ARBARA HANDED TREVOR RUDDOCK OVER TO BE fingerprinted, after which she escorted him to an interview room in the police station. She gave him the packet of cigarettes he requested, along with a Coke, an ashtray, and matches. She told him to have a nice, quiet think about what he'd been doing on Friday night and who—among his doubtlessly lengthy list of friends and acquaintances—was likely to corroborate whatever alibi he produced for the police. By locking the door upon her exit, she made certain he would have no access to a telephone in order to arrange this alibi. She went on her way.
Emily, she learned from WPC Warner, had brought in a suspect as well. “The coloured bloke from Clacton” was how Belinda described him. “The one on the phone chits from the hotel.”
Kumhar, Barbara thought. Emily's placement of the surveillance officer in Clacton had paid off more quickly than she would have expected.
She found Emily making arrangements to have Kumhar's fingerprints sent off to London. In the meantime, these prints would also go to the pathology lab in Peterborough, where officers would attempt to match them with those found on Querashi's Nissan. Barbara saw to it that Trevor Ruddock's dabs were added to Kumhar's. One way or another, it seemed that they were getting closer to the truth.
“His English is shit,” Emily told her laconically as they returned to her office. She blotted her face with a paper kitchen towel that she'd dug out of her pocket. She wadded it up and lobbed it into the wastepa-per basket. “Either that or he's pretending that his English is shit. We didn't get anywhere with him in Clacton. Just a lot of gabbling about his papers, as if we'd come to escort him to the nearest port of departure.”
“Is he denying that he knew Querashi?”
“I don't know what he's doing. He might be admitting, denying, outright lying, or reciting poetry. It's impossible to tell because he's doing it all in gibberish.”
“We'll need to get someone to translate,” Barbara said. “That shouldn't be too rough a go, should it? I mean, what with the local Asian community and everything.”
Emily laughed shortly. “You can imagine how well we'll be able to depend on the accuracy of a translation coming from that quarter. Damn it.”
Barbara couldn't argue with the DCI's perspective. How could they depend upon anyone from the Asian community to translate explicitly and objectively, given the racial climate in Balford-le-Nez?
“We could bring someone in from London. One of the DCs could bring out that bloke from the university, the one who did the translation of that page from the Qur'aan. What was his name?”
“Siddiqi.”
“Right. Professor Siddiqi. In fact, I could phone the Yard and ask one of our lads to round him up and drive him out here.”
“That may be our only option,” Emily said. They entered her office, where it seemed even hotter than it was in the rest of the building. The afternoon sun was blazing against the pillowcase that Emily had pinned over the window, casting the room in an aqua glow which simultaneously suggested life in an aquarium while also doing nothing to enhance one's personal appearance.
“Want me to make the call?” Barbara asked.
Emily sank into the chair behind her desk. “Not quite yet. I've got Kumhar locked up, and I'd like to give him time to feel what it's like to be in custody. Something tells me that all he really needs is a generous application of oil on the machinery of his ability to cooperate. And he's new enough in England not to be able to quote PACE to me, Chapter and verse. I've the whip hand in this situation, and I'd bloody well like to use it.”
“But if he doesn't speak English, Em …” Barbara offered hesitantly.
Emily appeared to ignore the implication behind the words: Weren't they wasting time by keeping him in custody without making at least a desultory attempt to bring in a trustworthy agent who spoke his language? “We'll find that out in a few hours, I dare say.” She directed her attention to WPC Warner, who entered the office with a sealed evidence bag in her hand.
“This's been logged in,” Belinda Warner said. “And logged out to you. It's the contents of Querashi's safe deposit box. From Barclays,” she added.
Emily extended her hand. Belinda made the delivery. As if wishing to assuage Barbara's unspoken concerns, Emily told the WPC to phone Professor Siddiqi in London, to ask him about his availability to translate for a Pakistani suspect should that be necessary. “Have him standing by,” Emily said. “If we need him, we'll want him out here fast.”
