Believing the Lie Page 5

  He turned from the sight of the hall, the tower, and the topiary garden, country home of his uncle, a man whom he loved but did not understand. “I accept you so you must accept me,” Bernard Fairclough had said to him, “because we all live lives of accommodation.”

  Ian wondered about this, however, just as he wondered about debts to be paid and to whom such payment needed to go. It was one other thing on his mind this evening. It was one other thing that kept him out on the water.

  The lake was not a lonely place. Because of its size— the largest body of water in Cumbria— a few small towns and villages sprang up intermittently on its shores, and in scattered areas within the rest of the undeveloped landscape the occasional slate-fronted house stood, either a country home long ago converted into a high-priced hotel or a private domicile that usually spoke of a well-heeled individual with the funds to live in more than one place because as autumn gave way to winter, the lakes became unwelcoming to those who weren’t prepared for heavy wind and snow.

  Thus, Ian felt no sense of isolation out on the water. True, he was the only one rowing at the moment, but there was comfort along the shore where boats used by members of a local club and boats, kayaks, canoes, and sculls belonging to inhabitants of the lakeside houses had not yet been removed from the water for the coming winter.

  He couldn’t have said how long he rowed. It couldn’t have been long, he thought, as it didn’t seem as if he’d gained much distance. He’d not yet come upon the Beech Hill Hotel, from which he’d be able to see clearly the hulk of Belle Isle lying low in the water. That usually marked the halfway point of his workout, but he realised he must have been more exhausted than he thought from his discussion with Kaveh because he found his muscles were growing weary, telling him it was time for turning back.

  He sat for a moment, still, unmoving. He could hear traffic noises from the A592, which ran along the east shore of the lake. But aside from the rain hitting the water and against his windcheater, that was it. Birds were abed, and everyone of sense was indoors.

  Ian breathed deeply. A shiver shuddered through him, someone walking on his grave, he thought wryly. Either that or the weather, which was far more likely. Even in the rain, he caught the scent of wood smoke from a chimney nearby and in his mind he pictured a warming blaze, himself in front of it with his legs stretched out, and next to him Kaveh. In a similar chair, holding in his hand a similar glass of wine, taking part in a desultory end-of-day conversation of the kind millions of couples had in millions of homes all over the planet.

  That, he told himself, was what he wanted. That and the peace that came with it. It didn’t seem so much to ask: just a life moving forward as other lives did.

  Some minutes passed in this way: with limited sounds, Ian at rest, the scull moving gently with the rhythm of the water. Had it not been raining, he might even have dozed. But as it was, he was becoming progressively wetter and it was time to head back to the boathouse.

  He reckoned he’d been on the water for more than an hour, and it was in complete darkness that he made his final approach to the shore. By this time, trees were mere shapes on the land: angular conifers as solid as standing stones, wispier birches line-drawn against the sky and among them maples with palmate leaves trembling as the rain beat upon them. A path among them led down to the boathouse, a fanciful structure when seen from the water, for even now despite the weather and the hour, the shape of it formed a mass of crenellation, slate, and limestone and its weatherside doorway rose in a gothic arch more suitable to a church than to a shelter for boats.

  The light had burned out above this doorway, Ian saw. It should have come on with the fall of darkness, illuminating the exterior of the boathouse even if it did little enough to shed light on the building’s insides. But where a yellow glow would have— at least in better weather— attracted moths, there was nothing at all. Along with the algae on the jetty steps, it was something else to be seen to.

  He aimed for the arched opening and glided within. The boathouse was nowhere near the main house, nor was it near the tower folly, so there was nothing— no hint of distant light— to break the gloom, and the darkness was absolute. There were three other craft stored there. A well-used fishing rowingboat, a speedboat, and a canoe of uncertain vintage and even more uncertain seaworthiness were tied up haphazardly along the front and the right side of the dock. It was necessary to work one’s way among them to get back to the far end where the scull had been tied, and Ian was able to do this by feel, although he caught his hand between the rowingboat and the scull and he swore as the fiberglass of one smashed his knuckles into the wood of the other.

  The same thing happened against the stone dock, and he felt the blood this time. He said, “Goddamn,” and pressed his knuckles against his side for a moment. The damn things hurt like the dickens and told him that whatever else he did, he needed to do it with care.

  There was a torch in his car, and he had enough sense of humour remaining to congratulate himself for having left it there where it would do him absolutely no bloody good. More carefully this time, he reached out for the dock, found it, and then sought the cleat to tie up the scull. At least, he thought, he could make a cleat hitch in light or in dark, in rain or in shine. He did so and released his feet from the stretchers. Then he shifted his weight and reached for the dock to heave himself up and out of the shell.

  As these things do, it happened when the balance of his weight was on a single stone of the dock and his body was momentarily arched out of the scull and over the water. The stone that should have taken his weight— and now apparently too long in place on the dock to do so—became dislodged. He fell forward, and the scull— tied only at its bow—shot backwards. Down he went into the frigid water.

