Deception on His Mind (35 page)

“You aren't listening to me,” Sahlah said. “You haven't heard, so you don't understand. I don't have time. I don't have options. Not any longer, if I ever did. I
am
like Yumn. Just exactly like Yumn.”

Rachel felt one final reflex protestation rise to her lips. But this time Sahlah's expression stopped it. She was watching her so intently, her dark eyes so pained, that Rachel's remark was quashed. She breathed in to say bitterly, “You've gone half-cracked if you think you're like Yumn,” but the words were a fire thoroughly doused by what Sahlah's face was telling her.

“Yumn,” Rachel said on the breath she'd taken to excoriate her friend. “Oh m’ God, Sahlah.
Yumn.
D'you mean … You and Theo …? You never said!” Involuntarily, her gaze went over her friend's body, so carefully concealed beneath her loose clothing.

“Yes,” Sahlah said. “Which is why Haytham agreed to move the marriage forward.”

“He
knew?”

“I couldn't have pretended the baby was his. Even if I'd thought I could do it, I had to tell him. He'd come here to marry me, but he'd been content to wait a bit—perhaps for six months—to give both of us time to get to know each other. I had to tell him there was no time. What could I say? Truth was my only option.”

Rachel felt staggered by the immensity of what her friend was telling her, taken in the context of her background, her religion, and her culture. And then she saw—even as she hated herself for seeing it—the possibility of salvation. Because if Haytham Querashi already knew that Theo Shaw was Sahlah's lover, then giving him that receipt, saying mysteriously, “Ask Sahlah about this,” and waiting for the desired result was behaviour for which she could forgive herself. She would only have been telling him something he already knew, accepted, and had come to terms with … if Sahlah had spoken the entire truth to him. “Did he know about Theo?” Rachel asked, trying not to sound as anxious as she felt for affirmation. “Did you tell him about Theo?”

“That's what you did for me,” Sahlah said.

Rachel's hope died again, and this time completely. “Who else knows?”

“No one. Yumn suspects. She would do, wouldn't she? She knows the signs well enough. But I've said nothing to her, and no one else knows.”

“Not Theo?”

Sahlah lowered her gaze, and Rachel followed this to her hands, which were clasped in her lap. The knuckles were whitened and they grew whiter. As if Theo Shaw's name had not come up, Sahlah said, “Haytham knew how little time we had to do the normal things couples do before they marry. Once I told him about my … about the baby, he didn't want me to be humiliated. He agreed to marriage as soon as possible.” She blinked slowly, as if to erase a memory. “Rachel, Haytham Querashi was a very good man.”

Rachel wanted to tell her that in addition to being a very good man, it was also likely that Haytham Querashi was a man who didn't want to bear the scorn of people within their community who would despise him for marrying an unchaste woman. It had been to his advantage as well that they marry as quickly as possible so as to pass the child off as his, no matter how light the colour of the baby's skin. But instead, Rachel thought about Theo Shaw, Sahlah's professed love for him, the knowledge she herself now possessed, and what she could do with it to make things right. But she had to know for certain first. She didn't want to take another misstep.

“Does Theo know about the baby?”

Sahlah gave a dispirited laugh. “You still don't understand, do you? Once you gave that receipt to Haytham, once Haytham knew it was for a gold bracelet, once he ran into Theo at that idiotic Gentlemen's Cooperative that's supposed to bring this pathetic little town back to life—” Sahlah stopped herself, as if suddenly aware of the uncharacteristic bitterness of her words and how they revealed the chaotic state of her mind. “What difference does it make to anything now if Theo knows or doesn't know?”

“What are you saying?” Rachel heard her fear and tried to quell it for the other girl's sake.

“Haytham's dead, Rachel. Don't you see? Haytham's
dead.
And he'd gone to the Nez. At night. In the dark. Which is less than half a mile from the Old Hall, where Theo lives. And which is also the place that Theo's been collecting fossils for the last twenty years. Do you understand now?” Sahlah asked sharply. “Rachel Winfield, do you understand?”

