Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(195)

“Where does the channel lead?” Barbara asked.

“Directly along the west side of the Nez.”

“So someone could have taken a Zodiac up the channel and round the north point of the Nez, beaching anywhere along the east side and walking south to the stairs.” Barbara followed the direction of Emily's gaze. On the other side of the little bay which sheltered the marina, a series of cultivated fields rose to the back of an estate whose main building's chimneys were plainly visible. A well-used path etched the land from the estate along the northern perimeter of the fields. It ran eastward and ended at the bay, where it turned south and followed the coast. Seeing this walkway, Barbara asked, “Who lives in that house, Em? The big one with all those chimneys.”

“It's called Balford Old Hall,” Emily said. “It's where the Shaws live.”

“Bingo,” Barbara murmured.

But Emily resolutely turned from such a facile solution to the equation of motive-means-opportunity. She said, “I'm not ready to tie a bow on that package. Let's get on to the mustard factory before someone gives Muhannad the word. If,” she added, “Herr Reuchlein hasn't already done so.”

? ? ?


SAHLAH SPENT HER time in the hospital corridor watching the door to Mrs. Shaw's room. The nurse had informed them that only one person at a time was allowed to see the patient, and she was relieved that this injunction prevented her from having to see Theo's grandmother. At the same time, she felt enormous guilt at her own relief. Mrs. Shaw was ill—and desperately so if the glimpse Sahlah had had of the hospital machinery in her room was any indication—and the tenets of her religion directed her to minister in some way to the woman's need. Those who believed and did good works, the Holy Qur'aan instructed, would be brought into the gardens underneath which rivers flowed. And what better work could be done than to visit the sick, especially when the sick took the form of one's enemy?

Theo, of course, had never directly stated the fact that his grandmother hated the Asian community as a whole and wished them ill individually. But her aversion for the immigrants who'd invaded Balford-le-Nez was always the unspoken reality between Sahlah and the man she loved. It had divided them as effectively as had Sahlah's own spoken revelations about her parents’ plans for her future.

Sahlah knew at heart that the love between Theo and herself had been defeated long before its inception. Tradition, religion, and culture had acted in conjunction to vanquish it. But having someone to blame for the impossibility of a life with Theo was a temptation that had sought to beguile her from the first. And how easy it was to twist the words of the Holy Qur'aan now, moulding them into a justification of what had happened to Theo's grandmother: Whatever good befalleth thee (O man) it is from Allah, and whatever of ill befalleth thee it is from thyself.

She could thus stoutly proclaim that Mrs. Shaw's current state was the direct result of the loathing, bias, and prejudice that she fostered in herself and encouraged in others. But Sahlah knew that she could also apply those same words from the Qur'aan to herself. For ill had befallen her as surely as it had befallen Theo's grandmother. And just as surely, the ill was a direct result of her own selfish, misguided behaviour.

She didn't want to think about it: how the ill had happened and what she was going to do to bring it to an end. The reality was that she didn't know what she was going to do. She didn't even know where to begin, despite the fact that she was sitting in the corridor of a hospital where activities euphemistically labelled Necessary Procedures were probably performed all the time.

Just for a moment with Rachel, she'd felt relief. When her friend had said, “I've gone and done it,” such a weight had lifted from Sahlah's shoulders that she'd actually thought she might become airborne. But when it had become apparent that going and doing it had meant acquiring a flat into which Sahlah knew she would never move, despair had descended upon her forcefully. Rachel had been her only hope to rid herself of the overt mark of her sin against her religion and her family, doing it in perfect secrecy and with minimum risk. Now, she knew, she was going to have to strike out on her own. And she couldn't even begin to determine the first move she had to make.

“Sahlah? Sahlah?”

She started at the sound of her name, said in the same hushed tone that he'd used in the pear orchard on those nights that they'd met. Theo stood to her right, stopped dead in his progress to his grandmother's room, one hand holding a can of Coke that was beaded with moisture.

She reached without thinking for the pendant she wore, as much to cover it up from him as to hold it in a form of taking sanctuary. But he'd seen the fossil, and he obviously made an interpretation from the fact that she was wearing it, because he came to the bench on which she was sitting and he sat down next to her. He set his Coke on the floor. She watched him do it. Then she kept her eyes on the can's aluminium top.

“Rachel told me, Sahlah,” he said. “She thinks—”

“I know what she thinks,” Sahlah whispered. She wanted to tell Theo to leave or at least to stand across the corridor and pretend their conversation was nothing save an expression of concern over his grandmother's condition on her part and a polite offering of gratitude for that concern on his. But the very nearness of him after the long weeks of not seeing him was like an intoxicant to her. Her heart wanted more and more of it even as her mind told her that the only way she could serve herself and ultimately survive was to accept less.