she and Freddie would need to be off the boy’s computer posthaste. But the arrivals weren’t Kaveh, as things turned out. They were, instead, an older Asian couple, possibly Iranian like Kaveh. With them was a teenage girl, who looked up at the manor house with a long-fingered hand pressed against her lips. She shot a glance at the older couple. The woman took her arm and together all three of them approached the front door.
They had to belong to Kaveh in some fashion, Manette thought. There were few enough Asians in this part of Cumbria, and hardly any at all in the countryside. They’d come on a surprise visit, perhaps. They’d come to call on their way from Point A to Point Z. Who knew
But that didn’t happen. Apparently with a key in their possession, they let themselves inside. Manette murmured, “What on earth…?” And then, “Freddie, someone’s arrived. It’s an older couple and a girl. I think they belong to Kaveh. Shall I…?”
Freddie said, “Damn. I’m getting somewhere here. Can you… I don’t know …Can you handle them in some way?”
Manette left the room quietly, closing the door behind her. She made a suitable amount of noise as she descended the stairs. She called out, “Hullo? Hullo? C’n I help you?” and she came face-to-face with everyone in the passage between the kitchen and the fire house.
The best course was bluffing, Manette decided. She smiled as if there was nothing unusual in her being inside the manor house. She said, “I’m Manette McGhie. I’m Ian’s cousin. You must be friends of Kaveh? He’s not here at the moment.”
They were more than friends of Kaveh, as it happened. They were his parents come up from Manchester. They’d brought his fiancee, newly come from Tehran, to see what was going to be her home in a few short weeks. She and Kaveh had not yet met. It was not the usual done thing for her future in-laws to bring the bride to call, but Kaveh had been anxious — well, what bridegroom wouldn’t be? — and so here they were. Just a little premarital surprise.
The girl’s name was Iman and she’d dropped her gaze in an appealingly diffident fashion while all this was being said. Her hair — copious, lustrous, and black — fell forward to hide her face. But the glimpse Manette had caught of it had been enough to see she was very pretty.
“Kaveh’s fiancee?” Manette’s smile froze as she took this on board. At least there was an explanation now for the pristine state of the house. But as to everything else, these waters were deep and this poor girl was probably going to drown in them. Manette said, “I had no idea Kaveh was engaged. Ian never told me about that.”
Whereupon the waters became deeper still.
“Who is Ian?” Kaveh’s father asked.
EN ROUTE TO LONDON
When his mobile rang, Lynley was nearly seventy miles from Milnthorpe, fast approaching the junction for the M56, and more than a little disturbed. He’d been played for a fool by Deborah St. James, and he was far from happy about it. He’d turned up at the Crow and Eagle as agreed at half past ten, expecting to find her with her bags packed and ready for the drive back to London. He’d not been concerned at first when she was not waiting for him in the lobby since he’d seen her hire car in the car park, so he knew she was somewhere about the place.
“If you’d ring her room please,” he’d said to the receptionist, a girl in a crisp white blouse and black wool skirt who’d done so obligingly with a “Who shall I tell her…?”
“Tommy,” he said, and he saw the flash of a knowing look strike her features. The Crow and Eagle was, perhaps, a hotbed of hot beds — as Sergeant Havers would have put it — a central location for daily assignations among the landed gentry. He added, “Fetching her for the drive back to London,” and then was immediately irritated with himself for doing so. He walked away and studied the ubiquitous rack of brochures featuring tourist highlights in Cumbria.
The receptionist cleared her throat after a moment and said, “No answer, sir. Could be she’s in the dining room?”
But she wasn’t. Nor was she in the bar, although what Deborah would have been doing in the bar at half past ten in the morning was a mystery to him. Since her car was there, right next to where he’d parked the Healey Elliott, he sat down to wait. There was a bank across the street from the hotel, a market square in the town, a old church with an appealing graveyard …He reckoned she could be having a final look round the place before the long drive.
It didn’t occur to him for some ten minutes that if the receptionist had been ringing Deborah’s room, she clearly hadn’t yet checked out of the hotel. When it
He rang her mobile at once. Of course, it went immediately to her voice mail. He said, “You must know I’m rather unhappy with you at the moment. We had an arrangement, you and I. Where the hell are you?” but there was nothing more to add. He knew Deborah. There was no point in trying to move her from the obdurate stand she had taken with regard to matters in Cumbria.
Still he had a look round the town for her before he left, telling himself he owed Simon that much. This ate up more of his day and accomplished nothing save an extended study of Milnthorpe, which, for some reason, appeared to have a plethora of Chinese takeaways round the market square. He finally returned to the inn, wrote her a note, left it with the receptionist, and went on his way.
When his phone rang on the approach to the M56, then, he thought at first it was Deborah, ready to be profuse with her apologies. He answered without glancing at the incoming number, barking, “What?” only to hear Sergeant Havers’s voice instead.
She said, “Right. Well. Hullo back at you. Which one is it, then? Did you have a personality transplant or a toss-and-turn night?”
He said, “Sorry. I’m on the motorway.”
“Heading…?”
“Home, where else?”
“Not a good idea, sir.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Just ring me when you can talk. Find a services area. I don’t want you crashing that expensive motor of yours. I’ve already got the Bentley on my conscience.”
The next services area was a Welcome Break, and he had to travel some way to find it. It was a quarter of an hour before he got there, but the car park wasn’t crowded and there was virtually no one inside the unappealing sprawl of sticky-floored cafeteria, shops, newsagents, and children’s play area. He bought himself a coffee and took it to a table. He rang Havers’s mobile.
“Hope you’re sitting down,” were her words when she answered.
“I was sitting down the first time we spoke,” he reminded her.
“Okay, okay.” She brought him up to the minute on what she’d been doing, which appeared mostly to be keeping out of Isabelle Ardery’s sight in order to do research on the Internet, for which she seemed to be developing a distinct liking. She talked about a Spanish graduate student; her neighbour Taymullah Azhar, with whom Lynley was acquainted; the town of Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos; and finally the five sons of the mayor of that town. She ended with the purpose of her call, always someone who liked to build to dramatic moments:
“And here’s the situation in a nutshell. There is no Alatea Vasquez y del Torres. Or perhaps better put: There is and there isn’t an Alatea Vasquez y del Torres.”
“Hadn’t you already established that Alatea’s probably from another part of the family?”
“To borrow unblushingly from rock ’n’ roll history, sir: That was yesterday and yesterday’s gone.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Alatea’s from this part of the family. She’s just not Alatea.”
