Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [139]
“Even on holiday,” Ardery said, “Barbara, you’re a representative of the Met. When you walk in the door— ” Abruptly, she brushed aside whatever she’d intended to say as her gaze came to rest on Barbara’s tattered notebook. She said, “What are you doing here?”
“Just needed to get some information.”
“Needing to get it here suggests a police matter.” Isabelle put herself in a position to see the screen of the computer’s monitor. She said, “Argentina?”
“Holidays,” Barbara said airily.
Isabelle looked further. She scrolled back to the previous screen and the one before that. She said, reading the list of Santa Maria di towns, “Developing a fondness for the Virgin Mary? Holidays suggest resorts. Skiing. Seaside visits. Jungle excursions. Adventures. Eco-journeys. Which are you interested in?”
“Oh, just playing with ideas at the moment,” Barbara told her.
Isabelle turned to her. “I’m not a fool, Sergeant. If you wanted to look for holiday possibilities, you wouldn’t be doing it here. That being the case and since you’ve asked for time off, I think it’s safe to conclude you’re doing some work for Inspector Lynley. Am I correct?”
Barbara sighed. “You are.”
“I see.” Isabelle’s eyes narrowed as she thought this one through. It seemed to lead her to a single conclusion. “You’ve been in contact with him, then.”
“Well… more or less. Right.”
“Regularly?”
“Not sure what you mean,” Barbara said. She also wondered where the hell this was going. It was not as if she had a thing with DI Lynley. If Ardery thought that, she was clearly off her nut.
“Where is he, Sergeant?” the superintendent asked directly. “You know, don’t you?”
Barbara considered her answer. Truth was, she did know. Truth also was, Lynley hadn’t told her. His mentioning of Bernard Fairclough had done that. So she said, “He hasn’t told me, guv.”
But Ardery took another meaning from the moments in which Barbara had been considering her options. She said, “I see,” in a way that told Barbara she saw something other than the truth of the matter. “Thank you, Sergeant,” the superintendent added. “Thank you very much indeed.”
Ardery left her then. Barbara knew she could call her back before she got to the door of the library. She knew she could clarify. But she did not do so. Nor did she ask herself why she was allowing the superintendent to believe something that was patently untrue.
Instead, she turned back to her work with Santa Maria di whatever. Alatea Vasquez y del Torres, she thought. Whoever she was, and not Isabelle Ardery, was the crux of the matter in hand.
MILNTHORPE
CUMBRIA
The end product St. James had to deal with was that his wife was simply afraid. Afraid, she was projecting them into a future for which she’d come up with half a dozen alternative scenarios, none of which did anything to assuage her fears. What was to St. James a potential solution to their long-thwarted desire for a family was no solution at all to her. There were too many variables that they couldn’t control, she’d argued, and reluctantly he had to admit that there was a great deal of truth in what she said. An open adoption could indeed invite into their lives not only an infant in need of a loving family but also a birth mother, birth father, birth grandparents on both sides, and God only knew who else. It wasn’t a simple matter of scooping up an infant from the arms of a social worker and— it had to be said— hoping that the child and young adult growing out of that infant would not be one who felt the need to develop a second life with a birth family he or she scouted out when of an age to do so. Deborah was completely right in this, but so was he: There would be no guarantees in any route to parenthood, he’d told her.
His brother was pressing him for an answer. This girl in Southampton couldn’t wait forever, David had said. There were other interested couples. “Come along, Simon. It’s either yes or no, and it’s not like you not to make a decision.”
So St. James had spoken to Deborah again. Again, she’d been adamant. They’d gone