That conclusion of Manette’s, however, existed before she had learned that Tim and Gracie weren’t living with their mother at all but rather with their father and his lover. She’d adjusted her thinking to What the hell is going on?, ultimately letting the question go when Ian had told her it was what he wanted as well: having his children with him. Upon Ian’s death, Manette had thought that Niamh would naturally have taken the children home with her. That she had evidently not done so brought up What the hell is going on? once again. This time, she intended to have the question answered.
Niamh’s estate car was in front of the house, and she came at once to the door when Manette knocked. Her expression was expectant, but this expression altered when she saw that her caller was Manette. Had Niamh not been wearing enough scent to knock over a pony as well as a hot-pink cocktail dress showing a copious amount of cleavage, that altered expression alone would have told Manette someone else was due to arrive quite soon.
Niamh said, “Manette,” as a means of greeting. She did not step back from the doorway in unspoken welcome.
No matter, Manette thought. She stepped forward, giving Niamh no choice but to go chest-to-chest with her or to move out of the way. Niamh chose the latter option, although she did not close the door behind them as she followed Manette into the body of the house.
Manette made for the sitting room with its broad windows overlooking the estuary. She gave a passing glance to the mass of Arnside Knot far across the bay and passing thought to the fact that with a powerful enough telescope one would have been able to see not only where the trees of the knot opened up to the crown of bare land and a few wind-scarred conifers at its summit but also lower down the hill and into her brother Nicolas’s sitting room.
She turned and faced Niamh. The other woman was watching her but, oddly, her glance shifted several times from Manette to the doorway leading into the kitchen. It was as if someone was hiding in there, which hardly made sense considering Niamh’s previous look of expectation. So Manette said, “I could do with a coffee. Mind if I…” and strode in that direction.
Niamh said, “Manette, what do you want? I would have appreciated a phone call to tell me— ”
But Manette was in the kitchen at that point, putting on the kettle as if she lived here. On the worktop she saw the reason for Niamh’s shifty eyes. A bright red tin bucket stood upon it, filled with a variety of items. A black sticker with white letters formed a flag on the bucket and Bucket of Love was printed across this. That this intriguing object had just arrived by post was indicated by an open box on the worktop as well. It took no advanced degree in human sexuality to understand that the bucket’s contents constituted a variety of suggestive toys meant to be used by a couple looking for spice to add to their sex life. Very interesting, Manette thought.
Niamh pushed past her, snatched up the Bucket of Love, and replaced it in the box. She said, “Fine. Now what do you want? And I’ll make the coffee if it’s quite all right with you.” She fetched a cafetiere, which she slammed onto the worktop. She did the same with a small bag of coffee and a mug with I’ve been to Blackpool! fading round its middle.
“I’ve come about the children,” Manette said. There was no point in preliminaries that she could see. “Why aren’t they back with you yet, Niamh?”
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business. Did Timothy tell you something yesterday?”
“Tim attacked me yesterday. I think you and I can agree that’s hardly normal behaviour for a fourteen-year-old boy.”
“Ah. So that’s what this is about. Well, you wanted to fetch him from school. It didn’t work out? How awful for you.” Niamh said this last in a tone that indicated Tim’s attack upon Manette had been nothing of the sort. She spooned coffee into the cafetiere and fetched milk from the fridge. She said, “But you can’t be that surprised, Manette. He’s in Margaret Fox School for a reason.”
“And we both know what that reason is,” Manette replied. “What the hell is going on?”
“What’s going on, as you put it, is the fact that Timothy’s behaviour hasn’t been normal, as you also put it, for quite some time. I expect you can work out why.”
God, Manette thought, it was going to be the same song and dance as it always was with Niamh: Tim’s birthday and the surprise guest showing up. Wonderful moment to learn one’s father has a lover of the same sex or of any sex. Manette wanted to strangle Niamh. How much more mileage was the bloody woman intending to get from what Ian and Kaveh had done? Manette said, “It wasn’t Tim’s fault, Niamh.” To which she added, “And do not attempt to derail this conversation in your usual fashion, all right? That may have worked with Ian, but I assure you it’s not going to work with me.”
