Deception on His Mind (51 page)

Rachel hadn't phoned, which meant that she hadn't gathered the necessary information for the abortion. Sahlah could only school herself to patience and hope that her friend would neither fail her nor betray her a second time.

Not for the first time since suspecting she was pregnant did Sahlah bitterly regret the lack of freedom imposed upon her by her parents. Not for the first time did she despise herself for having lived so docilely under the benign and loving but nonetheless implacable thumbs of her father and mother. She realised that the very womblike environment that had long kept her feeling so protected in an often unfriendly world was what stymied her now. The restrictions her parents had long placed upon her had sheltered her, indeed. But they'd also imprisoned her. And she'd never really known that till now, when more than anything she wished she had the coming-and-going lifestyle that English girls had, that carefree way of living in which parents seemed to be faraway planets orbiting only peripherally in the solar system of their daughters’ lives.

Had she been a tearaway, Sahlah realised, she'd know what to do. In fact, had she been a tearaway she'd probably
announce
what she intended to do. She'd tell her story without a single face-saving digression and without regard for anyone's feelings. Because her family wouldn't mean anything to her if she were a tearaway, her parents’ honour and pride—not to mention their natural, loving belief in their offspring—would be of no account.

But she'd never been a tearaway. Consequently, protecting the parents she loved was paramount to her, more important than her own personal happiness, dearer to her than life itself.

Dearer than this life certainly, she thought, automatically making a cradle of her hands to encircle her belly. But as quickly as she'd made the gesture, just as quickly did she force herself to reverse it. I can't give you life, she told the organism within her. I won't give life to something that would dishonour my parents and bring destruction upon my family.

And disgrace upon yourself, Sahlah dear? she heard the implacable voice of her conscience asking in that mocking tone she'd been listening to night after night and week after week. For who is to blame for the position in which you now find yourself if not yourself?

“Whore, slag,” her brother had cursed her in a whisper so violent that she shuddered from the simple memory of having heard it. “You'll pay for this, Sahlah, the way all whores pay.”

She squeezed her eyes closed tightly, as if the complete darkness provided by doing so could somehow rid her mind of memory, her heart of anguish, and her conscience of the enormity of the act in which she had found herself a participant. But doing this only served to shoot flashes of light across the backs of her eyelids, as if an inner being over which she had no control were attempting to illuminate everything that she wished to keep hidden.

She opened her eyes once more. The flashing light continued. Perplexed, she watched it flicker and halt, flicker and halt at the point where the wall of her bedroom met the ceiling. It was a moment before she understood.

Short, short, long, pause. Short, short, long, pause. How many times had she seen that signal in the last year? It meant
Come to me, Sahlah,
It told her that Theo Shaw was outside, using a torch to announce that he was in the orchard.

She closed her eyes against it. Not so very long ago, she would have risen quickly, signaled with her own torch, and slipped quietly from her bedroom. Careful in slippers that muted the sound of her footsteps, she would have slid past her parents’ room after hesitating at their closed door to listen for the reassuring sound of her father's thundering snore and her mother's accompanying, gentle one. She would have descended the stairs and made her way to the kitchen, and from there she would have flown into the night.

Short, short, long, pause. Short, short, long, pause. Even through her eyelids, she could see the light.

She sensed the urgency behind it. It was the same urgency she'd heard in his voice when he'd phoned her the previous evening.

“Sahlah, thank God,” he'd said. “I've phoned you at least five times since I heard about Haytham, but you never answered, and the idea of leaving a message … I didn't dare. For your sake. It was always Yumn who answered. Sahlah, I want to talk to you. We need to talk. We must talk.”

“We've talked,” she told him.

“No! Listen to me. You misunderstood. When I said I wanted to wait, it had nothing to do with how I feel about you.” His words were rapid, hushed. He sounded as if he believed she'd ring off before he had a chance to say everything he'd planned and probably rehearsed. But he also sounded as if he feared being overheard. And she knew by whom.

“My mother needs my help with dinner,” she said. “I can't talk to you now.”

