Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(140)

MILY'S MOBILE RANG THE MOMENT SHE HIT MARINE Parade East, which edged the waterfront on the approach to the pleasure pier in Clacton-on-Sea. She'd just braked for a group of pensioners who were crossing the street from the Cedars Nursing Home—three of them using zimmer frames and two with walking sticks—when the trill of the phone cut into her thoughts of what a witness to the crime could mean to their case.

The caller was DC Billy Honigman, who'd spent the day in an unmarked Escort some thirty yards from Jackson and Son, the news agent's shop in Carnarvon Road.

His message was terse enough: “Got him, Guv.”

Kumhar, she thought. Where? she wanted to know.

He'd tailed the Pakistani to a house in Chapman Road, Honigman told her, not much more than round the corner from Jackson and Son. It looked like a boarding house. A sign in the window advertised rooms to let.

“I'm on my way,” Emily informed him. “Sit tight. Don't approach.”

She rang off. When the pensioners were clear of her car, she surged forward and in less than a mile made the turn up Carnarvon Road. Chapman Road shot left off the High Street. It was lined with terraced Victorian houses, all identically constructed of umber brick with bay windows whose frames provided the only means of distinguishing among them. These were edged in a variety of colours, and when Emily joined DC Honigman, he indicated a house whose chosen window-frame colour was yellow. It sat twenty yards from where Honigman had parked his Escort.

“Lives over there,” he said. “He made a purchase at the news agent's—newspaper, cigarettes, and a chocolate bar—and walked back here directly. Nervous, though. Walked fast and kept his eyes straight ahead, but when he got to the house, he walked on by it. He went halfway to the end of the street and had a good look round before heading back.”

“Did he see you, Billy?”

“Might've. But what's to see? Bloke looking for a parking space for a day at the sea.”

He had a point. With his usual attention to detail, Honigman had strapped a collapsible plastic chaise longue to the roof of the car. In a bow to both continuity and incognito, he was wearing khaki shorts and an open-necked shirt of a decidedly tropical print. He didn't look the part of a policeman.

“Let's see what we have, then,” Emily said with a nod at the house.

The door was answered by a woman with a poodle in her arms. She and the dog looked amazingly similar: white-haired, long-snouted, and recently coiffed. She said, “Sorry. The sign's still up, but all the rooms's let. I need to pull it down, I know. But my lumbago stops me taking it out the window.”

It was the vacancy notice that hung between the diaphanous white curtains and the glass of the ground floor bay window. Emily told the woman that they weren't there in search of accommodation. She produced her warrant card.

The woman gave a sheeplike bleat. Offering her name as “Gladys Kersey, that's Missus, by the way, although Mr. Kersey's gone to Jesus,” she went on to assure them that everything was in perfect order in her establishment, always had been, always was, and certainly always would be. She clutched the poodle beneath her arm as she spoke, and the dog gave a yip not unlike the owner's bleat.

“Fahd Kumhar,” Emily said. “If we might have a word with him, Mrs. Kersey?”

“Mr. Kumhar? He's not in some sort of trouble, is he? He seems a nice enough young man. Very clean, he is, bleaches those shirts of his by hand and what that's doing to his skin, by the way, isn't a very pretty sight. His English isn't much to speak of, but he watches the morning news in the lounge and I can tell he's trying hard to learn. He's not in trouble, is he?”

“Can you show us to his room?” Emily aimed her voice for polite but firm.

Mrs. Kersey excavated for substance beneath the question. “This i'n't about that business in Balford, is it?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“No reason.” Mrs. Kersey hiked the poodle higher. “Just what with him being one of them. You know …” She let the phrase dangle as if hoping Emily would complete it for her. When Emily did not do so, Mrs. Kersey buried her fingers in the poodle's curly fur and told both of the police visitors to “come along with you, then.”

Fahd Kumhar's room was on the first floor at the back of the house. It was one of three bedrooms, all of which opened off a square little hall. Mrs. Kersey rapped softly on the door, gave a glance over her shoulder at her companions, and called, “Mr. Kumhar? You've visitors asking to have a word with you.”

This was greeted with silence.

Mrs. Kersey looked puzzled. She said, “I saw him come in not ten minutes ago. We even spoke, we did. He's always polite, that way. And he never goes out without saying goodbye.” She knocked again, this time more forcefully. “Mr. Kumhar? I say, did you hear me?”

A muted sound of wood sliding on wood came from within the room. Emily said, “Step aside, please,” and when Mrs. Kersey did so, she reached for the knob. She said, “Police, Mr. Kumhar.”

A shriek of wood followed. Emily quickly turned the doorknob. DC Honigman slid past her like a cat. He caught Fahd Kumhar by the arm just as the other man was attempting to climb out of the window.

Mrs. Kersey had time to exclaim, “Why, Mr. Kumhar!” before Emily closed the door on her and the dog.