“Don't let's turn this into a sexual issue. If you've a chip on your shoulder, I suggest you knock it off before someone else with more clout does it for you. Now, where are we, Inspector?”
Emily cursed him soundly under her breath. Then she'd brought him up to date without reminding him how remote was the possibility of there having been a major break in the case between his last call on the previous evening and this one in the morning.
He said thoughtfully, “And you say this woman's from Scotland Yard? I like that, Barlow. I like it very much. It has just the right ring of sincerity, doesn't it?” Emily could hear the sound of him swallowing and the clink of a glass against the telephone receiver. Donald Ferguson was passionate about Fanta Orange. He drank it steadily all day, always with an odd, paper-thin slice of lemon and always with a single cube of ice. This was probably his fourth of the morning. “Right. Then what about Malik? What about this screamer from London? Are you riding their shirttails? I want you on them, Barlow. If they sneezed last week, I want you to know the colour of the handkerchief that collected the snot. Is that clear?”
“Intelligence have already given me a report on Muhannad Malik.” Emily took pleasure in having managed to be one step ahead of him. She recited the salient details on the young Asian. “And I put a request in yesterday to gather what we can on the other: Taymullah Azhar. As he's from London, we'll have to liaise with SOU, but I expect having Sergeant Havers on our team will help with that.”
Ferguson's glass clinked again. Doubtless, he was taking the opportunity to manhandle his surprise into submission. He'd always been the sort of man who claimed women's hands had been shaped by God to curve perfectly over the handle of a Hoover. The fact that a female had actually been capable of thinking ahead and anticipating the investigation's needs was no doubt wreaking havoc with the preconceived notions that the superintendent held dear.
“Is there anything else?” she asked amiably. “I've got the day's activities briefing in five minutes. I don't like to be late for it. But if you've a message for the team …?”
“No message,” Ferguson said brusquely. “Get on with it, then.” He slammed down the phone.
Now at the mustard factory, Emily smiled at the memory. Ferguson had supported her promotion to DCI because circumstances—in the form of a negative Home Office evaluation of Essex Constabulary's commitment to equal opportunity—had forced his hand. He'd let her know privately that every decision she made would undergo examination beneath the lens of his personal microscope. It was j-o-y in its purest form to better the little worm in at least one round of the game he'd determined they'd be playing with each other.
Emily shoved open the door to Malik's Mustards, where the reception desk was occupied by a young Asian woman in a creamy linen tunic and matching trousers. Despite the day's temperature, which was not particularly lowered by the thick walls of the factory building, she wore an amber shawl over her head. Perhaps in a bow to couture, however, she'd arranged it fashionably in folds round her shoulders. When she looked up from the computer terminal at which she was working, her earrings of bone and brass clinked softly. They matched an intricate necklace she wore. A name plate on her desk identified her: S. MALIK. This would be the daughter, Emily thought, the fiancée of the murdered man. She was a pretty girl.
Emily introduced herself and flipped open her identification. She said, “You're Sahlah, aren't you?”
A strawberry birthmark high on the girl's cheek deepened in hue as she nodded. Her hands had been hovering over her terminal's keyboard, but she quickly lowered them to the wrist rest in front of the keys and kept them there, her thumbs and her knuckles pressed together.
She certainly looked the picture of guilt. Her hands were saying, Shackle me now. Her expression was crying, Oh no please no. “I'm sorry about your loss,” Emily said. “This can't be an easy time for you.”
“Thank you,” Sahlah said quietly. She looked at her hands, seemed to realise how odd their position was, and eased them apart. It was a surreptitious movement, but Emily didn't miss it. “May I help you with something, Inspector? My father's working in the experimental kitchen this morning, and my brother hasn't yet arrived.”
“I don't need them, actually, but you can help me with Ian Armstrong.”
The girl's gaze went to one of two doorways that led off the reception area. Its upper half comprised bevelled glass through which Emily could see several desks and what appeared to be an advertising campaign spread out on an easel.
“He's here, isn't he?” Emily said. “I was told he'd be stepping into the position that Mr. Querashi's death left vacant.”