“Frankly, I don’t wish to talk about Ian. You’ve no worry on that score.”
What a laugh, Manette thought. This would be an exciting change in her cousin’s wife since Ian and his outrage against her had been the sole subject of Niamh’s conversation for the last year. Well, she was going to take Niamh at her word. She was here to talk about Tim, anyway. She said, “Excellent. I’ve no wish to talk about Ian either.”
“Really?” Niamh examined her fingernails, which were perfectly groomed like the rest of her. “Now that’s a change. I thought Ian was one of your favourite topics.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Please. You may have been trying to hide it all these years, but it was never a secret to me that you wanted him.”
“Ian?”
“If he left me, you assumed it would be for you. Really, Manette, by all accounts, you should be as enraged as I am that he chose Kaveh as his next life’s partner.”
God, God, God, Manette thought. Niamh had actually managed to slither away from the subject of Tim as smoothly as if she’d been oiled. She said, “Oh stop it. I can see what you’re doing. It’s not going to work. I’m not leaving till we talk about Tim. Now you can have that conversation with me or we can play cat and mouse for the rest of the day. But something”— with a meaningful glance at the box containing the Bucket of Love— “tells me you’d like me to make myself scarce. And that’s not going to happen simply because you manage to raise my ire.”
Niamh said nothing to this. She was saved by the bell of coffee making. The electric kettle clicked off and she busied herself with filling the cafetiere and stirring the grounds.
Manette said, “Tim’s a day pupil at Margaret Fox School. He’s not a boarder. He’s meant to come home at night to his parents. But he’s still going home to Kaveh Mehran, not to you. What’s that supposed to be doing for his mental state?”
“What’s what doing to his mental state, Manette?” Niamh turned from the coffee. “The fact that he’s going home to Ian’s precious Kaveh or going home at all instead of staying there in lockdown like a criminal?”
“Home is here, not in Bryanbarrow. You know that very well. If you could have seen the state he was in yesterday… God in heaven, what’s wrong with you? This is your son. Why haven’t you moved him home? Why haven’t you moved Gracie home? Are you punishing them for some reason? Is this some sort of game you’re playing with their lives?”
“What do you know about their lives? What have you ever known? You’ve only been involved with them— when you’ve been involved at all— because of Ian. Dear beloved sainted Ian who can do no wrong to any bloody Fairclough. Even your father took his side when he left me. Your father. Ian with a halo on his head walks out of that door hand-in-hand— or should I say hand-on-arse— with some … some… some Arab barely out of nappies and your father does nothing. None of you do. And now he’s working for your mother as if he did absolutely nothing at all to destroy my life. And you accuse me of playing games? You question what I’m doing when the lot of you did nothing at all to make Ian come home where he belonged, where his duty was, where his children were, where I… I…” She grabbed a kitchen towel because the tears that had come to her eyes were threatening to spill over.
She caught them before they damaged her eyeliner or made a streak through her makeup. This done, she threw the kitchen towel in the rubbish and drove the palm of her hand down upon the cafetiere, separating the coffee from its grounds and putting a full stop to her own remarks.
Manette watched her. For the first time things were becoming clear. She said, “You’re not bringing them home, are you? You’re intending Kaveh to keep them. Why?”
“Drink your bloody coffee and leave,” Niamh replied.
“Not till we get things perfectly clear. Not till I understand every nuance of what you have in mind. Ian’s dead, so that’s ticked off your list. Now it’s Kaveh. Kaveh’s not too likely to die, though, unless you kill him— ” Manette’s words halted of their own accord. She and Niamh were left staring at each other.
Niamh turned away first. “Leave,” she said. “Just go. Leave.”
“What about Tim? What about Gracie? What happens to them?”
“Nothing.”