  On his way, however, his head slammed into the slate from which the dock had long ago been fashioned. He was unconscious when he hit the water, and within a few minutes he was also dead.

  25 OCTOBER

  WANDSWORTH

  LONDON

  Their arrangement was the same as it had been from the first. She would communicate in some way, and he would go to her. Sometimes it was a quarter smile, just an upturn of her lips gone so quickly that anyone unaware of what it meant would not even have noticed. Sometimes it was the word tonight murmured as they passed in a corridor. At other times she said something openly if, perhaps, they met on the stairway or in the officers’ mess or if, perhaps, they saw each other in the underground car park arriving by chance at the same moment in the morning. But in any case, he waited until she gave the word. He didn’t like it this way, but there was no other. She would not under any circumstances come to him, and even had she been willing to do so, she was his superior officer so he was hers to command. It did not work the other way round.

  He’d tried it only once, early on in their arrangement. He’d thought it might mean something if she spent the night with him in Belgravia, as if their relationship had turned some sort of corner, although he wasn’t exactly certain that he wanted it to do so. She’d said firmly in that way she had of making things so pellucid there were no further avenues of discussion available to him, That will never happen, Thomas. And the fact she called him Thomas rather than the more intimate Tommy by which his every friend and colleague referred to him said more than the other, larger truth that he knew she would not say: The house in Eton Terrace was still redolent of his murdered wife, and eight months after her death on the front steps of the building, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do a single thing about that. He was insightful enough to realise that there was little likelihood of any woman’s sleeping in his bed while Helen’s clothes still hung in the wardrobe, while Helen’s scent bottles still stood on the dressing table where Helen’s hairbrush still held strands of Helen’s hair. Until Helen’s presence was eradicated from the house, he could not realistically hope to share it with anyone else, even for a night. So he was caught, and when Isabelle said that word— Tonight?— he went to her,
drawn by a force that was at once a physical need and a form of oblivion, however brief.

  He did as much on this evening. In the afternoon they’d had a meeting with the head of IPCC on the matter of a complaint registered that past summer by a solicitor on the behalf of her client: a paranoid schizophrenic who had run into traffic in a London street while being pursued by the police. The resulting internal injuries and fractured skull demanded monetary compensation, and the solicitor meant to have it. The police complaints commission was investigating the matter and this constituted meeting upon meeting with everyone involved explaining his or her take on the story, with CCTV footage viewed, with eyewitnesses interviewed, and with the London tabloids breathlessly eager to snatch up the story and run with it as soon as the IPCC made a determination as to guilt, innocence, malfeasance, accident, circumstances beyond anyone’s control, or whatever else they chose to conclude. The meeting had been tense. He was as tightly strung as Isabelle at its conclusion.

  She’d said to him as they walked through the corridors to return to their offices in Victoria Block, I’d like to have you tonight, Thomas, if you’ve the energy. Dinner and a shag. Very good steaks, very nice wine, very clean sheets. Not Egyptian cotton as I expect yours are, but fresh all the same.

  And then the smile and something in her eyes that he’d not yet been able to interpret, these three months after they’d first coupled in the soulless bedroom of her basement flat. Damn if he didn’t want her, he thought. It had to do with an act the nature of which allowed him to believe he’d mastered her when the truth was she had quickly mastered him.

  The arrangement was simple enough. She would go to the shops, and he could either go straight to the flat and let himself in with his key or go to his own home first on one pretext or another, killing time till making the drive to that dismal street at the halfway point between Wandsworth prison and a cemetery. He chose the latter. It allowed him the semblance of being his own man.

  To further this illusion, he took his time with his preparations: reading his mail, having a shower and a shave, returning a phone call from his mother on the matter of rainwater heads along the west side of the house in Cornwall. Should they be replaced or repaired, did he think? Winter’s coming, darling, and with the rains getting heavier… It was a pretext call on her part. She wanted to know how he was, but she didn’t like to ask directly. She knew very well that the rainwater heads had to be repaired. They could not possibly be replaced. It was a listed building, after all. It would probably be falling down round their ears before they’d receive permission to alter it. They chatted on of family matters. How was his brother doing? he asked, which was family code for Is he still coping without turning back to cocaine, heroin, or whatever other substance he might use to remove himself from reality? The answer was Perfectly well, darling. This was family code for I’m monitoring him, as always, and you’ve no cause to worry about it. How was his sister? meant had Judith yet given up the idea of permanent widowhood, to which the answer Terribly busy as always was code for She has no intention of risking another dreadful marriage, believe me. So went the conversation till all topics were exhausted and his mother said, I do so hope we’ll see you for Christmas, Tommy, and he assured her that she would.

  After that, with no other reason to hold him in Belgravia, he worked his way over to the river and south from there to Wands worth Bridge. He reached the house in which Isabelle lived just after half past seven. Parking was murder in the area, but he got lucky when a van pulled away from the kerb some thirty yards down the street.

  At Isabelle’s door, he fished out his key. He had it in the lock and was letting himself in when she opened the door from within and quickly stepped outside onto the flagstones of the area at the base of the stairs from the pavement above them. She shut the door behind her.

