Deception on His Mind (69 page)

Aside from the cupboards, there were two deep drawers and a chest. The drawers held tools for small repairs: spanners, screw drivers, pliers, a crow bar, nails, screws, and even a small saw. But nothing else.

Barbara went on to the chest. Its lid made a squeak that, she swore, probably could have been heard in Clacton. The backpack lay within, the sort of aluminum-framed rucksack that students use when they hitchhike during their holidays, determined to see the world.

Anticipation rising, feeling and believing that at last she was getting somewhere, Barbara lifted the pack out and laid it on the floor. But her hopes were dashed when she saw the contents. And confusion quickly took hope's place.

The backpack contained a hotchpotch of useless articles, at least articles that were useless to her present purposes. She emptied the pack of salt cellars fashioned like lighthouses, fishermen, anchors, and whales; pepper mills posing as Scotties and pirates; a plastic tea set; two dirty Barbie dolls; three unused and sealed decks of cards; a mug commemorating the short-lived marriage of the Duke and Duchess of York; a small London taxi missing a wheel; two pairs of child-sized sunglasses;

an unopened box of Beehive nougats; two Ping-Pong bats, a net for the game, and a box of balls.

Hell, Barbara thought. This was a total bust.

“Barbara,” she heard Azhar murmur from the other side of the door. “A boy's walking in this direction from the pavilion. He's just come out.”

She stowed everything away again, trying to replace each article in the order in which she'd first found it. Azhar said her name again, more urgently this time.

“Right, right,” she whispered in response. She returned the backpack to the chest and rejoined Azhar outside on the pier.

They faded to the railing, where the shadows were deep, just beyond the sailing ship ride. The newcomer rounded the corner of the shed, went to its doorway without hesitation, cast a surreptitious glance to the right and the left, and let himself inside.

Barbara knew him on sight, having had two occasions already to interact with the boy. It was Charlie Ruddock, Trevor's younger brother.

“Who is this, Barbara?” Azhar asked quietly. “Do you know him?” Her head on his shoulder, Hadiyyah was fast asleep, and she murmured as if in answer to her father.

“He's called Charlie Ruddock,” Barbara said.

“Why do we watch him? And what were you looking for in that shed?”

“I don't exactly know,” she said, and when he looked sceptical, she went on. “It's the truth, Azhar. I don't know. That's the hell of this case. It could be racial like you want it to be—”

“As
I
want it to be? No, Barbara. I am not—”

“All right. All right. Like
some
people want it to be. But it's starting to look like it could be something else as well.”

“What?” he asked. But he read her reluctance to part with information as clearly as if she'd communicated it to him. “You won't explain yourself further, will you?”

She was saved from having to answer his question. Charlie Ruddock was exiting the shed. And on his back he wore the pack that Barbara had just examined. Curiouser and curiouser, she thought. Exactly what the hell was going on?

Charlie headed back towards the pavilion. Barbara said, “Come on,” and began to follow.

The lights had been turned off now on the amusements, and the number of fun-goers had been reduced to the shadow-seeking couples and a few families still gathering up their straggling members prior to departure. The din had quieted. The smells had faded. In the attractions, on the rides, and within the numerous take-away food stalls, those whose livelihood was the pier readied it for another day.

With so few pleasure-seekers left and most of them wending their way towards the exit, it was easy enough to tail one young boy who was not only doing likewise, but doing it with a bulging pack on his back. As Barbara and her friends made their way through the pavilion and towards the seafront, she watched Charlie's progress and considered what she'd seen and heard that evening.

Haytham Querashi had been quite insistent that something illegal was taking place between Germany and England. Since he'd phoned Hamburg, it stood to reason that he believed the activity originated in that city. And German ferries leaving from Hamburg arrived in Parkeston harbour, near Harwich. But Barbara was no closer to learning what—if anything—was going on between the two countries and who—if anyone—was involved in the activity than she'd been when the condition of Querashi's abandoned Nissan had first suggested possession of contraband.

The fact that the Nissan had been torn apart brought everything about Querashi into question anyway, didn't it? And didn't the car's condition also emphasise the possibility of smuggling? And
if it
did, was Querashi involved? Or was he, a man of deep enough religious convictions that he'd phoned all the way to Pakistan merely to discuss a verse of the Qur'aan, attempting to blow the whistle on the illegal activity? And no matter what Querashi had been doing, how the hell did Trevor Ruddock fit into it? Or his brother Charlie?

Barbara knew how Muhannad Malik—and perhaps Azhar—would respond to those final two questions. The Ruddocks, after all, were white.

But she herself had seen this evening evidence of what she already knew about racial interactions. The adolescents who had harassed Hadiyyah and the one young girl who'd attempted to right the wrong were human microcosms of the population at large, and as such they gave testimony to Barbara's belief: Some of her countrymen were xenophobic imbeciles; others most decidedly were not.

But where did that knowledge leave the investigation into Querashi's murder? she wondered. Especially in a situation in which the only suspects without alibis were white?

Ahead, Charlie Ruddock had gained the land side of the pavilion and stopped. Barbara and her friends did likewise, watching him. He was at the south railing of the pier, mounting an ancient, rust-corroded bicycle. Beyond him, the proprietors of the Lobster Hut were cranking down the metal shields over the establishment's ordering windows. A short distance away, Balford Balloons and Rock had already shut its doors for the night. The tiers of deserted beach huts that stretched along the promenade to the south of these two commercial concerns resembled an abandoned village. Both their doors and their windows were firmly barred, and the only noise emitted from their immediate vicinity was the echo of the sea as waves hit the shore.

