They were trapped, Kumhar said. They had only two options: to continue to work and hope that they would be given their papers eventually, or to make their escape and find their way into London, where they might hope to fade into the Asian community and avoid detection.
Emily had heard enough. She saw how they were all involved: the entire Malik clan and Haytham Querashi as well. It was a case of greed. Querashi uncovered the scheme that night at the Castle Hotel. He'd wanted a piece of the action as a portion of the Malik girl's dowry. He'd been refused: permanently. Doubtless he'd used Kumhar as a means of blackmailing the family to do his bidding. Slice him a piece of the financial pie or he'd bring down the entire operation by having Kumhar sing to the police or to the papers. It was a clever idea. He'd been counting on the family's greed overcoming whatever inclination they may have had to call his bluff. And his request for compensation for his knowledge wasn't so illogical. He was to be a member of the family, after all. He deserved his fair share of what everyone else was enjoying. Especially Muhannad.
Well, now, Muhannad could kiss goodbye his classic car, his Rolex watch, his snakeskin boots, his fancy diamond signet ring, and his gold chains. He wouldn't be needing them where he was going.
And this would cook Akram Malik's position in the community as well. Doubtless it would cook the entire Asian population too. Most of them worked for him anyway. And when the factory closed as a result of the investigation into the Maliks’ scheme, they'd have to take themselves off to seek employment elsewhere. Those that were legal, that is.
So she'd been on the right track in searching the mustard factory. She just hadn't thought to search it for people instead of inanimate contraband.
There was much to do. There was SOl to involve, to activate an investigation into the international aspects of the scheme. Then the IND would need to be informed, to make arrangements for the deportation of Muhannad's immigrants. Some of them, of course, would be needed to testify against him and his family at the trial. Perhaps in exchange for asylum? she wondered. It was a possibility.
She said to Azhar, “One thing more. How did Mr. Kumhar come to be hooked up with Mr. Querashi?”
He'd appeared at a work site, Kumhar explained. One day when they rested for lunch along the side of a strawberry field, he'd appeared among them. He'd been seeking someone to use as a means of putting an end to their enslavement, he said. He promised safety and a new start in this country. Kumhar was only one of eight men who had volunteered. He was chosen and he left that very afternoon with Mr. Querashi. He'd been driven to Clacton, set up in Mrs. Kersey's house, and given a cheque to send back to his family in Pakistan as a sign of Mr. Querashi's good intentions towards them all.
Right, Emily thought with a mental snort. It was another form of enslavement in the making, with Kumhar as the permanent sword that Querashi would hold over the heads of Muhannad Malik and his family. Kumhar had merely been too dim to work that out.
She needed to get back upstairs to her office, to see where Barbara was in her search for Muhannad. At the same time, she couldn't let Azhar leave the station lest he give his relatives the word that she was on to them all. She could hold him as an accessory, but one misspoken word out of her mouth, and he'd be on the phone demanding a lawyer so fast that her head would be spinning. Better to leave him with Kumhar, believing he was serving the good of all concerned.
She said to Azhar, “I'm going to need a written statement from Mr. Kumhar. May I ask you to stay with him as he writes it and then append a translation for me?” That should take a good two hours, she thought.
Kumhar spoke urgently, hands trembling as he lit yet another cigarette.
“What's he saying now?” Emily asked.
“He wants to know if he'll get his papers. Now that he's told you the truth.”
Azhar's look was a challenge. It irked her to see it so openly displayed on his dark face.
“Tell him all in good time,” Emily said. And she left them to hunt down Sergeant Havers.
YUMN PICKED UP on Barbara's interest in the craft table in Sahlah's bedroom. She said, “Her jewellery, or so she calls it. I call it her excuse not to do her duty when she's asked to do it.” She joined Barbara at the table and pulled out four of the drawers from their little chests. She spilled coins and beads onto the tabletop and sat Anas on the table's accompanying wooden chair. He became immediately enthralled with his aunt's jewellery-making bits and pieces. He pulled out another drawer and flung its contents among the coins and beads that his mother had already given him. He laughed at the sight of the colourful objects rolling and bouncing on the table. Before, they'd been arranged carefully by size, by hue, and by composition. Now, as Anas added two more drawersful, they were hopelessly mixed with one another, promising a long evening's work sorting them out.
