AFTER 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?”
“And he was supposed to marry the Malik daughter, wasn't he?”
“Yeah. One of those take-away marriages, all boxed up pretty by Mummy and Dad. You know what I mean.”
“So perhaps there were problems with that. She didn't ring his chimes. He didn't ring hers. She wanted out, but he wanted to immigrate, and she was his ticket. The whole situation ended up getting settled permanently.”
“Neck breaking's an extreme measure for ending an engagement,” Emily noted. “Anyway, Akram Malik's been part of this community for years, and from everything I know about him, he treasures his daughter. If she hadn't wanted to marry Querashi, I can't think her father would have forced her.”
Barbara mulled this over and went in a new direction. “They still use dowries, don't they? What was the daughter's? Could Querashi have been a little too ungrateful for what the family saw as generosity?”
“So they eliminated him?” Emily stretched out her long legs and cradled the brandy between her palms. “I suppose that's a possibility. It's completely out of character for Akram Malik, but for Muhannad …? I wouldn't put violence past that bloke. But that doesn't address the problem of the car.”
“Was there an indication that something had been taken?”
“It was completely torn apart.”
“And had the body been searched?”
“Definitely. We found the keys to the car in a patch of samphire growing on the cliff. I doubt Querashi would have tossed them there.”
“Was anything left on the body when he was found?”
“Ten pounds and three condoms.”
“No identification?” And when Emily shook her head, “Then how did you know who the victim was?”
Emily sighed and closed her eyes. Barbara had the impression that they'd finally come to the meaty part, the part she'd so far managed to withhold from everyone outside of the investigation.
“He was found yesterday morning by a bloke called Ian Armstrong,” Emily said. “And Ian Armstrong knew who he was by sight.”
“An Englishman,” Barbara said.
“The Englishman,” Emily said grimly.
Barbara immediately saw the direction in which Emily was heading. “Armstrong has a motive?”
“Oh yes.” Emily opened her eyes and turned her head to Barbara. “Ian Armstrong worked for Malik's Mustards. He lost his job six weeks ago.”
“Did Haytham Querashi sack him, or something?”
“It's worse than that, although it's vastly better from Muhannad's point of view, considering what he'll probably do with the information if it leaks out to him that Armstrong found the body.”
“Why? What's the story?”
“Revenge. Manipulation. Necessity. Desperation. Whatever you like. Haytham Querashi replaced Ian Armstrong at the factory, Barb. And the minute Haytham Querashi died, Ian Armstrong got his old job back. How's that for a motive from heaven?”