Rachel knew that there was no point to informing Connie that rearranging her hair would do little to improve her overall appearance. Her mother had gone twenty years pretending that there was nothing wrong with Rachel's face. She wasn't likely to change her tune now.
“Mum …”
“Connie,” her mother corrected her. She'd decided upon Rachel's twentieth birthday that she couldn't abide being the mother of a budding adult. “We look more like sisters anyway,” she'd said when she'd first informed Rachel that they were to be Connie and Rache from that moment forward.
“Connie,” Rachel said.
Connie smiled and patted her cheek. “Better,” she said. “But put some colour on, Rache. You've got perfect cheekbones. Women die for cheekbones like you've got. Why'n't you use them, for God's sake?”
Rachel trailed Connie into the kitchen. She was squatting before the tiny refrigerator. She brought out a Coke and an oversize rubber band that she kept inside a plastic bag. The rubber band—five inches wide and two feet long—she slapped onto the kitchen table. The Coke she poured into a glass, adding two sugar cubes as she always did and watching the bubbles rise from them in a froth. She carried this drink to the table as well and kicked off her shoes. She unzipped her dress, stepped out of it, stepped out of her petticoats, and sat on the floor in her underwear. She had the body of a woman half her forty-two years, and she liked to show it off if there was the slightest indication of a compliment—fulsome or otherwise, Connie wasn't picky—being tossed her way.
Rachel did her duty. “Most women'd kill to have a stomach that flat.”
Connie reached for her rubber band and hooked it round her feet. She began alternately doing sit-ups and pulling the band—made more resistant by its time in the fridge—high above her head. “Well, it's all about exercise, isn't it, Rache? And eating right. And thinking young. How're my thighs? Not going dimply, are they?” She paused to lift a leg in the air, toe pointed heavenward. She ran her hands from her ankles to her garters.
“They're fine,” Rachel said. “In fact, they're perfect.”
Connie looked pleased. Rachel sat at the table as her mother continued to exercise.
Connie puffed. “Isn't this heat the worst? I s'pose that's why you're up so late. Couldn't sleep? I'm not surprised. It's a wonder to me you ever sleep, all done up like a Victorian granny. Sleep in the nude, girl. Liberate yourself.”
“It's not the heat,” Rachel said.
“No? Then what? Some laddie got your knickers all in a twist?” She began her leg splits, grunting slightly. Her long-nailed fingers kept count of the repetitions, tapping against the linoleum floor. “You're not putting out without protection, are you, Rache? I told you how you got to insist that the bloke wears a rubber. If he won't wear a rubber when you tell him to wear a rubber, then you give him the shove. When I was your age—”
“Mum,” Rachel cut in. It was ridiculous to talk about insisting on rubbers. Who did her mother think she was, anyway? The reincarnation of Connie herself? Connie had had to drive men off with a cricket bat from her fourteenth birthday, to hear her tell it. And nothing was dearer to her heart than the idea of having a daughter who was faced with the same “inconvenience.”
“Connie,” Connie corrected her.
“Yeah. I meant Connie.”
“I'm sure you did, love-boodle.” Connie winked, changed her position to lie on her side, and began sideways lifts with her arms thrown over her head. One thing about Connie that Rachel admired was her single-minded dedication to an objective. It didn't really matter what the moment's objective was. Connie gave herself to it like a young girl becoming the bride of Christ: She was the picture of complete devotion. This was a fine attribute in competitive dancing, in exercising, even in business. At the moment, however, it was also an attribute that Rachel could have done without. She needed her mother's undivided attention. She screwed up her courage in order to request it.
“Connie, c'n I ask you something? Something personal? Something about your insides?”
“My insides?” On the floor, Connie raised an eyebrow. A drop of perspiration trickled from it, glittering like a liquid jewel in the kitchen light. “You wanting to know the facts of life?” She puffed and chortled, leg lifting and falling. Her cleavage was beginning to slick with sweat. “Bit late for that, i'n't it? Didn't I see you going between the beach huts with some bloke more ’n once at night?”
