“Whatever,” he said.
“Were you sacked unfairly? Did Querashi act too quickly?”
Trevor looked up from the spider. Barbara noticed for the first time that he had a tattoo beneath his left ear. It was a spider's web with an unpleasantly realistic-looking crawlie picking its way towards the centre. “Did I kill him because he gave me the sack? That what you're asking?” Trevor worked his fingers over the spider's pipe-cleaner legs, plucking at the covering until it resembled hairs. “I'm not stupid, you know. I seen the Standard today. I know the police are calling this a murder. I figgered you'd be round to poke at me, or someone like you. And here you are. I got a motive, don't I?”
“Why don't you tell me about your relationship with Mr. Querashi, Trevor?”
“I nicked some jars from the labelling and packing room. I worked in shipping, so it was dead easy. Querashi caught me and sacked me, he did. And that's the story of our relationship.” Trevor gave a sarcastic emphasis to the final word.
“Wasn't that risky, pinching jars from the packing room when you didn't work in the packing room?”
“I didn't nick them when anyone was there, did I? Just a jar here and a jar there during breaks and lunch. And just enough to have something to flog in Clacton.”
“You were selling them? Why? Did you need extra money? What for?”
Trevor pushed himself away from the table. He went to the window and thrust back the curtains. Lit by the day's pitiless sun, the room displayed cracked walls and hopelessly shabby furnishings. In spots, the rug on the floor was worn through to its backing. For some reason, a black line had been painted onto it, dividing the sleeping from the working areas.
“My dad can't work. And I got this stupid wish to keep the family off the streets. Charlie helps by doing odd jobs round the neighbourhood, and sometimes Stella gets hired to baby-sit. But there's eight of us here and we get hungry. So Mum and I sell what we can at the market square in Clacton.”
“And the jars from Malik's became part of what you could sell.”
“Tha's right. Just part of the lot and at a cut-rate price. I don't see that it did any harm anyways. It's not like Mr. Malik sells his jellies and stuffs round here. Just to posh shops and snooty hotels and restaurants.”
“So you were actually doing the consumer a favour?”
“Maybe I was.” He leaned his bum against the window sill and played with the cigarette in his mouth, turning it with his thumb and index finger. The window was wide open, but they may as well have been having their conversation inside an oven. “It seemed safe enough to flog them in Clacton anyways. I didn't expect Querashi to turn up there.”
“So you were caught trying to sell the jars in the market square? Querashi caught you there?”
“Right. Big as life, he was. ‘Course, he didn't expect to see me in Clacton any more'n I expected to see him there. And considering what he was up to, I figgered he'd turn an eye away from my little character lapse and forget all about it. Specially since he was having a little character lapse of his own.”
Barbara's fingertips tingled at this remark, the way they always tingled when a new direction was unpredictably unveiled. But she also felt wary. Trevor was watching her closely to gauge her reaction to the titbit he'd just dropped. And the very closeness of his scrutiny suggested he'd had more than this single run-in with the police. Most people were at least discomposed when answering official questions. But Trevor seemed completely at ease, as if he'd known in advance what she'd ask and what he'd say in reply.
“Where were you on the night that Mr. Querashi died, Trevor?”
A flicker in his eye told her she'd disappointed him in not nosing after the scent of Querashi's “little lapse of character.” That was good, she thought. Suspects weren't supposed to be the ones directing the investigation.
“At work,” Trevor said. “Clean-up on the pier. You c'n ask Mr. Shaw if you don't believe me.”
“I have done. Mr. Shaw says you report for work at half past eleven. Is that what you did on Friday night? D'you have a time card there, by the way?”
“I punched it when I always punch in.”
“At half past eleven?”
“Somewheres thereabouts, yeah. And I didn't leave, if you want to know. I work with a crew of blokes and they'll tell you that I didn't leave once all night.”
“What about before half past eleven?” Barbara asked him.
“What about it?”
“Where were you then?”
