“I KNEW IT'D look like an accident to everyone if I didn't do something to change the picture,” Hegarty continued.
“So you moved the body into the pillbox and you vandalised his car. That way, the police would know it was a murder,” Barbara concluded for him.
“I couldn't think of anything else,” he said frankly. “And I couldn't come forward. Gerry'd know then. And I'd've been cooked. It's not like I don't love Gerry, see. It's just that sometimes the thought of having one bloke for the rest of my life …Shit, it feels like a prison sentence, if you know what I mean.”
“And how d'you know that Gerry isn't already in the picture?” Barbara asked. Theo Shaw aside, here was yet another English suspect. She avoided Emily Barlow's eyes.
“What d'you …?” Hegarty suddenly saw where the question was heading. He said quickly, “No. It wasn't Ger on the clifftop. No way. He doesn't know about me and Hayth. He suspects, but he doesn't know. And if he did, he wouldn't've offed Hayth. He would've just sent me packing.”
Emily pushed past this diversion. “Was the figure you saw on the clifftop a man or a woman?”
He couldn't tell, he said. It was dark, and the distance from the pillbox to the clifftop was too great. So as to age, as to sex, as to race or identity … He just didn't know.
“The figure didn't come down to the beach to check on Querashi?”
No, Hegarty said. Whoever it was, the person had hurried north along the top of the cliff, in the direction of Pennyhole Bay.
Which was, Barbara thought with triumph, more support for the theory of a killer arriving by cabin cruiser. “Did you hear a boat's engine that night?”
He didn't hear anything but his own heart slamming against his eardrums, Hegarty said. He waited five minutes beside the pillbox, trying to collect himself and trying to think. He was in such a sweat that he wouldn't've noticed a nuclear explosion ten yards away.
Once he gathered his wits—three minutes, maybe five—he did what had to be done, which took—maybe—quarter of an hour. Then he scarpered. “Only boat engine I heard was my own,” he said.
“What?” Emily asked.
“The boat,” he said. “That's how I got there. Gerry's got a motor-boat that we use at the weekends. I always took that when I was meeting Hayth. I came up the coast from Jaywick Sands. It's more direct, that way, more exciting as well. And I like it to build. The excitement. You know.”
So here was the boat that had been heard in the water off the Nez that night. With a sinking heart, Barbara wondered if they were back at square one. She said, “While you were waiting for Querashi, did you hear anything then? Another boat's motor? Large and running low?” He hadn't, he said. But the figure up on the top of the cliff would have been there before him anyway. The trap was set when Haytham got there, because Hegarty hadn't seen anyone near the steps until after he fell.
Emily said, “We have an i.d. on you at the Castle Hotel with Mr. Querashi, at an affair called …?” She glanced at Barbara.
“Leather and Lace,” Barbara told her.
“Right. That i.d. doesn't square with your story, Mr. Hegarty. Why did the two of you end up at a public dance in the Castle Hotel? That makes no sense if you were so intent upon keeping your relationship a secret from your lover.”
“Ger doesn't do the scene,” Hegarty said. “He never did. How far's that hotel from here anyway? Forty minutes’ drive if you hit it good. More if you're going from Jaywick or Clacton. I didn't think anyone I know'd see me there and spill it to Gerry. And it was a work night in the Avenues for Ger, so I knew he'd never know I was gone. We were safe at the Castle, me and Hayth.” But having said that much, his eyebrows drew together and he frowned.
“Yes?” Emily asked him quickly.
“I thought for a moment …But it's nothing cause he didn't see us, so he never knew. And no way was Haytham going to tell him, of all people.”
“What are you talking about, Mr. Hegarty?”
“Muhannad.”
“Muhannad Malik?”
“Yeah. Right. We saw him at the Castle as well.”
Jesus, Barbara thought. How much more convoluted could the case become? She said, “Muhannad Malik's homosexual as well?”
Hegarty guffawed, fingering the nappie pin dangling from his ear-lobe. “Not at the hotel like in at the hotel. We saw him afterwards, when we were leaving. He drove right in front of us, crossed over the road, and took a right towards Harwich. It was one in the morning and Haytham couldn't make out what Muhannad was doing in that part of the world in the middle of the night. So we followed him.”
