Deception on His Mind (77 page)

Absolutely
not, Agatha thought. Some peabrained tart with her claws into Theo was exactly what she did
not
need. What she needed was escape from this place, along with peace and quiet to gather her strength for the upcoming battle of convalescence. Peace and quiet were scarce commodities when one was lying in a hospital bed. In a hospital bed, what one received were probings, proddings, prickings, and pity. And she wanted none of that.

Pity was the worst. She hated pity. She herself felt it for no one, and she wanted no one to feel it for her. She'd rather experience others’ aversion—which was what she'd felt for those doddering bits of human detritus on the Esplanade—than find herself a paralysed pilgarlic, the sort of person people spoke
about
rather than
to,
when they were in her presence. Aversion implied fear and horror, which could be used ultimately to one's own advantage. Pity implied the other's superiority, which Agatha had never had to face in her life. And she would not face it now, she swore.

If she allowed anyone to gain ascendancy over her, she would be defeated. Defeated, she would see her plans for Balford's future quashed. Nothing would remain of Agatha Shaw upon her death save whatever memories her grandson had and chose—when the time was right, of course—to pass on to future generations. But how could she rely upon Theo's devotion to her memory? He'd have other responsibilities then. So if her memory was to be established, if her life was to be given meaning before that life ended, she would have to do it herself. She would have to put the pieces and the players in position. Which was what she'd been in the course of doing when the damnable stroke supervened, knocking her plans awry.

Now, if she wasn't careful, that greasy, unwashed Malik monster would make his move. He'd done as much when her council seat had to be filled, sliding in to replace her, like a water moccasin slithering into a river. How much more he'd do once he got the word that she'd been laid out by another stroke.

Balford would be looking at more than Falak Dedar Park if Akram Malik had the opportunity to set his plans in motion. Before the town knew what was happening to it, he'd have a minaret in the market square, a gaudy mosque in place of their lovely St. John's Church, and nasty-smelling tandoor cookeries on every street corner from the Balford Road right down to the sea. And then the real invasion would come: scores of Pakis with their scores of lice-ridden children, half of them on the dole, the other half illegal, and all of them polluting the culture and the traditions among which they'd chosen to live.

They want a better life, Gran
was how Theo would explain it to her. But she didn't need his soft-hearted and wrong-headed explication of what was so patently obvious. They wanted
her
life. They wanted the life of every English man, woman, and child. And they would not rest, desist, or retreat until they had it.

Especially Akram, Agatha thought. That bloody, nasty, miserable Akram. He spun a treacly line about friendship and brotherhood. He even acted the part of community conciliator with his ludicrous Gentlemen's Cooperative. But the talk and the actions didn't fool Agatha. They were subterfuges. They were ways to lull the sheeplike populace into a sense that the meadow was clear and safe for their grazing and not scrutinised every second by a pack of wolves.

But she would show him that she was wise to his ways. She would rise from this hospital bed like Lazarus, every inch of her an indomitable force that Akram Malik—with all his plans—could not hope to conquer.

Agatha realised that Sister Jacobs had gone. The odour of spice had dissipated, leaving in its place the scent of medicines, of plastic tubing, of her body's secretions, of the polish on the floor.

She opened her eyes. Her mattress was raised so that she lay at a modest angle rather than flat on her back. This was a marked improvement over the hours immediately following her stroke. Then, she'd had nothing but blurry acoustic ceiling tiles to watch. Now, at least, despite the fact that the sound had been muted and Sister Jacobs had forgotten to increase it upon her departure, she at least had the television to watch. A film was showing in which a frantic far-too-pretty-to-be-believable husband wheeled his hugely but still attractively pregnant even-prettier wife into a casualty ward for the delivery of their child. It was supposed to be a comedy, Agatha guessed, from their slapstick behaviour and the expressions on their faces. What a risible thought that was indeed. No woman
she
knew had ever found the act of childbirth a laughing matter.

