“BUT, EM,” BARBARA said, “he's got it all, hasn't he? Motive, opportunity, and now the means. How long would it take him to walk from that house over to the marina? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? That's nothing, right? And the path from the house to the shore's so well marked that you can see it all the way from the boat hire. So he wouldn't even have needed a torch to show him the way. Which explains why we haven't been able to come up with a single witness who saw anyone on or near the Nez.”
“Except Cliff Hegarty.” Emily fired up the Ford.
“Right. And he's practically handed us Theo Shaw on a platter, what with the story about the Malik girl's pregnancy.”
Emily reversed out of the marina's car park. She didn't speak again until they were back on the lane leading into the town. Then she said, “Theo Shaw's not the only person who could have come to the marina and nicked one of Charlie's Zodiacs, Barb. Are you ready to discount Eastern Imports, World Wide Tours, Klaus Reuchlein, and Hamburg? How many of the things that tie Querashi to Muhannad's dodgy business do you want to label coincidences? The phone calls to Reuchlein's flat in Hamburg? The bill of lading from Eastern Imports in the safe deposit box? Muhannad's early morning jaunt to that warehouse? What do we toss out, Barb?”
“//Muhannad's got a dodgy business going,” Barbara pointed out.
“Driving a lorry away from Eastern Imports at one in the morning?” Emily reminded her. “What's that connected to if not something dodgy? Believe it, Barb. I know my man.”
They zoomed along the lane in the direction they'd come from, slowing as they re-entered the town. Emily braked at the corner of the High Street and waited for a family to cross in front of the car. Laden with canvas chairs, plastic buckets, shovels, and towels, they looked uniformly hot and unhappy as they straggled homeward from their day at the sea.
Barbara pulled on her lip, seeing the beachgoers trudging past but concentrating instead upon the case in hand. She knew that she couldn't rationally argue with Emily's logic. The DCI was perfectly right. There were too many flaming coincidences to be actual coincidences in the investigation. But she could not dismiss the fact that very nearly from the first, Theo Shaw had had a motive written above his head in neon, while—no matter his incendiary personality—Muhannad Malik had not.
Nonetheless, Barbara backed away from a full-scale debate over the efficacy of heading to the mustard factory in lieu of making a dash for the pleasure pier. Despite her inclination to follow up on the possibilities presented by the proximity of Balford Old Hall to the marina, she knew that neither she nor Emily had one piece of hard evidence to pin on anyone. Without an eyewitness to anything except a shadowy figure on the top of the Nez, and with only a list of curious phone calls and a tangle of circumstantial bits and pieces to go on, their only hope for an arrest was going to be to dig up an incriminating detail that would implicate one of the men under suspicion or to trip someone up in an interview that would reveal guilt where innocence had been avowed.
With a search warrant in their hands, it did make more sense to pursue the factory end of the business. At least the factory presented the hope of digging up something that could lead to an arrest. A sojourn to the pier didn't promise much more than plodding through what they already knew and had already heard, hoping this time to listen with more discerning ears to whatever tale was told.
Still, she persisted. “That bracelet did say ‘Life begins now.’ He could have meant to marry her, only to have Querashi get in the way.”
Emily gave her an incredulous glance. “Theo Shaw marry the Malik girl? Not on your life. His grandmother would have cut him off without a penny. No, it was to Theo Shaw's advantage that Haytham Querashi came along. Querashi was Theo's best bet to be rid of Sahlah without fuss. If anything, he had every reason to want Haytham Querashi to stay alive.”
They spun along the Esplanade. They left bicycle riders, pedestrians, and Rollerbladers behind them as they veered inland by the Coast Guard station and cruised along Hall Lane towards the elbow that became Nez Park Road.
Emily pulled into the bedraggled industrial estate. She took the search warrant from the glove compartment and said, “Ah. Here are the boys.”
The boys were the eight members of the squad whose pagers the DCI had instructed Belinda Warner to ring from the station. They'd been ordered from their current activities—everything from verifying Gerry DeVitt's alibi to contacting all of the owners of beach huts in an attempt to corroborate Trevor Ruddock's untold tale about petty burglary—in order to take part in the search of the factory. They were lounging about outside the old brick building, smoking, attempting to beat the heat with cans of Coke and bottles of water. They joined Emily and Barbara at the Ford, the smokers prudently crushing out their fags before they approached.
