HAT COULD BE DICEY,” BARBARA ADMITTED. “But wouldn't Armstrong have had an even stronger motive to kill whoever gave him the sack?”
“In some circumstances, yes. If he was after revenge.”
“But in these circumstances?”
“Armstrong had apparently been doing a spot-on job. The only reason he was let go was to make room for Querashi in the family business.”
“Bloody hell,” Barbara said with devotion. “Has Armstrong an alibi?”
“Claims he was home with the wife and a five-year-old. With a flaming ear ache—that's the kid, not Armstrong.”
“And the wife would corroborate that, right?”
“He's the main breadwinner and she knows what side her slice is buttered on.” Emily restlessly played her fingers along the curve of a peach in the fruit bowl. “Armstrong said he'd gone to the Nez for an early morning walk. He said he'd been taking early morning walks on both days at the weekend for some time now, getting away from the missus for a few quiet hours. He doesn't know if anyone's seen him on these walks, but even if they have done, he could have used a normal weekend activity as a form of alibi.”
Barbara knew what she was thinking: It wasn't that rare an occurrence that a killer made a pretence of stumbling onto a corpse after the fact, the better to direct the spotlight of guilt onto someone else. Yet something Emily had earlier noted prodded Barbara to take a different tack. “Forget the car for a moment. You said Querashi had three condoms and ten pounds on him. Could he have gone to the Nez to meet someone for sex? To meet a prostitute, perhaps? If he was about to marry, perhaps he wouldn't have wanted to risk being seen by someone who'd report his liaison back to his future father-in-law.”
“What prostitute do you know who'd give it a go for ten pounds, Barb?”
“A young one. A desperate one. Perhaps a beginner.” When Emily shook her head, Barbara said, “Then perhaps he was meeting a woman who'd otherwise be unavailable to him, a married woman. The husband caught on and did him in. Is there any indication that Querashi knew Armstrong's wife?”
“We're looking for connections,” Emily said, “with everyone's wife.”
“This Muhannad bloke,” Barbara said. “Is he married, Em?”
“Oh yes,” Emily said quietly. “Oh yes indeed. He had his own boxed-up marriage some three years ago.”
“A happy marriage?”
“You tell me. Your parents inform you that they've matched you up with a mate for life. You meet this person and the next thing you know, you're locked into marriage. Does that sound like a recipe for happiness to you?”
“Not really. But they've been doing it for centuries, so it can't be all bad. Can it?”
Emily cast her a glance that was eloquent in its wordlessness. They sat in silence, listening to the nightingale's song. In her mind, Barbara rearranged the facts that Emily had been laying before her. The body, the car, the keys in the bushes, the pillbox on the beach, a broken neck.
She finally said, “You know, if someone in Balford has an agenda for racial trouble, it doesn't really matter who you arrest, does it?”
“Why's that?”
“Because if they want to use an arrest to stir trouble, they're going to use an arrest to stir trouble. Put an Englishman in the nick, and they riot because the murder's an issue of racial violence. Arrest a Pakistani, and the arrest's an issue of police prejudice. The prism's just turned a bit. What they're examining through the prism remains the same.”
Emily stopped fingering the peach. She examined Barbara. When she next spoke, it seemed she'd reached a sudden and adroit conclusion. “Of course” she said. “How are you on committees, Barb?”
“What?”
“You said earlier you were ready to help. Well, I've a need for an officer with a talent for committee work and I think you're that officer. How are you at dealing with Asians? I could use another hand in all this, if only to swat my guv off my back.”
Before Barbara could riffle through her life history and produce an answer, Emily continued. She'd agreed to regular meetings with members of the Pakistani community during the course of the investigation. She needed an officer to serve that group. Barbara, if she agreed, would be that officer.
“You'll have to deal with Muhannad Malik,” Emily said, “and he'll be hot to push you as hard and as far as he can, so keeping your wits about you is crucial. But there's another Asian, a bloke from London called Something Azhar, and he appears to be able to keep a collar on Muhannad, so you'll get some help from him whether he realises he's helping or not.”
Barbara could only imagine how Taymullarh Azhar would react to seeing her bruise-battered face at the first meeting between the Asians and the local rozzers. She said, “I don't know. Committees aren't exactly my thing.”
“Nonsense.” Emily brushed her objections aside. “You'll be brilliant. Most people see reason when the facts are laid in front of them in the proper order. I'll work with you to decide what the proper order is.”
“And it'll be my neck if things come to a crisis?” Barbara asked shrewdly.
“Things won't come to a crisis,” Emily countered. “I know you can handle whatever comes up. And even if that weren't the case, who could be better than Scotland Yard to assure the Asians they're getting the red carpet treatment? Will you do it?”
That was the question, all right. But she would be of service, Barbara realised. Not only to Emily, but to Azhar. Who indeed could better navigate the waters of the Asians’ hostility than someone acquainted with one of the Asians? “All right,” she said.
“Brilliant.” Emily held her wrist up to the dim light from the street-lamp. She said, “Hell. It's late. Where're you staying, Barb?”
