He nodded and played his cigarette round the edge of the ashtray. Across the room, the last of the elderly couples were tottering towards the door. Basil Treves was hovering at the sideboard. He made busy noises as he filled six glass cruets from a plastic drum.
“Barbara, do you know how Haytham died?” Azhar asked quietly, eyes still on his cigarette's tip.
His question took Barbara by surprise. What took her more by surprise was her instant inclination to tell him the truth. She pondered for a moment, asking herself where this inclination had come from. And she found her answer in that nanosecond of warmth she'd felt between them when he'd asked her about the passion she applied to her work. But she'd learned the hard way to discount any warmth she might feel for another human being, especially a man. Warmth led to weakness and irresolution. Those two qualities were dangerous in life. They could be fatal when it came to murder.
She temporised with, “The postmortem's scheduled for this morning.” She waited for him to say, “And when they receive the report …?” But he didn't say it. He merely read her face, which she attempted to keep clear of incriminating information.
“Dad! Barbara! Look!”
Saved by the bell, Barbara thought. She looked towards the french doors. Hadiyyah was standing just outside with her arms extended to the sides and the red and blue beach ball sitting on her head.
“I can't move,” she announced. “I can't move a muscle. If I move, it'll fall. Can you do this, Dad? Can you do this, Barbara? Can you balance like this?”
That was the question, all right. Barbara scrubbed her napkin across her mouth and got to her feet. “Thanks for the conversation,” she said to Azhar, and then to his daughter, “The real pros can steady it on their noses. I expect you to have that mastered by dinner.” She took a final hit of her fag and stubbed it out in the ashtray. With a nod to Azhar, she left the room. Basil Treves followed her.
“Ah, Sergeant …?” He appeared Dickensian, Uriah Heepish in tone and posture with his hands clasped high on his chest as usual. “If I could have a moment …? Just over here …?”
Over here was reception, a cavelike cubicle built under the stairs. Treves padded behind the counter and bent to retrieve something contained within a drawer. It was a sheaf of pink chits. He handed them to Barbara and leaned over the counter to speak conspiratorially. “Messages,” he breathed.
Barbara gave momentary thought to the disturbing connotation behind the cloud of gin he exhaled. She glanced at the chits and saw that they were torn from a book, carbon copies of telephone messages received. For an instant she wondered how she could have come to amass such a collection in so short a time, especially since no one from London knew where she was. But then she saw that they were made out to H. Querashi.
“I was up before the birds,” Treves whispered. “Went through the message book and pulled all of his. I'm still working on his outgoing phone calls. How much time do I have? And what about his post? We don't generally record letters received by residents, but if I put my thinking cap on, I might be able to recall something helpful to our needs.”
Barbara didn't miss the plural possessive pronoun. “Everything and anything is helpful,” she said. “Letters, bills, phone calls, visitors. Anything.”
Treves’ face lit up. “As to that, Sergeant …” He glanced about. No one was near. The television in the lounge was playing the BBC morning news at a volume that would have drowned out Pavarotti bellowing Pagliacci, but Treves still maintained his air of caution. “Two weeks before he died, there was a visitor. I hadn't thought about it because they were engaged, after all, so why shouldn't she …? Although it did seem unusual to see her all got up that way. I mean, she doesn't usually. Not that she goes about in public that much. The family wouldn't have that, would they? So how am I to say that it was unusual in this case?”
“Mr. Treves, what the hell are you talking about?”
“The woman who came to see Haytham Querashi,” Treves said reasonably. He looked miffed that Barbara hadn't been following a train of thought that was chugging towards a perfectly obvious destination. “Two weeks before he died, he was visited by a woman. She came in that get-up they wear. God knows she must have been cooking under it, what with this heat and all.”
“A woman in a chādor? Is that what you mean?”
“Whatever they call it. She was all done up from head to toe in black, with slits for the eyes. She came in and asked for Querashi. He was in the lounge having his coffee. They had a whisper over by the door, right next to that umbrella stand, mind you. Then they went upstairs.” He looked pious as he concluded with, “I have no idea what they got up to in his room, by the way.”
“How long were they up there?”
