that opened into the industrial estate, and she watched the Renault roll to a stop at a prefabricated metal warehouse at the farthest end. Barbara would have given her signed edition of The Lusty Savage for a pair of binoculars at that moment. She was too far from the building to read its sign.
Unlike the other warehouses in the estate, this one was closed up and looked unoccupied.
But when Rudi rapped on the door, someone within admitted him.
S9
IBarbara watched from the Mini. She didn't know what she expected to see, and she was rewarded with seeing nothing. She sweated silently in the roasting car for a quarter of an hour that seemed like a century before Rudi emerged: no bags of heroin in his possession, no pockets bulging with counterfeit money, no video cassettes of children in compromising positions, no guns or explosives or even companions. He left the warehouse as he'd entered the warehouse, empty-handed and alone.
Barbara knew he'd see her if she remained on the edge of the industrial estate, so she pulled back onto the A120 with the intention of turning round and having a bit of recce among the warehouses once Rudi was gone. But as she looked for a suitable place to make a three-point turn, she saw a large stone building sitting back from the road on a horseshoe drive. THE CASTLE
HOTEL, its roadside sign announced in mediaeval lettering. She recalled the brochure that she'd found in Haytham Querashi's room. She turned into the hotel's car park, making the decision to kill another bird with the stones she'd been fortuitously given.
Professor Siddiqi wasn't at all what Emily Barlow had expected him to be. She'd anticipated someone dark and middle-aged, with black hair sweeping back from an intelligent forehead, kohl-coloured eyes, and tobacco skin. But the man who presented himself to her in the company of DC Hesketh, who'd fetched him from London, was very nearly blond, his eyes were decidedly grey, and his skin was fair enough for him to be mistaken for a northern European instead of an Asian. Looking to be in his early thirties, he was a compact man, not even her own height. He was toughly built, like an amateur wrestler.
He smiled as she quickly adjusted her expression from surprise to indifference. He offered his hand in greeting and said, "We don't all come out of the same mould, Inspector Barlow."
She didn't like to be read that easily, especially by someone she didn't know. She ignored the remark, saying brusquely instead, "Good of you to come. Would you like a drink or shall we get started with Mr. Kumhar straightaway?"
He asked for grapefruit juice, and as Belinda Warner took herself off to fetch it, Emily explained the situation into which the London professor had been brought. "I'll be tape-recording the entire interview," she said in conclusion. "My questions in English, your translations, Mr. Kumhar's answers, your translations."
Siddiqi was astute enough to make the proper inference. "You can rely upon my integrity," he said. "But as we've never met before now, I wouldn't expect you to depend upon it without a system of checks and balances."
The major ground rules laid and the minor ones implied, Emily took him to meet his fellow Asian.
Kumhar hadn't benefited from his night in custody.
If anything, he was more anxiety-ridden than on the previous afternoon. Worse, he was sodden with sweat and foul with the odour of faeces, as if he'd messed himself. fSiddiqi took one look at him and turned back to Emily. "Where's this man been kept? And what the hell have you been doing to him?"
Another ardent viewer of pro-I.R.A. films, Emily decided wearily. What Guildford and Birmingham had done to set back the cause of policework was inestimable. She said,
"He's been kept in a cell which you're more than welcome to inspect, Professor. And we've been doing nothing to him, unless serving him dinner and breakfast goes as torture these days. It's hot in the cells.
But no more so than the rest of the building or the whole bloody town. He'll tell you as much if you care to ask him."
"I'll do just that," Siddiqi said. And he fired off a series of questions to Kumhar that he didn't bother to translate.
For the first time since being brought into the station, Kumhar lost the look of a terrified rabbit.
He unclasped his hands and reached towards Siddiqi as if a life belt had been thrown him.
It was a gesture of supplication, and the