She gave her attention to the contents of the bag, most of which consisted of paperwork. There were a sheaf of documents relating to the house on First Avenue, a second sheaf that contained his immigration paperwork, a contract for renovation and construction signed by Gerry DeVitt as well as by Querashi and Akram Malik, and several loose papers. One of these had been torn from a spiral notebook, and as Emily picked this one up, Barbara took a second one.
“Here's Oskarstrafie 15 again,” Emily said, looking up from what she'd apparently read on her paper. She turned it over and gave it a closer scrutiny. “No city, though. But my money's still on Hamburg. What've you got?”
It was a bill of lading, Barbara told her. It came from a place of business called Eastern Imports. “‘Fine furniture, fittings, and accessories for the home,’ “she read to Emily. “Imports from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.”
“God only knows what anyone would be importing from Bangladesh,” Emily commented in a dry aside. “It looks like the lovebirds were getting ready to furnish their house on First Avenue.”
Barbara wasn't so sure. “But there's nothing listed on the bill, Em. If he and the Malik girl had been out buying the bridal bed and all the etceteras, wouldn't this be a receipt for their purchases? But it isn't. It's just a blank bill of lading for the company itself.”
Emily frowned. “Where is this place, then? Hounslow? Oxford? The Midlands?” Which were all locations, they both knew, of substantial Indian and Pakistani communities.
Barbara shook her head as she took note of the address. “Parkeston,” she said.
“Parkeston?” Emily sounded incredulous. “Hand it over, Barb.”
Barbara did so. As Emily studied the bill of lading, she also pushed her chair back from her desk and went to examine the wall map of the Tendring Peninsula and, next to it, a larger map of the coastline. For her part, Barbara gave her attention to the three sheaves of documents.
The immigration papers all appeared to be in order, as far as she could tell. The documentation on the First Avenue house seemed likewise. Akram Malik's signature was neatly rendered on most of these latter papers, but that made sense if the house was part of Sahlah Malik's dowry. Barbara was leafing through the contract for renovations signed by Gerry DeVitt when yet another paper slid out from between the pages.
It was, she saw, the page from a glossy magazine. It had been carefully torn out and folded to pocket size. Barbara unfolded it and spread it on her lap.
Both sides of the page comprised advertisements from a section of the magazine that was called At Your Service. They ranged from International Company Services Limited on the Isle of Man, which appeared to arrange offshore corporations for the protection of one's assets and the avoidance of taxes, to Lorraine Electronics Discreet Surveillance for employers who doubted the loyalty of their workers, to Spycatcher of Knightsbridge, which offered the latest in bug detecting devices for “the serious businessman's total protection.” There were ads for car hire companies, for serviced apartments in London, and for security services. Barbara read each of them. She was growing more and more nonplussed about Querashi's having stowed this particular paper among his other documents, thinking it surely had to be some sort of mistake, when a familiar name leapt out at her. World Wide Tours, she read, Travel and Specialists in Immigration,
Yet another very strange coincidence, she realised. One of the calls that Querashi had made from the Burnt House had been to this same agency, with one exception. Querashi had phoned World Wide Tours in Karachi, while this World Wide Tours was on the High Street in Harwich.
Barbara joined Emily at the coastal map, where the DCI was contemplating the peninsula north of Pennyhole Bay. Never an enthusiastic student of geography, until Barbara herself had a decent look at the map, she had no idea that Harwich was due north of the Nez and virtually identical to it longitudinally. It sat at the mouth of the River Stour, directly connected to the rest of the country by a railway line. Without conscious intention, Barbara followed the barbed and black indication of this line as it headed west. The first stop it made—indeed, barely far enough out of Harwich to be considered a separate entity—was Parkeston.
“Em,” Barbara said, aware of a rising sense of connections being made and pieces falling into place, “he's got an ad here for a travel agency in Harwich, but it's got the same name as the one he phoned in Karachi.”
But Emily, she saw, didn't make the jump between Karachi and Harwich, between Harwich and Parkeston. Instead, she appeared to be contemplating a small boxed list of information that was superimposed on the blue of the sea, to the east of Harwich. Barbara leaned forward to read it.
