Deception on His Mind (71 page)

What
was
it with these people? Emily wondered. They saw inequity, prejudice, and brutality under every lily pad. She didn't reply directly. Rather, she flipped on the tape recorder, gave the date, the time, and the individuals present. After which, she said, “Mr. Kumhar, your name was among the belongings of a murdered man, Mr. Haytham Querashi. Can you explain to me how it got there?”

She expected a replay of yesterday's litany: a string of disavowals. She was surprised. Kumhar fastened his eyes on Siddiqi as the question was translated for him, and when he replied—which he did at great length—he kept his eyes on the professor. Siddiqi listened, nodded, and at one point halted the man's recital to ask a question. Then he turned to Emily.

“He met Mr. Querashi outside Weeley on the A133. He—Mr. Kumhar, that is—was hitchhiking, and Mr. Querashi offered him a ride. This took place nearly a month ago. Mr. Kumhar had been working as a farm labourer, moving among the fields throughout the county. He'd become dissatisfied with the money he was making as well as with the working conditions, so he'd decided to look for other employment.”

Emily considered this, her brow furrowed. “Why didn't he tell me this yesterday? Why did he deny knowing Mr. Querashi?”

Siddiqi turned back to Kumhar, who watched him with the eagerness of a puppy determined to please. Before Siddiqi finished the question, Kumhar was answering, and this time he directed his response to Emily.

“‘When you said that Mr. Querashi was murdered,’ “Siddiqi translated, “‘I was afraid that you might come to believe that I was involved. I lied to protect myself from coming under suspicion. I'm new to this country, and I wish to do nothing to jeopardize my welcome here. Please understand how much I regret having lied to you. Mr. Querashi was nothing but kindness to me and I betrayed that kindness by not speaking the truth at once.’ “

Emily noted the sweat that coated the man's skin like a film of cooking oil. That he'd lied to her on the previous day was a bonafide fact. What remained open to question was whether he was lying to her now. She said, “Did Mr. Querashi know that you were looking for employment?”

He did, Kumhar answered. He'd told Mr. Querashi of his unhappiness with his farm employment. That had constituted the bulk of their conversation in the car.

“Did Mr. Querashi offer you a job?”

At this Kumhar looked nonplussed. A job? he asked. No. There was no job offered. Mr. Querashi merely picked him up and drove him to his lodgings.

“And wrote you a cheque for four hundred pounds,” Emily added.

Siddiqi raised an eyebrow, but translated without comment.

It was true that Mr. Querashi had given him money. The man was kindness itself, and Mr. Kumhar would not lie and call this gift of four hundred pounds a loan. But the Qur'aan decreed and the Five Pillars of Islam required payment of the
zakat
to one in need. So in giving him four hundred pounds—

“What is
zakat?”
Emily interposed.

“Alms for the needy,” Siddiqi answered. Kumhar watched him anxiously whenever he switched to English, and his expression suggested a man straining to understand and to absorb every word. “Muslims are required to see to the economic welfare of members of their community. We give to support the poor and others like them.”

“So in giving Mr. Kumhar four hundred pounds, Haytham Querashi was simply doing his religious duty?”

“That's exactly the case,” Siddiqi said.

“He wasn't buying something?”

“Such as?” Siddiqi gestured to Kumhar. “What on earth could this poor man have to sell him?”

“Silence comes to mind. Mr. Kumhar spends time near Clacton market square. Ask him if he ever saw Mr. Querashi there.”

Siddiqi gazed at her for a moment as if trying to read the meaning behind the question. Then he shrugged and turned to Kumhar, repeating the question in their own language.

Kumhar shook his head adamantly. Emily didn't require a translation for never, not once, not at any time, he himself had not been in the market square.

“Mr. Querashi was the director of production at a local factory. He could have offered Mr. Kumhar employment. Yet Mr. Kumhar says the subject of a job never came up between them. Does he wish to change that claim?”

No, Kumhar told her through his interpreter. He did not wish to change that claim. He knew Mr. Querashi only as a benefactor sent to him through the goodness of Allah. But there was a common thread that bound them to each other: They both had families in Pakistan whom they wished to bring to this country. Although in Querashi's case it was parents and siblings and in Kumhar's case it was a wife and two children, their intention was the same and thus there existed between them a greater understanding than might have otherwise existed between two strangers who meet on a public road.