Rachel gaped at her. “Theo?” she said. “No. Sahlah, you can't think Theo Shaw …”

“Haytham would have wanted to know who it was,” Sahlah told her. “He was prepared to marry me, yes, but still he would have wanted to know who'd made me pregnant. What man wouldn't, no matter what he said to me about living in ignorance? He would have wanted to know.”

“But even if he knew, even if he actually
talked
to Theo, you can't think that Theo …” Rachel couldn't finish the sentence, so horrified was she at the pure logic behind Sahlah's words. She could even picture how everything had happened: A meeting in the dark on the Nez, Haytham Querashi's conversation with Theo Shaw in which he spoke of Sahlah's pregnancy, Theo Shaw's subsequent desperation to rid the world of the man who stood between himself and his one true love and what he knew—
had
to know—to be his moral duty … Because he'd want to do his duty by Sahlah, Theo Shaw would. He loved Sahlah and if he knew he'd made her pregnant, he'd want to stand by her side. And because Sahlah was so reluctant—indeed, so afraid—to be cast out from her family for marrying an Englishman, he would also have known that there was only one way to bind her to him.

Rachel swallowed. She sucked in her lip and bit it, hard.

“So look what you've done in passing along the receipt for that bracelet, Rachel,” Sahlah said. “You've given the police a connection—which they might otherwise have never known about—between Haytham Querashi and Theo Shaw. And when a murder's been done, that's the first thing they look for: a connection.”

Rachel began to babble, so acute was her guilt and so horrifying the knowledge of the part she'd played in the tragedy on the Nez. “I'll phone him straightaway. I'll go to the pier.”

“No!” Sahlah sounded horrified.

“I'll tell him to throw the bracelet in the rubbish. I'll make sure he doesn't wear it again. The police have no reason to talk to him anyway. They don't know he knew Haytham. Even if they talk to all the blokes in the Gentlemen's Cooperative, it'll take them days to talk to everyone, won't it?”

“Rachel—”

“And that's the only way they'll know to talk to Theo Shaw. There's no other connection between him and Haytham. Just the Cooperative. So I'll get to him first. And they won't see the bracelet. They won't know about anything. I swear they won't know.”

Sahlah's head was shaking, her expression a mixture of disbelief and despair. “But don't you see, Rachel? That doesn't address the real problem, does it? No matter what you tell Theo, Haytham's still dead.”

“But the police'll rest the case or close it or whatever they do. And then you and Theo—”

“Then Theo and I what?”

“You can get married,” Rachel said. And when Sahlah didn't answer at once, she added weakly, “You and Theo. Married. You know.”

Sahlah rose. She pulled her
dupattā
back over her head. She looked towards the pier. The calliope music of the roundabout floated towards them on the air, even at this distance. The ferris wheel glittered in the sunlight, and the wild mouse frantically tossed its shrieking passengers from side to side. “Do you actually think it's as easy as that? You tell Theo to throw the bracelet in the rubbish, the police go away, and he and I marry?”

“It could happen that way, if we make it happen.”

Sahlah shook her head, then turned back to Rachel. “You don't even begin to understand,” she said. Her voice was resigned, a decision made. “I must have an abortion. As soon as possible. And I need you to help me make all the arrangements.”

• • •

T
HE BRACELET WAS
unmistakably an Aloysius Kennedy piece: thick, heavy, undefined swirls similar to the bracelet Barbara had seen in Ra-con Jewellery. She was willing to admit that Theo Shaw's possession of such a unique item might be pure coincidence, but she hadn't been involved in Criminal Investigations for eleven years for nothing: She knew how unlikely coincidences were when it came to murder.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Theo Shaw's tone was so friendly that Barbara wondered if, against all reason, he thought her visit was a social call. “Coffee? Tea? A Coke? I was about to grab a drink myself. Bloody hot weather, isn't it?”

Barbara said that a Coke would be fine, and when he left his office in search of one, she took the opportunity to have a look round. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, although she wouldn't have said no to the sight of a nice coil of incriminating wire—suitable for tripping someone in the darkness—lying squarely in the middle of his desk.

