Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(176)

“Did Mr. Querashi offer you a job?”

At this Kumhar looked nonplussed. A job? he asked. No. There was no job offered. Mr. Querashi merely picked him up and drove him to his lodgings.

“And wrote you a cheque for four hundred pounds,” Emily added.

Siddiqi raised an eyebrow, but translated without comment.

It was true that Mr. Querashi had given him money. The man was kindness itself, and Mr. Kumhar would not lie and call this gift of four hundred pounds a loan. But the Qur'aan decreed and the Five Pillars of Islam required payment of the zakat to one in need. So in giving him four hundred pounds—

“What is zakat?” Emily interposed.

“Alms for the needy,” Siddiqi answered. Kumhar watched him anxiously whenever he switched to English, and his expression suggested a man straining to understand and to absorb every word. “Muslims are required to see to the economic welfare of members of their community. We give to support the poor and others like them.”

“So in giving Mr. Kumhar four hundred pounds, Haytham Querashi was simply doing his religious duty?”

“That's exactly the case,” Siddiqi said.

“He wasn't buying something?”

“Such as?” Siddiqi gestured to Kumhar. “What on earth could this poor man have to sell him?”

“Silence comes to mind. Mr. Kumhar spends time near Clacton market square. Ask him if he ever saw Mr. Querashi there.”

Siddiqi gazed at her for a moment as if trying to read the meaning behind the question. Then he shrugged and turned to Kumhar, repeating the question in their own language.

Kumhar shook his head adamantly. Emily didn't require a translation for never, not once, not at any time, he himself had not been in the market square.

“Mr. Querashi was the director of production at a local factory. He could have offered Mr. Kumhar employment. Yet Mr. Kumhar says the subject of a job never came up between them. Does he wish to change that claim?”

No, Kumhar told her through his interpreter. He did not wish to change that claim. He knew Mr. Querashi only as a benefactor sent to him through the goodness of Allah. But there was a common thread that bound them to each other: They both had families in Pakistan whom they wished to bring to this country. Although in Querashi's case it was parents and siblings and in Kumhar's case it was a wife and two children, their intention was the same and thus there existed between them a greater understanding than might have otherwise existed between two strangers who meet on a public road.

“But wouldn't a permanent job have been far more of a benefit than four hundred pounds if you want to bring your family to this country?” Emily asked. “How far could you have stretched that money in comparison to what you might have earned over time as an employee of Malik's Mustards?”

Kumhar shrugged. He had no way to explain why Mr. Querashi hadn't offered him employment.

Siddiqi interjected a comment. “Mr. Kumhar was a wayfarer, Inspector. In giving him funds, Mr. Querashi met his obligation to him. He wasn't required to do anything more.”

“It seems to me that a man who was ‘nothing but kindness’ to Mr. Kumhar is a man who would have seen to his future welfare as well as to his immediate needs.”

“We can't know what his ultimate intentions were towards Mr. Kumhar,” Professor Siddiqi pointed out. “We can only interpret his actions. His death, unfortunately, prevents anything more.”

And wasn't that convenient? Emily thought.

“Did Mr. Querashi ever make a pass at you, Mr. Kumhar?” she asked.

Siddiqi stared at her, absorbing the abrupt change in topic. “Are you asking—”

“I think the question's clear enough. We've been given information that Querashi was homosexual. I'd like to know if Mr. Kumhar was on the receiving end of anything besides Mr. Querashi's money.”

Kumhar heard the question with some consternation. He declared his answer in a tone of strained horror: No, no, no. Mr. Querashi was a good man. He was a righteous man. He could not have defiled his body, his mind, and his everlasting soul with such behaviour. It was an impossibility, a sin against everything Muslims believed.

“And where were you on Friday night?”

At his lodgings in Clacton. And Mrs. Kersey—his most generous hostess—would be happy to tell Inspector Barlow as much.

That concluded their interview, which is what Emily recited into the tape recorder. When she switched it off, Kumhar spoke urgently to Siddiqi.

Emily said angrily, “Hang on there.”

Siddiqi said, “He only wants to know if he can return to Clacton now. He is, understandably, anxious to quit this place, Inspector.”

Emily meditated on the prospect of getting any more information out of the Pakistani if she held him longer and gave him time to sweat a little more in that sauna of a cell just off the weight room. If she grilled him another two or three times, she might wrest from him a detail that would take her one step closer to their killer. But in doing this, she also ran the risk of sending the Asian community back into the streets. Whatever member of Jum'a came to fetch Kumhar back to Clacton in the afternoon would be looking for anything useful to their cause that could be carried back and reported upon as a means of enflaming the people. She weighed this possibility against whatever potential information she could get from the Asian before her.