Vehicle Ferry from Harwich (Parkeston Quay) to:
Hook of Holland 6 to 8 hours
Esbjerg 20 hours
Hamburg 18 hours
Gothenburg 24 hours
“Well, well, well,” Barbara said.
“Interesting, isn't it?” Emily turned from the map. At her desk, she shifted papers, folders, and reports until she came up with the photograph of Haytham Querashi. She extended it to Barbara, saying, “What d'you think of a drive this afternoon?”
“Harwich and Parkeston?” Barbara said.
“If he was there, someone saw him,” Emily replied. “And if someone saw him, someone may be able to tell us—”
“Guv?” Belinda Warner was at the door again. She looked back over her shoulder as if expecting to be followed.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
“The Asian blokes. Mr. Malik and Mr. Azhar. They're here.”
“Shit.” Emily glanced at her watch. “I'm not about to put up with this. If they think that they can show up whenever they please for another one of their bloody meetings—”
“Not that, Guv,” Belinda cut in. “They've heard about the bloke from Clacton.”
For a moment Emily stared at the WPC as if she didn't quite understand. She even said, “Clacton.”
Belinda said, “Right. Mr. Kumhar. They know he's here. They're demanding to see him, and they won't be put off till you've given them a chance to have a word with him.”
“What bloody cheek,” Emily said.
But what she didn't say was what Barbara knew she had to be thinking: The Asians obviously knew the Police and Criminal Evidence Act better than the DCI had anticipated. And Barbara realised that intimate knowledge of PACE could only have come from one possible source.
AGATHA SHAW REPLACED the telephone receiver into its cradle and allowed herself a crow of triumph. If she could have done, she would have danced a jig. She would have danced it straight across the library carpet, leaping and bouncing through its steps until she found herself in front of those three easels on which still stood—these two days after the failed council meeting—the artist's and architect's depictions of Balford-le-Nez as it could be. Then she would have swept each of those easels into her arms and kissed them soundly, like precious children worshipped by an adoring mother.
As it was, she shouted, “Mary Ellis! Mary Ellis! You're wanted in the library and you're wanted now!” She planted her three-pronged stick between her legs and struggled to her feet.
The effort made her sweat like a suckling pig. Although it didn't seem possible, she found that she rose too quickly, despite the time it took her: Dizziness blew against her like a gust of wind. “Whoops,” she said. But she laughed as well. She had plenty to be dizzy about, hadn't she? She was dizzy with excitement, dizzy with possibility, dizzy with success, dizzy with joy. Damn it all, she had a right to be dizzy.
“Mary Ellis! Blast you, girl! Can't you hear me calling?”
The clatter of shoe soles told her that the girl was finally coming. She arrived in the library red-faced and breathless, saying, “Jesus God, Mrs. Shaw. You gave me that much of a fright. Are you all right?”
“Of course I'm all right,” Agatha snapped. “Where were you? Why don't you come when I call? What am I paying you for if I have to stand here and screech like one of the weird sisters whenever I need you?”
Mary came to her side. “You wanted the drawing room furniture switched round today, Mrs. Shaw. Don't you remember? You didn't like the piano next to the fireplace and you said the sofas were fading cause they're too near the windows. You even wanted the pictures—”
“All right. All right.” Agatha attempted to shake Mary's clammy hand from her arm. “Don't squish me like that, girl. I'm not an invalid. I can walk on my own, and you very well know it.”
Mary loosened her grip, saying, “Yes, ma'am,” and waiting for further instructions.
Agatha eyed her. She wondered once again what on earth she was thinking of, keeping such a pathetic creature in her employ. Aside from her lack of intellectual gifts, which rendered her useless for entertaining conversation, Mary Ellis was in the worst physical condition of anyone Agatha had ever known. Who else would be sweating, out of breath, and red in the face simply because of moving a piano and a few other paltry sticks of furniture?
“What are you good for, Mary, if you don't come at once when you're called?” Agatha demanded.
Mary dropped her gaze. “I did hear you, ma'am. But I was on the ladder, wasn't I. I had that portrait of your granddad ready to move, and I couldn't put it down very easy.”
