Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(34)

Akram snorted. “It all depends on what ‘these matters’ are. You should not have let him into the house.”

“He came with Muhannad,” was her reply. “What could I do?”

He was with Muhannad still, seated at one end of the sofa while Sahlah's brother took the other. Akram was in an easy chair, with one of Wardah's embroidered pillows cradling his back. The oversize television was playing another of Yumn's Asian films. She'd muted the sound instead of dousing the picture before scuttling upstairs. Now, over her father's shoulder, Sahlah could see two desperate young lovers meeting secretly like Romeo and Juliet. Except instead of upon a balcony, they met, embraced, and fell to the earth to do their business in a field where maize grew to their shoulders and hid them from view. Sahlah averted her eyes and felt her heart beating in her throat like a trapped bird's wings.

“I know you're not happy with everything that happened this afternoon,” Muhannad was saying, “But we've got the police to agree to meet with us daily. That'll keep us informed of what's going on.” Sahlah could tell by the clipped way her brother spoke that he chafed beneath their father's unuttered disapproval and disgust. “We wouldn't have got that far in one interview had Azhar not been there, Father. He positioned the DCI so that she had no option but to agree. And he did it so smoothly that she wasn't aware of the direction he was leading her till she arrived there.” He shot Azhar a look of admiration. Azhar crossed his legs, pressed the crease of his trousers between his fingers, but said nothing at all. He kept his gaze fixed on his uncle. Sahlah had never seen anyone look so composed in a situation in which he was so unwelcome.

“And this was your purpose in causing a riot?”

“The point isn't who caused what. The point is that we got an agreement.”

“And you think this is something we could not have managed on our own, Muhannad? This agreement, as you call it.” Akram lifted his glass and drank some of the lassi He hadn't glanced once at Taymullah Azhar.

“The cops know us, Father. They've known us for years. And familiarity makes people lax when it comes to fulfilling their responsibilities. Who shouts the loudest gets heard the soonest, and you know it.”

These last four words were a mistake, born of Muhannad's impatience and of his aversion for the English. Sahlah understood his feelings—having also been on the receiving end of childhood torment at the hands of schoolmates—but she knew that their father did not. Born in Pakistan and coming to England as a man in his twenties, he'd had only one experience of racism that he ever spoke of. Even that one episode of public humiliation in a London Underground station had not soured him about the people he'd decided to adopt as his countrymen. In his eyes, Muhannad had disgraced their people that day. Akram Malik wasn't likely to forget that fact soon.

“Who shouts the loudest often has the least to say,” he responded.

Muhannad's face tightened. “Azhar knows how to organise. The way we need to organise now.”

“What is now, Muni? Is Haytham less dead than he was at this time yesterday? Is your sister's future any less destroyed? How does one man's presence change what is?”

“Because,” Muhannad announced, and the tone of his voice told Sahlah that her brother had saved the best for last, “they've now admitted it's murder.”

Akram's face grew grave. However irrationally, he'd been consoling himself, his family, and Sahlah especially with the belief that Haytham's death had been an unfortunate accident. Now that Muhannad had ferreted out the truth, Sahlah knew that her father would have to think in different terms. He would have to ask why, which might very well lead him in a direction in which he didn't wish to go.

“Admitted, Father. To us. Because of what happened at today's council meeting and in the street afterwards. Wait. Don't respond yet.” Muhannad pressed his point, rising to his feet and pacing to the fireplace, where the mantelpiece held a score of framed family photographs. “I know I angered you today. I admit that things got out of hand. But I ask you to look at the results I got. And it was Azhar who suggested the town council meeting as a place to start. Azhar, Father. When I phoned him in London. Can you tell me that when you spoke to the CID they admitted murder to you? Because they didn't to me. And God knows they didn't tell Sahlah anything.”

Sahlah lowered her eyes as the men looked her way. She didn't need to confirm her brother's words. Akram had been in the room for her brief conversation with the police constable who'd come to inform them of Haytham's death. He knew exactly what had been said: “There's been a death on the Nez, I'm sorry to say. The deceased appears to be a Mr. Haytham Querashi. We need someone to identify the body formally, however, and we understand you were to marry him.”

“Yes,” Sahlah had replied gravely, while inside she was screaming, No no no!

“This may be,” Akram said to his son. “But you have gone too far. When one among us has died, it is not up to you to see to his resurrection, Muhannad.”

He was, Sahlah knew, not speaking of Haytham. He was speaking of Taymuliah Azhar. Azhar was supposed to be dead to everyone in the family once his parents had proclaimed him so. If you saw him on the street, you were to look through him or avert your eyes. His name wasn't to be mentioned. His existence wasn't to be spoken of to anyone, even in the most oblique terms. And if you thought of him, you quickly busied your mind with something else lest thinking of him turned to speaking of him turned to a willingness to consider allowing him entrance to the family once more. Sahlah had been too young to be told what crime Azhar had committed within the family to have been cast out, and once the casting out had been accomplished, she'd been forbidden to speak of him to anyone.