“Because as we've determined the death is a homicide, no element of the formal investigation can be shared with the public. It just isn't done.”
“And yet information is leaked to the media quite frequently in the midst of an investigation of this kind,” Azhar pointed out.
“Perhaps it is,” Emily said, “but not by the officer in charge.”
Azhar observed her with large, intelligent brown eyes. If the room hadn't been insufferably hot already, Emily knew she would have flushed under his scrutiny. As it was, the heat was her alibi. Everyone in the building—save the Asians—was crimson with discomfort, so her own colouring was indication of nothing.
“In what direction do you go from here?” he finally asked.
“We wait for all of the reports to come in. And we place everyone who knew Mr. Querashi under suspicion. We'll begin interviewing—”
“Everyone brown who knew him,” Muhannad concluded.
“I didn't say that, Mr. Malik.”
“You didn't have to, Inspector.” He made her rank too polite a title to indicate anything other than his scorn for it. “You have no intention of pursuing this murder into the white community. If you had your way, you probably wouldn't bother to pursue it as the murder it is. And don't bother to deny the accusation. I've a bit of experience associated with how the police treat crimes committed against my people.”
Emily didn't rise to this additional baiting, and Taymullah Azhar gave no indication he'd even heard his cousin. He merely said, “Since I didn't know Mr. Querashi, may I have access to the photographs of his body? It would set my family's mind at rest to know the police are hiding nothing from us.”
“I'm sorry,” Emily said in reply.
Muhannad shook his head, as if he'd expected this answer all along. He said to his cousin, “Let's get out of here. We're wasting our time.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Come on. This is bullshit. She's not going to help us.”
Azhar looked thoughtful. “Are you willing to meet our needs, Inspector?”
“In what way?” Emily was immediately wary.
“Through compromise.”
“Compromise?” Muhannad echoed. “No. No way, Azhar. If we compromise, we'll end up watching the carpet being lifted and Haytham's murder being swept—”
“Cousin.” Azhar glanced his way. It was the first time he'd even looked at him. “Inspector?” he repeated, turning back to Emily.
“There can be no compromise in a police investigation, Mr. Azhar. So I don't understand what you're suggesting.”
“What I'm suggesting is a way to assuage the community's most pressing concerns.”
She decided to read the implication at its most potentially efficacious: He could be suggesting a way to keep the Asians in line. That would certainly serve her interests. She replied carefully. “I won't deny that the community's foremost in my thoughts,” she said, and waited to see where he was heading.
“Then I would propose regular meetings between you and the family. This will allay all of our concerns—not only among the family but also among the larger community—as to how you're proceeding with your enquiry into Mr. Querashi's death. Will you agree to that?”
He waited patiently for her answer. His expression was as bland as it had been from the first. He was acting as if nothing—least of all peace in Balford-le-Nez—depended upon her willingness to cooperate. Watching him, Emily suddenly realised he'd anticipated every one of her previous answers, having planned to end up with this suggestion as the logical outcome of everything she'd said. She'd just been outmanoeuvred by the two of them. They'd played a mild variation of good cop/bad cop, and she'd fallen for it like a schoolgirl arrested for pinching sweets.
“I'd like to cooperate as fully as possible,” she said, choosing words with care to avoid committing herself. “But in the midst of an investigation, it's difficult to guarantee that I'll be available when you want me.”
“A convenient response,” Muhannad said. “I suggest we end this charade, Azhar.”
“I suspect you're drawing an inference I don't intend,” Emily told him.
“I know bloody well what you intend: letting anyone who raises a hand against us get away with it, with murder as well.”
“Muhannad,” Taymullah Azhar said quietly. “Let's give the inspector an opportunity to compromise.”
But Emily didn't want to compromise. In an investigation, she didn't want to find herself obliged to have meetings at which she would have to watch her every step, guard her every word, and maintain her temper. She didn't have the inclination for the game. More important, she didn't have the time. The investigation was already behind schedule, and mostly due to Malik's machinations. She was already twenty-four hours behind where she should have been. But Taymullah Azhar had just given her a way out, even if he did not realise the fact. “Will the family accept a substitute for me?”
“What sort of substitute?”
“Someone to liaise between you—the family and the community—and the investigating officers. Will you accept that?” And go on your bloody way, she added silently. And keep your fellows in line, at home, present at their jobs, and off the damn streets.
Azhar exchanged a look with his cousin. Muhannad shrugged abruptly. “We accept,” Azhar said, getting to his feet. “With the proviso that this individual will be replaced by you should we find it necessary to reject him as biased, ignorant, or deceptive.”