“You think it was because of you, don't you? I saw it in your face. I'm a coward in your eyes because I won't tell my grandmother I'm in love with an Asian. But the fact that I haven't told her has nothing to do with you.
Nothing.
All right? The time just isn't right.”

“I never believed it had anything to do with me,” she corrected him.

But she might not have spoken. She couldn't divert him from the course that he had apparently determined to take, because he hurried on. “She isn't well. Her speech is getting bad. She practically can't walk. She's weak. She needs nursing. So I have to be here for her, Sahlah. And I can't ask you to come to this house—as my wife—only to burden you with taking care of a sick old lady who might die any minute.”

“Yes,” she said. “You told me all of this, Theo.”

“So for God's sake, why won't you give me some time? Now that Haytham's dead, we can be together. We can make it happen. Sahlah, don't you see? Haytham's dying could be something that was meant to be. It could be a sign. It's as if the hand of God is telling us—”

“Haytham was murdered, Theo,” she said. “And I don't think God had anything to do with it.”

He'd been silent at this. Was he shocked? she wondered. Was he horrified? Was he sifting through his thoughts to fabricate something with just the right ring of sincerity: tender words of compassion that offered a condolence which he did not feel? Or was something altogether different going on in his head, a fervid search for a subtle means to portray himself in the most positive light?

Say something, she'd thought. Ask a single question that will serve as a sign.

“How do you know …? The newspaper … When it said the Nez … I don't know why, but I thought he had a heart attack or something, or maybe even a fall. But murdered? Murdered?”

Not, My God, how are you coping with this horror? Not, What can I do to help you? Not, I'm coming to you this instant, Sahlah. I'm taking my rightful place at your side, and we're putting an end to this bloody charade.

“The police told my brother this afternoon,” she'd said.

And another silence ensued. In it, she heard him breathing and she tried to interpret his respiration as she'd tried a moment earlier to gauge the meaning behind the delay between her revelation and his response.

He finally said, “I'm sorry that he's dead. I'm sorry about the
fact
that he's dead. But I can't pretend to be sorry that you won't be marrying at the weekend. Sahlah, I'm going to speak to Gran. I'm going to tell her everything, start to finish. I saw how close I came to losing you, and the moment we have this redevelopment project up and running, she'll be distracted, and I'll tell her.”

“And that's what you want her to be? Distracted? Because if she's distracted she might not notice when you introduce us that my skin is a colour she finds offensive?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Or is it that you don't intend to introduce us at all? Perhaps you hope that her project for the town will take enough out of her to finish her off. And then you'll have her money and your freedom as well.”

“No! Please! Listen to me.”

“I don't have the time,” she'd said, and she'd rung off just as Yumn came out of the sitting room and into the hall where the telephone sat on a stand at the foot of the stairs.

Her sister-in-law had smiled with such specious solicitude that Sahlah knew she'd heard her side of the conversation. “Oh my goodness, that phone hasn't stopped its ringing since word got out about our poor Haytham,” Yumn said. “And how kind it is of all his closest friends, phoning to offer their sympathies to Haytham's pretty young bride. But she wasn't quite a bride, was our little Sahlah? Just a few days short of it. But never mind that. It must soothe her heart to know that so many people had a love for our Haytham that equalled her own.” Yumn's eyes laughed while the rest of her face formed an expression of funereal suitability.

Sahlah turned on her heel and went to her mother, but she heard Yumn's quiet laughter following her. She knows, Sahlah thought, but she doesn't know everything.

Now in her bed, she opened her eyes to see if the torch outside still flickered its message. Short, short, long, pause. Short, short, long, pause. He was waiting.

I'm asleep, Theo, she told him silently. Go home. Go to Gran. It doesn't matter anyway, because even if you spoke—proud of our love and unafraid of your grandmother's reaction to it—I still wouldn't be free to come to you. You're like Rachel at heart, Theo. You see freedom as a simple act of will, a logical conclusion to recognising one's needs and desires and merely working to fulfill them. But I haven't that sort of freedom, and if I try to grasp it, we'll both be ruined. And when people who love find themselves and their fragile world in shambles, love dies quickly and blame takes its place. So go home, Theo. Please. Go home.