Yumn did nothing to stop him from continuing to empty more of the drawers. Instead, she smiled at him fondly and ruffled his hair. “You like the colours, don't you, pretty one?” she asked him. “Can you name these colours for your ammī-gee? Here's red, Anas. Can you see red?”
Barbara certainly was doing so. She said, “Mrs. Malik, about your husband. I'd like a word with him. Where can I find him?”
“Why would you want to talk to my Muni? I've already told you—”
“And I've got every word from the last forty minutes engraved on my heart. But I've one or two points to clear up with him regarding Mr. Querashi's death.”
Yumn had been continuing her play with Anas's hair. Now she turned to Barbara. “I've told you that he isn't involved in Haytham's death. You should be talking to Sahlah, not to her brother.”
“Nonetheless—”
“There is no nonetheless.” Yumn's voice was louder. Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. She had dropped her treacly wife-and-mother routine. Steel resolve replaced it. “I've told you that Sahlah and Haytham had words. I've told you what she got up to at night. I expect that, since you're the police, you can add one and one together without my having to do it for you. My Muni,” she concluded as with the need to clarify a point, “is a man among men. And you have no need to talk to him.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “Well, thanks for your time. I'll find my own way out.”
The other woman read the greater meaning behind Barbara's words. She said insistently, “You have no need to talk to him.”
Barbara passed her. She went into the corridor. Yumn's voice followed her.
“You've been taken in by her, haven't you? Just like everyone. You have five words with the little bitch and all you see is a precious doe. So quiet. So gentle. She wouldn't hurt a fly. So you overlook her. And she gets away.”
Barbara started down the stairs.
“She gets away with everything, the whore. Whore. With him in her room, with him in her bed, with pretending to be what she never was. Chaste. Dutiful. Pious. Good.”
Barbara was at the door. Her hand reached for the handle. From the top of the stairs, Yumn cried out the words.
“He was with me.”
Barbara's hand stopped, but remained outstretched for a moment as she registered what Yumn was saying. She turned. “What?”
Carrying her younger child, Yumn came down the stairs. The colour in her face had been reduced to two medallions of red that rode high on either cheek. Her wandering eye gave her a wild air, which was heightened by the words she next spoke. “I'm telling you what you'll hear from Muhannad. I'm saving you the trouble of having to find him. That's what you want, isn't it?”
“What are you saying?”
“I'm saying that if you think Munhannad was involved in what happened to Haytham Querashi, he couldn't have been. He was with me on Friday night. He was up in our room. We were together. We were in bed. He was with me.”
“Friday night,” Barbara clarified. “You're certain of that. He didn't go out? Not at any time? Not, perhaps, telling you that he was going to see a chum? Maybe even to have dinner with a chum?”
“I know when my husband was with me, don't I?” Yumn demanded. “And he was here. With me. In this very house. On Friday night.”
Brilliant, Barbara thought. She couldn't have asked for a more pellucid declaration of the Asian man's guilt.
E COULDN'T STOP THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD. They seemed to be coming from every direction and from every possible source. At first he thought that he'd know what to do next if only he could silence their shouting. But when he realised that he could do nothing to drive the howl of them out of his skull—save kill himself, which he certainly did not intend to do—he knew he would have to lay his plans while the voices attempted to lay waste to his nerves.
