Deception on His Mind (30 page)

He was certainly settling in at the factory, for a temporary employee. Barbara could imagine him bustling in that very morning with his photos stowed inside a briefcase, dusting them off with a handkerchief and humming happily as he set them in position prior to getting down to work.

It seemed a fantasy at odds with his current behaviour, however. He kept glancing anxiously at Barbara as if with the concern that she was about to go through his desk. Emily finally introduced them. Armstrong said, “Oh. Another …?” and then hastily swallowed whatever else he had in mind. Finally he said, “My in-laws.” And then he went on with growing strength. “I can't be completely accurate about the time, but I'm certain I spoke to them on Friday night. They knew Mikey was ailing, and they phoned us.” He smiled. “I'd forgotten because you asked if I'd phoned them and it was just the opposite.”

“The approximate time?” Emily asked.

“When they phoned? It would have been sometime after the news. On ITV.”

Which came on at ten o'clock, Barbara thought. She watched the man through narrowed eyes and wondered how much of this he was manufacturing on the spot and how quickly he'd pick up the phone to get his in-laws’ cooperation with the tale once she and Emily left his office.

While Barbara considered this proposition, Emily switched gears. She moved on to Haytham Querashi and Armstrong's relationship with the murdered man. It was, according to the temporary production manager, a fine relationship, an excellent relationship; they were practically blood brothers to hear Armstrong describe it.

“And he didn't have any enemies here at the factory, as far as I could tell,” Armstrong concluded. “Indeed, if the truth be told, the factory workers were delighted to have him.”

“And not sorry to see you leave?” Emily asked.

“I suppose that would be the case,” Armstrong admitted. “The majority of our workers are Asian, and they'd prefer one of their own overseeing them, far more than an Englishman. This isn't unnatural when you think of it, is it?”

He looked from Emily to Barbara, as if waiting for one of them to reassure him. When neither woman did, he went back to his previous thought, “So there was no one, really. If you're looking for a motive among the workers here, I can't say how you'll be able to find one. I've only been back a few hours, and from what I've been able to tell, there's been nothing but a true sense of mourning among his people.”

“What about someone called Kumhar?” Barbara asked. She joined Emily and Armstrong at the table.

“Kumhar?” Armstrong frowned.

“F. Kumhar. Are you familiar with the name?”

“Not at all. Is it someone who works here? Because I know everyone in the factory. … Well, one has to because of the job. And unless it's someone hired during Mr. Querashi's tenure, someone whom I've yet to meet …”

“Miss Malik seems to feel it would be someone brought in part time when work gets heavy. She mentioned special labelling needs.”

“A part-time employee?” Armstrong looked towards Emily. He said, “If I may …?” as if he believed he was under her supervision. He went to one of the shelves and pulled down a ledger, which he carried to the table. He said, “We've always been careful about our records. In Mr. Malik's position, employing illegals could be disastrous.”

“Is that a problem round here?” Barbara asked. “As far as I know, illegals generally head for a city. London, Birmingham, places where there's a large Asian community.”

“Hmm, yes. I expect they do,” Armstrong said as he flipped through a few pages of the ledger, examining the dates at the top. “But we're not that far from the harbours, are we? Illegals can always slip through the net at the port, so Mr. Malik insists upon vigilance, lest any of them end up here.”

“If Mr. Malik were employing aliens, could Haytham Querashi have uncovered that fact?” Barbara asked.

Ian Armstrong looked up. He clearly saw the direction in which the questions were heading, and he appeared frankly relieved to have the spotlight removed from him. Nonetheless, he didn't seem to attempt to skew his answer. “He might have suspected. But if someone presented him with well-forged papers, I don't see how he would have sussed them out. He wasn't English after all. How would he have known what to look for?”

Barbara wondered what being English had to do with it.

Armstrong looked over a page he'd selected. Then he went through two others. “These are the most recent part-timers,” he told them. “But there's no Kumhar among them. Sorry.”

Then Querashi would have known him in another context, Barbara concluded. She wondered what it was. The Pakistani organisation that Emily had told her had been founded by Muhannad Malik? It was a possibility.

Emily was saying, “What about someone given the sack by Querashi, part time or otherwise? Would he be listed there?”

“The terminated employees have personnel files, naturally,” Armstrong said, indicating the filing cabinets along one wall. But as he spoke, his voice drifted off, and he sat back in his chair, looking thoughtful. Whatever he was thinking apparently served to ease his mind, because he finally took out a handkerchief and blotted his face with it.

“You've thought of something else?” Emily asked him.

“A terminated employee?” Barbara said.

“It may be nothing. I only know about it, actually, because I had the word from one of his fellow employees in shipping after it happened. There was quite a to-do, evidently.”

“About what?”

“Trevor Ruddock, a boy from the town. Haytham gave him the sack about three weeks ago.” Armstrong went to one of the filing cabinets and fingered through a drawer. He brought out a folder and carried it to the table, reading a document contained inside. “Yes, here it is. … Oh dear. Well, it's not very nice.” He looked up and smiled. He'd obviously read good tidings for himself in Trevor Ruddock's file, and apparently he wasn't above celebrating the fact. “Trevor was sacked for stealing, it says here. The report's in Haytham's writing. It seems he caught Trevor red-handed with a shipping crate of goods. He sacked him on the spot.”

“You said a boy,” Barbara noted. “How old is he?”

Armstrong referred to the file. “Twenty-one.”

