Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(74)

“A part-time employee?” Armstrong looked towards Emily. He said, “If I may …?” as if he believed he was under her supervision. He went to one of the shelves and pulled down a ledger, which he carried to the table. He said, “We've always been careful about our records. In Mr. Malik's position, employing illegals could be disastrous.”

“Is that a problem round here?” Barbara asked. “As far as I know, illegals generally head for a city. London, Birmingham, places where there's a large Asian community.”

“Hmm, yes. I expect they do,” Armstrong said as he flipped through a few pages of the ledger, examining the dates at the top. “But we're not that far from the harbours, are we? Illegals can always slip through the net at the port, so Mr. Malik insists upon vigilance, lest any of them end up here.”

“If Mr. Malik were employing aliens, could Haytham Querashi have uncovered that fact?” Barbara asked.

Ian Armstrong looked up. He clearly saw the direction in which the questions were heading, and he appeared frankly relieved to have the spotlight removed from him. Nonetheless, he didn't seem to attempt to skew his answer. “He might have suspected. But if someone presented him with well-forged papers, I don't see how he would have sussed them out. He wasn't English after all. How would he have known what to look for?”

Barbara wondered what being English had to do with it.

Armstrong looked over a page he'd selected. Then he went through two others. “These are the most recent part-timers,” he told them. “But there's no Kumhar among them. Sorry.”

Then Querashi would have known him in another context, Barbara concluded. She wondered what it was. The Pakistani organisation that Emily had told her had been founded by Muhannad Malik? It was a possibility.

Emily was saying, “What about someone given the sack by Querashi, part time or otherwise? Would he be listed there?”

“The terminated employees have personnel files, naturally,” Armstrong said, indicating the filing cabinets along one wall. But as he spoke, his voice drifted off, and he sat back in his chair, looking thoughtful. Whatever he was thinking apparently served to ease his mind, because he finally took out a handkerchief and blotted his face with it.

“You've thought of something else?” Emily asked him.

“A terminated employee?” Barbara said.

“It may be nothing. I only know about it, actually, because I had the word from one of his fellow employees in shipping after it happened. There was quite a to-do, evidently.”

“About what?”

“Trevor Ruddock, a boy from the town. Haytham gave him the sack about three weeks ago.” Armstrong went to one of the filing cabinets and fingered through a drawer. He brought out a folder and carried it to the table, reading a document contained inside. “Yes, here it is. … Oh dear. Well, it's not very nice.” He looked up and smiled. He'd obviously read good tidings for himself in Trevor Ruddock's file, and apparently he wasn't above celebrating the fact. “Trevor was sacked for stealing, it says here. The report's in Haytham's writing. It seems he caught Trevor red-handed with a shipping crate of goods. He sacked him on the spot.”

“You said a boy,” Barbara noted. “How old is he?”

Armstrong referred to the file. “Twenty-one.”

Emily was with her. “Has he a wife? Children?”

And Armstrong wasn't far behind them. “No,” he said. “But he lives at home, according to his employment application. And I do know that five children live there, along with Trevor, his mum, and his dad. And from the address he's given …” Armstrong looked up at the two police officers. “Well, it isn't exactly an upmarket area. I should guess his family needed whatever money he made. That's the way it is in that part of town.”

Having said this, he seemed to realise that any attempt to direct their suspicions onto another could serve to heighten their suspicions about him. He continued hastily. “But Mr. Malik intervened for the boy. There's a copy here of a letter he wrote, asking another businessman in town to give Trevor a chance to redeem himself through a job.”

“Where?” Barbara asked.

“At the pleasure pier. And doubtless that's where you can find him. I mean, if you want to speak with him about his relationship with Mr. Querashi.”

Emily reached forward and shut off her tape recorder. Armstrong looked relieved, off the hook at last. But when Emily spoke, she put him back on. “You won't be leaving town within the next few days, will you?” she asked pleasantly.

“I have no plan to go—”

“Good,” Emily Barlow said. “We'll no doubt need to speak with you again. With your in-laws as well.”

“Of course. But as to this other matter … to Trevor … to Mr. Ruddock …? Surely you'll be wanting to …” Still, he wouldn't complete the sentence. He didn't dare. Ruddock's got a motive were the words that Ian Armstrong couldn't afford to speak. Because although Haytham Querashi had cost both men their jobs, only one of them had immediately benefitted from the Pakistani's death. And all of them round the table knew that the chief beneficiary of the Tendring Peninsula's first act of deadly violence in five years was sitting in Querashi's erstwhile office, having resumed the job that Querashi's arrival in England had cost him.