The girl agreed that Armstrong was working at the factory that morning. When Emily asked to see him, she pressed a few keys to exit whatever she'd been doing at her terminal. She excused herself and slipped silently through the other of the two doors, this one plain and leading into a corridor that ran the width of the factory.
Emily noticed the plaque then. It was bronze, and it hung on a wall that was given to a photographic mural of a harvester working in a vast yellow field of what were undoubtedly mustard plants. Emily read the plaque's inscription: LO! HE PRODUCETH CREATION, THEN REPRODUCETH IT, THAT HE MAY REWARD THOSE WHO BELIEVE AND DO GOOD WORKS WITH EQUITY. This was followed by an additional inscription in Arabic, beneath which were the words WE WERE BLESSED WITH A VISION THAT BROUGHT us TO THIS PLACE ON THE 15TH OF JUNE, and thereafter the year.
“He has been good to us,” a voice said behind Emily. She turned and saw that Sahlah hadn't produced Ian Armstrong as requested, but rather her father. She hovered behind him.
“Who?” Emily asked.
“Allah.” The name was spoken with a simple dignity that Emily couldn't help admiring. After saying it, Akram Malik came across the room to greet her. He was dressed for cooking, in medical-looking whites with a stained apron tied round his waist and a paper cap moulded to his head. The lenses of his glasses were speckled with something from the kitchen, and he took a moment to wipe them on his apron as he nodded his daughter back to her work.
“Sahlah tells me you've come to see Mr. Armstrong,” Akram said, dabbing his wrist against both his cheeks and his forehead in what Emily at first thought was some sort of Muslim greeting, until she realised he was simply removing the perspiration from his face.
“She said he's here today. I doubt our interview will take much more than a quarter hour. There was no real need to disturb you, Mr. Malik.”
“Sahlah did the appropriate thing in fetching me,” her father said in a tone that indicated Sahlah Malik did the appropriate thing by knee jerk reflex. “I'll take you to Mr. Armstrong, Inspector.”
He indicated the bevelled glass door with a nod, and he led Emily through it to the office beyond. This contained four desks, numerous filing cabinets, and two drafting tables in addition to the easels Emily had seen from reception. At one of the tables, an Asian man was working at some sort of design with calligraphy pens, but he ceased his work and rose respectfully as Akram led Emily through the office. At the other table, one middle-aged woman in black and two younger men—all of them Pakistani like the Maliks—were considering a set of glossy colour photographs in which the company's products were displayed in a variety of vignettes from picnic lunches to New Year's Eve dinners. They too set their work aside. No one spoke.
Emily wondered if the word had gone out that the police had come calling. Certainly, they'd have had to be expecting a visit from Balford CID. One would think they might have prepared themselves for it. But, like Sahlah in reception, everyone managed to look as if the next stop in his life's itinerary was destined to be the gallows.
Akram guided her into a small corridor off which three offices opened. Before he had a chance to leave her with Armstrong, however, Emily seized the opportunity with which Sahlah had presented her.
“If you've a moment, Mr. Malik, I'd like a word with you as well.”
“Of course.” He gestured to an open doorway at the end of the cor
ridor. Emily could see a conference table and an antique dresser whose shelves held not crockery but, rather, a display of the company's products. It was an impressive arrangement of jars and bottles containing sauces, jellies, mustards, chutneys, butters, and vinaigrettes. The Maliks had come a long way from their first efforts at simple mustard production in the erstwhile bakery on Old Pier Street.
Malik shut the door behind them, but not completely. He left two inches open, perhaps in deference to being alone in the conference room with a woman. He waited until Emily had sat at the table before he did likewise, removing his paper cap and folding it twice into a neat triangle.
“How may I be of help to you, Inspector Barlow?” he asked. “My family and I are anxious to get to the bottom of this tragedy. Please be assured that we have every intention of assisting you in whatever way we can.”
