Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(183)

“And your point is?”

His tongue slid from his mouth and darted, lizard-like in its speed, round his lips. “I can tell you what you want to know, and I'm willing to do it. But you got to guarantee that my name gets kept away from the press.”

“I'm not in the habit of making anyone guarantees of anything.” Emily sat across the table from him. “And considering the fact that your prints were found at the scene of a murder, you're in no position to be making deals.”

“Then I don't talk.”

“Mr. Hegarty,” Barbara interposed, “we had the i.d. on your dabs off S04 in London. My guess is that you know the score: A London i.d. means you're sitting on a record of arrest. D'you need it pointed out that it looks a little dicey for a bloke if a felon's prints are associated with a murder and the bloke and the felon are one and the same?”

“I never hurt anyone,” Hegarty said defensively. “In London or in anyplace else. And I'm not a felon. What I did was between two adults, and just because one of the adults was paying, it wasn't like I ever had to force anyone into it. Besides, I was just a kid then. If you coppers paid more attention to stopping real crime and less attention to rousting blokes trying to make a few honest quid by using their bodies just like a coal miner or a ditch digger uses his, then this country would be a better place to live.”

Emily didn't argue with the creative comparison between manual labourers and male prostitutes. “Look. A solicitor can't keep your name out of the paper, if that's why you want one. And I can't guarantee that someone from the Standard won't be camped on your doorstep when you go home. But the quicker we get you in and out of here, the less likely that possibility is.”

He considered this, lizard-tonguing his lips once again. His biceps tightened and the phallus posing as the lily's stamen flexed suggestively. He finally said, “It's like this, okay? There's another bloke. Him and I, we been together awhile. Four years, to be specific. I don't want him to know about …well, about what I'm going to tell you. He already suspects but he doesn't know. And I want to keep it that way.”

Emily consulted a clipboard that she'd picked up from reception on her way downstairs. She said, “You have a business, I see.”

“Shit. I can't tell Gerry you been after me about the Distractions. He already doesn't like me making them. He's always after me to be doing something legit—legit according to his definition of legit—and if he finds out that I've had some aggro from the cops—”

“And I see this business is in the Balford Industrial Estate,” Emily continued unperturbed. “Which is where Malik's Mustards is. Which is where Mr. Querashi was employed. We will, of course, be speaking to every businessman in the industrial estate in the course of our investigation. Does this meet your needs, Mr. Hegarty?”

Hegarty blew out the breath he'd taken in order to voice further protest. Clearly, he'd received the implicit message. He said, “Yeah. It does. Okay.”

“Right then.” Emily briskly switched on the cassette recorder. “Begin with how you knew Mr. Querashi. We are correct in assuming you knew him, I take it?”

“I knew him,” Hegarty said. “Yeah. I knew the bloke all right.”

They'd met in Clacton market square. Cliff had taken to going there when he was caught up at work. He went for the shopping and for what he called “a bit of larking about, if you know what I mean. It just gets to be such a drag when you're with one bloke day in and day out. Larking about cuts the boredom, see? And that's all it was. Just larking about.”

He'd seen Querashi checking out some counterfeit Hermés scarves. He hadn't thought much of him—”dark meat not gen'rally being my preference”—until the Asian raised his head and gave him the eye. “I'd seen him round Malik's before,” Hegarty said. “But I never met him and I never gave him much of a thought. But when he looked at me, I knew what was what. It was a ginger look, and no mistaking. So I went to the toilets. He followed directly. And that's how it started.”

True love, Barbara thought.

He'd thought it would be a one-off, Hegarty explained, which is what he wanted and what he usually got when he went to the market square. But that's not how Querashi had wanted it. What Querashi had wanted was a permanent—if illicit—liaison, and the fact that Cliff was committed elsewhere served the Pakistani's essential needs. “He told me he was engaged to Malik's daughter, but the deal between them was going to be on paper only. She needed him to be legit. He needed her for the same reason.”

“To be legit?” Barbara interjected. “Is the Malik girl lesbian?”

“She's in the club,” Hegarty answered. “Least, that's what Hayth told me about her.”

Bloody hell, Barbara thought. “Was Mr. Querashi certain that she's pregnant?” she clarified.

“The bird told him herself, he said. She told him straightaway when they met. He figured it was fine because while he could've shagged her, he knew that shagging a woman was going to be a real chore. So if they could pass the kid off as his, the better. He'd look like he'd done the husband business on his wedding night, and if the kid was a boy, he'd be in clover and not have to bother with the wife any longer.”