Especially Akram, Agatha thought. That bloody, nasty, miserable Akram. He spun a treacly line about friendship and brotherhood. He even acted the part of community conciliator with his ludicrous Gentlemen's Cooperative. But the talk and the actions didn't fool Agatha. They were subterfuges. They were ways to lull the sheeplike populace into a sense that the meadow was clear and safe for their grazing and not scrutinised every second by a pack of wolves.
But she would show him that she was wise to his ways. She would rise from this hospital bed like Lazarus, every inch of her an indomitable force that Akram Malik—with all his plans—could not hope to conquer.
Agatha realised that Sister Jacobs had gone. The odour of spice had dissipated, leaving in its place the scent of medicines, of plastic tubing, of her body's secretions, of the polish on the floor.
She opened her eyes. Her mattress was raised so that she lay at a modest angle rather than flat on her back. This was a marked improvement over the hours immediately following her stroke. Then, she'd had nothing but blurry acoustic ceiling tiles to watch. Now, at least, despite the fact that the sound had been muted and Sister Jacobs had forgotten to increase it upon her departure, she at least had the television to watch. A film was showing in which a frantic far-too-pretty-to-be-believable husband wheeled his hugely but still attractively pregnant even-prettier wife into a casualty ward for the delivery of their child. It was supposed to be a comedy, Agatha guessed, from their slapstick behaviour and the expressions on their faces. What a risible thought that was indeed. No woman she knew had ever found the act of childbirth a laughing matter.
With an effort, she managed to turn her head an inch, which was enough for her to see the window. Through it, a patch of sky the washed-out colour of a kestrel's tail told her that the heat was continuing unabated. She couldn't feel the effects of the outside temperature, however, as the hospital was one of the few buildings within twenty miles of Balford that was actually air conditioned. She would have celebrated that fact …had she only been at the hospital to visit someone, someone deserving of disaster, for instance. Indeed, she could have named twenty people more deserving of this disaster than she. She thought about this point. She began to name those twenty people. She entertained herself by assigning each one of them his own personal, private torment.
So she was unaware at first that someone had entered her room. A gentle cough told her that she had a visitor.
A quiet voice said, “No, do not move, Mrs. Shaw. Let me, please.” Footsteps came round the bed, and suddenly she was face-to-face with her soul's black adversary: Akram Malik.
She made an inarticulate noise, which was meant to be “What do you want? Get out. Get out. I'll have none of your oleaginous gloating,” but which—strangled by the convoluted messages her damaged brain was sending to her vocal cords—came out only as a garbled mishmosh of incomprehensible groans and howls.
Akram gazed at her intently. Doubtless, she thought, he was taking inventory of her condition, trying to assess how far he might have to push her so that she'd topple into her grave. That would clear the way for him to actuate his insidious plans for Balford-le-Nez. She said, “I'm not about to die, Mr. Wog. So wipe that hypocritical look of sympathy off your face. You have about as much sympathy for me as I'd have for you in similar circumstances.” But what she emitted from her mouth was the rising and falling of sounds alone, with nothing to separate them or give them definition.
Akram looked round the room and walked out of her line of sight for a moment. Panic-stricken, she thought he intended to switch off the machines that whirred and softly beeped just behind her head. But he returned with a chair, and he sat.
He was carrying, she saw, a bunch of flowers. He laid these on the table next to the bed. He removed from his pocket a small leather book. He set it upon his knee but didn't open it. He lowered his head and began to murmur a stream of words in his Pakistani mumbo-jumbo.
Where was Theo? Agatha thought desperately. Why wasn't he here to spare her from this? Akram Malik's voice was soft enough, but she wasn't about to be deceived by its tone. He was probably putting a hex on her. He was working black magic, engaging in voodoo, or doing whatever his sort did to defeat their enemies.
She wasn't about to put up with it. She said, “Stop that muttering! Stop it at once! And get out of this room immediately!” But her form of language was as indecipherable to him as his was to her, and his only response was to lay a brown hand upon her bed, as if he were extending her a blessing that she did not need of him, much less want.
