Deception on His Mind (21 page)

“Hadiyyah.” Her father's voice was firm. It silenced her with its usual proficiency.

Barbara studied her menu with religious devotion. She decided on her breakfast and gave her order to Treves who hovered nearby.

“Barbara is here to rest, Hadiyyah,” Azhar told his daughter as Treves took himself in the direction of the kitchen. “You are not to force yourself into her holiday. She's been in an accident and will not be well enough to run about the town.”

Hadiyyah made no reply, but she cast a hopeful look in Barbara's direction. Her eager face had
Ferris wheel, arcade,
and
roller coaster
written all over it. She was swinging her legs and fairly bouncing in her seat, and Barbara wondered how her father managed to deny her anything.

“These creaking bones might be able to make a trip to the pier,” Barbara said. “But we'll have to see how things develop.”

The marginal promise was apparently enough for the child. She said, “Yea! Yea! Yea!” and before her father could discipline her once more, she tucked into the remains of her cornflakes.

Azhar, Barbara saw, had been eating boiled eggs. He'd finished one egg and had begun the second when she joined them. She said, “Don't let me hold you up,” and gave a nod towards his plate. Again he used hesitation to communicate his reluctance, but whether it was a reluctance to eat or a reluctance to be in her company, she couldn't have said, although she suspected the latter.

He removed the top of the egg with his spoon and deftly separated the top's shimmering white from its shell. He held the spoon in his smooth brown fingers, but ate nothing from it until he'd spoken. “How coincidental it is,” he remarked without irony, “that you should come for your holiday to the same town that Hadiyyah and I have come to, Barbara. And even more coincidental it is that we should all find ourselves in the same hotel.”

“This way we can be together,” Hadiyyah announced happily. “Barbara and I. And when you go off, Dad, Barbara can look after me instead of Mrs. Porter. Mrs. Porter's all right,” she informed Barbara in a lower voice. “I like her well enough. But she isn't able to walk very well on account that she's got some sort of palsy.”

“Hadiyyah,” her father said quietly. “Your breakfast.”

Hadiyyah ducked her head, but not before she shot Barbara a radiant smile. Her feet kicked energetically against the legs of her chair.

Barbara knew that it was pointless to lie. The first time he came to a meeting between the police and the Asian community representatives, Azhar would discover the truth about what she was doing in Balford. Indeed, she realised that she was grateful she had a truth to tell him which was not the original truth that had brought her to Essex in the first place.

“Actually,” she said, “I'm here on business. Well, quasi-business, I expect you'd call it.” She went on breezily to tell him that she'd come to town to help out an old friend in the local CID: the detective chief inspector heading up a murder investigation. She waited to gauge his response to this. It was quintessential Azhar: He barely flickered an eyelash. “A man called Haytham Querashi was found murdered three days ago not far from here,” she went on, and added innocently, “He was staying in this hotel, as a matter of fact. Have you heard about his death, Azhar?”

“And you're working on this case?” Azhar asked. “How can this be? Your work is in London.”

Barbara walked a fine line with the truth. She'd received a phone call from her old mate Emily Barlow, she explained. Old Em had somehow got word—”Police gossip and all, you know how it is”—that Barbara was free at the moment. She'd rung up and invited Barbara to Essex. And that was that.

Barbara kneaded the dough of her friendship with Emily until it rose appropriately, sounding as if they were something between soul mates and twins once joined at the hip. When she was certain he got the I'd-do-anything-for-Em impression, she went on to say, “Em's asked me to serve on a committee that's been set up to keep the Asian community informed on the progress of the case.” And again she waited for his reaction.

“Why you?” Azhar set his spoon beside his egg cup. Barbara noted that half the egg was uneaten. “Have the local police inadequate manpower?”

“All of CID will be working the investigation itself,” Barbara told him, “which is, I expect, what the Asian community wants. Wouldn't you think so?”

Azhar removed the napkin from his lap. He folded it neatly and placed it next to his plate. “Then it seems we're here on similar missions, you and I.” Azhar looked at his daughter. “Hadiyyah, are you finished with your cereal? Yes? Good. Mrs. Porter looks as if she wishes to make plans with you for today.”