Emily instructed them to wait for her word, and she went into reception. Barbara followed. Sahlah Malik was not behind the desk. Instead, the reception area was occupied by a middle-aged woman—scarved and gowned—who was seeing to the day's post.
She greeted Emily's presentation of the search warrant by excusing herself hastily and disappearing into the administrative office just beyond reception. In a moment, Ian Armstrong was hurrying towards them, with the temporary receptionist hanging behind at a safe distance to watch his confrontation with the police.
Armstrong came through the door, said, “Detective Chief Inspector, Sergeant,” and nodded to both of them in turn. He dug into the breast pocket of his jacket. For a moment, Barbara thought he intended to present them with a legal document of his own, but he brought forth a crumpled handkerchief and blotted his forehead with it. “Mr. Malik isn't here. He's paying a call on Agatha Shaw. She's in hospital. A stroke, I'm told. How may I help you? Kawthar told me that you're requesting—”
Emily cut in with “It's not a request,” and she showed him the document.
He swallowed. “Oh dear. With Mr. Malik not here at the moment, I'm afraid I can't allow—”
“Allowing or not allowing isn't your option, Mr. Armstrong,” Emily told him. “Gather your people outside.”
“But we're mixing product at the moment.” He spoke weakly, as if he knew his protest was futile but felt compelled to make one anyway. “This is a delicate stage of the operation, as we're working on a new sauce, and Mr. Malik was quite firm in instructing our mixers …” He cleared his throat. “If you can give us a half hour …? Perhaps a bit more …?”
In answer, Emily went to the door. She stuck her head out and said, “Let's get on with it.”
“But …but …” Ian Armstrong wrung his hands and looked imploringly at Barbara, seeking an advocate. “Surely, you have to tell me …give me some indication of …what is it exactly that you're looking for? As I'm the one in charge in the absence of the Maliks …”
Emily said sharply, “Muhannad's not here either?”
“Well, of course he is … I mean, he was earlier … I had assumed …He goes home for lunch.” Armstrong cast an agonised glance at the outer door as Emily's team came striding through it. She'd chosen the biggest and burliest men available, knowing that at least one-quarter of the power of search and seizure was intimidation. Ian Armstrong took one look at the assembling crowd of police officers and obviously decided that discretion was the better part of whatever else he'd had in mind. He said, “Oh dear.”
Emily said, “Clear your people out of the building, Mr. Armstrong.”
Emily's team spread throughout the factory. While the employees gathered on the cracked tarmac fanning out from the front door, the detectives divided themselves among the administration offices, the shipping department, the production area, and the storage facility. They were seeking what could be shipped from the factory in the guise of product or tucked among the packed bottles and jars: drugs, hard core or child pornography, weapons, explosives, counterfeit money, jewels.
The team was elbow deep into the search when Emily's mobile sounded. She and Barbara were in the warehouse, searching through boxes that stood on the loading dock ready for shipment. The mobile phone was attached to the waistband of Emily's trousers, and when it rang, she snapped it off and, clearly annoyed at having so far found nothing within the factory, barked her name into the mouthpiece.
From her place on the other side of the loading dock, Barbara heard Emily's end of the conversation. It consisted of, “Barlow here …Yes. Goddamn it, Billy, I'm in the middle of something. What the hell is it? …Right, that's what I ordered and that's what I want. That bloke's intent on doing a runner and the minute you let him out of your sight, he's going to do one. … He what? Have you had a good look? Everywhere? …Yes, I can hear him babbling. What's he on about? …Stolen? Since yesterday? Bullshit. I want him back at the nick. Directly … I don't care if he pees in his pants. I want him under my thumb.”
She snapped the phone off and looked at Barbara. “Kumhar,” she said.
“A problem?”
“What the fuck else?” Emily scowled, looking at the shipping boxes that they'd opened but obviously with her mind miles away from the factory. “I told DC Honigman to collect Kumhar's papers when he returned him to Clacton. Passport, immigration documents, work permits, the lot.”
