Up in Flames (20 page)
‘Nothing yet,’ Casey told him. ‘There are just one or two things that we’d like to clear up. Perhaps we can come in?’
‘Of course. Of course. Kshama- sorry my wife didn’t let you in,’ he threw over his shoulder, ‘but since Chandra’s tragedy I have forbidden her to open the door unless me or my son are in the house.’
‘Very sensible.’ Was that an indication that Rathi Khan believed the loan-sharks might have been responsible for the arson attack? Casey wondered. Or was it simply to plant the possibility in Casey’s mind if he had already found out about Mr Khan’s debts?
As before, Rathi Khan led them into the double aspect living room. It was empty today.
‘Please to sit down.’ Rathi Khan gestured to one of the large yellow settees. ‘Would you like some tea? Coffee?’
‘Nothing, thank you. This should be just a brief visit.’ Was it his imagination or had a fleeting look of relief crossed Rathi Khan’s face?
‘How can I help you?’ Like a guest uncertain of his welcome, Mr Khan perched on the edge of one of his armchairs and gazed anxiously at them. He had lost weight since the tragedy. And although still dressed ‘just so’ as Mrs Ghosh had described, his suit hung on him. He looked ill.
‘It’s really just routine stuff.’ Casey’s tone was reassuring. ‘Just a matter of getting things out of the way so we can concentrate on more important aspects of the crime. All we wanted to do was check with yourself and your family who was where and at what times on the day your daughter and her baby died. We-’
‘You ask us? Her family?’ Although Rathi Khan sounded shocked to be asked such a question, a look of wariness clouded his eyes. He stared at them, his expression tense. ‘But what can you possibly want to know that for?’ He gazed anxiously from Casey to the silent Catt and back again. ‘This I do not understand.’
Casey sat back and forced himself to relax. His body language needed to be as convincing as his arguments if he was to persuade Rathi Khan that it really was just routine. Otherwise, he might be on the phone to the station and Superintendent Brown-Smith was prone to come down hard and heavy on those whose names featured in an official complaint from one of the ethnic minorities.
‘As I said, it’s simply routine. It has to be done, but it’s just for the books, really. I should have asked you before of course, but after such a tragedy I couldn’t quite find the words. But once we get such straightforward matters out of the way we can concentrate on more important aspects.’
Was Mr Khan taken in by his Judas words, he wondered? Probably not. He was an intelligent man. Intelligent enough, Casey hoped, to understand that he would keep probing till he got some answers. He must realise that the victims’ family would be on their list of suspects. So many murders were domestics of one sort or another that even Superintendent Brown-Smith had to accept that possibility here. Rathi Khan, too appeared to recognise this, as his protestations seemed more perfunctory than genuine.
Casey made a show of consulting his notes. ‘For instance, we know you were in your High Street shop on Saturday, 31 August and arrived there about 1.25 p m. But then you received a phone call and rushed out again. Perhaps you could tell us who called you and where you went?’
They had arrived at the shop shortly after two and he had been there then. So where had he gone and what had he done in the previous half hour that was so pressing?
Rathi Khan appeared puzzled. ‘Phone call? What phone call is this that you speak of? I remember no phone call.’
‘Perhaps I can refresh your memory? Your assistant, Mrs Ghosh, was quite clear. She told us you rushed off without your jacket - not your normal habit, I gather? It must have been something urgent. She told us the call had visibly upset you.’
An expression of concentrated thought furrowed Mr Khan’s high forehead, then his expression cleared. ‘Of course. How foolish of me. But with all this tragic business I had clean forgotten. My son rang me to tell me my wife had had an accident in the kitchen. She burned her hands when a pan of hot ghee went up. Really, he made it sound quite horrific. Naturally, I was upset.’
‘I see.’ Strange then, thought Casey, that with a phone in the house and a mobile in his pocket, Dan Khan had found it necessary to leave the family home and make the call from a public phone-box.
Casey decided not to question Mr Khan about it for the time being. ‘Tread warily, with kid gloves’ had been Superintendent Brown-Smith’s injunction. And as far as he could, Casey intended to continue to abide by it and the restrictions it imposed.
‘Yet, obviously your wife’s injuries weren’t as serious as you feared.’ Casey certainly hadn’t noticed any burns on Mrs Khan‘s hands or face on the day of the arson; certainly no marks that would have warranted calling her husband from his work.
‘It was a big fuss over nothing. Which is why I returned to work almost straight away. Women, they are the most dreadful drama queens.’
‘My mother always says it is the male of the species who are the drama queens. She insists that women are far more stoical. On the whole I have found she’s right. Your wife, son, daughter-in-law and parents were at home when you got here?’ Mr Khan nodded, then corrected himself. ‘No. I forgot. My daughter-in-law was out with my daughter and granddaughter.’
Although he had corrected himself, Rathi Khan hadn’t corrected the lie. Because if Dan Khan had made that phone call as his father claimed, he had certainly not made it from here. So where had he been? And, more to the point, what had he been doing?
‘It was a normal day, would you say? Until the fire?’
Rathi Khan looked curiously at him as if he couldn’t see the point of such a question. He shrugged. ‘Yes. My wife rose first to take the tea in bed to my parents, while my daughter-in-law prepared breakfast and got the children up. She took the children out around mid-day according to my wife, after the household chores were completed. My granddaughter is to start at the local infant school this month and she had to get the child’s uniform. My daughter, Kamala, went with them.’
‘And before that? Were they all at home all morning?’