Agatha knew the picture she was talking about. Above the fireplace, nearly life-size, in an ancient gilt frame … At the thought of the girl successfully heaving that painting round the drawing room, Agatha eyed Mary Ellis with something akin to respect. It was, however, an emotion from which she quickly recovered.
Agatha harrumphed. “Your obligation to this household is first and foremost me,” she told the girl. “See to it that you remember from now on.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Mary's voice was glum.
“Now, don't sulk, girl. I appreciate your moving the furniture about. But let's just keep things in their proper perspective. Now, give me your arm. I mean to go to the tennis court.”
“The tennis court?” Mary asked incredulously. “What d'you want with the tennis court, Mrs. Shaw?”
“I mean to see what condition it's in. I mean to start playing again.”
“But you can't—” Mary gulped the rest of her sentence back when Agatha cast a sharp look in her direction.
“I can't play?” Agatha said. “Rubbish. I can do anything. If I can get on the phone and win every necessary vote on the town council without their even seeing the plans …” Agatha chuckled. “I can damn well do anything.”
Mary Ellis didn't ask for clarification on the topic of the town council as her employer would have liked her to do. Agatha was hungry—indeed she was ravenous—to tell someone of her triumph. Theo was the person she'd have liked to crow to, but these days Theo wasn't ever to be found where he was supposed to be, so she hadn't bothered to try him at the pier. She hoped her hint had been broad enough for someone even with Mary Ellis's limited mental powers to take and run with conversationally. But that was not to be. Mary stood mute.
“Damn it, girl,” Agatha said. “Have you got a brain anywhere in your skull? Yes? No? Oh, bother with you anyway. Give me your arm. Help me outside.”
They tottered together out of the library and towards the front door. Having a captive audience, Agatha explained herself.
She was talking of the redevelopment plans for Balford-le-Nez, she told her companion. When Mary made sufficient guttural noise to indicate comprehension, Agatha continued. The ease with which she'd got Basil Treves in her corner on the previous day had suggested that she might do the same if she invested equal telephone time with the rest of the council.
“Save Akram Malik,” she said. “No point trying to get him in line. Besides”—and here again she chuckled—”I want old Akram to face a fait accompli.”
“There's to be a fete?” Mary asked eagerly.
God, Agatha thought wearily. “Not a fete, you idiot thing,” she said. “A fait. A fait accompli. Don't you know what that means? Never mind.”
She didn't want a digression from the topic at hand. Treves had been the easiest of them all to get on board, she confided, what with the way he felt about the coloureds. She'd got him in her corner last night. But the others hadn't been as quick to haul themselves to her side. “Still, I managed them all in the end,” she said. “I mean all of them that I need for the vote. If I've learned nothing else from business in all these years, Mary, I've learned that no man—or woman—turns away from the idea of investing money if the investment costs him next to nothing but still allows him to accrue a benefit. And that's the promise of our plans, you see. The town council invests, the town improves, the beach-goers arrive, and everyone benefits.”
Silent, Mary appeared to be mentally chewing on Agatha's scheme. She said, “I've seen the plans. Those're them in the library on that artist stand.”
“And soon,” Agatha said, “you shall see those plans taking a concrete form. A leisure centre, a redeveloped High Street, renovated hotels, a reconstructed Marine Parade and Princes Esplanade. Just you wait, Mary Ellis. Balford-le-Nez is going to be the showplace of the coast.”
“I sort of like it like it is,” Mary said.
They were out of the front door and on the sweeping drive. The sun was baking it so thoroughly that Agatha could feel it. She looked down and realised that she wore her bedroom slippers rather than her walking shoes, and the heat from the pebbles on the ground was seeping through the thin soles. She squinted, unable to recall the last time she'd been out of the house. The light was almost unbearably bright.