“When?”
“Before half past eleven, Trevor.”
“What time?”
“Just account for your movements, please.”
He took a final draw on his cigarette before he flipped it out of the window and into the street below. His forefinger took the cigarette's place. He gnawed at it thoughtfully before he replied. “I was home till nine. Then I went out.”
“Out where?”
“Nowheres special.” He spit a sliver of fingernail to the floor. He examined his handiwork as he continued. “I got this girl I sort of see off and on. I was with her.”
“She'll corroborate?”
“Huh?”
“She'll confirm that you were with her on Friday night?”
“Sure. But it's not like she was a date or anything. She's not my girlfriend. We just get together now and again. We talk. Have a smoke. See what's what with the world.”
Too right, Barbara thought. Why was it that she had trouble picturing Trevor Ruddock embroiled in deep philosophical colloquy with a female?
She wondered about the explanation he was giving, about why he found it necessary to give one in the first place. He'd either been with a woman or he hadn't been with a woman. She would either confirm his alibi or she wouldn't. Whether the two of them had been snogging, discussing politics, playing snap, or boffing each other like two hot monkeys made no difference to Barbara. She reached for her bag and brought out her notebook. “What's her name, then?”
“You mean this girl?”
“Right. This girl. I'll need to have a word with her. Who is she?”
He shuffled from one foot to the other. “Just a friend. We talk. It's no big-”
“Give me her name, okay?”
He sighed. “She's called Rachel Winfield. She works at the jewellery shop on the High Street.”
“Ah, Rachel. We've already met.”
He clasped his left hand round his right elbow. He said, “Yeah. Well, I was with her on Friday night. We're friends. She'll confirm.”
Barbara observed his discomfort and mentally toyed with the nature of it. Either he was embarrassed to have it known that he associated with the Winfield girl, or he was lying and hoping to get to her before Barbara checked his story out. “Where were the two of you?” she asked, seeing the need to establish a second source of corroboration. “A caff? A pub? The arcade? Where?”
“Uh … none of those, actually. We just went for a walk.”
“On the Nez maybe?”
“Hey, no way. We were on the beach all right, but nowheres near the Nez. We were off by the pier.”
“Anyone see you?”
“I don't think so.”
“But at night the pier's crowded. How could someone not have seen you?”
“Because … look, we weren't on the pier. I never said we were on it. We were at the beach huts. We were—” He raised his forefinger and gnawed again viciously. “We were in a beach hut. Got it? Okay?”
“In a beach hut?”
“Yeah. Like I said.” He dropped his hand from his mouth. His look was defiant. There was little doubt what he'd been up to with Rachel, and Barbara knew it probably had little to do with discussing what was what with the world.
“Tell me about Mr. Querashi and the market square,” she said. “Clacton's not that far from here. What are we talking about: twenty minutes in the car? It's not exactly a trip to the moon. So what was unusual about Haytham Querashi's being in the market square?”
/> “It's not him being there,” Trevor corrected Barbara. “It's a free country. He can go where he likes. It's what he was up to there. And with who.”
“All right. I'll go for it. What was he up to?”
Trevor returned to his seat at the table. He pulled an illustrated book from beneath a disorganised array of newspapers. It was open to a colour photograph. Barbara saw that the picture was of the spider that Trevor was in the process of creating. “Jumping spider,” he informed her. “It don't use a web like the others do, which is what makes it different to them. It hunts its prey. It goes out on the prowl, it finds a likely meal, and fumph—” His hand shot out and alighted on her arm. “He eats.” The young man grinned. He had odd eyeteeth, one long and one short. They made him look dangerous, and Barbara could tell that he knew and enjoyed this fact.
She disengaged her arm from his hand. “This is a metaphor, right? Querashi the spider? What was he hunting?”
“What a randy bloke gen'rally hunts when he goes someplace he doesn't think he'll be known. Only, I saw him. And he knew I saw him.”
“He was with someone?”
