Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(10)
Barbara gazed out the door, in the direction Hadiyyah and her father had taken. She thought of Hadiyyah's bright smile and the plaits that twitched like living things when she skipped. Finally, she mashed out her cigarette among the others.
She went to the clothes cupboard and pulled her haversack off the shelf.
ACHEL WINFIELD DECIDED TO CLOSE THE SHOP TEN minutes early, and she didn't feel one twinge of guilt. Her mother had left at half past three—it was the day of her weekly “do” at the Sea and Sun Unisex Hairstylists—and although she'd left firm instructions about what constituted doing one's duty at the till, for the past thirty minutes not a single customer or even a browser had come inside.
Rachel had more important things to attend to than watching the second hand of the wall clock slowly circumnavigate the dial. So after carefully checking to make sure that the display cases were locked, she bolted the front door. She flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and went to the stockroom, where she took from its hiding place behind the rubbish bins a perkily wrapped box that she'd done her best to keep from her mother's eyes. Tucking it under her arm, she ducked into the alley, where she kept her bike. The box she placed lovingly in the basket. Then she guided the bike round the corner to the front of the shop and took a moment to double check the door.
There'd be hell to pay if she was caught leaving early. There'd be permanent damnation if she not only left early but also left without locking up properly. The bolt was old and sometimes it stuck. Wisdom called for a quick, reassuring, and foiled attempt to get inside. Good, Rachel thought when the door didn't budge. She was in the clear.
Although it was late in the day, the heat still hadn't abated. The regular North Sea wind—which made the town of Balford-le-Nez so nasty in the depths of winter—wasn't gusting at all this afternoon. Nor had it gusted for the last two weeks. It wasn't even sighing enough to stir the bunting that hung dispiritedly across the High Street.
Beneath those crisscrossing red and blue triangles of manufactured gaiety, Rachel pedalled determinedly southward, heading for the upmarket part of the town. She wasn't going home. Had she been doing so, she would have been riding in the opposite direction, along the seafront and beyond the industrial estate to the three truncated streets of terraced houses where she and her mother lived in frequently strained good will. Rather, she was heading to the home of her oldest, best, and only true friend, upon whose life recent tragedy had fallen.
Must remember to be sympathetic, Rachel told herself sternly as she pedalled. Must remember not to mention Clifftop Snuggeries before I tell her how bad I feel. Although I don't feel bad like I ought to feel, do I? I feel like a door's been opened wide and I want to rush through it while I got the chance.
Rachel hiked her skirt above her knees to make the pedalling easier and to keep the thin, diaphanous material from becoming snagged in the greasy chain. She'd known she was going to pay a call on Sahlah Malik when she'd dressed this morning, so she probably should have worn something more suitable to a long bicycle ride in the late afternoon. But the length of the skirt she'd chosen favoured her best features—her ankles—and Rachel was a young woman who knew that, having been given so little to work with in the looks department by the Almighty, she had to accentuate what positives she had. So she regularly wore skirts and shoes that flattered her ankles, always hoping the casual gazes that fell upon her would overlook the mess of her face.
She'd heard every word in the book applied to her in her twenty years: Homely, arse-ugly, bagged out, and grotty were the usual adjectives. Cow, mare, and sow were the nouns of choice. She'd been the butt of jokes and of ceaseless bullying throughout her schooldays, and she'd early learned that for people like her, life presented three clear choices: cry, run away, or learn to fight back. She'd chosen the third, and it was her willingness to take on all comers that had won her Sahlah Malik as a friend.
Her best friend, Rachel thought. Through thick and through thin. They'd had the thick of it since they were nine years old. For the past two months, they'd had the thin. But things were going to change for the two of them. Rachel was nothing if not certain of that.
She teetered up the slope of Church Road, past St. John's graveyard where the flowers drooped from their stalks in the heat. She followed the curve by the railway station's grime-soaked walls and panted up the sharp acclivity that led to the better neighbourhoods with their rolling lawns and leafy streets. This section of the town was called The Avenues, and Sahlah Malik's family lived on Second, a five-minute walk from the Greensward, that stretch of perfect lawn beneath which two rows of beach huts perched above the sea.
The Maliks’ house was one of the grander residences in the neighbourhood, with wide lawns, gardens, and a small pear orchard where Rachel and Sahlah had shared childhood secrets. It was very English: tile-cladded, half-timbered, and diamond-paned in the fashion of another century. Its worn front door was studded with iron, its multiple chimneys were reminiscent of Hampton Court, and its detached garage—tucked at the back of the property—resembled a medieval fortress. To look at it, one would never guess that it was less than ten years old. And while one might conclude that its inhabitants were among the wealthiest people in Balford, one would also never guess that those same inhabitants took their origin in Asia, in a land of mujahidin, mosques, and figh.
Rachel's face was beaded with perspiration by the time she bumped over the kerb and cracked open the front gate. She gave a sigh of pure pleasure as she passed beneath the fresh-scented coolness of a willow tree. She stayed there a moment, telling herself it was to catch her breath but all the while knowing it was also to plan. In her twenty years, she'd never gone to the home of any recently bereaved who'd been dealt her bereavement in such a fashion as had her friend. And now she had to concentrate on what to say, how to say it, what to do, and how to act. The last mistake she wanted to make was to put a foot wrong with Sahlah.