Finally, he raised his head again. He began to speak once more, only this time she understood him perfectly. And his voice was so compelling that she found she could do nothing but hold his gaze with her own. She thought dimly, Basilisks are just like this, they impale you with their steely eyes. But still she didn't look away.
He said, “I heard only this morning of your trouble, Mrs. Shaw. How deeply sorry I am. My daughter and I wished to pay our respects. She waits in the corridor—my Sahlah—because we were advised that only one of us at a time could come into your room.” He removed his hand from her bed and laid it on the leather book on his knee. He smiled and went on. “I thought of reading from the holy book. Sometimes I find my own words inadequate for prayer. But when I saw you, the words came of themselves without any effort. At one time, I would have wondered about that and sought a greater meaning from it. But I've long since come to accept that the ways of Allah are most often beyond my comprehension.”
What was he on about? Agatha wondered. He'd come to gloat—there could be no mistake about that—so why didn't he get to the point and have done with it?
“Your grandson Theo has been a source of considerable help to me during this last year. Perhaps you know this. And for some time I've contemplated the best manner in which I could repay him for his kindness to my family.”
“Theo?” she said. “Not Theo. My Theo. Don't hurt Theo, you nasty man.”
He interpreted this conglomeration of sounds, it seemed, as her expression of a need for clarification. He said, “He brought Malik's Mustards into the present and into the future with his computers. And he was the first to stand by my side and involve himself in the Gentlemen's Cooperative. He has a vision not unlike my own, your grandson Theo. And I see in your current misfortune a way that I can finally reciprocate his acts of friendship.”
In your current misfortune, Agatha repeated in her mind. And she knew with certainty what he was about. Now was the moment he meant to sweep in like a raptor, making the kill. Just like a hawk, he'd chosen his time with an eye for the damage it could do to the victim. And she was without a single defence.
Damn his gloating, she thought. Damn his slimy, unctuous ways. Damn his pretence of saintliness. And damn most of all—
“I have long known your dream to redevelop our town and to restore it to its former beauty. Having been struck down a second time now, you must have great fears of your dream coming to nothing.” He put his hand back on the bed again. But this time it covered her own. Not her good hand, she noticed, which she could have flinched from him. But her talon-hand that was incapable of movement. Clever of him, she thought bitterly. How wise to emphasise her infirmities before laying out his plans to destroy her.
He said, “I intend to give Theo my full support, Mrs. Shaw. The redevelopment of Balford-le-Nez shall proceed as you planned it. To the last detail and to your design, your grandson and I will make this town come to life once more. And that's what I've come to tell you. Rest easily now and concentrate your efforts on returning to health so that you may live many years among us.”
And then he bent and touched his lips to her deformed, ugly, crippled hand.
And having no language in which to reply, she wondered how on earth she was going to be able to tell someone to wash it for her.
BARBARA WAS TRYING like the devil to keep her mind where it belonged, which was on the investigation. But it kept drifting off insistently, bounding in t
he direction of London, specifically to Chalk Farm and Eton Villas, and even more specifically to the ground floor flat of a yellow converted Edwardian house. At first she told herself that there had to be a mistake. Either there were two Taymullah Azhars in London, or the information supplied by the Met's SOU was inaccurate, incomplete, or out-and-out false. But the key facts on the Asian in question, supplied by London Intelligence, were among the facts that she already knew about Azhar. And when she read the report herself—which she managed to do upon her return to Emily's office with the DCI—she had to admit that the description being supplied by London was identical in many respects to the picture she already had. The home address of the subject was the same; the age of the child was correct; the fact that the child's mother was not in the picture also matched with what the report presented. Azhar was identified as a professor of microbiology, which Barbara knew he was, and his involvement with a London group called Asian Legal Awareness and Aid was certainly consistent with the depth of knowledge that he'd demonstrated over the past several days. So the Azhar in the London report had to be the Azhar she knew. Only the Azhar she knew didn't appear to be the Azhar she thought she knew. Which brought everything about him into question, especially his standing in the investigation.
