Believing the Lie

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.”