“I didn't actually time them, Sergeant,” Treves answered archly. Then he added, as she was about to walk off, “But I dare say it was quite long enough.”
? ? ?
YUMN STRETCHED LANGUIDLY and turned onto her side. She studied the back of her husband's head. In the house beneath their bedroom, she could hear the morning sounds telling her both of them should be up and about, but she liked the fact that while the rest of the family were busying themselves with the day's concerns, she and Muhannad were cocooned together with no concerns except for each other.
She raised a lazy hand to her husband's long hair—freed from its ponytail—and she insinuated her fingers into it. “Meri-jahn,” she murmured.
She did not have to glance at the small calendar on the bedside table to know what day this morning heralded. She kept a scrupulous record of her female cycle, and she'd seen the notation on the previous night. Relations with her husband today could lead to another pregnancy. And this more than anything—indeed, more than keeping the puling Sahlah firmly and permanently in her place—was what Yumn wanted.
Two months after Bishr's birth, she had begun to feel the urge for another child. And she'd begun turning to her husband regularly, arousing him to plant the seed of another son in the soil of her more than willing body. It would be another son, of course, once the pregnancy was achieved.
Yumn felt a physical stirring for him as she touched Muhannad. He was so lovely. What a change her marriage to such a man had brought to her life. The eldest sister, the least attractive, the most hopelessly unmarriageable in the eyes of her parents, and she—Yumn the sow and not one of her mild and doelike sisters—had proved herself an exceptional wife to an exceptional husband. Who would have thought it possible? A man like Muhannad could have had his pick of women, no matter the size of the dowry that her father had assembled to tempt him and his parents. As the only son of a father overly eager for grandchildren, Muhannad could have made certain that his every wish for a mate be embodied in the woman he ultimately took as his wife. He could have laid out his requirements in terms his father would not have dared to deny him. And having done so, he could have evaluated each potential bride presented by his parents and rejected anyone not meeting his specifications. But he had accepted his father's choice of her without question, and on the night they'd met, he had sealed their agreement to marry by taking her roughly in a dark corner of the orchard and making her pregnant with their first son.
“We make quite a pair, meri-jahn,” she murmured, easing closer to him. “We're very good for each other.” She brought her mouth to his neck. The taste of him increased her desire. His skin was faintly salty, and his hair smelled of the cigarettes he smoked out of his father's presence.
She glided her hand down his bare arm, but lightly so that his coarse hairs tickled her palm. She clasped his hand, then moved her fingers to the fur on his belly.
“You were up so late last night, Muni,” she whispered against his neck. “I wanted you. What were you and your cousin talking about for so long?”
She'd heard their voices long into the night, long after her in-laws had trudged up to bed. She lay, impatient for her husband to join her, and she wondered what it might cost Muhannad to defy his father by bringing the Outcast into their home. Muhannad had told her of his plan the night before he'd put it into action. She'd been bathing him. Afterwards, as she rubbed lotion into his skin, he spoke in a low voice of Taymullah Azhar.
He didn't care what the old fart said, he'd told her. He would bring his cousin to their assistance in this matter of Haytham's death. His cousin was an activist when it came to the rights of Pakistani immigrants. This much he knew from a member of Jum'a who'd heard him speak at a conference of their people in London. He'd been talking about the legal system, about the trap that immigrants—legal and otherwise—fall into by allowing their cultural traditions and predispositions to colour their interactions with police, with solicitors, and with courtrooms. Muhannad had remembered all of this. And when Haytham's death was not at once declared an accident, he moved quickly to obtain assistance from his cousin. Azhar can help, he'd told Yumn as she went from the lotion to brushing his hair. Azhar will help.
“But help do what, Muni?” she'd asked, feeling a pinch of worry at what the advent of this interloper might mean to her own plans. She didn't want Muhannad's time and his thoughts to be consumed with the death of Haytham Querashi.
“To see to it that these bloody police track down the killer,” Muhannad said. “They'll try to pin it on an Asian, naturally. I don't intend to let that happen.”
