Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(160)

Christ, she thought, how she loathed that bloody Asian. She'd loathed him since she'd first come across him as a teenager, the pride of his parents with his future laid out, one into which he only needed to step in order to succeed. While the rest of the world had to fight their way through life, Muhannad Malik had life handed to him. But did he realise this fact? Did he give it the barest nod of acknowledgement? Of course not. Because people who had their lives presented to them on a platinum platter never had the sort of perspective that allowed them to recognise how bloody lucky they were.

There he was, with his Rolex watch and his signet ring, with his snakeskin goddamn boots and the serpentine vein of a hosepipe gold chain just visible beneath his perfect, ironed T-shirt. There he was with his classic car and his Oakley sunglasses and a body that announced precisely how much leisure sodding time he possessed to see to its daily sculpted transcendence. Yet all he could talk about was how rotten he'd had it, how lousy life was, how rife with bias and hatred and prejudice his privileged little existence had been.

Christ, but she hated him, and she had reason to hate him. For the last ten years he'd been looking for racial bias under every pebble he found in his path, and she was sick to death, not only of him but of having to mince every word, every question, and every natural inclination when she was round him. When the police found themselves in a position of having to mollify the very people they suspected—and she'd suspected Muhannad of nearly every infraction of the law that had occurred on her patch in Balford since the day she'd met him—then they were playing the game at a disadvantage. As she was now.

She found the situation intolerable, and as she worked the wet paper towels against her steamy skin, she cursed Superintendent Ferguson, Muhannad Malik, the death on the Nez, and the entire Asian community for good measure. She couldn't believe she'd actually given in to Barbara's suggestion and allowed the Pakistanis to see Kumhar. She should have tossed them into the street on their ears. Better yet, she should have arrested Taymullah Azhar the moment she'd seen him loitering outside the station when she'd brought in Kumhar. He'd been quick enough to inform his bloody cousin that the cops had an Asian suspect in lock-up. Emily had no doubt that it was he who'd rushed off to give Muhannad and his cohorts the word. Who was he anyway, this Azhar? What bloody right did he have to come into town and challenge the police like some pricey barrister, which he decidedly was not?

It was the question of who he was—and the aggravation at being bested by him—that sent Emily back to her office. Until that moment, she'd forgotten the request she'd made of the Intelligence Unit, seeking information about the unknown Pakistani who'd entered their midst on Sunday afternoon. Clacton Intelligence had been in possession of that request for more than forty-eight hours. While that wasn't a great deal of time in intelligence work, it was enough to gather whatever information had been amassed by SOU in London, if Taymullah Azhar had ever attracted the attention of the silent service.

The plain of her desk had become hilled with files, documents, and reports. It took her a good ten minutes to sort through them all. Nothing had yet come in on Azhar.

Damn. She wanted something on the man, something to slide into their verbal sparring, even a minor fact or an insignificant secret whose revelation by either herself or Barbara Havers would tell him that he wasn't as secure in the police presence as he apparently felt himself to be. That kind of juicy detail about an adversary worked to wrest the upper hand away from him. And while she knew she still had the upper hand—indeed, information was hers to dole out or withhold as she saw fit—she wanted the Asians to realise that she had it. She picked up the phone and rang Intelligence.


EMILY WAS ON the phone when Barbara joined her. The fact that she was engaged in a personal call was made evident by the timbre of her voice. She sat at her desk with her forehead cradled by one of her hands while the other held the receiver to her ear and she said, “Believe me, I could do with that twice over, tonight. Three times even,” and then she laughed. It was a throaty laugh, punctuation within the sort of conversation that lovers had. Emily wouldn't, Barbara thought, be talking to her super. “What time?” she was saying. “Hmmm. I could manage that. But won't she wonder? …Gary, no one walks a dog for three hours.” And to whatever remark Gary made in reply, she laughed once more. She shifted position in her chair.

Barbara side-stepped, ready to duck out of the office before the DCI raised her head. But that was movement enough. Emily looked up and lifted her hand to keep Barbara where she was, one finger indicating that she was bringing the conversation to a close.

“All right, yes,” she said. “Half past ten. And don't forget the condoms this time.”

Without embarrassment, she rang off. She said to Barbara, “What did you give them?”

Barbara examined her, knowing full well that her face was flaming. For her part, Emily was all business. Nothing in her expression even began to suggest that she'd just been arranging an assignation with a married man for later in the evening. Yet surely that was what she'd been doing: lining up for some energetic mattress activity the very same bloke whom she'd given the brush on Sunday night. She might have been setting up a dental appointment.

Emily appeared to read Barbara with an excruciating precision. She said, “Fags, booze, ulcers, migraines, psychosomatic illness, or promiscuity. Choose your poison, Barb. I chose mine.”