Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(192)
Finally, he raised his head again. He began to speak once more, only this time she understood him perfectly. And his voice was so compelling that she found she could do nothing but hold his gaze with her own. She thought dimly, Basilisks are just like this, they impale you with their steely eyes. But still she didn't look away.
He said, “I heard only this morning of your trouble, Mrs. Shaw. How deeply sorry I am. My daughter and I wished to pay our respects. She waits in the corridor—my Sahlah—because we were advised that only one of us at a time could come into your room.” He removed his hand from her bed and laid it on the leather book on his knee. He smiled and went on. “I thought of reading from the holy book. Sometimes I find my own words inadequate for prayer. But when I saw you, the words came of themselves without any effort. At one time, I would have wondered about that and sought a greater meaning from it. But I've long since come to accept that the ways of Allah are most often beyond my comprehension.”
What was he on about? Agatha wondered. He'd come to gloat—there could be no mistake about that—so why didn't he get to the point and have done with it?
“Your grandson Theo has been a source of considerable help to me during this last year. Perhaps you know this. And for some time I've contemplated the best manner in which I could repay him for his kindness to my family.”
“Theo?” she said. “Not Theo. My Theo. Don't hurt Theo, you nasty man.”
He interpreted this conglomeration of sounds, it seemed, as her expression of a need for clarification. He said, “He brought Malik's Mustards into the present and into the future with his computers. And he was the first to stand by my side and involve himself in the Gentlemen's Cooperative. He has a vision not unlike my own, your grandson Theo. And I see in your current misfortune a way that I can finally reciprocate his acts of friendship.”
In your current misfortune, Agatha repeated in her mind. And she knew with certainty what he was about. Now was the moment he meant to sweep in like a raptor, making the kill. Just like a hawk, he'd chosen his time with an eye for the damage it could do to the victim. And she was without a single defence.
Damn his gloating, she thought. Damn his slimy, unctuous ways. Damn his pretence of saintliness. And damn most of all—
“I have long known your dream to redevelop our town and to restore it to its former beauty. Having been struck down a second time now, you must have great fears of your dream coming to nothing.” He put his hand back on the bed again. But this time it covered her own. Not her good hand, she noticed, which she could have flinched from him. But her talon-hand that was incapable of movement. Clever of him, she thought bitterly. How wise to emphasise her infirmities before laying out his plans to destroy her.
He said, “I intend to give Theo my full support, Mrs. Shaw. The redevelopment of Balford-le-Nez shall proceed as you planned it. To the last detail and to your design, your grandson and I will make this town come to life once more. And that's what I've come to tell you. Rest easily now and concentrate your efforts on returning to health so that you may live many years among us.”
And then he bent and touched his lips to her deformed, ugly, crippled hand.
And having no language in which to reply, she wondered how on earth she was going to be able to tell someone to wash it for her.
BARBARA WAS TRYING like the devil to keep her mind where it belonged, which was on the investigation. But it kept drifting off insistently, bounding in the direction of London, specifically to Chalk Farm and Eton Villas, and even more specifically to the ground floor flat of a yellow converted Edwardian house. At first she told herself that there had to be a mistake. Either there were two Taymullah Azhars in London, or the information supplied by the Met's SOU was inaccurate, incomplete, or out-and-out false. But the key facts on the Asian in question, supplied by London Intelligence, were among the facts that she already knew about Azhar. And when she read the report herself—which she managed to do upon her return to Emily's office with the DCI—she had to admit that the description being supplied by London was identical in many respects to the picture she already had. The home address of the subject was the same; the age of the child was correct; the fact that the child's mother was not in the picture also matched with what the report presented. Azhar was identified as a professor of microbiology, which Barbara knew he was, and his involvement with a London group called Asian Legal Awareness and Aid was certainly consistent with the depth of knowledge that he'd demonstrated over the past several days. So the Azhar in the London report had to be the Azhar she knew. Only the Azhar she knew didn't appear to be the Azhar she thought she knew. Which brought everything about him into question, especially his standing in the investigation.
Christ, she thought. She needed a fag. She was desperate for one. And while Emily groused about taking yet another tedious and time-consuming phone call from her superintendent, Barbara dashed into the lavatory and lit up hungrily, sucking on the tube of tobacco like a scuba diver running out of air.
Suddenly, a great deal about Taymullah Azhar and his daughter began to make sense to her. Among the puzzle pieces beginning to take on definition were Hadiyyah's eighth birthday party to which Barbara had been invited as the only guest; a mother ostensibly gone to Ontario but never revealing her whereabouts with so much as a postcard to her only child; a father who never spoke the word wife and never spoke at all of the mother of his child unless the subject was forced upon him; an absence of evidence in the ground floor flat that an adult woman had lived there anytime recently. No emery board or nail polish left lying about, no discarded handbag, no sewing, no knitting, no Vogue or Elle, no remnants of a hobby like watercolour painting or flower arranging. Had Angela Weston—mother of Hadiyyah—ever lived in Eton Villas at all? Barbara wondered. And if she hadn't, exactly how long did Azhar expect to keep up the pretence of Mummy-on-holiday in place of the truth, which appeared to be Mummy-very-much-on-the-run?