Reuchlein's phone call had come into the mustard factory less than two minutes after the Scotland Yard bitch had left the warehouse in Parkeston. “Abort, Malik” was all he said, which meant that the new shipment of goods—due to arrive this very day and worth at least £20,000 if he could keep them working long enough without doing a bunk—would not be met at the port, would not be driven to the warehouse, and would not be sent out in work parties to the Kent farmers who had already paid half in advance, as agreed upon. Instead, the goods would be released on their own upon their arrival, to find their way to London or Birmingham or any other city in which they could hide. And if they weren't caught by the police in advance of reaching their destination, they would fade into the population and keep their gobs plugged about how they got into the country. No sense in talking when talking would lead to deportation. As to those workers already on sites, they were on their own. When no one arrived to fetch them back to the warehouse, they'd work things out.
Abort meant that Reuchlein was on his way back to Hamburg. It meant that every document pertaining to the immigration services of World Wide Tours was heading into the shredder. And it meant that he himself had to act quickly before the world as he'd known it for twenty-six years crashed in on him.
He'd left the factory. He'd gone home. He'd started to put his own plans in motion. Haytham was dead—praise whatever Divine Being was convenient at the moment—and he knew that there was no way on earth that Kumhar would talk. Talk and he'd find himself deported, which was the last thing he wanted now that his chief protector had been murdered.
And then Yumn—that ugly cow whom he was forced to call wife—had begun her business with his mother. And she'd had to be dealt with, which is when he'd learned the truth about Sahlah.
He'd cursed her, his slag of a sister. She'd driven him to it. What did she expect to happen when she acted like a whore with a Westerner? Forgiveness? Understanding? Acceptance? What? She'd let those hands—unclean, defiled, corrupt, disgusting—touch her body. She'd willingly met that mouth with her own. She lay with that bloody piece of shit Shaw under a tree on the bare fucking ground and she expected him—her brother, her elder, her lord—to walk away from the knowledge? From the sound of their breathing and moaning together? From the scent of their sweat? From the sight of his hand lifting her nightgown and sliding sliding sliding up her leg?
So yes, he'd grabbed her. Yes, he'd dragged her into the house. And yes, he'd taken her because she deserved to be taken, because she was a whore, and because above all she was meant to pay the way all whores pay. And once—one night—was not enough to impress her with the knowledge of who was the real master of her fate. One word from me and you die, he'd told her. And he didn't even need to muffle her cries with his palm as he was prepared to do. She knew she had to pay for her sin.
Once Yumn had spoken, he'd gone in search of her. It was the very last thing he knew he should do, but he had to find her. He was in a fever to find her. His eyes were throbbing, his heart was thundering, and his head was pounding with all of their voices.
Abort, Malik.
Am I meant to be treated like a dog?
She's ungovernable, my son. She has no sense of—
The police were here to search the factory. They were asking for you.
Abort, Malik.
Look at me, Muni. Look at what your mother—
Before I knew it, she had ruined the plants. I don't understand why—
Abort, Malik.
…your father's perfect little virgin.
Abort.
Virgin? Her? In a few more weeks she won't be able to hide the—
They wouldn't say what they were looking for. But they had a warrant. I saw it myself.
Your sister's pregnant.
Abort. Abort.
Sahlah wouldn't speak of it. She wouldn't accuse him. She wouldn't dare. An accusation would ruin her because from it would rise the truth about Shaw. Because he—Muhannad, her brother—would speak that truth. He would accuse. He would relate exactly what he had seen pass between them in the orchard and he'd allow their parents to conclude the rest. Could they trust the word of a daughter who betrayed them by sneaking out of the house at night? Of a daughter who acted like a common slag? Who was more likely to be telling the truth? he would demand. A son who did his duty to his wife, his children, and his parents, or a daughter who daily lived a lie?
Sahlah knew what he would say. She knew what their parents would believe. So she wouldn't speak of it, and she wouldn't accuse.
Which gave him a chance to find her. But she wasn't at the factory. She wasn't at the jewellery shop with her hag-faced friend. She wasn't in Falak Dedar Park. She wasn't on the pier.