His English was remarkable for a man who'd spent the first twenty-two years of his life in a remote Pakistani village with a single well and neither electricity, indoor plumbing, nor telephones. But Emily knew from the literature he'd provided during his campaign for town council as well as from the door-to-door canvassing he'd done that Akram Malik had studied the language for four years with a private tutor when he'd arrived in England. “The good Mr. Geoffrey Talbert,” he'd called him. “From him I learned to love my adopted country, the richness of its heritage, and its magnificent language.” The claim had played well with a public disinclined to trust foreigners, and it had served Akram's purposes even better: He'd won his seat easily, and there was little doubt that his political aspirations didn't end in the stuffy council room of Balford-le-Nez.
“Your son told you that we've determined Mr. Querashi was murdered?” Emily said. When Akram nodded gravely, she went on. “Then anything you can tell me about him will be of help.”
“There are those who believe this an arbitrary racist crime,” Malik said. It was a clever way of addressing the issue, not accusing so much as contemplating.
“Your son among them,” Emily said. “But we've evidence that shows the crime was premeditated, Mr. Malik. And premeditated in such a way to suggest that Mr. Querashi—and not just any Asian—was the target. This doesn't mean that an English killer isn't involved. And it doesn't mean that race isn't an issue at some level either. But it does mean that it's a personal crime.”
“That doesn't seem possible.” Malik made another careful fold in his paper cap and smoothed his dark fingers along the crease he'd created. “Haytham had been here so brief a time. He knew so few people. How can you be certain that he knew his killer?”
Emily explained to him that there were some details of the investigation that procedure required she keep to herself, things that only the killer and the police knew, and thus things that ultimately could be used to construct a trap if a trap became necessary. “But we do know that someone studied his movements to be assured that he'd be on the Nez that night, and if we learn what his regular movements were, we may be able to trace them to that person.”
“I hardly know where to begin,” Malik said.
“Perhaps with his engagement to your daughter,” she suggested.
Malik's jaw tightened slightly. “Surely, you don't mean to suggest that Sahlah is involved in Haytham's death?”
“I understand that this was an arranged marriage. Was she agreeable to it?”
“More than agreeable. And she knew that neither her mother nor I would force her to marry against her will. She met Haytham, she was allowed to spend some time with him alone, and she decided favourably. Quite favourably, in fact. She was eager to marry. Had she felt otherwise, Haytham would have returned to his family in Karachi. That was the arrangement we made with his parents, and both sides agreed to it before he came to England.”
“You didn't think a Pakistani boy born in England would be more suitable for your daughter? Sahlah was born here, wasn't she? She'd be more used to others born here as well.”
“Asian boys born in England are sometimes at odds with their origins, Inspector Barlow. They're often at odds with Islam, with the importance of family, with our culture, with our beliefs.”
“Like your son, perhaps?”
Malik sidestepped. “Haytham lived by the tenets of Islam. He was a fine man. He wished to be a haji. This was an attribute I valued highly in a husband for my daughter. Sahlah felt likewise.”
“And how did your son feel about Mr. Querashi's becoming part of your family? He holds a position here at the factory, doesn't he?”
“Muhannad is our director of sales. Haytham was our director of production.”
“Positions of equality?”
“Essentially. And, as I know you will next ask: there was no conflict of position between them. Their jobs were unrelated to each other.”
“Both of them would want to perform well, I expect,” Emily noted.
“I should hope so. But their individual performances would not change the future. Upon my death, my son will rise to become managing director of the company. Haytham knew this. Indeed, he would have fully expected that to be the case. Thus, Muhannad had no need to fear Haytham's advent among us, if that's what you're suggesting. In fact, the situation was very much the contrary. Haytham took a burden off Muhannad's shoulders.”
“What sort of burden?”
Malik unfastened the top button of his shirt and once again pressed his wrist against his face to dab off the perspiration. The room was airless, and Emily wondered why he didn't open one of the two windows. “Before Haytham's arrival, Muhannad had the extra job of overseeing Mr. Armstrong's work. Mr. Armstrong was only a temporary employee and as he isn't a member of the family, he required more supervision. As director of production, he was responsible for the workings of the entire factory, and while he did a fine job, he knew his employment was temporary and thus did not have reason to be as meticulous as someone with a permanent interest here.” He raised a finger to stop Emily from speaking when she would have asked another question. “I do not mean to imply that Mr. Armstrong's work was unacceptable to us. I wouldn't have asked him back upon Haytham's death had it been so.”
