“We do,” DeVitt said. “What time?”
Since Sahlah had claimed not to know the exact time, Barbara speculated that if her story was accurate and if she had gone into work that day as an excuse to be out of the house alone, it would probably have been late in the afternoon, a possible detour she'd taken on her way home. “I'd say round five o'clock.”
Gerry shook his head. “We're out of here by half past four.” He turned to his men. “Any of you lot see this bird? Any of you still here after five?”
One man said, “You joking, mate?” and others laughed at the thought, it seemed, of hanging about any longer than necessary after a day's work. No one was able to corroborate Sahlah Malik's story.
“We would've noticed her if we were still here,” DeVitt said. He jerked his thumb at the other workers. “This lot? Let a good-looking bird come by and they're hanging by their knees trying to get her attention.” The men guffawed. DeVitt grinned at them and then said to Barbara, “This one you're speaking of: Is she a looker?”
She was very pretty, Barbara confirmed. She was the sort of woman that men looked at twice. And with the costume she was wearing—here on the seaside, where women dressed like Sahlah were rarely seen on their own—she would hardly have gone unnoticed.
“Must've been after we'd cleared out, then,” DeVitt said. “Anything else we can do for you?”
There was not. But Barbara handed the man one of her cards anyway, scrawling the name of the Burnt House Hotel on the back of it. If he remembered anything, if any of them remembered anything at all …
“Is this important information or something?” DeVitt asked curiously. “Does this have to do with—Since it's an Asian you're talking about, does this have to do with that bloke who died?”
She was just checking out some facts, Barbara said. That's all she could tell them at the moment. But if anything relating to that incident came to any of their minds …
“Doubt it will,” DeVitt said as he shoved the card into the back pocket of his jeans. “We steer clear of the Pakistanis. It keeps things simpler.”
“How's that?”
He shrugged. “They've got their ways and we've got ours. Mix the two and what you've got is trouble. Blokes like us”—and he indicated his workers with a wave of his arm—”don't have time for trouble. We work hard, have a pint or two afterwards, and then go home so we can work hard tomorrow.” He scooped up his headgear and his blow torch once again, saying, “If this bird you're asking about's an important part of things, you'd best have a word with the rest of the pier. One of them might've seen her pass by.”
She would do that, Barbara told them. She nodded her thanks and picked her way out of the building. Bust, she thought. But DeVitt was right. The attractions on the pier were open from morning until late at night. Unless Sahlah had swum or boated out to the end of the pier and climbed up to it in order to toss the bracelet dramatically into the sea from on high, she would have had to walk past all of them.
It was strictly plod work, the sort of questioning that Barbara had always loathed. But she began doggedly working her way from attraction to attraction, beginning with a teacup ride called the Waltzer and ending with a take-away snack stall. The land end of the pier was covered, a roof of Plexiglás arching over the arcade, the roundabout, and the kiddie rides. Here the noise was intense, and Barbara had to shout to make herself heard. But no one was able to confirm Sahlah's story, not even Rosalie the Romany Palm Reader, who sat on a three-legged stool in front of her den, dressed in swathes of colourful shawls, sweating, smoking, fanning herself with a paper plate, and watching every passerby for his potential to cross her palm with a five-pound note. If anyone had seen Sahlah Malik, Rosalie was the most likely candidate. But she hadn't seen her. She did, however, offer Barbara a reading: palm, tarot cards, or general aura. “You could do with a reading, luv,” she said sympathetically. “Believe you me. Rosalie can tell.”
Barbara begged off, saying that if the future was going to be as charming as the past, she'd much rather be in the dark about it.
She stopped at Jack Willies Wet Fish and Seafood, and bought a basket of deep fried whitebait, a snack she hadn't eaten in years. They were served with a suitable sheen of grease and a small pot of tartar sauce for dipping. Barbara took them back to the open-air section of the pier and lounged on one of the bright orange benches. She munched away and thought about the situation.