“So he wouldn't do a runner in case we need to talk to him again. I remember,” Barbara said. “And?”
“And that was Honigman on the blower. It seems that our little Asian worm doesn't have any papers in Clacton at all. According to Honigman, he appears to be claiming that they were stolen while he was in the nick last night.” She shoved the mobile back onto the waistband of her trousers.
Barbara considered this information in light of everything else they knew, what they had seen, and what they had heard. “Querashi had immigration papers in the Barclays safe deposit box, didn't he, Em? Is there a connection in that? And even if there is, is there also a connection here?” She gestured round the shipping department.
“That,” Emily said, “is exactly what I intend to find out.” She stepped off the shipping dock. “Keep with the search, Barb. And if Malik shows his mug, drag him over to the nick for a natter.”
“And if he doesn't show up?”
“Then check at his home. Run him to ground. Find him one way or the other. And bring him in.”
AFTER THE COPS returned him to the industrial estate, Cliff Hegarty decided to officially declare himself on holiday for the rest of the afternoon. He used a sheet of polythene to cover his current Distraction—a jigsaw puzzle under construction, featuring a large and pendulously breasted woman together with a small elephant in a most fascinating if physiologically impossible pose—and he packed his tools away in their stainless steel chests. He swept up the fine sawdust, polished the surface of his display cabinets, emptied and washed the tea mugs, and locked his door. He hummed contentedly all the while.
He'd done his part to bring Haytham's killer to justice. True, he hadn't come forward at once like he might've done on last Friday night, when he'd seen poor Hayth go head over arse down the face of the Nez, but at least he knew he would've come forward had circumstances been different. Besides, he hadn't been thinking only of himself in hanging back from making a statement to the rozzers. There was Haytham to think of as well. Had Cliff made it known that the murder victim had gone to the Nez for a bit of brown, what would it have done to the bloke's reputation? No sense in tarring him once he was gone was Cliff's way of thinking about it.
And there had been Gerry to consider as well. What was the point in stirring up a hornets’ nest of worry in Ger when it wasn't the least bit necessary? Ger talked about fidelity all the time, like he really believed in his heart of hearts that being true to one's lover was the number one topic on his mind. But the real truth was that Ger was scared shitless about HIV. He'd been getting himself tested three times a year since the scare began, and what he believed was that plugging only one bloke for the rest of his life was the key to survival. If he knew that Cliff had been doing the business with Haytham Querashi, he'd only worry himself into a state and probably bring on symptoms of some crazy disease that he didn't even have in the first place. Besides, Haytham always took precautions. Hell, there were times when taking it in the arse from Haytham was so antiseptic that Cliff had found himself tossing round the idea of setting up something with a third bucking bronco just to add a bit of salt to the mash.
Not that he would have done it, mind you. But there were times …Just now and then when Hayth would wrestle with that flaming Durex for about ten seconds too long for Cliff's liking …
However, those days were now behind him. Cliff made this decision as he strode to the car. Across the rutted lane, he could see six police cars sitting in front of the mustard factory, and he gave thanks that his part in the investigation was now at an end. He'd head for home and forget about it all, he decided. He'd had a close call, and he'd be a real boofhead if he didn't see what had happened in the past few days as a gilt-edged invitation from on high to turn over a new leaf.
He found himself whistling as he drove south through Balford, buzzing along the seafront, then cruising up the High Street. His life was definitely looking up. With the Haytham business completely behind him and his head finally straight on what he intended to do with the rest of his life, he knew he was ready to devote himself to Gerry. They'd been through a bad patch—him and Ger—but that's all it was, plain and simple.
He'd had to bring to bear all the fancy dancing he knew in order to convince Gerry that his suspicions were groundless. He'd begun his efforts at placation by using anger. When his lover had brought up the idea of being tested for HIV, Cliff's response had been outrage, finely tuned to illustrate that a grievous blow had been dealt him.
“Are we going to have this one again, Ger?” he'd demanded that morning in the kitchen. “I'm not cheating on you, okay? Jesus Christ. How d'you think it feels—”
“You think HIV can't touch you.” Gerry was the maddening voice of reason as always. “But it can and it will. Have you watched anyone die of AIDS, Cliff? Or do you leave the cinema when that scene comes on?”