“I haven't booked anywhere yet,” Barbara said, and she hurried forward lest Emily think she was hinting for an invitation to share the dubious comforts of her gentrification project. “I thought I'd try for a room along the seafront. If there's going to be a cool breeze within the next twenty-four hours, I'd like to be the first to know.”
“Even better,” Emily said. “Inspired, in fact.” Before Barbara could question what was so inspired about longing for a breeze to cool the stifling air, Emily went on. The Burnt House Hotel would be perfect for her needs, she said. It had no immediate access to the strand, but it sat at the north end of the town above the sea, with nothing to impede a breeze should one decide to blow in its direction. Since it had no immediate access to sand and water, it was always the last hotel to book up once the tourist season—such as it was these days in Balford-le-Nez—began. And even if that weren't the case, there was one other point about the Burnt House that made it a desirable domicile for New Scotland Yard's Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers during her sojourn in Balford.
“What's that?” Barbara asked.
The murdered man had stayed there, Emily told her. “So you can help me out with some nosing round.”
RACHEL WINFIELD OFTEN wondered where normal girls went for advice when the larger moral questions in life loomed in front of them demanding answers. Her fantasy was that normal girls went to their normal mothers. What happened was this: The normal girls and their normal mothers sat together in the kitchen and they shared a pot of tea. What went with the tea was conversation, and the normal daughters and their normal mothers chatted companionably about whatever subject was near and dear to their hearts. That was the key: hearts in the plural. The communication between them was a two-way street, with mother listening to daughter's concerns and then giving daughter the benefit of her own experience.
In Rachel's case, had mother even considered giving daughter the benefit of her own experience, that experience would have been of little use in the present situation. What good was listening to the tales of a middle-aged—however successful—competitive dancer if competitive dancing was not what was on one's mind? If what was on one's mind was murder, then hearing a spirited account of an elimination competition danced to the manic measures of “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” wouldn't be much of a help.
Rachel's mother, Connie, had on this very evening been deserted by her regular dancing partner—left at the metaphorical altar, which was disturbingly reminiscent of having been left at the real altar not once but twice by men too repugnant even to be named—and this desertion had taken place not twenty minutes before the competition. “His stomach,” Connie had announced bitterly upon arriving home with a small but nonetheless shining third place trophy on which two dancers contorted impossibly in bouffant skirt and form-fitting trousers. “He spent the evening in the loo doing his business and screaming about his flaming bowels. I'd've had first place if I hadn't had to dance with Seamus O'Callahan. Thinks he's Rudolph Bloody Valentino—”
Nureyev, Rachel corrected her silently.
“—and it's all I can do, isn't it, to keep him from squashing my feet to bits when he leaps about. Swing dancing is not about leaping, I keep telling him, don't I, Rache? But does that make a difference to Seamus O'C? Would that ever make a difference to a bloke who sweats like an overcooked turkey in the oven? Ha! Not bloody likely.”
Connie placed her trophy on one of the metal, designed-to-look-like-wood shelves of the unit fitted to the lounge wall. She fixed its position among the two dozen awards already displayed there. The smallest of them was a pewter shot glass engraved with a man and a woman at arm's length from each other and in full swing. The largest was a silver plated bowl—with FIRST PLACE SOUTHEND SWINGTIME scrolled on it—whose plating was wearing off from too much dedicated polishing.
Connie Winfield stepped back from the shelf and admired the latest addition to her collection. She looked a little the worse for wear after her hours on the dance floor. And the beginnings of a ruination that the exercise had wrought upon her fresh hair-do from Sea and Sand Unisex had been finished by the heat.
At the lounge door, Rachel watched her mother. She noted the love bite on her neck and wondered who had done the honours: Seamus O'Callahan or Connie's regular swing partner, a bloke called Jake Bottom, whom Rachel had found in the kitchen the morning after the night her mother had met him. “Couldn't get his car started,” Connie had whispered confidentially to Rachel when her daughter had stopped short at the sight of Jake's hairless and heretofore unknown chest at the breakfast table. “Slept on the sofa, Rache,” to which remark Jake had raised his head and winked lewdly.
Not that Rachel had needed that wink to put two and two together. Jake Bottom wasn't the first man who'd had engine trouble at their front door over the years.
“They're something, aren't they?” Connie asked in reference to her collection of trophies. “Never thought your mum could trip the bright fantastic—”
The light fantastic, Rachel corrected her silently.
“—like she does, did you?” Connie eyed her. “Why's your mug all pinched up, Rachel Lynn? You didn't forget to lock the shop, did you? Rache, if you've gone and caused us a break-in, I'll crack you a good one.”
“I locked up,” Rachel said. “I double-checked to make sure.”
“Then what's up? You look like you're sucking on sour plums. And why'n't you using that make-up I bought you? God knows, you can do something with what you've got if you'd only work at it, Rache.” Connie crossed to her and fussily rearranged her hair, doing what she always did with it: pulling it forward so that wings of black fell like a veil against a good part of her face. Stylish this way, Connie would tell her.
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.