Emily was with her. “Has he a wife? Children?”

And Armstrong wasn't far behind them. “No,” he said. “But he lives at home, according to his employment application. And I do know that five children live there, along with Trevor, his mum, and his dad. And from the address he's given …” Armstrong looked up at the two police officers. “Well, it isn't exactly an upmarket area. I should guess his family needed whatever money he made. That's the way it is in that part of town.”

Having said this, he seemed to realise that any attempt to direct their suspicions onto another could serve to heighten their suspicions about him. He continued hastily. “But Mr. Malik intervened for the boy. There's a copy here of a letter he wrote, asking another businessman in town to give Trevor a chance to redeem himself through a job.”

“Where?” Barbara asked.

“At the pleasure pier. And doubtless that's where you can find him. I mean, if you want to speak with him about his relationship with Mr. Querashi.”

Emily reached forward and shut off her tape recorder. Armstrong looked relieved, off the hook at last. But when Emily spoke, she put him back on. “You won't be leaving town within the next few days, will you?” she asked pleasantly.

“I have no plan to go—”

“Good,” Emily Barlow said. “We'll no doubt need to speak with you again. With your in-laws as well.”

“Of course. But as to this other matter … to Trevor … to Mr. Ruddock …? Surely you'll be wanting to …” Still, he wouldn't complete the sentence. He didn't dare.
Ruddock's got a motive
were the words that Ian Armstrong couldn't afford to speak. Because although Haytham Querashi had cost both men their jobs, only one of them had immediately benefitted from the Pakistani's death. And all of them round the table knew that the chief beneficiary of the Tendring Peninsula's first act of deadly violence in five years was sitting in Querashi's erstwhile office, having resumed the job that Querashi's arrival in England had cost him.

LIFF HEGARTY SAW THEM COME OUT OF THE
mustard factory together. He hadn't seen them go in together. Instead, he'd seen only the short, dumpy bird with the pudding-basin haircut who'd climbed out of a dilapidated Austin Mini carrying a shoulder bag the size of a pillar box. He hadn't given her much thought, other than wondering why a woman with her body was wearing drawstring trousers that served only to emphasise the absence of a waist. He'd seen her, evaluated her personal appearance, absently registered her as someone unlikely to browse through Hegarty's Adult Distractions, and consequently dismissed her. It was only upon his second sight of her that he realised who—or rather what—she was. And then he knew that the day, which had already started out bad, had the distinct potential for becoming worse.

The second time the bird came into view, she was with another woman. This one was taller, so physically fit that she looked like she could wrestle a polar bear to the ground, and so commanding in the way she carried herself that there could be only one explanation for what she was doing at Malik's Mustards in the aftermath of the death on the Nez. She was the fuzz, Cliff realised. She had to be. And the other—with whom she stood in the kind of conversation that suggested professional if not personal intimacy—therefore had to be a copper as well.

Shit, he thought. The last thing he needed was to have the cops prowling round the industrial estate. The town council was bad enough. They loved to harass him, and despite the lip-service they gave to bringing Balford back from the dead economically, they'd equally love to drive him out of business. And those two cops—two
female
cops—would probably be only too delighted to weigh in with the opposition once they got a look at his jigsaws. And there was no doubt that they'd see them. If they popped in for a chat, which they were bound to do given enough time to pin down everyone who might have laid eyes on the corpse before he was a corpse, they'd end up getting an eyeful of their own. That visit itself, beyond the questions they'd be asking which he'd be doing his best to avoid answering, was one of several upcoming events that Cliff didn't anticipate with boundless joy.

His business was almost entirely mail-order, so Cliff could never understand what the fuss was about when it came to his puzzles. It wasn't like he advertised them in the
Tendring Standard
or stuck up posters in the shops on the High Street. He was more discreet than that. Hell, he was always discreet.

But discretion didn't count for much once the coppers decided to start causing a bloke aggro. Cliff knew that from his Earl's Court days. When cops took that route, they began popping up on one's doorstep daily. Just a question, Mr. Hegarty. Could you help us out with a problem, Mr. Hegarty? Would you step down to the nick for a chat, Mr. Hegarty? There's been a burglary (or mugging or purse snatching or assault, it never mattered which), and we're wondering where you were on the night in question? Can we have a bit of a go with your dabs? Just to clear you of suspicion, of course. And on and on until the only way to get them to give it a rest was to move out, move on, and start over somewhere else.

Cliff knew he could do that. He'd done it before. But that was in the days when he was alone. Now that he had someone—and not just some hanger-on this time but someone with a job, a future, and a decent place to live on the strand in Jaywick Sands—he wasn't about to be forced out again. Because while Cliff Hegarty could set up business anywhere, Gerry DeVitt couldn't so easily get employment in the building trade. And with the promise of Balford's future redevelopment so close to coming true, Gerry's own future was looking rosy. He wouldn't pull up stakes at this point, when at long last there was the prospect of making some decent money.

Not that money was Gerry's preoccupation, Cliff thought. Life would be a hell of a lot easier if only that were the case. If Gerry just trundled off to the job each morning and worked himself to exhaustion blow-torching away at that restaurant on the pier, life would be grand. He'd come home hot, sweaty, and tired, with nothing more on his mind than dinner and sleep. He'd keep thinking about the bonus that the Shaws had promised him could he have the building up and running by the next bank holiday. And he wouldn't turn his concerns anywhere else.