“But wouldn't a permanent job have been far more of a benefit than four hundred pounds if you want to bring your family to this country?” Emily asked. “How far could you have stretched that money in comparison to what you might have earned over time as an employee of Malik's Mustards?”

Kumhar shrugged. He had no way to explain why Mr. Querashi hadn't offered him employment.

Siddiqi interjected a comment. “Mr. Kumhar was a wayfarer, Inspector. In giving him funds, Mr. Querashi met his obligation to him. He wasn't required to do anything more.”

“It seems to me that a man who was ‘nothing but kindness’ to Mr. Kumhar is a man who would have seen to his future welfare as well as to his immediate needs.”

“We can't know what his ultimate intentions were towards Mr. Kumhar,” Professor Siddiqi pointed out. “We can only interpret his actions. His death, unfortunately, prevents anything more.”

And wasn't that convenient? Emily thought.

“Did Mr. Querashi ever make a pass at you, Mr. Kumhar?” she asked.

Siddiqi stared at her, absorbing the abrupt change in topic. “Are you asking—”

“I think the question's clear enough. We've been given information that Querashi was homosexual. I'd like to know if Mr. Kumhar was on the receiving end of anything besides Mr. Querashi's money.”

Kumhar heard the question with some consternation. He declared his answer in a tone of strained horror: No, no, no. Mr. Querashi was a good man. He was a righteous man. He could not have defiled his body, his mind, and his everlasting soul with such behaviour. It was an impossibility, a sin against everything Muslims believed.

“And where were you on Friday night?”

At his lodgings in Clacton. And Mrs. Kersey—his most generous hostess—would be happy to tell Inspector Barlow as much.

That concluded their interview, which is what Emily recited into the tape recorder. When she switched it off, Kumhar spoke urgently to Siddiqi.

Emily said angrily, “Hang on there.”

Siddiqi said, “He only wants to know if he can return to Clacton now. He is, understandably, anxious to quit this place, Inspector.”

Emily meditated on the prospect of getting any more information out of the Pakistani if she held him longer and gave him time to sweat a little more in that sauna of a cell just off the weight room. If she grilled him another two or three times, she might wrest from him a detail that would take her one step closer to their killer. But in doing this, she also ran the risk of sending the Asian community back into the streets. Whatever member of
Jum'a
came to fetch Kumhar back to Clacton in the afternoon would be looking for anything useful to their cause that could be carried back and reported upon as a means of enflaming the people. She weighed this possibility against whatever potential information she could get from the Asian before her.

She finally went to the door and yanked it open. DC Honigman was waiting in the corridor. She said, “Take Mr. Kumhar to the weight room. See that he has a shower. Have someone get him lunch and some decent clothes. And tell DC Hesketh to take the professor back to London.”

She turned back to Siddiqi and his companion in the interrogation room. She said, “Mr. Kumhar, I'm not finished with you, so don't even think about leaving the vicinity. If you do, I'll track you down and drag you back here by your bollocks. Is that clear?”

Siddiqi leveled an ironic gaze upon her. “I expect he'll get your point,” he said.

She left them and returned to her office on the first floor. She'd long ago learned to trust her instincts in an investigation, and they were fairly screaming that Fahd Kumhar had more information than he was willing to part with.

Damn and blast the law and the proscription of torture and what both had done to the rights of the police, she fumed. A few minutes on the rack in the Middle Ages and that little worm would have been his inquisitor's pudding. As it was, he would walk away with his secrets intact while her head began to throb and her muscles went into extended spasm.

Christ. It was maddening. And what was worse was the fact that one brief interview with Fahd Kumhar had undone four hours of Gary's ardent ministrations the previous night.

Which made her want to snap someone's head off. Which made her want to yell at the first person who came within her line of vision. Which made her want to—

“Guv?”

“What?” Emily barked. “What?
What?”

Belinda Warner hesitated at the threshold of Emily's office. She was carrying a long fax in one hand and a pink telephone message in the other. Her expression was one of consternation, and she ventured a peek into Emily's office to see the source of the DCFs ill humour.

