Believing the Lie il-17 Read online

  From this it seemed to Zed that Ian Cresswell’s sin had been purchasing Bryan Beck farm before George Cowley had been able to do so. Which meant — and this was useful, wasn’t it? — that Cowley had a motive to murder Cresswell. And that meant it was only a matter of time before New Scotland Yard came calling, which also meant that all he himself had to do was wait for their arrival. Confirm they’re here, use their presence to sex up his story, and get the hell back to London, where he could resume his life. Yes. Things were looking up.

  He said, “You’re talking about Mr. Cresswell’s purchase of the farm, I take it.”

  Cowley looked at him as if he were mad. “Purchase of the farm?”

  “You said ‘the wages of sin.’ I reckoned purchasing the farm was his sin.”

  “Bah! That was bloody wrong, that was. That put us where it did, me and Dan. But no one pays wages ’cause of property.” He loaded the final two words with derision, and he seemed to feel Zed was dim enough to require further elucidation. “Indecent, it was, him and that Arab lodger of his. And what’re those kids of his still doing there? That’s the question I ask, but no one’s answering, are they. Well, that’s indecent on top of indecent. And I tell you this: More wages are coming, an’ they’re bound to be big. You can count on that.”

  SWARTHMOOR

  CUMBRIA

  Tim Cresswell hated Margaret Fox School, but he put up with it because it spared him from having to go to a comprehensive where he might be expected to make friends, which was pretty much the last thing he wanted. He’d had friends once, but he’d learned that having them meant having to look at the smirks on their faces when they twigged what was going on in his life. Having friends meant having to overhear their murmurs of speculation as he passed them in one corridor or another on his way to lessons. The fact was, he didn’t care if he ever had a friend again, since those he’d once possessed had ceased being friends just about the time his dad had walked out on the family to arse-fuck a limp-wristed Iranian. Word had gone round about that soon enough, for Tim’s mum didn’t possess the sense to keep her outrage to herself, especially if she was certain about being the aggrieved party in a situation. And she was definitely that, wasn’t she. Turned out his dad had been fucking other men for years, exposing her to disease, disaster, disgust, disrespect, all the other disses there were, because one thing Niamh was especially good at was listing those disses to whoever wanted to hear them. She made sure Tim knew them from the word go, and in response he broke a few things, he burned a few things, he hurt a few people, he dismembered a kitten — never mind that the poor thing was already dead — and he ended up in Margaret Fox School just outside of Ulverston. Here Tim intended to stay, but to manage that he had to do just enough to be cooperative and not enough to be given the boot back into the system where the normies were educated.

  Most kids boarded at Margaret Fox School because they were too disturbed to live with their families. But there were day pupils as well, and Niamh Cresswell had seen to it that Tim was placed among them. All the better to force his father or Kaveh Mehran to cart him from Bryanbarrow all the way to Ulverston and back each day, a drive that took forever, ate up their time together, and punished them for putting a real bazooble of a crater in Niamh’s pride. Tim went along with it all because it got him far away from everyone who knew the story of what had happened to his parents’ marriage, which was just about everyone in Grange-over-Sands.

  But one of the things he hated about Margaret Fox School was the rule about the stupid Societies, always spelled with a capital, just like that. In addition to regular lessons, one was required to belong to three Societies: one each of academic, creative, and physical. The philosophy was that the Societies supposedly eased the whacked-out pupils of Margaret Fox School into a semblance of normal behaviour, sort of tricking them into acting as if they could function beyond the high walls that enclosed the grounds of the institution. Tim despised the Societies because they forced him into contact with the other pupils, but he’d managed to find three that kept that contact to a bare minimum. He’d signed on for the Ramblers, the Sketchers, and the Philatelists, since each of these were activities he could do alone even if other people were present. They didn’t require communication of any kind, other than listening to the staff member in charge of each Society drone on about the subject of supposed interest.