“Like it's?” Agatha dragged on Mary Ellis's arm, leading her towards the rose garden to the north of the house. The lawn dipped in a gentle slope beyond the plants, and at the base of this slope the tennis court lay. It was a clay court that Lewis had constructed for her as a gift for her thirty-fifth birthday. Prior to her stroke, she'd played three times a week, never very well but always with a stubborn determination to win. “Have a bit of vision, girl. The town's gone to ruin. Shops are closing on the High Street, the restaurants are empty, hotels—such as they are, at this point—have more rooms to let than there are people on the street. If someone isn't willing to give Balford a transfusion, we'll be living inside a rotting corpse in another three years. There's potential in this town, Mary Ellis. All it takes is someone with the vision to see it.”
They worked their way into the rose garden. Agatha paused. She found that her breath was not coming easily—thanks to the bloody stroke, she fumed—and she used the excuse of examining the bushes to have a rest. Damn it all, when would she have her strength back?
“Blast it!” she snapped. “Why haven't these roses been sprayed? Just look at this, Mary. D'you see these leaves? Aphids are dining at my expense and no one's doing a bloody thing about it! Do I have to tell the damn gardener how to do his job? I want these plants sprayed, Mary Ellis. Today.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Mary Ellis said. “I'll phone Harry. It's not like him to overlook the roses, but his son had a burst appendix two weeks ago and I know it's worrying Harry cause they haven't been able to make him right.”
“He's going to have something more than a burst appendix to worry about if he lets the aphids ruin my roses.”
“His son's only ten years old, Mrs. Shaw, and they haven't been able to get all the muck out of his blood. He's had three operations, Harry said, and he's still all swelled up. They think—”
“Mary, do I look as if I wish to engage in a discussion of paediatric medicine? We all have personal problems. But we continue to meet our responsibilities in spite of those problems. If Harry can't do that, then he'll be sacked.”
Agatha turned from the roses. Her stick had become imbedded in the freshly turned earth at the edge of the flower bed. She attempted to free it, but found she lacked the strength.
“Damn and blast!” She jerked the handle and nearly lost her balance. Mary caught her by the arm. “Stop babying me! I don't need your coddling. Christ in heaven, when will this heat abate?”
“Mrs. Shaw, you're getting yourself in a state.” There was caution in Mary's voice, that eighteenth-century cringing tone of a servant who was afraid of being struck. Listening to it was worse than struggling with the miserable stick.
“I am not in a state,” Agatha said from between clenched teeth. She gave a final yank to the stick and freed it, but the effort robbed her of breath again.
She wasn't about to let something as basic as respiration defeat her, however. She gestured towards the lawn beyond the flowers and resolutely began to move forward once again.
“Don't you think you'd like a rest?” Mary asked. “You've gone a bit red in the face and—”
“What do you expect in this heat?” Agatha demanded. “And I don't need a rest. I mean to see my tennis court and I mean to see it now.”
But the going on the lawn was worse than the going in the flower bed, where at least there had been a pebble path to follow. Here the ground was uneven, and the sun-browned grass masked its irregularity. Agatha stumbled and righted, stumbled and righted. She yanked herself away from Mary and snarled when the girl said her name solicitously. Damn the garden to hell, she cursed silently. And how had she forgotten the very nature of her own lawn? Had movement been so easy before that she'd never noticed the land's pernicious anomalies?
“We c'n rest if you want,” Mary Ellis said. “I c'n fetch some water.”
Agatha lurched on. Her destination was in sight, no more than thirty yards away. It spread out like an umber blanket, with its net in place and its boundaries chalked freshly in anticipation of her next match. The court shimmered in the heat, and an illusion of light made it look as if steam were snaking up from it.
A trickle of perspiration worked its way from Agatha's forehead into her eye. Another followed. She found that her chest had grown quite tight and that her body felt as if a hot rubber shroud encased it. Every movement was a battle, while next to her Mary Ellis simply glided along like a feather in the wind. Blast her youth. Damn her health. Curse her blithe assumption that both youth and health gave her some sort of hegemony in their small household.
Agatha could sense the girl's unspoken superiority, could even read her thoughts: pathetic old woman, broken-down cow. Well, she would show her. She would stalk onto that tennis court and batter her opponent into fragments. She would serve her old serve of fire and wind. She would play the net and thunder returns down her victim's throat.