Christ, she thought. She needed a fag. She was desperate for one. And while Emily groused about taking yet another tedious and time-consuming phone call from her superintendent, Barbara dashed into the lavatory and lit up hungrily, sucking on the tube of tobacco like a scuba diver running out of air.
Suddenly, a great deal about Taymullah Azhar and his daughter began to make sense to her. Among the puzzle pieces beginning to take on definition were Hadiyyah's eighth birthday party to which Barbara had been invited as the only guest; a mother ostensibly gone to Ontario but never revealing her whereabouts with so much as a postcard to her only child; a father who never spoke the word wife and never spoke at all of the mother of his child unless the subject was forced upon him; an absence of evidence in the ground floor flat that an adult woman had lived there anytime recently. No emery board or nail polish left lying about, no discarded handbag, no sewing, no knitting, no Vogue or Elle, no remnants of a hobby like watercolour painting or flower arranging. Had Angela Weston—mother of Hadiyyah—ever lived in Eton Villas at all? Barbara wondered. And if she hadn't, exactly how long did Azhar expect to keep up the pretence of Mummy-on-holiday in place of the truth, which appeared to be Mummy-very-much-on-the-run?
Barbara wandered to the lavatory window and gazed at the small car park below. DC Billy Honigman was escorting a freshly washed, groomed, and dressed Fahd Kumhar to a panda car. As she watched, they were approached by Azhar. He spoke to Kumhar. Honigman warned him off. The detective constable stowed his passenger in the back seat of his vehicle. Azhar walked to his own car, and when Honigman took off, he followed, making no secret that he was doing so. He'd come to escort Fahd Kumhar home, as promised. Obviously, that's what he intended to do.
A man of his word, Barbara thought. A man of more than one word, in fact.
She considered the answers he'd given her in response to her questions about his culture. She saw now how they applied to him. He'd been cut off from his family just as he declared Querashi would have been had his homosexuality come into the open. He'd been so cut off from his family that his daughter's existence was not acknowledged. They were—the two of them—an island unto themselves. No wonder he'd only too well understood and been able to expound upon the meaning of being an outcast.
Barbara processed all this with a fair degree of rational thinking. But she wasn't up to processing what this information about the Pakistani man meant to her personally. She told herself that it couldn't mean anything at all to her personally. She didn't, after all, have a personal relationship with Taymullah Azhar. True, she played the role of friend in his daughter's life, but when it came to defining a role in his life …She really didn't have one.
So she didn't understand why she felt somehow betrayed by the knowledge that he'd deserted a wife and two children. Perhaps, she concluded, she was feeling the betrayal that Hadiyyah would feel should she ever learn the truth.
Yes, Barbara thought. Doubtless that was it.
The lavatory door opened and Emily bounded inside, striding directly to one of the wash basins. Hastily, Barbara squashed her cigarette on the sole of her trainer and surreptitiously tossed the dog end out of the window.
Emily's nose twitched. She said, “Jesus, Barb. Are you still on the weed after all these years?”
“I was never one to ignore my addictions,” Barbara confessed.
Emily turned on the tap and thoroughly soaked a paper towel beneath it. She applied this to the back of her neck, oblivious of or uncaring about the water that dribbled down her spine and dampened her tank top. She said, “Ferguson,” as if the super's name were an execration. “He has his interview for the assistant chief constable's job in just three days. He expects an arrest in the Querashi case before he faces the panel, thank you very much. Not that he's doing a single bloody thing to help move the investigation forward. Unless threatening me with Howard Bloody Presley and dogging every step I take now constitute lending a helping hand. But he'll be happy enough to bow to the applause if we bring someone in without more public bloodshed. Fuck it. I despise that man.” She wet a hand and shoved it back through her hair. She turned to Barbara.
It was time to take on the mustard factory, she announced. She'd made application for a search warrant from the magistrate, and he'd come through in record time. Apparently, he was as anxious as Ferguson to bring the case to a close without another battle in the streets.