Emily sighed. “Sorry. What is it?”

“Good news, Guv.”

“I could do with some.”

Reassured, the WPC joined her. “We've heard from London,” she said. She gestured first with the telephone message and then with the fax. “S04 and SOU. We've got a match on the fingerprints on the Nissan. And a report on that Asian bloke, Taymullah Azhar.”

• • •

T
HE CASTLE HOTEL
didn't look much like a castle. Instead, it resembled a squat fortress, with balustrades rather than crenellation at the roof-line. It was monochromatic on its exterior—constructed entirely of buff stone, buff bricks, and buff plaster—but that lack of colour had been more than compensated for in the hotel's interior.

The lobby was awash with colour and the predominant theme was pink: a fuchsia ceiling edged by a roseate dog-toothed cornice, walls papered in stripes of a candy-floss hue, maroon carpeting patterned with hyacinths. Just like walking into an enormous bonbon, Barbara thought.

Behind the reception desk, a middle-aged man in tails watched her progress across the lobby with an expectant air. His nametag identified him as Curtis and his manner suggested a welcome rehearsed in the privacy of his home and in front of a mirror. First came the slow smile till he was assured of eye contact with her; then came the unveiling of teeth; afterwards the head was cocked with an air of helpful interest; one eyebrow raised; one hand picked up a pencil expectantly.

When with studied courtesy he offered her his assistance, she produced her warrant card. The eyebrow lowered. The pencil dropped. The head uncocked. He altered from Curtis-in-Reception to Curtis-Most-Definitely-on-Guard.

Barbara brought out her pictures again, laying Querashi's and Kumhar's side by side. “This bloke was chopped at the Nez last week,” she explained laconically. “This one's in the nick at the moment having a talk with the local DCI. Seen either of them?”

Curtis relaxed marginally. As he studied the pictures, Barbara noted that a brass container sitting on the reception counter held a collection of brochures. She picked one up and saw that it was a copy of the same brochure which she'd found in Querashi's hotel room. There were other brochures as well, and she fingered through these. The Castle Hotel, it seemed, boosted its business in these trying economic times by offering special weekend rates, dances, wine tastings, and holiday extravaganzas at Christmas, New Year, Valentine's Day, and Easter.

“Yes.” Curtis drew the word out thoughtfully on a breath. “Oh yes, indeed.”

Barbara looked up from her study of the brochures. The picture of Kumhar he'd moved to one side. The picture of Querashi, however, he'd picked up and held between his thumb and his index finger. “You've seen him?”

“Oh yes, indeed. I remember him quite well, in fact, because I've never before seen an Asian at Leather and Lace. They generally don't go in for it.”

“Pardon?” Barbara asked, nonplussed. “Leather and Lace?”

Curtis riffled through the brass container and brought out a brochure that Barbara hadn't seen. Its cover was entirely black with a diagonal of white lace etched onto it. The word
Leather
was printed on the upper acute triangle, the word
Lace
on the lower. The inside comprised an invitation to a monthly dance held at the hotel. And the accompanying pictures of previous dances left no question at all as to the clientele being solicited.

Score a point for Trevor Ruddock, Barbara thought. “This is a dance for homosexuals?” she asked Curtis. “Not the usual sort of entertainment one finds in the countryside, is it?”

“Times are difficult,” he replied reasonably. “A business that closes its door to potential profits finds that it's not a business very long.”

There was truth in that, Barbara thought. Basil Treves might well take a slice of this cake and chew upon it when considering his profits and losses at the end of the fiscal year. She said, “And you saw Querashi at one of these dances?”

“Last month. Definitely. As I said, one sees very few Asians at this sort of gathering. One sees very few Asians in this part of the world altogether, as a matter of fact. So when he came in, I took note of him.”

“And you're certain he was here for the dance? Not for dinner? Not for a drink in the bar?”

“He was definitely here for the dance, Sergeant. Oh, not in drag, mind you. Not that he appeared to be the type to go in for that in the first place. No make-up. No ornaments. You know what I mean. But there was no question why he'd come to the Castle.”

“To pull another bloke?”

“Hardly. He wasn't alone. And his companion didn't look like someone who'd take lightly to being left out in the cold by a companion.”