Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(59)

She could see that, unlike the pleasure pier, the Nez stairs had undergone no renovation. The handrails on either side of them were pitted and rusting, and the stairs themselves were not faring well as the North Sea continued to erode the cliff. They bore deep-looking cracks. They bore dangerous gouges. They also bore the truth.

“The stairs,” Barbara said quietly. “Hell, Em. He must have fallen down the stairs. That's got to be why the body's so bruised.”

Emily looked up from the pictures of the corpse. “Look at his trousers, Barb. Look at his leg. Christ. Somebody used a trip wire on him.”

? ? ?


“BLOODY HELL. WAS anything like that found at the scene?” Barbara asked.

“I'll have a go with the evidence officer and see,” Emily replied. “But it's a public place. Even if a wire was left there—which I doubt—-it'd be easy enough for a decent defence lawyer to explain away.”

“Unless it's got fibres from Querashi's trousers on it.”

“Unless,” Emily acknowledged. She made a note.

Barbara scanned the other photographs of the site. “The killer must have moved the body to the pillbox after Querashi took the tumble. Were there signs, Em? Footprints in the sand? Any indication that the body had been dragged from the stairs?” Then she realised the answer herself. “There wouldn't have been. Because of the tide.”

“Right.” Emily rooted in one of her desk's drawers and brought out a magnifying glass. She studied the picture of Querashi's leg. She ran her finger down the autopsy report and said, “Here it is. The cut's four centimetres long. Received some brief time prior to death.” She set the report to one side and looked at Barbara, but the expression on her face indicated that what she really saw was the Nez, the Nez in darkness without a light to guide the unsuspecting walker past, over, or around a wire that had been strung across the stairs to cause a fatal fall. “What size of wire are we looking for?” she asked rhetorically. She glanced at the oscillating fan that continued its anaemic efforts. “An electrical wire?”

“That wouldn't have cut him,” Barbara pointed out.

“Unless it'd been stripped,” Emily said. “Which it would have been, to be camouflaged by the dark.”

“Hmm. I s'pose. But what about fishing line? Something strong, like for sport fishing. But thin as well. And flexible.”

“There you go,” Emily agreed. “There're piano strings as well. Or whatever it is they use for making sutures. Or wire used for binding up crates.”

“In other words, almost anything thin, strong, and flexible.” Barbara produced the evidence bag with its collection of goodies from Querashi's room. “Have a go with this, then. It's from his room at the Burnt House. The Maliks wanted inside, by the way.”

“I'll bet they did,” Emily said cryptically. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened the bag. “Have you logged this in with the evidence officer?”

“On my way in. He says to tell you he wouldn't say no to a fan for the lock-up, by the way.”

“In his dreams,” Emily muttered. She flipped through the yellow-covered book from Querashi's bedside table. “So it wasn't a crime of passion. And it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment fight. It was premeditated murder from the first, orchestrated by someone who knew where Querashi was going when he left the Burnt House Hotel on Friday night. Possibly the very person he was going to the Nez to meet. Or someone who knew that person.”

“A man,” Barbara said. “Since the body was moved, it had to have been a man.”

“Or a man and a woman working together,” Emily pointed out. “Or even a woman alone if the body was dragged from the stairs to the pillbox. A woman could have managed that.”

“But then, why move him?” Barbara asked.

“To delay the discovery, I should think. Although”—Emily sounded reflective—”if that was the object, why leave the car so obviously tossed? It was a signpost indicating something was wrong. Anyone who came upon it would notice it and having noticed it, would be hyper-aware of everything else about the location.”

“Perhaps the car-tosser was in a hurry and couldn't worry about someone noticing.” Barbara watched as Emily ran her finger down the page in the book that had been marked with the satin ribbon. The DCI tapped her nail against the bracketed section. “Or perhaps the tossing was just an excuse to find the body.”

Emily looked up. She blew an errant hair off her forehead. “We're back to Armstrong again, right? Jesus, Barb, if he's involved in this, the Asians are going to tear up the town.”

“It works, though, doesn't it?” Barbara said. “You know the sort of game I mean. He pretends to be out there for a stroll, and he comes upon the car, ‘Goodness me,’ he exclaims, ‘what have we here? It looks like someone made a real mess of this car. I wonder what else I might find on the beach?’ “

“Okay, it plays,” Emily said. “But only just. Look at how elaborate a set-up he would have been engineering: track Querashi from the day of his arrival, memorise his movements, choose the right evening, set the wire, hide till he fell, move the body, toss the car, and then return the next morning before anyone happens on the scene in order to pretend to find the body. Does that sound remotely reasonable to you?”