Deception on His Mind (11 page)

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.

B
ARBARA
H
AVERS 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 façade. 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.”