Deception on His Mind (29 page)

“I'm not blind to that at all,” Emily said. “Racist crimes are global problems, and I'd be a fool to deny it. But if hate and ignorance are behind Querashi's murder, they were directed at a specific target and not merely any Asian that the killer came across on the street. We need to know Mr. Querashi's contacts in both communities. It's the only way we'll track down his killer. The Gentlemen's Cooperative represents one view of life in Balford-le-Nez.
Jum'a,
you'll agree, represents another.” She stood. “If you'll take me to Mr. Armstrong …?”

Akram Malik gazed upon her thoughtfully. Under his scrutiny Emily became conscious of the differences between them, not just the standard male-female differences, but the cultural differences that would always define them. They were present in her manner of dress: thin tank-top, grey trousers, no covering on her head. They were present in the freedom afforded her: a woman on her own in a vast world that was hers for the taking. They were present in position she held: the dominant figure in a team comprising mostly men. She and Akram Malik—despite his professed love of the country he'd adopted—may as well have been from different universes.

He got to his feet. “This way,” he said.

B
ARBARA JOUNCED ALONG
the cratered lane and found a place to park her Mini at the far side of a prefabricated building with a sign that announced its business ambiguously as Hegarty's Adult Distractions. She noted the air conditioner set into one of its front windows, and she gave some moments’ consideration to the idea of staggering inside and planting herself in front of it. That would be an adult distraction well worth the effort, she thought.

The heat on the coast was beginning to feel worse than the heat in London, which was borderline inconceivable. If England was going to turn into a tropical environment as part of the global warming that scientists had been predicting for years, Barbara decided that it would be nice to have some of the accoutrements of the tropics as well. A white-jacketed waiter carrying a tray of Singapore slings wouldn't have gone down badly at all.

She looked in her rear view mirror to see how Emily's make-up job on her face was holding up to its exposure to sweat. She expected to see her countenance dissolving
a la
one of Dr. Jekyll's transmogrifications.

But both foundation and blusher were where they were supposed to be. Perhaps, after all, there was something to be said for playing about with pots of colour each morning in the quest for devastating beauty.

Barbara made her way back over the uneven lane to Malik's Mustards
&
Assorted Accompaniments. A stop at the Malik residence had allowed her to glean that Sahlah worked at the factory with her father and brother. This information had been passed on by a dowdy, plump woman with one child on her hip, another by the hand, a wandering eye, and a feathery but nonetheless noticeable growth of black hair on her upper lip. She'd looked at Barbara's warrant card and said, “It's Sahlah you want, then? Our little Sahlah? Oh my goodness, whatever has she done that someone from the police should want to talk to her?” But there was a certain delight to her questions, the sort of excitement experienced by a woman who had either little diversion in her life or an axe to grind with her sister-in-law. She'd informed Barbara of their relationship up front, via the announcement that she was the wife of Muhannad, the elder child and the only son of the household. And
these
—she indicated the children with pride—were the sons of Muhannad. And soon—and here she nodded meaningfully in the direction of her stomach—would be a third son, a third in three years. A third son for Muhannad Malik.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, Barbara thought. She decided that the woman needed a hobby if this was the extent of her conversation. She'd said, “I need a word with Sahlah, if you'll fetch her for me.”

But that wasn't possible. Sahlah was at the factory. “It's always best to keep busy when one's heart is broken, don't you agree?” the woman pronounced. But once again, there was an enjoyment in her expression that was at odds with the statement. She gave Barbara the creeps.

So Barbara took herself off to Malik's Mustards, and as she approached the brick structure now, she removed the jewellery receipt from her bag and slipped it into the pocket of her trousers.

She swung inside the factory, where the air was stale and a potted fern next to the reception desk appeared to be about to give up the ghost. A young woman sat at a computer terminal, looking remarkably cool despite the fact that she was fully clothed from head to foot, her arms covered to the wrists and her dark hair mostly hidden beneath a traditional shawl. This was long hair, though, and a thick braid of it hung down the woman's back to her waist.

There was a name plate on her desk, so Barbara knew she had to look no further for Sahlah Malik. She produced her warrant card and introduced herself. “Could I have a word?”

The girl looked towards a door whose half-glass construction revealed some sort of interior office. “With me?”

