Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(119)
She went on to the second number in Hamburg and found herself on the line with a woman saying something as unintelligible as had the male voice on the answer machine. But at least this was a real human being, and Barbara wasn't about to let her slip through her grasp.
God, how she wished she'd studied foreign language at the comprehensive! All she knew how to say in German was “Bitte zwei Bier” which didn't seem applicable in the situation. She thought, Bloody hell, but gathered her wits enough to say, “Ich spreche … I mean …Sprechen vous … No, that's not right …Ich bin ein calling from England … Hell! Damn!”
This was apparently sufficient stimulus, because the response came in English, and the words were surprising. “Here is Ingrid Eck,” the woman said curtly and with an accent so heavy that Barbara half-expected to hear Das Deutschlandlied playing in the background. “Here is Hamburg Police. Wer ist das, bitte? How may I help you?”
Police? Barbara thought. Hamburg police? German police? What in hell was a Pakistani in England doing phoning the German police?
She said, “Sorry. Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers here. New Scotland Yard.”
“New Scotland Yard?” the woman repeated. “Ja? To who will you wish”—vill and vish, she said—”to speak at this location?”
“I'm not sure,” Barbara said. “We're looking into a murder and the victim—”
“You have a German victim?” Ingrid Eck asked at once. Except she said haff and wictim and went on to clarify with “Has a German national been involved”—inwolwed—”in a homicide, please?”
“No. Our victim is Asian. Pakistani, in fact. A bloke called Haytham Querashi. And he phoned this number two days before he was killed. I'm trying to trace the call. I'd like to speak to whoever he phoned. Can you help me?”
“Oh. Ja. I see.” And then she spoke past the receiver, rapid German of which Barbara caught the words England and mord. Several voices answered, many gutturals like the clearing throats of a half dozen men afflicted with serious postnasal drip. Barbara's hopes lifted at the passion of their conversation, only to be dashed when Ingrid's voice came back over the line.
“Here is Ingrid another time,” she said. “I feel terror that we can be of no help.”
Terror? Barbara thought before she made the correction to I'm afraid. “Let me spell out the name for you,” she said helpfully. “Foreign names are odd when you hear them, aren't they, and if you see it written down, you might recognize it. Or someone else might if you pass it round.”
With stops and starts and at least five pauses to make corrections in the spelling, Ingrid took Haytham Querashi's name. She said in her creative and broken English that she would display it and circulate it round the station, but New Scotland Yard weren't to get their hopes up about receiving a helpful answer. Many hundred people worked at Polizeihochhaus in Hamburg in one division or another, and there was no telling if the right person would see the circulated and displayed name any time soon. People were beginning to take their summer holidays, people were overworked, people's focus was on German rather than English problems. …
So much for European unity, Barbara thought. She asked Ingrid to do her best, left her own number, and rang off. She blotted her hot face on the hem of her T-shirt, thinking how unlikely it was that she'd find an English-speaking recipient at the other end of her next set of phone calls. It had to be well after midnight in Pakistan, and since she didn't know a word of Urdu in which to tell an Asian sleeper why his slumber had been shattered by the ringing of his phone, Barbara decided to rustle up someone who could do the job for her.
She went up the stairs and made her way down the corridor to the section of the hotel in which Querashi's room had been. She paused before the door behind which she'd heard television voices on the previous night. Azhar and Hadiyyah had to be within. It was unthinkable that Basil Treves might have deviated from his odious separate-but-equal philosophy by placing the Asians in part of the hotel where his English guests would have their delicate sensibilities disrupted by a foreign presence.
She knocked quietly and said Azhar's name, then knocked again. The key turned in the lock within, and he was standing before her in a maroon dressing gown with a cigarette in his hand. Behind him, the room was semi-dark. A bedside lamp was shaded by a large blue handkerchief, but enough light was apparently left for him to read by. A bound document of some sort lay next to his pillow.
“Is Hadiyyah asleep? Can you come to my room?” she asked him.
He looked so startled at the request that Barbara felt her face begin to flame at the implication behind her words. She said hurriedly, “I need you to phone some numbers in Pakistan for me,” and went on to explain how she'd come by them.
“Ah.” He glanced at the gold watch on his thin wrist. “Have you any idea what time it is in Pakistan, Barbara?”
“Late.”
“Early,” he corrected her. “Extremely early. Would your purposes not be better served by waiting till a more reasonable hour?”
“Not when we're dealing with a murder,” she said. “Will you make the calls for me, Azhar?”
He looked over his shoulder into the room. Beyond him, Barbara could see the small humped figure of Hadiyyah in the second bed. She was sleeping with a large stuffed Kermit tucked in beside her.