Free The Language of Secrets by Ausma Zehanat Khan Page B

Mohsin would have seen something else. The pictures tell us about Ashkouri’s pain, and perhaps they tell us how determined he is to inflict that pain on someone else.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Rachel asked.
    â€œâ€˜We are men in the sun’,” Khattak quoted. “‘We will show you the proof in time.’”

 
    9
    Rachel drove down the charming Main Street of the village of Unionville, a part of the greater Toronto area she rarely visited. Founded in 1794, with quaint signposts at regular intervals, the village had been settled well before Confederation, and was older than the nation of Canada itself. It reminded her of the township of Waverley, where she and Khattak had worked their first case, the murder of a young woman named Miraj Siddiqui. Old Unionville had the same small-town charm, with the sense of having receded from winter.
    The little shops huddled together in the cold, a cascade of snow gilding the flanks of the pretty town gazebo. As Rachel’s car bumped over the railway tracks near the planing mill, she stopped before the Old Firehall Confectionery. With her instinctive habit of observation, she noticed that people were carrying their steaming-hot cups of coffee into the confectionery from the coffee shop next door to it, rather than the other way around.
    Ice cream instead of coffee, she mused. That wouldn’t sell in December. Gourmet fudge and tartlets might, however. Everyone who came out of the red-brick building was carrying a small cardboard box tied with a gold ribbon. Rachel’s stomach began to protest in response. A quick stop wouldn’t hurt, but it would mean she’d miss the afternoon prayer, and her chance to observe and blend in without drawing too much attention to herself. She’d have to satisfy her cravings another time.
    She drove past the Frederick Horsman Varley Art Gallery, with its single narrow steeple, and made the turnoff to Toogood Pond. The pond was frozen over. Young skaters raced one another over its rutted surface, small bits of color against the white glass, a perfect mirror of winter snowfall.
    Rachel sighed with pleasure. It was going to be a wonderful season.
    And there at the far end of the pond was a large two-story house in daffodil yellow with freshly painted gables in blue. She parked on the road and trudged through the snow to the front door. A discreet notice above the door identified the building as the Masjid un-Nur. Otherwise, it looked much the same as the other houses gathered around the pond.
    When she tried the door, she found it unlocked. She entered into an overheated space, and immediately her breath began to steam. She divested herself of coat, scarf, and gloves and dumped her boots on a nearby rack.
    The foyer had been transformed into a reception area, with a desk, shoe caddies, coatracks, and several portable bulletin boards. The room was empty save for a woman of indeterminate age seated behind the desk. Her smooth round face was settled in folds of fat. Her striking blue eyes were sunk beneath a pair of heavy eyebrows that if left to themselves would have met in the middle. An expression of permanent dissatisfaction marred what would otherwise have been a pleasant face. The woman was dressed in a long beige gown that matched the headscarf wound tightly about her skull, sealing off her cheeks and forehead.
    Rachel toyed with the headscarf in her hands. Her uncertain manner was only partly a projection of the role she had come here to play. She felt uncertain, and more than a little anxious that no action she undertook at the Nur mosque should undermine the INSET operation. She recognized the woman seated at the desk from the photographs Khattak had shown her. The woman’s name was Paula Kyriakou. She was one of the two women who had attended the winter camp with Mohsin Dar. From her surly expression, she did not appear to be grieving.
    â€œDid I miss the prayer?” Rachel asked,