This, of course, was very much the point as well as the detail that which Barbara Havers had stressed. Armstrong had been asked back to Malik's Mustards. “How long do you expect to have Mr. Armstrong working here this time round?”
“As long as it takes to find my daughter another suitable husband who can also work in the factory.”
Which, Emily thought, could take quite some time, cementing Ian Armstrong's position in the business. “And did Mr. Armstrong know Mr. Querashi? Had they ever met?”
“Oh yes, indeed. Ian trained Haytham for five days prior to leaving us.”
“And their relationship?”
“It appeared quite cordial. But then, Haytham was an easy man to like. And he had no enemies here at Malik's Mustards.”
“He knew everyone in the factory?”
“He had to do. He was the factory director.”
Which meant interviews with everyone, Emily thought, because everyone had enemies, no matter what Akram Malik believed. The trick was to smoke them out. Mentally, she assigned two DCs to the task. They could use this conference room. They would be discreet. She said, “And outside the factory? Who else did Mr. Querashi know?”
Akram considered this. “So few. But there was the Gentlemen's Cooperative. I suggested he join, and he did so at once.”
Emily knew about the Gentlemen's Cooperative. It had featured predominantly in the portrait that Akram Malik's campaign literature had painted of him. It was a social club of the town's businessmen, which Akram Malik had organised shortly after opening his factory. They met weekly for lunch and monthly for dinner, and their purpose was to foster good will, cooperation in commerce, and commitment to the growth of the town and the well-being of its citizens. The point was to discover and encourage commonalities among members, its founder having the philosophy that men at work on a mutual goal are men who live in har
mony together. It was interesting, Emily realised, to note the difference between the Gentlemen's Cooperative which Akram Malik had founded and Jum'a which had been founded by his son. She wondered how much at odds the two men were and if this condition extended to the future son-in-law.
“Is your son a member of this group as well?” she asked curiously.
“Muhannad's attendance is not what I would wish,” Malik said. “But he is indeed a member.”
“Less devoted to the cause than Mr. Querashi?”
Malik's face was grave. “You're seeking to connect my son to Mr. Querashi's death, aren't you?”
“How did your son feel about this arranged marriage?” she countered.
For a moment, Akram Malik's face registered a look that suggested he would answer no further questions about his son unless and until he was told what Emily had in mind when she asked them. But he relented. “As Muhannad's own marriage was arranged, he had no difficulty with his sister's being likewise.” He stirred in his chair. “My son, Inspector, has not been the easiest child to rear. He has, I believe, been too much influenced by Western culture. And perhaps one sees this in his behaviour in a way that makes him difficult to understand. But he respects his roots and takes great pride in his blood. He is a man of his people.”
Emily had heard that phrase invoked often enough about IRA hooligans and other wild-eyed political extremists. While it was true that Muhannad's political activism in the town supported his father's contention, the existence of Jum'a suggested that what could be identified as the younger man's pride in his blood could also be a identified as an inclination to cross the line and an ability to manipulate people by playing upon their ignorance and fear. Still, the thought of Jum'a prompted her to ask, “Did Mr. Querashi also belong to your son's fraternity, Mr. Malik?”
“Fraternity?”
“You know about Jum'a, don't you? Was Haytham Querashi part of it?”
“That I would not know.” He unfolded his cap with the same care he'd used to fold it, and he gave all his attention to his fingers’ movement on the thin paper. “Muhannad will be able to tell you that.” He frowned, then, and finally looked up. “But I must confess that the direction you've taken with these questions troubles me. It makes me wonder if my son—who is admittedly far too quick to anger and to allegation when it comes to matters of race—is correct in assuming you will turn a blind eye to the possibility of hate and ignorance being the sole motives behind this crime.”