Deception on His Mind (27 page)

Rachel felt a rising sense of desperation accompanying her need to strike out and wound. It was inconceivable to her that her friend had changed to such a marked degree. They'd seen each other only two days previous to this conversation. Their plans for the future had still been in place. So what had happened to alter her so? This wasn't the Sahlah she'd shared hours and days of companionship with, the Sahlah she'd played with, the Sahlah she'd defended before the bullies of Balford-le-Nez Junior School and Wickham-Standish Comprehensive. This wasn't a Sahlah she'd ever met.

“You talked to me about love,” Rachel said. “We talked to each other about it. We talked about honesty too. We said that in love, honesty comes first. Didn't we?”

“We did. Yes. We did.” Sahlah had been watching her parents’ house as if she were worried about someone observing their conversation and the passion of Rachel's reaction to her news. She turned to Rachel now, though. She said, “But sometimes complete—absolute—honesty isn't possible. It isn't possible with friends. It isn't possible with lovers. It isn't possible between parents and children. It isn't possible between husbands and wives. And not only isn't it always possible, Rachel, it's not always practical. And it's not always wise.”

“But you and I've been honest,” Rachel protested, the fear of Sahlah's meaning fast and hard upon her. “Or at least I've been honest with you. Always. About everything. And you've been honest with me. About everything. Haven't you? About everything?”

In the Asian girl's silence, Rachel heard the truth. “But I know all about … You told me …” But suddenly everything was open to question. What, indeed, had Sahlah told her? Girlish confidences about dreams, hopes, and love. The kind of secrets, Rachel had believed, that sealed a friendship. The kind of secrets she had sworn—and had meant—to reveal to no one.

But she hadn't expected such pain. She had never once thought that she'd encounter in her friend such a calm and steely resolve to smash her world to ruins. Such determination and everything that rose from such determination called for an action in response.

Rachel had chosen the only course open to her. And now she was living with the consequences.

She had to think what to do. She'd never have believed that one simple decision could have been such a significant domino, toppling a structure of other game pieces until nothing was left.

Rachel knew that the police sergeant had not believed either her or her mother. Once she picked up the receipt book and fingered through it, she'd seen the truth. The logical move for her to make was to speak to Sahlah now. And once she did that, every possibility for a new beginning with the Asian girl would be destroyed.

So actually, there was little to consider as a course of action. It lay before her like a road without a single diversion upon it.

Rachel rose from the toilet and tiptoed to the door. She drew back the bolt in near silence and created a crack through which she could see the back room and hear what was going on in the shop. Her mother had turned on the radio and tuned in a station that doubtless reminded her of her youth. The choice of music was ironic, as if the dj were a mocking god who knew the secrets of Rachel Winfield's soul. The Beatles were singing “Can't Buy Me Love.” Rachel would have laughed had she felt less like weeping.

She slithered out of the loo. Casting a hurried glance towards the shop, she slipped to the back door. It stood open, in the hope of creating cross ventilation from the steamy alley behind the shop through to the equally steamy High Street. No breeze stirred, but the open door provided Rachel with the exit route she needed. She stole into the alley and hurried to her bicycle. She mounted it, and began to pedal energetically in the direction of the sea.

She'd caused the dominoes to topple, it was true. But perhaps there was a chance to right a few before the lot of them were swept from the table.

ALIK'S MUSTARDS & ASSORTED ACCOMPANIMENTS
was in a small industrial estate at the north end of Balford-le-Nez. It was, in fact, on the route to the Nez itself, situated at an elbow created where Hall Lane, having veered northwest away from the sea, became Nez Park Road. Here, a ramshackle collection of buildings housed what went for industry in the town: a sailmaker, a seller of mattresses, a joinery, an auto repair business, a fencemaker, a dealer in junk cars, and a maker of custom jigsaw puzzles whose naughty choice of subjects generally kept him only one step ahead of public censure from the pulpits of every church in the town.

The buildings that housed these establishments were mostly prefabricated metal. They were utilitarian and suited to the environment in which they sat: A pebble-strewn lane cratered with potholes curved among them; orange skips bearing the oxymoronic name
Gold Coast Dumping
in purple letters listed on the uneven ground, spilling out everything from chunks of canvas to rusty bedsprings; several abandoned bicycle frames served as latticework for a gardener's nightmare of nettles and sorrel; sheets of corrugated metal, rotting wooden pallets, empty plastic jugs, and unwieldy, corroded sawhorses of iron made negotiating the industrial estate an ambitious undertaking.

In the midst of all this, Malik's Mustards
&
Assorted Accompaniments was both an anomaly and a reproach to its companion businesses. It comprised one third of the estate, a long, many-chimneyed Victorian building that had in the town's heyday been the Balford Timber Mill. The mill had fallen into disrepair with the rest of the town in the years following World War II. But now it stood restored with its bricks scoured of one hundred years of grime and its woodwork replaced and yearly repainted. It served as a wordless example of what the other businesses could do with themselves had their owners half the energy and one quarter the determination of Sayyid Akram Malik.

Akram Malik had purchased the derelict mill on the fifth anniversary of his family's arrival in Balford-le-Nez, and a plaque with words commemorating that occasion was the most impressive object that Emily Barlow took note of when she entered the building after parking her Peugeot in a space that was relatively cleared of debris along the lane.