The declaration pleased Yumn. She loved the defiant part of his nature. She herself shared it. She made the necessary sounds and gestures of obeisance to her mother-in-law, as required by custom, but she took great pleasure in rubbing Wardah's face in the ease with which the obedient daughter-in-law had so far been able to reproduce. She hadn't missed the brief expression of black envy that had passed across Wardah's features when Yumn proudly announced her second pregnancy twelve weeks after the birth of her first son. And she'd taken every opportunity that arose to flaunt her fecundity in front of her mother-in-law.
“But has your cousin your brains, meri-jahn?” she whispered. “For he has nothing else of yours, I think. Such a puny man. Such a little man.”
She walked her fingers downward from her husband's belly, curling the ever-thickening hair round her fingers and pulling it gently. She felt the insistent aching of her own desire. It grew until there was only one way to ease it.
But she wanted him to want her first. Because if she could not arouse need in him this morning, Yumn knew that he would seek arousal elsewhere.
It would not be the first time. Yumn did not know the name of the woman—or women, for that matter—with whom she was forced to share her husband. She knew only that they existed. She always pretended sleep when Muhannad left their bed at night, but once he shut the bedroom door upon his exit, she crept to the window. She listened for the sound of his car starting at the bottom of the street, where he'd let it roll silently. Sometimes she heard it. Sometimes she didn't.
But always she lay awake on those nights that Muhannad left her, staring up into the darkness and counting slowly to mark the time. And when he returned to her just before dawn—easing his body into their bed—she tested the air for the thick scent of sex, despite knowing that the smell of his betrayal would be as torturous as the actual sight of it. But Muhannad was careful not to carry to their bed the odour of sex with another woman. And he gave her no concrete evidence to work with. So she had to confront her unknown rival with the only weapon she had.
She ran her tongue along his shoulder. “Such a man,” she whispered. Her fingers found his penis. It was erect. She began to work him. She grazed her breasts against his back. She moved her hips rhythmically. She whispered his name.
Finally, he moved. He reached for her hand and clasped his own round it. He tightened her grip. He increased the pace with which she worked him.
Outside the bedroom, the morning sounds of the household intensified. The younger of her two sons wailed. Sandals slapped against the floor in the upstairs corridor. Wardah's voice called out something from the direction of the kitchen. Sahlah and her father exchanged quiet words. Outside the house, birds were chirruping from the orchard and a dog barked somewhere.
Wardah would be angry that her son's wife had not risen early to see to Muhannad's breakfast. Old woman that she was, she would never understand the importance of seeing to other things.
Muhannad's hips were jerking unconsciously. Gently, Yumn urged him onto his back. She flung back the sheet under which they'd slept. She lifted her nightdress and began to straddle him. His eyes opened.
He grabbed her hands. She looked at him. She breathed, “Muni, meri-jahn, how good you feel.”
She raised herself to take him inside her. But he slid quickly out from beneath her.
“But, Muni, don't you—”
His hand shot to her mouth and silenced her, fingers digging into her cheeks with such strength that she felt his nails like hot coals against her flesh. He moved behind her and pressed up against her, drawing her head back. His other hand felt for her breast, and between his thumb and his index finger, he pinched her nipple till she writhed. She felt his teeth on her neck and his hand, releasing her breast, travelled over her belly until it found her mound of hair. He grabbed this roughly. Then just as roughly he shoved her downward so that she was on her hands and knees. Still with his hand at her mouth, he found the spot he wanted and he began to thrust. He took his pleasure in less than twenty seconds.
He released her and she fell onto her side. He knelt above her for a moment, eyes closed, head raised to the ceiling, chest rising and falling rapidly. He shook back his hair and combed his fingers through it. Sweat gleamed on him.
He moved off the bed and reached for the T-shirt he'd discarded on the previous night. It lay on the floor among his other clothes, and he wiped himself with it before he threw it back where he'd found it. He picked up his jeans and stepped into them, drawing them up over his naked buttocks. He zipped them and, bare chested and bare footed, he left the room.
Yumn watched his back, watched the door close. She felt the slick deposit from his body oozing out of hers. Hastily, she reached for a tissue and raised her hips to work a pillow beneath them. She began to relax as she pictured the frantic flight of his sperm, seeking the solitary egg that lay waiting. It would happen this very morning, she thought.
Such a man her Muni was.