‘Yes. My wife, of course, has her duties here. She looks after my parents while they are here. She is a good wife and takes her duties seriously. She doesn’t work outside the home. As my parents rarely go out, she must remain with them. It would not be the done thing, you understand, to leave them on their own when they are under my roof. My wife and my parents rarely go out unless it is with me or my son in our cars. I’m afraid my parents find England a strange place. I hoped they would settle, but now - after- Now I think they want to go home, back to India. My father says they are too old to adapt to new customs. Perhaps he is right.’
Casey might have remarked that he, too, found England a strange place, an alien place, even, from the country he had known as a boy. But, of course, he kept such thoughts to himself. He checked that Devdan, the son, was also at home all that morning. Dan Khan worked for his father, but had apparently had a day off and had spent part of it with his family; apparently, he didn’t neglect his plain wife all the time.
Casey paused, then asked, ‘Tell me, Mr Khan. Was your daughter’s marriage happy?’
A spasm of pure anguish crossed Rathi Mr Khan’s aquiline features at the question. But then he rallied. Casey could almost trace the thought processes that led there. Because should he begin to question whether the early marriage he had arranged for his daughter might have led to her untimely and agonising death he wouldn’t be able to bear it. And the best way to avoid such painful self-questionings lay in strenuous denial. ‘Of course it was happy. My Chandra was adored by her husband.’
This was delicate ground. Casey could almost feel Superintendent Brown-Smith perched on his shoulder, anxiously censoring further questions along such lines. But as this was a murder enquiry, Casey felt the weight of the two young victims on his other shoulder and he shrugged the super off, stiffened his spine and continued, ‘But I understood theirs was an arranged marriage. That precludes any ‘of course’ as regards personal love or happiness, surely? How long had they known one another?’
‘For many years. Since they were children. Always our families have socialised together. Ever since Mr and Mrs Bansi and my wife and I settled here. Mr Bansi is a man of business, like myself. We meet often for that reason and at the temple, of course. Both our families saw a lot of each other. Chandra was perfectly happy to accept Magan Bansi as her husband.’
That wasn’t quite how Chandra’s neighbour had told it. And adoration to one person could so easily seem like jealousy and control for the person on the receiving end. Casey had witnessed such behaviour all too often when called out to domestics in his uniformed days. Asian families weren’t immune from such domestics. Casey, only too aware that not everything about the East was mystical or wonderful, was determined not to be made to feel apologetic for stating the obvious truth. Asians could be quick to criticise western marriages with their admittedly appalling divorce statistics, while vigorously protesting any criticism, however mild, of their own marital customs, which, he knew only too well, concealed much misery behind the walls of the marital home. He suspected that if the Asian womenfolk weren’t kept so subjugated, they too, would be clamouring for divorce. Of course one wasn’t supposed to say this.
‘And they had both been agreeable to the marriage from the first?’
Mr Khan was halfway through a second ‘Of course,’ when he presumably thought better of it, and bit the words off. His natural desire to convince Casey - and perhaps himself - how wonderful had been the match he had made for his daughter was superseded by the need for explanations. ‘It was a very good match for Chandra. She knew that, which is why after taking time to consider it she sensibly agreed. Perhaps our two cultures have different ideas about happiness, Inspector. For us, marriage is a social contract, joining two people and their families. It is the couple’s duty to make the marriage work. Happiness comes from doing one’s dharma or duty willingly and well, so as to provide a stable background in which to nurture children. The belief in romantic love as practised in the west is an illusion as we learn too well from the divorce statistics. Better to start with simple liking and friendship. The rest can grow.’
It was a valid point. But Casey hadn’t been challenging the idea of arranged marriages as such, merely the suggestion that such marriages were better or happier than the idealised western love match. However, he didn’t pursue the point.
‘Why are you asking about her marriage, anyway? Rathi Khan now asked. ‘What has this to do with Chandra’s death? What can it possibly have to do with it?’
Casey had been expecting such questions. It had been revealing that his probing hadn’t immediately been challenged. ‘Probably nothing,’ he soothed. Possibly everything, he added silently to himself. ‘But every piece of information is of value in finding the truth. The trouble is, at the beginning of an investigation, it’s often impossible to recognise what is vital and what is dross. We have no way of knowing at this stage which is which so we just carry on with the questions, asking anything we can think of.’ And in view of Chandra’s friendship with Mark Farrell - if that was all it was - and the blame Chandra’s in-laws attached to her for their son’s death, such questions might turn out to be all too relevant. But he was careful to play this down. It would do no good showing his hand. All it would gain him was another of Superintendent Brown-Smith’s interminable lectures.
Rathi Khan still didn’t look happy, but he made no more protests. Instead, he asked, ‘So, what next, Inspector?’
‘We’ve found those skinheads you said harassed Chandra.’ Rathi Khan nodded absently as if he already knew that. Apparently the leak had spread. ‘No luck on that front yet, I’m afraid, but investigations are continuing.’ Casey told him. ‘But if, as I now suspect, that doesn’t come to anything, we’ll extend our investigation to checking out other well-known local troublemakers and generally widen the scope of the investigation.’
He didn’t add that they had already narrowed the case. If this turned out to be a ‘domestic’, it was essential they thoroughly investigated Chandra’s friends and family, in-laws, out-laws, secret lovers, if any. With the added complications of the race element, Casey really didn’t want to invite politically-correct criticisms, but he had no choice. He just hoped when they finally reached the truth that PC interference didn’t end up twisting it beyond recognition.
