Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [145]
“She’s dead,” Lynley said.
“Whatever. So there’s a picture of him and he’s in his mayor kit and there’s his wife and they’re posing with someone and I can’t— of course— read the caption since it’s in Spanish, in which language I can actually say una cerveza por favor but, believe me, nothing else. But the names are in the caption. Esteban and Dominga and all the rest. So far, that’s our best bet, I reckon, because I haven’t been able to find anything else even close.”
“We’ll need someone to translate,” Lynley noted.
“What about you, Simon? Spanish among your many talents?”
“Only French,” St. James said. “Well, there’s Latin as well, but I’m not sure how much use that would be.”
“Well, we got to find someone. And we need someone else to tell us how these people come up with their surnames because I bloody don’t know and can’t work it out.”
“It has to do with forebears,” Lynley said.
“Got that much, I think. But what is it? Do they just keep lining them up back through history? Wouldn’t want to have to write that on my passport application if you know what I mean.”
Lynley was thinking about the language and who would serve their purposes as a translator. There would, of course, be someone in the Met, but he wasn’t sure how many more people he could afford to bring in on this before Isabelle traced the lot of them back to him.
He said, “What about Alatea Fairclough herself? What’ve you come up with on that score when you work her into this town of Santa Maria et cetera? You’re assuming she’s the mayor’s daughter, I take it?”
Havers said, “Can’t go that way at all, sir. They seem to have five sons.” She inhaled on the other end of the line and blew smoke noisily into the mobile phone. Lynley heard the rustling of paper and knew she was leafing through her notebook as well. She went on to say, “Carlos, Miguel, Angel, Santiago, and Diego. At least I reckon there are five sons. Considering the way these people string together their names, it could be one bloke, I s’pose.”
“So where does Alatea fit in?”
“Way I see it, she could be the wife of one of them.”
“A wife on the run?”
“Sounds very good to me.”
“What about a relative?” St. James asked. “A niece, a cousin.”
“I reckon that’s possible as well.”
“Are you working that angle?” Lynley asked her.
“Haven’t been. Can do. But no way can I delve because like I said this stuff’s in Spanish,” she reminded him. “Course, the Yard’ll have a program to translate. You know. Something buried on the computers somewhere, away from the prying eyes of the likes of us who might actually need to use it sometime. I c’n talk to Winston. He’ll know how to do it. Should I ask him?”
Lynley thought about this. He was back to what he’d considered earlier: the impact on Isabelle Ardery if she discovered he’d bled another member of her team away for his own purposes. The results of that manoeuvre wouldn’t be pretty. There had to be another way to get round the problem of the Spanish language. Where he didn’t want to go in his own thoughts at the moment was why it mattered to him how Isabelle would react. It wouldn’t have mattered to him how a superior officer might have reacted before this. The fact that he was worried now put him on the edge of a dangerous escarpment that he didn’t want to be on at this juncture in his life.
He said, “There has to be another way, Barbara. I can’t get Winston into this as well. I’m not authorised.”
Havers didn’t point out to him that he hadn’t been authorised to get her help either. She just said, “Let me… Well, I could ask Azhar.”
“Your neighbor? He speaks Spanish?”
“He does practically everything else,” she said ironically. “But I reckon if he doesn’t speak Spanish, he can get me someone from the university who does. A professor, probably. A graduate student. Worse comes to worse, I c’n walk over to Camden Lock Market and listen to the tourists— if there are any at this time of year— and put my fingers on someone speaking Spanish and drag ’em to the nearest Internet café for