Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(19)
The approach to Balford-le-Nez hadn't altered at all in the years since Barbara had last been there. The wheat fields of the Tendring Peninsula gave way on the north of the Balford Road to the Wade, a tidal marsh into which flowed both the Balford Channel and a narrowing estuary called the Twizzle. When the tide was in, the water of the Wade created islands out of hundreds of boggy excrescences. When the tide was out, what remained in its ebb were flats of mud and sand across which green algae stretched slimy arms. To the south of the Balford Road, small enclaves of houses still stood. Stucco-walled and squat, sparse of vegetation, these were some of the old summer cottages occupied by families who, like Barbara's own, came to escape the seasonal heat of London.
This year, however, there was no escaping. The wind that blew in the Mini's window and ruffled Barbara's crop of ill-cut hair was nearly as hot as the wind she'd felt as she'd driven out of London a few hours earlier.
At the junction of the Balford Road and the High Street, she braked and considered her options. She had nowhere to stay, so there was that to see to. Her stomach was rumbling, so there was food to dig up. She was in the dark as to what kind of investigation into the Pakistani man's death was actually in progress, so there was that to suss out as well.
Unlike her superior officer, who never seemed to manage a decent meal, Barbara wasn't one to deny her stomach its due. Accordingly, she turned left down the gentle slope of the High Street beyond which she had her first glimpse of sea.
As had been the case in her girlhood, there was no dearth of eating establishments in Balford, and most of them appeared not to have changed hands—or been painted—in the years since she last had been a visitor. She settled on the Breakwater Restaurant, which served its meals—perhaps with ominous intent—directly next door to D. K. Corney, a business establishment whose sign announced that its employees were Funeral Directors, Builders, Decorators, and Heating Engineers. Sort of one-stop shopping, Barbara decided. She parked the Mini with one of its front tyres on the kerb and went to see what the Breakwater had to offer.
Not much, she discovered, a fact that other diners must have been aware of, because although it was the dinner hour, she found herself alone in the restaurant. She chose a table near the door in the hope of catching an errant sea breeze should one fortuitously decide to blow. She plucked the laminated menu from its upright position next to a vase of plastic carnations. After using it to fan herself for a minute, she gave it a look-over and decided that the Mega-Meal was not for her despite its bargain price (￡5.50 for pork sausage, bacon, tomato, eggs, mushrooms, steak, frankfurter, kidney, hamburger, lamb chops, and chips). She settled on the restaurant's declared speciality: buck rarebit. She placed her order with a teenaged waitress sporting an impressive blemish precisely in the middle of her chin, and a moment later she saw that the Breakwater Restaurant was going to provide her with its own form of one-stop shopping.
Next to the till lay a tabloid newspaper. Barbara crossed to fetch it, trying to ignore the unsavoury sucking sounds that her trainer-shod feet made as she trod the sticky restaurant floor.
The words Tendring Standard were printed across the masthead in blue. They were accompanied by a lion rampant and the boast “ESSEX NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR.” Barbara took this journal back to her table and laid it on the plastic cloth, which was artfully embossed with tiny white flowers and splattered with the remains of a successful lunchtime.
The tabloid was a well-thumbed journal from the previous afternoon, and Barbara had to look no further than the front page because the death of Haytham Querashi was apparently the first “suspicious demise” that had occurred on the Tendring Peninsula in more than five years. As such, it was getting the journalistic red carpet treatment.
The front page displayed a picture of the dead man as well as a photo of the site where his body had been found. Barbara studied both pictures.
In life, Haytham Querashi had looked innocuous enough. His dark face was pleasant but largely forgettable. The caption beneath his picture indicated that he was twenty-five years old, but he looked older. This was the result of his sombre expression, and his balding head added to the effect. He was clean-shaven and moon-faced, and Barbara guessed that he would have been given to carrying too much extra weight in middle age, had he lived to see it.
The second picture depicted an abandoned pillbox sitting on the beach at the foot of a cliff. It was built of grey, pebble-studded concrete, hexagonal in shape with an entry that was low to the ground. Barbara had seen this structure before, years earlier on a walk with her younger brother when they'd noticed a boy and a girl glancing round surreptitiously before crawling inside on an overcast day. Barbara's brother had innocently wondered if the two teenagers were intent on playing war. Barbara had commented ironically that an invasion was definitely what they had in mind. She'd steered Tony clear of the pillbox. “I c'n make machine gun noises for them,” he'd offered. She'd assured him that sound effects were not required.
Her dinner arrived. The waitress positioned the cutlery—which appeared to be indifferently washed—and settled the plate in front of her. She'd been scrupulous about avoiding a scrutiny of Barbara's bandaged face when taking her order, but now the girl gave it an earnest look and said, “C'n I ask? D'you mind?”
“Lemonade,” Barbara said in reply. “With ice. And I don't suppose you have a fan you can turn on, have you? I'm about to wilt.”