  Which was exactly what was going on just now at the regular meeting of the Ramblers. Quincy Arnold was doing his usual blah blah blah at the end of their afternoon walk. This had been a nothing stagger on the public footpath from Mansriggs over to Mansriggs Hall and from there up to Town Bank Road, where the school van picked them up, but the way QA was banging on about it, you’d think they’d just scaled the Matterhorn. The big deal had been the view of Ben Cragg — wahoo to another bloody tooth of limestone, Tim thought — but the ultimate goal was evidently what all this afternoon wandering was leading up to: what QA called the Big Adventure on Scout Scar. Said adventure would not happen till spring, and in the meantime all the rambling they were doing was to prepare them for the enchantment to come. Blah blah blah whatever. QA could blather like no one else, and he could be positively orgasmic about limestone escarpments and — pound on, my heart — glacial erratics. Yew trees blasted by the winds, dangerous screes where sure footing was crucial, larks and buzzards and cuckoos on the wing, daffodils tucked into hazel coppices. It sounded about as interesting to Tim as learning Chinese writing from a blind man, but he knew the value of looking at QA when the bloke was doing his blah blahs, although he kept his expression hovering between indifference and loathing, always on guard against being deemed cured.

  He had to have a piss, though. He knew he should have done a side-of-the-road job before they’d embarked on the ride back to the school at the end of the walk. But he hated pulling his prick out in public because one never knew how it would be taken among this lot with whom he had to walk. So he squeezed back the urges and now he suffered through QA’s summary of their afternoon’s timeless adventure, and when they were at last released onto the school grounds with the gates shut behind them, he made a dash for the nearest loo and let it flow. He made sure some of it went on the floor and some onto his trouser leg. When he was finished, he examined himself in the mirror and picked at a spot on his forehead. He achieved a bit of blood — always nice — and left to fetch his mobile phone.

  They weren’t allowed, of course. But the day pupils could have them as long as they got checked in every morning and ticked off on a list that was kept in the headmaster’s office. To rescue them every afternoon, one had to trek to the headmaster, receive a permission slip, and then trek back to the tuck shop where in a locked bank of pigeon-holes behind the till the mobiles were deposited for safekeeping.

  On this day, Tim was the last to retrieve his. He checked for messages as soon as the mobile was in his hand. There was nothing, and he felt his fingers start to tingle. He wanted to throw the mobile at someone, but instead he walked to the tuck shop door and from there to the central path that would take him to the drop-off area where he would wait with the other day pupils to score their lifts for the trip home from school. They could only ride with approved drivers, of course. Tim had three but with his dad dead he was down to two, which meant one, really, because there was no way in hell that Niamh was going to drive to fetch him, so that left Kaveh. And so far Kaveh had done the job because he had no choice and he’d not yet worked how to get out of it.

  Tim didn’t care. It was nothing to him who came to fetch him. What was important now was the deal he’d struck with Toy4You and the fact that he’d had no response to his latest message, sent this morning on his way into school. He got into contact once again:

  Where r u

  A moment and then: Here

  y didnt u anser

  when

  u no what i mean we agreed

  no way

  u promised me

  no can do

  y y y

&
nbsp; not on mobl

  u promised u said

  lets talk

  Tim looked up from the screen. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted action. He’d kept his part of the bargain and it was only fair that Toy4You do exactly the same. It always came down to this in the end, he thought bitterly. People played each other like a deck of cards and he was bloody sick and tired of it all. But what choice did he have? He could start all over, but he didn’t want that. It had taken long enough to find Toy4You.

  He punched in his answer. Where

  u no

  2day

  2night

  ok

  He flipped the phone closed and shoved it into his pocket. A fat girl whose name he didn’t know was watching him from a bench. His eyes met hers and she lifted her school skirt. She spread her legs. She had on no knickers. He wanted to spew all over the path but instead he went for a distant bench and sat down to wait for his ride back to Bryanbarrow. He considered the ways he could torment Kaveh on the long trip home, and he congratulated himself for the piss on his trousers. That would get up old Kaveh’s nose in more ways than one, he thought with an inward chuckle.

