Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(113)

“Azhar, that can't be how we play the game. I can only tell you what DCI Barlow authorises me to tell you.”

“That's convenient for you.”

“No. That's how I stay involved in this case.” Barbara took a drag of her cigarette and considered how best to garner his cooperation. She said, “And as I see the situation, it's to everyone's advantage that I stay involved. I don't live here. I have no axe to grind and no vested interest in proving or disproving anyone's guilt. If you blokes think that there's prejudice behind the investigation, then frankly, I'm your best bet of weeding it out.”

“And is there?” he asked.

“Bloody hell, I don't know. I've been here twenty-four hours, Azhar. I'd like to think I'm good, but I doubt I'm that good. So can we get on with it, you and I?”

He took a turn to think things over, and he seemed to be trying to read her face for the truth of what she'd said. “You know how his neck was broken, though,” he finally said.

“Yeah. We know. But when you think about it, how else would we really be able to determine it was clear-cut murder?”

“And was it?”

“Know it.” She flicked ash onto the flagstones and drew in on her cigarette. She said, “Homosexuality, Azhar. How does it sit with Islam?”

She could see that she'd taken him by surprise. When she'd told him she wanted to ask him about Islam, he'd no doubt concluded that whatever questions she had would be further questions about arranged marriages, more of the same as she'd asked that morning. This was an entirely new direction, and he was clever enough to know how the question related to the investigation.

“Haytham Querashi?” he asked.

She shrugged. “We have a statement that makes it possible, but only that. And the person who gave it has a good enough reason to want us heading off on a goose chase, so it may be nothing. But I need to know what sort of deal homosexuality is to Muslims, and I'd rather not have to send to London to find out.”

“One of the suspects made this statement,” Azhar said thoughtfully. “Is this an English suspect?”

Barbara sighed, expelling a lungful of smoke. “Azhar, can we give this symphony more than one note? What difference does it make if he's English or Asian? Do you lot want this murder solved no matter what? Or only if an Englishman did it? And the suspect is English, by the way. And he was turned over to us by someone else English. If the truth be told, we've got at least three possibilities, and all of them are English. Now, will you give it a rest and answer my flaming question?”

He smiled and crushed out his cigarette. “Had you displayed this level of passion in our meeting today, Barbara, most of my cousin's trepidations would have been resolved. Why didn't you?”

“Because, frankly, I care sod bloody all about your cousin's trepidations. Even if I'd told him we had thirty English suspects, he'd hardly have believed me unless I'd given him their names. Am I right?”

“Admitted.” Azhar sipped his drink. Another time he managed to replace the glass on the same ring of condensation from which he'd taken it.

“So?” she said.

He waited a moment before answering. In the silence, Barbara heard Basil Treves ho-ho-hoing it at someone's joke. Azhar grimaced at the obviously false nature of the laughter. “Homosexuality is expressly forbidden,” he said.

“So what happens if a bloke is homosexual?”

“It would be something that he would keep to himself.”

“Because?”

Azhar toyed with the queen he'd captured from his daughter, his dark fingers rolling the piece to the base of his thumb and back again. “In openly practising homosexuality, he would be indicating that he no longer believed in Muslim ways. This is sacrilege. And for that—as well as for the homosexuality itself—he would be cut off from his family, from other Muslims as well.”

“So it follows,” Barbara said thoughtfully, “that he'd want to keep this business quiet. Maybe he'd even want to get married and have a reasonable front, to deflect suspicion.”

“These are serious charges, Barbara. You must guard against denigrating the memory of a man like Haytham. In insulting him, you insult the family to which he was bound by contracted marriage.”

“I haven't ‘charged’ anyone with anything,” Barbara said. “But if someone opens up a field of enquiry, the police are bound to walk across it. That's our job. So what about the insult to the family if he was homosexual? He'd have been contracting himself to a marriage under false pretenses, wouldn't he? And if a man does that to a family like the Maliks, what's the penalty?”

“Marriage is a contract between two families, not just between two individuals.”

“Jesus Christ, Azhar. You can't be telling me that Querashi's family would simply send over a different brother for Sahlah Malik to marry, like she was some fresh hot roll just waiting for a suitable sausage.”

Azhar smiled, it seemed, in spite of himself. “Your defense of your sex is admirable, Sergeant.”

“Great. Thanks. So—”

He interrupted. “But what I meant is this: Haytham's dissembling would have caused an irreparable breach between the two families. This breach—and the cause of it—would be known to the greater community as well.”