Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(201)
Muhannad turned from the door. His face was a carving. “What are you saying?”
Yumn felt the relief. It was followed by triumph. She'd diverted a crisis between them. “I'm saying just what you think I'm saying. Your sister's pregnant. Which is something everyone would have known if they weren't so intent on watching me all the time, just in case I make a move that they can give me a beating for.”
His eyes went opaque. She saw the ripple of muscles in his arm. She felt her lips want to draw back in a smile, but she maintained control. Precious Sahlah was in for it now. Four ruined tomato plants were hardly worthy of discussion in the face of this familial disgrace.
Muhannad jerked the door open. The force was so great that it crashed back against the wall and flew forward into his shoulder. He didn't flinch.
“Where are you going?” Yumn asked him.
He didn't reply. He strode from the room and clattered down the stairs. In a moment she heard the roar of the Thunderbird followed by the crackling of chippings from the driveway as its wheels spun wildly, flinging gravel against the sides of the car. She went to the window and saw him tearing down the street.
Oh dear, she thought and allowed herself to experience the smile that she'd stifled in her husband's presence. Poor little Sahlah was in for it now.
Yumn went to the bedroom door and shut it.
How hot the day was, she thought, stretching her arms above her head. A woman in her childbearing years, she would be foolish to overexert herself in the sun. She would have a long, lovely rest before seeing to Wardah's tiresome plants.
“BUT, EM,” BARBARA said, “he's got it all, hasn't he? Motive, opportunity, and now the means. How long would it take him to walk from that house over to the marina? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? That's nothing, right? And the path from the house to the shore's so well marked that you can see it all the way from the boat hire. So he wouldn't even have needed a torch to show him the way. Which explains why we haven't been able to come up with a single witness who saw anyone on or near the Nez.”
“Except Cliff Hegarty.” Emily fired up the Ford.
“Right. And he's practically handed us Theo Shaw on a platter, what with the story about the Malik girl's pregnancy.”
Emily reversed out of the marina's car park. She didn't speak again until they were back on the lane leading into the town. Then she said, “Theo Shaw's not the only person who could have come to the marina and nicked one of Charlie's Zodiacs, Barb. Are you ready to discount Eastern Imports, World Wide Tours, Klaus Reuchlein, and Hamburg? How many of the things that tie Querashi to Muhannad's dodgy business do you want to label coincidences? The phone calls to Reuchlein's flat in Hamburg? The bill of lading from Eastern Imports in the safe deposit box? Muhannad's early morning jaunt to that warehouse? What do we toss out, Barb?”
“//Muhannad's got a dodgy business going,” Barbara pointed out.
“Driving a lorry away from Eastern Imports at one in the morning?” Emily reminded her. “What's that connected to if not something dodgy? Believe it, Barb. I know my man.”
They zoomed along the lane in the direction they'd come from, slowing as they re-entered the town. Emily braked at the corner of the High Street and waited for a family to cross in front of the car. Laden with canvas chairs, plastic buckets, shovels, and towels, they looked uniformly hot and unhappy as they straggled homeward from their day at the sea.
Barbara pulled on her lip, seeing the beachgoers trudging past but concentrating instead upon the case in hand. She knew that she couldn't rationally argue with Emily's logic. The DCI was perfectly right. There were too many flaming coincidences to be actual coincidences in the investigation. But she could not dismiss the fact that very nearly from the first, Theo Shaw had had a motive written above his head in neon, while—no matter his incendiary personality—Muhannad Malik had not.
Nonetheless, Barbara backed away from a full-scale debate over the efficacy of heading to the mustard factory in lieu of making a dash for the pleasure pier. Despite her inclination to follow up on the possibilities presented by the proximity of Balford Old Hall to the marina, she knew that neither she nor Emily had one piece of hard evidence to pin on anyone. Without an eyewitness to anything except a shadowy figure on the top of the Nez, and with only a list of curious phone calls and a tangle of circumstantial bits and pieces to go on, their only hope for an arrest was going to be to dig up an incriminating detail that would implicate one of the men under suspicion or to trip someone up in an interview that would reveal guilt where innocence had been avowed.
With a search warrant in their hands, it did make more sense to pursue the factory end of the business. At least the factory presented the hope of digging up something that could lead to an arrest. A sojourn to the pier didn't promise much more than plodding through what they already knew and had already heard, hoping this time to listen with more discerning ears to whatever tale was told.
Still, she persisted. “That bracelet did say ‘Life begins now.’ He could have meant to marry her, only to have Querashi get in the way.”
Emily gave her an incredulous glance. “Theo Shaw marry the Malik girl? Not on your life. His grandmother would have cut him off without a penny. No, it was to Theo Shaw's advantage that Haytham Querashi came along. Querashi was Theo's best bet to be rid of Sahlah without fuss. If anything, he had every reason to want Haytham Querashi to stay alive.”