Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [88]
“Barbara, what are you talking about?”
“Laurence Olivier. Marathon Man. Don’t ask. I’m at home, more or less. I mean I’m on the terrace outside Azhar’s flat, having been saved at the final moment from making an appointment to have my hair styled to please Acting Detective Superintendent Ardery. I was thinking Big Hair, circa 1980. Or one of those complicated World War II jelly-roll affairs, if you know what I mean. Masses of hair on either side of the forehead wound round something and looking like salami. I’ve always wondered what it was they used to get that style. Toilet rolls, p’rhaps?”
“Should I anticipate all future conversations with you to take this bent?” Lynley enquired. “Frankly, I’ve always thought your appeal lay in your complete indifference to personal grooming.”
“Those days are past, sir. What c’n I do for you? I reckon this isn’t a personal call, made to see if I’m keeping my legs shaved.”
“I need you to do some digging for me, but it’s got to be completely out of everyone’s sight and hearing. It might involve legwork as well. Are you willing? More, can you manage that?”
“This’s to do with whatever you’re up to, I reckon. Everyone’s talking, you know.”
“About?”
“Where you are, why you are, who sent you, and all the trimmings. Common thought is you’re investigating a monumental cock-up somewhere. Police corruption, with you on tiptoe fading into the woodwork to catch someone taking a payoff or someone else putting electrodes to a suspect’s cobblers. You know what I mean.”
“And you?”
“What do I think? Hillier’s got you up to your eyeballs in something he himself doesn’t want to touch with a ten-foot plastic one. You put a step wrong, you take the fall, he still smells like dewdrops on roses. Am I close?”
“On the Hillier part. But it’s just a favour.”
“And that’s all you can say.”
“For the moment. Are you willing?”
“What? To lend a hand?”
“No one can know. You have to fly beneath the radar. Everyone’s but particularly— ”
“The superintendent’s.”
“It could get you into trouble with her. Not in the long run, but in the short term.”
“Why else do I breathe in our native land?” Barbara said. “Tell me what you need.”
CHALK FARM
LONDON
As soon as Lynley said Fairclough, Barbara knew. This wasn’t due to the fact that she had her fingers on the pulse of the life of everyone possessing a title in the UK. Far be that from the fact. Rather it was due to her being a devout albeit closet reader of The Source. She was addicted and had been so for years, an absolute victim to four-inch headlines and deliciously compromising photographs. Whenever she passed an advertising placard set up on the pavement and screaming a front-page story on sale inside this tobacconist or that corner shop, her feet went into the place of their own accord, she handed over her money, and she had a good wallow, generally over an afternoon cuppa and a toasted tea cake. Thus, Fairclough was a familiar name to her, not only as it referenced the Baron of Ireleth and his business— which had garnered many journalistic guffaws over the years— but also as it attached itself to his loose-living scion, Nicholas.
She also knew at once where Lynley was: in Cumbria, where the Faircloughs and Fairclough Industries were based. What she didn’t know was how Hillier knew the Faircloughs and what he’d asked Lynley to do regarding the family. In other words, she wasn’t sure if it was a case of we’re-for-’em or we’re-against-’em, but she reckoned that, if there was a title involved, Hillier was cosying up to the for-’em side. Hillier had a thing about titles, especially those that were above his own rank, which was all of them.
So this probably had to do with Lord Fairclough and not his wastrel son, long the subject of tabloid exposés along with other rich young things throwing their lives away. But the list of Lynley’s interests suggested that he was casting a very wide net indeed since they involved a will, an insurance policy, The Source, Bernard Fairclough, and the most recent edition of Conception magazine. They also involved someone