Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(209)

The detective constable gave another grunt. He stepped off the porch and said, “Give a shout, right?” to Barbara with a meaningful nod. He flexed his cigar-sized fingers and doubtless would have gone on to crack his knuckles had Barbara not said, “Thanks, Constable,” with her own meaningful nod at the sun-drenched flower beds behind them.

DC Park safely out of the way, Mrs. Malik took a step back from the door. Barbara interpreted this as her form of dusting off the welcome mat, and she ducked inside the house before the other woman had the opportunity to withdraw the invitation.

Mrs. Malik made a gesture towards a room on their left which, by means of an archway, opened off the vestibule in which they stood. This was obviously the main sitting room. Barbara stopped in the centre and turned to face Mrs. Malik across an expanse of brightly flowered fitted carpet. She noted with some surprise that there were no pictures on any of the walls. Rather, they were hung with samplers filled with Arabic writing, each of them embroidered and framed in gold. Above the fireplace hung a painting of a cube-shaped building backed with an azure cloud-filled sky. Beneath this painting sat the room's only photographs, and Barbara sauntered over to examine these.

One featured Muhannad and his hugely pregnant wife, arms round each other's waist and a picnic basket at their feet. Another showed Sahlah and Haytham Querashi posing on the front porch of yet another half-timbered house. The rest were of children, two little boys in a variety of poses, alone or with each other, dressed only in nappies or bundled up to their eyebrows against the cold.

“The grandkids?” Barbara asked, turning from the fireplace.

She saw that Mrs. Malik hadn't yet entered the room. She was watching her from the vestibule, keeping to the shadows in a way that suggested either secrecy, stealth, or an attack of nerves. Barbara realised that she had only the woman's word for it that Muhannad was no longer in the house.

Her senses went on the alert. She said, “Where's your son, Mrs. Malik? Is he still here?”

Mrs. Malik said, “No. As I said. No,” and as if a change in behaviour would underscore this answer, she joined Barbara, pulling her scarf closer to her head and throat again.

In the better light, Barbara could see that the hand which held the scarf at her throat was abraded and bruised. Noting this, she raised her eyes to the woman's face and saw much the same abrading and bruising there. She said, “What's happened to you? Has someone roughed you up?”

“No, of course not. I fell in the garden. My skirt caught on something.” And as if she wished to illustrate this point, she gathered up a handful of the skirt's material and showed where it was indeed quite filthy, as if she'd taken a fall and remained writhing on the ground to savour the sensation for a while.

“No one gets battered falling in the garden,” Barbara said.

“Alas. I do,” the woman replied. “As I said before, my son isn't at home. But I expect him back before the children eat this evening. He doesn't miss their meals if he can help it. If you would like to call back then, Muhannad will be happy—”

“You don't speak for Muni,” another woman's voice said.

Barbara swung round to see that Muhannad's wife had come down the stairs. She too was abraded in the face. And long scratches down her left cheek suggested a fight. A fight with another woman, Barbara concluded, since she knew only too well that when men fought, they used their fists. She gave another speculative glance to Mrs. Malik's injuries. She considered how the relationship between the two women might be turned to her advantage.

“Only Muhannad's wife speaks for Muhannad,” the younger woman announced.

And that, Barbara decided quickly, might be a blessing in disguise.

? ? ?


“HE SAYS,” TAYMULLAH Azhar reported, “that his papers were stolen. They were in his chest of drawers yesterday. He claims that he informed you of this when you were in his room. And when the detective constable asked for those papers this afternoon, he went to fetch them from the drawer, only to find they were missing.”

Emily was on her feet for the interrogation this time, in the airless cupboard that went for one of the station's two interview rooms. The tape recorder was running on the table, and after switching it on, she had planted herself by the door. From this location, she was able to look down upon Fahd Kumhar, which was useful in establishing for the man who had possession of the power and who hadn't.

Taymullah Azhar sat at the end of the table that served as one of the room's four pieces of furniture, with Kumhar at his right on the table's far side. So far, he had at least appeared to be relaying to his fellow Pakistani only what Emily allowed him to relate.

They had begun the interview with another round of babbling on the part of Kumhar. He'd been on the floor of the room when they'd entered, crouched into one of its corners like a mouse who knows that the final swipe of the cat's paw is imminent. He'd looked beyond Emily and Azhar, as if seeking another member of their party. When it became apparent to him that they constituted the whole of his inquisitors, he began the gibberish.

Emily had demanded to know what he was saying.

Azhar had listened closely without comment for some thirty seconds before replying. “He's paraphrasing parts of the Qur'aan. He's saying that among the people of Al-Madinah there are hypocrites whom Muhammad doesn't know. He's saying that they'll be chastised and doomed.”