She was fighting off a headache. There had been a disturbing undercurrent to her morning's meeting with Barbara Havers. This weighed on her mind. She didn't need a member of the political correctness police on her team, and Barbara's willingness to saddle guilt exactly where the bloody Asians wanted guilt assigned—on the back of an Englishman—bothered her, causing her to wonder exactly how clear the other detective's vision was. Additionally, the presence of Donald Ferguson in her life—hovering on its periphery like a stalking cat—was an added screw to her misery.

She'd begun her day with yet another phone call from the superintendent. He'd barked without so much as a good morning or a pleasant comment of commiseration about the weather, “Barlow. Where do we stand?”

She'd groaned. At eight in the morning her office had been like Alec Guinness's sweat box on the River Kwai, and a quarter hour's search for a fan in the choking, dust-filled air of the old station's attic had done nothing to improve her disposition. Stirring Ferguson into the mix of heat and aggravation was almost too much flavour for the recipe of her morning to have to bear.

“Don, are you going to give me a free hand in this?” she'd asked. “Or will you and I be playing report-to-the-teacher every morning and afternoon?”

“Watch your mouth,” Ferguson warned. “You'd do well to keep in mind who's sitting at the other end of this telephone line.”

“I'm not likely to forget it. You don't give me the chance. Do you keep this sort of short rein on the others? Powell? Honeyman? What about our lad Presley?”

“They've more than fifty years of experience among them. They don't need watching over. Least of all Presley.”

“Because they're male.”

“Don't let's turn this into a sexual issue. If you've a chip on your shoulder, I suggest you knock it off before someone else with more clout does it for you. Now, where are we, Inspector?”

Emily cursed him soundly under her breath. Then she'd brought him up to date without reminding him how remote was the possibility of there having been a major break in the case between his last call on the previous evening and this one in the morning.

He said thoughtfully, “And you say this woman's from Scotland Yard? I like that, Barlow. I like it very much. It has just the right ring of sincerity, doesn't it?” Emily could hear the sound of him swallowing and the clink of a glass against the telephone receiver. Donald Ferguson was passionate about Fanta Orange. He drank it steadily all day, always with an odd, paper-thin slice of lemon and always with a single cube of ice. This was probably his fourth of the morning. “Right. Then what about Malik? What about this screamer from London? Are you riding their shirttails? I want you on them, Barlow. If they sneezed last week, I want you to know the colour of the handkerchief that collected the snot. Is that clear?”

“Intelligence have already given me a report on Muhannad Malik.” Emily took pleasure in having managed to be one step ahead of him. She recited the salient details on the young Asian. “And I put a request in yesterday to gather what we can on the other: Taymullah Azhar. As he's from London, we'll have to liaise with SOU, but I expect having Sergeant Havers on our team will help with that.”

Ferguson's glass clinked again. Doubtless, he was taking the opportunity to manhandle his surprise into submission. He'd always been the sort of man who claimed women's hands had been shaped by God to curve perfectly over the handle of a Hoover. The fact that a female had actually been capable of thinking ahead and anticipating the investigation's needs was no doubt wreaking havoc with the preconceived notions that the superintendent held dear.

“Is there anything else?” she asked amiably. “I've got the day's activities briefing in five minutes. I don't like to be late for it. But if you've a message for the team …?”

“No message,” Ferguson said brusquely. “Get on with it, then.” He slammed down the phone.

Now at the mustard factory, Emily smiled at the memory. Ferguson had supported her promotion to DCI because circumstances—in the form of a negative Home Office evaluation of Essex Constabulary's commitment to equal opportunity—had forced his hand. He'd let her know privately that every decision she made would undergo examination beneath the lens of his personal microscope. It was j-o-y in its purest form to better the little worm in at least one round of the game he'd determined they'd be playing with each other.

Emily shoved open the door to Malik's Mustards, where the reception desk was occupied by a young Asian woman in a creamy linen tunic and matching trousers. Despite the day's temperature, which was not particularly lowered by the thick walls of the factory building, she wore an amber shawl over her head. Perhaps in a bow to couture, however, she'd arranged it fashionably in folds round her shoulders. When she looked up from the computer terminal at which she was working, her earrings of bone and brass clinked softly. They matched an intricate necklace she wore. A name plate on her desk identified her: S. MALIK. This would be the daughter, Emily thought, the fiancée of the murdered man. She was a pretty girl.

Emily introduced herself and flipped open her identification. She said, “You're Sahlah, aren't you?”

A strawberry birthmark high on the girl's cheek deepened in hue as she nodded. Her hands had been hovering over her terminal's keyboard, but she quickly lowered them to the wrist rest in front of the keys and kept them there, her thumbs and her knuckles pressed together.

She certainly looked the picture of guilt. Her hands were saying, Shackle me now. Her expression was crying, Oh no please no. “I'm sorry about your loss,” Emily said. “This can't be an easy time for you.”

“Thank you,” Sahlah said quietly. She looked at her hands, seemed to realise how odd their position was, and eased them apart. It was a surreptitious movement, but Emily didn't miss it. “May I help you with something, Inspector? My father's working in the experimental kitchen this morning, and my brother hasn't yet arrived.”