Rachel had gaped at her. “You want …” The immensity of the betrayal cleft her. She hadn't ever thought five simple words could cause such pain, and she had no armour to protect herself from it. “You want to marry him? But you don't know him and you don't love him and how can you begin to live such a lie?”
“We'll learn to love,” Sahlah replied. “That's what happened for my parents.”
“And is that what happened for Muhannad? What a joke! Yumn's not his beloved. She's his doormat. You've said so yourself. Do you want that to happen to you? Well, do you?”
“My brother and I are different people.” Sahlah had averted her head when she said this, and a length of her dupattā shielded her from view. She was withdrawing, an action that made Rachel want to cling to her even harder.
“Who cares about that? It's how different your brother and this Haybram—”
“Haytham.”
“Whatever he's called. It's how different your brother and he are to each other. And you don't know if they're different at all. And you won't know that, will you, till the first time he smacks you a good one, Sahlah. Just like Muhannad. I've seen Yumn's face after she's had a good one from your wonderful brother. What's to prevent Haykem—”
“Haytham, Rachel.”
“Whatever. What's to prevent him from doing you the same way?”
“I can't answer that. I don't know the answer yet. When I meet him, I'll see.”
“Just like that?” Rachel asked.
They'd been in the pear orchard beneath the trees, canopied in mid-spring by fragrant blossoms. They'd been sitting on the same teetering bench that they'd sat upon so many times as children when they'd swung their legs and made plans for a future that would now never come. It wasn't fair to be denied what was rightfully hers, Rachel thought, to have snatched from her the one person she had learned to depend upon. Not only was it not fair, though, it also wasn't right. Sahlah had lied to her. She had played along with a game that she'd never intended to complete.
Rachel's sense of loss and betrayal shifted slightly, like ground growing used to a new position once an earthquake has done its work. A budding of anger began to grow within her. And with anger came its companion: revenge.
“My father's told me that I can decide against Haytham when we meet,” Sahlah said. “He won't force me into a marriage if he sees I'm unhappy about it.”
Rachel read her friend's meaning behind the words, however Sahlah sought to make them appear. “But you won't be unhappy about it, will you? No matter what, you're going to marry him. I can see that in you. I know you, Sahlah.”
The bench upon which they sat was old. It rested unevenly on the ground beneath the tree. Sahlah picked at a splinter on the edge of the seat, raising it slowly with the smooth crescent edge of her thumbnail.
Rachel felt a rising sense of desperation accompanying her need to strike out and wound. It was inconceivable to her that her friend had changed to such a marked degree. They'd seen each other only two days previous to this conversation. Their plans for the future had still been in place. So what had happened to alter her so? This wasn't the Sahlah she'd shared hours and days of companionship with, the Sahlah she'd played with, the Sahlah she'd defended before the bullies of Balford-le-Nez Junior School and Wickham-Standish Comprehensive. This wasn't a Sahlah she'd ever met.
“You talked to me about love,” Rachel said. “We talked to each other about it. We talked about honesty too. We said that in love, honesty comes first. Didn't we?”
“We did. Yes. We did.” Sahlah had been watching her parents’ house as if she were worried about someone observing their conversation and the passion of Rachel's reaction to her news. She turned to Rachel now, though. She said, “But sometimes complete—absolute—honesty isn't possible. It isn't possible with friends. It isn't possible with lovers. It isn't possible between parents and children. It isn't possible between husbands and wives. And not only isn't it always possible, Rachel, it's not always practical. And it's not always wise.”
“But you and I've been honest,” Rachel protested, the fear of Sahlah's meaning fast and hard upon her. “Or at least I've been honest with you. Always. About everything. And you've been honest with me. About everything. Haven't you? About everything?”
In the Asian girl's silence, Rachel heard the truth. “But I know all about … You told me …” But suddenly everything was open to question. What, indeed, had Sahlah told her? Girlish confidences about dreams, hopes, and love. The kind of secrets, Rachel had believed, that sealed a friendship. The kind of secrets she had sworn—and had meant—to reveal to no one.
But she hadn't expected such pain. She had never once thought that she'd encounter in her friend such a calm and steely resolve to smash her world to ruins. Such determination and everything that rose from such determination called for an action in response.
Rachel had chosen the only course open to her. And now she was living with the consequences.
She had to think what to do. She'd never have believed that one simple decision could have been such a significant domino, toppling a structure of other game pieces until nothing was left.
Rachel knew that the police sergeant had not believed either her or her mother. Once she picked up the receipt book and fingered through it, she'd seen the truth. The logical move for her to make was to speak to Sahlah now. And once she did that, every possibility for a new beginning with the Asian girl would be destroyed.
So actually, there was little to consider as a course of action. It lay before her like a road without a single diversion upon it.
