Believing the Lie

route from Chalk Farm took her through King’s Cross Station anyway. So all it had involved was a brief stop there, not to mention putting up with an evaluative glance from the young man behind the till when she paid for the journal. She could see it in his eyes and in the ever-so-slightly-amused movement of his mouth: Conception? You? Not bloody likely. She’d wanted to pull him over the counter by the neck of his white shirt, but the dirty ring round its collar stopped her. No need to expose herself so closely to someone whose personal hygiene didn’t extend to washing his clothes regularly, she’d decided.

She was leafing through Conception as she waited in the pub. She was wondering where they found all the perfect babies to photograph, along with all the mothers who looked dewy fresh and not at all like what they probably were, which was haggard with lack of sleep. She’d ordered herself a jacket potato topped with chili con carne and she was dipping into this and reading about the care of one’s nipples during breast- feeding — who knew it was so painful? she wondered — when her inside guy at The Source showed up.

Mitchell Corsico came into the pub in his usual getup. He always wore a Stetson, jeans, and cowboy boots, but Barbara saw he’d added a fringed leather jacket. God, she thought, chaps and six-guns were probably next. He saw her, jerked his head in a nod, and approached the bar to place his order. He looked at the menu for a moment, tossed it down, and told the publican what he wanted. He paid for it as well, and this Barbara took for a positive sign till he walked to her table and said, “Twelve pounds fifty.”

She said, “Bloody hell, what did you order?”

“Did I have a limit?”

She muttered and pulled out her purse. She dug for the cash and shoved it over as he reached for a chair and mounted it like a cowboy onto a horse. She said, “Where’s Trigger?”

“Say what?”

“Never mind.”

“That’s bad for your arteries,” he noted with a nod at her potato.

“And you ordered…?”

“All right. Never mind. What’s up?”

“Back-scratch situation.”

She saw the wariness across his features. Who could blame him? Corsico was the one who was usually coming to the cops for information and not the reverse. But hope passed crossed his features as well because he knew his stock was very low at the Yard. He’d been embedded with the police during the hunt for a serial killer nearly a year earlier, and he wasn’t popular because of that.

Still, he was careful. He said, “I don’t know. Let’s see. What d’you need?”

“A name.”

He remained noncommittal.

“There’s a reporter from The Source been sent up to Cumbria. I need to know who he is and why he’s there.” At this, he began to reach into his jacket pocket, so she said, “Uh, we haven’t started scratching yet, Mitch. Hold Trigger’s rein, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh. A horse.”

“Yeah. Just like Silver. Hi ho, and all that. I’d expect you to know this, all things considered. So who’s gone up there? And why?”

He considered. After a moment during which his meal arrived — roast beef and Yorkshire bloody pud and all the trimmings, and Barbara reckoned he didn’t eat like that unless someone else was footing the bill — he said, “I need to know what’s in it for me.”

“That’s going to depend on the value of your information.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he said.

“Not usually. But things have changed. New super looking over my shoulder. I have to be careful.”

“An exclusive with DI Lynley would do.”

“Ha! Not bloody likely.”

He started to rise. Barbara knew it was show because there was no way in hell he was going to walk off and leave his roast beef and Yorkshire pud languishing uneaten at the table. But she played along and said, “All right. I’ll do what I can. So you do what you can. Who’s been sent to Cumbria?”

He spilled the beans as she reckoned he would. He gave her everything: Zedekiah Benjamin, a story on Nicholas Fairclough, a rejection by the editor, and a reporter’s determination to mould the story into something suitable for The Source instead of what he’d turned in at first, which appeared to be a puff piece that belonged in Hello! He’d been up to Cumbria at least three times now — maybe four — trying to sex up the story enough for Rodney Aronson, but he was apparently slow on the uptake. He’d not been getting anywhere till Ian Cresswell drowned.

This was an interesting bit, Barbara thought. She asked for the dates of Zedekiah Benjamin’s sojourns in Cumbria and she learned that two of those sojourns had occurred in advance of the Cresswell drowning. The second of these had ended just three days prior to the death, at which point Benjamin had apparently returned to London with his tail between his legs, having failed to suss out the sex that his editor required.

She said, “What happens to this bloke if he doesn’t find the sex?”

Corsico did the knife-across-the-throat business and topped that by flipping his thumb over his shoulder in case Barbara was too dim to work out what he meant. She nodded and said, “Know where he’s staying up there?”

Corsico said he didn’t. But he added that Benjamin wouldn’t exactly be difficult to spot if he was lurking in the bushes near someone’s house.

“Why?” Barbara asked.

Because, Corsico said, he was six feet eight inches tall with a head of hair so red it looked like his skull was on fire.

“Now,” he concluded, taking out his notebook, “my back’s itching.”

“I’ll have to scratch it later,” she replied.

ARNSIDE KNOT CUMBRIA

The rain had begun during Alatea’s walk. She was prepared for it, though, having seen the nasty bank of clouds approaching Arnside across Morecambe Bay, coming from the direction of Humphrey Head. What she hadn’t anticipated was the strength of it. She’d known from the wind it would be coming on quickly. The fact that it altered from a quarter of an hour’s downpour to a tempest was the surprise.

She was halfway to her destination when the pelting began. She could have turned for home, but she did not. It seemed to her a necessity that she complete the climb to the top of Arnside Knot. She told herself grimly that she might be struck by lightning there, and at the moment this sort of end to her life didn’t actually seem like such a bad thing. She’d be done in an instant, over, out. It would be a form of the ultimate knowing in a situation in which not knowing was slowly eating her up.

The rain had abated when she began the final ascent among the auburn-coated Scottish steers that grazed freely on the hillside. Her feet sought safe purchase in the areas of limestone scree, and she grasped the trunks of the bent, wind-scarred conifers to aid her as she reached the top. Once there, she found she was breathing less heavily than she had done in earlier climbs. Soon, she told herself, she’d probably be able to jog to the top of Arnside Knot and arrive there no worse for the exertion.

From the top of the knot, she could see it all: two hundred and eighty degrees of panorama that comprised everything from the speck that was Piel Island Castle to the undulating mass of Morecambe Bay and the fishing villages strung along its shore. This vista offered endless sky, treacherous waters, and landscape of every variety. What it did not offer, however, was a glimpse into the future, and Alatea had come out into the uncertain weather in an attempt to run from what she knew she could not hope to escape indefinitely.

She’d told Nicholas part of what she’d discovered in her research, but she had not told him all of it. “She’s a freelance photographer, not a location scout at all,” she’d informed him. Her nerves were on edge, and she’d had a