Deception on His Mind (15 page)

“The pressure you brought to bear this afternoon was not on the CID.”

“But that's how it works. Don't you see that?” The room was stifling. Muhannad's white T-shirt clung to his muscled frame. In contrast, Taymullah Azhar sat in a state of such cool calm that he appeared to have transported himself to another world. Muhannad changed gears. “I'm sorry to have caused you pain, and maybe I should have warned you in advance that there would be a disruption in the meeting—”

“Maybe?” Akram asked. “And what occurred at the meeting wasn't a simple disruption.”

“All right. All
right.
Maybe I approached it wrong.”

“Maybe?”

Sahlah saw her brother's muscles tense. But he was too old to throw stones at the wall, and there were no tree trunks in the room to be kicked. His face was beaded with sweat, and for the first time Sahlah realised the importance of having someone like Taymuilah Azhar acting as intermediary for the family in future discussions with the police. Tranquillity under duress wasn't Muhannad's strong suit. Intimidation was, but more than intimidation was going to be called for. “Look where the demonstration got us, Father: an interview with the DCI heading the investigation. And an admission of murder.”

“I see that,” Akram acknowledged. “So now you shall offer formal thanks to your cousin for his advice and send him on his way.”

“Bugger that shit!” Muhannad swept three framed pictures from the mantel onto the floor. “What's the matter with you? What are you afraid of? Are you so tied to these bloody westerners that you can't even think that—”

“Enough.” Akram stepped out of character: He raised his voice.

“No! It's not enough. You're afraid that one of these English murdered Haytham. And if that's what happened, you're going to have to do something about it—like feel different about them. And you can't bloody face that because you've been playing at being a sodding Englishman for twenty-seven years.”

Akram was up and across the room so quickly that Sahlah didn't realise what had happened until her father struck Muhannad across his face. It was then that she cried out.

“Stop it!” She heard the fear in her voice. It was fear for both of them, for what they were capable of doing to each other and how what they did had the potential to rip their family apart. “Muni!
Abhy-jahn!
Stop!”

The two men faced off, Akram with a warning finger held stiffly in front of Muhannad's eyes. It was the posture he'd adopted throughout his son's childhood, but with a difference. Now he held his finger up to his son's face because Muhannad topped him by more than two inches.

“We all want the same thing,” Sahlah said to them. “We want to know what happened to Haytham. And why. We want to know why.” She wasn't sure of the veracity of either of those statements. But she said them anyway because it was more important that her father and brother remain at peace with each other than it was that she speak the complete truth to them. “Why are you arguing, then? Isn't it best to follow the path that'll take us to the truth the quickest? Isn't that what we want?”

The men didn't answer. Upstairs, Anas began to cry, and in response Yumn's feet pattered down the corridor in her expensive sandals.

“It's what I want,” Sahlah said quietly. She didn't add the rest because she didn't have to: I am the injured party because he was to be my husband. “Muni.
Abhy-jahn.
It's what I want,” she repeated.

Taymullah Azhar rose from his place on the sofa. He was smaller than the two other men, slighter of build and shorter in height. But he seemed their equal in every way as he spoke, even though Akram didn't look at him.
“Chachā,”
he said.

Akram winced at the appellation.
Father's brother.
It claimed a tie of blood where he would not acknowledge one.

“I don't wish to bring trouble to your home,” Azhar said, and held Muhannad off with a gesture when he would have interrupted hotly. “Let me serve the family. You won't see me unless it's necessary. I'll stay elsewhere so that you needn't break your vow to my father. I can help because, when necessary, I work with our people in London when they have troubles with the police or the government. I have experience with the English—”

“And we know where that experience took him,” Akram said bitterly.

Azhar didn't flinch. “I have experience with the English that we all can use in this situation. I ask you to let me help. Because I have no direct connection with this man or his death, I have less emotion tied up in it. I can think more clearly and see more clearly. I offer myself to you.”

“He disgraced our name,” Akram said.

“Which is why I no longer use it,” Azhar replied. “I can show my regret in no other way.”

