“What's he saying?” Emily demanded when Azhar did not translate at once.
Azhar seemed to turn from the other man with difficulty. But he finally did so, slowly. “He's saying that he doesn't want to lose his life. He's asking for protection. Roughly, he's saying what he said yesterday afternoon. ‘I am no one. I am nothing. Protect me please. I am friendless in this land. And I have no wish to die like the other.’ “
Finally, Emily felt the sweet rush of triumph. “Then he does know something about Querashi's death.”
“That appears to be the case,” Azhar said.
BARBARA DECIDED THAT a nice little round of Divide and Rule might be what was needed. Mrs. Malik either didn't know where her son was, or she was unwilling to hand him over to the police. Muhannad's wife, on the other hand, seemed to be so intent upon illustrating that she and her husband thought each other's thoughts and wore each other's knickers that she was likely to impart one or more valuable titbits of information, all in the name of proving her own importance to the man she'd married. But to get her to do this, Barbara knew that she had to separate the younger from the older woman. This proved easier than she'd anticipated. Muhannad's wife made the suggestion that they conduct their interview alone.
“There are things between husbands and wives,” she said smugly to Barbara, “that are not for the hearing of mothers-in-law. And as I am the wife of Muhannad and the mother of his sons—”
“Yeah. Right.” The last thing Barbara wanted was another rendition of the song and dance she'd had from this woman on her first day in Balford. She had the impression that whatever her religion, Yumn could get positively biblical when it came to the begetting and begatting game. “Where can we talk?”
They would talk upstairs, Yumn told her. She had to bathe the sons of Muhannad prior to their tea, and the sergeant could speak to her as she did so. The sergeant would want to see this activity anyway. The naked sons of Muhannad were a sight to give the heart its greatest joy.
Right, Barbara thought. She could hardly wait.
Mrs. Malik said, “But, Yumn, you don't wish Sahlah to bathe them today?” She spoke in so quiet a fashion that the fact that her question was far more pointed than Yumn's previous comments had been was something that could be easily overlooked by anyone unused to subtleties.
Barbara was unsurprised when Yumn's reply indicated that only an axe driven between her eyes would get her attention. A scalpel between the ribs went largely unfelt. She said, “She may read to them in the evening, Sus-jahn. If, of course, they are not too tired. And if her choice of material will not give my Anas further nightmares.” And to Barbara, “Come along with me.”
Barbara followed the woman's large backside up the stairs. Yumn was chatting away happily. “How people deceive themselves,” she confided. “My mother-in-law believes that she's the vessel that holds my husband's heart. It's unfortunate, isn't it? He's her only son—she could have only the two children, you know, my Muni and his sister—so she's tied to him too strongly for her own good.”
“Is she?” Barbara said. “I'd think she'd be tied more to Sahlah. Both of them being women. You know.”
“Sahlah?” Yumn tittered. “Who would seek to be tied to such a worthless little thing? My sons are in here.”
She led the way into a bedroom where two small boys were playing on the floor. The younger child wore only a nappie—whose sagging in the direction of his knees indicated its sodden condition—while the older was completely naked. His discarded clothing—nappy, T-shirt, shorts, and sandals—lay in a pile that appeared to be serving as an obstacle course for the lorries he and his brother were pushing round.
“Anas. Bishr.” Yumn sang their names. “Come to Ammī-gee. Time for our bath.”
The boys continued playing.
“And Twisters afterwards, darling ones.”
That got their attention. They set aside their toys and allowed themselves to be scooped up by their mother. Yumn said gaily, “This way,” to Barbara and carried her treasures to the bathroom. She filled the tub with an inch of water, deposited the two boys, and dropped in three yellow ducks, two sailboats, a ball, and four sponges. She squeezed liquid soap liberally on all the toys as well as the sponges and handed these last to the boys to play with. “Bathing should be a delightful game,” she informed Barbara as she stood back to watch the children begin swatting each other with the soapy sponges. Bubbles drifted into the air. “Your auntie only scrubs and rubs, doesn't she?” Yumn asked the boys. “Tiresome auntie. But your ammī-gee makes bathing fun. Shall we play with the boats? Do we need more duckies? Do you love your ammī-gee better than anyone?”
