Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(164)

Muhannad's face was a study in active assessment, as if a computer in his brain were in the process of tallying information and placing it in appropriate categories. Barbara could well imagine what they were labelled: betrayal, secrecy, deception. He spoke to Hadiyyah, but he looked at her father.

“How very nice to meet your friend, little cousin. Have you known her long?”

“Oh, weeks and weeks and weeks,” Hadiyyah crowed. “We go for ice creams on Chalk Farm Road and we've been to the cinema and she even came to my birthday party. Sometimes we go to see her mum in Greenford. We have ever so much fun, don't we, Barbara?”

“How coincidental it is, then, that you should find yourselves in the same hotel in Balford-le-Nez,” Muhannad said meaningfully.

“Hadiyyah,” Azhar said, “Barbara has only just returned to the hotel, and it appears that you waylaid her on her way to her room. If you—”

“We told her we were going to Essex, you see.” Amiably, Hadiyyah offered the information to her cousin. “We had to, because I left a message on her answer machine. I invited her for an ice cream, and I didn't want her to think I would forget. So I went to her cottage to tell her and then Dad came and then we said we were going to the sea. Only Dad didn't tell me you lived here, Cousin Muhannad. He made it a surprise. So now you can meet my friend Barbara and she can meet you.”

“That's been done,” Azhar said.

“But perhaps not as soon as it might have been,” Muhannad said.

“Listen, Mr. Malik,” Barbara put in, but the appearance of Basil Treves supervened.

He was coming out of the bar in his usual bustle, the evening's dinner orders clutched in his hand. He hummed as always. The sight of Barbara with the Pakistanis, however, silenced him on what sounded like the fifth note of the title song to The Sound of Music.

“Ah! Sergeant Havers,” he said. “You've had a phone call. Three, in fact, all from the same man.” He cast a speculative glance at Muhannad and then at Azhar before he added mysteriously but with an unmistakable air of importance that served to underscore his position as the compatriot, fellow investigator, and general soulmate of the Scotland Yard detective, “You know, Sergeant. That little German concern of ours? He left two numbers: home and direct line into his office. I've put them both in your cubbyhole, and if you'll just wait a moment …”

As he scuttled away to fetch the telephone messages, Muhannad spoke again. “Cousin, we'll speak later, I hope. Hadiyyah, good evening. It was—” His face softened with the truth of his words and his other hand cradled the back of her head in a tender gesture. He bent and kissed her crown. “It was truly a pleasure to meet you at long last.”

“Will you come again? C'n I meet your wife and your little boys?”

“Everything”—he smiled—”in good time.”

He took his leave of them, and Azhar—casting a quick look at Barbara—followed him out of the hotel. Barbara heard him say urgently, “Muhannad, a moment,” as he got to the door. She wondered what on earth he was going to say to his cousin by way of explanation. No matter how one examined the situation, it didn't look good.

“Here we are.” Basil Treves was back with them, Barbara's messages fluttering from his fingers. “He was most courteous over the phone. Quite surprising, for a German. Will you be joining us for dinner, Sergeant?”

She told him that she would be doing so, and Hadiyyah said, “Sit with us, sit with us!”

Treves didn't look any happier at this turn of events than he'd looked at breakfast on Monday morning when Barbara had blithely crossed the invisible barrier that the hotelier erected between his white guests and his guests of colour. He patted Hadiyyah on the head. He looked at her with the special sort of superficial benignity one reserves for small animals to which one is violently allergic. “Yes, yes. If she wishes,” he said heartily, past the aversion in his eyes. “She can sit anywhere she wishes to sit, my dear.”

“Good, good, good!” Reassured, Hadiyyah scampered off. A moment later, Barbara heard her chatting with Mrs. Porter in the hotel bar.

“It was the police,” Treves said confidentially. He nodded at the telephone messages in Barbara's hand. “I didn't want to say as much in front of …those two. You know. One can't be too careful with foreigners.”

“Right,” Barbara said. She quelled the desire to smack Treves’ face and tramp on his feet. Instead, she went up the stairs to her room.

She tossed her shoulder bag onto one of the twin beds and went to the other. She slouched down onto it and examined her telephone messages. Each was made out to the same name: Helmut Kreuzhage. He'd phoned at three that afternoon, then again at five and at six-fifteen. She looked at her watch and decided to try him in his office first. She punched the German number into the phone and fanned herself with the plastic tray that she took from beneath the room's tin tea pot.

“Hier ist Kriminalhauptkommisar Kreuzhage/’

Bingo, she thought. She identified herself slowly in English, thinking of Ingrid and her modest command of Barbara's native tongue. The German switched languages immediately, saying, “Yes. Sergeant Havers. I'm the man who took the telephone calls here in Hamburg from Mr. Haytham Querashi.” He spoke with only the barest hint of an accent. His voice was pleasant and mellifluous. He must have driven Basil Treves half mad, Barbara thought, so little did he sound like a postwar cinema Nazi.