She turned away so that her back was to the insistent, blinking message. But she still saw it, reflected in the mirror across the room. And it reminded her: of flying through the orchard to meet him, of hands reaching out for her, of lips and mouth on her neck and shoulders, of fingers sliding into her hair.

And of other things: the feverish anticipation of meeting, the secrecy, the exchange of clothing with Rachel so as to move camouflaged to the Balford Marina after dark, the hushed trip across the Wade when the tide was high—using not the Shaws’ cabin cruiser but a small Zodiac raft pinched for a few hours from the marina boat hire, sitting in a shallow depression on Horsey Island by the fire he'd built and fed with driftwood, feeling the wind come up through the tall sea grasses and hearing it sough through the wild lavender and the sea purlane.

He'd brought his radio, and with the music as backdrop they'd begun by talking. They'd said all those things that time and the propriety of the workplace made forbidden to them, marvelling to discover how much there actually was to talk about in getting to know another person. But neither of them had been wise enough to see how easily talking to someone led to loving someone. And neither of them had realised how loving someone led to a longing the denial of which only made more intense.

Despite everything that had occurred in the last few months and the last few days, Sahlah felt that longing still. But she wouldn't go to him. She couldn't face him. She had no wish to see any expression upon his face that might—that doubtless would—communicate his fear, his pain, or his revulsion.

We all do what we must do, Theo, she told him silently. And, no matter our wishes otherwise, none of us can change the path that another chooses or has thrust upon him.

W
HEN BARBARA ARRIVED
at the incident room the next morning, Emily Barlow was on the phone, completing a conversation with enough animosity attached to it that Barbara concluded she had to be speaking to her superintendent.

“No, Don,” she was saying. “I don't read minds. So I won't know what the Pakistanis have planned until they do it. … And where am I supposed to dig up an Asian for that sort of undercover work? … That's assuming that New Scotland Yard has nothing better to do than send us an officer to infiltrate an organisation which—as far as any of us have been able to ascertain—has never committed a single bloody crime. … That's
what
I'm trying to dig up, for God's sake. … Yes, I could do. If you'd be good enough to give me a chance to accomplish something other than yammering on the blower with you twice a day.”

Barbara could just make out a man's angry shouting on the other end of the line. Emily rolled her eyes and listened without comment until the superintendent abruptly ended their conversation by slamming the receiver into its cradle at his end. Barbara heard the
crack
of the two pieces meeting. Emily cursed as the sound struck her ear.

“He's had three town councillors in his office this morning,” Emily explained. “They've got word of a protest set for midday on the High Street, and they're worried about the shops … what shops there are. Not that anyone has anything concrete to report to us, mind you.”

She went on with what she'd apparently been doing prior to Barbara's arrival and Ferguson's phone call: hanging a blue pillowcase over the uncurtained window of her office, perhaps with the intention of cutting down on the day's coming heat. She cast a look over her shoulder as she used the base of a stapler to pound drawing pins through the pillowcase and into the wall. She said, “Decent job with the face paint, Barb. You finally look human.”

“Thanks. I don't know how long I can keep it up, but I give you the fact that it does do something to hide the bruises. I thought I could be quicker about it, though. Sorry to have missed the morning briefing.”

Emily waved the apology off. Barbara was, she told her, not on the time sheet. This was supposed to be her holiday. Her assistance with the Pakistanis was a bonus to Balford's CID. No one expected her to skin her nose on the grindstone doing anything else.

The DCI stepped down from her chair and continued with the drawing pins and the stapler base, lower down on the pillowcase. She'd been to the news agent's on Carnarvon Road in Clacton, she informed Barbara. She'd spent quarter of an hour there on the previous night, having a chat with the owner. He himself ran the shop, and when she'd quizzed him about the Pakistani customer who used the phone to make calls to one Haytham Querashi, he'd responded at once with “That'd be Mr. Kumhar, that one. He i'n't in some sort of trouble, is he?”