Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(66)
“But you and I've been honest,” Rachel protested, the fear of Sahlah's meaning fast and hard upon her. “Or at least I've been honest with you. Always. About everything. And you've been honest with me. About everything. Haven't you? About everything?”
In the Asian girl's silence, Rachel heard the truth. “But I know all about … You told me …” But suddenly everything was open to question. What, indeed, had Sahlah told her? Girlish confidences about dreams, hopes, and love. The kind of secrets, Rachel had believed, that sealed a friendship. The kind of secrets she had sworn—and had meant—to reveal to no one.
But she hadn't expected such pain. She had never once thought that she'd encounter in her friend such a calm and steely resolve to smash her world to ruins. Such determination and everything that rose from such determination called for an action in response.
Rachel had chosen the only course open to her. And now she was living with the consequences.
She had to think what to do. She'd never have believed that one simple decision could have been such a significant domino, toppling a structure of other game pieces until nothing was left.
Rachel knew that the police sergeant had not believed either her or her mother. Once she picked up the receipt book and fingered through it, she'd seen the truth. The logical move for her to make was to speak to Sahlah now. And once she did that, every possibility for a new beginning with the Asian girl would be destroyed.
So actually, there was little to consider as a course of action. It lay before her like a road without a single diversion upon it.
Rachel rose from the toilet and tiptoed to the door. She drew back the bolt in near silence and created a crack through which she could see the back room and hear what was going on in the shop. Her mother had turned on the radio and tuned in a station that doubtless reminded her of her youth. The choice of music was ironic, as if the dj were a mocking god who knew the secrets of Rachel Winfield's soul. The Beatles were singing “Can't Buy Me Love.” Rachel would have laughed had she felt less like weeping.
She slithered out of the loo. Casting a hurried glance towards the shop, she slipped to the back door. It stood open, in the hope of creating cross ventilation from the steamy alley behind the shop through to the equally steamy High Street. No breeze stirred, but the open door provided Rachel with the exit route she needed. She stole into the alley and hurried to her bicycle. She mounted it, and began to pedal energetically in the direction of the sea.
She'd caused the dominoes to topple, it was true. But perhaps there was a chance to right a few before the lot of them were swept from the table.
ALIK'S MUSTARDS & ASSORTED ACCOMPANIMENTS was in a small industrial estate at the north end of Balford-le-Nez. It was, in fact, on the route to the Nez itself, situated at an elbow created where Hall Lane, having veered northwest away from the sea, became Nez Park Road. Here, a ramshackle collection of buildings housed what went for industry in the town: a sailmaker, a seller of mattresses, a joinery, an auto repair business, a fencemaker, a dealer in junk cars, and a maker of custom jigsaw puzzles whose naughty choice of subjects generally kept him only one step ahead of public censure from the pulpits of every church in the town.
The buildings that housed these establishments were mostly prefabricated metal. They were utilitarian and suited to the environment in which they sat: A pebble-strewn lane cratered with potholes curved among them; orange skips bearing the oxymoronic name Gold Coast Dumping in purple letters listed on the uneven ground, spilling out everything from chunks of canvas to rusty bedsprings; several abandoned bicycle frames served as latticework for a gardener's nightmare of nettles and sorrel; sheets of corrugated metal, rotting wooden pallets, empty plastic jugs, and unwieldy, corroded sawhorses of iron made negotiating the industrial estate an ambitious undertaking.
In the midst of all this, Malik's Mustards & Assorted Accompaniments was both an anomaly and a reproach to its companion businesses. It comprised one third of the estate, a long, many-chimneyed Victorian building that had in the town's heyday been the Balford Timber Mill. The mill had fallen into disrepair with the rest of the town in the years following World War II. But now it stood restored with its bricks scoured of one hundred years of grime and its woodwork replaced and yearly repainted. It served as a wordless example of what the other businesses could do with themselves had their owners half the energy and one quarter the determination of Sayyid Akram Malik.
Akram Malik had purchased the derelict mill on the fifth anniversary of his family's arrival in Balford-le-Nez, and a plaque with words commemorating that occasion was the most impressive object that Emily Barlow took note of when she entered the building after parking her Peugeot in a space that was relatively cleared of debris along the lane.
She was fighting off a headache. There had been a disturbing undercurrent to her morning's meeting with Barbara Havers. This weighed on her mind. She didn't need a member of the political correctness police on her team, and Barbara's willingness to saddle guilt exactly where the bloody Asians wanted guilt assigned—on the back of an Englishman—bothered her, causing her to wonder exactly how clear the other detective's vision was. Additionally, the presence of Donald Ferguson in her life—hovering on its periphery like a stalking cat—was an added screw to her misery.
She'd begun her day with yet another phone call from the superintendent. He'd barked without so much as a good morning or a pleasant comment of commiseration about the weather, “Barlow. Where do we stand?”