Believing the Lie

that the jump doesn’t actually match necessary expenses, if you know what I mean. Of course there was the surgery, but that would have been one payment, wouldn’t it? And considering she lives right here on the property, what has she got in the way of actual expenses? I know she does tend to spend a bit on her Internet shopping, but really, how much can that cost? Well, of course, I suppose it could cost a fortune, couldn’t it, if one became addicted to shopping on the Internet or something, but…”

Freddie babbled on a bit. Manette knew he could feel the tension between her parents and she knew his babbling was a reaction to this. He had to have known that they’d be walking into a minefield, talking to her parents together about the money going out to Vivienne and to Mignon, but in his Freddie innocence, he hadn’t considered exactly how many mines lay within that field, waiting to explode.

There was silence at the end of Freddie’s remarks. Valerie had her gaze concreted on Bernard. Bernard ran his hand back over his head. He opted for an attempt at redirection, saying to Manette, “I wouldn’t have thought this was possible for you.”

“What?” Manette said.

“You know very well. I thought our relationship was rather different to what it apparently is. My error, I see.”

To which Freddie said quickly, “I say, Bernard, this has nothing to do with Manette,” and with such firmness that Manette looked at her former husband. Freddie put his hand on hers and squeezed it, going on to say, “Her concerns are completely legitimate, in the circumstances. And she only knows about the payments because I told her. This is a family business — ”

“And you’re not family,” Bernard snapped. “You were once, but you took yourself out of that position and if you think — ”

“Do not,” Manette cut in, “talk to Freddie that way. You’re lucky to have him. We’re all lucky to have him. He appears to be the only honest person working in a position of responsibility at the company.”

“Does that include you, then?” her father asked.

“I’m not sure that matters,” Manette told him, “because it certainly includes you.” Perhaps, she thought, she would have said nothing at the end of the day, not wishing to be the one to devastate her own mother. But her father’s remarks to Freddie took things too far in Manette’s eyes, although she didn’t pause to consider why this was the case since the only thing her father had actually said was the absolute truth: Freddie wasn’t a member of the family any longer. She’d seen to that. She said to her mother, “I think Dad has something he’d like to say, something he’d like to explain about himself and Vivienne Tully.”

“I’m taking that point very well, Manette,” Valerie said. And to Freddie, “Stop the payments to Vivienne at once. Contact her through the bank to which the payments have gone. Tell them to inform her it’s my decision.”

Bernard said, “That’s not — ”

“I don’t care what it is and it isn’t,” Valerie said. “Nor should you. Or have you a reason to be paying her that you’d care to explain?”

Bernard’s expression was agonised. Had things been different, Manette thought she might actually have felt sorry for him. She gave passing consideration to what shits men were, and she waited for her father to attempt to lie his way out of this situation as he was surely going to do, in the hope that she would say nothing about their conversation and what he’d admitted to her about his affair with Vivienne Tully.

But Bernard Fairclough had always been the luckiest bastard on the planet, and that proved to be the case in that moment. For the door burst open as they sat there waiting for Bernard to answer, and the wind swept in. As Manette turned, thinking she and Freddie had left it off the latch, her brother Nicholas strode into the room.

LANCASTER LANCASHIRE

Deborah knew the only course open to her was to speak to the woman with Alatea Fairclough. If indeed she was correct in her surmise that what was going on with Alatea had to do with conceiving a child, then she seriously doubted that Alatea was going to be willing to talk about it, especially to someone who’d already been found out as misrepresenting her true purpose in Cumbria. Nor was she likely to unburden herself to a tabloid journalist. Thus, the other woman seemed like the only possibility to get to the bottom of Alatea’s odd behaviour and to learn whether it had anything to do with the death of Ian Cresswell.

She rang Zed on his mobile. He barked, “You took your bloody sweet time. Where the hell are you? What’s going on? We had a deal and if you’re reneging — ”

She said, “They’ve gone into a science building.”

“Well, that’s got us nowhere in a basket. Could be she’s just taking a course. Mature student, right? The other could be doing the same thing.”

“I must talk to her, Zed.”

“I thought you already went that route with no result.”

“I don’t mean Alatea. Obviously, she’s not going to talk to me any more than she’s going to talk to you. I mean the other, the woman she fetched from the disabled soldiers’ home. She’s the one I need to talk to.”

“Why?”

And here was where things got tricky. “They seem to have a relationship of some sort. They were talking quite companionably all the way from the car park to the science building. They seemed like friends, and friendships mean confidences shared.”

“They also mean keeping those confidences to oneself.”

“Of course. But I find that, outside of London, the Met have a certain cachet with people. Say ‘Scotland Yard CID’ and show your identification and suddenly what was sworn to secrecy gets offered for police consumption.”

“Same thing with a reporter’s work,” Zed noted.

Was he joking? Deborah wondered. Probably not. She said, “I take your point, of course.”

“Then — ”

“I think I might be a less threatening presence.”

“How so?”

“It seems obvious. First, it would be two against one: two complete strangers confronting a woman about her friendship with another woman. Second… Well, there’s your size, Zed, which you have to admit could be rather threatening.”

“I’m a lamb. She’ll see that.”

“Perhaps she would. But then there’s the entire matter of who we are. She’ll want to see our identification. Picture the result. I show her mine, you show her yours, and what’s she going to think — let alone do — when she sees the Met in bed with The Source? It wouldn’t work. The only route we have is for me to talk to this woman privately, see where that takes us, and share the information with you.”

“And how’m I s’posed to know you’ll do that? I see this as a bloody good route to a double cross.”

“With your ability to break the story of Scotland Yard’s presence up here on the front page of The Source at any moment? Believe me, Zed, I’m hardly going to play games with you.”

He was silent. Deborah had retreated a safe distance from the George Childress Centre. She had it in sight, but she didn’t want to risk being seen by Alatea Fairclough should she and the other woman emerge. The way she reckoned, the safest route to take at this point was to return to the disabled soldiers’ home and to wait there for Alatea and her companion to turn up. It could take hours, obviously, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice but a long wait in Zed’s car.

Which was what she told him. She also said that if he had any other ideas she would be happy to entertain them.

Luckily, he hadn’t. He wasn’t stupid. He did see that a direct confrontation of the two women together, right on the campus of the University of Lancaster, bore the distinct possibility of getting them nowhere. Superficially at