“He could have done his duty.”

“I did my best.”

Instead of answering further, Akram studied Muhannad. He seemed to be taking the measure of his son. Then he turned heavily and looked at Sahlah where she still sat, perched this time on the edge of her seat.

He said, “I would not have had this happen in your life, Sahlah. I see your sorrow. I only want to bring it to an end.”

“Then let Azhar—”

Akram silenced Muhannad by raising his hand between them. “This is for your sister,” he told his son. “Do not let me see him. Do not have him speak to me. And do not bring another moment of disgrace on this family's name.”

With that, he left them. His footsteps heavily struck each stair.

“Old fart.” Muhannad spat the words. “Ignorant, grudge-bearing, bloody-minded old fart.”

Taymullah Azhar shook his head. “He wants to do what's best for his family. It's a concept that I, of all people, understand.”

A
FTER EMILY'S MEAL,
Barbara and she had moved to the back garden of the house. They'd been interrupted by a telephone call from Emily's paramour, who'd said, “I can't believe you really wanted to cancel tonight, not after last week. When have you ever come so many—” before Emily snatched up the phone, cutting off the answer machine and saying, “Hi. I'm here, Gary.” She'd swung round so that her back faced Barbara. The conversation had been brief, consisting of Emily saying, “No … It's got nothing to do with that. You said she had a migraine and I believed you. … You're imagining things. … It has
nothing
to do with—Gary, you know how I hate it when you interrupt me. … Yes, well, I've someone here at the moment, so I can't go into it. … Oh for God's sake, don't be ridiculous. Even if that were the case, what would it matter? We agreed at the start how things would be. … This isn't
about
control. I'm working tonight. … And that, my darling, is none of your business.”

She'd hung up smartly and said, “Men. Jesus. If they didn't have the right equipment to amuse us, they'd hardly be worth the trouble.”

Barbara didn't attempt a clever riposte. Her experience with men's equipment was too limited to offer anything more than a roll of the eyes, which she hoped Emily would read as “Ain't it the truth?”

The DCI had appeared satisfied with this response. She'd grabbed a bowl of fruit and a bottle of brandy from the work top, and saying “Let's get some air,” she led Barbara to the garden.

The garden wasn't in much better condition than the house. But the worst of the weeds had been hacked away, and a flagstone path had been laid in a curve to a horse chestnut tree. Beneath this, Barbara and Emily now sat in low-slung canvas chairs, with the bowl of fruit between them, two glasses of brandy that Emily kept topped up, and a nightingale singing somewhere in the branches above them. Emily was eating her second plum. Barbara was munching a handful of grapes.

It was, at least, cooler in the garden than it had been in the kitchen, and there was even a bit of a view. Cars passed on the Balford Road below them, and beyond it the nighttime lights of the distant summer cottages blinked through the trees. Barbara wondered why the DCI just didn't bring her camp bed, her sleeping bag, her torch, and
A Brief History of Time
out here.

Emily cut into her thoughts. “Are you seeing anyone these days, Barb?”

“Me?” The question seemed ludicrous. Emily had no trouble with her vision, so surely she could deduce the answer without having to ask the question. Just look at me, Barbara wanted to say, I've the body of a chimpanzee. Who d'you think I'd be seeing? But what she said was, “Who has the time?” and hoped it sounded casual enough for the subject to be dismissed.

Emily glanced her way. A streetlamp burned on the Crescent, and since Emily's was the last house in the row, some of its light made its way into her back garden. Barbara could feel Emily making a study of her.

“That sounds like an excuse,” she said.

“For what?”

“For maintaining the status quo.” Emily lobbed her plum pit over the wall, where it fell into the weeds of the bare lot next door. “You're still alone, aren't you? Well, you can't want to be alone forever.”

“Why not? You are. Being alone's not holding you back.”

“Right. It's not. But there's being alone, and there's being
alone,”
Emily said wryly. “If you know what I mean.”

