Believing the Lie (51 page)

Of course, Simon hadn’t used the word
pigheadedly.
That was not his style. Instead, he’d said, “There are times when you don’t see things clearly, and you won’t see things clearly. You have to admit that,” in reference to her insistence in the car park that the route to investigate had everything to do with Alatea Fairclough’s possession of a magazine called
Conception
. “You’ve reached a conclusion based on your own inclinations,” he said. “You’re letting your judgement become clouded because of what you want instead of relying upon what you know. You can’t do that and be effective in an investigation. And none of that has any importance anyway because you shouldn’t be involved in this matter at all.”

“Tommy asked me—”

“If this is going to come down to Tommy, he also pointed out that you’ve served your purpose and there’s danger likely if you go any further.”

“Danger from whom? Danger from what? There
is
no danger. Oh, this is absurd.”

“I agree completely,” he replied. “So we’re finished here, Deborah. We need to return to London. I’ll see to it.”

This positively made her erupt, as he’d known it would. He’d left the room to do whatever he felt needed to be done regarding their departure, and when he’d returned her anger was so icy that she saw no point in speaking to him at all.

In the morning, then, he’d packed up his things. She pointedly
did not pack up hers. Instead she’d informed him that unless he wished to carry her over his shoulder all the way to her hire car, she was remaining in Cumbria. She said, “This isn’t finished, Simon,” and when he said, “Isn’t it,” she knew he was referring to more than matters associated with the drowning of Ian Cresswell.

She said, “I want to see this through. Can’t you at least try to see this is something I need to do? I
know
there’re things connected to this woman…”

It was definitely the wrong route to take. Any mention of Alatea Fairclough would only make Simon think more determinedly that Deborah was blinded by her own desires. He said quietly, “I’ll see you in London, then. Whenever you return.” He gave her a half smile that felt like an arrow to her heart. He added, “Good hunting,” and that was that.

All along, Deborah knew that she could have told him about her plans with the reporter from
The Source
. But had she done that, the fact that she and Zed Benjamin were going to join forces in the investigation would have come out into the open. Then, Simon would have done something to stop this from happening, and telling Tommy would have accomplished it. In keeping the truth from Simon she was actually protecting Tommy from exposure as the Scotland Yard detective. She was, effectively, giving him more time to get to the bottom of things. If Simon couldn’t see that she now had a vital place in this investigation, there was simply nothing she could do about that.

Even as she and her husband had their final words at the Milnthorpe inn, Zed Benjamin was down the road in Arnside, maintaining a position from which he could see the comings and goings at Arnside House. He would text her should Alatea Fairclough leave the property.
Move
meant she was on the move, heading somewhere in her car.
Your way
meant she was heading towards Milnthorpe.

This was the beauty of Arnside, Deborah and Zed Benjamin had concluded on the previous day. Although there were narrow lanes leading out of the village that one could take to reach the other side of Arnside Knot and the hamlets beyond Arnside Knot, if one
wanted a quick route out of the place, there was but a single good road upon which to travel. That road was the road to Milnthorpe. That road passed by the Crow and Eagle.

When the text message came, Simon had been gone thirty minutes. Deborah examined her mobile with a surge of excitement.
Move
and
Your way
comprised the message.

She’d already gathered her necessary belongings. In less than one minute, Deborah was down the stairs and waiting just inside the entrance to the inn with a view to the street. Through the glass half of the door, she saw Alatea Fairclough drive by and make a right turn into the A6. Three cars behind her came Zed Benjamin. Deborah was ready for him when he pulled to the kerb.

“South,” she said.

“I’m on it,” he replied. “Nick took off as well, looking down in the mouth. Heading for the family business, I dare say. Doing his part to keep the country well-supplied with loos.”

“What do you think? Should one of us have been following him?”

He shook his head. “No. I think you’re right. This little lady is at the crux of it all.”

LANCASTER
LANCASHIRE

The man was huge, Deborah thought. He filled more than his side of the car. He wasn’t fat, merely enormous. His seat was pushed back as far as it would go, but still he had difficulty keeping his knees out of the way of the steering wheel. Despite his size, he wasn’t an intimidating presence, however. There was an odd kind of gentleness to him, which she reckoned had to make him a fish out of water when it came to his chosen employment.

