Yadda, yadda, yadda, Barbara thought. The girl sounded like an advert. So much for any previous thoughts about Querashi's trying to skip town one step ahead of his wedding day. It sounded as if he'd been fully intending to uphold his end of the marriage agreement. Indeed, it sounded as if he'd been laying plans for the future of his family as well.
Barbara pulled the Polaroid of Fahd Kumhar from her shoulder bag next. This met with a different result. None of them knew this particular Asian. None of them had ever seen him. Barbara watched them closely, looking for an indication that one or all of them were lying. But no one quivered so much as an eyelash.
Bust, she thought. She thanked them for their help and stepped from the office into the High Street. It was eleven o'clock and she was already sweat-drenched. She was also thirsty, so she ducked into the Whip and Whistle across the street. There, she managed to talk the publican into parting with five ice cubes over which he poured lemonade. She carried this to a table by the window—along with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps—and she flung herself onto a stool, lit a cigarette, and prepared to enjoy her elevenses.
She'd consumed half of the crisps, three-quarters of the lemonade, and all of the cigarette when she saw Rudi step out of World Wide Tours across the street. He glanced right and left and right again, in a manner that Barbara decided could have been overly cautious—indicating the normal trepidation of a European unused to English traffic—or borderline stealthy. She cast her vote with the latter and when Rudi took off up the street, she gulped down the rest of her lemonade and left the remaining crisps on the table.
Outside, she saw him unlocking a Renault on the street corner. Her own Mini was parked two cars away, so as the German fired up his vehicle and guided it into the traffic, she dashed to her own. In a moment, she was in pursuit.
Anything, of course, could have taken him from the travel office: a dental appointment, a sexual assignation, a visit to the chiropodist, an early lunch. But following so closely on the heels of her visit, Rudi's departure was too intriguing to let go uninvestigated.
She followed him at a distance. He took the A120 out of town. He drove with no interest in the speed limit, and he led her directly to Parkeston, just over two miles from the travel office. He didn't make the turn towards the harbour, however. Rather, he drove into an industrial estate just before the harbour road.
Barbara couldn't risk following him there. But she pulled into the layby that opened into the industrial estate, and she watched the Renault roll to a stop at a prefabricated metal warehouse at the farthest end. Barbara would have given her signed edition of The Lusty Savage for a pair of binoculars at that moment. She was too far from the building to read its sign.
Unlike the other warehouses in the estate, this one was closed up and looked unoccupied. But when Rudi rapped on the door, someone within admitted him.
Barbara watched from the Mini. She didn't know what she expected to see, and she was rewarded with seeing nothing. She sweated silently in the roasting car for a quarter of an hour that seemed like a century before Rudi emerged: no bags of heroin in his possession, no pockets bulging with counterfeit money, no video cassettes of children in compromising positions, no guns or explosives or even companions. He left the warehouse as he'd entered the warehouse, empty-handed and alone.
Barbara knew he'd see her if she remained on the edge of the industrial estate, so she pulled back onto the A120 with the intention of turning round and having a bit of recce among the warehouses once Rudi was gone. But as she looked for a suitable place to make a three-point turn, she saw a large stone building sitting back from the road on a horseshoe drive. THE CASTLE HOTEL, its roadside sign announced in mediaeval lettering. She recalled the brochure that she'd found in Haytham Querashi's room. She turned into the hotel's car park, making the decision to kill another bird with the stones she'd been fortuitously given.
PROFESSOR SIDDIQI WASN'T at all what Emily Barlow had expected him to be. She'd anticipated someone dark and middle-aged, with black hair sweeping back from an intelligent forehead, kohl-coloured eyes, and tobacco skin. But the man who presented himself to her in the company of DC Hesketh, who'd fetched him from London, was very nearly blond, his eyes were decidedly grey, and his skin was fair enough for him to be mistaken for a northern European instead of an Asian. Looking to be in his early thirties, he was a compact man, not even her own height. He was toughly built, like an amateur wrestler.
