“Yes. Well,” Barbara said, “I'm sure the motorway of your life is completely littered with sexual roadkill and all of the corpses are grinning ear to ear. At least in your dreams. But we aren't dealing with dreams, Trevor. We're dealing with reality, and reality is murder. I have only your word for it that you saw Haytham Querashi cottaging in Clacton market square, and I've come to realise that there's a very good chance he was cottaging with you.”
“That's a bloody lie!” He surged to his feet so quickly that his chair toppled over.
“Is it?” Barbara asked blandly. “Sit down, please. Or I'll have a PC give you some assistance.” She waited till he'd righted the chair and planted himself in it. He'd thrown his cigarette to the table, and he retrieved it, lighting a match on the edge of a dirty thumbnail. “You see how it looks, don't you?” Barbara asked him. “You worked together at the factory. He gave you the sack and the excuse was that you'd nicked a few jars of mustard, some chutney and jam. But perhaps that's not why he sacked you at all. Perhaps he sacked you because he was marrying Sahlah Malik and he didn't want you round the place any longer, reminding him of what he really was.”
“I want my phone call,” Trevor said. “I got nothing more to talk to you about.”
“You do see how black things look, don't you?” Barbara crushed her own cigarette out, careful to use the ashtray and not the floor. “A declaration of Querashi's homosexuality, consistent fellatio and nothing else with Rachel—”
“I already explained that!”
“—and Querashi dying at the very same time that you're without an alibi. So tell me, Trevor, does this make you any more inclined to reveal what you were up to on Friday night? If, of course, you weren't up to murdering Haytham Querashi.”
His mouth clamped shut. He stared at her defiantly.
“Right,” she said. “Play it that way if you want. But just make sure you aren't also playing the fool.”
She left him to cool off and went in search of Emily. She heard the DCI before she saw her. Her voice—as well as a male voice taut with animosity—came from the lower floor. Barbara peered over the curved bannister and saw Emily standing toe-to-toe with Muhannad Malik. Taymullah Azhar was directly behind his cousin.
“Don't explain PACE to me,” Emily was saying tersely as Barbara descended the stairs. “I'm well aware of the law. Mr. Kumhar is being held for an arrestable offence. I'm within my rights to ensure that nothing interferes with potential evidence or puts anyone at risk.”
“Mr. Kumhar is the one at risk.” Muhannad's face was hard. “And if you're refusing to let us see him, there's only one possible reason why.”
“Would you care to explain?”
“I want to verify his physical condition. And don't let's pretend you've never used the term ‘resisting the police’ to excuse some bloke's getting a beating while he's in the nick.”
“I think,” Emily said pointedly as Barbara reached her side, “that you've been watching too much television, Mr. Malik. It's not my habit to rough up suspects.”
“Then you'll have no objection to our seeing him.”
When Emily would have offered a rejoinder, Azhar interposed. “The Police and Criminal Evidence Act also indicates that a suspect has the right to have a friend, relative, or other person who is known to him told without delay that he's in custody. May we have the name of whomever you informed, Inspector Barlow?”
He spoke without a glance in Barbara's direction, but even so she was certain he could feel her inward wince. PACE was all well and good, but when events began to outstrip the police's ability to keep up with them, more often than not even a good officer let slide exact compliance with the letter of the law. Azhar was betting on this having happened. Barbara waited to see if Emily was going to pull a friend or relative of Fahd Kumhar's out of a metaphorical hat.
She didn't bother. “Mr. Kumhar hasn't identified anyone he wishes to be notified.”
“Does he know he has that right?” Azhar asked astutely.
“Mr. Azhar, we've hardly had the opportunity to speak to this man long enough to apprise him of his rights.”
“That's business as usual,” Muhannad pointed out. “She's slapped him in isolation because it's the only way she can make sure he gets rattled enough to cooperate with her.”
Azhar didn't disagree with his cousin's assessment of the situation. He also didn't allow it to enflame him. Calmly, he asked, “Is Mr. Kumhar a native of this country, Inspector?”