Rachel rose from the toilet and tiptoed to the door. She drew back the bolt in near silence and created a crack through which she could see the back room and hear what was going on in the shop. Her mother had turned on the radio and tuned in a station that doubtless reminded her of her youth. The choice of music was ironic, as if the dj were a mocking god who knew the secrets of Rachel Winfield's soul. The Beatles were singing “Can't Buy Me Love.” Rachel would have laughed had she felt less like weeping.
She slithered out of the loo. Casting a hurried glance towards the shop, she slipped to the back door. It stood open, in the hope of creating cross ventilation from the steamy alley behind the shop through to the equally steamy High Street. No breeze stirred, but the open door provided Rachel with the exit route she needed. She stole into the alley and hurried to her bicycle. She mounted it, and began to pedal energetically in the direction of the sea.
She'd caused the dominoes to topple, it was true. But perhaps there was a chance to right a few before the lot of them were swept from the table.
ALIK'S MUSTARDS & ASSORTED ACCOMPANIMENTS was in a small industrial estate at the north end of Balford-le-Nez. It was, in fact, on the route to the Nez itself, situated at an elbow created where Hall Lane, having veered northwest away from the sea, became Nez Park Road. Here, a ramshackle collection of buildings housed what went for industry in the town: a sailmaker, a seller of mattresses, a joinery, an auto repair business, a fencemaker, a dealer in junk cars, and a maker of custom jigsaw puzzles whose naughty choice of subjects generally kept him only one step ahead of public censure from the pulpits of every church in the town.
The buildings that housed these establishments were mostly prefabricated metal. They were utilitarian and suited to the environment in which they sat: A pebble-strewn lane cratered with potholes curved among them; orange skips bearing the oxymoronic name Gold Coast Dumping in purple letters listed on the uneven ground, spilling out everything from chunks of canvas to rusty bedsprings; several abandoned bicycle frames served as latticework for a gardener's nightmare of nettles and sorrel; sheets of corrugated metal, rotting wooden pallets, empty plastic jugs, and unwieldy, corroded sawhorses of iron made negotiating the industrial estate an ambitious undertaking.
In the midst of all this, Malik's Mustards & Assorted Accompaniments was both an anomaly and a reproach to its companion businesses. It comprised one third of the estate, a long, many-chimneyed Victorian building that had in the town's heyday been the Balford Timber Mill. The mill had fallen into disrepair with the rest of the town in the years following World War II. But now it stood restored with its bricks scoured of one hundred years of grime and its woodwork replaced and yearly repainted. It served as a wordless example of what the other businesses could do with themselves had their owners half the energy and one quarter the determination of Sayyid Akram Malik.
Akram Malik had purchased the derelict mill on the fifth anniversary of his family's arrival in Balford-le-Nez, and a plaque with words commemorating that occasion was the most impressive object that Emily Barlow took note of when she entered the building after parking her Peugeot in a space that was relatively cleared of debris along the lane.
She was fighting off a headache. There had been a disturbing undercurrent to her morning's meeting with Barbara Havers. This weighed on her mind. She didn't need a member of the political correctness police on her team, and Barbara's willingness to saddle guilt exactly where the bloody Asians wanted guilt assigned—on the back of an Englishman—bothered her, causing her to wonder exactly how clear the other detective's vision was. Additionally, the presence of Donald Ferguson in her life—hovering on its periphery like a stalking cat—was an added screw to her misery.
She'd begun her day with yet another phone call from the superintendent. He'd barked without so much as a good morning or a pleasant comment of commiseration about the weather, “Barlow. Where do we stand?”
She'd groaned. At eight in the morning her office had been like Alec Guinness's sweat box on the River Kwai, and a quarter hour's search for a fan in the choking, dust-filled air of the old station's attic had done nothing to improve her disposition. Stirring Ferguson into the mix of heat and aggravation was almost too much flavour for the recipe of her morning to have to bear.
“Don, are you going to give me a free hand in this?” she'd asked. “Or will you and I be playing report-to-the-teacher every morning and afternoon?”
“Watch your mouth,” Ferguson warned. “You'd do well to keep in mind who's sitting at the other end of this telephone line.”
“I'm not likely to forget it. You don't give me the chance. Do you keep this sort of short rein on the others? Powell? Honeyman? What about our lad Presley?”
“They've more than fifty years of experience among them. They don't need watching over. Least of all Presley.”
“Because they're male.”
“Don't let's turn this into a sexual issue. If you've a chip on your shoulder, I suggest you knock it off before someone else with more clout does it for you. Now, where are we, Inspector?”
Emily cursed him soundly under her breath. Then she'd brought him up to date without reminding him how remote was the possibility of there having been a major break in the case between his last call on the previous evening and this one in the morning.
