Deception on His Mind Page 0,244

Villas, and even more specifically to the ground floor flat of a yellow converted Edwardian house. At first she told herself that there had to be a mistake. Either there were two Taymullah Azhars in London, or the information supplied by the Met's SOU was inaccurate, incomplete, or out-and-out false.

But the key facts on the Asian in question, supplied by London Intelligence, were among the facts that she already knew about Azhar. And when she read the report herself -

which she managed to do upon her return to Emily's office with the DCI - she had to admit that the description being supplied by London was identical in many respects to the picture she already had. The home address of the subject was the same; the age of the child was correct; the fact that the child's mother was not in the picture also matched with what the report presented.

Azhar was identified as a professor of microbiology, which Barbara knew he was, and his involvement with a London group called Asian Legal Awareness and Aid was certainly consistent with the depth of knowledge that he'd demonstrated over the past several days.

So the Azhar in the London report had to be the Azhar she knew. Only the Azhar she knew didn't appear to be the Azhar she thought she knew. Which brought everything about him into question, especially his standing in the investigation.

Christ, she thought. She needed a fag. She was desperate for one. And while Emily groused about taking yet another tedious and time-consuming phone call from her superintendent, Barbara dashed into the lavatory and lit up hungrily, sucking on the tube of tobacco like a scuba diver running out of air.

Suddenly, a great deal about Taymullah Azhar and his daughter began to make sense to her.

Among the puzzle pieces beginning to take on definition were Hadiyyah's eighth birthday party to which Barbara had been invited as the only guest; a mother ostensibly gone to Ontario but never revealing her whereabouts with so much as a postcard to her only child; a father who never spoke the word wife and never spoke at all of the mother of his child unless the subject was forced upon him; an absence of evidence in the ground floor flat that an adult woman had lived there anytime recently. No emery board or nail polish left lying about, no discarded handbag, no sewing, no knitting, no Vogue or Elk, no remnants of a hobby like watercolour painting or flower arranging. Had Angela Weston mother of Hadiyyah - ever lived in Eton Villas at all? Barbara wondered. And if she hadn't, exactly how long did Azhar expect to keep up the pretence of Mummy-on-holiday in place of the truth, which appeared to be Mummy-veryuchonthe-run?

Barbara wandered to the lavatory window and gazed at the small car park below. DC

Billy Honigman was escorting a freshly washed, groomed, and dressed Fahd Kumhar to a panda car. As she watched, they were approached by Azhar. He spoke to Kumhar.

Honigman warned him off. The detective constable stowed his passenger in the back seat of his vehicle. Azhar walked to his own car, and when Honigman took off, he followed, making no secret that he was doing so. He'd come to escort Fahd Kumhar home, as promised. Obviously, that's what he intended to do.

A man of his word, Barbara thought. A man of more than one word, in fact.

She considered the answers he'd given her in response to her questions about his culture.

She saw now how they applied to him. He'd been cut off from his family just as he declared Querashi would have been had his homosexuality come into the open. He'd been so cut off from his family that his daughter's existence was not acknowledged.

They were - the two of them an island unto themselves. No wonder he'd only too well understood and been able to expound upon the meaning of being an outcast.

Barbara processed all this with a fair degree of rational thinking. But she wasn't up to processing what this information about the Pakistani man meant to her personally. She told herself that it couldn't mean anything at all to her personally.

She didn't, after all, have a personal relationship with Taymullah Azhar. True, she played the role of friend in his daughter's life, but when it came to defining a role in his life . . .

She really didn't have one.

So she didn't understand why she felt somehow betrayed by the knowledge that he'd deserted a wife

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