YUMN WAS STANDING at the window, changing the baby's nappie, when she heard the front door close and the sandaled footsteps head down the path towards the street. She looked out to see Sahlah pulling her amber dupattā over her thick hair as she hurried to her Miera, parked at the kerb. She was late for work again, but doubtless Akram's wondrous little precious would be forgiven this unfortunate lapse.
She'd spent half an hour in the bathroom with the water running into the tub to cover the sound of her morning retching. But no one really knew that, did they? They thought she was washing herself, an unusual rite for her in the morning—Sahlah was a nighttime bather—but one that was understandable given the mind-numbing heat. Only Yumn knew the truth, Yumn who'd stood outside the door listening carefully, gathering information to store like kernels of corn against the potential famine of Sahlah's failure to please the sister-in-law to whom she owed respect, allegiance, and cooperation.
Such a little whore, Yumn thought as she watched Sahlah climb into the car and crank down both of the windows. Sneak out to meet him in the night, Sahlah, invite him into your room when the house is sleeping, spread your legs for him, join your bodies, rotate your hips, and still the next morning manage to look so pure so innocent so fragile so lovely so precious so …Little whore. Like a rotten egg that's perfect on the outside but, once cracked, reveals the corruption within.
The baby whimpered. Yumn looked down to see that instead of removing the soiled nappie from him, she'd inadvertently wrapped it tightly round his leg.
“Beloved,” she said, quickly removing it. “Forgive your thoughtless ammī-gee, Bishr.”
He cooed in response, waving arms and legs. She gazed down at him. Naked, he was magnificent.
She used the washing flannel to clean him, drawing it through his legs and carefully wiping his tiny penis. She eased the foreskin back and smoothed the flannel round it. She sang, “Ammī-gee's little love, Bishr. Yes. Yes. You are. You're Ammī-gee's one true love.”
When he was clean, she didn't reach for a fresh nappie at once. Instead, she admired him. From the shape of him, the strength, and the size, she could tell that he would be just like his father.
His masculinity affirmed her place as a woman. It was her duty to give her husband sons, and she'd done that duty and would continue to do it as long as her body allowed her the privilege. As a consequence, she would not only be cared for in her old age, she would be treasured. And that was more glory than loathsome little Sahlah would ever attain in a thousand lifetimes. She could not hope to be as fertile as Yumn, and she'd already transgressed the tenets of their religion so seriously that she could never redeem herself. She was damaged goods, soiled beyond redemption and ruined beyond the hope of reclamation. She was, indeed, good for nothing more than a life of servitude.
It was such a lovely thought.
“Yes,” Yumn crooned at the baby. “Yes, yes, what a lovely thought indeed.”
She caressed the insignificant appendage between his legs. How incredible it was that such a small scrap of flesh could determine the role this child would play in life. But that is how the Prophet decreed it.
“Men are in charge of us,” Yumn crooned to the baby, “because Allah made one to excel the other. Little Bishr, listen to Ammī-gee. Do your duty: shelter, protect, and guide. And seek a woman who knows how to do hers.”
Certainly Sahlah did not. She acted the part of obedient daughter, dutiful younger sister and sister-in-law, subservient and docile as required. But that was only a role she played. The real girl was the one who lay in a bed whose springs creaked rhythmically in the dead of night.
Yumn knew this. And she'd been intent upon holding her tongue about it. True, she'd not completely held her tongue. Some types of hypocrisy were not to be born. When Sahlah's morning vomiting had been followed so closely by her agreement to marry the first young man presented to her as a potential husband, Yumn had made the decision to act. She would not be party to so great a deception as the family's flower-like Sahlah had obviously intended to perpetrate upon her fiance.
So she'd gone to Haytham Querashi privately, slipping out of the house on one of the many evenings that Muhannad spent elsewhere. She'd buttonholed the intended bridegroom in his hotel and, sitting knee-to-knee in his garret of a room, she'd done her duty as any religious woman might have done, revealing the one ineradicable impediment to his upcoming marriage to her sister-in-law. The brat Sahlah carried could be got rid of, of course. But her virginity once lost could not be regained.