“This boy is involved in something, isn't he?” Azhar asked. “And it's something to do with Haytham's murder.”

“I don't know, Azhar,” Barbara said truthfully as they watched Charlie mount a dilapidated bike and begin to pedal in the general direction of the distant Nez. “He's involved in something. That much seems obvious. But as to what it is, I swear to God, I just don't know.”

“Is this the sergeant or Barbara speaking?” Azhar asked quietly.

She looked away from the Ruddock boy to the man beside her. “There's no difference between the two of them,” she said.

Azhar nodded and shifted his daughter in his arms. “I see. But perhaps there ought to be.”

ARBARA WAS ON THE ROAD TO HARWICH BY TEN
the next morning. She'd phoned Emily the moment her alarm had gone off, catching the DCI at home. She related what she'd heard from
Kriminalhauptkommisar
Kreuzhage in Hamburg and what she'd seen on the pier the previous night. She left out the fact that she'd been in the company of Taymullah Azhar and his daughter when she'd seen Trevor Ruddock, his brother, and the backpack, and she told herself that a lengthy explanation of her relationship with the Pakistanis would only fracture whatever fragile clarity they were finally beginning to bring to the investigation.

She soon learned that it wouldn't have made any difference had she mentioned her companions on the pier, however, because Emily appeared to have heard nothing else once Barbara mentioned the subject of her conversation with Helmut Kreuzhage. The DCI sounded brisk, rested, and completely awake. Whatever she and the faceless Gary had done to mitigate her stress after hours, it had obviously worked. “An illegality of some sort?” she said. “In Hamburg? Well done, Barb. I said Muhannad was into something dodgy, didn't I? At least now we're on the track of what it is.”

Barbara aimed for caution in her next remarks. “But Querashi didn't give Inspector Kreuzhage any evidence about what sort of illegal activity was going on. And he didn't mention names—Muhannad's included. And when Kreuzhage staked out
Oskarstrafie IS,
he came up cold, Em. His blokes didn't see a thing that didn't look strictly above board.”

“Muhannad's going to cover his tracks. He's been doing that for more than ten years. And we know that whoever killed Querashi covered up his tracks like a pro. The question is this: What the hell is Muhannad up to? Smuggling? Prostitution? International robbery? What?”

“Kreuzhage didn't have a clue. He didn't exactly launch an investigation, but what little he did wasn't enough to uncover anything. So here's what I think. If there's no real evidence of anything dodgy going down in Germany—”

“Then we'll have to find it on this end, won't we?” was Emily's riposte. “And the Maliks’ factory is set up to be the perfect stopping point for any number of enterprises: from counterfeiting to terrorism. If there's evidence to be found, that's where we'll find it. They ship goods out of there at least once a week. Who knows what else goes into those boxes besides jars of mustards and jellies?”

“But, Em, the Maliks aren't the only people Querashi knew, so they can't be the only ones under suspicion in this Hamburg business, can they? Trevor Ruddock worked at that factory as well. And let's not forget that wire I found in his room.
And
there's Querashi's lover to consider, if we ever find him.”

“Barbara, whatever we find, it's going to lead to Muhannad.”

Barbara wondered about this as she drove to Harwich. She had to admit that there was a certain logic to Emily's conclusion about Muhannad and the mustard factory. But she felt a disturbing sense of unease at the speed with which the DCI had leapt to it. Emily had dismissed the strange behaviour of the Ruddocks with the simple declaration, “Scavengers, that lot,” and she'd relayed information about Theo Shaw's grandmother having had a massive stroke on the previous afternoon as if that fact exonerated the young man from any part in Querashi's death. She'd said, “I'm sending to London for this Professor Siddiqi character as well. He'll do the translating for Kumhar when I question him.”

“What about Azhar?” Barbara asked. “Wouldn't it save time if you used him to translate? You could have him there without Muhannad.”

Emily scoffed at this idea. “I've no intention of letting either Muhannad Malik or his slippery cousin anywhere near that bloke again. Kumhar's our pipeline to the truth, Barb, and I'm not going to risk plugging up the works by having anyone skulking round in the background when I question him. Kumhar's got to know something about that factory. Muhannad's the sales director at Malik's Mustards. And the sales director oversees the shipping department. Where do you think that tasty bit of information fits into the overall scheme of things?”

Inspector Lynley would have called Emily's deductions
intuitive policework,
something that came from long experience and a carefully honed awareness of what was going on in one's gut as suspects were questioned and evidence was accumulated. But Barbara had learned the hard way to be aware of what was going on within her
own
gut as a member of an investigative team, and the sensations that filled her after her conversation with Emily didn't please her.

She considered her uneasiness from every angle, probing it like a scientist confronted with an alien being. Certainly, if Muhannad Malik was the kingpin in some sort of malfeasance, he had a motive to kill Querashi if Querashi had made an attempt to play the whistle blower on him. But the existence of that possibility shouldn't have obviated the potential guilt of Theo Shaw and Trevor Ruddock, both of whom also had motives to be rid of Querashi and neither of whom had a decent alibi. Yet that is exactly what appeared to have happened, at least in Emily Barlow's mind. And as she thought about the peremptory dismissal of Trevor Ruddock and Theo Shaw as suspects, Barbara felt her uneasiness coalesce into a simple and potentially ugly question: Was Emily responding to gut-level intuition or to something else?