Deception on His Mind (24 page)

“You'll do,” she said. “But that hair, Barb. It's beyond redemption. It looks like you cut it yourself in the shower.”

“Well … yeah,” Barbara said. “I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Emily raised her eyes heavenward but made no comment. She repacked her cosmetics. Barbara took the opportunity to examine her own appearance.

“Not bad,” she said. The bruises were still there, but they were greatly reduced in colour. And her eyes—which she generally thought of as pig-like—actually appeared an acceptable size. Emily was right: Her hair was a disaster. But otherwise, she wouldn't terrify innocent maidens and toddlers. “Where'd you get that stuff?” she said in reference to Emily's make-up.

“Boots,” the DCI replied. “You
have
heard of Boots, I suppose? Come on. I'm expecting a report on the postmortem from my man who stood in on it. And I'm hoping for something from forensic as well.”

The report was in. It lay in the centre of Emily's desk, its pages rustling in desultory fashion from the fan's efforts with the stifling air. Emily scooped it up and scanned the paperwork as she ran her fingers back through her hair. The report had come in with another set of photographs. Barbara retrieved these.

They depicted the corpse, disrobed and prior to dissection. Barbara saw that the beating he'd taken was a thorough one. There was bruising evident on his chest and his shoulders as well as the bruising she'd seen in the earlier photographs of his face. The discolourations were of an uneven nature, however. And neither their sizes nor their shapes suggested contact from someone's fists.

As Emily continued to read, Barbara ruminated. A weapon must have been used on Querashi. But if so, what sort? While the bruising didn't appear consistent with marks made by flailing fists, it also didn't appear consistent, full stop. One mark might have been made by a tyre iron, another by a board, a third by the back of a shovel, a fourth by the heel of a boot. All of which suggested an ambush, more than one assailant, and mortal combat.

“Em,” she said contemplatively, “for him to look this bad, there'd've been signs all over the pillbox—inside and out—that he'd been in a fight. What did your crime scene team pick up in there? Were there blood splatters? Maybe something used to whack him?”

Emily looked up from the report. “Nothing. Not a sprat.”

“What about something on the top of the Nez? Bushes tramped down? Ground stomped over?”

“Nothing there either.”

“Then on the beach?”

“There might have been something in the sand initially. But the tide took care of that.”

Was it really possible that mortal combat could occur without leaving its traces anywhere but on the body? And even if combat had occurred on the beach itself, how practical was it to assume that every indication of an ambush had been washed away with the tide? Barbara wondered about these questions as she looked at the condition of the corpse. It was certainly bruised, but the inconsistency of the bruises directed her thinking to another possibility.

She picked up a close shot of Querashi's bare leg and then an enlargement of one section of that leg. A ruler marked the area of flesh that the pathologist wished the police to note. Here, on the shin, was a hair's-width cut.

In comparison with the contusions and scrapes on the upper part of his body, a two-inch cut on his leg seemed small potatoes. But taken in conjunction with what she and Emily already knew about the crime scene, the cut provided an intriguing detail for them to consider.

Emily slapped the report onto her desk. “Not much that we didn't already know. The broken neck killed him. Preliminarily, there's nothing obvious in the blood. He says to give the clothes a going-over, though. He recommends having a close look at the trousers.”

Emily went behind her desk and punched a number into the phone. She waited, rubbing the back of her neck with a limp washing flannel that she dug from her pocket. She muttered, “This
heat,”
and then after a moment she said, “DCI Barlow here. Is that Roger?” into the receiver. “Hmm. Yes. Bloody miserable. But at least you've got air conditioning where you are. Try it over here for some real suffering.” She balled up the flannel and shoved it away. “Listen, have you got something for me? … On the Nez killing, Roger. … You do recall it? … I know what you said, but we're being advised by the Home Office bone man to give his clothes a going-over … What? Come on, Rog. Dig it out for me, won't you? … I understand, but I'd rather not wait for the report to be typed.” She rolled her eyes. “Roger … Roger … damn it. Would you just get the bleeding information for me?” She covered the mouthpiece and spoke to Barbara. “Prima donnas, this lot. You'd think they'd been trained by Joseph Bell.”