Emily had agreed to the condition, after which the two men had left her. She'd blotted her face with a tissue and rubbed it to bits against the sweat on the back of her neck. Picking the tissue fragments off her damp skin, she returned her phone calls. She talked to her superintendent.
Now, having read the intelligence report on Muhannad Malik, she jotted down the name Taymullah Azhar and requested a similar report on him. Then she looped the strap of her hold-all over her shoulder and switched out the lights in her office. Having dealt with the Muslims, she'd bought a little time. And time counted for everything when dealing with murder.
BARBARA HAVERS FOUND the Balford police station on Martello Road, a lane of shambled red-brick structures that marked yet another route to the sea. The station was housed in one of these. It was a gabled and many-chimneyed Victorian building that had doubtless once housed one of the town's more prominent families. An antique blue light whose glass shade was embellished with the white word Police identified the building's current use.
As Barbara pulled to a halt in front of it, evening floodlights came on, arcing shells of incandescence against the station's fa?ade. A female figure was coming out of the front door, and she paused to adjust the strap of a bulky shoulder bag. Barbara hadn't seen Emily Barlow in eighteen months, but she recognised her instantly. Tall, wearing a white tank top and dark trousers, the DCI had the broad shoulders and the well-defined biceps of the dedicated triathlete that she was. She may have been approaching forty, but her body was timelocked at twenty. In her presence—even at a distance and in the growing darkness—Barbara felt as she'd felt when they'd taken their courses together: a candidate for liposuction, a wardrobe makeover, and six intense months with a personal trainer.
“Em?” Barbara called quietly. “Hullo. Something told me I'd find you still hard at it.”
At the initial sound of Barbara's voice, Emily's head rose sharply. But by the end of the other woman's greeting, she'd stepped away from the station door and approached the pavement. She said, “Good God. Is that Barb Havers? What the devil are you doing in Balford?”
How exactly would it play? Barbara wondered. I'm trailing an exotic Pakistani and his kid in the hopes of keeping them out of the nick. Oh yes, DCI Emily Barlow was certain to go for that strange tale in a major way. “I'm on holiday,” Barbara settled upon saying. “I've just got in. I read about the case in the local rag. I saw your name and thought I'd come along to suss out the situation.”
“That sounds like a busman's holiday.”
“Can't keep my fingers out of the pie. You know how it is.” Barbara fished in her bag for her cigarettes but remembered at the last moment not only that Emily didn't smoke but also that she was always willing to go one or two rounds with anyone who did. Barbara relinquished the Players and fumbled for the Juicy Fruit instead. “Congratulations on the promotion,” she added. “Bloody hell, Em. You're climbing fast.” She folded the stick of gum into her mouth as the DCI joined her.
“Congratulations may be premature. If my super has his way, I'm back to constable.” Emily frowned. “What happened to your face, Barb? You look like hell.”
Barbara made a mental note to remove the bandages as soon as she was within spitting distance of a mirror. “I forgot to duck. On my last case.”
“I hope he looks worse. Was it a he?”
Barbara nodded. “He's in the nick for murder.”
Emily smiled. “Now, that's excellent news.”
“Where are you heading?”
The DCI shifted her weight and the weight of her hold-all and ran a hand through her hair in the habitual manner that Barbara remembered. It was jet-black hair, dyed punk and cut punk, and on any other woman her age it would have looked absurd. But not on Emily Barlow. Emily Barlow didn't do absurd, in appearance or in anything else. “Well,” she said frankly, “I was supposed to meet a gentleman friend for a few discreet hours of moonlight, romance, and what usually follows moonlight and romance. But to tell you the truth, his charms have just about run their course, so I cancelled. Somewhere along the line I knew he'd start whingeing about the wife and kiddies, and I just wasn't up to holding his hand through another attack of the galloping guilts.”
The reply was vintage Emily. She'd long ago relegated sex to just another aerobic activity. Barbara said, “Have you time for chat, then? About what's going on?”
The DCI hesitated. Barbara knew she would be considering the request for its propriety. She waited, understanding that Emily was unlikely to agree to any action that would jeopardise either the case itself or her newly acquired position. She finally glanced back at the building and seemed to come to a decision of some sort. She said, “Have you eaten, Barb?”
“At the Breakwater.”
“That was courageous. I can imagine your arteries hardening even as we speak. Well, I haven't had a bite since breakfast and I'm heading home. Come along. We can talk while I have my dinner.”
They wouldn't need the car, she added as Barbara fished her keys from her lumpy shoulder bag. Emily lived just at the top of the street, where Martello Road became the Crescent.