But on the pier he'd heard the news about Mrs. Shaw and he'd gone to the hospital. He was just in time to see them coming out, the three of them. His father, his sister, and Theo Shaw. And the look that passed between his sister and her lover as he opened the door of their father's car for her had told him what he needed to know. She'd told. The little bitch had told Shaw the truth.
He'd spun away before they could see him. And the voices roared.
Abort, Malik.
What am I to do? Tell me, Muni.
At the moment, Mr. Kumhar hasn't identified anyone he wishes to be notified.
When one among us has died, it is not up to you to see to his resurrection, Muhannad.
′ found dead on the Nez.
I work with our people in London when they have troubles with—
Abort, Malik.
Muhannad, come and meet my friend Barbara. She lives in London.
This person you speak of is dead to us. You should not have brought him into our house.
We go for ice creams on Chalk Farm Road and we've been to the cinema and she even came to my birthday party. Sometimes we go to see her mum in—
Abort, Malik.
We told her we were going to Essex. Only Dad didn't tell me you lived here, Muhannad.
Abort. Abort.
Will you come again? Can I meet your wife and your little boys? Will you come again?
And there—there, where he least expected to find it—was the answer he was seeking. It silenced the voices and calmed his nerves.
It sent him hurtling towards the Burnt House Hotel.
“ALL RIGHT,” Emily said fiercely. Her face lit with a radiant smile. “Well done, Barbara. God damn. All right.” She shouted for Belinda Warner. The WPC came bounding into the office.
Barbara felt like crowing. They had Muhannad Malik by the short and curlies, presented to them like the Baptist to Salome with no dancing required. And by his very own dimwitted wife.
Emily began giving orders. The DC working the Colchester end—who'd been combing the streets round Rakin Khan's home in an attempt to find someone who could either corroborate Muhannad's alibi for Friday night or sink it forever—was to be called home. The constables sent to the mustard factory to go through everyone's personnel file for an examination of their paperwork were to be taken off that scent. The blokes working on the beach hut break-ins to clear the slate of Trevor Ruddock were to put that endeavour on the back burner. Everyone was to join the search for Muhannad Malik.
“No one could be in two places at once,” Barbara had exulted to Emily. “He forgot to tell his wife what his alibi was
. And she bloody well gave him a second one. The flaming game's not afoot, Emily. It's bloody well up.”
And now she watched the DCI in her glory at long last. Emily fielded phone calls, constructed a battle plan, and directed her team with a calm assurance that belied the excitement which Barbara knew that she had to be feeling. Hell, she'd been right from the very first. She'd sensed something dodgy in Muhannad Malik, something not right in all of his loud protestations of being a man of his people. Indeed, there was probably some allegory or fable that emphasised the exact hypocrisy of Muhannad's life, but at the moment Barbara was too wired to dredge it up from her memory. Dog in the manger? Tortoise and the hare? Who knew? Who cared? Let's just get this flaming bastard, she thought.
Constables were dispatched in all directions: to the mustard factory, to the Avenues, to the town council rooms, to Falak Dedar Park, to that small meeting hall above Balford Print Shoppe where Intelligence had revealed that Jum'a had its gatherings. Other constables were assigned to Parkeston in the event that their quarry had headed to Eastern Imports.
Descriptions of Malik went out by fax to surrounding communities. The Thunderbird's number plates and the car's unique colour and features were relayed to police stations. The Tendring Standard was phoned for a front-page position for Malik's photograph in case they hadn't run him to ground by morning.
The entire station was mobilised. Everywhere was movement. Everyone worked like a cog in the greater machine of the investigation, and Emily Barlow was that machine's centre.
It was in this sort of mode that she did her best work. Barbara remembered her ability to make quick decisions and to deploy her manpower where it would have the greatest effect. She'd done this in their exercises at Maidenstone when there was nothing at stake but the approval of the instructor and the admiration of colleagues taking the course. Now, with everything at stake—from peace in the community to her very job—she was the personification of tranquility. Only the manner in which she bit off words as she spoke them gave an indication of her tension.