She went back to listening, reaching for a notebook on which she began to scribble. She interrupted twice, once to ask how long, once to ask if there was a way to tell how recently the damage had been done. She rang off with a brusque “Thanks, Rog,” telling Barbara, “One of the trouser legs had a rip in it.”

“What sort of rip? Where?”

“Five inches from the bottom. A straightforward tear. It was fresh, he said, because the threads were broken but they weren't worn or smooth the way you'd expect if the trousers had gone through a wash.”

“The pathologist has given you a photo of his leg,” Barbara told her. “There's a cut on the shin.”

“To match the tear in the trousers?”

“That's where my money is.” Barbara handed over the pictures. Those that had been taken on the Nez on Saturday morning were sitting on the edge of Emily's desk. As the DCI looked at the photos of the body itself, Barbara sorted out the pictures of Querashi in the pillbox and went on to those of the location. She saw where the victim had left his car—at the top of the cliff, abutting one of the white poles that bordered the car park. She noted the distance from the car to the café, and then from the car to the edge of the cliff. And then she noticed what she had seen without registering upon her first viewing of these same photographs on the previous night. She certainly should have remembered them from her own long ago visit to the Nez with her brother: a set of concrete steps that carved a diagonal gash down the face of the cliff.

She could see that, unlike the pleasure pier, the Nez stairs had undergone no renovation. The handrails on either side of them were pitted and rusting, and the stairs themselves were not faring well as the North Sea continued to erode the cliff. They bore deep-looking cracks. They bore dangerous gouges. They also bore the truth.

“The stairs,” Barbara said quietly. “Hell, Em. He must have fallen down the stairs. That's got to be why the body's so bruised.”

Emily looked up from the pictures of the corpse. “Look at his trousers, Barb. Look at his leg. Christ. Somebody used a trip wire on him.”

• • •

“BLOODY HELL. WAS
anything like that found at the scene?” Barbara asked.

“I'll have a go with the evidence officer and see,” Emily replied. “But it's a public place. Even if a wire was left there—which I doubt—-it'd be easy enough for a decent defence lawyer to explain away.”

“Unless it's got fibres from Querashi's trousers on it.”

“Unless,” Emily acknowledged. She made a note.

Barbara scanned the other photographs of the site. “The killer must have moved the body to the pillbox after Querashi took the tumble. Were there signs, Em? Footprints in the sand? Any indication that the body had been dragged from the stairs?” Then she realised the answer herself. “There wouldn't have been. Because of the tide.”

“Right.” Emily rooted in one of her desk's drawers and brought out a magnifying glass. She studied the picture of Querashi's leg. She ran her finger down the autopsy report and said, “Here it is. The cut's four centimetres long. Received some brief time prior to death.” She set the report to one side and looked at Barbara, but the expression on her face indicated that what she really saw was the Nez, the Nez in darkness without a light to guide the unsuspecting walker past, over, or around a wire that had been strung across the stairs to cause a fatal fall. “What size of wire are we looking for?” she asked rhetorically. She glanced at the oscillating fan that continued its anaemic efforts. “An electrical wire?”

“That wouldn't have cut him,” Barbara pointed out.

“Unless it'd been stripped,” Emily said. “Which it would have been, to be camouflaged by the dark.”

“Hmm. I s'pose. But what about fishing line? Something strong, like for sport fishing. But thin as well. And flexible.”

“There you go,” Emily agreed. “There're piano strings as well. Or whatever it is they use for making sutures. Or wire used for binding up crates.”

“In other words, almost anything thin, strong, and flexible.” Barbara produced the evidence bag with its collection of goodies from Querashi's room. “Have a go with this, then. It's from his room at the Burnt House. The Maliks wanted inside, by the way.”

“I'll bet they did,” Emily said cryptically. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened the bag. “Have you logged this in with the evidence officer?”

“On my way in. He says to tell you he wouldn't say no to a fan for the lock-up, by the way.”

“In his dreams,” Emily muttered. She flipped through the yellow-covered book from Querashi's bedside table. “So it wasn't a crime of passion. And it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment fight. It was premeditated murder from the first, orchestrated by someone who knew where Querashi was going when he left the Burnt House Hotel on Friday night. Possibly the very person he was going to the Nez to meet. Or someone who knew that person.”