It took them less than five minutes to walk there, at a brisk pace that Emily Barlow set. Her house stood at the near end of the Crescent. It was the last in a row of nine terraced dwellings that appeared to be in various stages of either renaissance or decay. Emily's belonged to the former group: Three storeys of scaffolding fronted it.
“You'll have to pardon the mess.” Emily led Barbara up the eight cracked front steps and onto a shallow porch that was walled with chipped Edwardian tiles. “It'll be a real showpiece when I've got it done, but right now finding the time to work on it is the biggest problem.” She shouldered open a paint-stripped front door. “Back here,” she said, heading down a steamy corridor that was redolent of sawdust and turpentine. “It's the only part that I've managed to get into remotely livable condition.”
If Barbara had had any thoughts of dossing down with Emily Barlow, she gave them a decent burial when she saw what back here was. Emily appeared to be living entirely in the airless kitchen. Not much more than a cupboard-sized room, it contained a refrigerator, a spirit stove, and the requisite sink and work tops. But in addition to these features typical to a kitchen, crammed into the room with them were a camp bed, a card table, two folding metal chairs, and an antique bathtub of the sort once used before the days of indoor plumbing. Barbara didn't want to ask where the toilet was.
A single bare bulb from the ceiling served as illumination, although a torch and a copy of A Brief History of Time by the camp bed indicated that Emily did some recreational reading—if one could actually call astrophysics recreational reading—by additional light while in bed. And bed consisted of a sleeping bag and plump pillow with a case decorated with Snoopy and Woodstock flying the World War I doghouse above the fields of France.
It was as odd a living environment as any Barbara could have imagined for the Emily Barlow she'd known at Maidstone. If she'd taken the time to picture anything in the way of digs for the DCI, it would have been something spare and modern with an emphasis on glass, metal, and stone.
Emily seemed to read her thoughts, because she dumped her hold-all on the work top and leaned against it with her hands in her pockets, saying, “It takes my mind off the job. When I finish renovating this place, I'll get another. That and having a regular bonk with a willing bloke are what keep me sane.” She cocked her head. “I haven't yet asked. How's your mother, Barb?”
“Speaking of sane … or otherwise?”
“Sorry. I didn't mean the connection.”
“Don't apologise. I didn't take offence.”
“Do you still have her with you?”
“I couldn't cope.” Barbara sketched the details for the other woman, feeling as she always felt when reluctantly revealing that she'd confined her mother to a private home: guilty, ungrateful, selfish, unkind. It made no difference that her mother was in better hands than she'd ever been in living with Barbara. She was still her mother. The debt of birth would always hang between them, no matter that no child ever seeks to incur it.
“That must have been a rough go,” Emily said when Barbara concluded. “You can't have made the decision easily.”
“I didn't. But it still feels like payback.”
“What for?”
“I don't know. For life, I guess.”
Emily nodded slowly. She seemed to be examining Barbara, and under her scrutiny, Barbara felt her skin begin itching beneath the bandages. It was miserably hot in the room and although the single window was open—and painted black for some reason—not even the faint promise of a breeze came into the kitchen.
Emily roused herself. “Dinner,” she said. She went to the fridge and squatted in front of it, bringing forth a container of yoghurt. She took a large bowl from a cupboard and spooned yoghurt into it in three huge globs. She reached for a packet of dried fruit and nuts. “This heat,” she said, pausing to fork her fingers through her hair. “God Almighty. This bloody heat.” She ripped the packet open with her teeth.
“The worst kind of weather for a CID investigation,” Barbara said. “No one has the patience for anything. Tempers go fast.”
“Tell me about it,” Emily agreed. “I haven't done much more in the last two days besides trying to keep the local Asians from burning down the town and my guv from assigning his golfing mate to take over the case.”
Barbara was gratified that her fellow officer had given her an opening. “Today's demonstration made ITV. Did you know?”
“Oh yes.” Emily dumped half the packet of nuts and fruit on top of the yoghurt and patted everything in place with her spoon before reaching for a banana from a bowl of fruit on the work top. “We had a score of Asians at a town council meeting, howling like werewolves about their civil liberties. One of them alerted the media and when a camera crew showed up, they started lobbing chunks of concrete. They've imported outsiders to help in the cause. And Ferguson—that's my guv—has taken to getting on the blower once or twice an hour to tell me how to do my job.”
“What's the Asians’ main concern?”
“It depends on who you talk to. They're intent on exposing whatever they can: a cover-up, a spate of footdragging by the local coppers, a CID conspiracy, or the start of ethnic cleansing. Have your pick.”
Barbara sat on one of the two metal chairs. “Which comes close?”
The DCI shot her a look. “Brilliant, Barb. You sound just like them.”
