Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(127)
“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.
WHEN 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.”