Barbara knew that Emily was probably cursing the fact that she'd allowed Kumhar to jabber about his papers. She could hardly deny knowledge of the man's immigrant status, especially when the law was specific about what his rights were, considering that status. If Emily prevaricated now—only to discover that Fahd Kumhar was involved in Haytham Querashi's death—she ran the risk of having her case tossed out of court later.
She said, “At this point, we'd like to question Mr. Kumhar about his relationship to Haytham Querashi. We've brought him to the station because he was reluctant to answer questions in his lodgings.”
“Stop avoiding the bloody issue,” Muhannad said. “Is Kumhar an English national or not?”
“He doesn't appear to be,” Emily replied, but she spoke to Azhar and not to Muhannad.
“Ah.” Azhar sounded somehow comforted by this admission. Barbara saw why when he asked his next question. “How good is his English?”
“I haven't given him a comprehension test.”
“But that's actually of no account, is it?”
“Azhar, bloody hell. If his English isn't—
Azhar cut off his cousin's hot remark with the simple gesture of raising his hand. He said, “Then I shall have to ask to be given access to Mr. Kumhar immediately, Inspector. I won't insult either your intelligence or your knowledge of the law by pretending you don't know that the only suspects who have an unqualified right to visitors are those from abroad.”
Game, set, and match, Barbara thought with no little admiration for the Pakistani. Teaching microbiology to university students might have been Azhar's day job, but he was clearly no slouch when it came to moonlighting in the white knight arena for the protection of his people. She suddenly realised that she needn't have worried about the man's getting in over his head in this journey he'd made to Balford-le-Nez. It was fairly apparent that he had the situation—at least with respect to their dealings with the coppers—completely and satisfactorily in hand.
For his part, Muhannad was looking triumphant at this turn of events. With pointed courtesy he said, “If you'll lead us to him, Inspector Barlow …? We'd like to be able to report to our people upon Mr. Kumhar's well-being. They're understandably anxious to know he's being treated well while he's in your hands.”
There wasn't much room for political manoeuvring. The message he sent was clear enough. Muhannad Malik could mobilise his people for yet another march, demonstration, and riot. He could just as easily mobilise them to keep the peace. The choice was DCI Emily Barlow's, as would be the responsibility.
Barbara saw the skin at the corners of the DCI's eyes tighten. It was the closest thing to a reaction that Emily was going to give the two men.
“Come with me,” she said.
SHE FELT AS if she were trapped in irons. Not irons that held her at the wrists and ankles, but irons that encased her from head to toe.
Lewis was talking inside her head. On and on he went about the children, his business, his infernal love for that antique Morgan that never ran properly no matter the money he poured into it. Then Lawrence took over. But all he said was I love her, I love her, why can't you understand that I love her, Mum, and we want a life? And then that Swedish bitch herself chimed in, spouting psychobabble that she'd probably learned while swatting a volleyball on some beach in California: Lawrence's love for me cannot lessen his love for you, Mrs. Shaw. You do see that, don't you? And you do want his happiness? And after that came Stephen, saying, It's my life, Gran. You can't live it for me.
If you can't accept me as I am, then I agree with you: It's best that I leave.
All of them talking on and on. She needed something to erase her brain. There was no real pain to speak of at the moment. There were only the voices, endless and insistent.
She found she wanted to argue with them, order them about, bend their wills to hers. But all she could do was listen to them, held prisoner to their importuning, their irrationality, their constant noise.
She wanted to raise her fists to her skull. She wanted to beat them against her head. But the irons held her body fast in position, and every limb was a weight that she couldn't move.
She became aware of lights. With this awareness, the voices dimmed. They were replaced with other voices, however. Agatha strained to make out the words.
At first they all slurred together. “Nottoomuchdifferentfromwhat-happenstotheheart,” someone was saying reasonably. “Butthisisabrain-attackinstead.”
Butthisisabrainattackinstead? What did this mean? Agatha wondered. Where was she? And why was she lying so still? She might have thought she'd died and was having an out of body experience, but she was firmly and definitely in her body, all too aware of its presence, in fact.