Since no one had been able to report seeing the Pakistani girl on the pier, there were three possibilities. The first had the most potential to muddy the waters: Sahlah Malik was lying. If this was the case, Barbara's next step was to ascertain why. The second possibility was the least plausible: Sahlah was telling the truth, even though not a single person on the pier remembered having seen the girl. Barbara had noted from her sojourn on the pier so far that the typical garb among visitors seemed to run heavily to black leather—despite the heat—and body rings. So unless Sahlah had come to the pier incognito—which was possibility number three—then what Barbara was left with was possibility number one: Sahlah was lying.
She finished her whitebait and wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. Leaning against the bench, she lifted her face to the sun and thought further, in another direction, back to F. Kumhar.
The only female Muslim name beginning with F that she could think of was Fatimah, although there had to be others. But assuming that the F. Kumhar to whom Querashi had written a cheque for £400 was a woman, and assuming that the cheque was somehow tied into Querashi's murder, what could one reasonably deduce the cheque had been written for? Certainly an abortion was a possibility: He'd been meeting someone illicitly; he was carrying condoms; he had more prophylactics in his bedside table. But what else was possible? A purchase of some sort, perhaps the lenā-denā gift that Sahlah was expecting to receive from him, a gift that he himself had not yet picked up. A loan of money to someone in need, a fellow Asian who could not turn to other members of her family for help. A down payment on an object to be delivered after Querashi's marriage: a bed, a sofa, a table, a fridge.
Even if F. Kumhar was a man, the possibilities weren't much different. What did people purchase? Barbara wondered. Naturally, they purchased concrete items like objects, property, food, and clothing. But they also purchased abstract items like loyalty, betrayal, and sedition. And they purchased the absence of items as well, by securing silence, temporising, or departure.
In any case, there was only one way to know what Querashi had purchased. She and Emily were going to have to track Kumhar down. Which reminded Barbara of the secondary purpose she'd had in coming to the Balford pier: tracking down Trevor Ruddock.
She blew out a breath and swallowed, tasting the lingering flavour of the whitebait and feeling the greasy deposit they'd left on the roof of her mouth. She realised that she should have bought a drink with which to wash the lard-laden mess down her gullet, preferably something scalding hot that would have thoroughly melted it and sent it on its havoc-wreaking way through her digestive system. In a half hour, she'd doubtless begin paying the price for her impulsive purchase at Jack Willies Wet Fish and Seafood. Perhaps a Coke would appease her stomach, which was already beginning to grumble in an ominous fashion.
She rose, watching the flight of two gulls who soared above her and alighted on the roof that covered the land end of the pier. She noted for the first time a set of windows and an upper storey above the arcade. They appeared to be for offices. They were one last place for her to seek someone who had witnessed an Asian girl walking on the pier and the first place she needed to head to seek Trevor Ruddock before someone on the pier put the word out to him that a tubby detective was on his tail.
The stairs to the upper storey were inside the arcade, tucked between Rosalie's palm reading establishment and a hologram exhibition. They led up to a single door upon which a black sign was printed with the single word MANAGEMENT.
Inside, a corridor was lined with windows, which were open to catch w
hatever faint breeze might finally stir the torrid air. Offices opened off this passage, and from them emanated the sounds of telephones ringing, conversations developing, office machinery running, and fans oscillating. Someone had designed the office space well, because the horrific noise of the arcade directly below was almost entirely muffled.
Barbara could see, however, how unlikely it would be that anyone up here might have observed Sahlah Malik on the pier. Glancing into one of the offices to her right, she noted that its windows offered a view of the sea, south Balford, and the colourful tiers of beach huts on the shore. Unless someone had happened along the corridor at the precise moment that Sahlah had been walking past the Red Baron airplane ride below, the only hope of her having been observed came from the office at the far end, the windows of which seemed to overlook both the pier immediately below it and the sea to its side.
“May I help you with something?” Barbara turned to see a toothy girl at the door of the first office. “Are you looking for someone? These are the management offices.”