He said thoughtfully, “And you say this woman's from Scotland Yard? I like that, Barlow. I like it very much. It has just the right ring of sincerity, doesn't it?” Emily could hear the sound of him swallowing and the clink of a glass against the telephone receiver. Donald Ferguson was passionate about Fanta Orange. He drank it steadily all day, always with an odd, paper-thin slice of lemon and always with a single cube of ice. This was probably his fourth of the morning. “Right. Then what about Malik? What about this screamer from London? Are you riding their shirttails? I want you on them, Barlow. If they sneezed last week, I want you to know the colour of the handkerchief that collected the snot. Is that clear?”
“Intelligence have already given me a report on Muhannad Malik.” Emily took pleasure in having managed to be one step ahead of him. She recited the salient details on the young Asian. “And I put a request in yesterday to gather what we can on the other: Taymullah Azhar. As he's from London, we'll have to liaise with SOU, but I expect having Sergeant Havers on our team will help with that.”
Ferguson's glass clinked again. Doubtless, he was taking the opportunity to manhandle his surprise into submission. He'd always been the sort of man who claimed women's hands had been shaped by God to curve perfectly over the handle of a Hoover. The fact that a female had actually been capable of thinking ahead and anticipating the investigation's needs was no doubt wreaking havoc with the preconceived notions that the superintendent held dear.
“Is there anything else?” she asked amiably. “I've got the day's activities briefing in five minutes. I don't like to be late for it. But if you've a message for the team …?”
“No message,” Ferguson said brusquely. “Get on with it, then.” He slammed down the phone.
Now at the mustard factory, Emily smiled at the memory. Ferguson had supported her promotion to DCI because circumstances—in the form of a negative Home Office evaluation of Essex Constabulary's commitment to equal opportunity—had forced his hand. He'd let her know privately that every decision she made would undergo examination beneath the lens of his personal microscope. It was j-o-y in its purest form to better the little worm in at least one round of the game he'd determined they'd be playing with each other.
Emily shoved open the door to Malik's Mustards, where the reception desk was occupied by a young Asian woman in a creamy linen tunic and matching trousers. Despite the day's temperature, which was not particularly lowered by the thick walls of the factory building, she wore an amber shawl over her head. Perhaps in a bow to couture, however, she'd arranged it fashionably in folds round her shoulders. When she looked up from the computer terminal at which she was working, her earrings of bone and brass clinked softly. They matched an intricate necklace she wore. A name plate on her desk identified her: S. MALIK. This would be the daughter, Emily thought, the fiancée of the murdered man. She was a pretty girl.
Emily introduced herself and flipped open her identification. She said, “You're Sahlah, aren't you?”
A strawberry birthmark high on the girl's cheek deepened in hue as she nodded. Her hands had been hovering over her terminal's keyboard, but she quickly lowered them to the wrist rest in front of the keys and kept them there, her thumbs and her knuckles pressed together.
She certainly looked the picture of guilt. Her hands were saying, Shackle me now. Her expression was crying, Oh no please no. “I'm sorry about your loss,” Emily said. “This can't be an easy time for you.”
“Thank you,” Sahlah said quietly. She looked at her hands, seemed to realise how odd their position was, and eased them apart. It was a surreptitious movement, but Emily didn't miss it. “May I help you with something, Inspector? My father's working in the experimental kitchen this morning, and my brother hasn't yet arrived.”
“I don't need them, actually, but you can help me with Ian Armstrong.”
The girl's gaze went to one of two doorways that led off the reception area. Its upper half comprised bevelled glass through which Emily could see several desks and what appeared to be an advertising campaign spread out on an easel.
“He's here, isn't he?” Emily said. “I was told he'd be stepping into the position that Mr. Querashi's death left vacant.”
The girl agreed that Armstrong was working at the factory that morning. When Emily asked to see him, she pressed a few keys to exit whatever she'd been doing at her terminal. She excused herself and slipped silently through the other of the two doors, this one plain and leading into a corridor that ran the width of the factory.
Emily noticed the plaque then. It was bronze, and it hung on a wall that was given to a photographic mural of a harvester working in a vast yellow field of what were undoubtedly mustard plants. Emily read the plaque's inscription: LO! HE PRODUCETH CREATION, THEN REPRODUCETH IT, THAT HE MAY REWARD THOSE WHO BELIEVE AND DO GOOD WORKS WITH EQUITY. This was followed by an additional inscription in Arabic, beneath which were the words WE WERE BLESSED WITH A VISION THAT BROUGHT us TO THIS PLACE ON THE 15TH OF JUNE, and thereafter the year.
“He has been good to us,” a voice said behind Emily. She turned and saw that Sahlah hadn't produced Ian Armstrong as requested, but rather her father. She hovered behind him.