Haytham, however, had not reacted as Yumn had expected. The announcement, She's soiled, she's carrying another man's child had not led where tradition and logic dictated it should lead. In fact, Haytham had been so tranquil at Yumn's revelation that she had experienced a moment of dread in which she'd thought she'd somehow got events confused, with Sahlah's morning retching beginning after Haytham's advent instead of before it, making Haytham the father of Sahlah's child.
But she knew that this was not the case. She knew that Sahlah had been pregnant already when Haytham arrived. Thus his acquiescence to a marriage—taken in conjunction with his utter placidity once informed of Sahlah's sin—could mean only one thing. He'd known about her condition and he'd agreed to marry her anyway. The little bitch was saved, Yumn had realised. She was saved from disgrace and saved from dishonour because Haytham was eager, ready, and willing to take her away from the family home as soon as she wished to leave it.
The situation could not have been one iota more unfair. Having been forced to endure her mother-in-law's extolment of Sahlah's virtues for nearly three years, Yumn had been taking great pleasure in every opportunity she had to torment the girl. She'd heard quite enough about Sahlah's beauty, her artistry with those pitiful baubles she made, her intellectual gifts, her religious piety, her physical perfection, and especially her adherence to duty. Upon that last characteristic of her beloved child, Wardah Malik was fully capable of waxing utterly intolerable. And she had no compunction about invoking the image of Sahlah's earnest docility every time Yumn displeased her. If she overcooked the sevian, Wardah was good for twenty minutes on the subject of Sahlah's expertise in the kitchen. If she dared to omit one of the five daily prayers—and she was very likely to forgo the namdz of sunrise—she was regaled with a ten-minute discourse about Sahlah's devotion to Islam. If she failed to dust well enough, to scour the bath completely, or to search out every cobweb in the house, her slovenly habits were compared to Sahlah's which were, of course, immaculate. So it had been a source of great enjoyment to Yumn, having a nasty little piece of knowledge to hold over her sister-in-law's head. And it had been a source of even greater enjoyment, knowing how she was going to be able to put that knowledge to use for her own benefit. Yumn had almost had to relinquish all of her dreams about indefinitely holding little Sahlah hostage to her wishes and commands once Haytham declared his intention of marrying her despite her sins. But now Yumn held the girl's future in her palm once again. And in Yumn's palm was where Sahlah Malik so richly deserved to be.
Yumn smiled down at her son. She began to enfold him in the fresh, soft nappie.
“How lovely life is, little god,” she whispered.
And she made a mental list of the duties she would have Sahlah perform when she arrived home that evening.
HE POSSIBILITY OF HAVING A WITNESS TO QUERASHI'S death invigorated and refocussed the investigation. DCI Barlow began phoning her men on their mobiles, saying, “Everyone who came in contact with Querashi is a potential witness to his murder as of now. I want everyone's alibi and I want it corroborated. Whoever was on the Nez that night, track him down.”
For Barbara's part, she went on her way to phone the fingerprint office in London, using what little influence she had to get S04 to move on the prints that had been lifted from the Nissan. She knew that a match wasn't guaranteed. They would have a match only if the prints on the Nissan had been left by someone once arrested and run through a booking procedure somewhere in the country. But if that was the case, they'd have the best break they could get: an identity, something concrete that was beyond the realm of speculation.
Barbara made the call. Like most support services, the fingerprint people didn't warm to anything suggesting interference from another branch of the legal family, so she used the racial unrest in the town to promote her cause. She finished by saying, “We're sitting on a powder keg out here, and we need your help to diffuse it.”
S04 understood. Everyone wanted their dabs given identities before the sun set on the first day of the investigation. But the sergeant needed to understand that a highly specialised work force such as S04 could only be expected to deal with a limited number of evidential particulars on a given day. “We cannot afford an error,” the department head intoned, “not when guilt or innocence may well ride on a conclusion reached by this organisation.”
Right, right, right, Barbara thought. She told him to do his best and returned to Emily.