With an effort, she managed to turn her head an inch, which was enough for her to see the window. Through it, a patch of sky the washed-out colour of a kestrel's tail told her that the heat was continuing unabated. She couldn't feel the effects of the outside temperature, however, as the hospital was one of the few buildings within twenty miles of Balford that was actually air conditioned. She would have celebrated that fact …had she only been at the hospital to visit someone, someone deserving of disaster, for instance. Indeed, she could have named twenty people more deserving of this disaster than she. She thought about this point. She began to name those twenty people. She entertained herself by assigning each one of them his own personal, private torment.

So she was unaware at first that someone had entered her room. A gentle cough told her that she had a visitor.

A quiet voice said, “No, do not move, Mrs. Shaw. Let me, please.” Footsteps came round the bed, and suddenly she was face-to-face with her soul's black adversary: Akram Malik.

She made an inarticulate noise, which was meant to be “What do you want? Get out. Get
out.
I'll have none of your oleaginous gloating,” but which—strangled by the convoluted messages her damaged brain was sending to her vocal cords—came out only as a garbled mishmosh of incomprehensible groans and howls.

Akram gazed at her intently. Doubtless, she thought, he was taking inventory of her condition, trying to assess how far he might have to push her so that she'd topple into her grave. That would clear the way for him to actuate his insidious plans for Balford-le-Nez. She said, “I'm not about to die, Mr. Wog. So wipe that hypocritical look of sympathy off your face. You have about as much sympathy for me as I'd have for you in similar circumstances.” But what she emitted from her mouth was the rising and falling of sounds alone, with nothing to separate them or give them definition.

Akram looked round the room and walked out of her line of sight for a moment. Panic-stricken, she thought he intended to switch off the machines that whirred and softly beeped just behind her head. But he returned with a chair, and he sat.

He was carrying, she saw, a bunch of flowers. He laid these on the table next to the bed. He removed from his pocket a small leather book. He set it upon his knee but didn't open it. He lowered his head and began to murmur a stream of words in his Pakistani mumbo-jumbo.

Where
was Theo? Agatha thought desperately. Why wasn't he here to spare her from this? Akram Malik's voice was soft enough, but she wasn't about to be deceived by its tone. He was probably putting a hex on her. He was working black magic, engaging in voodoo, or doing whatever his sort did to defeat their enemies.

She wasn't about to put up with it. She said, “Stop that muttering! Stop it at once! And get out of this room immediately!” But her form of language was as indecipherable to him as his was to her, and his only response was to lay a brown hand upon her bed, as if he were extending her a blessing that she did not need of him, much less want.

Finally, he raised his head again. He began to speak once more, only this time she understood him perfectly. And his voice was so compelling that she found she could do nothing but hold his gaze with her own. She thought dimly, Basilisks are just like this, they impale you with their steely eyes. But still she didn't look away.

He said, “I heard only this morning of your trouble, Mrs. Shaw. How deeply sorry I am. My daughter and I wished to pay our respects. She waits in the corridor—my Sahlah—because we were advised that only one of us at a time could come into your room.” He removed his hand from her bed and laid it on the leather book on his knee. He smiled and went on. “I thought of reading from the holy book. Sometimes I find my own words inadequate for prayer. But when I saw you, the words came of themselves without any effort. At one time, I would have wondered about that and sought a greater meaning from it. But I've long since come to accept that the ways of Allah are most often beyond my comprehension.”

What
was
he on about? Agatha wondered. He'd come to gloat—there could be no mistake about
that
—so why didn't he get to the point and have done with it?

“Your grandson Theo has been a source of considerable help to me during this last year. Perhaps you know this. And for some time I've contemplated the best manner in which I could repay him for his kindness to my family.”

“Theo?” she said. “Not Theo. My Theo. Don't hurt Theo, you nasty man.”

He interpreted this conglomeration of sounds, it seemed, as her expression of a need for clarification. He said, “He brought Malik's Mustards into the present and into the future with his computers. And he was the first to stand by my side and involve himself in the Gentlemen's Cooperative. He has a vision not unlike my own, your grandson Theo. And I see in your current misfortune a way that I can finally reciprocate his acts of friendship.”

