thing you want, Inspector Barlow. So what better way to oppress my people - to humiliate them into a subservience you can live with - than to shine the light of your pathetic investigation upon me?"
The man was no intellectual sluggard, Barbara realised. What could be more successful in disarming dissent in the community than attempt309 ing to present the dissenters'
leader to them as a shrill, tin god? Except . . . maybe he was.
Barbara ventured a quick look at Azhar, to see how he was reacting to the exchange between the DCI and his cousin. She found him watching not Emily but herself. See? his expression seemed to be saying. Our conversation at breakfast was prescient, wasn't it?
"That's a fine analysis of my motives," Emily told Muhannad. "And we'll be certain to discuss it at a later date."
"In front of your superiors."
"Whatever you wish. As for now, please answer the question or come with me to the nick to have a think about it."
"You'd like me there, wouldn't you?" Malik said. "I'm sorry to have to deprive you of the pleasure." He went back to the door and shoved it open. "Rakin Khan. You'll find him in Colchester, which I trust isn't too difficult a task for someone of your admirable investigative powers."
"You were with somone called Rakin Khan on Friday night?"
"Sorry to disappoint your hopes." He didn't wait for an answer. He disappeared into the building. Azhar nodded at Emily, then followed him.
"He's quick," Barbara noted grudgingly. "But he ought to deep-six those sunglasses." She repeated the question she'd asked a moment before Muhannad's arrival. "So how do you reckon Kumhar's a man?"
"Because Sahlah didn't know him."
"So? Like Muhannad just said - "
^1 o
"That was bullshit, Barbara. The Asian community in Balford is small and it's tight. If there's an F. Kumhar among them, believe me, Muhanad Malik of all people knows him."
"So why wouldn't his sister?"
"Because she's a woman. The family's traditional -- witness the marriage bit. Sahlah would know the community of Asian women, and she'd know the men who work here at the factory. But it doesn't follow that she'd know other men unless they're married to her acquaintances or boys from her schooldays. How would she? Look at her life.
She probably doesn't date. She doesn't go to pubs. She doesn't move freely round Balford.
She hasn't been away to school. She's as good as a prisoner. So if she's not lying about not recognising the name - which of course she could be - "
"Right. She could be," Barbara cut in. "Because F. Kumhar could well be a woman and she could know that. F. Kumhar could be the woman, in fact. And Sahlah may have sussed that out."
Emily rustled in her bag and brought out her sunglasses. Absently, she rubbed them against the front of her tank top before she replied. "The cheque stub tells us that Querashi paid Kumhar four hundred pounds. A single cheque, a single payment. If the cheque's been written to a woman, what was Querashi paying her for?"
"Blackmail," Barbara offered.
"Then why kill Querashi? If he was being blackmailed by F. Kumhar and he'd made a payment, why break his neck? That's killing the goose."
Barbara considered the DCI's questions. "He was going out at night. He was meeting someone.
He was carrying rubbers. Couldn't F. Kumhar be the woman he was boffing? And couldn't F.
Kumhar have come up pregnant?"
"Then why take the rubbers if she was already pregnant?"
"Because he wasn't meeting her any longer.
He'd already moved on to someone else. And F.
Kumhar knew it."
"And the four hundred pounds? What was that for? An abortion?"
"A very private abortion. Perhaps, even, a botched abortion."
"With someone seeking revenge afterwards?"
"Why not? Querashi had been here six weeks.
That's long enough to put someone in the club.
If word got out that he'd done it - to an Asian woman, no less, for whom virginity or chastity is a big deal in capitals - maybe her father, brother, husband, or other assorted relations were looking to set things right. So. Have any Asian women died recently?
Have any been admitted to hospital with suspicious haemorrhaging? It's something we need to look into, Em."
Emily shot her a wry look. "Have you gone off Armstrong so soon, then? We've still got his dabs on the Nissan, you know. And he's still sitting inside that building, happily working Querashi's job."
Barbara looked at the building, once again seeing the copiously sweating Mr. Ian Armstrong being put through his paces by DCI Barlow. "His