Believing the Lie

That he would actually dismiss her like this … Deborah had never wanted to strike her husband, but she wanted it badly in that moment. Temper, Deb, temper, her father would have said, but never had her father been taken so lightly by this man who stood implacably before her. God, he was insufferable, she thought. He was pompous. He was so bloody self-righteous. He was always so sure, so certain, so 100 percent full of his sodding scientific knowledge, but some things had nothing to do with science, some things had to do with the heart, some things weren’t about forensics, microscopes, bloodstains, computer analyses, graphs, charts, amazing machinery that would take a single thread and connect it to a manufacturer, a skein of wool, the sheep it had come from, and the farm on the Hebrides where that sheep had been born …She wanted to scream. She wanted to scratch out his eyes. She wanted-

“She does have a point, Simon,” Tommy said.

Simon looked at him and his expression asked his old friend if he’d entirely lost his mind.

Tommy said, “I don’t doubt there was bad blood between Nicholas and his cousin. Something’s not right with Bernard as well.”

“Granted,” Simon said, “but a scenario in which Ian’s former wife…” He waved off the entire idea.

Tommy then said, “But it’s too dangerous, Deb, if what you’re saying is true.”

“But — ”

“You’ve done good work up here, but Simon’s right about going back to London. I’ll take it from here. I can’t let you put yourself in harm’s way. You know that.”

He meant more than one thing. All of them knew it. She shared a history with Tommy and even if she hadn’t done, he would never allow her to come close to a danger that could take her from Simon as Tommy’s own wife had been taken from him.

She said numbly, “There’s no danger here. You know that, Tommy.”

“If murder’s involved, there’s always danger.”

He’d said all he would say on the topic. He left them, then, and left her with Simon there in the car park.

Simon had said to her, “I’m sorry, Deborah. I know that you want to help.”

She’d said bitterly, “Oh you know that, do you? Let’s not pretend this isn’t about punishing me.”

“For what?” He sounded so bloody surprised.

“For saying no to David. For not solving our problem with one little word: yes. That’s what you wanted, an instant solution. Without once considering how it would feel to me with an entire second family hovering out there, watching my every move, evaluating what sort of mummy I’d be…” She was close to tears. This infuriated her.

Simon said, “This has nothing to do with your phoning David. If you’ve made up your mind, I accept it. What else can I do? I might have other wishes, but — ”

“And that’s what counts. That’s what always counts. Your wishes. Not mine. Because should my wishes be granted in any matter, the power shifts, doesn’t it, and you don’t want that.”

He reached towards her, but she backed away. She said, “Just go about your business. We’ve said enough at this point.”

He waited for a moment. He was watching her, but she couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at his eyes and see the pain and know how far back into his past it reached.

He finally said, “We’ll talk later,” and he went to his car. Another moment and he’d driven away, out of the car park and about his business. Whatever it was. It didn’t matter to Deborah.

She left the car park herself. She went towards the front door of the inn. She’d got just inside when she heard someone say, “Hang on. You and I need to talk,” and she turned to see that, of all people, the red-headed giant was coming in the entrance. Before she had a chance to say anything, he continued. “Your cover’s been blown. It can be on the front page of The Source tomorrow or you and I can strike a deal.”

“What sort of deal?” Deborah asked him.

“The kind that gets us both what we want.”

GREAT URSWICK CUMBRIA

Lynley knew that Simon was right about Deborah: She needed to stay clear of things from this point forward. They didn’t know exactly what they were dealing with and anything that might put her into danger was unacceptable on so many levels that most of them didn’t bear talking about.

He’d been wrong to bring them into this. It had seemed a simple enough job that he could sort through with their help in a day or so. That wasn’t turning out to be the case, and he needed to finish things before Deborah did something that he, she, and Simon would regret.

When he left them in Milnthorpe, he headed north, then east. Then he took the road that coursed down the spatulate landmass at whose tip sat Barrow-in-Furness. Barrow wasn’t his destination, however. He wanted to speak to Manette Fairclough privately, and that meant a trip to Great Urswick.

The route he followed took him through the hilly Victorian sea town of Grange-over-Sands, along the estuary where wintering birds formed a living landscape across the mudflats, establishing hierarchies in the search for food. It was abundant here, replenished daily by the tides from Morecambe Bay.

After Grange-over-Sands, the road opened to grey water, deceptive in its calm, along one side of the car and pastures on the other side, broken by the occasional line of cottages where seaside holiday makers came in better weather. This was far south in Cumbria, not the land of the lakes so treasured by John Ruskin and William Wordsworth and his daffodils. Here most people got down to the serious hand-to-mouth of daily living, which comprised generations of fishermen out on the shifting sands of the bay, first with horses and carts and now with tractors and always within inches of losing their lives to the quicksand if they made a wrong decision. And then there was no saving them if the tide came in. There was only waiting for their bodies to turn up. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they did not.

At Bardsea, he turned inland. Great Urswick was landlocked, one of those villages that seemed to exist merely because it was at a crossroads and contained a pub. To get to it, one traveled through a countryside completely unlike the dramatic fells, slate-studded screes, and sudden eruptions of limestone of the upper lakes. This part of Cumbria looked more like the Broads. One climbed briefly through a village and then out onto a landscape flat and windswept, suitable for grazing.

Buildings in Great Urswick didn’t look like part of Cumbria, either. They were prettily painted, but they were not done up in the vernacular of the Lakes. No neatly stacked slate fronted them for a consistency of appearance. Here, they were roughcast. Some even were clad in wood, a strange building material for this part of the world.

Lynley found Manette’s home alongside a large pond, which appeared to be the centrepiece of the village. Swans floated on it, and it was thick with reeds here and there to protect them, their nests and their young. There were two cars parked in front of the house, so he reckoned he could kill two birds by speaking to both Manette and her former husband, with whom, Bernard Fairclough had revealed, his daughter still lived. He went to the door.

A man answered. This, Lynley reckoned, would be Freddie McGhie. He was a decent-looking bloke, neat as a pin, dark hair, dark eyes. Helen would have declared how squeaky clean he is, darling, but she would have meant it in the best possible sense because everything about him was perfectly groomed. He wasn’t dressed for work, but he still managed to look like someone who’d stepped out of an advertisement for Country Life.

Lynley introduced himself. McGhie said, “Ah yes. Bernard’s guest from London. Manette said she’d met you.” He sounded affable, but there was a sense of questioning in his tone. There was, after all, no reason that Bernard Fairclough’s guest from London would come a-wandering into Great Urswick and knock on Freddie McGhie’s front door.

Lynley said he was hoping to speak to Manette if she was at home.

McGhie glanced towards the street as if for answer to a question he didn’t ask. Then he said as if