Hadiyyah looked stricken. “But I thought that Barbara and I—”

“Barbara has just told us that she's here on business, Hadiyyah. Go to Mrs. Porter. Help her out to the lawn.”

“But—”

“Hadiyyah, I believe my words were clear.”

She shoved back her chair and, droopy-shouldered, trudged across the room to Mrs. Porter, who indeed was struggling with her aluminium zimmer, attempting with trembling hands to square it in front of her chair. Azhar waited until Hadiyyah and the elderly woman had disappeared through the french doors that led to the lawn above the sea. Then he turned back to Barbara.

As he did so, Basil Treves whisked into the dining room with Barbara's breakfast and deposited it in front of her with a flourish. He said, “If you need me, Sergeant …” and nodded meaningfully towards reception, which Barbara interpreted as indicating he'd been standing with telephone in hand, ready to punch the triple nines should Taymullah Azhar step out of line.

“Thanks,” Barbara said, and tucked into her eggs. She decided to wait for Azhar to speak. Better to see how much he was willing to reveal about his business in Balford than to play her cards of information before she had an idea of what his own hand was.

He was the incarnation of laconism. And as far as Barbara could tell, he hid nothing from her: The murdered man had been engaged to marry Azhar's cousin; Azhar had come to town at the request of the family; he was assisting them in a similar capacity to what Barbara would be doing for the local police.

Barbara didn't tell him that she'd already exceeded her designated job description of liaison officer. Liaison officers didn't prowl round victim's bedrooms, paw through their belongings, and bag items of interest. She said instead, “This couldn't be better, then. I'm glad you're here. The police need to be put clearly into the picture about Querashi. You can help, Azhar.”

He looked immediately wary. “I serve the family.”

“No question about that. But you're a step removed from the killing, so you've got more objectivity than the family has. Right?” She hastened on before he could answer. “And at the same time, you're on the inside of the group closest to Querashi, so that gives you information as well.”

“The family's interests come first, Barbara.”

“I dare say the family are interested”—she put gentle and ironic emphasis on the word—”in getting to the bottom of who offed Querashi.”

“Of course they're interested. They're more than interested.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” Barbara slathered butter on a triangle of toast. She forked up a portion of fried egg. “So here's how things work. When someone is murdered, the police are after the answers to three questions: Who had the motive? Who had the means? Who had the opportunity? You can help the police get at the answers.”

“By betraying my family, you mean,” Azhar said. “So Muhannad is right after all. The police wish to find guilt among the Asian community, don't they? And as you are working with the police, you too—”

“The police,” Barbara interrupted with determination, and she pointed her knife at him to emphasise the fact that she wasn't about to submit to an attempt to manipulate her with charges of racism, “want to get to the truth no matter where it leads them. You'd do your family a good turn by making that clear to them.” She munched on the toast and watched him watching her. Inscrutable, she thought. He'd have made a fine cop. She said past a wad of toast in her cheek, “Look, Azhar, we need to understand Querashi. We need to understand the family. We need to understand the community at large. We're going to be looking at everyone he came into contact with, and some of those people are going to be Asian. If you intend to get sweaty collared every time we start treading on Pakistani turf, we'll get nowhere. Fast.”

He reached for his cup—he'd been drinking coffee—but he merely rested his thin fingers against its handle rather than picking it up. “You're making it clear that the police don't wish to view this as a racially motivated incident.”

“And you, my man, are jumping to conclusions from here to hell and back again. Which is not a good habit for a liaison officer to get into, is it?”

Despite himself, a smile quirked one corner of his mouth. He said, “Accepted, Sergeant Havers.”

“Good. So let's agree to something up front. If I ask you a question, that's what it is, okay? A question. It doesn't mean that I'm heading in any direction at all. I'm just trying to understand the culture so I can understand the community. Okay?”

“As you wish.”

Barbara decided to take this as his wholehearted agreement to lay bare any and all facts at his fingertips. There was no point forcing him into signing with his blood a contract of cooperation. Besides, he seemed to be accepting her somewhat broad interpretation of her role as police liaison, and while she had him in that state, she wanted to get as much information out of him as she could.

