Deception on His Mind (76 page)

Emily said, “We have an i.d. on you at the Castle Hotel with Mr. Querashi, at an affair called …?” She glanced at Barbara.

“Leather and Lace,” Barbara told her.

“Right. That i.d. doesn't square with your story, Mr. Hegarty. Why did the two of you end up at a public dance in the Castle Hotel? That makes no sense if you were so intent upon keeping your relationship a secret from your lover.”

“Ger doesn't do the scene,” Hegarty said. “He never did. How far's that hotel from here anyway? Forty minutes’ drive if you hit it good. More if you're going from Jaywick or Clacton. I didn't think anyone I know'd see me there and spill it to Gerry. And it was a work night in the Avenues for Ger, so I knew he'd never know I was gone. We were safe at the Castle, me and Hayth.” But having said that much, his eyebrows drew together and he frowned.

“Yes?” Emily asked him quickly.

“I thought for a moment …But it's nothing cause he didn't see us, so he never knew. And no way was Haytham going to tell
him,
of all people.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Hegarty?”

“Muhannad.”

“Muhannad Malik?”

“Yeah. Right. We saw him at the Castle as well.”

Jesus, Barbara thought. How much more convoluted could the case become? She said, “Muhannad Malik's homosexual as well?”

Hegarty guffawed, fingering the nappie pin dangling from his ear-lobe. “Not
at
the hotel like in
at
the hotel. We saw him afterwards, when we were leaving. He drove right in front of us, crossed over the road, and took a right towards Harwich. It was one in the morning and Haytham couldn't make out what Muhannad was doing in that part of the world in the middle of the night. So we followed him.”

Barbara saw Emily's hand tighten round the pencil she'd been holding. Her voice, however, betrayed nothing. “Where did he go?”

He went, Hegarty said, to an industrial estate on the edge of Parkes-ton. He parked at one of the warehouses, disappeared inside for thirty minutes or so, and then left again.

“And you're sure it was Muhannad Malik?” Emily pressed.

There was no mistaking that fact, Hegarty told them. The bloke had been driving his turquoise Thunderbird, and it had to be the only car of its kind in Essex. “Only that's right, isn't it?” Hegarty suddenly added. “He wasn't driving that car when he left. He was driving a lorry. He pulled out of the warehouse in the lorry, in fact. And that's the last we saw of him.”

“You didn't follow him farther?”

“Hayth didn't want to risk it. It was one thing for us to see Muhannad. It was another if Muhannad spotted us.”

“And when was this exactly?”

“Last month.”

“Mr. Querashi never mentioned it again?”

He shook his head.

Barbara could tell from the very intensity of her focus that the DCI was charged up to follow this bit of information. But treading along the Muhannad Trail ignored a signpost that Hegarty had already painted. For the moment, Barbara shoved to the back of her mind the three words that had set her thoughts roiling.
In the club
couldn't negate the presence of another suspect.

“This Ger,” she said. “Gerry DeVitt.”

Hegarty, who'd even begun to relax in their presence, seeming to enjoy his moment of importance in the investigation, was at once wary. His eyes betrayed this, becoming watchful and alert. “What about him? You're not thinking that Gerry …? Look, I already said. He didn't know about me and Hayth. Which is why I didn't want to talk to you lot in the first place.”

“Why you
say
you didn't want to talk to us,” Barbara said.

“He was working on Hayth's house that night,” Hegarty insisted. “Ask anyone on First Avenue. They would've seen the lights. They would've heard the banging. And I already told you what was what: If Ger found out about me and Hayth, he would've ended it with me. He wouldn't've gone after Hayth. That's not his way.”

“Murder,” Emily said, “is generally not anyone's way, Mr. Hegarty.”

She concluded the interview formally, giving the time and switching the recorder off. She stood, saying, “We may be in touch again.”

“You won't ring me at home,” he said in request. “You won't come to Jay wick.”

“Thank you for cooperating,” Emily said in reply. “DC Eyre will take you back to work.”

Barbara followed Emily into the corridor, where the DCI spoke in a low, terse voice, revealing that motive or not, Gerry DeVitt had not displaced her number one suspect. “Whatever it is, Muhannad's taking it to the factory. He's boxing it there, and he's stowing those boxes with everything else being shipped out. He knows when orders are being assembled for shipment. Christ. That's part of his job. All he has to do is to time his own shipments with those going out from the factory. I want that place searched, top to bottom, inside and out.”

But in Barbara's mind, the interrogation of Hegarty could not be so easily dismissed. Thirty minutes with the bloke had raised at least half a dozen questions. And the answer to none of them was Muhannad Malik.

They passed reception on their way to the stairs. Barbara saw Azhar talking to the WPC on duty there. He looked up as she and Emily came within his field of vision. Emily saw him as well, saying obscurely to Barbara, “Ah. Mr. Devotion to His People. All the way from London to show us what a good Muslim can be.” She stopped behind the reception desk and spoke to Azhar. “A little early for your meeting, aren't you? Sergeant Havers won't be available until late this afternoon.”

“I've come not for our meeting but to collect Mr. Kumhar and return him to his home,” Azhar said. “His twenty-four hours of custody are nearly at an end, as I'm certain you know.”

“What I know,” Emily replied tartly, “is that Mr. Kumhar hasn't requested your services as a chauffeur. And until he does, he'll be returned to his home in the same way he was taken from his home.”

Azhar's glance shifted to Barbara. He seemed aware of the sudden sea-change in the investigation as evidenced by the DCFs tone. She didn't sound like an officer who was worried any longer about the possibility of another community uprising. Which made her much less likely to compromise.

