Eyes on the terminal’s screen, she reached for her mobile. She punched in Lynley’s number.
BRYANBARROW
CUMBRIA
“Can she be forced?” Manette asked Freddie. They were coursing through the Lyth Valley at a good speed, with Freddie behind the wheel. They’d just made the turn into the southwest end of it, where the emerald fields spread out behind crusty drystone walls on either side of the road and the fells rose above them with peaks that wore the grey shawls of cloud on their shoulders. It would be misty up there, and soon it would be misty on the valley floor as well. A good fog was probably going to develop as the day wore on.
Manette had been consumed by their conversation with Niamh Cresswell. How, she wondered, could she have known Niamh for so many years without really knowing her at all?
Freddie, it seemed, had been thinking thoughts unrelated to Niamh and their call upon her because he glanced Manette’s way and said, “Who?”
“Niamh, Freddie. Who else? Can she be forced to take the children back?”
Freddie looked doubtful. “I don’t know the law when it comes to parents and children. But, really, old girl, what sort of plan would that be, to get the law involved?”
“Oh Lord, I don’t know. But we should at least find out what the options are. Because the very idea that she’d just leave Tim and Gracie to their fate… especially little Gracie… Good God, Freddie, does she expect them to go into care? Can she give them into care, for that matter? Can’t someone force her…?”
“Solicitors, judges, and social services?” Freddie asked. “How d’you see that sort of thing affecting the children? Tim’s in a bad enough way already, what with Margaret Fox School and all that. I daresay knowing his mum has been forced by a court to take him back would send the poor lad right over the edge.”
“Perhaps my mum and dad, then…?” Manette suggested. “With that enormous play area she’s building…? Mum and Dad could take them. They’ve got the space, and the kids would love to be near the lake and to use the play area, certainly.”
Freddie slowed the car. Up ahead, a flock of sheep were being moved from one paddock into another in a manner typical to Cumbria: They were in the middle of the road with a border collie directing them and the farmer strolling along behind. The pace was, as always, glacial.
Freddie changed gears and said to Manette, “Tim’s a bit old for play areas, wouldn’t you say, Manette? And anyway, what with this business with Vivienne Tully just coming to light, having the kids move into Ireleth Hall might be even worse for them than… well, than whatever other arrangement can be made.”
“Of course, you’re right.” Manette sighed. She thought about everything she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours about her parents, but especially about her father. She said, “What d’you think she’s going to do?”
“Your mother?” He shook his head. “No idea.”
“I’ve never understood what attracted her to Dad in the first place,” Manette said. “And believe me, I haven’t a clue what Vivienne saw in him. Or continues to see in him, because it’s looking like she’s been seeing him for years. Why on earth would she ever have found Dad attractive? It can’t be money. The money’s mother’s, not his, so if they’d divorced he’d do fine but he wouldn’t have been exactly rolling in the dosh. I mean, of course he’s always had access to it and perhaps Vivienne never knew it wasn’t actually his…?”
“It’s unlikely that she even thought of money when it came to your dad,” Freddie replied. “I expect it was his self-assurance. Women like that in a man, and your father’s always had self-assurance in spades. I wager it’s what attracted your mother to him.”
Manette glanced his way. He was still watching the sheep on the road, but the tips of his ears were giving him away. There was more here than met the eye, so she said, “And…?”
“Hmm?”
“The self-assurance bit.”
“Right. Well. I’ve always admired that about your father. Honestly? Wished I had just a bit of what he’s got.” The ears got redder.
“You? Not self-assured? How can you say that? And look at all the women who’ve been crawling on their knees across broken glass to get at you lately.”
“That sort of thing is easy, Manette. It’s the biological imperative. Women want a man without knowing why they want him. All he has to do is perform. And if a man can’t perform when a woman’s pulling his trousers down to have a ride on the pogo stick— ”
“Freddie McGhie!” Manette laughed, in spite of herself.