She tucked into her eggs and forked up a wedge of bacon to accompany them. “Let's suppose, just for a moment, that this wasn't a racially motivated crime. Most people are murdered by someone they know, so let's suppose that was the case with Querashi. Are you with me?”

Azhar turned his cup in his saucer. He'd still not drunk from it. He was watching Barbara. He nodded slightly.

“He hadn't been in England long.”

“Six weeks,” Azhar said.

“And he'd been working at the mustard factory with the Maliks during that time.”

“Correct.”

“So can we agree that the majority of his acquaintances here in England—not all, but the majority, okay?—were probably Asians?”

His expression was sombre. “For the moment, we can agree on that probability.”

“Good. And his marriage was to be an Asian marriage. Isn't that the case?”

“It is.”

Barbara sliced into more bacon and dipped it into the egg yolk. “I need to understand one thing, then. What happens if an Asian engagement—an arranged engagement—is broken?”

“What do you mean,
broken?”

“I mean what happens if one of the parties calls off an arranged marriage?”

It seemed like a simple enough question, but when he didn't answer immediately, Barbara looked up from the triangle of toast to which she was administering a generous dollop of blackcurrant jam. His face was expressionless, but it seemed too controlled. Damn the man. He was jumping to conclusions despite what she'd said about needing to gather information.

Impatiently, she said, “Azhar—”

“Do you mind?” He took out a packet of cigarettes. “May I? Since you're eating …?”

“Fire it up. If I could smoke and eat simultaneously, believe me, I'd be doing it.”

He used a small silver lighter against the tobacco. He turned in his chair to gaze in the direction of the french doors. Outside on the lawn, Hadiyyah was throwing a red and blue beach ball into the air. He seemed to be considering how best to answer the question, and seeing this, Barbara felt the pinch of irritation. If their every conversation was going to be a round of the political correctness minuet, they'd still be sitting in Balford at Christmas.

“Azhar, do I need to rephrase this?” she asked him.

He turned back to her. “Haytham and Sahlah had both submitted themselves to the arrangement for their marriage,” he said, rolling the tip of his cigarette against the table's ashtray although the ash of it didn't need to be dislodged. “If Haytham decided to reject the arrangement, he would in effect be rejecting Sahlah. This would be viewed as a grave insult to her family. To my family.”

“Because the family arranged the marriage in the first place?” Barbara poured herself a cup of tea. It was viscous and had the look of a brew that had been bubbling away like a hell broth for the better part of a week. She loaded it up with sugar and milk.

“Because Haytham's actions would cause my uncle to lose face and thus lose the respect of the community. Sahlah herself would be branded as discarded by her intended husband, which would do nothing to heighten her desirability to other men.”

“What about Haytham? What would he suffer?”

“In rejecting the marriage, he would be defying his own father. This could result in his being cast out from his family if the marriage had been considered an important liaison.” The act of inhaling and expelling smoke served to screen Azhar's face. But Barbara could see that he was observing her through the smoke as he went on. “To be outcast is to have no contact with the family. No one communicates with the outcast for fear of being cast out as well. On the street, one turns away. At the home, doors are not opened. Telephone calls are not returned. Post is sent back unacknowledged.”

“Like being dead?”

“Completely unlike. The dead are remembered, mourned, and revered. The outcast never existed in the first place.”

“Rough,” Barbara acknowledged. “But would this have been a problem for Querashi? Isn't his family in Pakistan? He wouldn't have been seeing them anyway, right?”

“It would have been Haytham's intention to bring his family to England as soon as he had the money to do so. Sahlah's dowry would have provided him that money.” Azhar looked back to the french doors. Hadiyyah was hopping across the lawn, bouncing the beach ball on her head. He smiled at the sight and kept his gaze on her as he continued. “Thus, Barbara, I think it unlikely that he was attempting to back out of marriage to Sahlah.”

“But what if he'd fallen in love with someone else? I can understand the whole arranged marriage business, and I can see how someone might agree to do his duty and all that—hell, look at the flaming monarchy and the mess they've made of their lives in the name of duty—but what if someone else came along and he fell in love with her before he really knew what was happening? People do that, you know.”