Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [165]
“I’d actually hoped you’d continue renting the land as you’ve been doing,” Kaveh said. “It’s worked out so far. I don’t see why it can’t continue to do so. Besides the land’s quite valuable if it ever came to a sale of it.”
“And you reckon I’d never have the funds to make it mine,” Cowley concluded. “Well, d’you have the funds to buy it up yourself, laddie? I reckon not. This whole place’ll go on the block in a few months’ time and I’ll be there with the money.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be going on the block at all,” Kaveh said.
“Why’s that, then? You’re not claiming he left it to you?”
“As it happens, he did.”
George Cowley was silent, digesting this unexpected bit of news. He finally said, “You’re taking the piss.”
“As it happens, I’m not.”
“No? So where d’you plan to come up with the death duties, eh? That’ll take a real pile of dosh.”
“Death duties aren’t actually going to be a problem, Mr. Cowley,” Kaveh said.
There was another silence. Tim wondered what George Cowley was making of all this. For the first time, he also wondered how Kaveh Mehran fit into the picture of his father’s death. It had been an accident, plain and simple, hadn’t it? Everyone had said so, including the coroner. But now it didn’t seem so simple at all. And the next thing that came out of Kaveh’s mouth made the matter complicated beyond Tim’s imagining.
“My family will be joining me here as well, you see. Our combined resources will see to it that death duties— ”
“Family?” Cowley scoffed. “What’s the meaning of family in the light of day to your sort, eh?”
Kaveh didn’t reply for a moment. When he spoke, then, his tone was deathly formal. “Family means my parents, for one. They’ll be coming up from Manchester to live with me. Along with my wife.”
The walls seemed to shimmer around Tim. The earth itself seemed to tilt. Everything he’d thought he’d known was suddenly thrown into a vortex where words meant something far beyond what they’d meant for all of his fourteen years and what he thought he’d actually understood was obliterated by the uttering of one declaration.
“Your wife.” Cowley said it flatly.
“My wife. Yes.” The sound of movement, Kaveh crossing to the window perhaps, or to the desk at one side of the room. Or even standing at the hearth of the fireplace, one arm on the mantel, looking like someone who knew he was holding all the good cards in the deck. “I’ll be marrying next month.”
“Oh, too right.” Cowley snorted. “She know about your little ‘situation’ here, this next-month wife of yours?”
“Situation? What on earth do you mean?”
“You little pixie. You know ’xactly what I mean. You two arse bandits, you an’ Cresswell. Wha’s this, eh? Think the whole village didn’t know the truth?”
“If you mean that the village knew Ian Cresswell and I shared this house, of course they knew. Beyond that, what else is there?”
“Why, you little bum fucker. You trying to say— ”
“I’m trying to say that I’ll be marrying, my wife will live here along with my parents, and then our children. If there’s something not clear to you in that, I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“What about them kids? You think one’f them won’t tell this next-month wife of yours what’s up with you?”
“Are you talking about Tim and Gracie, Mr. Cowley?”
“You goddamn bloody well know I am.”
“Aside from the fact that my fiancée doesn’t speak English and wouldn’t understand a word they said to her, there’s nothing for them to tell anyone. And Tim and Gracie are going back to their mother. That’s already in the works.”
“That’s that, then?”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“You’re a real deep one, then, aren’t you, lad? Had this planned from the first, I expect.”
What Kaveh said in answer, Tim did not catch. He’d heard all that he needed to hear. He stumbled from the passageway into the kitchen and from there out of the house.
LAKE WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
St. James had decided there was a final possibility in this matter of Ian Cresswell’s drowning. It was a tenuous one at best, but as it existed,