She hadn't far to go. Racon Original and Artistic Jewellery was situated on the corner of the High Street and Saville Lane, and it had the distinction of being one of only three businesses that were apparently still operational in a row of seven.
The shop was not yet open for the day, but Barbara knocked on the door in the hope that someone was in the back room, which she could see through a doorway just beyond the counter. She rattled the handle and knocked a second time, more aggressively. This effected the desired result. A woman with formidably styled hair of an equally formidable shade of red appeared in that doorway and gestured to the CLOSED sign in the front window. “Not quite ready for the day yet,” she called with an air of determined good cheer. And doubtless because she'd come to realise the folly of turning away any potential customer in the current business climate of Balford, she added, “Is it an emergency, love? D'you need a birthday gift or something?” and came forward to open the door anyway.
Barbara displayed her warrant card. The woman's eyes widened. She said, “Scotland Yard?” and turned for some reason to glance at the room from which she'd emerged.
“I'm not after a gift,” Barbara told her. “Just some information, Mrs. …?”
“Winfield,” she said. “Connie Winfield. Connie of Racon.”
It took Barbara a moment to realise that the other woman wasn't identifying her place of genesis a la Catherine of Aragón. She was referring to the name of the shop. “This is your business, then?”
“Quite.” Connie Winfield closed the door behind Barbara and patted it smartly. She returned to the counter and began arranging the display inside. This was covered with a maroon flannel cloth, which she folded back to reveal earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and other baubles. Not the standard stuff of jewellery stores, all were of unique design, leaning heavily towards coins, beads, feathers, polished stones, and leather. Where precious metal was used, it was the traditional gold or silver, but fashioned unusually.
Barbara thought of the ring she'd seen in the leather case in Querashi's room. A traditional design with a single ruby, the ring had definitely not been purchased here.
She fished out the receipt that had been in Querashi's possession. She said, “Mrs. Winfield, this receipt—”
“Connie,” the other woman replied. She'd gone on to a second display case and was uncovering the ornaments within it. “Everyone calls me Connie. Always have done. I've lived here all my life, and I never saw the point of becoming Mrs. Winfield to people who used to see me running down the street in a dirty nappy.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “Connie.”
“Even my artists call me Connie. That's who do my jewels, by the way. Artists from Brighton to Inverness. I sell their pieces on consignment, which is why I've been able to ride out the recession when most of the shops—the luxury shops, that is, not the grocery or the chemist or the necessary shops—have had to close their doors these last five years. I've got a good mind for business, always have done. And when I opened Racon ten years ago, I said, ‘Connie, don't you put all your money into stock, darling girl.’ That's as good as setting sail to Port Failure with all engines blasting, if you know what I mean.”
From beneath the counters she began taking display stands made of polished wood and artfully shaped like trees. These were devoted to earrings, and their beads and coins jangled together as Connie set them on the counter and deftly arranged them to their best advantage. She worked energetically, and Barbara couldn't help wondering if the attention she was giving to the products on sale was typical of a morning's activity or the nervous reaction to a visit from the police.
Barbara laid the receipt next to one of the earring trees. She said, “Mrs.—Connie, this receipt is from your shop, isn't it?”
Connie picked it up. “Says Racon right on the top,” she agreed.
“Can you tell me what purchase went with it? And what does the phrase ‘Life begins now’ refer to?”
“Hang on.” Connie went to a corner of the shop, where an oscillating floor fan stood. She switched this on, and Barbara was relieved to note that unlike the fan in Emily's office, it worked as one might hope an oscillating fan would work. Connie opted for the medium setting.
