In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(228)

“As I said, it was Hadiyyah who visited Mrs. Porter. I myself visited the local police.”

At this, Barbara felt her defences rising. She wanted to make some sort of remark that would derail the conversation they were about to have, but she couldn't think of one quickly enough because Azhar went on.

“I spoke to Constable Fogarty,” he told her. “Constable Michael Fogarty, Barbara.”

Barbara nodded. “Yeah. Mike. Right.”

“He's the weapons officer for the Essex police.”

“Yeah. Mike. Weapons. That's right.”

“He told me what happened on the boat, Barbara. What DCI Barlow said about Hadiyyah, what she intended, and what you did.”

“Azhar—”

He rose. He walked to the day bed. Barbara grimaced to see that she'd not yet made it and the loathsome happy face T-shirt that she wore at night was still lying in a tangle with the sheets. She thought for a moment that he intended to straighten the bed—he was the most compulsively neat person she'd ever met—but he turned to face her. She could see his agitation.

“How do I thank you? What can I say that could possibly thank you for the sacrifice you have made for my child?”

“No thanks are needed.”

“This is not true. DCI Barlow—”

“Em Barlow was born with too much ambition, Azhar. That bollocksed up her judgement. It didn't mess with mine.”

“But as a result you have lost your position. You have been disgraced. Your partnership with Inspector Lynley—whom I know you esteem—has been dissolved, has it not?”

“Well, things between us aren't exactly peachy,” Barbara agreed. “But the inspector's got rules and regulations on his side so he's within his rights to be cheesed off at me.”

“But this … all this is due to what you did … to your protection of Hadiyyah when DCI Barlow wanted to leave her, when she called her a ‘Paki brat’ and was indifferent to her drowning in the sea.”

He was so distressed that Barbara wished fervently that Constable Michael Fogarty had been taken ill on Sunday, absenting himself from the police station and leaving DCI Barlow the only one present who could—and would—give a seriously sanitised account of the North Sea chase that had ended with Barbara firing a weapon at her. As it was, she could only be grateful for the single fact that Fogarty, in making his report to Azhar, had mercifully not included the God damn that Emily Barlow had used before the words Paki brat that day.

“I didn't think about the consequences,” Barbara told Azhar. “Hadiyyah was what was important. And she's still what's important. Full stop.”

“I must find a way to show what I feel,” he said despite her words of reassurance. “I must not let you think that your sacrifice—”

“Believe me, it wasn't a sacrifice. And as to thanks … Well, you've given me a heart, haven't you? And that'll do fine.”

“A heart?” He looked confused. Then he followed the direction of Barbara's extended hand and saw the heart that he'd won from the crane grab game. “That. The heart. But that is nothing. I thought only of the words on it, Barbara, and how you might smile when you saw them.”

“The words?”

“Yes. Did you not see … ?” And he came to the table and flipped the heart over. On its obverse side—which she'd have seen well enough if she'd had the courage to examine the damn thing when Hadiyyah had given it to her—was embroidered I * … Essex. “It was a joke, you see. Because after what you went through in Essex, you can, of course, hardly love it. But you did not see the words?”

“Oh, those words,” Barbara said hastily with a hearty ha-ha that was designed to illustrate the degree of her complicity in his little joke. “Yes. The old I love Essex routine. Just about the last spot on earth that I want to return to. Thanks, Azhar. This's far better than a stuffed elephant, isn't it?”

“But it's not enough. And there's nothing else that I can give you in thanks. Nothing that is equal to what you gave me.”

Barbara remembered what she'd learned about his people: lenādenā. The giving of a gift that was equal to or greater than the one which had been received. It was the way they indicated their willingness to engage in a relationship, an overt manner of declaring one's intentions without the indelicacy of speaking them openly. How sensible they were, the Asians, she thought. Nothing was left to guesswork in their culture.

“Your wanting to find something of equal value is what counts, isn't it?” Barbara asked him. “I mean, we can make the wanting to find something count if we want to, can't we, Azhar?”

“I suppose we can,” he said doubtfully.

“Then consider the equal gift given. And go and plait Hadiyyah's hair. She'll be waiting for you.”

He looked as if he might say more, but instead he came to the table and crushed out his cigarette. “Thank you, Barbara Havers,” he said quietly.

“Cheers,” she replied. And she felt the ghost of a touch on her shoulder as he passed her on the way to the door.

When it was shut behind him, Barbara chuckled wearily at her boundless folly. She picked up the heart and balanced it between her thumbs and index fingers. I love Essex, she thought. Well, there were worse ways he could have joked with her.