But there was a detail unrelated to the factory and to Emily's conviction about illegal activity going on within it, and Barbara wanted to pursue it. She couldn't ignore the fact that Sahlah Malik was pregnant, nor could she overlook the import this fact had in the case. “Can we make a stop at the marina, Em?”
Emily glanced at her watch. “Why? We know the Maliks don't have a boat, if you're hanging on to an arrival at the Nez by water.”
“But Theo Shaw has. And Sahlah's pregnant. And Theo got that bracelet off Sahlah. He's got motive, Em. He's got it loud and clear, no matter what Muhannad and his mates are up to at Eastern Imports.”
Theo also didn't have an alibi, while Muhannad did have one, she wanted to add. But she held her tongue. Emily knew the score, no matter her determination to run Muhannad Malik to ground for one offence or another.
Emily frowned as she considered Barbara's request. She said, “Right. Okay. We'll check it out.”
They set off in one of the unmarked Fords, making a turn into the High Street, where they saw Rachel Winfield teetering towards Racon Original and Artistic Jewellery from the direction of sea. The girl was red in the face. She looked as if she'd spent her morning in the bicycling third of an Iron Woman event. She paused to take a breather next to the signpost indicating that Balford Marina was just to the north. She waved happily as the Ford passed her. If she was guilty of something, she certainly didn't look it.
Balford Marina was perhaps a mile along the lane that ran perpendicular to the High Street. Its lower end comprised one-quarter of the little square whose opposite side was Alfred Terrace, where the Ruddock home stood in semi-squalor. It passed Tide Lake and a caravan park and, ultimately, the circular mass of a Martello Tower that had once been used to defend the coast during the Napoleonic Wars. The lane ended at the marina itself.
This consisted of a series of eight pontoons at which sailing boats and cabin cruisers were tied in the placid water of a tidal bay. At the far north end, a small office abutted a brick building that housed lavatories and showers. Emily drove in this direction and parked next to a tier of kayaks above which hung a faded sign advertising East Essex Boat Hire.
The owner of that business also acted the role of harbour master, a limited line of employment considering the relatively small size of the harbour in question.
&nbs
p; Emily and Barbara interrupted Charlie Spencer in the midst of a perusal of the racing forms from Newmarket. “You catch anyone yet?” were his first words when he looked up, saw Emily's identification, and shoved his teeth-gnawed pencil behind one ear. “I can't sit here nights with a shotgun, you know. What's my taxes going for if I can't get service from the local constab. Eh? You tell me.”
“Improve your security, Mr. Spencer,” Emily responded. “I expect you don't leave your house unlocked when you aren't at home.”
“I got a dog takes care of the house,” he retorted.
“Then you need another to take care of your raft.”
“Which one of those is the Shaws?’” Barbara asked the man, indicating the lines of moored boats that lay motionless in the harbour. There were, she saw, very few people about, despite the hour of the day and the heat that encouraged travel to the sea.
“Fighting Lady,” he replied. “The biggest one at the end of Pontoon Six. Shouldn't keep it here, the Shaws, you know. But it's convenient for them and they pay up regular and always have done, so who'm I to complain, eh?”
When they asked him why the Fighting Lady didn't belong in the Balford Marina, he said, “Tide's the problem,” and went on to explain that anyone who wished to use a boat that large would be better served with a mooring that wasn't so dependent on the tide. At high water there wasn't a problem. Plenty of water to keep a large boat afloat. But when the tide went out, the bottom of the cruiser rested in the mud, which wasn't good for it since the cabin and the boat's machinery bore down on the infrastructure. “Shortens the life of the craft,” he explained.
And the tide on Friday night? Barbara asked him. The tide between ten and midnight, for example?
Charlie set aside his racing forms to consult a booklet next to the till. Low, he told them. Fighting Lady—not to mention every other large pleasure craft in the marina—wasn't going anywhere on Friday night. “Each one of them boats needs a good eight foot of water to manoeuvre in,” he explained. “Now, as to my complaint, Inspector …” And he turned to take issue with the DCI on the efficacy of training guard dogs.