She carried the receipt over to the till, where a black notebook lay. This bore the words RACON JEWELLERY embossed in gold. Connie opened it. “AK means the artist,” she explained to Barbara. “That's how we identify the pieces. This is Aloysius Kennedy, a bloke from Northumberland. I don't sell many of his pieces because they get a bit pricey for the sort of trade we do in Balford. But this one …” She licked her middle finger and leafed through a few pages. She ran a long acrylic fingernail—painted, it seemed, to match her hair—down the page. “The 162 refers to the stock number,” she said. “And in this case—yes. Here it is. It was one of his hinged wrist cuffs. Oooh. This was a lovely one. I haven't another exactly like it, but—” she switched to sales mode—”I can show you something close if you'd like to have a look.”
“And ‘Life begins now?’” Barbara said. “What would that refer to?”
“Common sense, I expect,” Connie said, and she laughed a little too forcefully at her own small joke, showing tiny child-like white teeth. “We'll have to ask Rache, won't we? This's her writing.” She went to the doorway to the back room and called, “Rache, love-boodle. We got Scotland Yard in the shop asking about a receipt of yours. Could you bring me a Kennedy?” She shot Barbara a smile. “Rachel. My daughter.”
“Ra of Racon.”
“You're quick, aren't you?” Connie acknowledged.
From the back room, footsteps clacked on a wooden floor. In a moment, a young woman stood in the doorway. She kept to the shadows and held a box in her hand. She said, “I was seeing to the shipment from Devon. She's doing shells this time. Did you know?”
“Is she? Cor, you can't tell that woman a thing about what sells, can you? This is Scotland Yard, Rache.”
Rachel moved forward only slightly but enough for Barbara to see that she was nothing like her mother. Despite her unnaturally flaming hair, Connie was a pretty-featured woman with flawless skin, long eyelashes, and a delicate mouth. In contrast, her daughter looked as if someone had put her together from the discarded pieces of five or six unattractive individuals.
Her eyes were abnormally wide set, and one of them drooped as if she suffered from a form of palsy. What went for her chin was a small protuberance of flesh beneath her lower lip, below which was her neck. And where her nose should have been, she'd obviously once had nothing at all. A cosmetically created projection served to take its place, and while it was shaped like a nose, it had insufficient bridge, so it dipped into her face as if a thumb had been pressed into a model made of clay.
Barbara didn't know where to look without seeming offensive to the young woman. She racked her brains to remember what people with deformities wanted from their fellow men: Staring was crass, but gazing elsewhere while attempting to speak to the victim of such physical disfigurement seemed even more cruel.
“What c'n you tell Scotland Yard about this, sweet thing?” Connie said. “It's a Kennedy piece with your writing on it, and you sold it to …” Her voice drifted off as she read the name at the top of the receipt for the first time. She raised her eyes to her daughter, and her daughter met her gaze. A subtle communication seemed to pass between them.
“The receipt indicates that it was sold to Sahlah Malik,” Barbara told Rachel Winfield.
Rachel finally came forward into the direct light of the shop. She stood some two feet from the counter on which the receipt lay. She looked at it tentatively as if it were an alien creature best not approached too quickly. Barbara could see that a vein in her temple was throbbing, and while she gave the receipt an arm's length scrutiny, she hugged herself and, with the hand not holding the box she'd brought from the back room, she rubbed her thumb fiercely against her upper arm.
Her mother went to her side and, with a cluck, fussily rearranged the younger woman's hair. She pulled a bit of it forward and fluffed another bit of it outward. Rachel looked irritated, but didn't shake her mother off.
“Your mum says this is your handwriting,” Barbara told her. “So you must have made the sale. Do you recall it?”
“Not a sale exactly,” Rachel said. She cleared her throat. “More like a trade. She makes some of our jewellery, Sahlah does, so we sort of bartered. She doesn't … well, she doesn't have any money of her own.” She indicated a display of ethnic necklaces. They were heavy with foreign coins and carved beads.
“So you do know her,” Barbara said.