When she spoke, Barbara saw that she'd had the centre of her tongue pierced and she wore a glittering stud in the hole. The sight gave Barbara the shivers—which were rather gratifying, considering the heat—and she sent a thankful prayer heavenward that she'd grown to adulthood at a period of time when harpooning one's body parts hadn't been in vogue.
Barbara presented her identification and ran Tongue-stud through the routine by rote. But the answer was as Barbara had expected. Tongue-stud had seen no one like Sahlah Malik on the pier. Never had done, in fact. An Asian girl alone? she repeated. Lord, she couldn't recall ever having seen an Asian girl alone. Leastways, not done up like the detective was describing.
But done up another way? Barbara wanted to know.
Tongue-stud played her teeth against her tongue's decoration, tap-tapping it thoughtfully. Barbara's stomach curdled.
No, she said. Which wasn't to say that some Asian girl hadn't been on the pier dressed like a normal person, mind. It's just that if she had been dressed like a normal person, well … she wouldn't have been very noticeable, would she?
That, naturally, was the rub.
Barbara asked who occupied the office at the end of the corridor. Tongue-stud told her that was Mr. Shaw's office. Of Shaw Attractions, she added meaningfully. Did the detective sergeant wish to see him?
Why not? Barbara thought. If he couldn't add anything to what she'd already learned about Sahlah Malik's alleged visit to the pier—which was sod bloody all—then as the pier's owner, at least he'd be able to tell her where to find Trevor Ruddock.
“I'll just check, then,” Tongue-stud said. She went to the far door and stuck her head inside. “Theo? The fuzz. Wanting a word.”
Barbara couldn't hear a reply, but in a moment a man came to the doorway of the office. He was younger than Barbara—somewhere in his middle twenties—wearing fashionable, loose-fitting linen clothes. His fists were sunk into his pockets casually, but his expression was one of concern.
“There isn't trouble again, is there?” He directed a glance out of the windows, towards the amusements below. “Is something out of order?”
He didn't mean with the equipment, she knew. He meant with his customers. A businessman in his position would know the value of a trouble-free environment. And when the police came calling, there was usually trouble in the air.
“Can I have a word?” she asked.
“Thanks, Dominique,” Theo said to Tongue-stud.
Dominique? Barbara thought. She'd expected a name like Slam or Punch.
Dominique took herself off to the office nearest the stairs. Barbara followed Theo Shaw into his. She saw at once that his windows gave him the view she'd suspected he'd have: overlooking the sea on one side, overlooking the pier at the office's far end. So if anyone at all had seen Sahlah Malik, Barbara knew she was down to her last possibility.
She turned to him, the question on her lips. It died in place.
He'd removed his hands from his pockets while she was taking in the view. And thus removed, they presented her with the object she'd been seeking all along.
Theo Shaw was wearing an Aloysius Kennedy golden bracelet.
HEN SHE'D FIRST MADE HER ESCAPE FROM THE jewellery shop, Rachel had only one destination in mind. She knew that she had to do something to mitigate the uneasy situation in which her actions had placed Sahlah, not to mention herself. The problem was that she wasn't sure what that something might be. She knew only that she had to act at once. So she'd begun pedalling her bicycle furiously in the direction of the mustard factory. But when she'd realised the factory was the most logical next place for the detective sergeant to head, she decreased her speed, coasting until the bike glided to a stop on the seafront.
Her face was dripping. She blew a breath upward to cool her steamy forehead. Her throat was parched, and she wished she'd thought to bring a bottle of water with her. But she'd thought of nothing, really, other than the desperate need to get to Sahlah.
By the seafront, however, Rachel had realised that she couldn't possibly outrace the police. And if the detective went to Sahlah's house first, matters could even turn out worse. Sahlah's mum or that slimy Yumn would tell the detective the truth—that Sahlah had gone to work with her father (despite the untimely death of her intended, which is what Yumn would no doubt add)—so the sergeant would take herself off to the mustard factory next. And if she showed up while Rachel was there, trying to rationalise what Sahlah would surely believe was an unforgivable betrayal—not to mention trying to warn her friend of an impending police visit that would be rife with questions to take her by surprise … How would it look? It would look like someone was bloody well guilty of something, all right. And while it was true that Rachel was guilty, she wasn't guilty of the Big Thing. She hadn't harmed Haytham Querashi at all. Only … Well, perhaps that wasn't quite true when one thought about it, was it?