Barbara saw Emily's hand tighten round the pencil she'd been holding. Her voice, however, betrayed nothing. “Where did he go?”
He went, Hegarty said, to an industrial estate on the edge of Parkes-ton. He parked at one of the warehouses, disappeared inside for thirty minutes or so, and then left again.
“And you're sure it was Muhannad Malik?” Emily pressed.
There was no mistaking that fact, Hegarty told them. The bloke had been driving his turquoise Thunderbird, and it had to be the only car of its kind in Essex. “Only that's right, isn't it?” Hegarty suddenly added. “He wasn't driving that car when he left. He was driving a lorry. He pulled out of the warehouse in the lorry, in fact. And that's the last we saw of him.”
“You didn't follow him farther?”
“Hayth didn't want to risk it. It was one thing for us to see Muhannad. It was another if Muhannad spotted us.”
“And when was this exactly?”
“Last month.”
“Mr. Querashi never mentioned it again?”
He shook his head.
Barbara could tell from the very intensity of her focus that the DCI was charged up to follow this bit of information. But treading along the Muhannad Trail ignored a signpost that Hegarty had already painted. For the moment, Barbara shoved to the back of her mind the three words that had set her thoughts roiling. In the club couldn't negate the presence of another suspect.
“This Ger,” she said. “Gerry DeVitt.”
Hegarty, who'd even begun to relax in their presence, seeming to enjoy his moment of importance in the investigation, was at once wary. His eyes betrayed this, becoming watchful and alert. “What about him? You're not thinking that Gerry …? Look, I already said. He didn't know about me and Hayth. Which is why I didn't want to talk to you lot in the first place.”
“Why you say you didn't want to talk to us,” Barbara said.
“He was working on Hayth's house that night,” Hegarty insisted. “Ask anyone on First Avenue. They would've seen the lights. They would've heard the banging. And I already told you what was what: If Ger found out about me and Hayth, he would've ended it with me. He wouldn't've gone after Hayth. That's not his way.”
“Murder,” Emily said, “is generally not anyone's way, Mr. Hegarty.”
She concluded the interview formally, giving the time and switching the recorder off. She stood, saying, “We may be in touch again.”
“You won't ring me at home,” he said in request. “You won't come to Jay wick.”
“Thank you for cooperating,” Emily said in reply. “DC Eyre will take you back to work.”
Barbara followed Emily into the corridor, where the DCI spoke in a low, terse voice, revealing that motive or not, Gerry DeVitt had not displaced her number one suspect. “Whatever it is, Muhannad's taking it to the factory. He's boxing it there, and he's stowing those boxes with everything else being shipped out. He knows when orders are being assembled for shipment. Christ. That's part of his job. All he has to do is to time his own shipments with those going out from the factory. I want that place searched, top to bottom, inside and out.”
But in Barbara's mind, the interrogation of Hegarty could not be so easily dismissed. Thirty minutes with the bloke had raised at least half a dozen questions. And the answer to none of them was Muhannad Malik.
They passed reception on their way to the stairs. Barbara saw Azhar talking to the WPC on duty there. He looked up as she and Emily came within his field of vision. Emily saw him as well, saying obscurely to Barbara, “Ah. Mr. Devotion to His People. All the way from London to show us what a good Muslim can be.” She stopped behind the reception desk and spoke to Azhar. “A little early for your meeting, aren't you? Sergeant Havers won't be available until late this afternoon.”
“I've come not for our meeting but to collect Mr. Kumhar and return him to his home,” Azhar said. “His twenty-four hours of custody are nearly at an end, as I'm certain you know.”
“What I know,” Emily replied tartly, “is that Mr. Kumhar hasn't requested your services as a chauffeur. And until he does, he'll be returned to his home in the same way he was taken from his home.”
Azhar's glance shifted to Barbara. He seemed aware of the sudden sea-change in the investigation as evidenced by the DCFs tone. She didn't sound like an officer who was worried any longer about the possibility of another community uprising. Which made her much less likely to compromise.