Emily didn't give Azhar a chance to reply. She turned away, caught sight of one of her team approaching, and said, “Billy, if Mr. Kumhar's had his lunch and his wash-up, take him home. Collect his work papers and his passport when you get there. I don't want that bloke disappearing on us till we can sort through everything he had to say.”

Her voice carried. Azhar clearly heard it. Barbara spoke with some care as they climbed the stairs. “Even if Muhannad's at the bottom of all this, you don't think Azhar's—Mr. Azhar's—involved, Em? He's come from London. He didn't even know about the killing before that.”

“We don't know a thing about what he knew or when he knew it. He came here posing as some sort of legal expert when, for all we know, he could be the brains behind Muhannad's game. Where was
he
on Friday night, Barb?”

Barbara knew the answer to that very well since, from behind the shelter of the curtains in her bungalow, she'd watched Azhar and his daughter grilling
halal
lamb kebabs on the lawn behind the Edwardian house in which they occupied the ground floor flat. But she couldn't say this without betraying her friendship with them. So she said, “Except …well, he's seemed a decent sort of bloke in our meetings.”

Emily gave a sardonic laugh. “He's decent all right. He's got a wife and two kids that he ditched in Hounslow so he could set up house with some English tart. He gave her a brat, and then she walked out on him, this Angela Weston, whoever she is. God knows how many other women he's doing the business with in his spare time. He's probably planting half-breed bastards all over town.” She laughed again. “Right, Barb. What a decent bloke our Mr. Azhar is.”

Barbara's step faltered on the stairs. She said, “What? How d'you—?”

Emily stopped above her. She glanced back and said, “How did I what? Suss out the truth? I put a call out on him the first day he was here. I got the report when I got the i.d. on Hegarty's fingerprints.” Her look sharpened. Too perceptively, Barbara thought. “Why, Barb? What's the truth about Azhar got to do with the price of petrol? Aside, of course, from confirming my belief that not one of these yobbos can be trusted half an inch.”

Barbara wondered about the question. She didn't much want to consider the true answer. She said, “Nothing. Nothing really.”

“Good,” Emily replied. “Let's take on Muhannad.”

OU HAVE YOURSELF A CUPPA, MR. SHAW. I'LL BE
right outside at the station, just where I am on every shift. If she takes a turn, I'll hear the machines start bleating.”

“Actually, I'm fine, Sister. I don't need—”

“No argument, young man. You look dead as a ghoul. You were here half the night, and you won't do anyone a bit of good if you don't start taking better care of yourself.”

It was the day nurse's voice. Agatha recognised it. She didn't have to open her eyes to know who was speaking to her grandson, which was just as well, because opening her eyes felt as if it would take too damned much effort. And besides, she didn't want to look at anyone. She didn't want to have to see the pity in their faces. She knew well enough what they'd be seeing to inspire that pity: a wreck of a woman, a virtual carcase, all shrivelled up on one side, her left leg useless, her left hand clawed into a dead bird's talon, her head tilted, her mouth and one eye following that tilt, and the disgusting drool following them both.

“All right, Mrs. Jacobs,” Theo said to the nurse, and Agatha realised that he
did
sound tired. He sounded both exhausted and unwell. And at this thought she felt a moment of panic clutching at her lungs, making it suddenly difficult to breathe. What if something happened to Theo? she wondered feverishly. She hadn't once considered the possibility, but what if he didn't take care of himself? What if he fell ill? Or was in an accident? What, then, would become of her?

She felt his nearness from the scent of him: that clean odour of soap and the faint lime smell of the astringent he used. She felt the mattress of the hospital bed depress slightly as he leaned over her.

“Gran?” he whispered. “I'm going down to the cafeteria, but don't you worry. I won't be long.”

“You'll be long enough to have yourself a decent meal,” Sister Jacobs said curtly. “If you're back here in less than an hour, lad, I'm sending you off again. See if I don't.”

“What a task master she is, eh, Gran?” Theo said in some amusement. Agatha felt his dry lips press against her forehead. “I'll be back in sixty-one minutes, then. You have a good rest.”

Rest? Agatha queried incredulously. How was she supposed to rest? When she closed her eyes, all she could see in her mind's vision was the hideous spectacle she herself presented: a misshapen shell of the vital woman she once had been, now helpless, immobile, catheterised, dependent. And when she tried to dismiss that vision in order to imagine the future instead, what she pictured in its place was what she had seen and scorned a thousand times, driving along the Esplanade below the Avenues in Balford, where that line of nursing homes overlooked the sea. There, the discarded ancients tottered, clinging to their zimmer frames for support. Their backbones permanently curved like the mark of a question no one had the courage to ask, they shuffled along the pavement, an army of the forgotten and infirm. She'd been aware of these relics of humanity since her girlhood. And since her girlhood she'd sworn to herself that she'd end her own life before she was reduced to becoming one of their numbers.

Only now she didn't want to end her own life. She wanted to take her life back, and she knew that she needed Theo to do it.

“Now, now, sweetie, something tells me you're wide awake under those eyelids of yours.” Sister Jacobs was hanging over the bed. She wore a man's heavy deodorant, and when she perspired—which was copiously and often—the odour of spice wafted off her body like steam rolling off boiling water. Her hands smoothed back Agatha's hair. A comb went through it, caught on a tangle, pulled insistently, then gave up the effort. “Lovely grandboy you've got, Mrs. Shaw. Such a love, he is. I've a daughter who'd like to meet your Theo. Available, is he? I ought to invite her round for a cuppa when I take my break. I think they'd get on, my Donna and your Theo. What d'you think of that? Would you like a nice granddaughter-in-law, Mrs. Shaw? She could help you in your recovery, my Donna.”