Rachel went at things from another angle. “It would be an inscription, what I've written there. ‘Life begins now’ would be an inscription for the inside of the bracelet. We don't do inscriptions here, though. We have the pieces sent out if someone wants one.” She placed the box on the counter and prised it open. Inside, an object was wrapped in soft purple cloth. Rachel removed this and laid a gold bracelet on the counter. Its style was in keeping with the overall fashion of the rest of the jewellery in the shop. While its purpose was obvious by its circular shape, its design was indefinite, as if it had been poured into a malleable mould that had been allowed to take whatever shape chance gave it. “This is a Kennedy piece,” Rachel said. “They're all different, but it'll give you the general idea of what AK-162's like.”
Barbara fingered the bracelet. It was unique. And had she seen one similar to it among Querashi's belongings, she would have remembered it. She wondered if he'd been wearing it the night he died. Although the bracelet could have been removed from his body after he'd fallen to his death, it hardly seemed likely that his killer had then tossed his car in order to find it. And had he died for a bracelet worth ￡220? It was a possibility, but a conjecture that Barbara was unwilling to hang her next pay rise on to.
She took up the receipt again and gave it a second observation. Rachel and her mother said nothing, but another look passed between them and Barbara could feel a tension that she wanted to pursue.
The reaction of the women told her that, in one way or another, they had a connection with the murdered man. But what sort of connection might it be? she wondered. She knew the risks inherent in drawing premature conclusions—especially drawing premature conclusions that were prompted by something as potentially baseless as personal appearance—but it was difficult to see Rachel Winfield in the guise of Querashi's putative lover. It was difficult to see Rachel Winfield in the guise of anyone's lover. No devastating beauty herself, Barbara knew the role that an appealing countenance played in attracting men. So it seemed logical to conclude that, whatever the connection might be, it wasn't a romantic or sexual one. On the other hand, the young woman had a nice body, so there was that to consider as well. And under cover of darkness … But Barbara realised that she was getting ahead of herself. The real question was Querashi's possession of the receipt and what it was doing among his belongings when the bracelet wasn't.
Thinking of the receipt, she glanced at the till. Next to this with its cover curled open lay a booklet of receipts heretofor unused. Barbara registered their colour. They were white. And the receipt from Querashi's room was yellow.
She saw upon this latter paper what she might have noted before had she not been concentrating on the name Sablah Malik, the phrase ‘Life begins now,’ and the cost of the item. Printed in minuscule letters at the bottom of the page were two more words: Business Copy.
“This is the shop's receipt, isn't it?” she asked Rachel Winfield and her mother. “The customer gets the original white one from the book by the till. The shop keeps the yellow as a record of the sale.”
Connie Winfield interjected hastily, “Oh, we're never as clever as that, are we, Rache? We just tear the receipt off and shove one of the two copies over. I don't expect we mind much which one they get, so long as we keep one for ourselves. Isn't that so, love-boodle?”
But Rachel, it seemed, had realised her mother's mistake. She blinked hard when Barbara reached for the receipt book. Those documenting previous sales were folded back along with the booklet's cover. Barbara leafed through them. Every copy left in was yellow.
She saw they were numbered and she riffled through the pages to find the original of the copy she had in her possession. It was receipt number 2395: 2394 and 2396 were in book in yellow, and 2395 wasn't there in either colour.
Barbara closed the book, saying, “Is this always in the shop? What do you do with it when you lock up for the night?”
“It goes under the cash drawer in the till,” Connie said. “Fits snug as a bug. Why? Have you found something wrong with it? God knows me and Rache are a bit loose when it comes to our bookkeeping, but we've never done something illegal.” She laughed. “You can't cook the books when the chef's yourself, if you know what I mean. There's no one to cheat. ‘Course, I suppose we could cheat the artists if we had a mind to, but that'd catch up with us in the end because we give them an accounting twice a year and they have the right to go over our books themselves. So if we have any sense at all—and I like to think that we do, mind you—we can—”
“This receipt was among a dead man's belongings,” Barbara cut in.
