Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(109)

“I got to talk to you,” she said without preamble. “It's real important, Theo.”

Theo looked at the colourful clown-face clock that was mounted above the arcade's doors. Rachel was afraid that he was going to say he had to be somewhere, so she went hurriedly on.

“It's about Sahlah.”

“Sahlah?” His voice was careful, non-committal.

“I know about the two of you. Sahlah and I don't have any secrets. We're best friends, you know. Been best friends since we were little.”

“Did she send you to me?”

Rachel was glad to hear that he sounded eager, and she interpreted this as another positive sign. Clearly, he wanted to be with her friend. And if that was so, Rachel knew her job was going to be easier than she'd anticipated.

“Not exactly.” Rachel looked around. It wouldn't do for them to be seen together, especially if the police were lurking nearby. She was already in enough trouble as it was, what with lying to the woman detective that morning and then doing a bunk from the shop. Her position would only worsen if she was caught talking to Theo while he had that gold bracelet on his wrist. “C'n we talk somewhere? I mean, somewheres not so out in the open? It's real important.”

Theo's eyebrows drew together, but he cooperated well enough, gesturing towards the side of the Lobster Hut and the BMW parked near it. Rachel trailed him to the car, keeping a nervous eye towards the Marine Parade, half in the expectation that—her luck being what it was: rotten—she stood a fair to even chance of being seen by someone before they got to safety.

But that didn't happen. Theo disarmed the car's security system and slipped inside, unlocking the passenger door for her. She glanced about and then slid in, wincing as the hot upholstery singed her flesh.

Theo lowered the windows. He turned in his seat. “What is it?”

“You got to get rid of that bracelet,” Rachel blurted out. “The police know Sahlah bought it for you.”

He kept his eyes on her, but his right hand reached for his left wrist and, as if unconsciously, encircled the gold band. “What do you have to do with all this?”

It was the one question she'd have preferred not to hear. She'd rather have had him say, “Bloody hell. Absolutely,” and remove the bracelet without asking anything at all. It wouldn't have been at all disagreeable had he tossed the bracelet into the nearest rubbish bin, which was ten feet away and buzzing with flies.

“Rachel?” he prompted when she didn't reply. “What do you have to do with this? Did Sahlah send you?”

“That's the second time you asked me that.” Even to her own ears, Rachel's voice sounded weak. “You're thinking of her all the time, aren't you?”

“What's going on? The police have already been here, by the way, some heavyset woman with a roughed-up face. She had the bracelet off me for a look.”

“You didn't give it to her, Theo!”

“What else could I do? I didn't know why she wanted it till she'd already had a good look at it and told me she was searching for a similar one that Sahlah claimed to have thrown from the pier.”

“Oh no,” Rachel whispered.

“But the way I see it, she can't know they're one and the same,” Theo went on. “Anyone can own a gold bracelet. She can't prove anything by the fact that I have one.”

“But she knows,” Rachel said miserably. “What's written inside it. She knows. And if she saw the engraving inside of yours …” She saw that there was still a margin of hope, and she went on eagerly. “Except maybe she didn't look inside the band?”

But Theo's expression told her that the Scotland Yard detective had done just that, reading those incriminating words and adding them to the information she'd already gleaned, first from Rachel and then from Sahlah. “I should've phoned,” Rachel moaned. “You and Sahlah. I should've phoned. Only I couldn't because Mum was there and she wanted to know what was going on and I had to get out of the shop directly the policewoman left.”

Theo had halfway turned in his seat to face her, but now he looked away to the Pier Approach, that concrete promenade that ran along the strand and separated it from the three rows of beach huts that climbed the hill. He didn't appear so much panicked as Rachel had suspected he might be, all things considered. He looked confused.

He said, “I don't understand how they traced it so quickly to me. Sahlah wouldn't have, …” Then he turned back to her and his voice sounded eager once again, as if he'd drawn a conclusion that painted a picture he'd long hoped to see. “Did Sahlah tell them she gave it to me? But no, she couldn't have if she told them she threw it off the pier. So how …?”

There was only one way, of course, and he appeared to work that out soon enough, because he said, “That police detective talked to you? How did she end up talking to you?”

“Because …” How could she describe her actions in a way that he would understand, when she didn't really understand them herself? Oh, Sahlah had her own interpretation of what Rachel had meant in giving the jewellery receipt to Haytham, but Sahlah wasn't right. Rachel hadn't meant harm. She'd meant only the best: Haytham questioning his fianceé the way any man might and the truth about Sahlah's love for Theo coming out as a result; Sahlah being saved from a marriage that she didn't want; and Sahlah being free to marry where she chose, whom she chose, when she chose. Or if it was also her choice, Sahlah not marrying at all. “Haytham had the receipt,” Rachel said. “The police found it with his belongings. They're tracking down everything connected with him. So they came to the shop and asked about it.”