Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(88)

“What?” Theo said.

Score a point, Barbara thought. He hadn't bought the bracelet himself, because if he had done, there was little doubt that one of the Winfields would have waxed eloquent on its origins. “That bracelet,” Barbara said. “It looks like one I've been drooling over in London. A bloke called Aloysius Kennedy designs them. Can I have a look?” She added with what she hoped was her best display of girlish artlessness, “This is probably as close as I'm ever going to get to owning one, if you know what I mean.”

For a moment she thought she hadn't been able to hook him, but as the bait of her interest floated in front of him, Theo Shaw made the decision to bite. He handed over the gold wrist cuff, unfastening it with his thumbnail and slipping it off.

“It's great,” Barbara said. “May I …?” She gestured towards the window, and when he nodded, she carried it over. She turned it this way and that with her hand. She said, “The man's a genius, isn't he? I like these swirls. And the metal's perfect. He's the Rembrandt of goldsmiths, if you ask me.” She hoped the artistic allusion was right. What she knew about Rembrandt—not to mention what she knew about gold and jewellery—could easily fit into a teaspoon. She went on to remark on the weight of it, she ran her fingers over the shape of it, she examined its cleverly hidden clasp. And when the time was right, she looked at its inside and saw what she had believed she would see. Three words were engraved in a fluid scroll: LIFE BEGINS NOW.

Ah. Time to apply the thumbscrews. Barbara returned to the desk and set the bracelet next to the fossilised sponge. Theo Shaw didn't put it on at once. His colour was slightly higher than it had been when Barbara had taken the bracelet from him. He'd seen her read the inscription inside and she had little doubt that she and the young man were about to dance the careful pas de deux of how-to-find-out-what-the-rozzers-know. She realised that when the music began, she was going to need to outstep him.

“Makes a nice statement, that,” she said, indicating the bracelet with a nod. “I wouldn't mind finding one on my doorstep some morning. Just the sort of thing one hopes to have passed one's way by a nameless admirer.”

Theo reached for the bracelet and snapped it back on. “It was my dad's,” he said. Voila, Barbara thought. He should have kept his mug plugged, but in her experience, the guilty parties so rarely did, feeling compelled to demonstrate their spurious innocence for one and all.

“Your dad's dead, then?”

“My mother as well.”

“Then all of this—” Here she indicated the pier itself followed by the blue prints on the bulletin board. “Is all of this commemorating your parents?”

He looked nonplussed. She went on. “When I came here as a kid, this was Balford Pier. Now it's Shaw Attractions. And the leisure centre—Agatha Shaw Recreational Village. Is that your mum's name?”

His expression cleared. “Agatha Shaw's my grandmother, although she's done duty as my mother since I was six. My parents were killed in a car crash.”

“That must have been rough,” Barbara said.

“Yeah. But … well, Gran was great.”

“She's all you've got left?”

“All that's here. The rest of the family scattered years ago. Gran took us in—I've an older brother trying his luck in Hollywood—and raised us as her second set of kids.”

“Nice to have something to remember your dad by,” Barbara noted, another nod at the bracelet. She wasn't about to let him slither away from the topic at hand with Dickensian recollections of being orphaned and passed along to an ageing relative. She gazed at him fixedly. “Sort of modern to be a family heirloom, though. It looks like it was made last week.”

Theo returned her gaze just as fixedly, although he couldn't prevent the rush of colour on his neck, which gave him away. “I'd never thought of that. But I suppose it does.”

“Yes. Well. It's interesting to run across it like this because, oddly enough, we're on the trail of a Kennedy piece that's very much like it.”

Theo frowned. “On the trail …? Why?”

Barbara avoided a direct answer and went back to the window overlooking the pier. Outside, the Ferris wheel had begun to revolve, lifting a score of happy riders into the air. She said, “How do you know Akram Malik, Mr. Shaw?”

“What?” Clearly, he expected something else.

“You mentioned he phoned you about hiring Trevor Ruddock. That suggests you know each other. I was wondering how.”

“From the Gentlemen's Cooperative.” Theo went on to explain what it was. “We try to help each other out. This was an instance when I could do him favour. He'll do me one in return one day.”

“Is that your only connection with the Maliks?”

He looked from her to the window. Outside, a gull had come to sit on an exhaust fan on the roof of the arcade below them. The bird looked expectant. Barbara did likewise. She knew Theo Shaw was walking a delicate line at the moment. Not knowing what she had already been told about him from other sources, he would have to choose carefully between truth and lie. “Actually, I helped Akram set up his factory's computer system,” he settled on saying. “And I went to junior school here in town with Muhannad. To comprehensive as well, but that was in Clacton.”