“It’s true, old girl. The whole species dies out if the bloke can’t do it when a woman’s getting him ready for it, so that’s all it is. Biology. The performance is rote. Technique isn’t, of course, but any bloke can learn a decent technique.” The sheep ahead of them reached the next field, where the gate stood open between the drystone walls. The border collie expertly got them through, and Freddie put the car back into gear. He said, “So we can say your dad developed a good technique, but he had to have something to attract women in the first place, and that’s his confidence. He has the sort of confidence that makes a man believe he can do anything. And not only does he believe he can do anything, but he proves it to people.”
Manette could see how this was the case, certainly when it came to her parents’ relationship. Their initial meeting was part of family lore, that fifteen-year-old boy strutting up to eighteen-year-old Valerie Fairclough and announcing his intentions towards her. She’d been intrigued by his cockiness in a world where his kind generally knew where to find their forelocks. That feeling of intrigue was all Bernie Dexter had required. The rest was history.
She said, “But, Freddie, you can do anything, as well. Have you never believed that about yourself?”
He shot her a diffident smile. “Couldn’t hang on to you, could I? And what Mignon said yesterday …? I always knew you preferred Ian. P’rhaps that was the crux of our problems.”
“That isn’t true,” Manette protested. “The seventeen-year-old girl I was might have preferred Ian. The woman I became preferred no one but you.”
“Ah,” he said. But he said nothing more.
Nor did she, although she could feel an uneasiness come between them, a tension that hadn’t been there before. She kept quiet as they made the turn that would take them up to Bryanbarrow village and, ultimately, to Bryan Beck farm.
When they arrived, it was to see a removals van in front of the cottage where George Cowley and his son, Daniel, lived. When they parked and began to approach the old manor house, Cowley came out of the cottage and, apparently seeing them, strolled over to have a word. It was brief enough to begin with: “Got what he wanted all along, I dare say.” He spat unappealingly on the stone path that led past Gracie’s trampoline to the front door. “See how he likes to have a farm not bringing in a bloody penny and he’ll be changing his tune.”
“I beg your pardon?” Freddie was the one to speak. He didn’t know George Cowley and while Manette knew him by sight, she’d never actually spoken to the man.
“He’s got Big Plans, he has,” Cowley said, using uppercase by means of his intonation. “We’re finished here, me an’ Dan. We take our sheep with us, and let him see how he likes it. And let him see his way to finding another farmer willing to rent the land and live in that hovel over there and pay through the nose for the pleasure. Him and his wife and family.”
Manette wondered if the cottage was actually large enough for a man, his wife, and a family as well, but she didn’t say anything. Just, “Is Tim here, Mr. Cowley? We’re looking for him.”
“Don’t know, do I?” George Cowley said. “Something wrong with that kid anyways. And the other’s an odd one, ’s well. Jumping on that trampoline for hours. Bloody glad, I am, to be gone from this place. You see that bollock licker, you tell him I said so. You tell him I don’t believe his nonsense for a bloody minute, no matter what he’s got up his sleeve.”
“Certainly. Will do,?
?? Freddie said. He took Manette’s arm and steered her to the front door. Under his breath he said, “Best give him a very wide berth, hmm?”
Manette agreed. Clearly, the man was a bit off his nut. What on earth had he been talking about?
No one was at home in the old manor house, but Manette knew where a spare key was kept, beneath a lichen-covered concrete mushroom half-buried in the garden at the base of an old wisteria, leafless now with its massive trunk climbing towards the roof. Key in their possession, they entered. The door took them through a passage and into the kitchen, where everything was pin-neat and the old woodwork of the sagging cabinets had been polished to a glow. The place looked better than it had looked prior to Ian’s death. Clearly, Kaveh or someone else had been at work upon it.
This gave Manette a feeling of disquiet. She was of a mind that devastating grief should produce in someone an equal devastation of spirit, of the sort that precluded doing one’s house up as if in the expectation of visitors. But nothing was out of place in this room, not a single cobweb clung to the heavy oak ceiling beams, and even in the hidden area high above the old fireplace where meat had once hung to be smoked and preserved during long winters, it appeared that someone had used a mop and a cleaning agent on the smoky walls.