She would show Mary Ellis. She would show everyone. Agatha Shaw was not to be defeated. She'd bent the town council to her will. She'd breathed new life into Balford-le-Nez. She'd regained her strength and redesigned her life's purpose. And she would do the same to her contemptible body.
“Mrs. Shaw …” Mary's tone was chary. “Don't you think that a rest …? We can sit under that lime tree over there. I c'n get you a drink.”
“Rubbish!” Agatha found that she could only gasp the word. “I want …see …tennis.”
“Please, Mrs. Shaw. Your face's like a beetroot. I'm scared that—”
“Pish! Scared!” Agatha tried to laugh, but it came out like a cough. How was it that the tennis court seemed just as distant as it had done when they'd first set out? It seemed they'd been walking for ages—for miles—and their destination wavered mirage-like, no closer. How could this be? She was slogging forward, dragging her stick, dragging her leg, and she was feeling as if she were being pulled first backward then downward like a hundredweight sinking. “You're …holding me …back,” she gasped. “Damn …girl. Holding me, aren't you?”
“Mrs. Shaw, I'm not,” Mary said, and her voice was higher and sounded scared. “Mrs. Shaw, I don't have my hand anywheres on you. Please, won't you stop? I c'n fetch a chair. And I'll get a brolly to keep the sun off you.”
“Nonsense …” Weakly, Agatha waved her off. But she became aware that she'd ceased moving altogether. The landscape itself seemed to be moving instead. The tennis court receded into the distance and appeared to meld with the faraway Wade that lay in the shape of a green bucking horse beyond the Balford Channel.
Something told her that Mary Ellis was speaking, but she couldn't make out the words. She found that her head had begun to pound, that the dizziness she'd earlier felt upon rising in the library now swept against her like a current. And although she wanted to ask for help—or at least to say her companion's name—nothing emerged from her mouth but a groan. One arm and one leg became a drag upon her, numb anchors too heavy to heave along the ground.
She heard a shouting coming from somewhere.
The sun beat down fiercely.
The sky became white.
Lewis cried, “Aggie!”
Lawrence said, “Mum?”
Her vision tunneled to a pinprick before she fell.
TREVOR RUDDOCK HAD managed to fill the interview room with enough cigarette smoke to make Barbara's lighting up nearly unnecessary. When she joined him, it was through a grey pall that she saw him seated at the black metal table, and an array of extinguished cigarette ends speckled the floor by his chair. She'd given him an ashtray to use, but apparently he'd needed to make a statement that only floor-stubbed cigarettes and flakes of ash could assist him in making.
“Had enough time for a think?” Barbara asked him.
“I get to make a phone call,” he said.
“Looking to have a solicitor sit with you? That's a curious request from someone who claims he had nothing to do with Querashi's murder.”
He said, “I want my phone call.”
“Fine. You'll make it in my presence, of course.”
“I don't have to—”
“Wrong. You do.” There was no bloody way that she intended to give Trevor the slightest chance to cook up an alibi. And since he'd doubtless already attempted that with Rachel Winfield, his track record of heartfelt honesty left something to be desired.
Trevor scowled. “I admitted that I nicked stuff from the factory, didn't I? I told you Querashi gave me the sack. I told you everything I knew about the bloke. Why'd I do that if I also chopped him?”
“I've been considering that,” Barbara said agreeably. She joined him at the table. The room had no ventilation, so the air was close, saunalike in its weight as she took it into her lungs. The residual smoke from Trevor's habit didn't help much, and she realised there was little point in not joining him. So she took one of his remaining cigarettes and lit up. “I had a chat with Rachel this morning.”
“I know that, don't I” was his reply. “If you came for me, it's ‘cause you talked to her. She must've told you we split round ten. Okay. We did. We split round ten. Now you know it.”
“Right. I know it. But she told me something else that I really didn't put into proper perspective till you refused to tell me what you were up to on Friday night once you left her. And when I put together what she told me with what you've related about Querashi, and I blend those two facts with your secret activity on Friday night, I come up with only one possibility. And that's what we need to talk about, you and I.”
