MILNTHORPE
CUMBRIA
“I wouldn’t want to have to write it on an envelope, but they probably have some Spanish abbreviation if you’re sending a letter there,” Havers said. She was referring to the town in Argentina that she’d managed to come up with as being the likeliest origin of Alatea Vasquez y del Torres. “Santa Maria de la Cruz, de los Angeles, y de los Santos,” she had just announced to Lynley over his mobile phone. “We’re talking about a burg that’s touching all the spiritual bases. It must be in an earthquake zone and hoping for divine intervention in case of the worst.”
Lynley could hear her smoking on the other end. No surprise. Havers was always smoking. She wouldn’t be at the Met, then. Or if she was, she was phoning from a stairwell where, he knew, she occasionally skulked for an illegal hit of the weed. He said to her, “Why this town, Barbara?” and to St. James, who had joined him to lean against the Healey Elliott, “She’s onto Alatea Fairclough.”
“Who’re you talking to?” Havers enquired irritably. “I bloody well hate three-way conversations.”
“St. James is here. I’ll switch it to the speaker if I can work out how to do that.”
“Oh, that’ll happen on a snowy day in hell,” she said. “Give it to Simon, sir. He can do it for you.”
“Havers, I’m not entirely — ”
“Sir.” It was her patient-as-a-saint voice. There was nothing for it. He handed the mobile over to St. James. One or two buttons and both of them were listening to Havers in the car park of the Crow and Eagle.
“It’s the mayor,” Havers said. “I know this is spitting in the dark, sir, but the mayor’s a bloke called Esteban Vega y de Vasquez and his wife’s called Dominga Padilla y del Torres de Vasquez. I reckoned it could be a put-it- all-together-and-what’ve-you-got situation. Some of the surnames are the same as Alatea’s.”
“That’s a stretch, Barbara.”
“This came from the Internet?” St. James asked.
“Bloody hours on it. And since everything’s in sodding Spanish, I’m only guessing he’s the mayor. He could be the dog catcher but there was a picture of him and I can’t think why the dog catcher’d be handing over the keys to the city to anyone in some picture. Well, except maybe to Barbara Woodhouse.”
“She’s dead,” Lynley said.
“Whatever. So there’s a picture of him and he’s in his mayor kit and there’s his wife and they’re posing with someone and I can’t — of course — read the caption since it’s in Spanish, in which language I can actually say
“We’ll need someone to translate,” Lynley noted.
“What about you, Simon? Spanish among your many talents?”
“Only French,” St. James said. “Well, there’s Latin as well, but I’m not sure how much use that would be.”
“Well, we got to find someone. And we need someone else to tell us how these people come up with their surnames because I bloody don’t know and can’t work it out.”
“It has to do with forebears,” Lynley said.
“Got that much, I think. But what is it? Do they just keep lining them up back through history? Wouldn’t want to have to write that on my passport application if you know what I mean.”
Lynley was thinking about the language and who would serve their purposes as a translator. There would, of course, be someone in the Met, but he wasn’t sure how many more people he could afford to bring in on this before Isabelle traced the lot of them back to him.
He said, “What about Alatea Fairclough herself? What’ve you come up with on that score when you work her into this town of Santa Maria et cetera? You’re assuming she’s the mayor’s daughter, I take it?”
Havers said, “Can’t go that way at all, sir. They seem to have five sons.” She inhaled on the other end of the line and blew smoke noisily into the mobile phone. Lynley heard the rustling of paper and knew she was leafing through her notebook as well. She went on to say, “Carlos, Miguel, Angel, Santiago, and Diego. At least I reckon there are five sons. Considering the way these people string together their names, it could be one bloke, I s’pose.”
“So where does Alatea fit in?”
“Way I see it, she could be the wife of one of them.”
“A wife on the run?”
“Sounds very good to me.”
“What about a relative?” St. James asked. “A niece, a cousin.”
“I reckon that’s possible as well.”
“Are you working that angle?” Lynley asked her.
“Haven’t been. Can do. But no way can I delve because like I said this stuff’s in Spanish,” she reminded him. “Course, the Yard’ll have a program to translate. You know. Something buried on the computers somewhere, away from the prying eyes of the likes of us who might actually need to use it sometime. I c’n talk to Winston. He’ll know how to do it. Should I ask him?”
Lynley thought about this. He was back to what he’d considered earlier: the impact on Isabelle Ardery if she discovered he’d bled another member of her team away for his own purposes. The results of that manoeuvre wouldn’t be pretty. There had to be another way to get round the problem of the Spanish language. Where he didn’t want to go in his own thoughts at the moment was why it mattered to him how Isabelle would react. It wouldn’t have mattered to him how a superior officer might have reacted before this. The fact that he was worried now put him on the edge of a dangerous escarpment that he didn’t want to be on at this juncture in his life.
He said, “There has to be another way, Barbara. I can’t get Winston into this as well. I’m not authorised.”
Havers didn’t point out to him that he hadn’t been authorised to get her help either. She just said, “Let me… Well, I could ask Azhar.”
“Your neighbor? He speaks Spanish?”
“He does practically everything else,” she said ironically. “But I reckon if he doesn’t speak Spanish, he can get me someone from the university who does. A professor, probably. A graduate student. Worse comes to worse, I c’n walk over to Camden Lock Market and listen to the tourists — if there are any at this time of year — and put my fingers on someone speaking Spanish and drag ’em to the nearest Internet cafe for a look at the information on the Net. I mean, there are ways, sir. I s’pose we don’t need Winston.”
“Ask Azhar,” Lynley said, and he added, “if that doesn’t put you in a difficult position.”
“Why would that put me in a difficult position, sir?” Barbara’s tone was suspicious and with good reason.
Lynley didn’t reply. There were things between them that they didn’t discuss. Her relationship with Taymullah Azhar was one of them. “Anything else?” he asked her.
“Bernard Fairclough. He’s got a set of keys to the flat of a woman called Vivienne Tully. I’ve been there but so far no luck in seeing her. Picture of her that I tracked down makes her youngish, trendy clothes, good skin, good figure, edgy hairstyle. Another woman’s basic nightmare, essentially. All I know about her is that she once worked for him, she now works in London, and she likes ballet because that’s where she was yesterday. Either at a dance class or watching a performance. Her housekeeper didn’t speak English, so we did it with sign language. Lots of moving body parts if you know what I mean. Bloody hell, sir, have you noticed how few people actually
“Fairclough has a key to her flat?”
“Sounds cosy, eh? I’ve another trip to Kensington on the agenda. I reckon she bears a little arm twisting. I haven’t got onto the Cresswell will yet — ”
No matter, Lynley told her. She could verify details, but they had that information in hand. They’d learned there was insurance that the ex-wife had come into. And according to the partner, the farm had been left to him in Cresswell’s will. What she