He smiled as she quickly adjusted her expression from surprise to indifference. He offered his hand in greeting and said, “We don't all come out of the same mould, Inspector Barlow.”
She didn't like to be read that easily, especially by someone she didn't know. She ignored the remark, saying brusquely instead, “Good of you to come. Would you like a drink or shall we get started with Mr. Kumhar straightaway?”
He asked for grapefruit juice, and as Belinda Warner took herself off to fetch it, Emily explained the situation into which the London professor had been brought. “I'll be tape-recording the entire interview,” she said in conclusion. “My questions in English, your translations, Mr. Kumhar's answers, your translations.”
Siddiqi was astute enough to make the proper inference. “You can rely upon my integrity,” he said. “But as we've never met before now, I wouldn't expect you to depend upon it without a system of checks and balances.”
The major ground rules laid and the minor ones implied, Emily took him to meet his fellow Asian.
Kumhar hadn't benefited from his night in custody. If anything, he was more anxiety-ridden than on the previous afternoon. Worse, he was sodden with sweat and foul with the odour of faeces, as if he'd messed himself.
Siddiqi took one look at him and turned back to Emily. “Where's this man been kept? And what the hell have you been doing to him?”
Another ardent viewer of pro-I.R.A. films, Emily decided wearily. What Guildford and Birmingham had done to set back the cause of policework was inestimable. She said, “He's been kept in a cell which you're more than welcome to inspect, Professor. And we've been doing nothing to him, unless serving him dinner and breakfast goes as torture these days. It's hot in the cells. But no more so than the rest of the building or the whole bloody town. He'll tell you as much if you care to ask him.”
“I'll do just that,” Siddiqi said. And he fired off a series of questions to Kumhar that he didn't bother to translate.
For the first time since being brought into the station, Kumhar lost the look of a terrified rabbit. He unclasped his hands and reached towards Siddiqi as if a life belt had been thrown him.
It was a gesture of supplication, and the professor apparently saw it as such. He used both of his hands to reach for the man, and having done so, he drew him to the table in the centre of the room. He spoke again, translating this time for Emily. “I've introduced myself. I've told him that I'm to translate your questions and his answers. I've told him that you mean him no harm. I hope that's the truth, Inspector.”
What was it with these people? Emily wondered. They saw inequity, prejudice, and brutality under every lily pad. She didn't reply directly. Rather, she flipped on the tape recorder, gave the date, the time, and the individuals present. After which, she said, “Mr. Kumhar, your name was among the belongings of a murdered man, Mr. Haytham Querashi. Can you explain to me how it got there?”
She expected a replay of yesterday's litany: a string of disavowals. She was surprised. Kumhar fastened his eyes on Siddiqi as the question was translated for him, and when he replied—which he did at great length—he kept his eyes on the professor. Siddiqi listened, nodded, and at one point halted the man's recital to ask a question. Then he turned to Emily.
“He met Mr. Querashi outside Weeley on the A133. He—Mr. Kumhar, that is—was hitchhiking, and Mr. Querashi offered him a ride. This took place nearly a month ago. Mr. Kumhar had been working as a farm labourer, moving among the fields throughout the county. He'd become dissatisfied with the money he was making a
s well as with the working conditions, so he'd decided to look for other employment.”
Emily considered this, her brow furrowed. “Why didn't he tell me this yesterday? Why did he deny knowing Mr. Querashi?”
Siddiqi turned back to Kumhar, who watched him with the eagerness of a puppy determined to please. Before Siddiqi finished the question, Kumhar was answering, and this time he directed his response to Emily.
“‘When you said that Mr. Querashi was murdered,’ “Siddiqi translated, “‘I was afraid that you might come to believe that I was involved. I lied to protect myself from coming under suspicion. I'm new to this country, and I wish to do nothing to jeopardize my welcome here. Please understand how much I regret having lied to you. Mr. Querashi was nothing but kindness to me and I betrayed that kindness by not speaking the truth at once.’ “
Emily noted the sweat that coated the man's skin like a film of cooking oil. That he'd lied to her on the previous day was a bonafide fact. What remained open to question was whether he was lying to her now. She said, “Did Mr. Querashi know that you were looking for employment?”