“Is there something wrong with your hearing, mate? I said I'm not cheating. If you don't believe me, maybe you ought to tell me why.”
“I'm not stupid, okay? I work days at the pier. I work nights at that house. Want to tell me what you do while I'm gone?”
Cliff had felt ice running in his veins, so close was Gerry coming to the truth, but he'd rallied well enough. “You want to tell me what you're on about? What's your point? Just spit it out, Ger.” This demand had been a calculated risk. But in Cliff's experience, the time to bluff was when he had absolutely no idea what cards his opponent was holding. In this case, he knew what Gerry's suspicions were, and the only way he could sway Gerry to see those suspicions as groundless was to force them into the open in order to beat them down with a decent display of righteous rage. “Go on, then. Spit it all out, Gerry.”
“Okay. All right. You go out when I'm working nights. And we haven't been doing it like we used to. I know the signs, Cliff. Something's going on.”
“Shit. I fucking do not believe this. You expect me to sit here and wait for you, right? But I can't sit here with nothing to do. I start climbing the walls. So I go out. I have a walk. I take a drive. I have a drink at Never Say Die. Or I work on a special order at the shop. D'you want some proof for all this? Should I get the barmaid to write me a note? How ’bout setting up a time clock at the Distractions so I could punch in and out for you?”
This explosion achieved a nice effect. Gerry's voice altered, a subtle gentling that told Cliff he was well on his way to having the upper hand. “I'm saying that if we need to get tested, we need to get tested. Knowing the truth is better than living a death sentence without even knowing it.”
Gerry's alteration in tone told Cliff that an escalation of his own passion would douse even more of his lover's. “Great. So get tested if you want to, but don't expect me to do the same, because I don't need a test, because I'm not bloody cheating. If you're going to start sifting through my business, though, I sure as hell c'n do the same to you. And just as easy. Believe me.” He raised his voice further. “You're gone all day on the pier, aren't you, and half the bleeding night pounding away on some bloke's house—// by the way that's what you're really pounding on.”
“Hang on,” Gerry said. “What's that supposed to mean? We need the money, and as far as I know, there's only one legal way to get it.”
“Right. Fine. Work all you want, if that's what you're doing. But don't expect me to be like you. I got to have breathing room, and if every time I need to have space you're going to think I'm fucking some bloke in a public loo—”
“You go to the square on market days, Cliff.”
“Christ! Jesus! That really cuts it. How else am I going to do the shopping if I don't go to the square on market days?”
“The temptation's there. And both of us know how you are round temptation.”
“Sure we know, and let's both get straight on why we know.” Gerry's face grew red. Cliff knew that he was inches away from scoring the definitive goal in this verbal football match they were engaged in. “Remember me?” he taunted. “I'm the poofter you met in the market square loo when ‘taking precautions’ wasn't near as important as buggering any bloke willing to have you.”
“That's in the past,” Gerry responded defensively.
“Yeah. And let's have a look at the past. You liked your cottaging days as much as I did. Giving blokes the eye, slipping into the loo, doing the business on them without even finding out their names. Only I don't wave those days in front of your face when you don't act like I want you to do. And I don't take you through an inquisition if you stop by the market square for five minutes to pick up lettuce. If that's what you're picking up, by the way.”
“Hang on, Cliff.”
“No. You hang on. Cheating works both ways, and you're out more nights than me.”
“I already said. I'm working.”
“Right. Working.”
“And you know how I feel about fidelity.”
“I know what you say about fidelity. And there's a hell of a lot of difference between what blokes say and what they feel. I figured you might understand that, Ger. I guess I was wrong.”
And that had been that. Deflated when his argument had been turned against him, Gerry'd backed off. He'd sulked for a while, but he wasn't a man who liked to be at odds with anyone, so he'd ended up apologising for his suspicions. Cliff hadn't accepted the apology initially. He'd said gloomily, “I don't know, Gerry. How can we live in peace together—in harmony like you always said you wanted—when we get into rows like this?”
