Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(161)

“Yeah. Well,” Barbara said with a shrug, intending the movement of her shoulders to indicate her own membership in the sisterhood of women who casually crushed cobblers for stress reduction. The reality was that she was dying for a fag—not a man—and she could feel the need for nicotine building from her fingertips to the backs of her eyeballs, despite having sucked down three and a half cigarettes during her meeting with Azhar and his cousin. “Whatever works.”

“This does for me.” Emily blew out a breath and raked her fingers back through her hair. A small curtain of sodden paper towels draped over the unlit lamp of her desk, and she took one of them, rubbing it on the back of her neck. “I swear to God, this weather feels like summer in New Delhi. Have you ever been there? No? Good. Don't waste your money. It's a real pit. What did you give them?”

Barbara made her report. She'd told the Asians that the police had tracked down and acquired the contents of Querashi's safe deposit box at Barclays, that Siddiqi had confirmed Azhar's translation of the Qur'aan page from Querashi's hotel room, that they were working on his incoming and outgoing telephone calls, and that they had a suspect—beyond Kumhar—who was being held for questioning at the present time.

“Malik's reaction?” Emily said.

“He pressed.”

Which mildly understated the case. Muhannad Malik had demanded to know the race and identity of the second suspect. He'd asked for a list of the contents of Querashi's safe deposit box. He'd demanded a complete definition of what it meant to be “working” on incoming and outgoing telephone calls. He wanted to be put in touch with Professor Siddiqi in order to make certain that the man understood the nature of the crime that was being investigated in Balford-le-Nez.

“Christ. He's got such bloody nerve,” Emily remarked upon Barbara's conclusion. “What did you tell him?”

“I didn't have to tell him anything,” Barbara replied. “Azhar did it for me.” And he'd done it in his usual fashion, with the aplomb that came from obviously having had more than one occasion to deal with the police, with PACE, and with that law's ramifications. Which made Barbara wonder anew about her London neighbour. She'd labelled him university professor and father of Hadiyyah during the nearly two months of their acquaintance. But what else was he? she asked herself now. And what were the depth and the breadth of information that was missing from her knowledge of the man?

“You like this other bloke, this Azhar,” Emily said astutely. “Why?”

Barbara knew she should say Because I know him from London, we're neighbours, and his daughter is special to me. But what she said instead was “Just a gut feeling. He seems honest. He seems like he wants to get to the bottom of what happened to Querashi as much as we do.”

Emily gave out a sceptical bark of laughter. “Don't put money on that, Barb. If he's thick with Muhannad, he's got an agenda that has nothing to do with getting to the bottom of what happened on the Nez. Or did you miss the subtext in our little rendezvous with Azhar, Malik, and Fahd Kumhar?”

“What subtext?”

“Kumhar's reaction when those two walked into the interrogation room. You saw it, didn't you? What do you think that meant?”

“Kumhar was bricking it,” Barbara admitted. “I've never seen anyone so rattled in custody. But that's the real point, isn't it, Em? He's in custody. So where are you heading with this?”

“I'm heading to a connection between these blokes. Kumhar took one look at Azhar and Malik and nearly wore brown trousers.”

“You're saying he knew them?”

“Perhaps not Azhar. But I'm saying that he knew Muhannad Malik. I'm saying it's dead cert that he knew him. He was shaking so badly, we could have used him to make martinis for James Bond. And believe me, that reaction had nothing to do with being locked up in the nick.”

Barbara sensed her certainty and met it with caution. “But, Em, look at his situation. He's in custody—a suspect in a murder investigation—in a foreign country, where his language skills wouldn't get him as far as the edge of town if he wanted to scarper. Isn't that reason enough for him to be—”

“Yes,” Emily said impatiently. “Right. His English wouldn't serve him to call a dog to a bone. So what was he doing in Clacton? And, more to the point, how did he get there? We're not talking about a town teeming with Asians. We're talking about a town with so few of them that all we had to do was ask about a single Pakistani at Jackson and Son and the proprietor knew we were looking for Kumhar.”

“So?” Barbara asked.

‘This isn't exactly a culture of free spirits. These people stick together. So what's Kumhar doing in Clacton by himself when the rest of his kind are here, in Balford?”

Barbara wanted to argue that Azhar was in London alone despite, as she had so recently learned, having a large family elsewhere in the country. She wanted to argue that the Asian community in London was centered mostly round Southall and Hounslow, while Azhar lived in Chalk Farm and worked in Bloomsbury. How typical is that? she wanted to ask. But she couldn't do that without jeopardising her position in the investigation.

Emily went on insistently. “You heard DC Honigman. Kumhar was fine till those two blokes walked into the room. What do you suppose that means?”