She was about to comment on this when he made a remark about what he supposed to be her line of work instead. With his eyes on
Alatea’s car far ahead of them, he said to Deborah, “Wouldn’t have taken you for a cop. I wouldn’t have known who you were at all if you hadn’t been nosing round Arnside House.”

“What did I do to give the game away, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I just have a sixth sense about this kind of thing.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Can sniff ’em out pretty easily, if you know what I mean. Goes with the territory. Has to, doesn’t it.”

“What territory are we talking about?”

“Journalism. Thing is,” he said expansively, “you have to be able to see more than what’s just on the surface in my line of work. Investigative reporting is about more than sitting at one’s desk and waiting for some bloke’s lifelong enemies to ring up with details of a story that’ll bring down the government. You have to be adept at digging. You have to get into the hunt.”

Deborah found this nonsense impossible to resist. “Investigative reporting,” she said contemplatively. “Is that what you call working for
The Source
, then? They don’t seem to publish investigative stories about the government very often, do they? If at all.”

“Just using that as an example,” he said.

“Ah.”

“Hey, it’s a living,” he declared, doubtless picking up on her ironic tone. “Anyway, I’m a poet otherwise. And no one supports himself on poetry these days.”

“No, indeed,” Deborah said.

“Look, I know it’s a rag, Sergeant Cotter. But I like to eat and have a roof over my head and this is how I do it. Your line of work isn’t much better, I reckon, looking under stones to dig out society’s scum, eh?”

Mixed metaphor, Deborah thought. Odd for a poet but there you had it. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” she said.

“There’s more than one way to look at everything.”

Up ahead of them, Alatea drove onward. It became apparent soon enough that she was heading for Lancaster. Once in the environs of the city, they had to take care not to be seen by her, so they dropped back with five cars between them.

They wound through the streets. There was no question that Alatea knew exactly where she was going. She ended up in the city centre, in the small car park of a stout brick structure, which Deborah and Zed Benjamin passed by. Thirty yards from this place, Zed pulled to the kerb. Deborah swivelled in her seat to look back at the building. In some forty-five seconds, Alatea came round the corner of it from the direction of the car park and went inside.

“We need to find out what that place is,” Deborah said. Considering Zed’s size, he wasn’t the one to accomplish this task unseen. Deborah got out, said, “Wait here,” and dashed to the other side of the street, where she could keep herself somewhat hidden by using the cars parked there.

She went as far as she needed to go to be able to read the lettering above the building’s entrance.
Kent-Howath Foundation for Disabled Veterans
it said. A home for soldiers wounded in war.

Deborah considered Alatea’s place of birth, which she knew was Argentina. This took her ineluctably to the Falklands War. She wondered about the likelihood of an Argentine soldier ending up here for some reason, someone whom Alatea was visiting.

She was thinking about other possible wars—the Gulf Wars being the most recent ones—when Alatea emerged. She wasn’t alone, but she wasn’t with anyone who looked remotely like a disabled veteran. She was instead with another woman, tall like Alatea but stocky. Her appearance and ease of movement suggested she was someone who regularly favoured the type of clothing she was wearing at the moment: a colourful long skirt, loose pullover, and boots. Her long hair was unstyled, dark in colour but peppered with grey, and she wore it pulled back from her face and held with a hair slide.

They walked in the direction of the foundation’s car park, talking earnestly. Considering what this meant, Deborah dashed back to where Zed had parked. She got into the car saying, “She’s going to be on the move. She’s got someone with her.”

In response, he fired up the engine and readied himself to follow once more. He said, “What was that place?”

“Disabled soldiers’ home.”

“That who’s with her?”

“No. She’s got a woman with her. I s’pose she could be a soldier, but she’s not disabled as far as I could tell. Here they come. Quickly.” Deborah lunged at Zed. She threw her arms round him and drew him into what she hoped appeared to a passerby as a lovers’ passionate embrace. When over Zed’s shoulder she saw the car pass, she released him and saw that his face was flaming. “Sorry,” she said. “It seemed best.”

