Believing the Lie

where a yellow glow would have — at least in better weather — attracted moths, there was nothing at all. Along with the algae on the jetty steps, it was something else to be seen to.

He aimed for the arched opening and glided within. The boathouse was nowhere near the main house, nor was it near the tower folly, so there was nothing — no hint of distant light — to break the gloom, and the darkness was absolute. There were three other craft stored there. A well-used fishing rowingboat, a speedboat, and a canoe of uncertain vintage and even more uncertain seaworthiness were tied up haphazardly along the front and the right side of the dock. It was necessary to work one’s way among them to get back to the far end where the scull had been tied, and Ian was able to do this by feel, although he caught his hand between the rowingboat and the scull and he swore as the fiberglass of one smashed his knuckles into the wood of the other.

The same thing happened against the stone dock, and he felt the blood this time. He said, “Goddamn,” and pressed his knuckles against his side for a moment. The damn things hurt like the dickens and told him that whatever else he did, he needed to do it with care.

There was a torch in his car, and he had enough sense of humour remaining to congratulate himself for having left it there where it would do him absolutely no bloody good. More carefully this time, he reached out for the dock, found it, and then sought the cleat to tie up the scull. At least, he thought, he could make a cleat hitch in light or in dark, in rain or in shine. He did so and released his feet from the stretchers. Then he shifted his weight and reached for the dock to heave himself up and out of the shell.

As these things do, it happened when the balance of his weight was on a single stone of the dock and his body was momentarily arched out of the scull and over the water. The stone that should have taken his weight — and now apparently too long in place on the dock to do so — became dislodged. He fell forward, and the scull — tied only at its bow — shot backwards. Down he went into the frigid water.

On his way, however, his head slammed into the slate from which the dock had long ago been fashioned. He was unconscious when he hit the water, and within a few minutes he was also dead.

25 OCTOBER

WANDSWORTH LONDON

Their arrangement was the same as it had been from the first. She would communicate in some way, and he would go to her. Sometimes it was a quarter smile, just an upturn of her lips gone so quickly that anyone unaware of what it meant would not even have noticed. Sometimes it was the word tonight murmured as they passed in a corridor. At other times she said something openly if, perhaps, they met on the stairway or in the officers’ mess or if, perhaps, they saw each other in the underground car park arriving by chance at the same moment in the morning. But in any case, he waited until she gave the word. He didn’t like it this way, but there was no other. She would not under any circumstances come to him, and even had she been willing to do so, she was his superior officer so he was hers to command. It did not work the other way round.

He’d tried it only once, early on in their arrangement. He’d thought it might mean something if she spent the night with him in Belgravia, as if their relationship had turned some sort of corner, although he wasn’t exactly certain that he wanted it to do so. She’d said firmly in that way she had of making things so pellucid there were no further avenues of discussion available to him, That will never happen, Thomas. And the fact she called him Thomas rather than the more intimate Tommy by which his every friend and colleague referred to him said more than the other, larger truth that he knew she would not say: The house in Eton Terrace was still redolent of his murdered wife, and eight months after her death on the front steps of the building, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do a single thing about that. He was insightful enough to realise that there was little likelihood of any woman’s sleeping in his bed while Helen’s clothes still hung in the wardrobe, while Helen’s scent bottles still stood on the dressing table where Helen’s hairbrush still held strands of Helen’s hair. Until Helen’s presence was eradicated from the house, he could not realistically hope to share it with anyone else, even for a night. So he was caught, and when Isabelle said that word — Tonight? — he went to her, drawn by a force that was at once a physical need and a form of oblivion, however brief.

He did as much on this evening. In the afternoon they’d had a meeting with the head of IPCC on the matter of a complaint registered that past summer by a solicitor on the behalf of her client: a paranoid schizophrenic who had run into traffic in a London street while being pursued by the police. The resulting internal injuries and fractured skull demanded monetary compensation, and the solicitor meant to have it. The police complaints commission was investigating the matter and this constituted meeting upon meeting with everyone involved explaining his or her take on the story, with CCTV footage viewed, with eyewitnesses interviewed, and with the London tabloids breathlessly eager to snatch up the story and run with it as soon as the IPCC made a determination as to guilt, innocence, malfeasance, accident, circumstances beyond anyone’s control, or whatever else they chose to conclude. The meeting had been tense. He was as tightly strung as Isabelle at its conclusion.

She’d said to him as they walked through the corridors to return to their offices in Victoria Block, I’d like to have you tonight, Thomas, if you’ve the energy. Dinner and a shag. Very good steaks, very nice wine, very clean sheets. Not Egyptian cotton as I expect yours are, but fresh all the same.

And then the smile and something in her eyes that he’d not yet been able to interpret, these three months after they’d first coupled in the soulless bedroom of her basement flat. Damn if he didn’t want her, he thought. It had to do with an act the nature of which allowed him to believe he’d mastered her when the truth was she had quickly mastered him.

The arrangement was simple enough. She would go to the shops, and he could either go straight to the flat and let himself in with his key or go to his own home first on one pretext or another, killing time till making the drive to that dismal street at the halfway point between Wandsworth prison and a cemetery. He chose the latter. It allowed him the semblance of being his own man.

To further this illusion, he took his time with his preparations: reading his mail, having a shower and a shave, returning a phone call from his mother on the matter of rainwater heads along the west side of the house in Cornwall. Should they be replaced or repaired, did he think? Winter’s coming, darling, and with the rains getting heavier… It was a pretext call on her part. She wanted to know how he was, but she didn’t like to ask directly. She knew very well that the rainwater heads had to be repaired. They could not possibly be replaced. It was a listed building, after all. It would probably be falling down round their ears before they’d receive permission to alter it. They chatted on of family matters. How was his brother doing? he asked, which was family code for Is he still coping without turning back to cocaine, heroin, or whatever other substance he might use to remove himself from reality? The answer was Perfectly well, darling. This was family code for I’m monitoring him, as always, and you’ve no cause to worry about it. How was his sister? meant had Judith yet given up the idea of permanent widowhood, to which the answer Terribly busy as always was code for She has no intention of risking another dreadful marriage, believe me. So went the conversation till all topics were exhausted and his mother said, I do so hope we’ll see you for Christmas, Tommy, and he assured her that she would.

After that, with no other reason to hold him in Belgravia, he worked his way over to the river and south from there to Wands worth Bridge. He reached the house in which Isabelle lived just after half past seven. Parking was murder in the area, but he got lucky when a van pulled away from the kerb some thirty yards down the street.

At Isabelle’s door, he fished out his key. He had it in the lock and was letting himself in when she opened the door from within and quickly stepped outside onto the flagstones of the area at the base of the stairs from the pavement above them. She shut the door behind her.

She said, “We can’t tonight. Something’s come up. I would have rung your mobile but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

He was nonplussed. Stupidly, he looked over her shoulder at the panels of the closed door. He said, “Who’s here?” because that much was obvious enough. Another man, he reckoned, and in that he was right, although it was not a man he expected.