“Which means you leave them with Kaveh. Until someone forces your hand legally or otherwise, you leave them in Bryanbarrow. Permanently. So Kaveh gets the full experience of what he destroyed. Those two children— who are, by the way, perfectly innocent in this entire matter— ”
“Don’t be so certain of that.”
“What? Are you claiming now that Tim… My God. You get worse and worse.”
There was, Manette knew, no further point in their conversation. Coffee be damned, she began to head towards the front door and she was nearly there when footsteps came up the two exterior steps and someone called out, “Nee? Pet? Where’s my girl?”
A man stood at the door, a pot of chrysanthemums in his hands and on his face a look of such eagerness that Manette knew she was looking at the sender of the Bucket of Love. He was there to play with its contents, she reckoned. A slight sheen of anticipation glistened on his pudgy face.
He said, “Oh!” and looked over his shoulder as if thinking he’d come to the wrong house.
Then over Manette’s shoulder, Niamh said, “Come in, Charlie. Manette is just leaving.”
Charlie. He looked vaguely familiar. Manette couldn’t place him, however, till he nodded at her nervously and passed her in the doorway. His proximity brought his scent quite close, and the scent was cooking oils and something else. At first Manette thought of fish and chips, but then she realised he was the owner of one of the three Chinese takeaways in the market square in Milnthorpe. She’d been in there more than once on her way home from Arnside and Nicholas’s house, scoring a meal for Freddie. She’d never seen this man out of his kitchen uniform spattered with grease and copious amounts of soy sauce. But here he was, eager to do a job that didn’t at all involve slopping chop suey into takeaway cartons.
As he entered the house, he said, “You look good enough to eat,” to Niamh.
She giggled. “Hope so. Have you brought your appetite?”
Both of them laughed. The door closed on them, allowing them to get down to business.
Manette felt white heat wash over her. Something, she decided, would have to be done about her cousin Ian’s wife. She was wise enough to understand, however, that it might well be a leave-her-to-God situation completely beyond her powers to effect. But what she could effect was a change in Tim and Gracie’s lives. And that was something she could see to herself.
WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
Getting possession of the forensic reports had not been a difficult matter, and this ease of acquisition had been largely due to St. James’s reputation as an expert witness. There was, of course, no actual need for his expertise in this matter because the ruling had already been made by the coroner, but a phone call and a spurious tale about a university presentation on basic forensics had been enough to put all the relevant documents into his hands. These confirmed what Lynley had told him about the death of Ian Cresswell, with a few additional salient details. The man had suffered a severe blow to the head— in the near region of the left temple— which had been enough to render him unconscious and fracture his skull. The apparent source of the blow was the stone dock and although his body had been in the water for approximately nineteen hours when it had been found, it had— at least according to the forensic report— still been possible to make a comparison between the wound on his head and the shape of the stone that he had ostensibly hit on the dock before tumbling into the water.
St. James frowned. He wondered how this was possible. Nineteen hours in the water would do much to alter the inflicted wound, making information about it useless unless some sort of reconstruction had been managed. He looked for this, but he didn’t see one. He made a note and continued reading.
Death had been by drowning as an examination of the lungs had confirmed. Bruising on the right leg suggested that Cresswell’s foot may have become caught in the scull’s stretcher as he lost his balance, capsizing the craft and holding the victim beneath the water for a time until— perhaps due to the gentle action of the lake over the hours—his foot had ultimately become dislodged and his body had floated freely next to the dock.
Toxicology showed nothing unusual. Blood alcohol indicated that he’d been drinking but he was not drunk. Everything else in the report indicated that he was a fine specimen of a man in the range of forty to forty-five years, in perfect health and superb physical condition.
Since it had been an unwitnessed drowning, a coroner’s ruling had been required. This had necessitated an inquest, preceded by an investigation by the coroner’s officers. They had testified at the inquest, as had Valerie Fairclough, the forensic pathologist, the first policeman on the scene, and the subsequent officer called in to confirm the first policeman’s conclusion that no SOCO were needed as no crime had occurred. The end product of all this was the ruling of death by accidental drowning.