“Mum!”
“Connie.”
“Right. Connie.”
“Didn't know I knew about that, did you, Rache? Who was he, anyway? Did he do bad by you?” She sat, draped the band round her shoulders, began to pull it forward and release it, working on her arms. The patch of damp she'd left on the lino looked vaguely the shape of an upended pear. “Men, Rache: You got to forget about trying to read their minds or control their doings. If you both want the same thing, then go ahead and have yourselfs some fun. If one of you doesn't, forget the whole thing. And always keep fun just that, Rache: fun. And use protection because you don't want any little surprises after the fact, with legs or without them. The surprises, that is. That's how I've lived and it's served me fine.” She watched Rachel brightly, as if waiting for the next probing question or a girlish admission prompted by her own womanly candour.
“It's not about insides like that,” Rachel said. “It's about your real insides. Your soul and your conscience.”
Connie's expression wasn't encouraging. She looked utterly baffled. “You getting religion?” she asked. “Did you talk to those Hare Krishnas last week? Don't look so innocent. You know the ones I mean. They were dancing round by Princes Breakwater, beating on their tambourines. You must've ridden by on your bike. Don't tell me you didn't.” She went back to her arm pulls.
“It's not about religion. It's about right and wrong. That's what I want to ask you about.”
Clearly, these were deeper waters. Connie dropped the rubber band and pulled herself to her feet. She took a large gulp of Coke and reached for a packet of Dunhills that lay in a plastic basket in the centre of the table. She eyed her daughter warily as she lit up and inhaled, holding the smoke in her lungs for a moment before exhaling a stream of it in Rachel's direction. “What've you been up to, Rachel Lynn?” She'd become all mother in an instant.
Rachel was actually grateful for the change. She felt buoyed momentarily as she had been in childhood at those moments when Connie's maternal instincts battled their way past her natural indifference to the calls of motherhood.
“Nothing,” Rachel said. “It's not about doing right or wrong. At least not really.”
“Then what?”
Rachel hesitated. Now that she had her mother's attention, she wondered how it was going to serve her. She couldn't tell her everything—she couldn't tell anyone everything—but she needed to tell someone just enough so that the someone might give her advice. “Suppose,” Rachel said delicately, “suppose something bad happened to a person.”
‘Okay. I'm supposing.” Connie smoked, looking as thoughtful as one could hope to look in a black strapless bra, matching knickers cut high on the thigh, and a lace suspender belt.
“This is a seriously bad thing that happened. And suppose you know something that might help people understand why this bad thing happened in the first place.”
“Understand why?” Connie said. “Why does anyone need to understand why? Bad things happen to people all the time.”
“But this is a real bad thing. This is the worst.”
Connie inhaled again, eyes on her daughter speculatively. “The worst, eh? Now, what could that be? House burnt down? Winning lottery ticket got tossed in the rubbish? Wife ran off with Ringo Starr?”
“I'm being serious,” Rachel said.
Connie must have seen the anxiety in her daughter's face, because she pulled out a chair and lowered herself into it, joining Rachel at the table. “Okay,” she said. “Something bad happened to someone. And you know why. Is that right? Yes?
So what's this something, then?”
“Death.”
Connie's cheeks puffed out. She took up her cigarette and drew on it deeply. “Death, Rachel Lynn. What're you on about?”
“Someone died. And I—”
“You mixed up in something nasty?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Mum, I'm trying to explain. I mean, I'm trying to ask you—”
“What?”
“For help. For advice. I need to know if when a person knows something about a death, that person should tell the whole truth no matter what. If what a person knows may not have anything at all to do with that death, then should that person hold back on telling what she knows if she's asked what she knows in the first place. Because I know that the person doesn't need to say anything if no one asks her. But on the chance that she is asked, should she say something if she isn't sure it could be of help?”
