Believing the Lie

As it turned out, there was very little on Angel, who, despite his name, appeared to be the black sheep of the family. Using her dictionary and moving at a pace so tedious that she thought her outrageously expensive Knightsbridge haircut might grow out before she discovered anything useful, she ultimately was able to put together the fact that he’d caused a car crash that had crippled his passenger for life. The passenger had been a fifteen- year-old girl.

Barbara followed this lead — the fifteen-year-old girl being at least the first female she’d come across aside from Miguel’s unfortunate wife — but she came up with nothing but a dead end. No photo was available of her and while there was one of Angel, he appeared to be round nineteen years old and it didn’t matter anyway because after the accident, he dropped directly off the media map. If he was North American and preferably from the United States, at that point he would either have gone into a rehab programme or discovered Jesus, but this was South America and whatever happened to him after that accident, the available media didn’t talk about it. Too small a fish, probably. They’d quickly moved on to other things.

So did she. Santiago. She found a story about the boy’s first communion. At least she reckoned it was his first communion because he was standing in a neat arrangement of children in suits (the boys) and bride getups (the girls) and either the Moonies had decided to begin marrying them off when they were round eight years old or this was a group of children who, as Catholics in Argentina, had just been elevated to worthy recipients of the Sacrament. It was rather odd that there would be a story about a group first communion, so Barbara struggled through a bit of it. She got the gist: that the church had burned down and they’d been forced to have their first communion in a city park. Or so it seemed to Barbara’s extremely limited skill with Spanish. Truth was, the church could have been destroyed by a flood. Or even an earthquake. Or perhaps they’d tented the place for termites because God, God, God this was tedious work having to translate everything a single word at a time.

She squinted at the photo of the children and looked at it one girl at a time. She brought out the Internet picture she had of Alatea Fairclough and she began to compare it to each of the girls. Their names were listed and there were only fifteen of them and certainly she could do an Internet search on each of them but that would take hours and she didn’t have hours because once Superintendent Ardery returned, if she wasn’t beavering away at the witness statements she’d been ordered to deal with at the side of the CPS clerk, there would be hell to pay.

She considered choosing the most likely suspect among the girls and having an age progression done upon her. But she hardly had the time and she certainly didn’t have the authority. So she went back to the Santiago trail because if he had nothing more to offer her, there was nothing else to do other than to move on to Diego.

She found an older picture of Santiago playing Othello sans black pancake in the eponymous play as an adolescent. There was a final picture of him with the school football team and an enormous trophy, but then there was nothing. Just like Angel of the car crash, he fell off the radar. It was as if once the boys reached mid- adolescence, if they hadn’t accomplished something important — preparing for the priesthood or for dentistry being cases in point — then the local news media lost interest in them. Either that or they became useless to their father politically. Because, after all, he was a politician, with a politician’s bent for trotting out his family in election years to demonstrate their essential wholesomeness for the voters.

Barbara thought about this: family, politics, the voting public. She thought about Angel. She thought about Santiago. She stared at every photo she’d come up with and she ended with the children in the park at their first communion. Finally, she picked up the photograph of Alatea Fairclough again.

“What is it?” she whispered. “Tell me your secrets, luv.”

But there was nothing. A string of noughts stretched out to infinity.

She muttered a curse and reached for the mouse to log off the Internet and get back to Diego — the final brother — later. But then she looked a last time at the football photo, then at Othello. From them she went to Alatea Fairclough. Then Alatea on Montenegro’s arm. Then she went back to the first communion. Then she riffled through the photos of Alatea Fairclough’s modelling years. She went back and back and back through those photos, back through time, back to the first one she could find. She studied it. She finally saw.

Eyes on the terminal’s screen, she reached for her mobile. She punched in Lynley’s number.

BRYANBARROW CUMBRIA

“Can she be forced?” Manette asked Freddie. They were coursing through the Lyth Valley at a good speed, with Freddie behind the wheel. They’d just made the turn into the southwest end of it, where the emerald fields spread out behind crusty drystone walls on either side of the road and the fells rose above them with peaks that wore the grey shawls of cloud on their shoulders. It would be misty up there, and soon it would be misty on the valley floor as well. A good fog was probably going to develop as the day wore on.

Manette had been consumed by their conversation with Niamh Cresswell. How, she wondered, could she have known Niamh for so many years without really knowing her at all?

Freddie, it seemed, had been thinking thoughts unrelated to Niamh and their call upon her because he glanced Manette’s way and said, “Who?”

“Niamh, Freddie. Who else? Can she be forced to take the children back?”

Freddie looked doubtful. “I don’t know the law when it comes to parents and children. But, really, old girl, what sort of plan would that be, to get the law involved?”

“Oh Lord, I don’t know. But we should at least find out what the options are. Because the very idea that she’d just leave Tim and Gracie to their fate… especially little Gracie… Good God, Freddie, does she expect them to go into care? Can she give them into care, for that matter? Can’t someone force her…?”

“Solicitors, judges, and social services?” Freddie asked. “How d’you see that sort of thing affecting the children? Tim’s in a bad enough way already, what with Margaret Fox School and all that. I daresay knowing his mum has been forced by a court to take him back would send the poor lad right over the edge.”

“Perhaps my mum and dad, then…?” Manette suggested. “With that enormous play area she’s building…? Mum and Dad could take them. They’ve got the space, and the kids would love to be near the lake and to use the play area, certainly.”

Freddie slowed the car. Up ahead, a flock of sheep were being moved from one paddock into another in a manner typical to Cumbria: They were in the middle of the road with a border collie directing them and the farmer strolling along behind. The pace was, as always, glacial.

Freddie changed gears and said to Manette, “Tim’s a bit old for play areas, wouldn’t you say, Manette? And anyway, what with this business with Vivienne Tully just coming to light, having the kids move into Ireleth Hall might be even worse for them than… well, than whatever other arrangement can be made.”

“Of course, you’re right.” Manette sighed. She thought about everything she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours about her parents, but especially about her father. She said, “What d’you think she’s going to do?”

“Your mother?” He shook his head. “No idea.”

“I’ve never understood what attracted her to Dad in the first place,” Manette said. “And believe me, I haven’t a clue what Vivienne saw in him. Or continues to see in him, because it’s looking like she’s been seeing him for years. Why on earth would she ever have found Dad attractive? It can’t be money. The money’s mother’s, not his, so if they’d divorced he’d do fine but he wouldn’t have been exactly rolling in the dosh. I mean, of course he’s always had access to it and perhaps Vivienne never knew it wasn’t actually his…?”

“It’s unlikely that she even thought of money when it came to your dad,” Freddie replied. “I expect it was his self-assurance. Women like that in a man, and your father’s always had self-assurance in spades. I wager it’s what attracted your mother to him.”

Manette glanced his way. He was still watching the sheep on the road, but the tips of his ears were giving him away. There was more here than met the eye, so she said, “And…?”

“Hmm?”

“The self-assurance bit.”