“You're Sahlah Malik, aren't you?”

“Yes, but I've spoken to the police already if this is about Haytham. I spoke to them the very first day.” On her desk there was a long computer print out which appeared to list names. She took a yellow felt pen from the desk's centre drawer and began highlighting some names and crossing others out with a pencil.

“Did you tell them about the bracelet, then?” Barbara asked her.

She didn't look up from the print out, although Barbara saw her eyebrows tighten momentarily. It could have been an expression of concentration had the common activity of highlighting names required concentration. On the other hand, it could have been confusion. “Bracelet?” she asked.

“A piece by a bloke called Aloysius Kennedy. Gold. Engraved with the words ‘Life begins now.’ Is this sounding familiar?”

“I don't understand the nature of your question,” the girl said. “What has a gold bracelet to do with Haytham's death?”

“I don't know,” Barbara said. “P'rhaps nothing. I thought you might be able to tell me. This”—she set the receipt on the desk—”was among his things. Locked up among his things, by the way. Can you think why? Or what it was doing in his possession in the first place?”

Sahlah capped the yellow pen and set the pencil to one side before she took the receipt. She had lovely hands, Barbara noted, with fingers that were slender and nails that were clipped to the tips of her fingers but smooth and buffed-looking. She wore no rings.

Barbara waited for her to respond. In her peripheral vision she saw movement in the inner office and looked that way. In a corridor at the far end, Emily Barlow was speaking with a middle-aged Pakistani man wearing what looked like a chef's outfit. Akram Malik? Barbara wondered. He looked old enough and grave enough for the part. She gave her attention back to Sahlah.

“I don't know,” Sahlah said. “I don't know why he had it.” She spoke to the receipt rather than to Barbara. “Perhaps he was seeking a way to reciprocate and this seemed best to him. Haytham was a very good man. A very kind man. It wouldn't have been unlike him to attempt to discover the cost of something so that he could make an equal offering in return.”

“Sorry?”

“Lenā-denā”
Sahlah said. “The giving of gifts. It's part of the way we establish our relationships.”

“The gold bracelet was a gift for him? From you? For Mr. Querashi?”

“As his fiancée, I would present him with a token. He would do likewise to me.”

But again there remained the question of where the bracelet was now. Barbara hadn't seen it among Querashi's belongings. She hadn't read in the police report about its being found upon the body. Would someone really stalk a victim and carefully arrange his death for possession of a gold bracelet? People had died for less, to be sure, but in this case … Why was it that the thought seemed so unlikely?

“He didn't have the bracelet,” Barbara said. “It wasn't on his body and it wasn't in his room at the Burnt House. Can you explain why?”

Sahlah used the yellow pen against another name. “I hadn't yet given it to him,” she said. “I would have done on the day of the
nikāb.”

“Which is what?”

“When our marriage contract would have been formally signed.”

“So you have the bracelet.”

“No. There was no point to keeping it. When he was killed, I took it …” Here she paused. Her fingers touched the edges of the computer print out, straightening them perfectly. “This will sound absurd and melodramatic, like something out of a nineteenth century novel. When Haytham was killed, I took the bracelet and threw it from the pier. From the end of the pier. I suppose it was a way of saying goodbye.”

“When was this?”

“On Saturday. The day the police told me what had happened to him.”

This begged the question of the receipt, however. “So he didn't know you had a bracelet to give him?”

“He didn't know.”

“Then what was he doing with the receipt?”

“I can't say exactly. But he would have known I was going to give him something. It's traditional.”

“Because of … what did you call it?”

“Lenā-denā.
Yes. Because of that. And he wouldn't have wanted his gift to me to be out of balance with my gift to him. That would have been an insult to my family and Haytham was careful about that sort of thing. I imagine”—and here she looked at Barbara for the first time since their discussion had begun—”I imagine that he did some small detective work on his own to discover what I'd purchased for him and where. It wouldn't have been that difficult. Balford's a small town. The shops that carry items worthy of an occasional like a
nikāh are
easy enough to unearth.”

Her explanation was reasonable, Barbara thought. It made perfect sense. The only problem with it was that neither Rachel Winfield nor her mother had said anything that could come close to supporting this conjecture.

