Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(180)

The German nodded as he took another bite of bread and cheese. He reached into his desk and brought out a three-ring notebook, then a second, then a third. He flipped them open with one hand while the other rolled up another piece of ham.

Barbara saw that these were catalogues, and they contained everything from bedroom furniture to kitchenware to lamps. She said, “You don't keep goods in the warehouse, then?” And she thought, If you don't, then why bloody have one?

“We do indeed,” he said. “Our wholesale shipments. They are in the warehouse.”

“Perfect,” Barbara said. “Could I have a look? I can't ever tell anything from a picture.”

“Our stock is low,” he said, and sounded uneasy for the first time. “If you could come back …perhaps Saturday week?”

“Just a look is all,” Barbara said pleasantly. “I'd like to get an idea of size and materials before I make up my mind.”

He didn't appear convinced, but he said, albeit reluctantly, “If you don't mind the dust and a toilet that's gone down…”

She assured him that she minded neither—what were dust and broken toilets when one was in search of the perfect three-piece suite?—and she followed him through the inner door.

She wasn't quite sure what she'd been expecting. But what she found within the cavernous gut of the warehouse wasn't a sound set for making snuff films, on going videotaping of hard-core pornography, crates of explosives, or a factory for assembling Uzi sub-machine guns. What she found was a storehouse for furniture: three tiers of sofas, dining room tables, armchairs, lamps, and bedframes. As her companion had said, the stock was low. It was also covered in plastic that was coated with dust. But as to thinking the furniture was anything else: It was impossible to stretch the imagination that far.

And he'd told the truth about the toilet. The warehouse was rank with the scent of sewage, as if two hundred people had used the facilities without flushing. Barbara saw the offending source through a half-open door at the end of the building: a toilet that had overflowed onto the concrete floor, pooling out into the warehouse for a good fifteen feet.

The German saw the direction of her gaze. “I have called the plumbers three times these last two days. To no avail, as you see. I am so sorry. It is so unpleasant.” And he hastened forward to shut the door on the lavatory, stepping carefully round the pool of sewage. He clucked at a blanket and a sodden pillow that lay next to a row of dusty filing cabinets to one side of the lavatory. He picked up the former and folded it carefully, placing it on the nearest cabinet. The latter he threw in a rubbish bin next to a wall of cupboards.

He came to rejoin Barbara, taking a Swiss Army knife from his pocket. He said, “Our sofas are the very best quality. The upholstery is all done by hand. Whether you choose wool or silk—”

“Yeah,” Barbara said. “I get the idea. Nice stuff. You don't need to uncover it.”

“You do not wish to see?” Vish, he said.

“I've seen. Thanks.”

What she'd seen was that the warehouse was like the others in the industrial park. It had one large door that retracted into the metal rafters, allowing the entrance of large lorries. That lorries came and went was evident in the empty rectangle that extended from the door to the far side of the building. In that space, oil stains blotted the concrete floor, looking like continents floating on a grey map of sea.

She walked towards this, making a pretence of examining the furniture beneath the plastic shrouds. The building had no insulation, so it was like a boiler room inside. Barbara felt the sweat trickling down her back, between her breasts, from her neck to her waist.

“Hot,” she said. “It's not bad for the furniture? Doesn't heat dry it out or something?”

“Our furniture comes from the East, where the weather is far less temperate than England's,” he responded. “This heat is nothing in comparison.”

“Hmm. I s'pose you're right.” She stooped to examine the oil on the warehouse floor. Four of the stains were old, with small hillocks of dirt looking like depictions of mountains on the global map of the concrete. Three were more recent. In one of them, a single bare foot—man-sized—had left a perfect print.

When Barbara rose, she saw that the German was watching her. He looked perplexed, and his eyes travelled from her to the stains to the furniture. He said, “Is there something out of order?”

She jerked her thumb at the oil stains. “You ought to clean that up. Safety hazard. Someone could slip and break a leg, especially if he's running round without shoes on.”

“Yes, of course. Unquestionably,” he replied.

She had no reason to linger, aside from a feeling that she hadn't yet learned all there was to learn. She wished like hell that she knew what she was looking for, but if there was a sign of something dodgy going on in the warehouse, she failed to see it. All she had to go on was a hollow sensation in her gut, a drumlike feeling that she wanted to identify as incompletion. It was instinct and nothing else. Yet how could she act upon it when at the same time she continually questioned Emily Barlow for doing the same? Instinct was all well and good but, somewhere along the line, it needed to be supported by evidence.

But Rudi had left World Wide Tours within minutes of her own departure, she told herself. He'd driven directly here. He'd been admitted into this same building. And if those facts didn't mean something, what the hell did?