Deception on His Mind (12 page)

“What's the Asians’ main concern?”

“It depends on who you talk to. They're intent on exposing whatever they can: a cover-up, a spate of footdragging by the local coppers, a CID conspiracy, or the start of ethnic cleansing. Have your pick.”

Barbara sat on one of the two metal chairs. “Which comes close?”

The DCI shot her a look. “Brilliant, Barb. You sound just like them.”

“Sorry. I didn't mean to suggest—”

“Forget it. The whole bloody world's on my back. Why not you as well?” From a drawer, Emily took a small knife which she wielded against the banana, adding slices to the yoghurt, nuts, and fruit. “Here's the situation. I'm trying to keep the leaks to a minimum. Things are dicey as hell in the community, and if I'm not careful about who knows what and when, there's a loose cannon in town who'll start firing away.”

“Who is it?”

“A Muslim. Muhannad Malik.” Emily explained his relationship to the deceased man and described the importance of the Malik family—and hence Muhannad himself—in Balford-le-Nez. His father, Akram, had brought the family to the town eleven years before with the dream of starting their own business. Unlike many Asian newcomers who confined themselves to restaurants, markets, dry cleaners, or petrol stations, when Akram Malik dreamed, he dreamed big. He saw that in a depressed part of the country, he might not only be welcomed as a source of future employment but he might also make his mark. He'd started small, making mustard in the back room of a tiny bakery on Old Pier Street. He'd ended up with a complete factory in the north section of the town. There he manufactured everything from savoury jellies to vinaigrettes.

“Malik's Mustards and Assorted Accompaniments,” Emily finished. ‘Other Asians followed him here. Some of them relatives, others not. We've a growing community of them now. With all the interracial headaches.”

“Muhannad's one of them?”

“A migraine. I'm up to my neck in political bullshit because of that prick.” She reached for a peach and began to slice it, tucking wedges of fruit along the rim of the yoghurt bowl. Barbara watched her, considered her own healthless dinner, and managed to subdue her guilt.

Muhannad, Emily informed her, was a political activist in Balford-le-Nez, fiercely dedicated to equal rights and fair treatment for all of his people. He'd formed an organisation whose putative purpose was support, brotherhood, and solidarity among youthful Asians, but he was a real hot head when it came to anything remotely suggestive of a racial incident. Anyone who harassed an Asian found himself in short order going eyeball-to-eyeball with one or more relentless Nemeses whose identity victims were always conveniently unable to recall. “No one can mobilise the Asian community like Malik,” Emily said. “He's been dogging my heels since Querashi's body was found, and he'll be dogging them till I make an arrest. Between seeing to him and seeing to Ferguson, I've had to manufacture time to conduct the investigation.”

“That's rough,” Barbara said.

“What it is is a pisser.” Emily tossed the knife into the kitchen sink and carried her meal to the table.

“I had a talk with a local girl at the Breakwater,” Barbara said as Emily went to the fridge and brought out two cans of Heineken. She passed one to Barbara and popped the top on her own. She sat with natural and unconscious athleticism, lifting one leg over the seat of the chair rather than easing her way into it with studied feminine grace. “There's some talk that Querashi had a mishap with drugs. You know what I mean: ingested heroin prior to leaving Pakistan.”

Emily spooned up some of her yoghurt concoction. She rolled her beer can across her forehead, where the perspiration was glistening on her skin. She said, “We haven't yet got the final word from toxicology about Querashi. There may be a drug tie. With the harbours nearby, we've got to keep it in mind. But drugs didn't kill him, if that's what you're thinking.”

“D'you know what did?”

“Oh yeah. I know.”

“Then why're you playing your cards so close? I saw there's been no cause of death given, so it's still not clear if you've even got a murder. Is that where things still stand?”

Emily swallowed some beer and eyed Barbara carefully. “How much of a holiday are you on, Barb?”

“I can hold my tongue, if that's what you're asking.”

“What if I'm asking more?”

“D'you need my help?”

Emily had scooped up more yoghurt, but she set her spoon back in the bowl and meditated on it before answering slowly. “I may do.”

This was far better than greasing her way in, Barbara realised. She jumped at the opportunity the DCI was unknowingly offering. “Then you've got it. Why're you holding the press off? If it isn't drugs, is it sex related? Suicide? Accident? What's going on?”

“Murder,” she said.

“Ah. And when the word gets out, the Asians're going to hit the streets again.”

“The word is out. I told the Pakistanis this afternoon.”

“And?”

“And they'll be breathing, peeing, and sleeping for us from this moment onward.”

“Is it a racial killing, then?”

“We don't know yet.”

“But you do know how he died?”

“We knew that the moment we got a clear look at him. But it's something I'd like to keep from the Asians as long as I can.”

“Why? If they know it's a murder—”

“Because this kind of murder suggests the very thing they're claiming.”

“A racial incident?” And when Emily nodded, Barbara asked, “How? I mean, how could you tell by looking at the body that it's a racial killing? Were there marks on it? Swastikas or something?”

“No.”

“Some sort of National Front calling card left at the scene?”

“Not that either.”

“Then how can you conclude—”

“He was seriously bruised. And his neck was broken, Barb.”