The boys were too occupied with plastering each other's face with the sponges to pay her much attention. She ruffled their hair and then, after sighing with satisfaction over them, said to Barbara, “These are my pride. Their father's also. And they will be just like him, men among men.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “I can see the likeness.”
“Can you?” Yumn stood back from the tub and reflected on her sons as if they were works of art. “Yes. Well, Anas has his father's eyes. And Bishr …” She chuckled. “Shall we say that in time, my Bishr shall have something else quite like his father's as well? Won't you be a bullgod to your wife someday, Bishr?”
Barbara thought at first that Yumn had said bulldog, but when the woman reached between her son's legs to display his penis—approximately the size of Barbara's little toe—she adjusted her thinking. Nothing quite like starting the bloke out on his complexes early, she decided.
“Mrs. Malik,” she said, “I've come here looking for your husband. Can you tell me where he is?”
“What on earth can you want with my Muni?” She bent over the bathtub and ran one of the sponges up and down Bishr's back. “He hasn't failed to pay a parking fine, has he?”
“Just some questions I'd like to put to him,” Barbara said.
“Questions? About what? Has something happened?”
Barbara knotted her eyebrows. The woman couldn't possibly be this much out of the loop. She said, “Haytham Querashi—”
“Oh, that. But you don't want to talk to my Muni about Haytham Querashi. He hardly knew him. You want to speak to Sahlah.”
“I do?” Barbara watched Yumn playfully dribbling soap along the plane of Anas's shoulders.
“Of course. Sahlah was up to some nasty business. Haytham discovered what it was—who knows how?—and they had words. Words led to …It's sad what words lead people to, isn't it? Darlings, here. Shall we float our boats on the waves?” She splashed water against their thighs. The boats bobbed and weaved. The boys laughed and struck the water with their fists.
“What sort of nasty business?” Barbara asked.
“She was busy at night. When she assumed the house was asleep, she became quite busy, our little Sahlah. She went out. And more than once, someone came in. Someone joined her in her room. She thinks that no one knows this, of course. What she doesn't know is that when my Muni goes out in the evenings, I don't sleep well until he returns to our bed. And my ears are sharp. Quite quite sharp. Aren't they, my lovely little ones?” And she playfully poked her sons’ bellies. Anas splashed water across the front of her tunic in return. She laughed gaily and splashed back. “And little Sahlah's bed goes squeak, squeak, squeak, doesn't it, darlings?” More splashing followed. “Such a restless sleeper our auntie is. Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak. Haytham found out about that nasty squeaking, didn't he, boys? And he and our Sahlah had words and words.”
What a cobra, Barbara thought. Someone needed to take a cosh to the woman's head, and she expected there would be more than one volunteer in the household should she ask who would like to wield one. Well, two could play innuendo poker. Barbara said, “Have you a chā, Mrs. Malik?”
Yumn's hands hesitated in the creation of more waves for her boys. She said, “A chā? How odd. Whatever makes you ask such a question?”
“You're wearing fairly tradit
ional garb. I was wondering. That's all. Get out and about much? Go visiting friends in the evening? Stop by one hotel or another for an evening coffee? By yourself, that is? And when you do, do you wear a chā? One sees them all the time in London. But I don't recall seeing any here at the sea.”
Yumn reached for a large plastic jug on the floor nearby. She took out the bathplug and filled the jug from the tap. She began pouring water over the boys, who squealed and shook themselves like wet puppies. She didn't reply until she had both of the children thoroughly rinsed and wrapped in large white towels. She lifted one to each hip and started out of the room, saying to Barbara, “Come with me.”
She didn't lead the way back to the boys’ room, however. Instead, she went to the far end of the corridor, to a bedroom at the back of the house. The door was closed, and she opened this imperiously and gestured Barbara inside.