“What's this, then?” He sounded wary. He chewed on his index finger and spat away a flake of skin.
“Have you ever had sexual intercourse with Rachel?”
He lifted his chin, part defiance, part embarrassment. “What if I have? She saying she didn't want it or something? Cause if she is, my memory tells me something different.”
“Just answer the question, Trevor. Have you ever had sexual intercourse with Rachel?”
“Lots of times.” He smirked. “When I give her the call and tell her what day and what time, she comes round straightaway. ‘N’ if she has something else to do that night, she changes her plans. She's got a real itch for me.” Where his eyebrows would have been had he not shaved them off, the skin drew together. “Is she telling you different?”
“Clothes-off sexual intercourse is what I'm talking about,” Barbara clarified, skimming past his other remarks. “Or perhaps better stated, underclothes-off sexual intercourse.”
He chewed on his finger again and examined her. “What're you on about, then?”
“I think you know. Have you ever had vaginal intercourse with Rachel?”
“There's lot of ways to shag. I don't need to give her a length like the pensioners do it.”
“Right. But you're not exactly answering me, are you? What I want to know is whether you've ever been inside Rachel Winfield's vagina. Standing, sitting, kneeling, or mounted on a pogo stick. I don't particularly care about specifics. Just the act itself.”
“We did it. Yeah. Just like you said. We did the act. She got hers and I got mine.”
“With your penis inside her.”
He grabbed the packet of cigarettes. “Shit. What is this? I told you we did it. Is she saying I raped her?”
“No. She's saying something a little more intriguing. She's saying sex between you was a one-way street. You didn't do anything but let Rachel Winfield play your flute, Trevor. Isn't that the case?”
“You just hang on there!” His ears had gone crimson. Barbara noticed that when the blood throbbed in his jugular, the spider that was tattooed on his neck seemed to come alive.
“You popped your cork every time the two of you got together,” Barbara went on. “But Rachel didn't get anything out of it. Not even a passing greeting down under, if you get my meaning.”
He didn't deny it, but his fingers clutched the cigarette packet, partially crumpling it.
“So this is what I reckon,” she continued. “Either you're a total dumbshit when it comes to women—thinking that having some bird give your prong the mouth business is the same as putting her on the path to heaven—or you don't much like females at all, which would explain why sex between you was limited to blow jobs. So which one is it, Trevor? Are you just a dumbshit or a bum boy in hiding?”
“I'm not!”
“Not which?”
“Not either! I like girls fine and they like me. And if Rachel tells you different—”
“I'm not so sure about any of that,” Barbara said.
“I c'n give you girls,” he declared hotly. “I c'n give you dozens and dozens of girls. I c'n give you hundreds. I had my first when I was ten years old, and I c'n tell you right now, she liked it just fine. Yeah, I don't shag Rachel Winfield. I never did and I never will. So? What about it? She's an ugly cow and the only way she'll be rogered proper is if the bloke doing it to her is blind. Which I am not, ‘n case you didn't notice.” He stabbed his index finger into the packet and brought out a cigarette. Apparently, it was the last one, because he balled the packet into his palm and flung it into the corner of the room.
“Yes. Well,” Barbara said, “I'm sure the motorway of your life is completely littered with sexual roadkill and all of the corpses are grinning ear to ear. At least in your dreams. But we aren't dealing with dreams, Trevor. We're dealing with reality, and reality is murder. I have only your word for it that you saw Haytham Querashi cottaging in Clacton market square, and I've come to realise that there's a very good chance he was cottaging with you.”
“That's a bloody lie!” He surged to his feet so quickly that his chair toppled over.
“Is it?” Barbara asked blandly. “Sit down, please. Or I'll have a PC give you some assistance.” She waited till he'd righted the chair and planted himself in it. He'd thrown his cigarette to the table, and he retrieved it, lighting a match on the edge of a dirty thumbnail. “You see how it looks, don't you?” Barbara asked him. “You worked together at the factory. He gave you the sack and the excuse was that you'd nicked a few jars of mustard, some chutney and jam. But perhaps that's not why he sacked you at all. Perhaps he sacked you because he was marrying Sahlah Malik and he didn't want you round the place any longer, reminding him of what he really was.”