“Whoa. Bloody hell.” Barbara's words were reverent. She recalled what she'd read. Querashi's body had been found inside a pillbox on the beach. This suggested a lying in wait and an ambush. Taken in conjunction with a beating, the death could indeed be interpreted as having been racially motivated. Because premeditated killings—unless they were preceded by the sort of tortures favoured by serial killers—were generally swift since the object was death. Additionally, a broken neck suggested another man as the killer. No average woman would have the strength even to begin to break a man's neck.

As Barbara considered these points, Emily went to the work top and fetched her canvas hold-all. At the table, she shoved her plate to the edge and pulled out three manila folders. She opened the first, placed it to one side, and opened the second. It contained a set of glossy photographs. She flipped through these for several she wanted and handed them to Barbara.

The photographs depicted the corpse as he appeared on the morning of his discovery in the pillbox. The first picture concentrated on his face, and Barbara saw that he was nearly as banged up as she herself was. His right cheek was especially contused, and a gash bisected one of his eyebrows. Two other photographs displayed his hands. Both were scored and abraded as if they'd been raised protectively.

Barbara thought about the implications behind the pictures. The right cheek's condition suggested a left-handed assailant. But the wound on the forehead was on the left, which itself suggested either ambidexterity on the part of the killer or an accomplice.

Emily handed her another photograph, saying, “Are you familiar with the Nez?”

“I haven't been there in years,” Barbara replied. “But I remember the cliffs. A caff of some sort. An old watch tower.” The additional picture was an aerial shot. It included the pillbox, the cliff looming above it, the columnar watch tower, the L-shaped café. A car park to the southwest of the café contained police vehicles that surrounded a hatchback. But it was what was missing from the picture that Barbara took note of, what otherwise might have loomed above the car park, washing it with illumination after dark. “Em,” she said, “are there any lights out there? On the Nez? On the cliff top? Are there lights?” She looked up and found Emily watching her, an eyebrow raised to acknowledge the direction in which she was heading. “Hell. There aren't, are there? And if there aren't any lights …?” Barbara went back to studying the picture and she directed her next question to it. “Then what the dickens was Haytham Querashi doing out on the Nez in the dark?”

She raised her head once more to see Emily saluting her with her Heineken. “That's certainly the question, Sergeant Havers,” she said, and upended the beer into her mouth.

H'LL I HELP YOU UP TO BED, MRS. SHAW? IT'S GONE
past ten, and the doctor said I was to mind that you got your rest.”

Mary Ellis's voice was pitched at precisely that diffident tone which made Agatha Shaw want to claw the girl's eyes out. She restrained herself, however, turning slowly from the three large easels that Theo had assembled for her in the library. On them were representations of Balford-le-Nez in the past, the present, and the future. She'd been studying them for the last thirty minutes, using them as a means of harnessing the rage she'd been feeling ever since her grandson had informed her of the means by which her carefully planned and specially called town council meeting had been derailed. So far it had been quite a fine evening of rage, with her anger escalating over dinner as Theo went through the council meeting and its aftermath for her step by step.

“Mary,” she said, “do I look as if I need to be treated like a poster girl for terminal senility?”

Mary considered the question with a concentration that puckered her spotty face. “Pardon?” she said, and she wiped her hands against the sides of her skirt. The skirt was cotton, a pale and hideously anaemic blue. Her palms left splodges of damp against it.

“I'm aware of the time,” Agatha clarified. “And when I'm ready to retire for the evening, I shall call for you.”

“But as it's gone near half ten, Mrs. Shaw …” Mary's voice drifted off, and the way her teeth pulled at the centre of her lower lip was supposed to convey the rest of her remark.

Agatha knew this. She hated being manipulated. She realised the girl wanted to be on her way—no doubt with the intention of allowing some equally spotty-faced hooligan access to her questionable charms—but the very fact that she wouldn't come out and say what was on her mind provoked Agatha into baiting her. It was the girl's own fault. She was nineteen years old, which was quite old enough to be able to say what she meant. At her age, Agatha had already been a Wren for a year and had lost the only man she'd ever loved in a bombing raid on Berlin. In those days, if a woman wasn't able to say what she meant, chances were very good that she wouldn't have the opportunity to say anything to anyone next time round. Because chances were excellent that there wouldn't be a next time round at all.

“Yes?” Agatha encouraged her pleasantly. “As it's gone near half past ten, Mary …?”

“I thought … don't you want … it's just that my hours's supposed to be just till nine. We agreed on that, you and me, right?”

Agatha waited for more. Mary squirmed, looking as if a centipede were crawling up her thigh.

“It's just that … As it's getting late …”

Agatha raised an eyebrow.

Mary looked defeated. “Give me call when you're ready, ma'm.”

Agatha smiled. “Thank you, Mary. I shall do so.”

She turned back to her contemplation of the easels as Mary Ellis took herself off into the bowels of the house. On the first easel Balford-le-Nez in the past was represented by seven neatly arranged photographs taken during its fifty-year heyday as a holiday hotspot between 1880 and 1930. Central to the pictures was a large depiction of Agatha's first love, the pleasure pier, and petalling out from this carpel were additional pictures of the locations that had once attracted visitors. Bathing machines lined the seafront at Princes Beach; parasol-shaded women strolled along a crowded High Street; waders gathered at the outer end of a longshore net being landed on the beach by a lobster boat. Here was the famous Pier End Hotel, and there the distinguished Edwardian terrace overlooking the Balford Promenade.