Freddie said, “Well, no one can claim he’s letting the place go to ruin, eh?” as he looked round.
Manette called out, “Tim? Are you here?”
This was mostly for effect, since she knew very well that even if Tim was present, he was hardly going to come leaping down the stairs or in from the fire house, open-armed in greeting. Nonetheless, they checked the place systematically as they went: The hallan was empty, the fire house was as well. Like the kitchen, every room into which they popped their heads was neat and clean. It all looked as it had when Ian had been alive, only better kept up, as if a photographer might be arriving at any moment to shoot pictures for a magazine article on Elizabethan buildings.
They went up the stairs. A building of this age would have hidey-holes aplenty, and they did their best to search them out. Freddie voiced his opinion that Tim was long gone and who could really blame him after what he’d been going through. But Manette wanted to make absolutely sure. She looked under beds and poked into wardrobes and even pressed on some of the ancient paneled walls to see if there were hidden chambers. She knew she was being ridiculous but she couldn’t help herself. There was something essentially wrong with the entire picture of Bryan Beck farm, and she was intent upon understanding what it was because for all they knew the real truth was that Kaveh had done something to Tim to drive him off and then had made a show of looking for him afterwards.
Tim’s bedroom was the last place they looked, and here too all was in order. The fact that it was the bedroom of a fourteen-year-old boy was nowhere in evidence, although his clothing still hung in the wardrobe, and his tee-shirts and jerseys were folded within the chest of drawers.
“Ah,” Freddie said, approaching a table that did service as a desk beneath a window. On this sat Tim’s laptop computer, its top open as if it had been recently used. “This might give us something,” he told Manette. He sat down, stretched his fingers, and said, “Let’s see what we can see.”
Manette went to his side and said, “We don’t have his password. What do we know about delving into other people’s computers without passwords?”
Freddie looked at her and smiled. “Ah, you of little faith,” he said. He began to whittle away at the problem, which didn’t turn out to be much of a problem at all. Tim’s computer was set to remember his password. They needed only his user name, which Manette knew since she had done her best to e-mail Tim regularly. The rest, as Freddie said, was bingo.
He chuckled at the ease of it all and said to Manette, “I do wish your back had been turned, old girl. You might actually have thought I was some sort of genius.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “You’re genius enough for me, my dear.”
As Freddie set about examining e-mails and trails to various websites, Manette looked at what was on the desk along with the computer. School books, an iPod with its docking station and speakers, a notebook filled with disturbing pencil drawings of grotesque alien beings consuming various body parts of humans, a book on bird watching— where had that come from? she wondered— a pocket knife that she unfolded to see a chilling brown crust of blood on its largest blade, and a map printed from the Internet. She took this last and said, “Freddie, could this be— ?”
Car doors slammed outside the house. Manette leaned over the table to look out of the window. She thought it likely that Kaveh had returned, that, perhaps, he’d found Tim himself and had brought him home, in which case she and Freddie would need to be off the boy’s computer posthaste. But the arrivals weren’t Kaveh, as things turned out. They were, instead, an older Asian couple, possibly Iranian like Kaveh. With them was a teenage girl, who looked up at the manor house with a long-fingered hand pressed against her lips. She shot a glance at the older couple. The woman took her arm and together all three of them approached the front door.
They had to belong to Kaveh in some fashion, Manette thought. There were few enough Asians in this part of Cumbria, and hardly any at all in the countryside. They’d come on a surprise visit, perhaps. They’d come to call on their way from Point A to Point Z. Who knew why they’d come? It didn’t matter because they’d knock on the door and no one would answer and then they’d skedaddle so that she and Freddie could get on with things.
But that didn’t happen. Apparently with a key in their possession, they let themselves inside. Manette murmured, “What on earth…?” And then, “Freddie, someone’s arrived. It’s an older couple and a girl. I think they belong to Kaveh. Shall I…?”