She'd lifted her bicycle onto the pavement and rolled it to the seawall. She'd leaned it against the barrier and sat for a good quarter of an hour, feeling the sun's heat rise from the concrete like blistering bubbles against her bum. She wasn't ready to go back to the shop and face her mother's probing questions. She couldn't get to Sahlah before the police. So she'd realised that she had to come up with a place to go until the coast was clear, allowing her to bike back to the mustard factory and have a word with her friend.
Which is how she finally ended up where she was at the moment: at the Cliff top Snuggeries. It had been the only place she could think of.
She'd had to retrace her route to get here, bypassing the High Street and Racon Original and Artistic Jewellery by pedalling along the Marine Parade instead. This was a rougher go because she had to wend her way up the steep acclivity of the shoreline's Upper Parade, an activity that was sheer torture in the heat, but she had no real choice in the matter. Trying to get to the Snuggeries via Church Road's gentler slope would have meant pedalling up the High Street, directly in front of Racon Jewellery. One glimpse of Rachel darting by on her bike and Connie would have been out of the shop in a fury, screeching like the victim of a shotgun hold-up.
As a result, Rachel had arrived at the Snuggeries in a virtual lather. She'd dropped her bicycle next to a dusty bed of begonias, and she'd staggered round to the back of the flats. Here there was a garden comprising a strip of sunbrowned lawn, three narrow flower beds planted with drooping cornflowers, tickseed, and daisies, two stone birdbaths, and a wooden bench. Rachel sank onto this. It faced not the sea but the flats themselves, and they looked at her in a silent reproach that she could barely tolerate. They displayed what she'd loved best about them: the balconies above and the terraces below, both of which looked out not only on the garden but on the winding path of Southcliff Promenade, which curved above the sea.
We're lost to you, lost to you, the Clifftop Snuggeries seemed to be saying. Your well-laid plans went awry, Rachel Winfield, and where are you now?
Rachel turne
d from the sight of them, her throat tight and sore. She rubbed the back of her arm against her forehead and wished for a Twister, imagining how soothing the lemon and lime ice cream would have felt as it slid down her throat. She pivoted on the bench and looked out at the sea. The sun blazed above without a hint of pity, while far out on the horizon, the thin bank of fog lay as it had for days.
Rachel balanced her chin on her fist, her fist on the back of the bench. Her eyes stung as if a fierce salty wind were blowing, and she blinked hard and fast to make the tears disappear. She wished herself anywhere but where she was, facing the lonely place that anger, resentment, and jealousy had taken her.
What did it really mean to pledge yourself to another person? At one time she would have been able to answer the question with ease. Pledging yourself meant extending your hand and holding within it another's heart, the secrets of her soul, and the dearest of her dreams. It meant offering safety, a haven where anything was possible and everything between two kindred souls was perfectly understood. Pledging yourself meant saying “We're equals” and “Whatever trouble comes, we'll face it together.” That's what she'd thought about pledging at one time. How artless her promise of loyalty had been.
But they had begun as equals, she and Sahlah, two schoolgirls who were last chosen for teams, who weren't allowed, invited—or who just didn't dare—to attend their schoolmates’ parties or dances, whose coyly decorated valentine shoeboxes at the back of their classroom in junior school would have gone empty had each of them not remembered the other and what it felt like to be out in the cold. She and Sahlah had indeed begun as equals. It's where they finished that off-balanced the scales.
Rachel swallowed against the tight soreness in her throat. She hadn't meant harm to anyone, really. She'd only meant the truth to come out. It was all for the best when people learned the truth. Wasn't it better than living a lie?
But Rachel knew that the real lie was the one she was telling herself right now. And the evidence of this was right behind her, played out in brick with ruched curtains at the windows and a red FOR SALE sticker pasted across its door.