Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [82]
“Right. Well. Good.” And really, that should have been it since their only obligation to each other was a twice-daily phone call taking place somewhere in his mother’s vicinity.
Yaffa, however, took them back to what she’d been saying earlier in their conversation. “What if things aren’t how they look?”
“Like us, you mean?”
“Well, I’m not talking about us, but it’s a case in point, isn’t it? What I mean is what if there’s an inherent irony here that in and of itself could sex up your story about Nicholas Fairclough?”
“The Scotland Yard bloke— ”
“Beyond the Scotland Yard bloke. Because listen to what you’ve told me about it all: one man is dead, another man wants the farm that the dead man occupied. Still another man lives on the farm with the dead man’s children. Now what does that suggest to you?”
The truth was that it suggested nothing, but Zed was suddenly aware that Yaffa was ahead of him on the curve of the story. He hemmed and hawed and cleared his throat.
She said, mercifully, “There’s more here than meets the eye, Zed. Did the dead man leave a will?”
“A will?” What the hell had a will to do with anything? Where was the sex in that?
“Yes. A will. There’s potential conflict there, d’you see? George Cowley assumes the farm is going to be his for the taking now because now it will go on the block. But what if that’s not the case? What if that farm is paid for free and clear and Ian Cresswell left it to someone? Or what if he put a name besides his own on the deed? What irony, hmm? George Cowley is thwarted once again. It’s even more ironic if, perhaps, this man George Cowley had something to do with Ian Cresswell’s death, isn’t it?”
Zed saw she was right. He also saw she was clever and on his side as well. So after they rang off, he set about delving into the matter of Ian Cresswell and a will. It didn’t take long for him to find out that there was indeed a will because wisely Cresswell had registered it online and the information was there for all to see: A copy of this document was at his solicitor’s office in Windermere. Another copy— since the bloke was dead— would be available through the probate registry but scoring a look at that would eat up valuable time, not to mention a trip all the way to York, so he knew he had to get either a peek or the information itself in another way.
It would have been nothing short of pure delight for the will to be viewable online, but the lack of privacy in the UK— which was becoming pandemic considering global terrorism, permeable national borders, and the easy access to explosives courtesy of the world’s arms manufacturers— had not extended to the requirement that one’s last will and testament had to be offered up for public consumption. Still, Zed knew that there was a way to get to it and he also knew which single person on the planet was likely to be able to put his fingers on the document that he needed.
“A will,” Rodney Aronson said when he caught up with the editor in his London office. “You’re telling me you want to look at the dead man’s will. I’m in the middle of a meeting here, Zed. We’ve a paper to produce. You do know that, don’t you?”
Zed reckoned that his editor was also in the middle of consuming a chocolate bar, for over the phone he could hear the wrapper being crinkled even as Rodney Aronson spoke.
He said, “The situation is more complicated than it looks, Rod. There’s a bloke up here wanting to put his mitts on that farm owned by Ian Cresswell. Expecting it to go on the block, he is. It seems to me that he’s got one hell of a motive to do the chop on our guy— ”
“Our guy, as you say, is Nick Fairclough. The story you’re writing is about him, no? That’s the story we’re looking for the sex in and the sex is the cops. But it’s only sex in the Fairclough story if they’re investigating Fairclough. Zed my man, do I have to do your job for you, or can you possibly jump on board the moving train?