Freddie said, “Damn. I’m getting somewhere here. Can you… I don’t know …Can you handle them in some way?”
Manette left the room quietly, closing the door behind her. She made a suitable amount of noise as she descended the stairs. She called out, “Hullo? Hullo? C’n I help you?” and she came face-to-face with everyone in the passage between the kitchen and the fire house.
The best course was bluffing, Manette decided. She smiled as if there was nothing unusual in her being inside the manor house. She said, “I’m Manette McGhie. I’m Ian’s cousin. You must be friends of Kaveh? He’s not here at the moment.”
They were more than friends of Kaveh, as it happened. They were his parents come up from Manchester. They’d brought his fiancée, newly come from Tehran, to see what was going to be her home in a few short weeks. She and Kaveh had not yet met. It was not the usual done thing for her future in-laws to bring the bride to call, but Kaveh had been anxious— well, what bridegroom wouldn’t be?— and so here they were. Just a little premarital surprise.
The girl’s name was Iman and she’d dropped her gaze in an appealingly diffident fashion while all this was being said. Her hair— copious, lustrous, and black— fell forward to hide her face. But the glimpse Manette had caught of it had been enough to see she was very pretty.
“Kaveh’s fiancée?” Manette’s smile froze as she took this on board. At least there was an explanation now for the pristine state of the house. But as to everything else, these waters were deep and this poor girl was probably going to drown in them. Manette said, “I had no idea Kaveh was engaged. Ian never told me about that.”
Whereupon the waters became deeper still.
“Who is Ian?” Kaveh’s father asked.
En route to London
When his mobile rang, Lynley was nearly seventy miles from Milnthorpe, fast approaching the junction for the M56, and more than a little disturbed. He’d been played for a fool by Deborah St. James, and he was far from happy about it. He’d turned up at the Crow and Eagle as agreed at half past ten, expecting to find her with her bags packed and ready for the drive back to London. He’d not been concerned at first when she was not waiting for him in the lobby since he’d seen her hire car in the car park,
so he knew she was somewhere about the place.
“If you’d ring her room please,” he’d said to the receptionist, a girl in a crisp white blouse and black wool skirt who’d done so obligingly with a “Who shall I tell her…?”
“Tommy,” he said, and he saw the flash of a knowing look strike her features. The Crow and Eagle was, perhaps, a hotbed of hot beds— as Sergeant Havers would have put it— a central location for daily assignations among the landed gentry. He added, “Fetching her for the drive back to London,” and then was immediately irritated with himself for doing so. He walked away and studied the ubiquitous rack of brochures featuring tourist highlights in Cumbria.
The receptionist cleared her throat after a moment and said, “No answer, sir. Could be she’s in the dining room?”
But she wasn’t. Nor was she in the bar, although what Deborah would have been doing in the bar at half past ten in the morning was a mystery to him. Since her car was there, right next to where he’d parked the Healey Elliott, he sat down to wait. There was a bank across the street from the hotel, a market square in the town, a old church with an appealing graveyard …He reckoned she could be having a final look round the place before the long drive.
It didn’t occur to him for some ten minutes that if the receptionist had been ringing Deborah’s room, she clearly hadn’t yet checked out of the hotel. When it did occur to him, he moved fairly rapidly from there to a conclusion of “Bloody maddening woman.”
He rang her mobile at once. Of course, it went immediately to her voice mail. He said, “You must know I’m rather unhappy with you at the moment. We had an arrangement, you and I. Where the hell are you?” but there was nothing more to add. He knew Deborah. There was no point in trying to move her from the obdurate stand she had taken with regard to matters in Cumbria.
Still he had a look round the town for her before he left, telling himself he owed Simon that much. This ate up more of his day and accomplished nothing save an extended study of Milnthorpe, which, for some reason, appeared to have a plethora of Chinese takeaways round the market square. He finally returned to the inn, wrote her a note, left it with the receptionist, and went on his way.