“I'm a bird with a lot less clout than I would like to be,” Barbara told her frankly. “They'll do what they can. What's up?”
Emily was in the process of flipping through the contents of a file. She said, “Querashi's picture,” and pulled it out. It was, Barbara saw, the same photograph of the murdered man that had run on the front page of the Tendring Standard: Querashi looked simultaneously solemn and harmless. “If Trevor Ruddock's telling the truth about Querashi and his cottaging, there's a chance that someone else saw him in the market square in Clacton. And if someone else saw him, someone may have seen our potential witness with him. I want that witness, Barb. If Ruddock's telling the truth.”
“If,” Barbara said. “He's got motive enough to kill Querashi himself, and I haven't checked on his alibi yet. I want to have a look at his time card for last week. And I want a talk with Rachel as well. A lot of roads seem to be leading to her. It's curious, if you ask me.”
Emily gave her approval to the plan. For her own part, she'd work the homosexual aspect of the case. With the market-square angle to be explored and Fahd Kumhar to be located, other roads appeared to be leading to Clacton. She didn't want to ignore them. “If he exists, that witness is our key,” she said.
They parted company in the patch of tarmac that served as the old police station's car park. At one side, a corrugated metal lock-up acted as the digs of the evidence officer. In his shirt sleeves and with a blue handkerchief tied round his head to soak up the perspiration, he sat on a stool. He appeared to be in the process of checking evidence bags against a logbook. The temperature was beginning to reach heights that felt suitable for grilling bacon. That poor bloke, Barbara thought, had the worst job of all.
In the time that she'd been in the station, Barbara found that the Mini—even with its windows wide open—had soaked up enough heat to make breathing difficult once she was inside it. The steering wheel was fiery to the touch, and the car's seats sizzled through the thin material of her trousers. She looked at her watch and wondered at the fact that it wasn't yet midday. She had little doubt that by two o'clock she'd feel like an overcooked Sunday joint.
Racon Original and Artistic Jewellery was open for business when she arrived. Beyond the gaping front door, both Connie Winfield and her daughter were at work. They appeared to be in process of arranging a new shipment of necklaces and earrings for display, because they were removing baubles from a cardboard box and using straight pins to mount them on an antique folding screen whose panels had been fashioned from cream-coloured velvet.
Barbara watched them for a moment without making her presence known. Idly, she noted two details. Between them they had the artistry to make the arrangement of jewellery enticing and attractive. And they worked in what seemed to be an inimical silence. The mother cast baleful looks upon the daughter. The daughter countered with haughty expressions indicative of her indifference to her mother's displeasure.
Both women started when Barbara said good morning. Only Connie spoke.
“I got my doubts that you're here to make a purchase.” She stopped what she was doing and went to the counter, where a cigarette burned in a quarter-moon ashtray. She tapped off ash and brought the cigarette to her mouth. She watched Barbara over it, eyes hostile.
“I'd like a word with Rachel,” Barbara said.
“Have it, then. And good luck to you. I'd like a word with the slag myself, but I'm getting nothing out of her. You may as well have a go. I can't hardly wait to hear what she's got to say for herself.”
Barbara didn't intend the mother to be in on the questioning, however. She said, “Rachel, can you step outside? Can we have a walk?”
“What's this, then?” Connie demanded. “I di'n't say she was free to go off somewheres. We got work to do. What you got to say to her, you c'n say here. While we do our unpacking.”
Over one of the folding screen's six finíais, Rachel draped the necklace she'd been holding. Connie seemed to realise what this action implied. She went on, “Rachel Lynn, don't you dare even think—”
“We c'n walk up to the park,” Rachel said to Barbara. “It's not far, and I could do with a break.”
“Rachel Lynn!”
Rachel pointedly ignored her. She led the way out of the shop and onto the pavement. Barbara heard Connie bark her daughter's name once more—and then cry it out pleadingly—as they headed in the direction of the Balford Road.
The park in question was a square of sun-parched lawn a short distance beyond St. John's Church. A freshly painted black wrought-iron fence surrounded it, but its gate stood open. A sign on this bade everyone welcome and named the place FALAK DEDAR PARK. A Muslim name, Barbara noted. She wondered if it was indicative of the inroads that the Asian community was making into Balford-le-Nez.
