Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(90)
“No reason.” Theo Shaw's words were firm, but his gaze skittered to the telephone. It hadn't rung, so Barbara wondered who it was he was going to phone the second she left his office. He wouldn't be stupid enough to make the call while she was skulking in the corridor, though. Whatever else he might have been, Theo Shaw wasn't an idiot.
“Right,” Barbara said. Cigarette dangling between her lips, she scribbled the number of the Burnt House Hotel on the back of one of her cards. She handed it over, telling Theo to phone should he recall anything pertinent to the case—like the truth about his possession of the gold bracelet, she added mentally.
Outside, with the cacophony of the arcade swirling round her, Barbara thought of the implications behind both Theo Shaw's possession of the gold piece and his lies about its origin. While it was possible that two Aloysius Kennedy golds could exist harmoniously in the same town, it was unlikely that they'd be inscribed identically. This being the case, the reasonable conclusion to draw was that Sahlah Malik had been lying about throwing the bracelet from the pier and the bracelet she claimed to have thrown from the pier was resting round Theo Shaw's wrist. And there were only two ways that the bracelet had come into Theo Shaw's possession: Either Sahlah Malik had given it to him directly or she'd given it to Haytham Querashi and Theo Shaw had seen it and taken it from Querashi's body. In either case, Theo Shaw was standing squarely in suspicion's doorway.
Another Englishman, Barbara thought. She wondered what would actually happen to the community's tenuous peace if it turned out that Querashi had met his death at the hands of a Westerner. Because at this moment it seemed to her that they had two solid suspects, Armstrong and Shaw, both of whom were English. And next on her list was Trevor Ruddock, in line to be Englishman Number Three. Unless F. Kumhar came up smelling like three-day-old cod or one of the Maliks began to sweat more than one expected in this heat—except for Sahlah, who appeared to have been born without pores—then an Englishman was likely the perp they were seeking.
However, at the thought of Sahlah, Barbara hesitated, her car keys dangling from her fingers and Trevor Ruddock's address crumpled into her hand. What did that previous conclusion imply? What did it mean if Sahlah had given the bracelet to Shaw and not to Querashi? It meant the obvious, didn't it? Since “Life begins now” wasn't exactly the sort of comment one made to a casual acquaintance, then Theo Shaw wasn't a casual acquaintance. Which meant he and Sahlah knew each other rather more intimately than Theo had suggested. Which in turn meant that not only Theo Shaw had a motive to off Querashi. Sahlah Malik may very well have had a motive to kill her fiancé as well.
An Asian was finally firmly on the list of suspects, Barbara thought. So the case was still anybody's game.
ARBARA GRABBED A BAG OF POPCORN AND A second bag of rainbow rock from a free-standing stall at the land end of the pier. The stall was called Sweet Sensations, and its emanating odours of doughnuts frying, candy floss spinning, and corn popping were too tempting to disregard. So she made her purchase and with barely a twinge of guilt. After all, she told herself, it stood to good reason that she might be taking her next meal with the calorically abstemious Emily Barlow. If that were the case, she wanted to bulk up on her daily junk-food quotient.
She went for the small packet of old fashioned rainbow rock first, popping a piece of it into her mouth and beginning the hike back to her car. She'd left the Mini parked on The Parade, a strip of seafront road that climbed towards the higher section of the town. Here, a row of Edwardian villas not unlike Emily's overlooked the sea. They were Italianate in design, with balconies and arched windows and doorways, and in 1900 they would have been regal. Now, much like Emily's house, they needed renovation. Bed and breakfast signs hung in every front window, but curtains sagging with grime and woodwork shedding paint onto the pavement doubtlessly put off the less hardy adventurer. They looked completely unoccupied and more than half ready for the wrecking ball.
At her car, Barbara paused. This was her first real opportunity to survey the town from the vantage point of the seafront, and what she saw wasn't very appealing. The road along the shore rose prettily enough, but the buildings that fronted it were like the villas: in disrepair. Years of sea air had eaten away paint and had rusted through metal. Years of isolation from the tourist trade—as inexpensive package holidays to Spain became more alluring than a drive to Essex—had leeched the lifeblood from the local economy. The result lay before her like an urban Miss Havisham, jilted and frozen in a fragment of time.
The town was in desperate need of exactly what Akram Malik was providing: a source of employment. It was also in need of what the Shaw family apparently had in mind: redevelopment. Looking it over, Barbara wondered if there was a point of conflict between the two that Balford CID ought to be exploring.
As she thought of this and meditated on the picture that the seafront provided, she saw two little dark-skinned boys—perhaps ten years old—come out of Stan's Hot and Cold Snacks. They were eating Cornettos, and they wandered in the direction of the pier. Like children who've been instructed well, they paused for traffic at the edge of the pavement. A dusty van braked to let them cross.
Partially hidden behind a filthy windscreen, the driver waved them towards the other side of the street. The boys nodded their thanks and stepped off the kerb. Which is what, it seemed, the van's occupants wished.