Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(197)

“Whose is it?” he asked. “If it isn't Haytham's …Sahlah, whose is it?”

“Please help me do what I need to do. Who can I phone? Is there a clinic? It can't be in Balford. I can't take that chance. But in Clacton …? There must be something in Clacton. Someone there who can help me, Theo. Quietly and quickly so my parents don't know. Because if they find out, it will kill them. Believe me. It will kill them, Theo. And not only them.”

“Who else?”

“Please.”

“Sahlah.” His hand closed fiercely on her upper arm. It was as if he sensed in her tone everything that she could not bring herself to say. “What happened? That night. Tell me. What happened?”

You're going to pay, he'd said, the way all whores pay.

“I brought it on myself,” she said brokenly, “because I didn't care what he thought. Because I told him I loved you.”

“Oh God,” he whispered and his hand fell from her arm.


THE DOOR TO Agatha Shaw's hospital room opened, and Sahlah's father stepped out. He closed it carefully behind him. He looked bewildered to see his daughter and Theo Shaw in earnest conversation. But his face warmed in an instant, perhaps with the certainty that Sahlah was doing her part to bring herself into the garden underneath which the rivers flowed.

He said, “Ah. Theo. I'm so very happy that we won't have left the hospital without seeing you. I've just spoken to your grandmother, and I've given her my assurance—as a friend and town councillor—that her plans for Balford's renaissance will go forward unchanged and unimpeded in any way.”

Next to her, Theo rose. Sahlah did likewise. She ducked her head modestly, and in doing so, she hid from her father's vision the telltale sign of her birthmark's painful throbbing.

“Thank you, Mr. Malik,” Theo said. “That's good of you. Gran will more than appreciate your kindness.”

“Very good,” Akram said. “And now, Sahlah my dear, shall we be on our way?”

Sahlah nodded. She cast Theo a fleeting look. The young man had gone pale beneath his light tan, and he was gazing from Akram to her and back to Akram as if he sought but failed to find something to say. He was her only hope, and like every other hope she'd once harboured about love and life, he was fading from her.

She said, “It was lovely talking to you again, Theo. I hope your grandmother recovers quickly.”

He said, “Thank you,” stiffly.

Sahlah felt her father take her arm, and she allowed herself to be led towards the lift at the end of the corridor. Each step seemed to take her away from safety. And then Theo spoke.

“Mr. Malik,” he said.

Akram stopped, turned. He looked pleasantly attentive. Theo rejoined them.

“I was wondering,” Theo said. “I mean, forgive me if I'm out of place, because I don't pretend to know exactly what's right in this situation. But would you very much mind if I took Sahlah to lunch one day next week? There's a …well, there's a jewellery exhibit—it's at Green Lodge, where they do the summer courses—and as Sahlah makes jewellery, I thought she might like to see it.”

Akram cocked his head and considered the request. He looked at his daughter as if gauging her readiness for such an adventure. He said, “You are a good friend of the family, Theo. I can see no objection, if Sahlah wishes to go. Do you, Sahlah?”

She raised her head. “Green Lodge,” she said. “Where is that, Theo?”

His reply was as even as was his expression. “It's in Clacton,” he told her.



UMN KNEADED THE SMALL OF HER BACK AND USED her foot to kick the trug ahead of her in her assigned rows of her mother-in-law's loathsome vegetable garden. Sullenly, she watched Wardah cultivating two rows over—hovering over a vine of chillis with the devotion of a newlywed wife to her husband—and she wished upon the older woman everything foul that was humanly possible, from sun stroke to leprosy. It was approximately two million bloody degrees, working there among the plants. And to accompany the unbearable, deadly temperature, which that morning had been declared a record high by the BBC Breakfast News, the insect life in Wardah's garden was making a feast of more than the tomatoes, peppers, onions, and beans upon which they normally sated themselves. Gnats and flies buzzed round Yumn's head like malicious satellites. They landed on her perspiring face, while spiders worked their way beneath her dupattā and tiny green caterpillars dropped from vine leaves onto her shoulders. She flailed her hands and raged, attempting to drive the flies in her mother-in-law's direction.

This torment was yet another offence committed by Wardah against her. Any other mother-in-law, filled with what ought to have been gratitude at having been presented with two grandchildren in such rapid succession and so soon after her son's marriage—would have insisted that Yumn rest herself beneath the walnut tree at the edge of the garden, where even at this moment her children—two male children—rolled their toy lorries along the miniature thoroughfare created by a space between the old tree's roots. Any other mother-in-law would have recognised that a woman on the verge of another pregnancy should not even be relaxing in the blazing sunlight, let alone be toiling in it. Hard manual labour wasn't good for a woman in her childbearing years, Yumn told herself. But try sharing that bit of information with Wardah, Wardah the Wonder, who'd spent the entire day of her son Muhannad's birth washing every window of the house, cooking dinner for her husband, and scrubbing the dishes, the pots, and the kitchen floor before she squatted in the larder to deliver the baby. No. Wardah Malik was unlikely to see temperatures rising to thirty-five degrees as anything other than a minor inconvenience, just as she'd seen the hose pipe ban.