A cinder path that edged the lawn took them to a bench, partially shaded by a laburnum tree heavy with cascades of yellow flowers. A fountain trickled in the centre of the park, a veiled girl rendered in cloud-coloured marble, who poured water from a tipped urn into a shallow pool that formed a shell at her feet. After arranging her filmy skirt, Rachel gave her attention to this fountain, not to Barbara.
Barbara told the girl why she was there: to ascertain her whereabouts on the previous Friday night. “Four nights ago,” she reminded Rachel, lest the girl feign an inability to recall. Four nights hardly comprised a substantial enough leap in time to dim one's recollection, she was implying.
Rachel obviously was skilled in inference. She said, “You want to know where I was when Haytham Querashi died.”
Barbara agreed that this was her purpose. She added, “Your name's come up more than once in relation to this case, Rachel. I didn't want to say as much in front of your mum—”
“Ta,” Rachel said.
“—but it never looks good when one's name pops up in any way during a murder investigation. Smoke?”
Rachel shook her head and returned her gaze to the fountain. She said, “I was out with a boy called Trevor Ruddock. He's a bloke from the pier. But I expect you know that already. He told me last night that you talked to him.” She smoothed her hand along a design in her skirt, a peacock's head that was cleverly camouflaged in the material's swirls of colour.
Barbara altered her position to pull her notebook from her shoulder bag. She flipped through the pages to find her notes of the earlier interview with Trevor Ruddock. As she did this, she saw Rachel's eyes catch the movement in her peripheral vision. The girl's hand stopped smoothing her skirt, as if she'd suddenly realised that any motion was liable to betray her.
Barbara refreshed her own memory on the subject of Trevor's evening with Rachel, then she turned to the girl. She said, “Trevor Ruddock claims you were with him. He gets a bit vague with the details, though. And details are what I'm trying to suss out. So perhaps you can fill in his blanks for me.”
“I don't see how.”
“It's easy enough.” Barbara held her pencil in an attitude of expectancy. She said, “What did you two do?”
“Do?”
“On Friday night. Where'd you go? Out for a meal? For coffee? To a film? Perhaps you went to a caff somewhere?”
Two of Rachel's fingers pinched the peacock's crested head. “You're making a joke, aren't you?” Her tone was bitter. “I expect Trev told you where we went.”
“He might have done,” Barbara admitted. “But I'd like to have your version, if you don't mind.”
“And if I mind?”
“Then you mind. But minding's not such a good idea when someone's been murdered. When someone's been murdered, the best thing to do is to tell the truth. Because if you lie, the rozzers always want to know the reason. And they generally keep chipping away at you till they get it.”
The girl's fingers pinched her skirt more tightly. If the camouflaged peacock had been real, Barbara thought, he'd be gasping his final breaths.
“Rachel?” Barbara prompted. “Have we got a problem? Because I can always let you go back to the shop if you need to have a think before we talk. You can ask your mum what you ought to do. Your mum seemed real concerned about you yesterday, and I'm sure if she knew that the cops're asking about your whereabouts on the murder night, she'd give you all the advice you want. Didn't your mum mention to me yesterday that you—”
“All right.” Apparently, Rachel didn't need Barbara to offer more clarity on the subject of her mother. “What he said is true. What he told you is true. All right? Is that what you want to hear?”
“What I want to hear are the facts, Rachel. Where were you and Trevor on Friday night?”
“Where he said we were. Up in one of the beach huts. Which is where we are most Friday nights. Cause no one's around up there after dark, so no one sees who Trevor Ruddock's decided to let blow him. There. Is that what you wanted to know?”
The girl's head turned. She was red to her hair. And the harsh and unforgiving daylight emphasised each of her facial deformities with a brutal precision. Seeing her fully, neither hidden by shadows nor in profile any longer, Barbara couldn't help thinking of a documentary film she'd once watched on the BBC, an exploration of what constitutes beauty to the human eye. Symmetry, the film concluded. Homo sapiens is genetically programmed to admire symmetry. If that was the case, Barbara thought, Rachel Winfield didn't stand a chance.
