Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(191)
Now, if she wasn't careful, that greasy, unwashed Malik monster would make his move. He'd done as much when her council seat had to be filled, sliding in to replace her, like a water moccasin slithering into a river. How much more he'd do once he got the word that she'd been laid out by another stroke.
Balford would be looking at more than Falak Dedar Park if Akram Malik had the opportunity to set his plans in motion. Before the town knew what was happening to it, he'd have a minaret in the market square, a gaudy mosque in place of their lovely St. John's Church, and nasty-smelling tandoor cookeries on every street corner from the Balford Road right down to the sea. And then the real invasion would come: scores of Pakis with their scores of lice-ridden children, half of them on the dole, the other half illegal, and all of them polluting the culture and the traditions among which they'd chosen to live.
They want a better life, Gran was how Theo would explain it to her. But she didn't need his soft-hearted and wrong-headed explication of what was so patently obvious. They wanted her life. They wanted the life of every English man, woman, and child. And they would not rest, desist, or retreat until they had it.
Especially Akram, Agatha thought. That bloody, nasty, miserable Akram. He spun a treacly line about friendship and brotherhood. He even acted the part of community conciliator with his ludicrous Gentlemen's Cooperative. But the talk and the actions didn't fool Agatha. They were subterfuges. They were ways to lull the sheeplike populace into a sense that the meadow was clear and safe for their grazing and not scrutinised every second by a pack of wolves.
But she would show him that she was wise to his ways. She would rise from this hospital bed like Lazarus, every inch of her an indomitable force that Akram Malik—with all his plans—could not hope to conquer.
Agatha realised that Sister Jacobs had gone. The odour of spice had dissipated, leaving in its place the scent of medicines, of plastic tubing, of her body's secretions, of the polish on the floor.
She opened her eyes. Her mattress was raised so that she lay at a modest angle rather than flat on her back. This was a marked improvement over the hours immediately following her stroke. Then, she'd had nothing but blurry acoustic ceiling tiles to watch. Now, at least, despite the fact that the sound had been muted and Sister Jacobs had forgotten to increase it upon her departure, she at least had the television to watch. A film was showing in which a frantic far-too-pretty-to-be-believable husband wheeled his hugely but still attractively pregnant even-prettier wife into a casualty ward for the delivery of their child. It was supposed to be a comedy, Agatha guessed, from their slapstick behaviour and the expressions on their faces. What a risible thought that was indeed. No woman she knew had ever found the act of childbirth a laughing matter.
With an effort, she managed to turn her head an inch, which was enough for her to see the window. Through it, a patch of sky the washed-out colour of a kestrel's tail told her that the heat was continuing unabated. She couldn't feel the effects of the outside temperature, however, as the hospital was one of the few buildings within twenty miles of Balford that was actually air conditioned. She would have celebrated that fact …had she only been at the hospital to visit someone, someone deserving of disaster, for instance. Indeed, she could have named twenty people more deserving of this disaster than she. She thought about this point. She began to name those twenty people. She entertained herself by assigning each one of them his own personal, private torment.
So she was unaware at first that someone had entered her room. A gentle cough told her that she had a visitor.
A quiet voice said, “No, do not move, Mrs. Shaw. Let me, please.” Footsteps came round the bed, and suddenly she was face-to-face with her soul's black adversary: Akram Malik.
She made an inarticulate noise, which was meant to be “What do you want? Get out. Get out. I'll have none of your oleaginous gloating,” but which—strangled by the convoluted messages her damaged brain was sending to her vocal cords—came out only as a garbled mishmosh of incomprehensible groans and howls.
Akram gazed at her intently. Doubtless, she thought, he was taking inventory of her condition, trying to assess how far he might have to push her so that she'd topple into her grave. That would clear the way for him to actuate his insidious plans for Balford-le-Nez. She said, “I'm not about to die, Mr. Wog. So wipe that hypocritical look of sympathy off your face. You have about as much sympathy for me as I'd have for you in similar circumstances.” But what she emitted from her mouth was the rising and falling of sounds alone, with nothing to separate them or give them definition.
Akram looked round the room and walked out of her line of sight for a moment. Panic-stricken, she thought he intended to switch off the machines that whirred and softly beeped just behind her head. But he returned with a chair, and he sat.
He was carrying, she saw, a bunch of flowers. He laid these on the table next to the bed. He removed from his pocket a small leather book. He set it upon his knee but didn't open it. He lowered his head and began to murmur a stream of words in his Pakistani mumbo-jumbo.
Where was Theo? Agatha thought desperately. Why wasn't he here to spare her from this? Akram Malik's voice was soft enough, but she wasn't about to be deceived by its tone. He was probably putting a hex on her. He was working black magic, engaging in voodoo, or doing whatever his sort did to defeat their enemies.
She wasn't about to put up with it. She said, “Stop that muttering! Stop it at once! And get out of this room immediately!” But her form of language was as indecipherable to him as his was to her, and his only response was to lay a brown hand upon her bed, as if he were extending her a blessing that she did not need of him, much less want.