Barbara knew what she meant well enough. While she lived by herself, Emily Barlow had never been without a man on the string for more than one month. But that was because she had it all: good looks, a fine body, a singular mind. Why was it that women who slew men by virtue of simply existing always thought that other women had the same power?

She craved a cigarette. It was beginning to seem like days since she'd last had one. What the bloody hell did non-smokers do to buy time, to displace unwanted attention, to avoid discussion, or simply to quell nerves? They said, “Pardon, but I don't want to discuss it,” which wouldn't exactly be the best response in a situation in which Barbara was hoping to work closely with the DCI heading up a murder investigation.

“You don't believe me, do you?” Emily asked when Barbara made no response.

“Let's just say that experience has encouraged my scepticism. And anyway—” She hoped the gust of air she expelled would give the impression of insouciance. “I'm happy enough with things as they are.”

Emily reached for an apricot. She rolled it round her palm. “Are you.” The words were a thoughtful statement.

Barbara chose to interpret this remark as a two-word termination of their discussion. She sought a clever transition into a new topic. Something along the lines of “Speaking of murder” would have done, except that they hadn't spoken of murder since leaving the kitchen. Barbara was reluctant to press in that direction, her quasi-professional stature in the case being more tenuous than she was used to, but she also wanted to get back to the real matter at hand. She'd come to Balford-le-Nez because of a police investigation, not to consider the ramifications of solitude.

She went for the direct approach, adopting the pretence that there had been no interruption in their discussion of the death on the Nez in the first place. “It's the racial bit that I'm wondering about,” she said, and lest Emily think she was expressing concerns that her social life might become an arena for miscegenation, she went on with “If Haytham Querashi had only recently come to England—and that's what the telly reported, by the way—then that suggests he may not have known his killer. Which in turn suggests the sort of random racial violence one hears about in America. Or in any big city around the world, for that matter, times being what they are.”

“You're thinking like the Asians, Barb,” Emily said, taking a bite of her apricot. She washed the fruit down with a swig of brandy. “But the Nez is no place for a random act of violence. It's deserted at night. And you saw the pictures. There're no lights, either on the clifftop or on the beach. So if someone goes there alone—and let's assume for the moment that Querashi went there by himself—he goes with one of two reasons. To be alone for a walk—”

“Was it dark when he left the hotel?”

“It was. With no moon to speak of, by the way. So we cross out the walk unless he was planning to stumble along like a blind man, and we theorise that he was there to be alone for a think.”

“Perhaps he was getting cold feet about the upcoming marriage? He wanted to call it off and was wondering how?”

“That's a good theory. Reasonable, as well. But there's another point we have to consider: His car was tossed. Someone tore it to pieces. What does that suggest to you?”

There seemed only one possibility. “That he'd gone there deliberately to meet someone. He'd taken something with him to deliver. He didn't hand it over as prearranged and he paid with his life. After which someone searched his car for whatever he was supposed to hand over.”

“None of which suggests a racial killing to me,” Emily said. “Those killings are arbitrary. This killing wasn't.”

“But that doesn't mean someone English didn't kill him, Em. For a reason having nothing to do with race.”

“Don't remind me. But it also doesn't mean someone Asian didn't kill him.”

Barbara nodded but continued with her own line of thought. “If you bring in someone English for the crime, the Asian community will see it as a racial killing because the death
looks
racial. And if that happens, everything'll explode. Right?”

“Right. So while it complicates the hell out of matters, I have to say I'm relieved that the car was tossed. Even if the crime was racial in nature, I can interpret it otherwise till I know for sure. That'll buy me time, keep a lid on things, and give me a chance to strategise. Momentarily, at least. And only if I can keep Ferguson off the bloody phone for twenty-four hours.”

“Could
a member of Querashi's community have killed him?” Barbara reached in the fruit bowl for another handful of grapes. Emily settled into her chair with her brandy glass balanced on her stomach and her head tilted up to examine the black webbing of chestnut leaves that hung above them. Somewhere safely hidden by these leaves, the nightingale continued his liquid song.

“It's not out of the question,” Emily said. “I think it's even likely. Who else did he know well enough for murder other than Asians?”