Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(130)

The phone rang. She didn't pick it up. Barbara looked nervously from her to it.

The ringing ceased after fifteen seconds. Belinda Warner came to the door. “Frank on the phone, Guv,” she said. “He's got into Querashi's safe deposit box at Barclays in Clacton. He says he's got a bill of lading from a business called Eastern Imports—” Here she glanced at a piece of paper on which she'd apparently jotted down the information relayed to her by the DC at Barclays. “‘Purveyors of furniture, rugs, and other goods for the home,’ it says. An import company from Pakistan. He's also got an envelope with part of an address on it. Oskarstrafe 15, but nothing else. And a page from a glossy magazine that he can't make anything of. There's also paperwork on a house on First Avenue and Querashi's immigration documents. And that's it on the safe deposit box. Frank wants to know do you want him to bring this stuff in?”

“Tell him to use his bloody head for once,” Emily snapped. “Of course I want him to bring the stuff in.”

Belinda gulped and exited hurriedly. Emily turned to Barbara.

“Oskarstrafie 15,” she said meditatively but with a meaning Barbara couldn't avoid. “Now, where d'you expect that address is?”

“I was out of line,” Barbara said. “I get the bit between my teeth sometimes and I just run with it. Can we forget what I said?”

“No,” Emily returned. “We can't forget it.”

Shit, Barbara thought. There went her plans to work at the DCFs side, to learn something from her, and to keep Taymullah Azhar out of trouble. All defeated by her own flapping lips. “Hell, Em,” she said.

“Go on.”

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I never mean … Oh hell.” Barbara sank her head into the palm of one hand.

“I didn't mean go on with your grovelling,” Emily said. “Appropriate though it may be. I meant go on with what you were saying.”

Confused, Barbara looked up, trying to read her friend for irony and an intent to humiliate. But what she saw was only interest. And once again she was forced to recognise those qualities that were so essential in their line of work: the ability to back off, the willingness to listen, and the facility for altering one course of action if another presented itself.

Barbara licked her lips, tasting the thin film of lipstick that she'd applied earlier. “Okay,” she said, but she proceeded gingerly, determined to control her ungovernable tongue. “Forget Sahlah and Theo Shaw for a minute. What if we suppose that Querashi's intent in calling the mufti was actually about his homosexuality, as you suggested. He phoned and asked if a Muslim who commits a grave sin is still a Muslim and he was talking about himself.”

“I'll go with that.” Emily reached for a handful of trail mix and held it cupped it her palm as Barbara continued.

“He heard that a grave sin would cut him off, so he decided to end his affair and he told the other bloke at an earlier meeting. But this other bloke—his lover—didn't want to break it off. He asked for another meeting. Querashi took his condoms, figuring the last meeting might well end up with a farewell buggering. Better safe than sorry. Only this time, the lover arranged for Querashi's death, along the lines of ‘If I can't have you, no one can.’ “

“Querashi became his obsession,” Emily clarified, sounding as if she did so more for herself than for Barbara. She shifted her gaze to the oscillating fan that she'd unearthed from the attic on the previous day. She hadn't yet turned it on. Stilled, the blades were tufted with dust. “I can see how that works, Barb, but you're forgetting one thing: your own argument from yesterday. Why would the lover have killed Querashi and then moved the body? What might have been taken for an accident immediately became suspicious because of that. And because the Nissan was tossed.”

“That bloody Nissan” was Barbara's response, an admission that Emily had just shot down her theory. But when she thought of the events of that past Friday night—a secret rendezvous, a fatal fall, a body out of place, a car tossed—she began to see another possibility. “Em, what if there's a third party involved?”

“A menage a trois? What d'you mean?”

“What if Querashi's supposed lover isn't his killer? D'you have the crime scene pictures?”

The DCI again rooted through the files and papers on the top of her desk. She found the file and set the photos of the body to one side. She laid out the pictures of the scene itself. Barbara went to stand behind the DCI's chair, studying the photographs over her shoulder.

“Okay,” Emily said. “Let's go with it. Let's see how it plays with the lover not Querashi's killer. On Friday if Querashi's intention was to meet someone, then that person was either already at the Nez waiting for him when Querashi got there or on his way to the rendezvous. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Barbara continued with the scenario. “So if that person either saw or heard Querashi take the fall or if he found him dead at the bottom of those steps—”

“Then he would have logically assumed it was an accident. He would have chosen two courses of action at that point: leaving the body there for someone else to find or reporting the accident himself.”

“Right. If he wants to keep their liaison secret, he leaves the body. If he doesn't care who knows—”