appeared to list names. She took a yellow felt pen from the desk's centre drawer and began highlighting some names and crossing others out with a pencil.
"Did you tell them about the bracelet, then?"
Barbara asked her.
She didn't look up from the print out, although Barbara saw her eyebrows tighten momentarily.
It could have been an expression of concentration had the common activity of highlighting names required concentration. On the other hand, it could have been confusion. "Bracelet?" she asked.
"A piece by a bloke called Aloysius Kennedy.
Gold. Engraved with the words 'Life begins now.'
Is this sounding familiar?"
"I don't understand the nature of your question," the girl said. "What has a gold bracelet to do with Haytham's death?"
"I don't know," Barbara said. "P'rhaps nothing.
I thought you might be able to tell me. This"
-- she set the receipt on the desk - "was among his things. Locked up among his things, by the way. Can you think why? Or what it was doing in his possession in the first place?"
Sahlah capped the yellow pen and set the pencil to one side before she took the receipt.
She had lovely hands, Barbara noted, with fingers that were slender and nails that were clipped to the tips of her fingers but smooth and buffed-looking.
She wore no rings.
Barbara waited for her to respond. In her peripheral vision she saw movement in the inner office and looked that way. In a corridor at the far end, Emily Barlow was speaking with a middle-aged Pakistani man wearing what looked like a chefs outfit. Akram Malik?
Barbara wondered.
He looked old enough and grave enough for the part. She gave her attention back to Sahlah.
"I don't know," Sahlah said. "I don't know why he had it." She spoke to the receipt rather than to Barbara. "Perhaps he was seeking a way to reciprocate and this seemed best to him.
Haytham was a very good man. A very kind man.
It wouldn't have been unlike him to attempt to discover the cost of something so that he could make an equal offering in return."
"Sorry?"
"Lend-dena," Sahlah said. "The giving of gifts.
It's part of the way we establish our relationships."
"The gold bracelet was a gift for him? From you? For Mr. Querashi?"
"As his fiancee, I would present him with a token. He would do likewise to me."
But again there remained the question of where the bracelet was now. Barbara hadn't seen it among Querashi's belongings. She hadn't read in the police report about its being found upon the body. Would someone really stalk a victim and carefully arrange his death for possession of a gold bracelet? People had died for less, to be sure, but in this case . . .
Why was it that the thought seemed so unlikely?
"He didn't have the bracelet," Barbara said. "It wasn't on his body and it wasn't in his room at the Burnt House. Can you explain why?"
Sahlah used the yellow pen against another name. "I hadn't yet given it to him," she said.
"I would have done on the day of the nikdh."
"Which is what?"
"When our marriage contract would have been formally signed."
"So you have the bracelet."
"No. There was no point to keeping it. When he was killed, I took it . . ." Here she paused.
Her fingers touched the edges of the computer print out, straightening them perfectly.
"This will sound absurd and melodramatic, like something out of a nineteenth century novel. When Haytham was killed, I took the bracelet and threw it from the pier. From the end of the pier. I suppose it was a way of saying goodbye."
"When was this?"
"On Saturday. The day the police told me what had happened to him."
This begged the question of the receipt, however.
"So he didn't know you had a bracelet to give him?"
"He didn't know."
"Then what was he doing with the receipt?"
"I can't say exactly. But he would have known I was going to give him something. It's traditional."
"Because of ... what did you call it?"
"Lena-dena. Yes. Because of that. And he wouldn't have wanted his gift to me to be out of balance with my gift to him. That would have been an insult to my family and Haytham was careful about that sort of thing. I imagine" - and here she looked at Barbara for the first time since their discussion had begun - "I imagine that he did some small detective work on his own to discover what I'd purchased for him and where.
It wouldn't have been that difficult. Balford's a small town. The shops that carry items worthy of