“Who?” Emily asked.
“Allah.” The name was spoken with a simple dignity that Emily couldn't help admiring. After saying it, Akram Malik came across the room to greet her. He was dressed for cooking, in medical-looking whites with a stained apron tied round his waist and a paper cap moulded to his head. The lenses of his glasses were speckled with something from the kitchen, and he took a moment to wipe them on his apron as he nodded his daughter back to her work.
“Sahlah tells me you've come to see Mr. Armstrong,” Akram said, dabbing his wrist against both his cheeks and his forehead in what Emily at first thought was some sort of Muslim greeting, until she realised he was simply removing the perspiration from his face.
“She said he's here today. I doubt our interview will take much more than a quarter hour. There was no real need to disturb you, Mr. Malik.”
“Sahlah did the appropriate thing in fetching me,” her father said in a tone that indicated Sahlah Malik did the appropriate thing by knee jerk reflex. “I'll take you to Mr. Armstrong, Inspector.”
He indicated the bevelled glass door with a nod, and he led Emily through it to the office beyond. This contained four desks, numerous filing cabinets, and two drafting tables in addition to the easels Emily had seen from reception. At one of the tables, an Asian man was working at some sort of design with calligraphy pens, but he ceased his work and rose respectfully as Akram led Emily through the office. At the other table, one middle-aged woman in black and two younger men—all of them Pakistani like the Maliks—were considering a set of glossy colour photographs in which the company's products were displayed in a variety of vignettes from picnic lunches to New Year's Eve dinners. They too set their work aside. No one spoke.
Emily wondered if the word had gone out that the police had come calling. Certainly, they'd have had to be expecting a visit from Balford CID. One would think they might have prepared themselves for it. But, like Sahlah in reception, everyone managed to look as if the next stop in his life's itinerary was destined to be the gallows.
Akram guided her into a small corridor off which three offices opened. Before he had a chance to leave her with Armstrong, however, Emily seized the opportunity with which Sahlah had presented her.
“If you've a moment, Mr. Malik, I'd like a word with you as well.”
“Of course.” He gestured to an open doorway at the end of the corridor. Emily could see a conference table and an antique dresser whose shelves held not crockery but, rather, a display of the company's products. It was an impressive arrangement of jars and bottles containing sauces, jellies, mustards, chutneys, butters, and vinaigrettes. The Maliks had come a long way from their first efforts at simple mustard production in the erstwhile bakery on Old Pier Street.
Malik shut the door behind them, but not completely. He left two inches open, perhaps in deference to being alone in the conference room with a woman. He waited until Emily had sat at the table before he did likewise, removing his paper cap and folding it twice into a neat triangle.
“How may I be of help to you, Inspector Barlow?” he asked. “My family and I are anxious to get to the bottom of this tragedy. Please be assured that we have every intention of assisting you in whatever way we can.”
His English was remarkable for a man who'd spent the first twenty-two years of his life in a remote Pakistani village with a single well and neither electricity, indoor plumbing, nor telephones. But Emily knew from the literature he'd provided during his campaign for town council as well as from the door-to-door canvassing he'd done that Akram Malik had studied the language for four years with a private tutor when he'd arrived in England. “The good Mr. Geoffrey Talbert,” he'd called him. “From him I learned to love my adopted country, the richness of its heritage, and its magnificent language.” The claim had played well with a public disinclined to trust foreigners, and it had served Akram's purposes even better: He'd won his seat easily, and there was little doubt that his political aspirations didn't end in the stuffy council room of Balford-le-Nez.
“Your son told you that we've determined Mr. Querashi was murdered?” Emily said. When Akram nodded gravely, she went on. “Then anything you can tell me about him will be of help.”
“There are those who believe this an arbitrary racist crime,” Malik said. It was a clever way of addressing the issue, not accusing so much as contemplating.
“Your son among them,” Emily said. “But we've evidence that shows the crime was premeditated, Mr. Malik. And premeditated in such a way to suggest that Mr. Querashi—and not just any Asian—was the target. This doesn't mean that an English killer isn't involved. And it doesn't mean that race isn't an issue at some level either. But it does mean that it's a personal crime.”
“That doesn't seem possible.” Malik made another careful fold in his paper cap and smoothed his dark fingers along the crease he'd created. “Haytham had been here so brief a time. He knew so few people. How can you be certain that he knew his killer?”
Emily explained to him that there were some details of the investigation that procedure required she keep to herself, things that only the killer and the police knew, and thus things that ultimately could be used to construct a trap if a trap became necessary. “But we do know that someone studied his movements to be assured that he'd be on the Nez that night, and if we learn what his regular movements were, we may be able to trace them to that person.”