To which Gerry had said, “Forget it. It's the heat. It's getting to me or something. I'm not thinking straight.”
Thinking straight was what everything was all about, in the end. And Cliff was finally doing that. He shot along the country road between Great Holland and Clacton—where the summer wheat languished under a sky that hadn't produced a drop of rain in four scorching weeks—and he realised that what was called for now was a rededication of the self to another. Everyone received a wake-up call sometime during his life. The key was to recognise that call for what it was and to know how to answer it.
His answer would be straightforward fidelity from this time on. Gerry DeVitt, after all, was a good enough bloke. He had a decent job. He had a house five steps from the sand in Jaywick. He had a boat and a motorcycle as well. Cliff could do a lot worse for a permanent situation than hooking up with Gerry. Hell, Cliff's past was a veritable study on that point. And if Gerry was a bit of a bore sometimes, if his compulsion for neatness and promptness began to wear against one's natural grain now and then, if he clung too closely so that one wanted to swat him into the next time zone every once in a while …weren't these in reality small inconveniences compared to what Gerry had to offer in return? Certainly. At least they seemed to be.
Cliff turned along the seafront in Clacton, spinning along Kings Parade. He always hated this stretch of going home: a line of seedy old buildings nudging the shore, a score of ancient hotels and decrepit nursing homes. He hated the sight of the doddering pensioners, clinging to their zimmers with nothing to look forward to and only the past to talk about. Every time he saw them and the environment in which they lived, he renewed his vow never to be among them. He'd die first, he always told himself, before he ended his life this way. And always as he came in sight of the first of the nursing establishments, his foot pressed down on his old Deux Chevaux's accelerator and his eyes shifted to the undulating mass of the grey-green North Sea.
Today was no different. If anything, it was worse than usual. The heat had brought the pensioners out of their caves in herds. They were a bobbing, teetering, careening mass of shiny bald heads, blue hair, and bulging varicose veins. And traffic along the shore was halted, so Cliff was treated to a lingering look at what the happy golden years of old age had in store for the unfortunate.
Restlessly, he tapped the car's steering wheel as he watched them. Ahead, he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance. No, two. Or was it three? Brilliant. A lorry had probably ploughed right into a group of them. And now he was going to be treated to a nice long sit as the paramedics sorted out the living from the dead. Not that they all weren't half dead already. Why did people continue to live when it was so clear that their lives were useless?
Shit. Traffic was going nowhere. And he was parched with thirst. If he drove with two of his wheels on the pavement, he could make it up to Queensway and cut into the town from there. He went for it. He had to use the horn to clear the way, and he was treated to a few raised fists, one tossed apple, and some shouts of protest. But he gave two fingers to anyone who hassled him, and he made it to Queensway and headed away from the shore.
This was definitely better, he thought. He'd crisscross through town. He'd drop back to the shore just beyond Clacton Pier, and then he'd have only a quick jaunt from there to Jay wick Sands.
Moving along again, he began to consider what he and Gerry could do to celebrate his conversion to monogamy and lifelong fidelity. Naturally, Gerry couldn't know that's what they were celebrating, since Cliff had been smiting the air—if that's what the word was—with major protestations of his fidelity for years. But a subtle celebration was certainly in order. And afterwards, with a little wine, a nice steak, a fresh green salad, some lovely veg, and a jacket potato oozing butter …Well, Cliff knew that he could make Gerry DeVitt forget any suspicions he might have ever entertained about his lover's roving eye. Cliff would have to dream up some phony reason why they were having a celebration, of course, but there was time to think of that before Gerry came home.
Cliff zipped into the traffic on Holland Road, turning west in the direction of the railway tracks. He'd shoot beyond the tracks and make his next turn into Oxford Road, which would eventually take him back towards the sea. The scenery was grotty as hell going this way—nothing but dusty industrial estates and a couple of recreation grounds long gone the colour of straw in the deadly, continuing summer heat—but looking at filthy bricks and dying lawns was a damn sight more appealing than watching the old farts down by the shore.