“I want my phone call,” Trevor said. “I got nothing more to talk to you about.”
“You do see how black things look, don't you?” Barbara crushed her own cigarette out, careful to use the ashtray and not the floor. “A declaration of Querashi's homosexuality, consistent fellatio and nothing else with Rachel—”
“I already explained that!”
“—and Querashi dying at the very same time that you're without an alibi. So tell me, Trevor, does this make you any more inclined to reveal what you were up to on Friday night? If, of course, you weren't up to murdering Haytham Querashi.”
His mouth clamped shut. He stared at her defiantly.
“Right,” she said. “Play it that way if you want. But just make sure you aren't also playing the fool.”
She left him to cool off and went in search of Emily. She heard the DCI before she saw her. Her voice—as well as a male voice taut with animosity—came from the lower floor. Barbara peered over the curved bannister and saw Emily standing toe-to-toe with Muhannad Malik. Taymullah Azhar was directly behind his cousin.
“Don't explain PACE to me,” Emily was saying tersely as Barbara descended the stairs. “I'm well aware of the law. Mr. Kumhar is being held for an arrestable offence. I'm within my rights to ensure that nothing interferes with potential evidence or puts anyone at risk.”
“Mr. Kumhar is the one at risk.” Muhannad's face was hard. “And if you're refusing to let us see him, there's only one possible reason why.”
“Would you care to explain?”
“I want to verify his physical condition. And don't let's pretend you've never used the term ‘resisting the police’ to excuse some bloke's getting a beating while he's in the nick.”
“I think,” Emily said pointedly as Barbara reached her side, “that you've been watching too much television, Mr. Malik. It's not my habit to rough up suspects.”
“Then you'll have no objection to our seeing him.”
When Emily would have offered a rejoinder, Azhar interposed. “The Police and Criminal Evidence Act also indicates that a suspect has the right to have a friend, relative, or other person who is known to him told without delay that he's in custody. May we have the name of whomever you informed, Inspector Barlow?”
He spoke without a glance in Barbara's direction, but even so she was certain he could feel her inward wince. PACE was all well and good, but when events began to outstrip the police's ability to keep up with them, more often than not even a good officer let slide exact compliance with the letter of the law. Azhar was betting on this having happened. Barbara waited to see if Emily was going to pull a friend or relative of Fahd Kumhar's out of a metaphorical hat.
She didn't bother. “Mr. Kumhar hasn't identified anyone he wishes to be notified.”
“Does he know he has that right?” Azhar asked astutely.
“Mr. Azhar, we've hardly had the opportunity to speak to this man long enough to apprise him of his rights.”
“That's business as usual,” Muhannad pointed out. “She's slapped him in isolation because it's the only way she can make sure he gets rattled enough to cooperate with her.”
Azhar didn't disagree with his cousin's assessment of the situation. He also didn't allow it to enflame him. Calmly, he asked, “Is Mr. Kumhar a native of this country, Inspector?”
Barbara knew that Emily was probably cursing the fact that she'd allowed Kumhar to jabber about his papers. She could hardly deny knowledge of the man's immigrant status, especially when the law was specific about what his rights were, considering that status. If Emily prevaricated now—only to discover that Fahd Kumhar was involved in Haytham Querashi's death—she ran the risk of having her case tossed out of court later.
She said, “At this point, we'd like to question Mr. Kumhar about his relationship to Haytham Querashi. We've brought him to the station because he was reluctant to answer questions in his lodgings.”
“Stop avoiding the bloody issue,” Muhannad said. “Is Kumhar an English national or not?”
“He doesn't appear to be,” Emily replied, but she spoke to Azhar and not to Muhannad.
“Ah.” Azhar sounded somehow comforted by this admission. Barbara saw why when he asked his next question. “How good is his English?”
“I haven't given him a comprehension test.”
“But that's actually of no account, is it?”
“Azhar, bloody hell. If his English isn't—