Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(166)
Kreuzhage assured her he would do what he could. She rang off. She spent a moment just sitting on the bed, letting its hideous counterpane soak a bit of the sweat from the backs of her legs. When she felt she had the energy to do so, she went to the shower and stood under it, too hot even to entertain herself with her usual medley of rock ‘n’ roll oldies.
FTER DINNER, BARBARA ENDED UP ON THE PLEASURE pier solely because Hadiyyah had extended the invitation. In her usual impulsive and generous manner, the little girl had announced, “You must come with us, Barbara. We're going to the pier, Dad and I, and you must come as well. She must, Dad, mustn't she? It'll be ever so much more fun if she comes.” She'd craned her neck to see her father, who listened to the invitation soberly. The final diners of the evening, they were finishing their sorbet-du-jour. It was lemon this night, and they'd had to consume it in a rush before the heat reduced it to slop. Hadiyyah had waved her spoon in the air as she spoke, sending lemon droplets across the table cloth.
Barbara would have preferred a quiet sit on the lawn above the sea. Mingling with the doubtlessly odoriferous pleasure seekers on the Balford pier and building up a new patina of sweat were activities she could have done without. But Azhar had been preoccupied throughout dinner, allowing his daughter to carry the conversation happily in whatever direction she chose, and at any length. This behaviour was so unlike him that Barbara knew it had to be connected with Muhannad Malik's departure from the Burnt House and whatever had been said between the two men in the car park prior to that departure. So she was willing to accompany Azhar and his daughter to the pleasure pier if for no other reason than to prise from the man an account of what had passed between him and his cousin.
Thus she found herself on the pier at ten o'clock, jostled by the sunburned masses, her nostrils assailed by the mixed odours of lotions, sweat, frying whitebait, sizzling hamburgers, and popping corn. The noise was even more deafening at night than during the day, possibly because the carnies grew more desperate for custom as the closing hour approached. So they shouted for attention, attempting to beguile passers-by into tossing balls or spinning wheels or shooting ducks, and in order to be heard they had to match the volume of the calliope music from the roundabout and the whistles, bells, pops, and mechanical explosions of the games in the arcade.
It was to the arcade that Hadiyyah led them, having each of them by the hand. “What fun, what fun!” she sang out, and she seemed oblivious of the fact that what passed between her father and her friend was mostly silence.
On every side of them, a glistening throng played video and pin ball machines in the din. Small children raced among the fruit machines, shouting and laughing. A crowd of adolescent boys drove virtual reality race cars to the accompaniment of admiring shrieks from teenaged girls. A line of elderly women sat at a counter playing bingo, with the numbers being boomed out on a microphone that was wielded by a clown-suited man whose make-up had long since suffered the worst it could suffer from the relentless heat. No one in the arcade, Barbara noted, was Asian.
For her part, Hadiyyah seemed unmindful of everything: the noise, the smell, the temperature, the crowd, and being one of two parts of a distinct minority. She released her grip on her father and Barbara and whirled about, dancing from foot to foot. She crowed, “The crane grab! Dad, the crane grab!” and dashed in the direction of that particular game.
When they caught up with her, she was pressed against the front of the machine, her nose to the glass as she studied its contents. It was filled with stuffed animals: pink pigs, spotted cows, giraffes, lions, and elephants. “Giraffe, giraffe,” she sang out, poking her finger at the animal she wanted her father to try to win for her. “Dad, c'n you do the giraffe for me? He's ever so good at the crane grab, Barbara. Just wait till you see.” She spun on one foot and grabbed her father's arm. She urged him forward to the machine. “And when you win a giraffe for me, you must win something for Barbara next. An elephant, Dad. Remember the elephant you won for Mummy? Remember how I cut out its stuffing? I didn't mean to, Barbara. I was only five years old, and I was playing vets with it. It needed an operation, but it lost its stuffing when I cut it open. Mummy was in such a rage about that. She shouted and shouted. Didn't she, Dad?”
Azhar didn't answer. Instead, he applied his attention and his efforts to the crane grab. He did it as Barbara assumed he would do it: with the sort of solemn concentration that he gave to everything. He missed on the first try as well as the second. But neither he nor his daughter lost heart. “He's just practising,” Hadiyyah informed Barbara confidently. “He always practises first. Right, Dad?”
Azhar went about his business. On his third try, he positioned the crane quickly, dropped its hook efficiently, and snagged the giraffe that his daughter wanted. Hadiyyah shouted with delight and swept the small stuffed animal into her arms as if she'd just been given the single gift she'd desired for the length of her eight short years.
“Thank you, thank you!” she cried and hugged her father round the waist. “It'll be my souvenir from Balford. It'll be how I remember what a fine time we had on our holiday. Try for another. Please, Dad, won't you? Try for an elephant for Barbara's souvenir.”
“Another time, kiddo,” Barbara said hastily to the girl. The thought of being presented with a stuffed animal from Azhar was somehow disconcerting. “We don't want to drop our lolly all in one place, do we? What about pin ball? Or the roundabout?”