“OhGodhowbadisit?” This was Theo's voice, and Agatha warmed to it. Theo, she thought. Theo was there. Theo was with her, in the room, nearby. Things couldn't be as bad as they seemed.
So relieved was she to have heard his voice that she caught only snatches of words for the next several minutes. Thrombosis, she heard. Cholesterol deposits. Occlusion of artery. And right hemiparisis.
Then she knew. And what she felt in the instant she knew was a despair so profound that it welled inside her like a fast-inflating balloon of a scream which she could not emit, which threatened to kill her. Would that it could, she thought brokenly. Oh blessed Jesus, would that it could.
Lewis had called to her. Lawrence had called to her. But pig-headed as always, she hadn't joined them. She had things left to do, dreams to fulfill, and points left to make before she was done with living. So when the stroke had attacked and the blood clot had robbed her brain of oxygen for however long a time it had been, the substance and spirit of Agatha Shaw had fiercely fought back. And she had not died.
Now the words were becoming clearer. The light that filled the field of her vision began to transform itself into forms. From these forms, people emerged, indistinguishable from one another at first.
“It's the left middle cerebral artery that's been affected again.” A man's voice, and one she now recognised. Dr. Fairclough, who'd seen her through her last stroke. “You can see as much from the pull on her facial muscles. Nurse, use the needle again please. See? There's no reaction. If we repeat the pricking on her arm as well, we'll have the same results.” He bent over the bed. Now Agatha could see him clearly. His nose was large, with pores that were the size of pinheads. He wore glasses whose lenses were oily and smudged. How could he possibly see anything through them? “Agatha?” he called. “Do you know me, Agatha? Do you know what's happened?”
Bloody stupid man, Agatha thought. How could she not know what had happened. With an effort, she blinked. The very act exhausted her.
“Yes. Good,” Dr. Fairclough said. “You've had another stroke, my dear. But you're all right now. And Theo's here.”
“Gran?” He sounded so tentative, as if she'd become an abandoned puppy that he attempted to coax from a hiding place. He was standing too far away for her to see him clearly, but even seeing the shape of him was comforting to her, a sign that all might be well once again. “Why the hell did you try to get to the tennis court?” Theo asked. “Jesus, Gran, if Mary hadn't been with you …She didn't even phone for an ambulance. She picked you up and rushed you here herself. Dr. Fairclough thinks that saved your life.”
Who would have thought the silly cow had such presence of mind? Agatha wondered. All she could ever recall Mary Ellis doing in an emergency situation was blubbering, blinking, and letting her nose dribble onto her upper lip.
“She isn't responding,” Theo said, and Agatha could see that he'd turned to the doctor. “Can she even hear me?”
“Agatha?” the doctor said. “Will you show Theo you can hear what he's saying?”
Slowly and once again with great effort, Agatha blinked. It seemed to take every ounce of her energy, and she felt the strain of the movement all the way to her throat.
“What we're seeing,” the doctor said in that blasted imparting-of-information voice that had always caused Agatha's hackles to rise, “is called expressive aphasia. The clot denied blood—hence oxygen—to the left side of the brain. Since that's the region responsible for word-oriented rational reality, speech is affected.”
“But she's worse than last time. She had some words last time. So why doesn't she have them now? Gran, can you say my name? Can you say your own?”
Agatha forced her mouth to open. But the only sound she was able to make sounded to her like “Ahg.” She tried a second time, then a third. And she felt that balloon scream trying to force its way out of her lungs again.
“It's a more serious stroke this time,” Dr. Fairclough was saying. He put a hand on Agatha's left shoulder. She could feel him squeeze warmly. “Agatha, don't strain yourself. Rest now. You're in excellent hands. And Theo's here if you need him.”
They stepped away from the bed and out of her range of vision, but she could still hear some of their hushed words.
“…no magic bullet unfortunately,” the doctor was saying. “…will need extensive rehabilitation.”
“… therapy?” this from Theo.
“Physical and speech.”
“…hospital?”
And Agatha strained to hear. Intuitively, she knew what her grandson was asking because it was what she felt herself desperate to know: What was the prognosis in a case like hers? And could she expect to remain in hospital, immobilised in a rail-sided bed like a blasted rag doll, until the day she died?