It was a small room with a single bed against one wall, a chest of drawers, and a table against another. Its diamond-paned window was open, overlooking the back garden and, beyond this garden, a brick wall with a gate that opened onto a neat, weedless orchard.
“This is the bed,” Yumn said, as if revealing a place of infamy. “And Haytham knew what went on within it.”
Barbara turned from the window, but she didn't examine the object in question. She was about to say, “And we both know how Haytham Querashi came by that piece of information, don't we, sweetie,” when she noticed that the table across the room from the bed appeared to be a craft centre of some sort. She walked to this curiously. Yumn continued.
“You can imagine how Haytham would feel, learning that his beloved—presented to him by her father as chaste—was little more than a common …well, my language is too strong, perhaps. But no stronger than my feelings.”
“Hmm,” Barbara said. She saw that three miniature plastic chests of drawers contained beads, coins, shells, stones, bits of copperas, and other small ornaments.
“Women carry our culture forward through time,” Yumn was continuing. “Our role is not only as wives and mothers, but as symbols of virtue for the daughters that follow us.”
“Yes. Right,” Barbara said. Next to the three chests was a rack of implements: tiny spanners, long-nosed pliers, a glue gun, scissors, and two wire cutters.
“And if a woman fails in this role, she fails herself, her husband, and her family. She stands disgraced. Sahlah knew this. She knew what awaited her once Haytham broke their engagement and stated his reasons for doing so.”
“Got it. Yes,” Barbara said. And next to the rack of tools was a row of large spools.
“No man would want her after that. If she wasn't cast out of the family altogether, she'd be a prisoner of it. A virtual slave. At everyone's command.”
Barbara said, “I need to speak to your husband, Mrs. Malik,” and she rested her fingers on the prize she'd found.
Among the spools of thin chain, string, and bright yarn stood one damning spool of very fine wire. It was more than suitable for tripping an unsuspecting man in the dark on the top of the Nez.
Bingo, she thought. Bloody flaming hell. Barlow the Beast had been right from the first.
EMILY HAD TO allow both of them to smoke. It appeared to be the only way to get Kumhar relaxed enough to spill his guts. So with her chest feeling tighter, her eyes watering, and her head beginning to pound, she endured the fumes from his Benson and Hedges. It took three fags before he came anywhere close to speaking what might have been the truth. Before that, he tried to claim he'd come through customs at Heathrow. Then he switched to Gatwick. Then, when he was unable to produce the flight number, the airline, or even the date of entry into the country, he was finally reduced to telling the truth. Azhar translated. His face remained expressionless throughout. To his credit, however, his eyes appeared more and more pained as the interview continued. Emily was leery of this pain, though. She knew enough of these Asians to see them for the actors they were.
There were people who helped, Kumhar began. When one wanted to immigrate to England, there were people in Pakistan who knew the short cuts. They could cut through the waiting time and waive the requirements and ensure one of having proper papers. … All of this for a price, of course.
“How does he define ‘proper papers?’” Emily asked.
Kumhar circumvented the question. He'd hoped at first to be able to come to this wonderful country legitimately, he said. He'd sought ways to do this. He'd sought sponsors. He'd even attempted to offer himself as a bridegroom to a family unaware of his marital status, with the plan of marrying bigamously. Of course, it wouldn't really have been a bigamous union, polygyny being not only legal but also appropriate for a man with the means to support more than one wife. Not that he had the means, but he would. Someday.
“Spare me the cultural asides,” Emily said.
Yes, of course. When his plans were not enough to get him to England legitimately, his father-in-law had informed him of an agency in Karachi that specialised in …well, they called it assisting in the immigration problem. They had, he learned, offices round the world.
“In every desirable port of entry,” Emily noted, recalling the cities that Barbara Havers had listed as locales for World Wide Tours. “And in every undesirable port of exit.”
One could look at it that way, Kumhar said. He visited the Karachi office and explained his needs. And for a fee, his problem was taken care of.
“He was smuggled into England,” Emily said.
