Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(170)
Azhar stopped. He took the two giraffes from the little girl and handed them to Barbara. Then he lifted his daughter and settled her legs round his waist.
“I c'n walk,” she protested sleepily. “I'm not tired. Not one little bit.”
Azhar kissed the side of her head. For a moment he stood motionless with his daughter in his arms, as if awash in an emotion that he wished to feel but not to exhibit.
Watching him, Barbara was overwhelmed for an instant with a longing that she didn't wish to identify, much less to experience. So she fumbled with the plastic bag in which their three T-shirts were folded, placing the two giraffes within it, finding it necessary to rearrange the bag's position on her arm. It was a moment in which her daily armour of derision and irony failed her entirely. There, on the pier in the company of a father and his child, circumstances suggested that she assess the elements comprising her personal life.
But she wasn't a woman who embraced such suggestions, so she looked about for other intellectual, emotional, and psychological employment. She found it without difficulty: Trevor Ruddock was heading in their direction, having just emerged from the brightly lit pavilion.
He was wearing sky-blue overalls, attire so out of character in him that Barbara could only conclude it was a uniform worn by the maintenance and custodial crews who took care of the pier after it closed for the night. But it wasn't the overalls that caused her to take a second and closer look at young Mr. Ruddock. He worked on the pier, after all. He'd been released from the nick some hours earlier. His presence at Shaw Attractions was hardly illogical, considering the hour. But the bulging backpack he was wearing slung over his shoulders was a less than reasonable accessory to his sartorial ensemble.
His eyes adjusting to the difference in lighting from the pavilion to the pier, Trevor didn't see Barbara and her companions. He went to a shed at the east side of the pavilion, where he unlocked its door and disappeared inside.
As Azhar started to move towards the exit again, Barbara put a hand on his arm. “Hang on,” she said.
He followed the direction of her gaze, seemed to see nothing, and looked back at her, perplexed. “Is there …?”
“Just a little something I want to check out,” she said. The shed, after all, was a perfect place to cache contraband. And Trevor Ruddock clearly had something other than his evening meal in his possession. With Balford's nearness to Harwich and Parkeston … it didn't make sense to let an opportunity like this one pass her by.
Trevor emerged—sans backpack, Barbara noted—pushing a large trolley. It was equipped with brooms and brushes, with buckets and dust pans, with a coiled hose pipe and an assortment of unidentifiable bottles, tins, and cannisters. Cleansers and disinfectants, Barbara concluded. The upkeep of Shaw Attractions was serious business. She wondered momentarily if Trevor's backpack had merely been a means of transporting all of his cleaning accoutrements. It was a possibility. She knew there was only one way to find out.
He took off towards the end of the pier, obviously with the intention of working his way towards and into the pavilion from the future site of the restaurant. Barbara seized the opportunity. She grabbed Azhar's elbow and hustled him across the pier to the shed. She tried the door, which Trevor had swung shut behind him. She found she was in luck. He hadn't relocked it.
She ducked inside. “Just keep watch for me,” she requested of her friend.
“Watch?” Azhar shifted the bulk of Hadiyyah's weight from one arm to the other. “For what? Barbara, what are you doing?”
“Just checking out a theory,” she said. “I won't be a tick.”
He said nothing else, and as she couldn't see him, she could only assume he was doing his bit and keeping an eye open for anyone approaching the shed with an intent to enter. For her part, she considered what Helmut Kreuzhage had told her from Hamburg earlier in the evening: Haytham Querashi had suspected someone of an illegal activity involving both Hamburg and the nearby English harbours.
Drug smuggling was the obvious illegal activity of choice, despite what Kriminalhauptkommisar Kreuzhage had said to discourage this line of thought. It brought in big money, especially if the drug was heroin. But an illegal activity that involved smuggling didn't limit itself to narcotics. There was pornography to consider, as well as loose jewels like diamonds, explosives, and small arms, any of which could be carried onto the pleasure pier via backpack and hidden in a shed.
She looked round for the backpack, but it was nowhere in sight. She began a search. The only light inside came from what the partially open doorway allowed, but it was sufficient for her to see by once her eyes became accustomed to the gloom. The shed was outfitted with a set of cupboards, and she went through these swiftly. She found nothing inside but five cans of paint, brushes, rollers, overalls, and tarpaulins, in addition to extra cleaning supplies.
Aside from the cupboards, there were two deep drawers and a chest. The drawers held tools for small repairs: spanners, screw drivers, pliers, a crow bar, nails, screws, and even a small saw. But nothing else.
Barbara went on to the chest. Its lid made a squeak that, she swore, probably could have been heard in Clacton. The backpack lay within, the sort of aluminum-framed rucksack that students use when they hitchhike during their holidays, determined to see the world.
Anticipation rising, feeling and believing that at last she was getting somewhere, Barbara lifted the pack out and laid it on the floor. But her hopes were dashed when she saw the contents. And confusion quickly took hope's place.