Connie looked at her as if she'd just sprouted wings. Then her eyes narrowed. Despite Rachel's rambling presentation, when Connie next spoke, it was clear that she'd made some sophisticated leaps of comprehension. “Is this a sudden death we're talking of, Rache? Is this death unexpected?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“Is it unexplained?”
“I s'pose so. Yeah.”
“Is it recent?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it local?”
Rachel nodded.
“Then is it …” Connie stowed her cigarette between her lips and rooted in a stack of newspapers, magazines, and post that lay beneath the plastic basket from which she'd taken her cigarettes. She looked at the front page of one Tendring Standard, discarded it in favour of another, discarded that in favour of a third. “This?” She tossed the paper in front of Rachel. It was the one reporting the death on the Nez. “D'you know something about this, my girl?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Come on, Rache. I've not gone blind. I know you're thick with the coloureds.”
“Don't say that.”
“Why? You never made a secret that you and Sally Malik—”
“Sahlah. Not Sally. And I didn't mean don't say I'm thick with them. I meant don't call them coloured. It's ignorant.”
“Well, pardon me.” Connie tapped her cigarette against an ashtray. This was shaped like a high-heeled shoe, with the heel a resting spot for the fag. Connie didn't use this, since to use it meant to forego a few lungfuls of smoke, which was something she was clearly loath to do at the moment. She said, “You best tell me direct what's got your knickers knotted, girl, because I'm not up to playing mind games tonight. Do you know something about this bloke's death?”
“No. Not exactly, that is.”
“So you know something unexactly. That it? You know this bloke personal?” The question, once asked, seemed to push a button of some sort, because Connie's eyes widened and she stubbed out her cigarette so quickly that she upended the ashtray onto the table. “Is this the bloke you were going between the beach huts with? God Almighty, were you letting some coloured man do you? Where's your sense, Rachel? Where's your decency? Where's your value of yourself? D'you think a coloured man would ever give two figs if he put you in the club? Not bloody likely. And if he gave you one of those coloured diseases? What then, girl? And what about some virus? What's it called? Enola? Oncola?”
Ebola, Rachel corrected her silently. And it had nothing to do with getting poked by a man—white, brown, black, or purple—between the beach huts in Balford-le-Nez. “Mum,” she said patiently.
“Connie to you. ConnieConnieConnie!”
“Yes. Right. No one's poking me, Connie. D'you actually think that anyone—no matter his colour—would want to poke me?”
“And whyever not?” Connie demanded. “What's wrong with you? With a beautiful body and fabulous cheekbones and wonderful legs, why wouldn't some bloke want to have his way with Rachel Lynn Winfield every night of the week?”
Rachel could see the desperation in her mother's eyes. She knew it would be pointless—worse, it would be unnecessarily cruel—to wring an admission of the truth from Connie. She was, after all, the person who had given birth to the baby without a proper face. That would probably be as difficult a reality to live with as it was to live with the face itself. She said, “You're right, Connie,” and felt a quiet despair settle over her, like a net whose webbing was composed of sorrows. “But this bloke on the Nez? I didn't do it with him.”
“But it's his death you know something about.”
“Not exactly his death. But something related. And I wanted to know should I say something if someone asks me.”
“What kind of someone?”
“Maybe a police kind of someone.”
“Police?” Connie managed to say the word with barely a movement of her lips. Beneath the fuchsia blusher she wore, her skin had gone quite pale so that the streaks of make-up on her cheeks stood out like sodden rose petals. She didn't look at Rachel again as she spoke. “We're business women, Rachel Lynn Winfield. We're business women first and we're business women last. What we got—no matter how little it is—depends on the good will of this town. And not just the tourists’ good will, mind you, coming here in the summer, but everyone else's good will as well. You got that?”
“Sure. I know.”
