”

  “I know you’re not completely stupid,” Rodney cut in, “but I’m beginning to think you’re deaf. ‘Death is sex,’ is what I said. You did hear that, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. I did. And she’s sexy, the wife. You’d have to be blind not to— ”

  “Forget the wife. She’s not dead, is she?”

  “Dead? Well, no. I mean, I reckoned you were using a metaphor, Rodney.”

  Rodney gulped down the rest of his espresso. This gave him time not to strangle the young man, which was what he badly wanted to do. He finally said, “Believe me, when I use a fucking metaphor, you’re going to know it. Are you aware— remotely or otherwise— that the cousin of your hero is dead? Recently dead as a matter of fact? That he died in a boathouse where he fell into the water and drowned? That the boathouse I’m speaking of is on the property of your hero’s father?”

  “Drowned while I was there? No way,” Zed declared. “You may think I’m blind, Rod— ”

  “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  “— but I would have hardly missed that fact. When did he die and which cousin are we talking about?”

  “Is there more than one?”

  Zed shifted in his chair. “Well, not that I know of. Ian Cresswell drowned?”

  “Yes indeedy doodah,” Rodney said.

  “Murdered?”

  “Accident according to the inquest. But that’s hardly the point because the death’s nicely suspicious and suspicion is our bread and butter. Metaphor, by the way, in case you’re thinking otherwise. Our purpose is to fan the fire— another metaphor, I think I’m on a roll here— and see what comes crawling out of the woodwork.”

  “Mixed,” Zed muttered.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Is that what you want me to do, then? I take it I’m to suggest there’s reason to believe foul play is involved, with Nicholas Fairclough the player. I can see how it fits: The former drug addict falls off the wagon of recovery and does in his cousin for some obscure reason and as of this writing, gentle readers, he apparently has walked away scot-free.” Zed slapped his hands against his thighs as if he was about to rise and do Rodney’s bidding directly. But instead of getting up to leave, he said, “They grew up as brothers, Rodney. The original story does indicate that. And they didn’t hate each other. But of course I could make it sound like Cain going after Abel if that suits you.”

  “Do not,” Rodney said, “take that tone with me.”

  “What tone?”

  “You bloody well know what tone. I should kick your arse from here to down under, but I’m going to do you a favour instead. I’m going to say three little words that I hope to God will make your pointed ears prick up. Are you listening, Zed? I don’t want you to miss them. Here they come, now: New Scotland Yard.”

  That, Rodney saw to his satisfaction, appeared to stop Zed Benjamin in his self-righteous tracks. The reporter frowned. He thought. He finally said, “What about New Scotland Yard?”

  “They’re in.”

  “Are you saying they’re investigating the drowning?”

  “I’m saying something better than that. They’re sending a bloke up there wearing brothel-creepers, if you receive my meaning. And he’s not a bloke from the IPCC.”

  “So it’s not an internal investigation? What is it, then?”

  “A special assignment. Completely hush-hush, mum’s the word, and on the big QT. He’s apparently been given the job of making a list and checking it twice. And reporting back when he’s finished.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the story, Zed. That’s the sex behind the death.” Rodney wanted to add that it was also what Zed himself would have learned had he put in the effort that Rodney himself would have put in had he been in the same position with his story shit-canned by his editor and, potentially, with his job on the line.

  “So I’m not to make something up to add sex to the story,” Zed said, as if he needed clarification. “What you’re saying is that it’s already there.”

  “At The Source,” Rodney intoned religiously, “we don’t need to make things up. We just need to find them in the first place.”

  “And can I ask… How’d you know this? About the Met, I mean. How’d you find out if it’s all hush-hush?”

  It was one of those moments when paternal superiority was called for, and Rodney loved those kinds of moments. He rose from behind his desk, went round to the front of it, and lifted a bulky thigh to rest it on the corner. It wasn’t the most comfortable position— considering the chafing of his skin against his trousers— but Rodney liked to think it communicated a degree of journalistic savoir faire that would underscore the importance of what he had to say next. “Zedekiah, I’ve been in this business since I was a kid. I’ve sat where you’re sitting and this is what I learned: We’re nothing without the snouts we cultivate, and I’ve cultivated them from Edinburgh to London and all points in between. Particularly in London, my friend. I’ve got snouts in places that other people don’t even recognise as being places. I scratch their backs with great regularity. They scratch mine whenever they can.”

  Benjamin looked suitably impressed. Indeed, he looked humbled. He was in the presence of his journalistic better and it seemed that he finally knew it.

