Believing the Lie

Barbara said, “Look, I’m going to be straight with you. I have serious questions to ask about one of your members and this could be a matter of murder.”

“I see.” The woman considered this, her head cocked to one side. Her hair was thick and completely white. Barbara reckoned she was wearing a wig. One didn’t get this old with all the follicles still churning. “Well, my dear,” the woman said, “when could be a matter becomes is a matter, we’ll have something to discuss. Until then, we don’t.”

That said, she stepped back and closed the door. Barbara was left on the step, realising she’d lost the battle because she’d used a bloody conditional verb.

She swore and fished a packet of Players out of her bag. She lit up and considered her next move. There had to be someone else who worked in this place, someone with information to impart: a chef, a cook, a waiter, a cleaner. Surely, the old bag didn’t run the place on her own.

She descended the steps and looked back at the building. It was perfectly shut up and forbidding, a fortress for its members’ secrets.

She glanced around. Perhaps, she thought, there was another way. A shop with a curious shop assistant inside, gaping out of the window at the well-heeled as they arrived and entered the club? A florist who made regular deliveries through the front door? A tobacconist selling members snuff or cigars? But there seemed to be nothing at all aside from a taxi rank on Portland Place, not far from BBC Broadcasting House.

She decided a taxi rank was possible. Drivers of cabs probably had their favourite routes and their favourite ranks. They’d know where the pickings were best and they’d haunt that area. If that was the case, it stood to reason that a cab driver could as easily cart a member of Twins somewhere as he could cart someone ducking out of the BBC.

She walked over to have a chat. The first three drivers in the line got her nowhere. The fourth was her lucky charm. The driver sounded like an extra from EastEnders. Barbara reckoned he spent his Sundays shouting “Pound a bowl” in the vicinity of the Brick Lane market.

He knew Lord Fairclough. He knew “most them toffs,” he said. He liked to chat to them cos it rankled ’em, it did, and he liked to see how long it’d take ’em to tell ’im to plug his mug. Fairclough was always ready for a chat, when he was alone. When someone was wif him, things was diff’rent.

The someone was with him piqued Barbara’s interest. Anyone special with him? she asked.

Oh, aye, the cab driver told her. Al’as the same bird, it was.

His wife? Barbara asked.

The cab driver guffawed.

Remember where you took him and the bird, then? she asked.

The driver smirked. He tapped his head, the repository of all knowledge including the Knowledge. He said that course he remembered cos it was al’as the same place. And, he added with a wink, the bird was a young’n.

Better and better, Barbara thought. Bernard Fairclough and a young woman always going by taxi to the same place after meeting at his club. She asked the driver if he could take her to that place now.

He glanced at the rank of taxis ahead of him and she knew what that meant. He couldn’t move off with a passenger until it was his turn or there would be hell to pay. She said she’d wait till he was at the head of the line but could he take her to the exact place and show her where Fairclough and his companion went? She showed her ID. Police business, she told him.

He said, “You got the fare?” and when she nodded, “Climb in then, darlin’. I’m your man.”

MILNTHORPE TO LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

“Don’t you see what all of this means, Simon?”

Whenever Deborah said that to him, St. James knew to take care in their conversation. She intended to attach something to the conclusion of her remarks, and in this situation what she intended to attach could put her into a dangerous position. So he said, “I don’t, actually, my love. What I see is that while you were talking to her, Alatea Fairclough became upset for reasons that aren’t completely clear, but those reasons don’t seem to have anything to do with Ian Cresswell’s death. The best course is for you to return the call from her husband and tell him something’s come up and you’ve got to go back to London.”

“Without seeing what he wants?” Deborah’s tone was incredulous and her expression suspicious. In the way of most husbands and wives, Deborah would know his weak spots. She would also know his weakest spot was Deborah herself. “Why on earth should I do that?”

“You yourself said she knows you’re not who you said you were. You can’t think she hasn’t told Nicholas that. If he rang you and said he’d like a word — which he did, yes? — he’s going to want that word to be about the state his wife was in when you left her.”

“That’s what you would want to talk about. He might want to talk to me about a dozen things. And I’m not going to know what they are unless I ring him back and agree to see him.”

They were standing in the car park of the Crow and Eagle, next to his hire car, and he was due to meet Lynley at Ireleth Hall. He wasn’t at this point late, but if the conversation went on much longer he was going to be. Deborah had followed him down from their room because although he’d considered their conversation finished, she had not. She was dressed to go out and this was not a good sign. She hadn’t brought her shoulder bag or camera, however, so this counted in his favour.

Deborah had given him chapter and verse on her encounter with Alatea Fairclough, and as far as he was concerned Deborah’s cover was blown, and it was time for her to back away from the situation. Deborah’s point was that the Argentine woman’s reaction had been so extreme that she had to be hiding something. Her additional point was that if Alatea was indeed hiding something, chances were very good that her husband didn’t know what it was. So the only way she was going to discover what was truly going on was to speak with the man.

St. James had pointed out that, according to Lynley, a reporter from The Source had been nosing round the area as well, so that — in combination with a photographer who wasn’t who she’d said she was — certainly would be enough to unnerve Alatea Fairclough. What did Deborah think she was hiding, anyway, a Nazi in her past? She was, after all, from Argentina.

Fiddlesticks, Deborah said.

Fiddlesticks? St. James thought. What sort of word was fiddlesticks in this century and what did fiddlesticks have to do with anything? He was wise enough not to say that, however. Instead, he waited for more, and true to form his wife didn’t disappoint him.

Deborah said, “I think all of this has to do with the magazine, Simon. Alatea was perfectly fine — well, a little nervous, but otherwise fine — until I brought up Conception. I was attempting to get a little closer to her, I told her just a bit about our difficulties with pregnancy, and that was it. She went a bit wild and — ”

“We’ve been over this, Deborah,” he said patiently. “You can see where it leads, can’t you? Her husband arrives home, she tells him you aren’t who you say you are, he rings you and wants to have a chat, and that chat is going to tell you that the cover you’re using to slip into his life — ”

“I told her I was a freelance photographer. I told her what that means. I told her I was hired by Query Productions, which is a start-up company with no films made yet. I thought of that in the heat of the moment, by the way, because her next step is going to be to learn there is no start-up company called Query Productions at all, and you and I know it. I can handle meeting with Nicholas if I was able to handle that.”

“You’re in a very bad position,” he concluded with his hand on the door handle of the car. “You need to leave this alone.” He didn’t say he forbade her doing more. He didn’t say he wished her to do no more. Their years of marriage had taught him that in that way lay madness, so he tried to ease her in the general direction of this conclusion. At the end of the day, it was losing her that terrified him, but he couldn’t say that since her next move would be to say that he wasn’t going to lose her, which would lead to his next move,