Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(89)

“Ah.” Barbara mentally waved away the geography of his relationship with the family. Clacton or Balford hardly mattered. What was important was the connection itself. “You've known them for years, then.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What manner of speaking is that?” Barbara lifted her Coke for another swig. It was doing wonders to settle the earlier consumed whitebait into her digestive system.

Theo followed her lead and took a swallow of Coke himself. “I knew Muhannad from school, but we weren't friends, so I never knew the family until I did their computers at the factory. This was a year ago, perhaps a bit more.”

“So I assume that you know Sahlah Malik as well?”

“I've met Sahlah, yes.” He did what, in Barbara's experience, so many people did when trying to look nonchalant about a piece of information that was causing their insides to shimmy: He continued to look her straight in the eye.

“So you'd recognise her. On the street, say. Or perhaps on the pier. Dressed Muslim or otherwise.”

“I suppose. But I don't see what Sahlah Malik has to do with anything. What's this all about?”

“Have you seen her on the pier in the last few days?”

“No. No, I haven't.”

“When did you last see her?”

“I can't recall. From what I could tell when I was doing their computers, Akram keeps her on a rather short tether. She's the only daughter, and it's their way. What makes you think she was on the pier?”

“She told me she was. She told me she threw a bracelet something like this one”—with a flip of her thumb at his Kennedy gold—”off the end of the pier once she was told that Haytham Querashi was dead. She said it'd been a gift for him and she gave it the toss on Saturday afternoon. But here's what's odd: As far as I've been able to tell, not a soul saw her. What d'you make of that?”

As if of their own volition, his fingers reached for his wrist and closed over the bracelet. “I don't know,” he said.

“Hmm.” Barbara nodded gravely. “It's intriguing, though, isn't it? That no one saw her.”

“It's getting on to high summer. There're scores of people on the pier every day. It's not very likely that one of them would stick in the memory.”

“Perhaps,” Barbara said, “but I've been the length of it, and here's what I noticed: No one's out there in Muslim garb.” Barbara rooted casually through her bag to find her cigarettes. She said, “Mind?” And when he waved her onward with a flick of his fingers, she lit up and said, “Sahlah wears the traditional get-up. Take that with the thought that she'd have had no reason to come onto the pier incognito, and we've got her here wearing Muslim garb. Wouldn't you agree? I mean, it's not like she was doing something illegal that required a disguise: She was just tossing an expensive piece of jewellery into the drink.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“So if she said she was here and if no one saw her and if she came here wearing her usual togs, then there's only one conclusion to draw. Isn't there?”

“Drawing conclusions is your job, not mine,” Theo Shaw said, and Barbara gave him credit for saying it evenly. “But if you're suggesting that Sahlah Malik's somehow involved in what happened to her fiancé … That's just not on.”

“How'd we get on to this business at the Nez?” Barbara asked. “That's rather a jump.”

He refused to be baited or trapped this time. He said, “You're the police, and I'm not stupid. If you're asking whether I knew the Maliks, you're involved in investigating the death on the Nez. Right?”

“And you knew she was to marry Querashi?”

“I'd been introduced to him at the Gentlemen's Cooperative. Akram called him his future son-in-law. I didn't think he was here to marry Muhannad, so it seemed reasonable to conclude he was here to marry Sahlah.”

Touché, Barbara saluted him mentally. She'd thought she had him, but he'd dodged adroitly.

“So you knew Querashi yourself?”

“I'd met him. I wouldn't call it knowing him.”

“Yes. Right. But you knew who he was. You'd have recognised him on the street.” When Theo Shaw acknowledged this to be the case, Barbara went on with “Just for clarity's sake, then, where were you on Friday night?”

“I was at home. And since you're going to inquire anyway, if not of me then of someone else, home is at the end of Old Hall Lane, which is itself a ten-minute walk from the Nez.”

“Were you alone?”

His thumb created a small dent in the Coke can. “Why the hell are you asking me this?”

“Because Mr. Querashi's death on the Nez was a murder, Mr. Shaw. But I expect you know that already, don't you?”

His thumb relaxed. The Coke can pinged. “You're trying to mix me up in this, aren't you? I'll tell you that Gran was upstairs in bed while I was down in my workroom. You'll note that I therefore had opportunity to dash off to the Nez and do away with Querashi. Of course, I had no reason to kill him, but that detail is of no consequence, apparently.”

“No reason?” Barbara said. She flicked cigarette ash into the waste-paper basket.