  Rodney went on, enjoying his moment. “Nicholas Fairclough’s dad has a tie to the Met. He’s the one asking for an investigation. Can I reckon you know what that means, Zed?”

  “He thinks it wasn’t an accident that Ian Cresswell drowned. And if it wasn’t an accident, we’ve got a story. Fact is, we’ve got a story either way because we’ve got the Met up there nosing round and that suggests something might have gone on and all we ever need for a story is a suggestion.”

  “Amen to that,” Rodney said. “Get back to Cumbria, my good man. On the double.”

/>   CHALK FARM

  LONDON

  Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers arrived home in an uneasy mood that she didn’t want to name. Having found a parking space not too far from Eton Villas, she should have been grateful, but she couldn’t summon up the appropriate feeling of joy attendant on not having to hike to her front door. As usual, the Mini coughed a few times after Barbara cut the ignition, but she barely took note. Through the windscreen a splattering of rain began to fall, but she hardly clocked that either. Instead, her thoughts remained where they’d been largely fixed— save for one brief distraction— during her long drive home from the Met. Those thoughts battled in her head with a voice that judged them childish, but that didn’t matter and it certainly wasn’t enough to quash them, although she would, at this point, have been grateful had that only been the case.

  No one had noticed, Barbara thought. Not a single, sodding individual. Well, all right, Detective Superintendent Ardery had noticed, but she hardly counted as she’d given the initial order— although she’d claimed it was only a suggestion— and from Barbara’s nearly four months of experience with Isabelle Ardery, she knew the superintendent noticed everything. Ardery seemed to make noticing a habit. She seemed, in fact, to have raised it to a fine art. So whenever she took note of something, it mattered not, unless her taking note was connected intimately to one’s performance at work. If it was connected to anything else, one could say that Isabelle Ardery was merely engaging in her irritating habit of sitting in judgement upon the superficial, with the number one superficial within the superintendent’s gaze being Barbara Havers’s personal appearance. As to the rest of the team, when Barbara had arrived back at the Yard from her final appointment with the dentist, they’d gone about their business without a word, a raised eyebrow, or anything else.

  Barbara had told herself she didn’t care, and there was truth in this since she really didn’t care about the notice of most of her colleagues. But the notice of one of them she cared about deeply, and it was this caring that sat uneasily upon her, asking to be acknowledged or at least dealt with by the downing of something of a pastry orientation. French would be nice, but it was too late in the day to score a chocolate croissant, although not too late in the day to snag an entire torte, which of course would have been Austrian, but at this hour who was quibbling about such minor details as country of origin? Yet Barbara knew that that direction would lead her straight into the evils of an extended carb wallow from which she might not emerge for weeks, so instead of pausing at a bakery en route to her home, she’d decided to engage in retail therapy in Camden High Street. There she’d made the purchase of a scarf and a blouse, whereupon she’d celebrated the fact that she’d just behaved in a manner entirely different from her usual mode of reacting to disappointment, stress, frustration, or anxiety, but this celebration lasted only till she parked the Mini. At that point, her final encounter with Thomas Lynley forced its way into her consciousness.

  After their time at the Old Bailey that day, they’d parted: Lynley heading back to the Yard and Barbara heading to the dentist. They’d not seen each other again until the end of the day when they met in the ascending lift. Barbara was taking it from the underground car park and when it stopped at the lobby, Lynley got on. She could see that he was preoccupied. He’d been preoccupied outside Courtoom Number One earlier in the day, but she’d reckoned that had to do with having to testify to his near encounter with the Grim Reaper in the back of a Ford Transit kitted out as a mobile murder scene some months earlier. This preoccupation seemed different, though, and when he vanished into Superintendent Ardery’s office after the lift doors opened, Barbara reckoned she knew the reason why.

  Lynley thought she didn’t know what was going on between Ardery and him. Barbara could understand the reason for this conclusion. No one else at the Met had a clue that he and the superintendent were dancing inside each other’s knickers two or sometimes three nights a week, but no one else at the Met knew Lynley as well as Barbara did. And while she couldn’t imagine anyone actually wanting to shag the superintendent— bloody hell, it had to be like going to bed with a cobra— she’d spent the last three months of their affair telling herself that, if nothing else, Lynley deserved it. He’d lost his wife to a street murder at the hands of a twelve-year-old, he’d spent five months afterwards wandering the coast of Cornwall in a sodding daze, he’d returned to London barely functioning … If he wanted the questionable diversion of plugging Isabelle Ardery’s drainpipes for a time, so be it. They could both be in big trouble if anyone found out about it, but no one was going to find out about it because they were discreet and Barbara wasn’t going to say a word. Besides, Lynley wasn’t going to hook himself up permanently to someone like Isabelle Ardery. The man had something like three hundred years of family history to contend with, and if nothing else, he knew his duty and it had very little to do with an interlude in which he bonked a woman on whom the title Countess of Asherton would hang like a hundredweight. His type was meant to reproduce obligingly and send the family name hurtling into the future. He knew this and he’d act accordingly.