But there wasn't much to take note of. A set of book shelves held one row of green plastic binders and a second row of account books with successive years stamped on the spine of each in flaking gold numerals. A metal in-and-out tray on the top of a filing cabinet contained a batch of invoices that appeared to be for foodstuffs, for electrical work, for plumbing, and for business supplies. A bulletin board on one of the walls had posted upon it four architectural blue prints: two for a structure identified as the Pier End Hotel and two for a leisure centre called Agatha Shaw Recreational Village. Barbara took note of this latter name. Mother of Theo? she wondered. Aunt? Sister? Wife?

Idly she picked up a large paperweight that was holding down a pile of correspondence, all of which appeared devoted to a plan to redevelop the town. When she heard Theo's approaching footsteps in the corridor, she removed her attention from the letters to the paperweight, which appeared to be a large blob of pocked stone.

“Rapbidonema”
Theo Shaw said. He carried two Coke cans with a paper cup fitted over one of them. He handed this one over to Barbara.

“Raphi-who?” she said.

“Raphidonema. Porifera calcarea pharetronida lelapiidae raphidonema
to be more exact.” He smiled. He had a most appealing smile, Barbara thought, and she hardened automatically at the sight of it. She knew well enough what degree of complicity an appealing smile was able to hide. “I'm showing off,” he said ingenuously. “It's a fossil sponge. Lower Cretaceous period. I found it.”

Barbara turned the rock in her hands. “Really? It looks like … hell, I don't know … sandstone? How'd you know what it was?”

“Experience. I've been playing palaeontologist for years.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Along the coast, just north of town.”

“At the Nez?” Barbara asked.

Theo's eyes narrowed, but so fractionally that Barbara would have missed the movement had she not been watching for some indication that he knew, at heart, what she was doing in his office. “Right,” he said. “The red crag traps them and the London clay releases them. All you have to do is wait for the sea to erode the cliffs.”

“That's your primary spot for fossil-hunting, then? Out on the Nez?”

“Not on the Nez,” he corrected her. “On the beach below it, at the base of the cliffs. But yes, that's the best spot for fossils along this stretch of coastline.”

She nodded and placed the fossilised sponge back on top of the papers it had been weighing down. She popped open her Coke and drank straight from the can. The paper cup she crumpled slowly into her hand. A tiny elevation of Theo Shaw's eyebrows told her that he didn't misunderstand the gesture.

First things first, she thought. The Nez and the bracelet made Theo himself a subject that she wished to pursue, but there were other fish to fry before she got to him. She said, “What can you tell me about a bloke called Trevor Ruddock?”

“Trevor Ruddock?”

Did he sound relieved? Barbara wondered. “He works somewhere on the pier. D'you know him?”

“I do. He's been here for three weeks.”

“He came to you via Malik's Mustards, I understand.”

“He did.”

“Where he was given the sack for pilfering goods.”

“I know,” Theo said. “Akram wrote me about it. Phoned as well. He asked me to give the chap a chance because he believed there were extenuating circumstances behind the pilfering. The family's poor. Six kids. And Trevor's dad has been out of work with a bad back for the last eighteen months. Akram said he couldn't in conscience keep Ruddock on, but he wanted to give him a second chance somewhere else. So I took him on. It's not much of a job, and it doesn't pay nearly what he was making with Akram, but it's something to tide him over.”

“What's he do?”

“Pier clean-up right now. After hours.”

“So he's not here at the moment?”

“He starts work at half past eleven at night. There'd be no point to coming to the pier before that, unless he was doing it for his own amusement.”

Mentally, Barbara added another tick to Trevor Ruddock's name in the list of suspects. The motive was there and now the opportunity. He could easily have done away with Haytham Querashi on the Nez and still clocked in at the pier on time.

But that begged the question of what Theo Shaw was doing with the Aloysius Kennedy bracelet. If indeed it was
the
Kennedy bracelet. And there was only one way to find out.

Enter Thespian Havers, Barbara thought. She said, “I'll need a current address for him if you've got it.”

“Not a problem at all.” Theo went to his desk and sat in the wheeled oak chair behind it. He turned the spool of an old Rolodex and flipped through its cards until he came to the one he wanted. He wrote the address on a Post-it and handed this over. Which gave Thespian Havers the opportunity she wanted.

“Whoa,” she said. “Is that an Aloysius Kennedy you've got on? It's gorgeous.”

“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.”