Emily didn't give Azhar a chance to reply. She turned away, caught sight of one of her team approaching, and said, “Billy, if Mr. Kumhar's had his lunch and his wash-up, take him home. Collect his work papers and his passport when you get there. I don't want that bloke disappearing on us till we can sort through everything he had to say.”
Her voice carried. Azhar clearly heard it. Barbara spoke with some care as they climbed the stairs. “Even if Muhannad's at the bottom of all this, you don't think Azhar's—Mr. Azhar's—involved, Em? He's come from London. He didn't even know about the killing before that.”
“We don't know a thing about what he knew or when he knew it. He came here posing as some sort of legal expert when, for all we know, he could be the brains behind Muhannad's game. Where was he on Friday night, Barb?”
Barbara knew the answer to that very well since, from behind the shelter of the curtains in her bungalow, she'd watched Azhar and his daughter grilling halal lamb kebabs on the lawn behind the Edwardian house in which they occupied the ground floor flat. But she couldn't say this without betraying her friendship with them. So she said, “Except …well, he's seemed a decent sort of bloke in our meetings.”
Emily gave a sardonic laugh. “He's decent all right. He's got a wife and two kids that he ditched in Hounslow so he could set up house with some English tart. He gave her a brat, and then she walked out on him, this Angela Weston, whoever she is. God knows how many other women he's doing the business with in his spare time. He's probably planting half-breed bastards all over town.” She laughed again. “Right, Barb. What a decent bloke our Mr. Azhar is.”
Barbara's step faltered on the stairs. She said, “What? How d'you—?”
Emily stopped above her. She glanced back and said, “How did I what? Suss out the truth? I put a call out on him the first day he was here. I got the report when I got the i.d. on Hegarty's fingerprints.” Her look sharpened. Too perceptively, Barbara thought. “Why, Barb? What's the truth about Azhar got to do with the price of petrol? Aside, of course, from confirming my belief that not one of these yobbos can be trusted half an inch.”
Barbara wondered about the question. She didn't much want to consider the true answer. She said, “Nothing. Nothing really.”
“Good,” Emily replied. “Let's take on Muhannad.”
OU HAVE YOURSELF A CUPPA, MR. SHAW. I'LL BE right outside at the station, just where I am on every shift. If she takes a turn, I'll hear the machines start bleating.”
“Actually, I'm fine, Sister. I don't need—”
“No argument, young man. You look dead as a ghoul. You were here half the night, and you won't do anyone a bit of good if you don't start taking better care of yourself.”
It was the day nurse's voice. Agatha recognised it. She didn't have to open her eyes to know who was speaking to her grandson, which was just as well, because opening her eyes felt as if it would take too damned much effort. And besides, she didn't want to look at anyone. She didn't want to have to see the pity in their faces. She knew well enough what they'd be seeing to inspire that pity: a wreck of a woman, a virtual carcase, all shrivelled up on one side, her left leg useless, her left hand clawed into a dead bird's talon, her head tilted, her mouth and one eye following that tilt, and the disgusting drool following them both.
“All right, Mrs. Jacobs,” Theo said to the nurse, and Agatha realised that he did sound tired. He sounded both exhausted and unwell. And at this thought she felt a moment of panic clutching at her lungs, making it suddenly difficult to breathe. What if something happened to Theo? she wondered feverishly. She hadn't once considered the possibility, but what if he didn't take care of himself? What if he fell ill? Or was in an accident? What, then, would become of her?
She felt his nearness from the scent of him: that clean odour of soap and the faint lime smell of the astringent he used. She felt the mattress of the hospital bed depress slightly as he leaned over her.
“Gran?” he whispered. “I'm going down to the cafeteria, but don't you worry. I won't be long.”
“You'll be long enough to have yourself a decent meal,” Sister Jacobs said curtly. “If you're back here in less than an hour, lad, I'm sending you off again. See if I don't.”
“What a task master she is, eh, Gran?” Theo said in some amusement. Agatha felt his dry lips press against her forehead. “I'll be back in sixty-one minutes, then. You have a good rest.”
