Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(215)

Barbara certainly was doing so. She said, “Mrs. Malik, about your husband. I'd like a word with him. Where can I find him?”

“Why would you want to talk to my Muni? I've already told you—”

“And I've got every word from the last forty minutes engraved on my heart. But I've one or two points to clear up with him regarding Mr. Querashi's death.”

Yumn had been continuing her play with Anas's hair. Now she turned to Barbara. “I've told you that he isn't involved in Haytham's death. You should be talking to Sahlah, not to her brother.”

“Nonetheless—”

“There is no nonetheless.” Yumn's voice was louder. Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. She had dropped her treacly wife-and-mother routine. Steel resolve replaced it. “I've told you that Sahlah and Haytham had words. I've told you what she got up to at night. I expect that, since you're the police, you can add one and one together without my having to do it for you. My Muni,” she concluded as with the need to clarify a point, “is a man among men. And you have no need to talk to him.”

“Right,” Barbara said. “Well, thanks for your time. I'll find my own way out.”

The other woman read the greater meaning behind Barbara's words. She said insistently, “You have no need to talk to him.”

Barbara passed her. She went into the corridor. Yumn's voice followed her.

“You've been taken in by her, haven't you? Just like everyone. You have five words with the little bitch and all you see is a precious doe. So quiet. So gentle. She wouldn't hurt a fly. So you overlook her. And she gets away.”

Barbara started down the stairs.

“She gets away with everything, the whore. Whore. With him in her room, with him in her bed, with pretending to be what she never was. Chaste. Dutiful. Pious. Good.”

Barbara was at the door. Her hand reached for the handle. From the top of the stairs, Yumn cried out the words.

“He was with me.”

Barbara's hand stopped, but remained outstretched for a moment as she registered what Yumn was saying. She turned. “What?”

Carrying her younger child, Yumn came down the stairs. The colour in her face had been reduced to two medallions of red that rode high on either cheek. Her wandering eye gave her a wild air, which was heightened by the words she next spoke. “I'm telling you what you'll hear from Muhannad. I'm saving you the trouble of having to find him. That's what you want, isn't it?”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that if you think Munhannad was involved in what happened to Haytham Querashi, he couldn't have been. He was with me on Friday night. He was up in our room. We were together. We were in bed. He was with me.”

“Friday night,” Barbara clarified. “You're certain of that. He didn't go out? Not at any time? Not, perhaps, telling you that he was going to see a chum? Maybe even to have dinner with a chum?”

“I know when my husband was with me, don't I?” Yumn demanded. “And he was here. With me. In this very house. On Friday night.”

Brilliant, Barbara thought. She couldn't have asked for a more pellucid declaration of the Asian man's guilt.



E COULDN'T STOP THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD. They seemed to be coming from every direction and from every possible source. At first he thought that he'd know what to do next if only he could silence their shouting. But when he realised that he could do nothing to drive the howl of them out of his skull—save kill himself, which he certainly did not intend to do—he knew he would have to lay his plans while the voices attempted to lay waste to his nerves.

Reuchlein's phone call had come into the mustard factory less than two minutes after the Scotland Yard bitch had left the warehouse in Parkeston. “Abort, Malik” was all he said, which meant that the new shipment of goods—due to arrive this very day and worth at least ￡20,000 if he could keep them working long enough without doing a bunk—would not be met at the port, would not be driven to the warehouse, and would not be sent out in work parties to the Kent farmers who had already paid half in advance, as agreed upon. Instead, the goods would be released on their own upon their arrival, to find their way to London or Birmingham or any other city in which they could hide. And if they weren't caught by the police in advance of reaching their destination, they would fade into the population and keep their gobs plugged about how they got into the country. No sense in talking when talking would lead to deportation. As to those workers already on sites, they were on their own. When no one arrived to fetch them back to the warehouse, they'd work things out.

Abort meant that Reuchlein was on his way back to Hamburg. It meant that every document pertaining to the immigration services of World Wide Tours was heading into the shredder. And it meant that he himself had to act quickly before the world as he'd known it for twenty-six years crashed in on him.

He'd left the factory. He'd gone home. He'd started to put his own plans in motion. Haytham was dead—praise whatever Divine Being was convenient at the moment—and he knew that there was no way on earth that Kumhar would talk. Talk and he'd find himself deported, which was the last thing he wanted now that his chief protector had been murdered.

And then Yumn—that ugly cow whom he was forced to call wife—had begun her business with his mother. And she'd had to be dealt with, which is when he'd learned the truth about Sahlah.