“Oh, they didn't make it look that way, but I saw them talking and I watched them afterwards. And sure enough, they trotted off to the toilets one at a time—real casual, you know—looking like cats with feathers in their teeth.”
Barbara observed the young man, and he observed her. She said carefully, “Trevor, are you telling me that Haytham Querashi was doing some cottaging in Clacton market square?”
“Looked that way to me,” Trevor said. “He's standing there giving some scarves the finger at a stall across the square from the toilets. Some bloke comes up and does his own bit with the scarves ‘bout five feet from him. They look at each other. They look away. This other bloke walks past and drops a line in his ear. Haytham heads for the gents straightaway. I watch. Two minutes later this bloke slides in there as well. Ten minutes after that, Haytham comes out. Alone. Looking the look. And that's when he sees me.”
“Who was this other bloke? Someone from Balford? Do you know him?”
Trevor shook his head. “He was just some poufter wanting to score. Some poufter with a fancy for a poke of a different colour.”
Barbara jumped on this. “He was white? The homosexual? He was English?”
“Could've been. But he could've been German, Danish, Swedish. Maybe even Norwegian. I don't know. But he wasn't a coloured, that's for sure.”
“And Querashi knew you'd seen him?”
“Yes and no. He saw me but he didn't know I'd watched him pull this other bloke. It was only when he wanted to give me the sack that I told him I seen the whole thing.” Trevor shoved the spider book back where he'd taken it from. “I thought I'd have something to hold over him, see? Like he wouldn't sack me if he knew I might give the word to old Akram that his future son-in-law was buggering white boys in a public convenience. But he denied the whole thing, Querashi did. All he said was that I'd better not hope to keep my job at the factory by spreading the nasties about him. Akram wouldn't believe them, he said, and I'd end up without my job at Malik's and without the new spot at the pier as well. I needed the pier job, so I shut my gob. End of story.”
“You told no one else? Not Mr. Malik? Not Muhannad? Not Sahlah?” Who would, Barbara believed, doubtless be horrified to know that her intended husband was betraying her and threatening the family's sense of honour. And it would be an honour issue for the Asians, wouldn't it? She needed to explore this issue with Azhar.
“It was my word against his, wasn't it?” Trevor said. “It's not like he was caught in the act by the rozzers or anything.”
“So even you don't know for sure what he was doing in the toilets that day.”
“I didn't go in to check it out personally, if that's what you're saying. But I'm not daft, am I? Those toilets are used for cottaging all the time, and everyone knows it. So if two blokes go in there and don't come out in the time it takes to pee … Well, you figure it out.”
“What about Mr. Shaw at the pier. Did you tell him?”
“Like I said. I didn't tell no one.”
“What'd this other bloke look like, then?” Barbara asked.
“Dunno. Just a bloke. Real tanned. Wearing a black baseball cap backwards. Not a big bloke, y'know, but not exactly a poufter-type either. I mean, not to look at. Oh yeah, one other thing. He had a ring through his lip. A little gold hoop.” Trevor shuddered. “Jesus,” he said without a trace of irony, fingertips resting against the spider on his neck, “what some blokes'll do to their appearance.”
“HOMOSEXUALITY?” EMILY BARLOW said. Her voice heightened sharply with interest.
Barbara had found her in the incident room of the old police station, where she held her daily meetings with the investigation's team of detective constables. She'd been penning names and activities onto a china board.
Barbara saw that since Emily's visit to the factory, two DCs had been assigned to Malik's Mustards and were already in the process of conducting interviews there with all the employees. They would be seeking information that could lead them to an enemy of Haytham Querashi.
This new detail about the dead man would be invaluable to them, and the DCI didn't waste any time before striding to the door and giving the order to pass the information along to the constables post haste. “Page them first,” she directed WPC Belinda Warner, who was working at the computer in the next room. “When they phone in, give them the word, but for Christ's sake, tell them to play their cards close.”
