Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(62)

She carried the receipt over to the till, where a black notebook lay. This bore the words RACON JEWELLERY embossed in gold. Connie opened it. “AK means the artist,” she explained to Barbara. “That's how we identify the pieces. This is Aloysius Kennedy, a bloke from Northumberland. I don't sell many of his pieces because they get a bit pricey for the sort of trade we do in Balford. But this one …” She licked her middle finger and leafed through a few pages. She ran a long acrylic fingernail—painted, it seemed, to match her hair—down the page. “The 162 refers to the stock number,” she said. “And in this case—yes. Here it is. It was one of his hinged wrist cuffs. Oooh. This was a lovely one. I haven't another exactly like it, but—” she switched to sales mode—”I can show you something close if you'd like to have a look.”

“And ‘Life begins now?’” Barbara said. “What would that refer to?”

“Common sense, I expect,” Connie said, and she laughed a little too forcefully at her own small joke, showing tiny child-like white teeth. “We'll have to ask Rache, won't we? This's her writing.” She went to the doorway to the back room and called, “Rache, love-boodle. We got Scotland Yard in the shop asking about a receipt of yours. Could you bring me a Kennedy?” She shot Barbara a smile. “Rachel. My daughter.”

“Ra of Racon.”

“You're quick, aren't you?” Connie acknowledged.

From the back room, footsteps clacked on a wooden floor. In a moment, a young woman stood in the doorway. She kept to the shadows and held a box in her hand. She said, “I was seeing to the shipment from Devon. She's doing shells this time. Did you know?”

“Is she? Cor, you can't tell that woman a thing about what sells, can you? This is Scotland Yard, Rache.”

Rachel moved forward only slightly but enough for Barbara to see that she was nothing like her mother. Despite her unnaturally flaming hair, Connie was a pretty-featured woman with flawless skin, long eyelashes, and a delicate mouth. In contrast, her daughter looked as if someone had put her together from the discarded pieces of five or six unattractive individuals.

Her eyes were abnormally wide set, and one of them drooped as if she suffered from a form of palsy. What went for her chin was a small protuberance of flesh beneath her lower lip, below which was her neck. And where her nose should have been, she'd obviously once had nothing at all. A cosmetically created projection served to take its place, and while it was shaped like a nose, it had insufficient bridge, so it dipped into her face as if a thumb had been pressed into a model made of clay.

Barbara didn't know where to look without seeming offensive to the young woman. She racked her brains to remember what people with deformities wanted from their fellow men: Staring was crass, but gazing elsewhere while attempting to speak to the victim of such physical disfigurement seemed even more cruel.

“What c'n you tell Scotland Yard about this, sweet thing?” Connie said. “It's a Kennedy piece with your writing on it, and you sold it to …” Her voice drifted off as she read the name at the top of the receipt for the first time. She raised her eyes to her daughter, and her daughter met her gaze. A subtle communication seemed to pass between them.

“The receipt indicates that it was sold to Sahlah Malik,” Barbara told Rachel Winfield.

Rachel finally came forward into the direct light of the shop. She stood some two feet from the counter on which the receipt lay. She looked at it tentatively as if it were an alien creature best not approached too quickly. Barbara could see that a vein in her temple was throbbing, and while she gave the receipt an arm's length scrutiny, she hugged herself and, with the hand not holding the box she'd brought from the back room, she rubbed her thumb fiercely against her upper arm.

Her mother went to her side and, with a cluck, fussily rearranged the younger woman's hair. She pulled a bit of it forward and fluffed another bit of it outward. Rachel looked irritated, but didn't shake her mother off.

“Your mum says this is your handwriting,” Barbara told her. “So you must have made the sale. Do you recall it?”

“Not a sale exactly,” Rachel said. She cleared her throat. “More like a trade. She makes some of our jewellery, Sahlah does, so we sort of bartered. She doesn't … well, she doesn't have any money of her own.” She indicated a display of ethnic necklaces. They were heavy with foreign coins and carved beads.

“So you do know her,” Barbara said.

Rachel went at things from another angle. “It would be an inscription, what I've written there. ‘Life begins now’ would be an inscription for the inside of the bracelet. We don't do inscriptions here, though. We have the pieces sent out if someone wants one.” She placed the box on the counter and prised it open. Inside, an object was wrapped in soft purple cloth. Rachel removed this and laid a gold bracelet on the counter. Its style was in keeping with the overall fashion of the rest of the jewellery in the shop. While its purpose was obvious by its circular shape, its design was indefinite, as if it had been poured into a malleable mould that had been allowed to take whatever shape chance gave it. “This is a Kennedy piece,” Rachel said. “They're all different, but it'll give you the general idea of what AK-162's like.”

Barbara fingered the bracelet. It was unique. And had she seen one similar to it among Querashi's belongings, she would have remembered it. She wondered if he'd been wearing it the night he died. Although the bracelet could have been removed from his body after he'd fallen to his death, it hardly seemed likely that his killer had then tossed his car in order to find it. And had he died for a bracelet worth ￡220? It was a possibility, but a conjecture that Barbara was unwilling to hang her next pay rise on to.