“Actually quite hopeful,” Dr. Fairclough said, and he returned to her bedside to share the information with her. He patted her shoulder, then touched his fingertips to her forehead as if he were giving her a formal benediction.
Doctors, she thought. When they didn't think they were the Pope, they thought they were God.
“Agatha, the paralysis you're experiencing will improve over time with physical therapy. The aphasia …well, reacquisition of speech is more difficult to predict. But with care, with nursing, and most of all with a will to recover, you can live for any number of years.” The doctor turned then to Theo. “She has to want to live, however. And she must have a reason to live.”
She had that, Agatha thought. Damn it to hell and back again, she had that. She would recreate this town to her image of what a sea resort ought to be. She would do it from her bed, she would do it from her coffin, she would do it from her grave. The name Agatha Shaw would mean something beyond an abortive marriage brought to a meaningless early end, a failed motherhood with children either scattered to the globe or tucked into premature graves, and a life defined through the people she'd lost. So she had the will to live and endure. She had it in spades.
The doctor was continuing. “She's enormously blessed in two respects, and we can hang our hopes of recovery on them. Overall, she's in excellent physical condition: heart, lungs, bone mass, muscles. She has the body of a woman in her fifties, and believe me, that's going to serve her well.”
“She was always active,” Theo said. “Tennis, boating, riding. Until the first stroke, she did it all.”
“Hmm. Yes. And much to her benefit. But there's more to life than keeping the body fit. There's keeping the heart and soul fit as well. She does that through you. She isn't alone in the world. She has a family. And family give people a reason to go on.” The doctor chuckled as he asked his last questions, so apparently sure was he of the reply. “Now, you aren't thinking of going off somewhere, Theo? Not planning an expedition to Africa? No trips to Mars?”
&
nbsp; There was a silence. In it, Agatha heard the bleeping of the monitors to which she was hooked up. They burbled and hissed just out of sight, beyond her head.
She wanted to tell Theo to stand within her view. She wished that she could tell him how she loved him. Love was balderdash and rubbish, she knew. It was nonsense and illusion that did nothing but wound one and wear one down. It was, in fact, a word she'd never used openly in her life. But she would have said it now.
She felt a longing for him, to touch him and hold him. She felt it down her arms and in her fingertips. She'd always thought touch was meant for discipline. How had she failed to see it was meant for forging bonds?
The doctor chuckled again, but this time it sounded forced. “Good God, don't look like that, Theo. You're no expert in the field and you won't have to rehabilitate your grandmother on your own. It's your presence in her life that's important. It's continuity. You can give her that.”
Theo came close enough for her to see now. He gazed into her eyes and his own looked clouded. They looked, in fact, just the way they'd looked when she'd arrived at that urine-scented children's home where he and Stephen had been taken in the immediate aftermath of their parents’ deaths. She'd said to them, “Come along with you, then,” and when she didn't extend her hand to either of them, Stephen walked out ahead of her. But Theo reached up and grasped the waistband of her skirt.
“I'll be there for her,” Theo said. “I'm not going anywhere.”
S LIAISON OFFICER, BARBARA CAME UP WITH A compromise that all present declared themselves able to live with. Emily had stopped their procession outside the interrogation room, where she'd informed the two men that their access to Fahd Kumhar would be limited to visual access only. They could check him for his physical condition, but they could ask nothing. These ground rules caused an immediate argument between the DCI and the Pakistanis, with Muhannad manhandling the reins of the discussion away from his cousin. After listening to his threats of “imminent community dissent,” Barbara suggested that Taymullah Azhar—an outsider clearly not suspected of anything—act as an interpreter. Fahd Kumhar would hear his rights given to him in English, Azhar would translate anything that the man did not understand, and Emily would tape-record their entire interaction for verification from Professor Siddiqi in London. This appeared to cover all possible permutations of what could happen in the room. Everyone agreed it was a viable alternative to squabbling indefinitely in the corridor. So the compromise was accepted, as are most compromises: Everyone agreed to it; no one liked it.