Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(174)
“And you yourself are from …?” Barbara asked encouragingly, although she was fairly certain of the answer.
“Hamburg,” he said.
Well, well, well, she thought.
He said, “Originally Hamburg, that is. I have been in this country for seven years.” Haff, he said.
She said, “Right. Yes. Well. This bloke's called Haytham Querashi. I'm investigating his murder. He was killed last week in Balford-le-Nez. What sort of air tickets was he asking about?”
To their credit, they all seemed equally surprised or dismayed when the word murder was intoned. They lowered their heads as one to re-examine the photograph of Querashi as if it were a relic of a saint. Jen was the one to answer. He'd been inquiring about airline tickets for his family, she explained to Barbara. He wished to bring them to England from Pakistan. A whole party of people, it was: brothers and sisters, parents, the lot. He wanted them to join him in England permanently.
“You've a branch office in Pakistan,” Barbara noted. “In Karachi, right?”
“In Hong Kong, Istanbul, New Delhi, Vancouver, New York, and Kingston as well,” Edwina said proudly. “Our speciality is foreign travel and immigration. We've experts working in every office.”
Which is probably why Querashi had chosen World Wide Tours rather than an agency in Balford, Jen added, testimonial incarnate. He'd been asking about immigration for his family. Unlike most travel agencies solely eager to part customers from their cash, WWT had an international reputation—”a proud international reputation” was how she put it—for its network of contacts with lawyers round the world who specialised in immigration. “UK, EU, and US,” she said. “We're travel agents for people on the move and we're here to help make that movement easier.”
Yadda, yadda, yadda, Barbara thought. The girl sounded like an advert. So much for any previous thoughts about Querashi's trying to skip town one step ahead of his wedding day. It sounded as if he'd been fully intending to uphold his end of the marriage agreement. Indeed, it sounded as if he'd been laying plans for the future of his family as well.
Barbara pulled the Polaroid of Fahd Kumhar from her shoulder bag next. This met with a different result. None of them knew this particular Asian. None of them had ever seen him. Barbara watched them closely, looking for an indication that one or all of them were lying. But no one quivered so much as an eyelash.
Bust, she thought. She thanked them for their help and stepped from the office into the High Street. It was eleven o'clock and she was already sweat-drenched. She was also thirsty, so she ducked into the Whip and Whistle across the street. There, she managed to talk the publican into parting with five ice cubes over which he poured lemonade. She carried this to a table by the window—along with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps—and she flung herself onto a stool, lit a cigarette, and prepared to enjoy her elevenses.
She'd consumed half of the crisps, three-quarters of the lemonade, and all of the cigarette when she saw Rudi step out of World Wide Tours across the street. He glanced right and left and right again, in a manner that Barbara decided could have been overly cautious—indicating the normal trepidation of a European unused to English traffic—or borderline stealthy. She cast her vote with the latter and when Rudi took off up the street, she gulped down the rest of her lemonade and left the remaining crisps on the table.
Outside, she saw him unlocking a Renault on the street corner. Her own Mini was parked two cars away, so as the German fired up his vehicle and guided it into the traffic, she dashed to her own. In a moment, she was in pursuit.
Anything, of course, could have taken him from the travel office: a dental appointment, a sexual assignation, a visit to the chiropodist, an early lunch. But following so closely on the heels of her visit, Rudi's departure was too intriguing to let go uninvestigated.
She followed him at a distance. He took the A120 out of town. He drove with no interest in the speed limit, and he led her directly to Parkeston, just over two miles from the travel office. He didn't make the turn towards the harbour, however. Rather, he drove into an industrial estate just before the harbour road.
Barbara couldn't risk following him there. But she pulled into the layby that opened into the industrial estate, and she watched the Renault roll to a stop at a prefabricated metal warehouse at the farthest end. Barbara would have given her signed edition of The Lusty Savage for a pair of binoculars at that moment. She was too far from the building to read its sign.
Unlike the other warehouses in the estate, this one was closed up and looked unoccupied. But when Rudi rapped on the door, someone within admitted him.
Barbara watched from the Mini. She didn't know what she expected to see, and she was rewarded with seeing nothing. She sweated silently in the roasting car for a quarter of an hour that seemed like a century before Rudi emerged: no bags of heroin in his possession, no pockets bulging with counterfeit money, no video cassettes of children in compromising positions, no guns or explosives or even companions. He left the warehouse as he'd entered the warehouse, empty-handed and alone.
Barbara knew he'd see her if she remained on the edge of the industrial estate, so she pulled back onto the A120 with the intention of turning round and having a bit of recce among the warehouses once Rudi was gone. But as she looked for a suitable place to make a three-point turn, she saw a large stone building sitting back from the road on a horseshoe drive. THE CASTLE HOTEL, its roadside sign announced in mediaeval lettering. She recalled the brochure that she'd found in Haytham Querashi's room. She turned into the hotel's car park, making the decision to kill another bird with the stones she'd been fortuitously given.