  She said, “We can’t tonight. Something’s come up. I would have rung your mobile but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

  He was nonplussed. Stupidly, he looked over her shoulder at the panels of the closed door. He said, “Who’s here?” because that much was obvious enough. Another man, he reckoned, and in that he was right, although it was not a man he expected.

  “Bob,” she said.

  Her former husband. How could this, he wondered, possibly be a problem? “And?” he enquired pleasantly.

  “Thomas, it’s awkward. Sandra’s with him. The boys as well.”

  Bob’s wife. The twin sons that were Isabelle’s own, children of her five-year marriage. They were eight years old and he’d had yet to meet them. As far as he knew, they’d not even been into London to see her.

  He said, “This is good, Isabelle. He’s brought them to you, then?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting— ”

  “I know that, obviously. So I’ll meet them, we’ll have dinner, and I’ll leave.”

  “He doesn’t know about you.”

  “Who?”

  “Bob. I’ve not told him. This was all a surprise. He and Sandra have come into town for some sort of dinner. A big affair. They’re dressed to the nines. They’ve brought the boys and they thought we could have a visit— the boys and I— while they’re at this event.”

  “They didn’t phone you first? What if you hadn’t even been at home? What would he have done with them then? Have them wait in the car while he went to dinner?”

  She looked irritated. “You know, that’s hardly important, Thomas. The fact is, I am at home and they’re here in London. I’ve not seen the boys in weeks, this is the first time he’s actually allowing me to be alone with them, and I have no intention of— ”

  “What?” He looked at her more evenly now. She was pinched round the mouth. He knew what this meant. She was wanting a drink and the last thing she’d now be able to do was to have one. “What is it you suppose I’d do, Isabelle? Corrupt them with my dissolute ways?”

  “Don’t be difficult. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Tell them I’m your colleague, then.”

  “A colleague with the key to my door?”

  “For the love of God, if he knows I have the key to your door— ”

  “He doesn’t. And he won’t. I told him I thought I heard someone knock and I’ve come to check if anyone’s at the door.”

  “Are you aware you’re contradicting yourself?” Again, he looked beyond her shoulder to the door. He said, “Isabelle, is there someone else in there? Not Bob at all? Not his wife? Not the boys?”

  She drew herself taller. She was six feet tall, nearly his height, and he knew what it meant when she made the most of that fact. “What are you suggesting?” she demanded. “That I’ve another lover? God in heaven. I cannot believe you’re doing this. You know what this means to me. These are my children. You’ll meet them and Bob and Sandra and God only knows who else when I’m ready and not before. Now I’ve got to get back inside before he comes to see what’s happening, and you’ve got to go. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  “And if I walk in anyway? You leave me out here, I use the key, I come inside? What then?” Even as he spoke the words, he couldn’t believe it of himself. His dignity seemed to have gone the way of his brains, his patience, and his self-control.

  She knew it. He could see that in her eyes no matter what else she was able to hide from him so well. She said, “Let’s forget you said that,” and she went inside, leaving him to cope with what looked every moment more like a tantrum thrown by a five-year-old.

  God, what had he been thinking? he wondered. Thomas Lynley, detective inspector of New Scotland Yard, titled member of the landed gentry, graduate of Oxford University with a first-class degree in being a fool.

  28 OCTOBER

  MARYLEBONE

  LONDON

  He managed to avoid her quite successfully for two days although he was able to tell himself that he wasn’t attempting to avoid her at all because he spent those days hanging about the Royal Courts of Justice. There his testi
mony had been called for in the ongoing trial of a serial killer with whom he’d come into very close and nearly fatal contact the previous February. After those two days, however, his presence being no longer required in the vicinity of Courtroom Number One, he politely refused three requests from journalists for interviews, which he knew would end up touching upon the one subject he could not face touching upon— the death of his wife— and he returned to New Scotland Yard. There Isabelle unsurprisingly asked him if he’d been avoiding her since he’d phoned in his necessary absences not to her but to the departmental secretary. He said of course not and what possible reason had he to avoid her and he’d been at court as had been his longtime partner DS Barbara Havers. Surely Isabelle didn’t think DS Havers was also trying to avoid her?

  He shouldn’t have said this last because it gave too much away, and what it gave away was the truth of the matter, which was, naturally, that he hadn’t particularly wished to have a conversation with Isabelle till he’d sorted out in his own head the reasons for his reaction at the door to her flat. Isabelle said that, frankly, avoiding her was precisely what she’d expect DS Havers to be doing as she made a regular habit of that. To which he’d replied, Be that as it may, I’m not trying to do so.

  She said, “You’re angry and you’ve a right to be, Tommy. I behaved badly. He turned up with the children and I was completely unnerved. But see it from my position, please. It’s not beyond Bob to phone one of the higher-ups here and drop the word: ‘Are you aware that Acting Detective Superintendent Ardery is having it off with a subordinate officer? Just thought you might want to know.’ And he’d do that, Tommy. He would do that. And you know what would happen if he did.”