Night Work

night.”

Mehta came to a halt and turned to Hawkin, affronted. “You would question me?” His lilting accent was stronger now, such was his perturbation.

“We are questioning everyone, sir. Now—”

“My wife? You would question her?”

“Yes, when we’re fin—”

“And the children, perhaps? Will you question my son Indrapal who is not yet two years old concerning the foul murder of his uncle? Why are you not out there searching for these female animals who are killing the men of our city? Why do you come and torment the suffering family? This is intolerable!”

“Sir,” Hawkin said sharply. “Each death must be treated individually. Even if your brother’s murder is related to someone else’s, it is distinct. You’re a sensible man, Mr. Mehta. Surely you can see that we have to begin at the beginning, to trace your brother’s last movements, and to do that we have to question the people who were closest to him. Do you have any objections to that?”

Abruptly, Mehta subsided. “No,” he said, and retreated to his chair behind the desk. “No, of course I don’t. I’m just… It is all most upsetting. I was fond of my little brother. He was not an easy person, but I did my best to love him and care for him. And now this. Achcha,” he said, and then drew himself together. “You wish to know where we were last night. I worked in this study until eleven o’clock. My wife worked in the kitchen with the servant, Lali, and then Lali left and Rani put the children to bed at nine o’clock. She was asleep by the time I went up, and I was asleep myself twenty minutes later. I did not see Laxman all evening, although his lights were on. They usually are.”

“Do you know why your brother was in the Castro district last night? Was he meeting a friend, perhaps?”

“My brother had no friends. He had his family, and until a week ago he had his wife.”

“I understand that he and his wife were very close.”

“He worshiped her,” Mehta declared fiercely, although Kate thought that was not exactly the same thing.

“Do you think your brother killed his wife?” Al asked bluntly. Too bluntly, because Mehta turned his swivel chair around to look out the window at the slowing rain.

“I don’t want to think that, no,” he said after a while.

“But you think it possible?”

Mehta did not answer. Hawkin left it for the moment.

“When did you last see your brother?”

“In the afternoon, I went up to his rooms to see if I could persuade him to come down and eat dinner with the family. He had not done so since the girl died.”

“You mean he stayed up in his rooms all the time?”

“During the day.”

“But at night… ?”

Mehta gave a deep sigh. “I do not know, but I think he went out at night. My wife thought she heard him come in early one morning, and two days ago I found the front door unlatched when I went out for the newspaper.”

“Where would he go?”

“My God, who would know? He had no friends, he didn’t drive. Where is there to walk to here?”

Kate could have listed half a dozen late-night hot spots less than half an hour from the house by foot, including Dimitri’s leather bar, but neither she nor Al chose to enlighten the man. Instead, Hawkin asked him, “Did your brother have his own phone line?”

“No, just an extension of the family line.”

“Would you have heard an incoming phone call during the night?”

“Of course.”

“In that case, I’ll need to see a printout of the calls made on your number since your sister-in-law died.” It would save another round of search warrant forms if Mehta were willing to provide the records—but he was already nodding in agreement.

“I’ll ask the phone company for one.”

“What about phone calls this last week, Mr. Mehta? Any threatening calls, hang-ups, wrong numbers at strange hours?”

Mehta nodded vigorously. “Two. We had two after Pramilla died.” He was using her name now, Kate noted. “Women, both of them. I hung up on them. And told my wife and children not to answer the phone, to let the answering machine take it. There have been a lot of hang-ups on the recorder.”

The two detectives were silent for a minute, wondering if they ought to have known, if they should have put a tracer on the line as soon as they had a man fitting their profile of victim. Could they have foreseen the threat to Laxman Mehta, and prevented his death? Or would they have had to be psychic to guess?

“Your brother’s income, Mr. Mehta,” Al asked. “Did he have his own bank account, charge cards, ATM card, that sort of thing?”

“As I told your colleague, Laxman was mildly retarded. He could handle simple cash transactions—he was actually pretty good with numbers—but the concept of money was beyond him. I handled all money matters for him, gave him a cash allowance to spend at the market. He enjoyed shopping for clothes, and for knickknacks at the tourist shops. Anything bigger, I went with him to purchase.”

Something in the phrase “handled all money matters” snagged at Kate’s attention, and she thought she ought to clarify this. “Do you mean that Laxman had money of his own? Or was he dependent on you?”

“Of course he was dependent on me,” Mehta said impatiently. “You met him, you saw the problem.”

“Financially, I mean, Mr. Mehta. Did your brother have any money of his own?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. Our father wished to be fair, so he left a small portion of his estate in trust for Laxman.”

“How does that work, to have money in trust?” she asked innocently, to see how he would respond.

Mehta picked up a gold pen from his desk and fiddled with it, put it down and picked up a small bronze figurine. “The money is there, in an account and stocks, and the income goes into another account that is jointly in my name with that of Laxman. Theoretically, he could have drawn from it, although he could not have touched the capital.”

“And you were the, what do they call it, executor?” Al stepped in to resume the questions. Kate had no doubt that her partner knew perfectly well what the word was.

“I was. Am, since I am also the executor for Laxman’s estate.”

“And now that he is dead, who inherits?”

“Inspector, I really don’t know why—”

“Just answer the question please, Mr. Mehta.”

“My brother was killed by… by terrorists, and you sit here questioning me about my financial affairs?” Mehta spluttered indignantly.

“We can find out easily enough, Mr. Mehta.”

“My children,” he told them furiously. “My four children will inherit their uncle’s estate. Mani’s nephews and nieces.”

“Although it will, I assume, be in trust for them until they reach the age of twenty-one? Isn’t that how such things usually work?”

“It is.” The terse response showed that Mehta well understood the implications a suspicious detective might place on the transfer of money, but there was no hesitation in his answers. “At the time my eldest reaches twenty-one it will be legally presumed that my wife and I are having no more children, and Mani’s estate will then be divided equally between however many there are.”

“Until then, you are in charge of your brother’s estate?”

“Yes.”

“And how much money is actually involved?”

Mehta’s eyes came up to meet Hawkin’s. “In the vicinity of a million dollars. Depending on the state of the stock market, you understand.”