“So you get a name as someone who opens her gob too easy and spills what she knows to every Tom, Dick, and Harry coming in off the street, and the only people who lose out are us: Connie and Rache. People shy away from us. They stop coming into the shop. They take their business over to Clacton, and it's no inconvenience for them to do that because they'd rather go somewhere they feel comfortable, where they can say, ‘I need something pretty for a very special lady’ and they can wink when they say it and know that wink isn't going to get back to their wives. Am I being clear on this, Rache? We got a business to run. And business comes first. Always.”
That said, she took up her Coke once again, and this time when she took a gulp, she pulled a copy of Woman's Own from the pile of bills, catalogues, and newspapers on the table. She opened it and began to study the table of contents. Their conversation was at a close.
Rachel watched her running her long red fingernail down the list of articles contained in the magazine. She watched as Connie flipped to one entitled “Seven Ways to Know if He's Cheating.” The title made Rachel shiver despite the heat, so accurately did it hit the very nail on the very head. She needed an article called “What to Do When You Know,” but she had her answer, really. Do nothing and wait. Which is what, she realised, everyone should do when it came to betrayals petty or otherwise. Acting upon a knowledge of them led nowhere else but to disaster. The past few days in Balford-le-Nez had proved that to Rachel Winfield beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“FOR AN INDEFINITE stay?” The proprietor of the Burnt House Hotel fairly salivated over the words. As it was, he rubbed his hands together as if he were already massaging the money Barbara would have to part with at the end of her stay. He had introduced himself as Basil Treves and had added the information that he was a retired lieutenant in the army—in “Her Majesty's Armed Forces,” as he termed it—once he read upon her registration card that her place of employment was New Scotland Yard. This apparently made them compatriots of some sort.
Barbara supposed it was the idea of having to wear uniforms both in the army and for the Met. She herself hadn't worn a uniform in years, but she didn't share this bit of personal trivia. She needed Basil Treves on her side, and anything that served to put him there and keep him there was well worth preserving. Besides, she appreciated the fact that he'd tactfully made no mention of the condition of her face. She'd removed the remaining bandages in the car after leaving Emily, but her skin from eyes to lips was still a panorama of yellow, purple, and blue.
Treves led her up one flight of stairs and down a dim corridor. Nowhere was there much to indicate to Barbara that the Burnt House Hotel was a banner of delights just wait
ing to unfurl for her pleasure. A relic of long-ago Edwardian summers, it boasted faded carpets over creaking floor boards above which hung water-stained ceilings. It was possessed of a general atmosphere of genteel decay.
Treves seemed oblivious of all this, however. He chatted incessantly the entire way to Barbara's room, smoothing his sparse and oily hair up from a parting just above his left ear and across the gleaming dome of his skull. She would find the Burnt House had every possible convenience, he confided: a colour television in every room with a remote control device and another large-screen telly in the residents’ lounge should she decide to be sociable of an evening; tea-making facilities next to one's bed for a morning cuppa; bathrooms in nearly every room and additional toilets and baths on each floor; telephones with a direct line into the world upon the touch of a nine; and that most mystical, blessed, and cherished of mod cons—a fax machine in reception. He called it a facsimile sender, as if he and the machine were still on formal terms with each other, and he went on to add, “But you won't be wanting that, I dare say. Here for a holiday, are you, Miss Havers?”
“Sergeant Havers,” Barbara corrected him, and added “Detective Sergeant Havers.” There was no better time than the present, she decided, to position Basil Treves where she needed him. Something about the man's sharp little eyes and expectant posture told her he would be only too happy to assist the police with information if given a chance. The framed newspaper photo of himself in reception—celebrating his election to the town council—told her that he was the sort of man who didn't come by personal glory often or easily. So when the opportunity arose to garner a bit, he doubtless would be the first to jump at it. And what better glory than to be an unofficial part of a murder investigation? He might prove to be quite useful, and with only a little effort on her part. “I'm here on business, actually,” she told him, allowing herself a slight taffy-pull with the truth. “CID business, to be more precise.”