Okay, he thought as he drove along, one arm out the window and the other hand resting easily on the steering wheel. What to tell Ger about the celebration? A big new order came into the Distractions? What about a legacy left by old Aunt Mabel? Or perhaps an anniversary of some sort? That last sounded nice. An anniversary. But was there anything special or significant about today's date?
Cliff considered the question. When had he and Gerry met? He couldn't remember the year without effort, much less the day or the month. And since they'd first done it the day they'd met, he couldn't exactly offer that momentous occasion as a point of celebration either. They'd moved in together—or at least Cliff had moved into Gerry's digs—in the month of March because the wind was blowing like a bitch that day, so they must have met sometime in February. Except that didn't seem right because it was cold as frozen shit in February and he couldn't imagine having it off with anyone in the market square toilet in the February cold. He did have some standards, after all, and one of them was not freezing off his jewels all in the name of getting his rocks off with some good looking bugger who gave him the eye. And since he and Gerry had indeed met in the market square, and since meeting had led directly to doing the business, and since that had led to living together in fairly short order … He knew that March as the move-in date must not be the right month at all. Shit. What was happening to his memory? Cliff wondered. Ger's was like a steel trap and always had been.
Cliff sighed. That was the problem with Ger, wasn't it? He never forgot a single flaming thing. If he only did have the occasional lapse of memory—like who was where and at what time of night—Cliff wouldn't be searching his brain at the moment, trying to come up with something to celebrate. In fact, the whole idea of having to have a celebration instead of just getting on with life left one feeling just a bit aggrieved.
After all, if Gerry had one single milligram of trust in his body, Cliff wouldn't be in the position of trying to placate him. He wouldn't be trying to worm his way into Gerry's good graces because he'd never have been out of his graces in the first place.
That was the other problem with Ger, wasn't it? One had to try so bloody hard with the bloke. A single wrong word, a night or a morning or an afternoon when one just didn't feel like doing it with him, and all of a sudden the whole relationship was under the flipping microscope.
Cliff turned left into Oxford Road, feeling a bit more peeved at his lover. The road ran parallel to the railway, separated from it by another dingy industrial estate. Cliff glanced at the grimy, soot-stained bricks, and he realised that that's exactly how a go-round of the guilts with Gerry made him feel: dirty, like he was something unclean and nasty while Ger was as pure as rainwater in Switzerland. Like that was really the case or something, Cliff thought scornfully. Everyone had weak spots, and Gerry had his. For all Cliff knew, his lover was shagging sheep on the side. He wouldn't really have put it past him.
At the bottom of Oxford Road, two other roads met in the apex of a triangle. These were Carnarvon and Wellesley. The latter led to Pier Avenue, the former to the Marine Parade, and both of them led to the sea. Cliff paused here, his hand on the gear lever, not so much considering which direction he wanted to set off in as considering the manner in which the last few days had played out in his life.
Okay, so Gerry had gone a bit rough with him. It wasn't like he didn't deserve it. On the other hand, Gerry always went a bit rough when he got his teeth into a subject. He couldn't ever just let it go.
And when he didn't have his teeth into something—some shortcoming of Cliff's that he felt needed an adjustment right NOW—he was all over him like a rash, looking for reassurance that he was loved and treasured and wanted and …shit. Sometimes living with Gerry felt like living with a clinging woman. It was all long, meaningful silences that had to be interpreted just so, soulful sighs that were supposed to signal God only knew what, nuzzles on the neck that were meant to be taken as foreplay, and—here was the worst and it made him crazy—that stiff dick poking against him in the morning, telling him what someone's expectations were.
And he hated anyone's expectations. He hated knowing that they were there, like unspoken questions he was supposed to answer immediately. When Gerry prodded him with his prong, there were times that Cliff just wanted to smash him in the face, wanted to shout, You want something, Ger? Then just fucking say it for once.
But he never said anything directly, did Gerry. Only when he accused was he finally direct. And that—above all—really pissed Cliff off. It made him want to strike out, do things, break things, and hurt someone bad.
He saw that without thinking he'd taken the right side of that triangle whose apex was created by Carnarvon and Wellesley roads. Without realising where he was going, he'd driven to Clacton market square. He'd even pulled to the kerb in much the same fugue in which he'd made the turn.