  Still, it did not sit easily with Barbara that Lynley and the superintendent were lovers. That relationship comprised the malodorous elephant present in every encounter Barbara had with him. She hated this. Not him, not the affair itself, but the fact that he wouldn’t talk to her about it. Not that she expected him to. Not that she really wanted him to. Not that she would actually be able to think of something reasonable to say should he turn to her and make a comment alluding to it. But they were partners— she and Lynley— or at least they had been and partners were meant to… What? she asked herself. But that was a question she preferred not to answer.

  She shoved open her car door. The rain wasn’t bad enough to use a brollie, so she pulled up her jacket’s collar, grabbed the bag that held her new purchases, and hurried towards home.

  As was her habit, she glanced at the basement flat of the Edwardian house behind which her tiny bungalow sat. The day was falling towards dusk, and lights were on. She saw her neighbour move past the French windows.

  All right, she thought, she was ready to admit it. The truth was, she needed someone to notice. She’d endured hours in the dentist’s chair and her reward had been Isabelle Ardery’s nod and her words, “See to the hair next, Sergeant,” and that had been it. So instead of heading down the side of the house to the back garden where her bungalow sat beneath a towering false acacia, Barbara headed over to the flagstones that marked the outside area of the basement flat, and there she knocked on the door. The notice of a nine-year-old was better than nothing, she decided.

  Hadiyyah answered, although Barbara heard the girl’s mother say, “Darling, I do wish you wouldn’t do that. It could be anyone.”

  “Just me,” Barbara called out.

  “Barbara, Barbara!” Hadiyyah cried. “Mummy, it’s Barbara! Shall we show her what we’ve done?”

  “Of course, silly girl. Do ask her to come in.”

  Barbara stepped inside to the scent of fresh paint, and it took less than a moment to see what mother and daughter had accomplished. The lounge of the flat had been repainted. Angelina Upman was putting her mark upon it. She’d arranged decorative cushions on the sofa as well, and there were fresh flowers in two different vases: one low artistic arrangement on the coffee table, another on the mantel above the electric fire.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Hadiyyah gazed up at her mother with such adoration that Barbara felt her throat close. “Mummy knows how to make things special and it’s simple, really. Isn’t it, Mummy?”

  Angelina bent and kissed the top of her daughter’s head. She lifted the little girl’s chin and said to her, “You, my darling, are my biggest admirer, for which I thank you. But a more disinterested eye is required.” She shot a smile at Barbara. “What do you think, Barbara? Have Hadiyyah and I made a success of our redecorating?”

  “It’s meant to be a surprise,” Hadiyyah added. “B
arbara, think of it. Dad doesn’t even know.”

  They’d chosen to cover the heretofore dingy cream walls with the pale green of early spring. It was a colour well suited to Angelina, and she had to have known that. Sensible decision, Barbara thought. Against it, she looked even more attractive than she already was: light haired, blue eyed, delicate, a sprite.

  “I like it,” she said to Hadiyyah. “Did you help pick out the colour?”

  “Well …” Hadiyyah shifted on her feet. She was standing next to her mother and she looked up at Angelina and sucked a tiny part of her upper lip.

  “She did,” Angelina lied blithely. “She had the final say. Her future in interior design is laid out in front of her, I daresay, although it’s not likely her father will agree. It’ll be science for you, Hadiyyah pet.”

  “Pooh,” Hadiyyah said. “I want to be”— with a glance at her mother— “a jazz dancer, that’s what.”

  This was news to Barbara, but not surprising. She’d learned that life as a professional dancer had been what Angelina had ostensibly been attempting for the fourteen months during which she’d disappeared from her daughter’s life. That she hadn’t disappeared alone was something Hadiyyah had not been told.

  Angelina laughed. “A jazz dancer, is it? We’ll keep that a secret, you and I.” And to Barbara, “Will you have a cup of tea with us, Barbara? Hadiyyah, put the kettle on. We need to put our feet up after our day’s labours.”

  “No, no, can’t stay,” Barbara said. “Just stopped by to…”

  Barbara realised that they hadn’t noticed either. Hours upon hours in the blasted dental chair and no one… and that meant… She pulled herself together. God, what was wrong with her? she wondered.