Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(231)
“Insolent!” Yumn jumped to her feet. “I insist that you say I was in this house. I'm your brother's wife! I command your obedience. I order you to tell them.”
And there it was, Barbara realised. The motive itself. Buried deeply within a culture she knew so little about that she had failed to see it. But she saw it now. And she saw how it had worked its desperate energy within the mind of a woman who had nothing else to recommend herself to her in-laws but a sizable dowry and the ability to reproduce. She said, “But Sahlah wouldn't have had to obey any longer if she married Querashi, would she? Only you would be left having to do that, Yumn. Obeying your husband, obeying your mother-in-law, obeying everyone, including your own sons eventually.”
Yumn refused to submit. She said, “Sus,” to Wardah. “Abby,” to Akram. And “Your grandsons’ mother,” to them both.
Akram's face closed down, shuttering itself effectively and completely. Barbara felt a chill run down her spine as she saw in that instant that Yumn had simply ceased to exist in the mind of her father-in-law.
Wardah took up her embroidery. Sahlah leaned forward. She opened the photograph album. She cut Yumn's likeness from the first of the pictures. No one spoke as her image, loosened from the family group, fluttered to the carpet at Sahlah's feet.
“I am …” Yumn grasped for words. “The mother …” She faltered. She looked to each of them. But no one met her gaze. “The sons of Muhannad,” she said in desperation. “All of you will listen. You will do as I say.”
Emily moved. She crossed the room and took Yumn's arm. “You'll need to get dressed,” she told the woman.
Yumn cast a look over her shoulder as Emily drew her towards the door. She said, “Whore,” to Sahlah. “In your room. In your bed. I heard you, Sahlah. I know what you are.”
Barbara looked cautiously from Sahlah to her parents, breath held and waiting for their reaction. But she could see on their faces that they discounted Yumn's accusation. She was, after all, a woman who had deceived them once and would be willing to deceive them yet again.
T WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT WHEN BARBARA FINALLY returned to the Burnt House Hotel. She was wrung out. But not so much so that she failed to note the blessed stirring of a breeze from the sea. It struck her cheeks as she climbed out of the Mini, wincing as the pain in her chest told her of the rough usage she'd made of her unhealed ribcage during the day. For a moment, she stood in the car park and carefully breathed in the salt air, hoping that its long-touted medicinal properties might hurry her healing along.
In the corona of silver light from one of the streetlamps, she could see the first wisps of fog—so long anticipated—finally coming to the shore. Hallelujah, she thought at the sight of the fragile feathers of vapour. Never had the potential return of a damp and dreary English summer seemed so bloody good to her.
She scooped up her shoulder bag and trudged to the door of the hotel. She felt weighed down by the case, despite—or perhaps because of—having been the means of bringing it to a conclusion. She didn't have to look far to find a reason for feeling so burdened, however. She'd seen the reason first hand, and she'd heard it spoken as well.
What she'd seen had been in the faces of the elder Maliks as they sought a way to come to terms with the enormity of their beloved son's crimes against his own people. He had represented the future to his parents—their own future and the future of their family stretching out towards infinity, each generation more successful than the last. His had been the promise of security in their old age. He had been the foundation upon which they'd built the larger part of their lives. With his flight—more, with the reason for his flight—all of that had been destroyed. What they might have anticipated for him and expected from him as their only son was gone forever. What was left in place of their hopes was ignominy, a family disaster turned into a permanent nightmare and very real disgrace by their daughter-in-law's culpability in the murder of Haytham Querashi.
What Barbara had heard was Sahlah's quiet reply to the question she'd asked the girl out of her parents’ hearing. What will you do now? she'd wanted to know. What will you do …about everything that's happened? Everything, Sahlah. It hadn't been her business, of course, but with the thought of so many lives being ruined by one man's greed and one woman's need to cement her position of superiority, Barbara had felt anxious for any indication of reassurance telling her that something good would arise from the devastation fallen upon these people. I'll remain with my family, Sahlah had told her in reply with a voice so steady and sure that there was no doubt that nothing could move her from her resolve. My parents have no one else, and the children will need me now, she'd said. Barbara had thought, And what do you need, Sahlah? But she hadn't asked a question that she'd come to realise was utterly foreign to a woman of this culture.
She sighed. She realised that every time she felt she'd got a leg up on understanding her fellow man, something happened to whip the rug out from under her. And these past few days had been one long session of energetic rug whipping, as far as she could see. She'd begun in awe of a CID diva; she'd concluded in a stunned recognition that her chosen exemplar had feet of clay. And at the end of the day, Emily Barlow was really no different from the woman they'd just arrested for murder, each of them seeking nothing more than the means—however fruitless and destructive—to order her world.