Believing the Lie

further she could dig herself.

“Guv, I don’t know,” she said, although being without Lynley to bonk was fairly high on her list. “I didn’t mean anything by that, anyway. Just something to say.”

“Yes? Well, don’t play round with ‘just something to say,’ all right? Finish what you’re doing here, then get out of this building. I’ll see you here tomorrow morning and if I do not, you’ll be a traffic warden in Uzbekistan by tomorrow afternoon. Is that clear?”

“Don’t know how it could be clearer,” Barbara said.

“And you,” Isabelle said to Winston, “are coming with me.”

“No sign of knickers,” was what Nkata said in response, although he said it quickly and he said it to Barbara, adding, “Check out Raul Montenegro,” before he left her.

Barbara waited till the superintendent and Nkata had left the Met library. She cursed her bad luck when it came to Ardery. She was going to have to start walking the perfectly straight and the excruciatingly narrow with the superintendent. Failing that, she had little doubt that Isabelle would be only too happy to drop-kick her bum into another time zone.

She replaced Winston at the computer terminal. She gazed at the screen. She read what was there — damn if it wasn’t in bloody Spanish again — but she found the name Winston had mentioned before being carted off. Raul Montenegro popped out from a jumble of other words. Okay, Barbara thought, let’s follow that lead.

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Throughout the years, Manette had seen her younger brother in many different states, from stone-cold sober to barely conscious. She’d seen him regretful. She’d seen him earnest. She’d seen him manipulative, mournful, agitated, anxious, pleasantly high, and unpleasantly paranoid. But she’d never seen him as angry as he was when he burst through the door to Ireleth Hall, letting it crash back behind him.

As entrances went, it was damn effective. It left all of them gaping. Most conveniently, it left Bernard Fairclough in the welcome state of not having to answer any further questions about Vivienne Tully and the payments made into her bank account.

“Nicky, what’s wrong?” Valerie demanded.

“Are you all right?” Bernard said. “Where’s Alatea? Has something happened to her?”

“Nothing’s happened to Alatea.” Nicholas’s voice was brusque. “Let’s talk about Scotland Yard, all right? You won’t mind that, will you? Will you, Manette? What about you, Freddie? I s’pose I can assume the whole collection of you are in on this.”

Manette looked at her father. She wasn’t about to take this on. She closed her fingers over Freddie’s hand to indicate to him he wasn’t to say anything either. She felt him look at her, but he said nothing. Instead, his hand turned and he wove his fingers with hers.

Bernard said, “What are you talking about, Nick? Sit down. You look awful. Are you not sleeping?”

“Don’t start the bloody false concern with me,” he cried. “There’s someone up here from London to investigate me, and if you’re about to suggest you know nothing about it, that’s just not on.” He strode to the fireplace. He towered over his father. “What the hell did you think? That I wouldn’t notice? That I wouldn’t work it out? That I’m so bloody addle-brained from drugs and done up with booze that I wouldn’t wonder why… Christ in heaven, I ought to kill you and have done with it. It’d be easy enough, wouldn’t it? I’ve apparently got such talents in the area of homicide that one more dead body in the boathouse would hardly count.”

“Nicholas!” Valerie rose from the sofa. “Stop this at once.”

“Oh, you’re part of it, are you?” He sneered at her. “I would’ve thought you — ”

“Not part of it. All of it,” Valerie said. “Are you listening to me? I’m all of it.”

That brought him to silence. Manette felt the shock of her mother’s words, like a ball of ice forming within her stomach. But confusion replaced shock soon enough. It was easier to be confused by the declaration than it was to follow it to its logical conclusion.

“Valerie,” her husband said quietly. “This isn’t necessary.”

“I’m afraid it is at this point.” She said to Nicholas, “The police are here because of me. Your father fetched them at my request. It was not his idea. Do you understand? He went to London. He did the legwork because he knows someone at New Scotland Yard. But it was no more his idea than” — she gestured to Manette and Freddie, still holding each other’s hand on the sofa — “than it was your sister’s. Or Mignon’s. Or anyone else’s. I wanted this, Nicholas. No one else.”

Nicholas looked like a man who’d taken a mortal blow. He finally said, “My own bloody mother. Did you actually think… You thought…?”

“It’s not quite what you’re concluding,” she said.

“That I might… that I could have…” Then he hit his fist on the mantelpiece. Manette winced at the force he used. “I’d kill Ian? That’s what you think? That I was capable of murder? What’s the matter with you?”

“Nick. Enough.” Bernard had spoken. “If nothing else, you’ve a history of — ”

“I goddamn know my history. I lived it. You bloody well don’t need to recite it for me. But unless I spent a decade or two of my history in some sort of fugue, I don’t recall ever lifting a hand against anyone.”

“No one,” Valerie said, “lifted a hand against Ian, either. That’s not how he died.”

“Then what the hell — ”

“Valerie,” Bernard said. “This will make things worse.”

“They can’t get worse,” Nicholas said. “Unless there’s another reason Mother wanted Scotland Yard up here. Want me to think that, do you? Are they investigating Manette? What about Mignon? What about Fred? Or has he just continued running to do Manette’s bidding as usual?”

Manette said, “Don’t you dare take this out on Freddie. And yes the detective has been to see us. And the first we knew there was a detective was when we had a Scotland Yard ID shoved under our noses.”

“Well at least you got that much,” he said. And to his mother, “Have you any idea — any bloody idea at all — ”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve hurt you, and I’m sorry. But there are things beyond your hurt — ”

“Like what?” he shouted. And then the pieces seemed to fall into place. “Is this about the family business? Who gets what. Who runs what. Who has the power. And when and how.”

“Nicholas, please. There are other things — ”

“D’you think I care about any of that? D’you think I want it? D’you think that’s why I’m here, back at home? I don’t give a toss who runs the business. Give it to Manette. Give it to Freddie. Give it to someone off the street. Do you have any idea what this has done to Alatea, having someone actually come into our home, someone prowling round pretending to be… This… this investigator of yours has lied to us from the first, Mother. Do you understand that? She’s come to the house, she’s told a stupid tale about why she’s here, she’s frightened Allie, who now, apparently, thinks… Oh God, I don’t know what she thinks, but she’s in a state and if she thinks I’m using… Don’t you see what you’ve done? My own wife… If she walks out on me…”

“She?” Bernard spoke. “‘She’s come to the house’? Nick, what are you talking about?”

“What the hell do you think I’m talking about? Your sodding Scotland Yard investigator.”

“It’s a man,” Valerie said. “Nicholas, it’s a man, not a woman. It’s a man …We know nothing about — ”

“Oh too right, Mum.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Manette told her brother.

“He has someone with him,” Bernard added. “But it’s another man, Nick. A forensic specialist. Another man. If a woman’s been to Arnside House to talk to you and Alatea, it’s to do with something else entirely.”

Nicholas blanched then. He was making connections rapidly. Manette could see that much as the thoughts passed quickly across his face.

Unaccountably he said, “Montenegro.”

“Who?” Bernard asked.