Believing the Lie

“How convenient. Whose idea was all this: the farm left to you and insurance for them? How much insurance, by the way? And exactly who does the money go to? Because if it goes to Niamh in trust for the children — ”

“Manette,” her father cut in. “That’s not on just now.” And to Kaveh, “Will you be keeping the farm or selling it, Kaveh?”

“Keeping it. As for Tim and Gracie, they’re welcome to stay with me till Niamh’s ready to have them back. And if she’s never ready, Ian would have wanted — ”

“No, no, no!” Manette didn’t particularly care to hear the rest. The point was that the children belonged with family, and Kaveh — partner to Ian or not — was not family. She said hotly, “Dad, you must… Ian can’t have wanted… Does Niamh know all this?”

“What part?” Kaveh asked. “And do you think she actually cares one way or the other?”

“Does she know you’ve inherited? And when did Ian do this?”

Kaveh hesitated, as if evaluating the potential responses that he could make. Manette had to say his name twice to get him to respond at all. “I don’t know,” he told her.

A look passed between Bernard and Tommy Lynley. Manette saw this and knew that they were thinking what she herself was thinking. Kaveh was lying about something. The only question was which of her enquiries he was answering with “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what, exactly?” she asked him.

“I don’t know a thing about Niamh, one way or the other. She has the insurance money, and there’s quite a pile. Ian meant it to help her care for Tim and Gracie, of course, but that’s because he believed that if anything happened to him, Niamh would come to her senses about them.”

“Well, she hasn’t. And it’s not looking likely she’s going to.”

“If they must, then, they’ll stay with me. They’re established at the farm, and they’re happy enough.”

Ludicrous thought, that Tim Cresswell was happy. He hadn’t been happy in ages. Manette said, “And what exactly is supposed to happen when you meet someone new in a month or two, Kaveh? When you move him to the farm and take up life with him? What then? What are the children supposed to do? What are they supposed to think?”

“Manette,” Bernard murmured cautiously.

Kaveh had gone quite pale with her words, but he said nothing, although his jaw worked furiously and at his side, his right hand clenched into a fist.

Manette said, “Niamh will fight you in court for that farm. She’ll contest the will. For the children.”

“Manette, enough,” her father said on a sigh. “There’s been plenty of grief to go round and everyone needs to recover, yourself included.”

“Why are you playing the peacemaker in this?” Manette demanded of her father. “He’s nothing to us,” she said with a jerk of her head at Kaveh. “He’s nothing to the children. He’s just someone Ian ruined his life for and — ”

“I said enough!” Bernard snapped. And to Kaveh, “Excuse her, Kaveh. She doesn’t mean — ”

“Oh, she knows very well what she means,” Kaveh said. “Most people do.”

Manette sought a way out of the mire she’d created for herself by saying lamely, “All right. Look. If nothing else, you’re too young to be the father of a fourteen-year-old boy, Kaveh. He needs someone older, someone experienced, someone — ”

“Not homosexual,” Kaveh finished for her.

“I didn’t say that. And I don’t mean that. I was going to say someone within his own family.”

“You’ve made that point more than once.”

“I’m sorry, Kaveh. It’s not about you. It’s about Tim and Gracie. They can’t be asked to tolerate more devastation in their lives. It’s destroying Tim. It’s going to do the same to Gracie. I have to stop their world from falling apart even further. I hope you can understand that.”

“Leave things as they are, Manette,” her father said. “There are larger concerns at the moment.”

“Like what?”

He said nothing. But there were those glances between her father and his London friend and she wondered for the first time what was going on here. Clearly, this bloke wasn’t intended to press a case for love with her wily sister in the fashion of the eighteenth century: out for her money, perhaps, in order to support a crumbling estate in Cornwall. And the fact that her father had actually wanted him to hear every word of her conversation with Kaveh suggested that the quiet waters of Tommy Lynley’s outward appearance were probably deep enough for Nessie to swim in. Well, that couldn’t matter. Nothing could matter. She intended to do something about her cousin’s children and if her father wouldn’t join forces with her, she knew someone else who was likely to do so.

She threw up her hands. “All right,” she said. And to Lynley, “Sorry you had to listen to all this.”

He nodded politely. But there was an expression on his face that told he hadn’t minded hearing the information at all.

BRYANBARROW EN ROUTE TO WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

The previous day had been a wash-out. Two hours trying to thumb it to Windermere and Tim had finally given up. But he was determined today would be different.

The rain started not long after he began the most difficult part of his journey: the endless hike from Bryanbarrow village down to the main road through the Lyth Valley. He didn’t expect to get a lift during this part of the route, as the cars were few and far between and if a farm vehicle happened to come by — a tractor, for example — it moved so slowly and went so little distance that he could actually make better time on foot.

He hadn’t counted on the rain, though. This was stupid of him, considering it was the sodden month of sodding November and as far as he knew, it rained more in the Lakes than anywhere else in the bloody country. But because he’d left Bryan Beck farm in a state in which clear thinking wasn’t exactly going on in his head, he had put a hoodie on over a flannel shirt, which he wore over a tee-shirt and none of this was waterproof. He had trainers on his feet, too, and while these weren’t soaked through, they were mud up to the ankles because the verges of the lane were swampy the way they always were at this time of year. As for his jeans, they were growing heavier and heavier as the rain got to them. Since they were several sizes too large anyway, the struggle to keep them up round his hips was infuriating.

He was on the main road through the valley when he scored his first lift, a spot of luck in a day that otherwise was sucking ostrich eggs. This was supplied by a farmer. He pulled over in a Land Rover that was up to its wings in crusted mud and he said, “Get in, son. You look like something dragged out of the pond. Where to?”

Tim said Newby Bridge — the opposite direction from Windermere — because he had a feeling about the bloke and the way the bloke looked at him, close and curious. He also didn’t want to leave a trail once everything was over. If things went the way he wanted them to go, if his name and face showed up in the paper and this bloke recognised him, then Tim wanted the phone call he made to the cops to be one that said, “Oh, yeah, I ’member that kid. Said he was going to Newby Bridge.”

The farmer said, “Newby Bridge, is it?” and pulled back onto the road. He said he could take him as far as Winster, and after that he did the usual thing, which was to ask why Tim wasn’t at school. He said, “School day, innit? You doing a bunk?”

Tim was used to the maddening habit adults had of asking questions that were none of their business. It always made him want to dig his thumbs into their eyeballs. It wasn’t as if they’d ask a question like that of another adult — like “Why aren’t you at work today like the rest of the world?” — but they seemed to think it was open season on firing just about any question at a kid. He’d been prepared for this, though, so he said, “Check the time. Half day.”

The farmer said, “Not for my three, it’s not. Where d’you go to school?”