Well, not directly into England. He hadn't the money for that, although direct entry was available to those with £5,000 to pay for a British passport, a driving licence, and a medical card. But who except the extremely fortunate could produce that amount of money? For what he'd managed to scrape together in five years of saving and doing without, he was able to purchase only an overland passage from Pakistan to Germany.
“To Hamburg,” Emily said.
Again he offered no direct answer. In Germany, he said, he waited—concealed in a safe lodging—for passage to England, where—in time and with sufficient effort on his part, he was told—he would be given the documents he needed to remain in the country.
“You came in through Parkeston Harbour,” Emily concluded. “How?”
By ferry, in the back of a lorry. The immigrants hid among goods being shipped from the continent: car-tyre fibre, wheat, maize, potatoes, clothing, machine parts. It made no difference. All that was required was a lorry driver willing to take the risk for a considerable compensation.
“And your documents?”
Here, Kumhar began to jabber, clearly unwilling to carry his story any further. He and Azhar engaged in a rapid-fire exchange that Emily interrupted with “Enough. I want a translation. Now.”
Azhar turned to her, his face grave. “This is more of the same that we've already heard. He's afraid to say more.”
“Then I'll say it for him,” Emily said. “Muhannad Malik's involved in this up to his eyeballs. He's smuggling illegals into the country and holding their forged documents hostage. Translate that, Mr. Azhar.” And when the man didn't speak at once, his eyes darkening with each accusation she made against his cousin, she said icily, “Translate. You wanted to be a part of this. So be a part of this. Tell him what I said.”
Azhar spoke, but his voice was altered, subtly toned by something that Emily couldn't identify but strongly suspected was preoccupation. Of course. He'd be wanting to get the word out to his detestable cousin. These people stuck together like flies over cow dung no matter what the offence. But he couldn't leave the nick until he knew for certain what the real word was. And by that time they'd have Muhannad under lock and key.
When Azhar had finished the translation, Fahd Kumhar began to weep. It was true, he said. Upon arrival in England, he'd been taken to a warehouse. There, he and his fellow travellers were met by a German and two of their own countrymen.
“Muhannad Malik was one?” Emily asked. “Who was the other?”
He didn't
know. He'd never known. But this other wore gold—watches and rings. He dressed well. And he spoke Urdu fluently. He did not come often to the warehouse, but when he did, the two others deferred to him.
“Rakin Khan,” Emily breathed. The description couldn't have fit anyone else.
Kumhar hadn't known either man's name at first. He learned Mr. Malik's identity only because they themselves—and here he indicated Emily and Azhar—had given it yesterday during the interview they'd already had together. Prior to that, he'd known Malik only as the Master.
“Wonderful sobriquet,” Emily muttered. “Doubtless he came up with it himself.”
Kumhar continued. They were told that arrangements had been made for them to work until such a time as they had sufficient funds to pay for the proper documents.
“What sort of work?”
Some went to farms, others to factories, others to mills. Wherever they were needed, they went. A lorry would come for them in the middle of the night. They would be taken to the location for work. They would be returned when the labour was completed, sometimes in the night of that same day, sometimes days later. Mr. Malik and the other two men took their wages. From these, they extracted a payment for the documents. When the documents were paid off, the immigrant would be given them and allowed to leave.
Except, in the three months that Fahd Kumhar had been working off his debt, no one had left. At least not with the proper papers. Not a single person. More immigrants came, but no one managed to earn enough to buy his freedom. The work increased as more fruit needed picking and more vegetables needed harvesting, but no amount of work appeared to be enough to pay off their debts to the people who had arranged their entry into the country.
It was a gangmaster program, Emily realised. The illegals were being hired by farmers, mill owners, and factory foremen. These people paid lower wages than they would have to pay legal workers, and they paid them not to the illegals themselves, but to the person who transported them. That person skimmed off as much money as he wanted and doled out to the workers what he felt like giving them. The illegals thought the scheme was to assist them with their immigration dilemmas. But the law had another word for it: slavery.