Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(233)
“She's not coming back from Canada, is she?” Barbara settled on asking. “If, in fact, she's even gone to Canada at all.”
“She's not coming back,” Azhar admitted.
“Why haven't you told Hadiyyah? Why're you letting her cling to hope?”
“Because I've been clinging to hope as well. Because when one falls in love, anything seems possible between two people, no matter the differences in their temperaments or in their cultures. Because—most of all—hope is always the last of our feelings to wither and die.”
“You miss her.” Barbara stated the fact, so readily apparent beneath his tranquil reserve.
“Every moment of the day,” he replied. “But this will pass eventually. All things do.”
He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. Barbara tossed down the rest of her Irish whiskey. She could have done with another one, but she took that feeling as an uneasy warning sign. Getting soused wouldn't clarify anything, and feeling the need to get soused in the first place was a fairly good sign that something inside her needed clarification. But later, she thought. Tomorrow. Next week. Next month. In a year. Tonight she was just too bloody exhausted to mine her psyche for the valuable ore of understanding why she felt what it was that she felt.
She rose. She stretched. She winced at the pain. “Yeah. Well,” she said in conclusion. “I expect that if we wait long enough, troubles sort themselves out, don't they?”
“Or we die without understanding them,” he said. But he softened the words with his appealing smile. It was wry but warm, making an offer of friendship.
Barbara wondered fleetingly if she wanted to accept the offer. She wondered if she really wanted to face the unknown and take the risk of engaging her heart—there it was again, that flaming, unreliable organ—where it might well be broken. But then she realised that, insidious arbiter of behaviour that it was, her heart was already entirely engaged and had been so from the moment she'd encountered the man's elfin daughter. What, after all, was so terrifying about adding one more person to the crew of the largely untidy ship upon which she appeared to be sailing in her life?
They left the lounge together and started up the stairs in the darkness. They didn't speak again until they'd reached the door of Barbara's room. Then it was Azhar who broke the silence.
“Will you join us for breakfast in the morning, Barbara Havers? Hadiyyah will want that especially.” And when she didn't answer at once, considering—with some guiltless delight—what another morning of dining with the Asians would do to throw a spanner into Basil Treves’ separate but equal philosophy of innkeeping, he went on. “And for me, too, it would be a pleasure.”
Barbara smiled. “I'd like that,” she said.
And she meant those words, despite the complications they brought to her present, despite the uncertainty they gave to her future.
TTEMPTING, AS AN AMERICAN, TO WRITE ABOUT the Pakistani experience in Great Britain was an enormous undertaking that I couldn't have begun—let alone completed—without the assistance of the following individuals.
First and foremost, I owe a significant debt of gratitude to Kay Ghafoor, whose honesty and enthusiasm for this project laid the groundwork upon which I built the structure of the novel.
As always, I'm indebted to my police sources in England. I thank Chief Inspector Pip Lane of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary for providing me with information on everything from Armed Response Vehicles to Interpol. I also thank him for liaising between me and the Essex police force. I thank Intelligence Officer Ray Chrystal of the Clacton Intelligence Unit for the background information he provided, Detective Inspector Roger Cattermole for giving me access to his incident room, Gary Elliot of New Scotland Yard for an insider's tour.
I'm additionally indebted to William Tullberg of Wiltshire Trackle-ments and to Carol Irving of Crabtree and Evelyn, who assisted in my initial search for a suitable family-operated factory, to Sam Llewelyn and Bruce Lack for nautical details, and to Sue Fletcher—my editor at Hodder Stoughton—for throwing her support, her assistance, and the resourceful and redoubtable Bettina Jamani behind this endeavor.
In Germany, I thank Veronika Kreuzhage and Christine Kruttschnitt for assisting with police procedure and Hamburg information.
In the United States, I thank Dr. Tom Ruben and Dr. H. M. Upton for once again supplying me with medical information. I thank my assistant Cindy Murphy for keeping the ship afloat in Huntington Beach. And I thank my writing students for challenging me in my approach to this work: Patricia Fogarty, Barbara Fryer, Tom Fields, April Jackson, Chris Eyre, Tim Polmanteer, Elaine Medosch, Carolyn Honigman, Reggie Park, Patty Smiley, and Patrick Kersey.
And for personal reasons, I thank some wonderful people for their friendship and support: Lana Schlemmer, Karen Bohan, Gordon Globus, Gay Hartell-Lloyd, Carolyn and Bill Honigman, Bonnie SirKegian, Joan and Colin Randall, Georgia Ann Treadaway, Gunilla Sondell, Marilyn Schulz, Marilyn Mitchell, Sheila Hillinger, Virginia Westover-Weiner, Chris Eyre, Dorothy Bodenberg, and Alan Bardsley.
I owe many debts to Kate Miciak, my excellent longtime editor at Bantam, and none so many as were incurred with the creation of this novel. And last, but certainly far from least, I thank my warrior agents at William Morris—Robert Gottlieb, Stephanie Cabot, and Marcy Posner—for all that they're doing to support my work in progress and to promote the finished product both in the United States and around the world.