cupped it her palm as Barbara continued.
"He heard that a grave sin would cut him off, so he decided to end his affair and he told the other bloke at an earlier meeting. But this other bloke - his lover - didn't want to break it off.
He asked for another meeting. Querashi took his condoms, figuring the last meeting might well end up with a farewell buggering. Better safe than sorry. Only this time, the lover arranged for Querashi's death, along the lines of 'If I can't have you, no one can.' "
"Querashi became his obsession," Emily clarified, sounding as if she did so more for herself than for Barbara. She shifted her gaze to the oscillating fan that she'd unearthed from the attic on the previous day. She hadn't yet turned it on.
Stilled, the blades were tufted with dust. "I can see how that works, Barb, but you're forgetting one thing: your own argument from yesterday.
Why would the lover have killed Querashi and then moved the body? What might have been taken for an accident immediately became suspicious because of that. And because the Nissan was tossed."
"That bloody Nissan" was Barbara's response, an admission that Emily had just shot down her theory. But when she thought of the events of that past Friday night - a secret rendezvous, a fatal fall, a body out of place, a car tossed - she began to see another possibility. "Em, what if there's a third party involved?"
"A menage a trois? What d'you mean?"
"What if Querashi's supposed lover isn't his killer? D'you have the crime scene pictures?"
The DCI again rooted through the files and papers on the top of her desk. She found the file and set the photos of the body to one side. She laid out the pictures of the scene itself.
Barbara went to stand behind the DCI's chair, studying the photographs over her shoulder.
"Okay," Emily said. "Let's go with it. Let's see how it plays with the lover not Querashi's killer.
On Friday if Querashi's intention was to meet someone, then that person was either already at the Nez waiting for him when Querashi got there or on his way to the rendezvous. Agreed?"
"Agreed." Barbara continued with the scenario.
"So if that person either saw or heard Querashi take the fall or if he found him dead at the bottom of those steps - "
"Then he would have logically assumed it was an accident. He would have chosen two courses of action at that point: leaving the body there for someone else to find or reporting the accident himself."
"Right. If he wants to keep their liaison secret, he leaves the body. If he doesn't care who knows - "
"He reports it," Emily finished.
"But the entire picture changes if Querashi's lover actually saw something suspicious that night."
Slowly, Emily's head turned from the photographs until she was meeting Barbara's eyes.
She said, "If the lover saw . . . Christ, Barb. Whoever Querashi was going there to meet must have known it was murder when he fell."
"So Querashi's lover is out of sight, waiting.
He sees the killer string the tripwire, a shadow on the stairs moving about. He doesn't know what he's watching, but when Querashi takes the tumble, he figures it out directly.
He even sees the killer remove the wire afterwards."
"But he can't come forward because he can't let it be known that he's been having a fling,"
Emily went on.
"Because he's married," Barbara said.
"Or involved with someone else."
"In either case, he can't come forward, but he wants to do something to signal to the police that this is a murder and not an accident."
"So he moves the body," Emily finished. "And he tosses the car. Jesus Christ, Barb.
D'you know what this means?"
Barbara smiled. "We've got ourselves a flaming witness, Guv."
"And if the killer knows that," Emily added grimly, "we also have someone who could be in danger."
Yumn was standing at the window, changing the baby's nappie, when she heard the front door close and the sandaled footsteps head down the path towards the street. She looked out to see Sahlah pulling her amber dupatta over her thick hair as she hurried to her Micra, parked at the kerb. She was late for work again, but doubtless Akram's wondrous little precious would be forgiven this unfortunate lapse.
She'd spent half an hour in the bathroom with the water running into the tub to cover the sound of her morning retching. But no one really knew that, did they? They thought she was washing herself, an unusual