“I’ve done nothing illegal.”
“So you say,” Deborah said. “And if that’s the case— ”
“It is.”
“— then you can decide which route has more to offer you.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. The word offer had done the trick. “What are you talking about?”
Deborah looked round furtively and said with great meaning, “We can’t speak here in the lobby.”
“Come with me, then.”
Even better, Deborah thought.
This time, they didn’t go to the garden but rather to an office, which seemed to be her own. There were two desks in it, but the other wasn’t occupied. Lucy closed the door behind them and stood in front of it. She said, “Who’s offering what?”
“Tabloids pay for their stories. You must know that.”
“Is that who you are?”
“A tabloid journalist? No. But I’ve got one with me, and if you’ll consent to talk to him, I’m here to make sure you get paid for what you have to say. My part is to assess the value of the story. You tell me, I negotiate with him.”
“That can’t possibly be how it works,” Lucy said shrewdly. “What are you, then? An agent for The Source? Some kind of… what? News scout or something?”
“I’m not sure it matters who I am,” Deborah said. “I think it matters more what I have to offer. I can ring the DI from New Scotland Yard who’s here in Cumbria on a matter of murder or I can ring a journalist who’ll walk in, listen to your story, and pay you for it.”
“Murder? What’s going on?”
“That’s not important at the moment. This situation between you and Alatea Fairclough is. You must decide. What’s it to be? A visit from New Scotland Yard or a journalist happy to hear what you have to say?”
Lucy Keverne thought this over while outside the office, some sort of trolley trundled down the corridor. She finally said, “How much, then?” and Deborah breathed more easily now that Lucy was swimming closer to the bait.
She said, “I suppose that depends on how sensational your story is.”
Lucy looked towards a window that faced the garden in which she and Deborah had spoken on the previous day. A gust of wind shuddered the slim branches of a Japanese maple outside, dislodging the rest of the leaves still clinging to it stubbornly. Deborah waited with please please please running through her mind. This was, she knew, the only option left to get at the truth. If Lucy Keverne didn’t go for it, there was nothing more to do but return to London as bidden.
Lucy finally said, “There is no story. At least, there is no story that could possibly interest The Source. All there is is an arrangement between two women. I’d make more of it if I could, believe me, because I could use the money. I’d prefer not to work here. I’d prefer to sit at home and write my plays and send them off to London and see them produced. But that’s not happening any time soon, so I work here in the mornings and I write in the afternoons and occasionally I top up my income by donating eggs, which was why I placed the advertisement in Conception magazine. I told you this.”
“You also told me you would never consider being a surrogate.”
“All right. That part wasn’t true.”
“So why did you lie about this yesterday?”
“Obviously, it was a private matter. It’s still a private matter.”
“And the money?”
“What about it?”
“As I understand how everything works,” Deborah pointed out, “you’re paid for allowing your eggs to be harvested. But if you’re a surrogate for someone, you receive nothing. Just your expenses. Eggs equal profit while surrogacy comes from the goodness of your heart. Isn’t that how it works?”
Lucy was silent. Into her silence, Deborah’s mobile rang. She jerked it impatiently from her shoulder bag and saw the incoming number.
“Are you playing me for a bloody idiot?” Zed demanded when she answered. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I’m going to have to ring you back,” she said.
“No sodding way. I’m coming in.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“No? Well, it’s the best I’ve come up with. And when I get there, there’d better be a story waiting for me and it’d better have to do with Cresswell’s murder.”
“I can’t promise— ” But he ended the call before she could finish. She said to Lucy, “The Source reporter is on his way in. This is out of my hands unless you wish to tell me more, something I can spin to keep him away from you. It’s to do with money, I expect. You’ve agreed to be a surrogate for Alatea, and Alatea is willing to pay you more than just your expenses, isn’t she? That would put you on the wrong side of the law. It explains why you misdirected me yesterday.”
Lucy said with some passion, “Look at me. Look at this job. All I need is time to finish my play, to have it workshopped, to be able to revise it, and I don’t have time and I don’t have money and the surrogacy agreement between us was going to give me both. So you can make a story out of that if you’d like, but I hardly think it’ll sell any papers. Do you?”
She was, of course, dead right. Scion of Fairclough Fortune in Illegal Surrogacy Deal might sell some newspapers, but the story would have legs only if there existed a bouncing baby whose winsome picture could be run along with the tabloid’s disclosure, along with a typical tabloid caption, something like Purchased Baby Fairclough, Sold by Surrogate Mum for £50,000. The story of an illegal deal going unfulfilled couldn’t even be sold to any tabloid since there would be nothing to prove it save Lucy’s claim, which would be denied by Alatea Fairclough. The story of a deal in which an infant could be produced as proof would be hot and lively, but since there was no baby to speak of, there was also no story.
On the other hand, Deborah now knew why Alatea Fairclough was in a panic about her. The only question was whether Ian Cresswell had discovered this situation in some manner and had threatened Alatea in the one way she could be threatened by him: through money. If Lucy was to be paid for the surrogacy, then the money would have had to come through Ian Cresswell. He had been the man in control of the Fairclough fortune. Unless she had funds of her own, Alatea would have had to strike some kind of deal with Ian.
This of course brought up Nicholas Fairclough’s role in the surrogacy arrangement. He would have had to know and to agree, which meant he would have had to be part of digging up the funds to pay for everything.
She said to Lucy, “What about Nicholas, Alatea’s husband?”
Lucy said, “He only— ” but that was as far as she got.
The maddening Zed Benjamin burst into the room. He said to Deborah, “Enough of these Scotland Yard double crosses. We’re doing this together or not at all.”
Lucy cried, “Scotland Yard double crosses? Scotland Yard?”
Zed said to her, jerking his thumb at Deborah, “Who the hell d’you think you’ve been talking to here? Lady Godiva?”
ARNSIDE
CUMBRIA
Alatea had managed to send Nicholas off to work. He hadn’t wanted to go and chances were very good, she knew, that he wouldn’t stay there. But the only thing she had to cling to at this point was a semblance of normalcy, and what constituted normal was Nicky heading to Barrow and after that to the pele project.
He’d been unable to sleep again. He was filled with remorse, seeing himself as the person who was bringing Raul Montenegro down upon her.