  ARNSIDE

  CUMBRIA

  Alatea Fairclough was mesmerised by Morecambe Bay. She’d never seen anything like it. The ebb tide emptied its vast expanse, leaving behind one hundred twenty square miles of varying kinds of sands. But these were sands so dangerous that only the unwary, the lifelong fishermen of the area, or the Queen’s Guide went out on them. If anyone else wandered into the empty bay — and people did all the time — they ran the risk of ending their days on earth by stumbling onto an area of quicksand that was, to the casual observer, indistinguishable from solid ground. Or far out in the bay they stood too long on rises of sand that seemed safe, like islands, only to find that the flood tide cut them off and then covered them in its return. And when, instead of a mere flood tide, a tidal bore brought the water swirling back into the bay at the speed of a galloping horse, things happened with a dizzying quickness as a vast surge of water covered everything in its path. And that was the thing about the tidal bore that Alatea found so hypnotic. It seemed to come from nowhere, and the speed of the torrent suggested a power driven by a force beyond any man’s control. The thought of this generally filled her with peace, however: that there was a force beyond man’s control and that she could turn to that force for solace when she was most in need.

  She loved the fact that this house — a gift from her husband’s father to celebrate the occasion of her marriage to his only son — sat just above the Kent Channel, which was itself part of greater Morecambe Bay. From the edge of the property where a stone wall marked a public footpath along the channel and ultimately up to the wild, open hilltop of Arnside Knot, she could stand with a voluminous shawl wrapped round her and watch the renewing return of the salt water. She could pretend she knew something about how to read the eddies that it created.

  She was there now, on this November afternoon. The sunlight was dimming as it would do earlier and earlier until late December, and the temperature was fast falling as well. A cloud bank over the rise of Humphrey Head Point across the channel to the west suggested a coming night of rain, but she wasn’t bothered by this. Unlike so many people in this adopted country of hers, she always welcomed rain with its promise of both growth and renewal. Still, she found herself uneasy. Her husband was the cause.

  She hadn’t heard from him. She’d phoned his mobile during the afternoon, once she’d learned from ringing Fairclough Industries that Nicholas hadn’t gone into work that day. She’d made that phone call round eleven, when he still should have been there prior to leaving for the Middlebarrow Pele Project, where he now spent half of his workdays. She’d first assumed that he’d gone to the project earlier than usual and she’d then rung his mobile. But all she heard was that disembodied voice telling her that she had to leave a message. This she had done, three times now. The fact that Nicholas had not replied filled her with concern.

  His cousin’s sudden death loomed large. Alatea didn’t want to think about it. Not only did death in general shake her, but this death in particular and the circumstances of this death filled her with a dread that took every ounce of her skill at subterfuge to hide. Ian’s drowning had hit the family hard. Particularly had it devastated Nicholas’s father. So staggered had Bernard been at first that Alatea had wondered at the nature of his exact relationship with Ian. But it was only when Bernard had begun to distance himself from Nicholas that Alatea had sensed an undercurrent beneath the older man’s grief.

  Nicholas was not involved in Ian’s drowning. Alatea knew this for a hundred and one reasons but most of all she knew it because she knew her husband. He seemed weak to people because of his past, but he was no such thing. He was the rock and substance of her life, and he would become the same to many others if he only had the chance. This was what the Middlebarrow Pele Project was giving to him.

  But he hadn’t been at the project today any more than he had been at Fairclough Industries. Had he been, he would have had his mobile switched on. He knew it was important to her to have contact with him periodically and he was always willing to allow her the access. He’d said at first, “Do you not trust me, Allie? I mean, if I’m going to use again, I’m going to use again. You can’t stop me with a phone call, you know,” but that hadn’t been the reason she wanted close contact with him, and through partial truths she’d ultimately been able to persuade him that her need had nothing to do with the need he himself had finally managed to conquer.

