"Which gives Theo plenty of opportunity to have taken himself over to the Nez on foot,"
Barbara pointed out.
"Which would explain why no one in the vicinity claims to have heard another car."
Emily frowned thoughtfully. She directed her attention to a second china board. On it she had scrawled surnames of suspects and first initials, followed by their alleged whereabouts for the time in question.
She said, "The Malik girl seems docile enough, but if she was secretly involved with Theo, she may have had a reason to send her fiance tumbling down the Nez stairs. It would sure as hell end her obligation to Querashi. Permanently."
"But you said her dad claimed that he wouldn't have forced her to marry the man."
"He says that now. But he could be covering up for her. Perhaps she and Theo are in this together."
"Romeo and Juliet killing off Count Paris instead of themselves? Okay. I see that it works.
But aside from the car-tossing, which we'll forget about for the moment, here's something else we're not considering: Let's say Querashi got tricked into going to the Nez to meet Theo Shaw for a confab about Theo's relationship to Sahlah.
Then how do we explain the condoms in his pocket?"
"Shit. The condoms," Emily said. "Okay, so he may not have been going to meet Theo Shaw at all. But even if he didn't know about Theo, one thing is certain: Theo knew about him."
Barbara had to admit that the scales of culpability were beginning to tip in the direction of one of the Englishmen. She wondered what the hell she was going to report to the Pakistanis when they had their meeting. She could only imagine what Muhannad Malik would do with any information that supported his belief in the crime's racist nature.
"Okay," she said, "but we can't forget that we've caught out Sahlah Malik in a lie. And since Haytham Querashi had the receipt, I think we can conclude that someone must have wanted him to know that Sahlah had another relationship."
"Rachel Winfield," Emily said. "She's still the enigma in all this for me."
"A woman went to see Querashi at the hotel.
A woman wearing a chador."
"And if that woman was Rachel Winfield, and if Rachel Winfield wanted Querashi for herself - "
"Guv?" Emily and Barbara turned to the door, where Belinda Warner had come to stand, with a stack of chits in her hand. These were neatly clipped together in several different piles. Barbara recognised them as the copies of the telephone messages from the Burnt House Hotel that she'd handed over to Emily that morning.
"What is it?" Emily said.
"I've sorted through this lot, arranged them in categories, and tracked everyone down. Or at least nearly everyone." She entered and placed each small stack down as she identified it. "Calls from the Maliks: Sahlah, Akram, and Muhannad.
Calls from a contractor: a bloke called Gerry DeVitt from Jaywick Sands. He was doing some work on the house that Akram'd bought for the newlyweds."
"DeVitt?" Barbara asked. "Em, he works on the pier. I spoke to him this afternoon."
Emily made an entry into her notebook, which she scooped from a table in the incident room.
"What else?" she asked Belinda.
"Calls from a decorator in Colchester, also working on the house. And this last, miscellaneous calls: from friends, I expect, by their names: Mr. Zaidi, Mr. Faruqi, Mr. Kumhar, Mr.
Kat - "
"Kumhar?" Emily and Barbara said simultaneously.
Belinda looked up. "Kumhar," she confirmed. aas
"He phoned the most. There're eleven messages from him." She licked her index finger and flicked through the final stack of chits. She pulled from them the one she wanted.
"Here it is. Fahd Kumar," she said.
"Bloody hell. There you are," Barbara put in reverently.
"It's a Clacton number," Belinda went on. "I phoned it, but I only got a news agent on Carnarvon Road."
"Carnarvon Road?" Emily said quickly. "Are you absolutely sure it was Carnarvon Road?"
"I've got the address right here."
"Now there's a development from the gods, Barb."
"Why?" Barbara asked. There was a map of the area on one of the notice boards, and she went to this and looked it over, seeking the location of Carnarvon Road. She found it, rising perpendicularly from the sea and Clacton's Marine Parade.
It passed the railway station and ultimately led to the A133, which was the road to London. "Is there something important about Carnarvon Road?"
"There's something too coincidental for coincidence,"
Emily said. "Carnarvon Road runs along the east side of the market square. Clacton market