Connie gulped and raised a closed fist to her sternum. And she kept her eyes so fixed to Barbara that it seemed only too clear whose face she was determined not to glance at. Even when she spoke, she didn't look at her daughter. “Fancy that, Rache. How d'you suppose it happened? Are you talking about that bloke from the Nez, Sergeant? I mean, you're the police and that bloke's the only dead man round here that the police are interested in. So it must be him. He must be the dead man. Yes?”
“The same,” Barbara said.
“Fancy that,” Connie breathed. “I couldn't say for money how he came to have one of our receipts. What about you, love-boodle? D'you know anything about this, Rache?”
One of Rachel's hands closed over a fold in her skirt. It was one of those Asian skirts, Barbara noted for the first time, the translucent sort that were sold in open air markets all over the country. The skirt didn't exactly tie the girl to the Asian community. But it also didn't extricate her from a situation in which her reluctance to speak was indicating that she was—however tangentially—involved.
“Don't know a thing,” Rachel said faintly. “P'rhaps that bloke picked it up off the street or something. It has Sahlah Malik's name on it. He would have recognised that. P'rhaps he meant to give it back to her and he never had the chance.”
“How would he have known Sahlah Malik?” Barbara asked.
Rachel's hand jerked on the skirt. “Didn't you say that him and Sahlah—”
“The story was in the local rag, Sergeant,” Connie put in. “Rache and I c'n both read, and the paper said this bloke was here to marry Akram Malik's daughter.”
“And you know nothing more than what you read in the paper?” Barbara asked.
“Not a thing more,” Connie said. “You, Rache?”
“Nothing,” Rachel said.
Barbara doubted that. Connie was too determinedly loquacious. Rachel was too taciturn. There was a fishing expedition to embark upon here, but she would have to return when she had better bait. She took out one of her cards. Scrawling the name of the Burnt House on it, she told the two women to phone her if anything jogged their memories. She gave the Kennedy bracelet a final scrutiny and tucked the receipt for AK-162 among her own belongings.
She ducked out of the shop but glanced back quickly. Both women were watching her. Whatever they knew, they would talk about eventually. People did that when the conditions were right. Perhaps, Barbara thought, the sight of that missing golden bracelet would light a fire beneath the Winfields and defrost their tongues. She needed to find it.
RACHEL LOCKED HERSELF in the loo. The moment the sergeant moved out of their range of vision, she bolted into the back room. She dashed down the passage created between the wall and a freestanding row of shelves. The loo was next to the shop's back door, and she made for this and bolted the door behind her.
She pressed her hands together to stop their shaking, and when she was unsuccessful at doing this, she used both of them to turn on the tap in the small, triangular basin. She was burning hot and icy cold at the same time, which didn't seem possible. She knew there was a procedure to follow when physical sensations like these came over one, but she couldn't have said for love or money what the procedures were. She settled on splashing her face with water, and she was splashing away when Connie banged on the door.
“You get out here, Rachel Lynn,” she ordered. “We got some talking to do, you and me.”
Rachel gasped, “Can't. I'm being sick.”
“Being sick, my little toe,” Connie snapped. “You going to open this door for me, or am I going to axe it in to get you?”
“I had to go the whole time she was here,” Rachel said, and she lifted her skirt to sit on the toilet for the complete effect.
“I thought you said you were being sick.” Connie's voice had the sound of triumph associated with mothers who catch their daughters in a lie. “Isn't that what you just said? So what is it, Rachel Lynn? You sick? You going? What?”
“Not that kind of sick,” Rachel said. “The other. You know. So c'n I have a bit of privacy, please?”
There was a silence. Rachel could imagine her mother tapping her small and shapely foot against the floor. It was what she usually did when she was planning a course of action.
“Give me a minute, Mum,” Rachel pleaded. “My stomach's all clenched up on itself. Listen. Is that the shop door ringing?”
“Don't play with me, girl. I'll be watching the clock. And I know how long it takes to do what in the loo. You got that, Rache?”