“A man,” Barbara said. “Since the body was moved, it had to have been a man.”

“Or a man and a woman working together,” Emily pointed out. “Or even a woman alone if the body was dragged from the stairs to the pillbox. A woman could have managed that.”

“But then, why move him?” Barbara asked.

“To delay the discovery, I should think. Although”—Emily sounded reflective—”if that was the object, why leave the car so obviously tossed? It was a signpost indicating something was wrong. Anyone who came upon it would notice it and having noticed it, would be hyper-aware of everything else about the location.”

“Perhaps the car-tosser was in a hurry and couldn't worry about someone noticing.” Barbara watched as Emily ran her finger down the page in the book that had been marked with the satin ribbon. The DCI tapped her nail against the bracketed section. “Or perhaps the tossing was just an excuse to find the body.”

Emily looked up. She blew an errant hair off her forehead. “We're back to Armstrong again, right? Jesus, Barb, if he's involved in this, the Asians are going to tear up the town.”

“It works, though, doesn't it?” Barbara said. “You know the sort of game I mean. He pretends to be out there for a stroll, and he comes upon the car, ‘Goodness me,’ he exclaims,
‘what
have we here? It looks like someone made a real mess of this car. I wonder what else I might find on the beach?’ “

“Okay, it plays,” Emily said. “But only just. Look at how elaborate a set-up he would have been engineering: track Querashi from the day of his arrival, memorise his movements, choose the right evening, set the wire, hide till he fell, move the body, toss the car, and then return the next morning before anyone happens on the scene in order to pretend to find the body. Does that sound remotely reasonable to you?”

Barbara shrugged. “How desperate was he to have his job back?”

“Accepted. Fine. But I've spoken to the man, and I'm willing to swear he isn't clever enough or sharp enough to plan something this detailed.”

“But he's back to being production manager of this factory, isn't he? You said yourself he was doing a decent job there before Querashi turned up. If that's the case, he's got to have some decent beans in his pot.”

“Damn!” Emily was flipping through the rest of the book. “Great. Sanskrit. It's all the same.” She strode to the door. “Belinda Warner!” she shouted. “Find me someone who can decode Pakistani.”

“Arabic,” Barbara said.

“What?”

“The writing. It's Arabic.”

“Whatever.” Emily dug out the condoms, the two brass keys, and the leather case from the evidence bag. “This one's a bank key, I expect,” she noted, indicating the larger key with the tagged number
104
on it. “It looks to me like a key to safe deposit box. We've got Barclays, Westminster, Lloyds, and Midland. Here and in Clacton.” She made a note regarding this.

“Were his fingerprints on the car?” Barbara asked as Emily wrote.

“Whose?”

“Armstrong's. You had the Nissan impounded, right? So you've got to know. Were his prints on it, Em?”

“He has an alibi, Barb.”

“They were on the car, right? And he has a motive. And—”

“I said he has an alibi!” Emily snapped. She tossed the evidence bag onto her desk. She went to a small cooler that sat next to the door. She opened it, brought out a tin of juice. She tossed it to Barbara.

Barbara had never seen Emily frazzled, but she'd also never seen her under real pressure. She was suddenly aware for the first time—and acutely so—that she wasn't working with Inspector Lynley, whose ease of manner had always encouraged his subordinates to argue their points of view freely and with as much passion as the subject warranted. The DCI was a different beast. Barbara knew it behooved her to remember that fact. “Sorry,” she said. “I tend to push.”

Emily sighed. “Listen, Barb. I want you in on this. I need someone on my side. But you're chasing a goose if you go after Armstrong. And you're giving me aggro. Which I'm already getting in spades from Ferguson.” Emily opened her juice and downed a gulp. She said with studied patience, “Armstrong claimed his prints were on the car because he had a look inside. He'd found it standing there with its door open, and he was worried someone might be in trouble.”

“Do you believe him?” Barbara made her next point delicately. Her position on this case was a tenuous one. She wanted to maintain it. “Because he could have tossed that car himself.”

“He could have done,” Emily said flatly, and she went back to the evidence bag.