Then she turned back to the conference room, recapping her felt-tip pen smartly and setting it on the china board's tray. Barbara had reported on her entire day's activities: from her conversation with Connie and Rachel Winfield to her failed attempts to corroborate Sahlah Malik's story about tossing the gold bracelet from the pier. Emily had nodded and continued to make her entries on the china board. It was only when the issue of Querashi's putative homosexuality came up that she'd reacted.
“How the Muslims feel about homosexuality.” She made the phrase sound like a category that she was setting up mentally in the investigation.
“I haven't a clue how they feel about it,” Barbara replied. “But the more I thought about the question of homosexuality on my drive back here, the less I could attach it to Querashi's murder.”
“Why's that?” Emily went to one of the bulletin boards which lined the walls. Copies of photographs of the victim had been posted there, and she studied them earnestly, as if by this she could somehow get verification of Querashi's sexual proclivities.
“Because it seemed more likely that if one of the Maliks found out that Querashi was cottaging, they'd just call off the marriage and give him the boot back to Karachi. They sure as hell wouldn't kill him, would they? Why go to the bother?”
“They're Asians. They wouldn't want to lose face,” Emily stated. “And they sure as hell wouldn't be able to—how did Muhannad put it?—hold their heads up with pride if the word got out that Querashi was playing them for fools.”
Barbara thought about what Emily was suggesting. Something seemed slightly out of joint. She said, “So one of them killed him? Hell, Em, that's taking ethnic pride to the extreme. It seems to me that Querashi'd be likely to go after anyone who knew his secret, rather than someone going after Querashi because he had a secret. If homosexuality's at the root of this, doesn't it make more sense to see Querashi as the killer and not as the victim?”
“Not if an Asian, outraged by the knowledge that a man was planning to use Sahlah Malik as a cover for his homosexual lifestyle, went after Querashi.”
“If that's what Querashi was planning,” Barbara said.
Emily picked up a small plastic bag that was lying on top of one of the room's computer terminals. She untwisted its wire tie and dug out four carrot sticks. Seeing this, Barbara tried not to look guilty about her previously consumed whitebait and rock—not to mention her cigarettes—as the DCI began to munch virtuously. “Whic
h Asian comes to mind when you think of someone being driven to murder in order to revenge that sort of arrangement?”
“I know where you're heading,” Barbara said. “But I thought Muhannad was supposed to be a man of his people. If he isn't and if he offed Querashi, then why's he raising hell about the murder?”
“To paint himself in a saintly light. Jihad: the holy war against the infidels. He shouts for justice and directs the spotlight of guilt onto an English killer. And, coincidentally, off himself.”
“But, Em, that's no different to what Armstrong may be doing with the tossed car. A different approach, but the same intent.”
“Armstrong has an alibi.”
“What about Muhannad's? Did you find this Rakin Khan in Colchester?”
“Oh, I found him all right. He was holding court in a private room of his father's restaurant, with half a dozen others of his ilk. In a suit by Armani, slip-ons by Bally, wrist watch by Rolex, and a diamond signet ring from Burlington Arcade. He was an old friend of Malik's, he claimed, from their days at university.”
“What did he say?”
“He confirmed everything, Chapter and verse. He said the two of them had dinner that evening. They began at eight and went on till midnight.”
“A four hour dinner? Where? A restaurant? That restaurant?”
“Wouldn't that be lovely for our side? But no, this dinner took place, he said, at his own home. And he cooked the entire meal himself, which is what took so long. He likes to cook, loves to cook, cooked all the time for Muhannad at university, he said, because they neither of them have ever been able to abide English food. He even recited the menu for me.”
“Can anyone confirm the story?”
“Oh yes. Because, conveniently, they weren't alone. Another foreign bloke—and intriguing, isn't it, that everyone's foreign?—was there as well. Also a mate from their university days. Khan said it was a little reunion.”
“Well,” Barbara said, “if they both confirm …”