He stammered, “Yes. Right. ’Course,” and he pulled out of the parking space and got back onto Alatea Fairclough’s tail.

They headed out of the city centre. Traffic was heavy, but they managed to keep Alatea’s vehicle within view. Zed Benjamin was the one who twigged first where Alatea was headed. Clear of the centre of Lancaster, it wasn’t long before a hillside topped with a variety of modern-era buildings came into view.

“She’s going to the university,” he said. “This could take us nowhere in our information.”

Deborah didn’t think so. If Alatea was heading towards Lancaster University with a companion, there was going to be a reason why. She had a feeling of what that reason would be, and she reckoned it had nothing to do with a desire to pursue higher education.

Parking in this area while remaining out of sight of their quarry was something of an iffy situation. Vehicles heading to the university were made to use a peripheral road, and once they found themselves upon it, Deborah and her companion discovered that parking was restricted as well. There were cul-de-sacs for it, but very little scope for hiding within them. Obviously, Deborah thought, the university had not been designed with the thought of individuals skulking along on the tail of someone else.

When Alatea turned into one of the cul-de-sacs, Deborah told Zed to let her out of the car. When he started to protest—they were, after all, supposed to be doing this tailing of Alatea Fairclough together and he wasn’t exactly sure of Scotland Yard’s cooperation, he pointed out—she said, “Look. We can’t go in there after them, Zed. Drop me off, and drive on. Park somewhere else. Ring me on my mobile and I’ll tell you where I am. It’s the only thing that’s going to work.”

He didn’t look happy. He didn’t look trustful. That couldn’t be helped. She wasn’t there to earn his personal faith in her character. She was there to get to the bottom of Alatea Fairclough. He’d braked the car, and that was good enough for Deborah. She hopped out, saying, “Ring my mobile,” and she dashed into the cul-de-sac before he could protest.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew he couldn’t be seen by Alatea Fairclough or the gaff would be blown in a very large way. Deborah couldn’t be seen either, but it was going to be far easier for her to hide herself from the Argentine woman and her companion than for Zed to do so.

Following them proved simpler than she had thought it would be. Providence helped. It began to rain. The downpour was sudden and it was heavy, requiring umbrellas. What better way to conceal one’s identity? Deborah fished hers out of her shoulder bag and thus was able to obscure her face and, more important, cover her coppery hair.

She kept a good distance between herself and the other women. They made for the university buildings. There were plenty of students on the purpose-built campus at this time of day, which was a blessing. It was also a blessing that the university—unlike the older institutions in the country—existed largely in a single location, on the top of that hill outside of the city proper.

The two women continued to talk as they walked, heads bent together, sharing an umbrella. Alatea had her arm through the other woman’s. She slipped once, and her companion steadied her. They seemed to be friends.

They didn’t stop in their progress through the campus. They consulted no map. They didn’t ask directions. Deborah felt a flicker of excitement at this.

Her mobile rang. She said into it, hurriedly, “We’re on a central path, a sort of walkway. It goes straight across the campus.”

“Deb?”

Tommy’s voice. Deborah winced and called herself a fool for not having looked at the incoming caller’s identity. She said, “Oh. Tommy. I thought it was someone else.”

“Obviously. Where are you?”

“Why d’you want to know?”

“Because I know you. I saw that expression on your face in the car park yesterday, and I know exactly what it means. You’re doing something we’ve asked you not to do, I take it?”

“Simon’s
not
my father, Tommy. Is he with you?”

“He’s asked to meet for a coffee in Newby Bridge. Deb, what’re you doing? Where are you? Whose call are you waiting for?”

Deborah considered not only whether to lie to him but also whether she could carry off a lie. She sighed and said, “Lancaster University.”

“Lancaster University? What’s going on?”

“I’m following Alatea Fairclough. She’s come here in the company of a woman from a disabled soldiers’ home. I want to see where they’re going.” She didn’t give him time to consider what this might mean, instead continuing with, “This entire situation has got to do with Alatea Fairclough. Something’s not right, Tommy. I know you can sense it.”