Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [113]
ARNSIDE
CUMBRIA
He knew nothing about fishing, but that was hardly the point. Zed Benjamin understood that the point was not to catch fish or even hope to catch fish but rather to look like he was fishing. So he’d borrowed a rod from the tottering owner of his B & B, who gave him chapter and verse on her late husband and the wasted hours he’d spent with his fishing line in the waters of this lake, that stream, or whatever bay. She handed over a tackle basket, as well, along with a slicker that fit Zed’s arm but nothing else and a pair of Wellingtons that were altogether useless to him. She pressed a folding stool upon him and wished him luck. Her husband, she told him, had had virtually none. According to her, the man had caught fifteen fish in twenty-five years. He could see the record if he wanted to because she’d kept it, every time the bloody man left the house and returned empty-handed. Could be he’d been having an affair, she said, because when one really put one’s head to the matter—
Zed had thanked her hastily and had driven to Arnside, where he found, with thanks to God, that the tide was in. He’d established himself on the seawall path, just beneath Nicholas Fairclough’s house, and there he’d cast his line into the water. The line was baitless. The last thing he wanted was actually to catch a fish and have to do something with it. Like touch it.
Now that Scotland Yard knew that he was in the vicinity, he had to take care. Once they clocked him— whoever they were— his job was going to be even more difficult. He needed to know exactly who they were— assuming it was a they, because didn’t they work in teams like on the telly?— because if he could suss them out before they sussed him out, his position to strike a deal was going to be a hell of a lot stronger. For if they were here on the sly, then the last thing they would want was to have their mugs printed on the front page of The Source, alerting Nicholas Fairclough to their presence, not to mention to their intentions.
Zed had reckoned they’d turn up at Arnside House eventually. He was there to take note when that occurred.
The stool had been an excellent idea. After he took up his position along the seawall, he alternated between standing and taking a load off as the hours passed. But nothing of a suspicious nature or any nature at all happened across the lawn at Arnside House, and he was growing rather desperate to learn something— anything— useful to his story when Alatea Fairclough finally came outside.
She walked straight towards him and his thought was Bloody, bloody, double bloody hell. He was about to be discovered before he’d learned a damn thing useful, and wasn’t that just how his luck was running these days? But she stopped far short of the seawall and stood looking out at the endlessly undulating mass of the bay. Her expression was sombre. Zed reckoned she was thinking about all the people who’d met an untimely end in this area, like those poor Chinese sods— more than fifty of them—caught in the darkness in the incoming tide and phoning home like E.T., desperate for rescue that did not come. Or the bloke and his son caught by the tide and a sudden fog bank and disoriented round by foghorns that seemed to come from everywhere. Considering this, Zed reckoned the edge of Morecambe Bay was a perishing depressing place to live, and Alatea Fairclough looked about as perishing depressed as one could get.
Hell, he thought, was she considering the possibilities of offing herself out there in the treacherous waters? He hoped not. He’d be meant to rescue her, and they’d both likely die if it came to that.
He was too far to hear its ringing, but Alatea’s mobile phone seemed to go off, because she took it from the jacket she was wearing and flipped it open. She spoke to someone. She began to pace. Ultimately, she looked at her watch, which glittered on her wrist even at this distance. She glanced round as if worried she might be observed and Zed ducked his head.
God, she was a beautiful