As far as St. James could see, there was nothing untoward in any of this. However, if mistakes had been made, they’d been made at the initial stage of the process and that was with the first policeman on the scene. A conversation with this police constable was in order. This demanded a trip to Windermere, from where the officer had originally come.
The man’s name was PC William Schlicht, and from the look of him when he came into Reception at the Windermere station to meet St. James, he was fresh out of the nearest training facility. This would explain why he’d called in another officer to confirm what he’d concluded. It had likely been the first death scene PC Schlicht had encountered and he wouldn’t have wanted to start his career off with a gross error. Aside from that, the death had occurred on the estate of a well-known and semi-public figure. The newspapers in the area would have found this of interest, and the PC would know that eyes were upon him.
Schlicht was a slight man. But he was also wiry and athletic in appearance, and his uniform looked as if he starched and ironed it every morning, as well as polished its buttons. He seemed to be in his early twenties, and his expression was one of a man extremely eager to please. Not the best attitude in a policeman, St. James thought. It put one in the position of being easily manipulated by outside forces.
“A course you’re teaching?” PC Schlicht said after their exchange of greetings. He’d taken St. James beyond Reception, into the station itself, and he led him to a coffee room/lunch room where a refrigerator bore a sign reading Put your *#%*# name on your lunch bag! and an old coffeemaker circa 1980 was sending forth an odour reminiscent of coal mines in the nineteenth century. Schlicht had been in the midst of eating what looked like leftover chicken pie from a plastic container. A smaller pot of raspberry fool sat next to this, awaiting consumption as his dessert.
St. James made the appropriate noises of agreement upon the mention of the putative course. He lectured frequently at University College London. Should PC Schlicht wish to do some checking up on him, everything he was claiming about his visit to Cumbria was verifiable. St. James told the PC to go on with his lunch, please, as he merely wished to confirm a few details
.
“I reckon someone like you would look for a fancier case to pre sent in a lecture, if you know what I mean.” Schlicht lifted a leg over the seat of his chair to sit. He scooped up his cutlery and tucked back into his meal. “The Cresswell situation was a straightforward business from the start.”
“You must have had one or two doubts, though,” St. James said, “since you called in another officer.”
“Oh, that.” Schlicht waved his fork in acknowledgement. He then confirmed what St. James had suspected: It had been his first death scene, he didn’t want a blot on his copy book, and the family was quite well-known in the area. He added, “Not to mention rich as the dickens, if you know what I mean,” and he grinned as if the wealth of the Faircloughs demanded that a certain conclusion was in order from the local police. St. James said nothing, merely looking questioning. Schlicht said, “The rich have their ways, you know? Not like you and me, they are. You take my wife: She finds a body in our boathouse— not that we have a boathouse in the first place, mind you— and let me tell you, she’d be screaming down the walls and running in circles and no phone call to nine-nine-nine she made would even be understandable, if you get my meaning. That one”— by whom St. James concluded he was referring to Valerie Fairclough— “is cool as cream. ‘There appears to be a dead man floating in my boathouse’ is how she puts it, ’cording to the dispatch bloke who phoned up the station, and she goes right on to give the address without being asked, which is a bit odd ’cause you’d think under the circumstances she’d need to be asked or reminded or something. And when I get there, she’s not waiting on the drive or pacing in the garden or tapping her toe on the front steps or anything you’d expect in such a situation, is she? No. She’s inside the house and she comes out dressed like she’s going to some posh afternoon tea or something and I wonder, I do, what she went down to the boathouse for in the first place dressed like that. She tells me straightaway and without my asking that she was down there to go out on the lake and do a bit of fishing. Dressed like that, mind you. She says she does it all the time: two, three, perhaps four times a week. All hours, it doesn’t matter to her. She likes to be out on the water, she says. She says she didn’t expect to find a body floating there and she knows who it is: her husband’s nephew. She takes me down there to have a look. We’re walking on our way when the ambulance shows up and she waits for them to join us.”