Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(123)

Rachel attempted to step past her mother. Connie caught her arm. “We aren't finished, you and me, Missy-miss.”

“What is it, Trev?” Rachel asked.

“You know this bloke?” Connie demanded incredulously.

“Obviously,” Rachel replied. “Since he asked for me, I probably know him.”

“C'n you talk for a minute?” Trevor asked. He shifted his weight, and his boots—unlaced and unpolished—scraped against the concrete front step. “I know it's late, but I was hoping … Rachel, I need to talk to you, okay? Private.”

“About what?” Connie demanded hotly. “What've you got to say to Rachel Lynn that you can't say in front of her mum? And who are you anyways? Why've I never seen you before if you and Rachel know each other good enough for you to come calling at quarter past eleven?”

Trevor looked from Rachel to her mother. He looked back to Rachel again. His expression said clearly, What d'you want her to know? And Connie read it like a psychic.

She jerked Rachel's arm. “This is what you been messing with? This is what you snuck up round the beach huts for? You been lowering yourself to do the job with a wally no better than yesterday's rubbish?”

Trevor's lips jerked as if he were stopping himself from responding. Rachel did it for him.

“Shut up, Mum.” She twisted out of her mother's grasp and stepped onto the porch.

“You get back in this house,” her mother said.

“And you stop talking like I was a baby,” Rachel retorted. “Trevor's my friend and if he wants to see me, I mean to know why. And Sahlah's my friend and if I want to help her, I'm going to do it. And no policeman—and you neither, Mum—is going to make me do anything else.”

Connie gaped at her. “Rachel Lynn Winfield!”

“Yeah, that's my name,” Rachel said. She heard her mother gasp at the sheer audacity of her reply. She took Trevor's arm and led off the front step, in the direction of the street where he'd left his old motor-scooter. “We can finish our talking once I talk to Trevor,” she called back to her mother.

A slammed door was the answer.

“Sorry,” she said to Trevor, stopping midway down the path. “Mum's in a state. The cops came round to the shop this morning and I scarpered without telling her why.”

“They came to me, too,” he said. “Some sergeant bird. Sort of fat with her face all …” He seemed to recall whose presence he was in and what a remark about a banged-up face might mean to her. “Anyway,” he said, driving a hand into the pocket of his jeans. “The cops came. Someone at Malik's told them I'd got the sack from Querashi.”

“That's rough,” Rachel said. “But they don't think you did anything, right? I mean, what would've been the point? It's not like Mr. Malik didn't know why Haytham sacked you.”

Trevor pulled out his keys. He played them through his fingers. To Rachel's eyes, he looked nervous, but until he went on, she didn't know why.

“Yeah, but why I got the sack's not really the point,” he said. “The fact of getting the sack is. ‘S far as they see it, I could've given him the chop to get revenge. That's what they're thinking. Besides, I'm white. He was coloured. A Paki. And with the rest of that lot making noise about hate crimes …” He lifted his arm and wiped it across his brow. “Fucking hot,” he said. “Whew. You'd think it'd cool off at night.”

Rachel watched him curiously. She'd never seen Trevor Ruddock nervous. He always acted like he knew what he wanted and getting it was only a matter of doing what it took. For sure, he'd been that way with her all right: smooth moving and easy talking. Definitely and positively easy talking. But now … This was a Trevor she'd not seen before, not even at school, where he'd once stood out among the pupils as a hopeless yob with limited brainpower and a future to match. Even then, he'd acted sure of himself. What he couldn't solve mentally, he'd solved with his fists.

“Yeah. It's hot,” she said carefully, waiting to see what would unfold between them. It couldn't be what usually unfolded between them. Not here with her mother steaming behind the lounge curtains and the nearby neighbours in the congested street only too willing to have a peep and a listen through their open windows. “I can't remember when it's ever gone on like this, day after day, can you? I read a bit in the paper about global warming. Maybe this's it, huh?”

But it was evident that Trevor had not come to speak about science, atmospheric or otherwise. He shoved his keys back into his pocket, gnawed on his thumb, and cast a quick glance over his shoulder to the lounge window.

“Listen,” he said. He looked at the skin he'd bitten. He rubbed the thumb against the front of his T-shirt. “Look'ere, Rachel, c'n we talk for a sec?”

“We're talking.”

He jerked his head towards the street. “I mean … c'n we walk?” He headed to the pavement. He stopped at the rusty front gate and indicated—again with his head—that he wished her to follow.

She did so, saying, “Aren't you s'posed to be at work, Trev?”

“Yeah. I'm going. But I got to talk to you first.” He waited for her to join him. But he walked no farther than his motorscooter, and he straddled it, planting his bum on the seat. He gave his attention to the handlebars, and his hands twisted round them as he continued. “Lookit, you and me … I mean … last Friday night. When Querashi got chopped. We was together. You remember that, right?”