Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [35]
It was interesting, though, that Bernard Fairclough wasn’t satisfied, Lynley thought. Despite the inquest and its results, Fairclough’s doubts in the matter suggested that he might well know more than he’d mentioned at their meeting at Twins. And this suggested there was more to the death of Ian Cresswell than met the superficial eye.
Lynley wondered if someone had dropped a word to Fairclough about the local investigation into the drowning. He also wondered if Fairclough had himself had a word with someone inside of it.
Lynley turned from the window and gazed at his desk, spread out on it were notes, printouts from his computer, the laptop itself. There was, he reckoned, more than one avenue to unearth additional information regarding Ian Cresswell’s death— if, indeed, there was additional information— and he was on his way to the phone to make a call in the service of gathering more details when it rang. He thought about allowing the answer machine to take it— that reaction to the phone had become habitual over recent months— but he decided to pick up, and when he did, it was to hear Isabelle say, “What on earth are you doing, Tommy? Why haven’t you been at work?”
He’d thought Hillier would handle this detail. Obviously, he’d been wrong.
He said, “It’s a small matter Hillier asked me to deal with. I thought he’d tell you.”
“Hillier? What sort of matter?” Isabelle sounded surprised, as well she might. He and Hillier didn’t rub congenial elbows very often, and if push came to shove, Lynley was surely the last person at the Met to whom Hillier would turn.
“It’s confidential,” he told her. “I’m not at liberty— ”
“What’s going on?”
He didn’t reply at once. He was trying to think of a way to tell her what he was doing without actually telling her what he was doing, but she apparently took his silence for avoidance because she said tartly, “Ah. I see. Is this to do with what happened?”
“With what? What happened?”
“Please. Don’t. You know what I’m saying. With Bob. That night. The fact that we’ve not been together since— ”
“Lord, no. It’s nothing to do with that,” he cut in, although the truth of the matter, if he had to admit it, was that he wasn’t exactly sure.
“Then why’ve you been avoiding me?”
“I’m not aware that I have been avoiding you.”
There was a silence that greeted this. He found himself wondering where she was. The time of day suggested she might still be at the Yard, perhaps in her office, and he could see her there at her desk with her head lowered to speak into the phone and her smooth hair— rather the colour of amber— tucked behind one ear to show a conservative but fashionable earring. One shoe off, perhaps, and there she was leaning down to rub her calf as she thought what she would say to him next.
What she said surprised him. “Tommy, I told Bob yesterday. Not who exactly because, as I explained, I do know very well he’d use it against me at some time when he believes I’m out of order. But that. I told him that.”
“That what?”
“That I’m involved with someone. That you’d come to the door when he and Sandra were there, that I’d sent you off because I thought the boys weren’t ready to meet… after all, they’d come into London for the first time to see me and they needed to adjust to my being in London and to the flat itself and everything that goes along with it. To have a man there as well… I told him I felt it was too soon and I’d asked you to leave. But I wanted him to know that you do exist.”
“Ah. Isabelle.” Lynley knew what it had cost her: telling her former husband about him when the man held such power over her life and now telling him that she’d done so when she was a proud woman and God how he knew that about her.
“I’m missing you, Tommy. I don’t want us to be at odds.”
“We’re not at odds.”
“Are we not?