He did, Kumhar answered. He'd told Mr. Querashi of his unhappiness with his farm employment. That had constituted the bulk of their conversation in the car.
“Did Mr. Querashi offer you a job?”
At this Kumhar looked nonplussed. A job? he asked. No. There was no job offered. Mr. Querashi merely picked him up and drove him to his lodgings.
“And wrote you a cheque for four hundred pounds,” Emily added.
Siddiqi raised an eyebrow, but translated without comment.
It was true that Mr. Querashi had given him money. The man was kindness itself, and Mr. Kumhar would not lie and call this gift of four hundred pounds a loan. But the Qur'aan decreed and the Five Pillars of Islam required payment of the zakat to one in need. So in giving him four hundred pounds—
“What is zakat?” Emily interposed.
“Alms for the needy,” Siddiqi answered. Kumhar watched him anxiously whenever he switched to English, and his expression suggested a man straining to understand and to absorb every word. “Muslims are required to see to the economic welfare of members of their community. We give to support the poor and others like them.”
“So in giving Mr. Kumhar four hundred pounds, Haytham Querashi was simply doing his religious duty?”
“That's exactly the case,” Siddiqi said.
“He wasn't buying something?”
“Such as?” Siddiqi gestured to Kumhar. “What on earth could this poor man have to sell him?”
“Silence comes to mind. Mr. Kumhar spends time near Clacton market square. Ask him if he ever saw Mr. Querashi there.”
Siddiqi gazed at her for a moment as if trying to read the meaning behind the question. Then he shrugged and turned to Kumhar, repeating the question in their own language.
Kumhar shook his head adamantly. Emily didn't require a translation for never, not once, not at any time, he himself had not been in the market square.
“Mr. Querashi was the director of production at a local factory. He could have offered Mr. Kumhar employment. Yet Mr. Kumhar says the subject of a job never came up between them. Does he wish to change that claim?”
No, Kumhar told her through his interpreter. He did not wish to change that claim. He knew Mr. Querashi only as a benefactor sent to him through the goodness of Allah. But there was a common thread that bound them to each other: They both had families in Pakistan whom they wished to bring to this country. Although in Querashi's case it was parents and siblings and in Kumhar's case it was a wife and two children, their intention was the same and thus there existed between them a greater understanding than might have otherwise existed between two strangers who meet on a public road.
“But wouldn't a permanent job have been far more of a benefit than four hundred pounds if you want to bring your family to this country?” Emily asked. “How far could you have stretched that money in comparison to what you might have earned over time as an employee of Malik's Mustards?”
Kumhar shrugged. He had no way to explain why Mr. Querashi hadn't offered him employment.
Siddiqi interjected a comment. “Mr. Kumhar was a wayfarer, Inspector. In giving him funds, Mr. Querashi met his obligation to him. He wasn't required to do anything more.”
“It seems to me that a man who was ‘nothing but kindness’ to Mr. Kumhar is a man who would have seen to his future welfare as well as to his immediate needs.”
“We can't know what his ultimate intentions were towards Mr. Kumhar,” Professor Siddiqi pointed out. “We can only interpret his actions. His death, unfortunately, prevents anything more.”
And wasn't that convenient? Emily thought.
“Did Mr. Querashi ever make a pass at you, Mr. Kumhar?” she asked.
Siddiqi stared at her, absorbing the abrupt change in topic. “Are you asking—”
“I think the question's clear enough. We've been given information that Querashi was homosexual. I'd like to know if Mr. Kumhar was on the receiving end of anything besides Mr. Querashi's money.”
Kumhar heard the question with some consternation. He declared his answer in a tone of strained horror: No, no, no. Mr. Querashi was a good man. He was a righteous man. He could not have defiled his body, his mind, and his everlasting soul with such behaviour. It was an impossibility, a sin against everything Muslims believed.
“And where were you on Friday night?”