Rest? Agatha queried incredulously. How was she supposed to rest? When she closed her eyes, all she could see in her mind's vision was the hideous spectacle she herself presented: a misshapen shell of the vital woman she once had been, now helpless, immobile, catheterised, dependent. And when she tried to dismiss that vision in order to imagine the future instead, what she pictured in its place was what she had seen and scorned a thousand times, driving along the Esplanade below the Avenues in Balford, where that line of nursing homes overlooked the sea. There, the discarded ancients tottered, clinging to their zimmer frames for support. Their backbones permanently curved like the mark of a question no one had the courage to ask, they shuffled along the pavement, an army of the forgotten and infirm. She'd been aware of these relics of humanity since her girlhood. And since her girlhood she'd sworn to herself that she'd end her own life before she was reduced to becoming one of their numbers.
Only now she didn't want to end her own life. She wanted to take her life back, and she knew that she needed Theo to do it.
“Now, now, sweetie, something tells me you're wide awake under those eyelids of yours.” Sister Jacobs was hanging over the bed. She wore a man's heavy deodorant, and when she perspired—which was copiously and often—the odour of spice wafted off her body like steam rolling off boiling water. Her hands smoothed back Agatha's hair. A comb went through it, caught on a tangle, pulled insistently, then gave up the effort. “Lovely grandboy you've got, Mrs. Shaw. Such a love, he is. I've a daughter who'd like to meet your Theo. Available, is he? I ought to invite her round for a cuppa when I take my break. I think they'd get on, my Donna and your Theo. What d'you think of that? Would you like a nice granddaughter-in-law, Mrs. Shaw? She could help you in your recovery, my Donna.”
Absolutely not, Agatha thought. Some peabrained tart with her claws into Theo was exactly what she did not need. What she needed was escape from this place, along with peace and quiet to gather her strength for the upcoming battle of convalescence. Peace and quiet were scarce commodities when one was lying in a hospital bed. In a hospital bed, what one received were probings, proddings, prickings, and pity. And she wanted none of that.
Pity was the worst. She hated pity. She herself felt it for no one, and she wanted no one to feel it for her. She'd rather experience others’ aversion—which was what she'd felt for those doddering bits of human detritus on the Esplanade—than find herself a paralysed pilgarlic, the sort of person people spoke about rather than to, when they were in her presence. Aversion implied fear and horror, which could be used ultimately to one's own advantage. Pity implied the other's superiority, which Agatha had never had to face in her life. And she would not face it now, she swore.
If she allowed anyone to gain ascendancy over her, she would be defeated. Defeated, she would see her plans for Balford's future quashed. Nothing would remain of Agatha Shaw upon her death save whatever memories her grandson had and chose—when the time was right, of course—to pass on to future generations. But how could she rely upon Theo's devotion to her memory? He'd have other responsibilities then. So if her memory was to be established, if her life was to be given meaning before that life ended, she would have to do it herself. She would have to put the pieces and the players in position. Which was what she'd been in the course of doing when the damnable stroke supervened, knocking her plans awry.
Now, if she wasn't careful, that greasy, unwashed Malik monster would make his move. He'd done as much when her council seat had to be filled, sliding in to replace her, like a water moccasin slithering into a river. How much more he'd do once he got the word that she'd been laid out by another stroke.
Balford would be looking at more than Falak Dedar Park if Akram Malik had the opportunity to set his plans in motion. Before the town knew what was happening to it, he'd have a minaret in the market square, a gaudy mosque in place of their lovely St. John's Church, and nasty-smelling tandoor cookeries on every street corner from the Balford Road right down to the sea. And then the real invasion would come: scores of Pakis with their scores of lice-ridden children, half of them on the dole, the other half illegal, and all of them polluting the culture and the traditions among which they'd chosen to live.
They want a better life, Gran was how Theo would explain it to her. But she didn't need his soft-hearted and wrong-headed explication of what was so patently obvious. They wanted her life. They wanted the life of every English man, woman, and child. And they would not rest, desist, or retreat until they had it.
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.”