Barbara sighed. She wanted to tell the girl that life didn't need to be lived the way she was living it. But the only alternative she herself had to offer was the life she was leading, and she was leading it alone.
“Actually,” she said, “what you and Trevor were up to doesn't much interest me, Rachel. It's your call who you want to do and why. If you're chuffed at the end of an evening with him, more power to you. If you're not, move on.”
“I'm chuffed,” Rachel said defiantly. “I'm properly chuffed.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “So what time did you find yourself so chuffed that you staggered home? Trevor tells me it was half past eleven. What d'you say?”
Rachel stared at her. Barbara took note of the fact that she was biting her lower lip.
“What's it going to be?” Barbara asked her. “Either you were with him till half past eleven, or you weren't.” She didn't add the rest, because she knew the girl understood it. If Trevor Ruddock had spoken to her, he'd have made it clear that her failure to corroborate his story in every detail would shine suspicion's spotlight on him.
Rachel looked away, back to the fountain. The girl pouring water was lithe and graceful, with perfect features and downcast eyes. Her hands were small and her feet—just visible at the bottom of the drapery that she wore to cover her body—were shapely and delicate like the rest of her. Gazing upon the statue, Rachel Winfield seemed to make up her mind. She said, “Ten o'clock,” with her vision fixed on the fountain. “I got home round ten.”
“You're sure of that? You looked at a clock? You couldn't have misread the time somehow?”
Rachel gave a weary one-note laugh. “You know how long it takes to blow some bloke? When that's all he wants and that's all you're likely ever to get? From him or anyone? Let me tell you. It doesn't take long.”
Barbara felt all the wretchedness of the girl's painful questions. She flipped her notebook closed and considered how best to reply. Part of her said that it wasn't her job to hand out advice, to salve psychic wounds, or to pour oil generously where soul waters roiled. The other part of her felt a kinship with the girl. For Barbara, one of life's most difficult and most bitter lessons had been the slow recognition of what constitutes love: both giving it and receiving it in turn. She still hadn't learned the lesson completely. And in her line of work, there were times when she wondered if she ever would.
“Don't put such a give away price on yourself,” she finally settled on saying to the girl. She dropped her cigarette to the ground as she spoke, extinguishing it with the toe of her high top trainer. Her throat was dry, from the heat, the smoke, and the tautness of muscles fighting to hold back what she didn't particularly want to feel and even less want to remember about her own low prices and when she'd offered them. “Someone's going to pay that price, sure, because it's a bargain. But the price you pay is bloody well higher.”
She rose without giving the girl a chance to reply. She nodded her thanks for Rachel's cooperation and began to head out of the small park. As she followed the path to the gate, she saw a young Asian man affixing onto one of the wrought-iron railings a yellow paper that he took from a stack which he carried. By the time she reached him, he'd moved on and she saw him farther down the street, fixing another notice to a telegraph pole.
Curiously, she read the poster. The large black letters on yellow were hard to miss, and they spelled out a man's name across the top: FAHD KUMHAR. Beneath this was a boldly rendered message in both English and Urdu, BALFORD C.I.D. WANT TO INTERROGATE YOU. DO NOT SPEAK TO THEM WITHOUT LEGAL REPRESENTATION. JUM'A WILL PROVIDE THIS. PLEASE PHONE. These four sentences were followed by a local telephone number, which was repeated across the bottom of the page vertically so that it could be torn off by a passer-by.
At least they now knew what Muhannad Malik's latest move was, Barbara thought. And she felt a mixture of satisfaction and relief at what the yellow notice inadvertently revealed to her. Despite having good reason for doing so, Azhar hadn't betrayed to his cousin her slip of the tongue of the previous night. Had he done so, the only town in which the notices would have gone up was Clacton, and they'd have been concentrated round the market square.
She owed him one now. And as she walked back in the direction of the High Street, Barbara couldn't help wondering when and how Taymullah Azhar would call in the debt.