At his lodgings in Clacton. And Mrs. Kersey—his most generous hostess—would be happy to tell Inspector Barlow as much.
That concluded their interview, which is what Emily recited into the tape recorder. When she switched it off, Kumhar spoke urgently to Siddiqi.
Emily said angrily, “Hang on there.”
Siddiqi said, “He only wants to know if he can return to Clacton now. He is, understandably, anxious to quit this place, Inspector.”
Emily meditated on the prospect of getting any more information out of the Pakistani if she held him longer and gave him time to sweat a little more in that sauna of a cell just off the weight room. If she grilled him another two or three times, she might wrest from him a detail that would take her one step closer to their killer. But in doing this, she also ran the risk of sending the Asian community back into the streets. Whatever member of Jum'a came to fetch Kumhar back to Clacton in the afternoon would be looking for anything useful to their cause that could be carried back and reported upon as a means of enflaming the people. She weighed this possibility against whatever potential information she could get from the Asian before her.
She finally went to the door and yanked it open. DC Honigman was waiting in the corridor. She said, “Take Mr. Kumhar to the weight room. See that he has a shower. Have someone get him lunch and some decent clothes. And tell DC Hesketh to take the professor back to London.”
She turned back to Siddiqi and his companion in the interrogation room. She said, “Mr. Kumhar, I'm not finished with you, so don't even think about leaving the vicinity. If you do, I'll track you down and drag you back here by your bollocks. Is that clear?”
Siddiqi leveled an ironic gaze upon her. “I expect he'll get your point,” he said.
She left them and returned to her office on the first floor. She'd long ago learned to trust her instincts in an investigation, and they were fairly screaming that Fahd Kumhar had more information than he was willing to part with.
Damn and blast the law and the proscription of torture and what both had done to the rights of the police, she fumed. A few minutes on the rack in the Middle Ages and that little worm would have been his inquisitor's pudding. As it was, he would walk away with his secrets intact while her head began to throb and her muscles went into extended spasm.
Christ. It was maddening. And what was worse was the fact that one brief interview with Fahd Kumhar had undone four hours of Gary's ardent ministrations the previous night.
Which made her want to snap someone's head off. Which mad
e her want to yell at the first person who came within her line of vision. Which made her want to—
“Guv?”
“What?” Emily barked. “What? What?”
Belinda Warner hesitated at the threshold of Emily's office. She was carrying a long fax in one hand and a pink telephone message in the other. Her expression was one of consternation, and she ventured a peek into Emily's office to see the source of the DCFs ill humour.
Emily sighed. “Sorry. What is it?”
“Good news, Guv.”
“I could do with some.”
Reassured, the WPC joined her. “We've heard from London,” she said. She gestured first with the telephone message and then with the fax. “S04 and SOU. We've got a match on the fingerprints on the Nissan. And a report on that Asian bloke, Taymullah Azhar.”
• • •
THE CASTLE HOTEL didn't look much like a castle. Instead, it resembled a squat fortress, with balustrades rather than crenellation at the roof-line. It was monochromatic on its exterior—constructed entirely of buff stone, buff bricks, and buff plaster—but that lack of colour had been more than compensated for in the hotel's interior.
The lobby was awash with colour and the predominant theme was pink: a fuchsia ceiling edged by a roseate dog-toothed cornice, walls papered in stripes of a candy-floss hue, maroon carpeting patterned with hyacinths. Just like walking into an enormous bonbon, Barbara thought.
Behind the reception desk, a middle-aged man in tails watched her progress across the lobby with an expectant air. His nametag identified him as Curtis and his manner suggested a welcome rehearsed in the privacy of his home and in front of a mirror. First came the slow smile till he was assured of eye contact with her; then came the unveiling of teeth; afterwards the head was cocked with an air of helpful interest; one eyebrow raised; one hand picked up a pencil expectantly.
When with studied courtesy he offered her his assistance, she produced her warrant card. The eyebrow lowered. The pencil dropped. The head uncocked. He altered from Curtis-in-Reception to Curtis-Most-Definitely-on-Guard.