Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(168)

Hadiyyah watched the planes for a moment. She'd been carrying her soiled and ruined giraffe, but now she handed it over to her father and straightened her shoulders. “I especially love aeroplanes,” she said.


THEY WATCHED HER when they couldn't ride with her. Some of the amusements were child-sized: the miniature Army Jeeps, the train, the helicopters, and the planes. Others were made for larger occupants, and in these the three of them rode together, dashing from the teacups to the Ferris wheel to the roller coaster, always managing to stay at least one step ahead of disappointment and dejection. It wasn't until Hadiyyah insisted on three consecutive rides on the miniature sailing ships—“They make my stomach go whoop-dee-do,” she explained—that Barbara had a chance to talk to Azhar alone.

“I'm sorry about what happened,” she said to him. He'd taken out his cigarettes and offered her one. She accepted. He lit them both. “Rotten thing. On her holiday and everything.”

“I'd love to shield her from every pain.” Azhar watched his daughter and smiled at her laughter as her stomach whoop-dee-do'd on the simulated wave which crested and fell beneath her tiny ship. “But that's the desire of every loving parent, isn't it? It's a wish that's both reasonable to possess and completely impossible to fulfill.” He lifted his cigarette to his lips and kept his eyes fixed to Hadiyyah. He said, “Thank you, however.”

“For?”

He canted his head in the direction of the arcade. “Coming to her aid. It was good of you.”

“Bloody hell, Azhar. She's the best. I like her. I love her. What the hell else did you expect me to do? If I'd had my way, we wouldn't have walked out of that place like three of the meek with prospects of inheritance on our minds. Believe me.”

Azhar turned his head to Barbara. “You're a pleasure to know, Sergeant Havers.”

Barbara felt her face get hot. She said, “Yeah. Well,” and in some confusion she drew in on her cigarette and made a study of the beach huts on the shore, half-lit by lamps that were shaped like old gaslights, half-shadowed by the darkness. Despite the balminess of the night, most of the huts were closed up, their daytime occupants gone to the hotels and cottages where they spent their holiday nights.

She said, “I'm sorry about the hotel, Azhar. About Muhannad. You know. I saw the Thunderbird when I pulled into the car park. I thought I could avoid him and duck upstairs. I was desperate for a shower, or I would have cooled my heels in a pub or something. Which, I realise, is probably what I should have done.”

“It was inevitable that my cousin should know we're acquainted,” he told her. “I should have told him at once. That I didn't has caused him to question my commitment to our people. And rightfully so.”

“He looked pretty cheesed off when he left the hotel. How'd you explain things?”

“As you yourself explained them to me,” Azhar said. “I told him your presence had been requested by DCI Barlow and that it was as much a surprise to you as it had been to me to find yourself involved in a situation in which a member of the opposition happens to be someone with whom you're acquainted.”

Barbara could feel him looking at her, and her face grew even hotter. She was glad of the shadow cast by the sailing ship ride. At least it kept her safe from the sort of scrutiny that was Azhar's stock-in-trade.

She was overcome by a strong compulsion to tell him the truth. Except she couldn't have said at the moment precisely what the real truth was. She seemed to have lost her grip upon it sometime during the last several days. And for the life of her, she couldn't identify when the facts had clothed themselves in such slippery garments. She wanted to offer him something in reparation for the lies she'd told. But as he himself had said, he and she represented opposing forces.

“How did Muhannad take that information?” she asked.

“My cousin has a temper,” Azhar replied. He flicked ash from his cigarette onto the pier. “His is a nature that sees enemies everywhere. It was easy for him to conclude that the notes of caution I've attempted to strike during our conversations these last few days were evidence of my duplicity. He feels betrayed by one of his own, and that makes things difficult between us at the moment. This isn't unreasonable, however. Deception is the one sin in a relationship that people find nearly impossible to forgive.”

Barbara felt as if he was playing her conscience like a violin. To quell both her pangs of guilt and her desire for absolution, she kept the conversation anchored on his cousin. “You didn't deceive him for malicious reasons, Azhar. Hell, you didn't deceive him at all. He didn't ask you if you knew me, right? Why should you have volunteered the information?”

“A point which Muhannad has difficulty accepting at the moment. Thus”—he shot her an apologetic glance—”my usefulness to my cousin may be at an end. And yours to DCI Barlow as well.”

Barbara immediately saw where he was heading. “Holy hell, are you saying Muhannad'll tell Emily about us?” She felt her face flame yet another time. “I mean …not us. There isn't any us. But you know what—”

He smiled. “I have no way of knowing what Muhannad may do, Barbara. In many ways, he keeps his own counsel. Until this weekend, I hadn't seen him in nearly ten years but as a teenager, he was much the same.”