“From the end of the pier,” Barbara said. “What time of day was this?”

“I have no idea. I didn't look at a watch.”

“I don't mean the exact time. But was it morning? Afternoon? Night?”

“Afternoon. The police came to us in the morning.”

“Not at night, then?”

Perhaps she saw too late where Barbara was heading, because her gaze faltered. But she seemed to realise the difficulty she'd be causing herself if she changed her story. She said, “It was the afternoon.”

And a woman dressed as Sahlah dressed would doubtless have been noticed … by someone. The pier was being renovated. That very morning Barbara had herself seen the workmen perched on a building being constructed at the very place Sahlah had claimed she'd disposed of the gold bracelet. So there had to be someone on the pier who could corroborate her story.

Movement in the inner office caught her attention again. It wasn't Emily this time, but two Asian men who'd come into Barbara's line of vision. They walked to a drafting table, where they engaged in an earnest discussion with a third Asian man who was working there. The sight of them reminded Barbara of the name.

“F. Kumhar,” she said to Sahlah. “Does someone of that name work here?”

“Not in the office,” Sahlah said.

“The office?”

“It wouldn't be someone in either accounting or sales. Those are the office positions.” She indicated the windowed door. “But as to the factory itself … that's production. I know the regular employees in production, but not those we bring in for extra work like labelling when a big order goes out.”

“These are part-time people?”

“Yes. I don't always know them.” She gestured to the printout on her desk. “I've never seen the name among these, but as we don't pay the part-time people by computer, I wouldn't have done.”

“Who knows the part-timers, then?”

“The director of production.”

“Haytham Querashi,” Barbara said.

“Yes. And Mr. Armstrong before him.”

W
HICH WAS HOW
Barbara and Emily crossed paths at Malik's Mustards, with Sahlah leading Barbara back to meet Mr. Armstrong.

If size of office was anything to go by—as it was in New Scotland Yard, where importance of position was measured by the number of windows one had—then Ian Armstrong was occupying a position of some prominence, however impermanently. When Sahlah tapped on the door and a voice called out entrance, Barbara saw a room large enough to accommodate a desk, a round conference table, and six chairs. As it was an interior office, there were no windows. Either the heat or Emily Barlow's questions were making Ian Armstrong's face drip.

Armstrong was saying, “… no real necessity for taking Mikey to the doctor last Friday. That's my son's name, by the way. Mikey.”

“Was he running a fever?” Emily nodded as Barbara slipped into the room. Sahlah pulled the door shut and departed.

“Yes, but children do run high temperature, don't they?” Armstrong's eyes flicked to Barbara before returning to Emily. He didn't seem to notice the perspiration that was dribbling from his forehead, down one cheek.

For her part, Emily looked as if freon rather than blood were coursing through her veins. Coolly, she sat at the conference table with a small tape player before her, recording Ian Armstrong's answers.

“One can't rush a child to the casualty ward simply because his forehead's hot,” Armstrong explained. “Besides, the boy's had so many ear aches that we know what to do at this point. We have drops. We use heat. He soon settles after that.”

“Can anyone other than your wife confirm this? Did you phone your in-laws looking for advice on Friday? What about your own parents? A neighbour? Or a friend?”

His expression clouded. “I … If you'll give me a moment to think …”

“Take your time, Mr. Armstrong,” Emily said. “We want to be accurate.”

“It's just that I've never been involved in anything like this, and I'm feeling a bit jittery. If you know what I mean.”

“Indeed,” Emily said.

As the DCI waited for the man's reply to her question, Barbara took note of the office. It was functional enough. Product posters hung framed on the walls. The desk was serviceable steel as were the filing cabinets and the shelves. The table and chairs were relatively new but inexpensive-looking. The only items of note were on Armstrong's desk. These were framed photographs, and there were three of them. Barbara sidled round to have a look. A sour-looking woman with blonde hair curled in a retro fashion from the early sixties was depicted in one, a child speaking earnestly to Father Christmas was in another, and the third displayed the happy family together in a stair-step arrangement with child on mother's lap and father standing behind them with hands on mother's shoulders. Armstrong looked rather startled in this photograph, as if he'd come to his position of paterfamilias quite by accident and much to his surprise.