“Sorry. I didn't mean to suggest—”
“Forget it. The whole bloody world's on my back. Why not you as well?” From a drawer, Emily took a small knife which she wielded against the banana, adding slices to the yoghurt, nuts, and fruit. “Here's the situation. I'm trying to keep the leaks to a minimum. Things are dicey as hell in the community, and if I'm not careful about who knows what and when, there's a loose cannon in town who'll start firing away.”
“Who is it?”
“A Muslim. Muhannad Malik.” Emily explained his relationship to the deceased man and described the importance of the Malik family—and hence Muhannad himself—in Balford-le-Nez. His father, Akram, had brought the family to the town eleven years before with the dream of starting their own business. Unlike many Asian newcomers who confined themselves to restaurants, markets, dry cleaners, or petrol stations, when Akram Malik dreamed, he dreamed big. He saw that in a depressed part of the country, he might not only be welcomed as a source of future employment but he might also make his mark. He'd started small, making mustard in the back room of a tiny bakery on Old Pier Street. He'd ended up with a complete factory in the north section of the town. There he manufactured everything from savoury jellies to vinaigrettes.
“Malik's Mustards and Assorted Accompaniments,” Emily finished. ‘Other Asians followed him here. Some of them relatives, others not. We've a growing community of them now. With all the interracial headaches.”
“Muhannad's one of them?”
“A migraine. I'm up to my neck in political bullshit because of that prick.” She reached for a peach and began to slice it, tucking wedges of fruit along the rim of the yoghurt bowl. Barbara watched her, considered her own healthless dinner, and managed to subdue her guilt.
Muhannad, Emily informed her, was a political activist in Balford-le-Nez, fiercely dedicated to equal rights and fair treatment for all of his people. He'd formed an organisation whose putative purpose was support, brotherhood, and solidarity among youthful Asians, but he was a real hot head when it came to anything remotely suggestive of a racial incident. Anyone who harassed an Asian found himself in short order going eyeball-to-eyeball with one or more relentless Nemeses whose identity victims were always conveniently unable to recall. “No one can mobilise the Asian community like Malik,” Emily said. “He's been dogging my heels since Querashi's body was found, and he'll be dogging them till I make an arrest. Between seeing to him and seeing to Ferguson, I've had to manufacture time to conduct the investigation.”
“That's rough,” Barbara said.
“What it is is a pisser.” Emily tossed the knife into the kitchen sink and carried her meal to the table.
“I had a talk with a local girl at the Breakwater,” Barbara said as Emily went to the fridge and brought out two cans of Heineken. She passed one to Barbara and popped the top on her own. She sat with natural and unconscious athleticism, lifting one leg over the seat of the chair rather than easing her way into it with studied feminine grace. “There's some talk that Querashi had a mishap with drugs. You know what I mean: ingested heroin prior to leaving Pakistan.”
Emily spooned up some of her yoghurt concoction. She rolled her beer can across her forehead, where the perspiration was glistening on her skin. She said, “We haven't yet got the final word from toxicology about Querashi. There may be a drug tie. With the harbours nearby, we've got to keep it in mind. But drugs didn't kill him, if that's what you're thinking.”
“D'you know what did?”
“Oh yeah. I know.”
“Then why're you playing your cards so close? I saw there's been no cause of death given, so it's still not clear if you've even got a murder. Is that where things still stand?”
Emily swallowed some beer and eyed Barbara carefully. “How much of a holiday are you on, Barb?”
“I can hold my tongue, if that's what you're asking.”
“What if I'm asking more?”
“D'you need my help?”
Emily had scooped up more yoghurt, but she set her spoon back in the bowl and meditated on it before answering slowly. “I may do.”
This was far better than greasing her way in, Barbara realised. She jumped at the opportunity the DCI was unknowingly offering. “Then you've got it. Why're you holding the press off? If it isn't drugs, is it sex related? Suicide? Accident? What's going on?”
“Murder,” she said.
“Ah. And when the word gets out, the Asians're going to hit the streets again.”
“The word is out. I told the Pakistanis this afternoon.”
“And?”
“And they'll be breathing, peeing, and sleeping for us from this moment onward.”
“Is it a racial killing, then?”
“We don't know yet.”
“But you do know how he died?”
“We knew that the moment we got a clear look at him. But it's something I'd like to keep from the Asians as long as I can.”
“Why? If they know it's a murder—”
“Because this kind of murder suggests the very thing they're claiming.”
“A racial incident?” And when Emily nodded, Barbara asked, “How? I mean, how could you tell by looking at the body that it's a racial killing? Were there marks on it? Swastikas or something?”
“No.”