In your current misfortune,
Agatha repeated in her mind. And she knew with certainty what he was about. Now was the moment he meant to sweep in like a raptor, making the kill. Just like a hawk, he'd chosen his time with an eye for the damage it could do to the victim. And she was without a single defence.

Damn his gloating, she thought. Damn his slimy, unctuous ways. Damn his pretence of saintliness. And damn most of all—

“I have long known your dream to redevelop our town and to restore it to its former beauty. Having been struck down a second time now, you must have great fears of your dream coming to nothing.” He put his hand back on the bed again. But this time it covered her own. Not her good hand, she noticed, which she could have flinched from him. But her talon-hand that was incapable of movement. Clever of him, she thought bitterly. How wise to emphasise her infirmities before laying out his plans to destroy her.

He said, “I intend to give Theo my full support, Mrs. Shaw. The redevelopment of Balford-le-Nez shall proceed as you planned it. To the last detail and to your design, your grandson and I will make this town come to life once more. And that's what I've come to tell you. Rest easily now and concentrate your efforts on returning to health so that you may live many years among us.”

And then he bent and touched his lips to her deformed, ugly, crippled hand.

And having no language in which to reply, she wondered how on earth she was going to be able to tell someone to wash it for her.

B
ARBARA WAS TRYING
like the devil to keep her mind where it belonged, which was on the investigation. But it kept drifting off insistently, bounding in the direction of London, specifically to Chalk Farm and Eton Villas, and even more specifically to the ground floor flat of a yellow converted Edwardian house. At first she told herself that there had to be a mistake. Either there were two Taymullah Azhars in London, or the information supplied by the Met's SOU was inaccurate, incomplete, or out-and-out false. But the key facts on the Asian in question, supplied by London Intelligence, were among the facts that she already knew about Azhar. And when she read the report herself—which she managed to do upon her return to Emily's office with the DCI—she had to admit that the description being supplied by London was identical in many respects to the picture she already had. The home address of the subject was the same; the age of the child was correct; the fact that the child's mother was not in the picture also matched with what the report presented. Azhar was identified as a professor of microbiology, which Barbara knew he was, and his involvement with a London group called Asian Legal Awareness and Aid was certainly consistent with the depth of knowledge that he'd demonstrated over the past several days. So the Azhar in the London report had to be the Azhar she knew. Only the Azhar she knew didn't appear to be the Azhar she thought she knew. Which brought everything about him into question, especially his standing in the investigation.

Christ, she thought. She needed a fag. She was desperate for one. And while Emily groused about taking yet another tedious and time-consuming phone call from her superintendent, Barbara dashed into the lavatory and lit up hungrily, sucking on the tube of tobacco like a scuba diver running out of air.

Suddenly, a great deal about Taymullah Azhar and his daughter began to make sense to her. Among the puzzle pieces beginning to take on definition were Hadiyyah's eighth birthday party to which Barbara had been invited as the only guest; a mother ostensibly gone to Ontario but never revealing her whereabouts with so much as a postcard to her only child; a father who never spoke the word
wife
and never spoke at all of the mother of his child unless the subject was forced upon him; an absence of evidence in the ground floor flat that an adult woman had lived there anytime recently. No emery board or nail polish left lying about, no discarded handbag, no sewing, no knitting, no
Vogue
or
Elle,
no remnants of a hobby like watercolour painting or flower arranging. Had Angela Weston—mother of Hadiyyah—ever lived in Eton Villas at all? Barbara wondered. And if she hadn't, exactly how long did Azhar expect to keep up the pretence of Mummy-on-holiday in place of the truth, which appeared to be Mummy-very-much-on-the-run?

Barbara wandered to the lavatory window and gazed at the small car park below. DC Billy Honigman was escorting a freshly washed, groomed, and dressed Fahd Kumhar to a panda car. As she watched, they were approached by Azhar. He spoke to Kumhar. Honigman warned him off. The detective constable stowed his passenger in the back seat of his vehicle. Azhar walked to his own car, and when Honigman took off, he followed, making no secret that he was doing so. He'd come to escort Fahd Kumhar home, as promised. Obviously, that's what he intended to do.