Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(60)

Barbara shrugged. “How desperate was he to have his job back?”

“Accepted. Fine. But I've spoken to the man, and I'm willing to swear he isn't clever enough or sharp enough to plan something this detailed.”

“But he's back to being production manager of this factory, isn't he? You said yourself he was doing a decent job there before Querashi turned up. If that's the case, he's got to have some decent beans in his pot.”

“Damn!” Emily was flipping through the rest of the book. “Great. Sanskrit. It's all the same.” She strode to the door. “Belinda Warner!” she shouted. “Find me someone who can decode Pakistani.”

“Arabic,” Barbara said.

“What?”

“The writing. It's Arabic.”

“Whatever.” Emily dug out the condoms, the two brass keys, and the leather case from the evidence bag. “This one's a bank key, I expect,” she noted, indicating the larger key with the tagged number 104 on it. “It looks to me like a key to safe deposit box. We've got Barclays, Westminster, Lloyds, and Midland. Here and in Clacton.” She made a note regarding this.

“Were his fingerprints on the car?” Barbara asked as Emily wrote.

“Whose?”

“Armstrong's. You had the Nissan impounded, right? So you've got to know. Were his prints on it, Em?”

“He has an alibi, Barb.”

“They were on the car, right? And he has a motive. And—”

“I said he has an alibi!” Emily snapped. She tossed the evidence bag onto her desk. She went to a small cooler that sat next to the door. She opened it, brought out a tin of juice. She tossed it to Barbara.

Barbara had never seen Emily frazzled, but she'd also never seen her under real pressure. She was suddenly aware for the first time—and acutely so—that she wasn't working with Inspector Lynley, whose ease of manner had always encouraged his subordinates to argue their points of view freely and with as much passion as the subject warranted. The DCI was a different beast. Barbara knew it behooved her to remember that fact. “Sorry,” she said. “I tend to push.”

Emily sighed. “Listen, Barb. I want you in on this. I need someone on my side. But you're chasing a goose if you go after Armstrong. And you're giving me aggro. Which I'm already getting in spades from Ferguson.” Emily opened her juice and downed a gulp. She said with studied patience, “Armstrong claimed his prints were on the car because he had a look inside. He'd found it standing there with its door open, and he was worried someone might be in trouble.”

“Do you believe him?” Barbara made her next point delicately. Her position on this case was a tenuous one. She wanted to maintain it. “Because he could have tossed that car himself.”

“He could have done,” Emily said flatly, and she went back to the evidence bag.

“Guv?” a woman's voice shouted from somewhere in the building. “Bloke called Kayr al Din Siddiqi at London University. You hear that, Guv? He can do Arabic if you fax something over.”

“Belinda Warner,” Emily said drily. “The girl can't type a bloody report, but give her a phone and she's magic. Right,” she shouted back, and sent the yellow-bound book to the copier machine. She pulled Haytham Querashi's cheque book from the evidence bag.

Seeing it, Barbara realised there was another direction to head in besides the road signposted to Ian Armstrong's door. She said, “Querashi wrote a cheque two weeks ago. He's entered it on the stub. Four hundred pounds to someone called F. Kumhar.”

Emily found the entry and frowned down at it. “Not exactly a fortune, but not a paltry sum. We'll need to track him down. Or her.”

“The cheque book was locked inside that leather case, by the way, and there was a jewellery receipt locked with it. From Racon Jewellery, here in town. The receipt has Sahlah Malik's name on it.”

“Odd to lock up a cheque book,” Emily said. “It's not as if anyone but Querashi could have used it.” She tossed it to Barbara. “Have a go with it. See to the jewellery receipt as well.”

It seemed a generous offer, considering the moment of friction between them over Ian Armstrong's potential guilt. And Emily increased the generosity of it with her next words. “I'll have a second go with Mr. Armstrong. Between the two of us, we should finally be able to make some decent headway today.”

“Right,” Barbara said, and she wanted to thank the other woman: for seeing to her battered face, for allowing her to work at her side, for even considering her take on the case. But instead she said, “I mean, if you're sure.”

“I'm sure,” Emily said with the ease and the confidence Barbara remembered. “As far as I'm concerned, you're one of us.” She slipped her sunglasses on and took up her key ring. “Scotland Yard has a professional caché that the Asians are going to respect and even my super might acknowledge. I need them off my back. I need him off my back. I want you to do what you can to make that happen.”

Calling out to her subordinates that she was heading off to put Mr. Armstrong through his paces, Emily shouted, “And I've got the mobile if you want me,” in the direction of the back of the building. She nodded at Barbara and shot down the stairs.