Rachel heard her mother's sharp footsteps fading as she headed to the front of the building. She knew that she'd bought herself a few minutes only, and she struggled to gather her fragmented thoughts together in order to form them into a plan. You're a fighter, Rache, she told herself in much the same mental voice she'd used in childhood when preparing every morning for another round of bullying from her merciless schoolmates. So think. Think. It doesn't matter two pins if everyone in the world goes and lets you down, Rache, because you've still got yourself and yourself is what counts.
But she hadn't believed that two months before when Sahlah Malik had revealed her decision to submit herself to her parents’ wishes for an arranged marriage to an unknown man from Pakistan. Instead of remembering that she still had herself, she'd been horrified at the thought of losing Sahlah. After which, she'd felt both lost and abandoned. And at the end, she'd believed herself cruelly betrayed. The ground upon which she'd long had faith that her future was built had fractured suddenly and irreparably beneath her, and in that instant she'd forgotten life's most important lesson completely. For the ten years following her birth, she'd lived with the certain belief that success, failure, and happiness were available to her through the effort of a single individual on earth: Rachel Lynn Winfield. Thus, the taunts of her schoolmates had stung her but they'd never scarred her, and she'd grown adept at forging her own way. But meeting Sahlah had changed all that, and she'd allowed herself to see their friendship as central to what the future held.
Oh, it had been stupid—stupid—to think in such a fashion, and she knew that now. But in those first terrible moments when Sahlah had revealed her intentions in that calm and gentle way of hers—the way that had made her, too, the victim of bullies who wouldn't dare to raise a nasty hand against Sahlah Malik or to voice a slur about the hue of her skin whenever Rachel Winfield was in the vicinity—all that Rachel could think was, What about me? What about us? What about our plans? We were saving up to put money on a flat, we were going to have pine furniture in it with big deep cushions, we were going to set up a workshop for you on one side of your bedroom so you could make your jewellery without your nephews getting into your trays, we were going to collect shells on the beach, we were going to have two cats, you were going to teach me to cook, and I was going to teach you … what? What on earth could I have taught you, Sahlah? What on earth had I ever to offer you?
But she hadn't said that. Instead, she'd said, “Married? You? Married, Sahlah? Who? Not … but I thought you always said that you couldn't—”
“A man from Karachi. A man my parents have chosen for me,” Sahlah had said.
“You mean …? You can't mean a stranger, Sahlah. You can't mean someone you don't even know.”
“It's the way my parents married. It's the way most of my people marry.”
“Your people, your people,” Rachel had scoffed. She'd been trying to laugh the idea off, to make Sahlah see how ludicrous it was. “You're English,” she said. “You were born in England. You're no more Asian than I am. What d'you know about him, anyway? Is he fat? Is he ugly? Does he have false teeth? Does he have hairs sprouting from his nose and his ears? And how old is he? Is he some bloke of sixty with varicose veins?”
“His name is Haytham Querashi. He's twenty-five years old. He's been to university—”
“As if that makes him a good candidate for husband,” Rachel said bitterly. “I suppose he's got lots of money as well. Your dad would go in big for that. Like he did with Yumn. Who cares what sort of monkey crawls into your bed just so long as Akram gets what he wants from the deal? And that's it, isn't it? Isn't your dad getting something as well? Tell the truth, Sahlah.”
“Haytham will work for the business, if that's what you're asking,” Sahlah said.
“Hah! See what they're doing? He's got something they want—Muhannad and your dad—and the only way they can get it is to hand you over to some oily bloke you don't even know. I can't believe you're doing it.”
“I have no choice.”
“What d'you mean? If you said you didn't want to marry this bloke, you can't tell me your dad would make you do it. He dotes on you. So all you have to do is tell him that you and me, we've got plans. And none of them have to do with marrying some twit from Pakistan you've never even met.”
“I want to marry him,” Sahlah said.