  Whenever he was gone from her, she worried that something might happen to him, entirely unrelated to his addictions. A car crash, a stone falling from the old pele tower, a freak accident… exactly like what had happened to Ian. Except she wouldn’t think about Ian, she told herself. There were too many other things to consider.

  She turned from the sight of the floodwaters swirling into the Kent Channel. Up the slope of the lawn in front of her, Arnside House spread out. She allowed herself a momentary feeling of pleasure as she looked upon the building. The house gave her a focus for her energies, and she wondered if Bernard had known that when he presented it to them upon their return to England.

  “It was used for convalescing soldiers after the war,” he’d said as he’d walked her through it, “and then it spent some thirty years as a girls’ school. After that there were two sets of owners who did a few things to restore it to what it once was. But then I’m afraid it stood vacant for a time. Still, there’s something about it that’s very special, my dear. I think it deserves a family running about inside it. And more, it deserves someone like you to put your touch upon it.” He’d kept his hand on the small of her back as he’d walked her through the place. He had a way of looking at her that was a little disturbing. His gaze would go from Nicholas to her and back to Nicholas as if he couldn’t understand what they had between them: either where it had come from in the first place or how it was going to endure.

  But that didn’t matter to Alatea. What mattered was Bernard’s acceptance of her, and she had that. She could tell he thought she possessed a form of magical power that was protecting Nicholas, a kind of sorcery perhaps. She could also tell from Bernard’s assessing looks, taking her in from top to toes, that he reckoned exactly what the sorcery was.

  She went up the slope of lawn towards the house. A set of stone steps led up to a terrace, and she used these, careful of the damp moss that grew upon them. Across the lawn she made for a doorway tucked into the side of the building. There she let herself into the drawing room, whose pale yellow walls suggested sunlight even on the most dismal of days.

  This was the first room she and Nicholas had restored. It overlooked the terrace, the lawn, and the channel. From its bay windows one could even see across the water to Grange-over-Sands forming a fan of lights up the hillside at night. In the evenings she and Nicholas sat here, a fire glowing in the fireplace as the shadows stretched across the floor.


  It was early for the fire, but she lit it anyway, for comfort as well as for warmth. Then she checked the phone for a message from her husband and when there was no light blinking to tell her he’d phoned, she decided to ring him another time. She pressed the numbers slowly, the way one does when hoping a previously engaged line will now be unengaged. Before she finished, though, she finally heard him, his footsteps approaching along the uncarpeted corridor.

  She hadn’t heard either his car or his entering the house. But she knew it was Nicholas just as she knew from the lightness of his step what mood he was in. She slipped her mobile into her pocket. Nicholas called her name and she said, “In here, darling,” and in a moment he was with her again.

  He paused at the doorway. He looked cherubic in the diffused light, like an overlarge putto from a Renaissance painting, round of face with bright curls spilling over his forehead. He said, “You’re an impossibly gorgeous woman. Am I in the right house?” and he crossed the room to her. She was wearing flat-soled shoes for once, so they were of a height: both of them nearly six feet tall. This made it easier for him to kiss her, and he did so, enthusiastically. His hands went down her back to cup her bum and he pulled her close to him. He finally said with an engaging laugh, “I’m loaded, Allie, like you wouldn’t believe,” and for a terrible moment she thought he’d got himself high. But then he removed the pins and the slides that kept her hair in order and he loosened it to fall round her face and her shoulders. After that he began to unbutton her blouse and talk about “swimmers and there’re millions of them, and they’re perfect in form and let me tell you they’re ready to be perfect in function as well. Where are we in your cycle just now?” and his mouth went to her neck as his hands deftly unfastened her bra.

  Her body responded even as her mind assessed. She sank to the carpet before the fire, pulled Nicholas down with her, and undressed him. He was not a man who coupled in silence. Rather, it was “Christ, the feel of you,” and “my God, Allie,” and “oh yes, just like that” and because of this, she knew every level of his rising excitement.