Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(136)

Cliff asked them what they meant. He said that sure, he knew Querashi outside the industrial estate. If he knew him here, he'd know him elsewhere. He wouldn't exactly have a memory loss when it was after hours, would he?

They weren't amused by this remark. They asked him to explain how he knew Querashi.

He told them he knew Querashi outside work the same way he knew Querashi inside work. If he saw him in Balford or anywhere else, he said hello, he said Bloody hot day, he nodded in recognition. That was the extent of it.

Where might he have seen Querashi outside work? they asked him.

And Cliff saw once again how cops twist everything to suit themselves. He hated the bastards in that instant. If he didn't mind his every syllable, they'd have him strolling with Querashi in the same pair of knickers before they were finished.

He kept his temper and told them that he hadn't seen the bloke outside the industrial estate. He was merely telling them that if he'd seen him, he'd have known who he was and he would have acknowledged him the way he acknowledged anyone he recognised. He was that sort of chap.

Friendly, the cop called Grey remarked. He let his gaze wander over to the display case of goodies to make his point.

Cliff didn't challenge them with a belligerent What's that supposed to mean? He knew that cops liked to cause aggro because feeling aggro put you off-guard with them. He'd played this game more than once with the rozzers. It had only taken him one night in lock-up to figure out the importance of staying cool.

They changed gears on him, then, asking if he was familiar with someone called Fahd Kumhar.

He told him he wasn't. He admitted that he might recognise Fahd Kumhar on sight because by sight he knew most of the Asians who worked in the mustard factory. But he didn't know their names. Those names they have just sound like a slew of letters put together to make up noises and I can never remember them, he explained. Why don't those people give their kids proper names? What about William, Charlie, or Steve?

The cops didn't pick up on this friendly aside. Instead, they went back to Querashi again. Had he ever seen Querashi with anyone? Talking to anyone on the grounds of the industrial estate?

Cliff couldn't recall, he told them. He said he might have done, but it wouldn't have registered. There were people in the grounds all the time, lots of coming and going, lorries arriving, deliveries being made, goods being shipped.

This might well have been a man Querashi would have been talking to, Waters told him. And with a nod towards the display case, he asked Cliff if he and Querashi had ever done business.

Querashi was a ginger, Grey added. Did Cliff know that?

This question cut a little too close for comfort, the way a knife blade can nearly slice into one's skin. Cliff closed his mind to the memory of his conversation with Gerry in the kitchen on the previous morning. He shut his inner ears to their words: accusations on one part and angry denials and defences on the other.

What about fidelity? Where did that go?

What about fidelity? All I know about it is what you say about it. And there's a hell of a lot of difference between what blokes feel and what they say.

Was it the market square? Is that where it happened? Did you meet him there?

Oh right, too right. Have it your way.

And the crash of the door put the full stop at the end of what went for their conversation.

But he couldn't betray any of that to the cops. No way could he let these blokes near Gerry.

No, he told them steadily. He'd never done business with Haytham Querashi, and it was news to him that the bloke was queer. He thought Querashi was supposed to be marrying Akram Malik's daughter. So were the cops sure they had their facts sorted out?

Nothing's ever sure in an investigation till a suspect's in the nick, Grey informed him.

And Waters added that if he remembered anything that he thought the police needed to know …

Cliff assured them that he'd have a proper think. He'd phone if anything popped into his head.

You do that, Grey told him. He gave a final look round the shop. When he and Waters stepped outside, he said, Flaming dung-puncher, just loud enough to be certain that Cliff overheard it.

Cliff watched them walk off. When they disappeared into the joinery across the pitted lane, he allowed himself to move. He went behind the counter, where his order desk was, and he thunked down onto the wooden chair.

His heart was racing, but he hadn't noticed while the cops were there. Once they left, though, he could feel it pounding so hard and so fast that it felt like it might leap straight through his chest to lay throbbing on the blue lino floor. He had to get a grip, he told himself. There was Gerry to think of. He had to keep his mind on Gerry.

His lover hadn't slept at home on the previous night. Cliff had awakened in the morning to find his side of the bed unruffled and he'd known at once that Gerry had never returned from Balford. His guts greeted this knowledge with a sickening twist. And despite the early heat of the day, his hands and feet had gone cold as dead fish at the thought of what Gerry's absence might mean.

He'd tried at first to tell himself that the other man had simply decided to work through the night and into the next day. After all, he was trying to complete the pier-end restaurant before the next bank holiday. And at the same time, he was working after hours on that house renovation in Balford. So Gerry had a good enough reason to be away from home. He might have gone directly from the first job to the second one, which was something he did quite often, in fact, sometimes working till three in the morning if he was anywhere close to completing a stage of the second project. But he'd never worked round the clock before. And in the past whenever he'd planned to work late into the night, he'd always phoned.