felt anxious for any indication of reassurance telling her that something good would arise from the devastation fallen upon these people. I'll remain with my family, Sahlah had told her in reply with a voice so steady and sure that there was no doubt that nothing could move her from her resolve.
My parents have no one else, and the children will need me now, she'd said. Barbara had thought, And what do you need, Sahlah? But she hadn't asked a question that she'd come to realise was utterly foreign to a woman of this culture.
She sighed. She realised that every time she felt she'd got a leg up on understanding her fellow man, something happened to whip the rug out from under her. And these past few days had been one long session of energetic rug whipping, as far as she could see. She'd begun in awe of a CID diva; she'd concluded in a stunned recognition that her chosen exemplar had feet of clay. And at the end of the day, Emily Barlow was really no different from the woman they'd just arrested for murder, each of them seeking nothing more than the means - however fruitless and destructive to order her world.
The hotel door opened before Barbara could put her hand on the knob. She started. All the lights were out on the ground floor. In the shadows, she had failed to see that someone had been awaiting her arrival, seated in the old porter's chair that stood just inside the entry.
Oh God. Not Treves, she thought wearily. The idea of another round of cloaks-and-daggers with the hotelier was too much for her. But then she saw the gleam of an incandescently laundered white shirt, and a moment later she heard his voice.
"Mr. Treves wouldn't hear of leaving the door unlocked for you," Azhar said. "I told him I'd wait and lock up myself. He didn't like that idea, but I expect that he could see no way round it other than by giving direct offence, rather than his more usual, oblique brand of insult. I do think he intends to count the silver in the morning, however." Despite the words, there was a smile in his voice.
Barbara chuckled. "And he'll do the counting in your presence, no doubt."
"No doubt," Azhar said. He closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock.
"Come," he said.
He led the way into the darkened lounge, where he lit a single lamp next to the fireplace and took himself behind the bar. He poured two fingers of Black Bush into a tumbler and slid this across the mahogany to Barbara. He poured a bitter lemon for himself. That done, he came round the bar and joined her at one of the tables, placing his cigarettes at her disposal.
She told him all of it, from start to finish. She left out nothing. Not Cliff Hegarty, not Trevor Ruddock, not Rachel Winfield, not Sahlah Malik. She told him the part Theo Shaw had played and where Ian Armstrong fit into the picture. She told him what their earliest suspicions had been, where those suspicions had led them, and how they'd ended up in the Maliks' sitting room, arresting someone they'd never once suspected could be guilty of the crime.
"Yumn?" Azhar said in some confusion. "Barbara, how can this be?"
Barbara told him how. Yumn had been to see the murdered man, and she'd done this without the knowledge of the Malik family. She'd gone in a chador - either her bow to propriety or her need for disguise - and she'd managed the trip without anyone from the Malik household being aware that she'd done so. A good look at the structure of their house, particularly at the position of the driveway and the garage in relation to the sitting room and the bedrooms upstairs, demonstrated the ease with which she could have taken one of the cars without the rest of the family ever knowing. And if she'd done this when the boys were in bed, when Sahlah was occupied with her jewellery making, when Akram and Wardah were at their prayers or in the sitting room, no one would ever have been the wiser. How, after all, could Yumn have failed at what the police had concluded was simplicity itself: watching Haytham Querashi long enough to realise that he went regularly to the Nez, taking a Zodiac round to the east side of the promontory on the night in question, stringing