Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(75)
LIFF HEGARTY SAW THEM COME OUT OF THE mustard factory together. He hadn't seen them go in together. Instead, he'd seen only the short, dumpy bird with the pudding-basin haircut who'd climbed out of a dilapidated Austin Mini carrying a shoulder bag the size of a pillar box. He hadn't given her much thought, other than wondering why a woman with her body was wearing drawstring trousers that served only to emphasise the absence of a waist. He'd seen her, evaluated her personal appearance, absently registered her as someone unlikely to browse through Hegarty's Adult Distractions, and consequently dismissed her. It was only upon his second sight of her that he realised who—or rather what—she was. And then he knew that the day, which had already started out bad, had the distinct potential for becoming worse.
The second time the bird came into view, she was with another woman. This one was taller, so physically fit that she looked like she could wrestle a polar bear to the ground, and so commanding in the way she carried herself that there could be only one explanation for what she was doing at Malik's Mustards in the aftermath of the death on the Nez. She was the fuzz, Cliff realised. She had to be. And the other—with whom she stood in the kind of conversation that suggested professional if not personal intimacy—therefore had to be a copper as well.
Shit, he thought. The last thing he needed was to have the cops prowling round the industrial estate. The town council was bad enough. They loved to harass him, and despite the lip-service they gave to bringing Balford back from the dead economically, they'd equally love to drive him out of business. And those two cops—two female cops—would probably be only too delighted to weigh in with the opposition once they got a look at his jigsaws. And there was no doubt that they'd see them. If they popped in for a chat, which they were bound to do given enough time to pin down everyone who might have laid eyes on the corpse before he was a corpse, they'd end up getting an eyeful of their own. That visit itself, beyond the questions they'd be asking which he'd be doing his best to avoid answering, was one of several upcoming events that Cliff didn't anticipate with boundless joy.
His business was almost entirely mail-order, so Cliff could never understand what the fuss was about when it came to his puzzles. It wasn't like he advertised them in the Tendring Standard or stuck up posters in the shops on the High Street. He was more discreet than that. Hell, he was always discreet.
But discretion didn't count for much once the coppers decided to start causing a bloke aggro. Cliff knew that from his Earl's Court days. When cops took that route, they began popping up on one's doorstep daily. Just a question, Mr. Hegarty. Could you help us out with a problem, Mr. Hegarty? Would you step down to the nick for a chat, Mr. Hegarty? There's been a burglary (or mugging or purse snatching or assault, it never mattered which), and we're wondering where you were on the night in question? Can we have a bit of a go with your dabs? Just to clear you of suspicion, of course. And on and on until the only way to get them to give it a rest was to move out, move on, and start over somewhere else.
Cliff knew he could do that. He'd done it before. But that was in the days when he was alone. Now that he had someone—and not just some hanger-on this time but someone with a job, a future, and a decent place to live on the strand in Jaywick Sands—he wasn't about to be forced out again. Because while Cliff Hegarty could set up business anywhere, Gerry DeVitt couldn't so easily get employment in the building trade. And with the promise of Balford's future redevelopment so close to coming true, Gerry's own future was looking rosy. He wouldn't pull up stakes at this point, when at long last there was the prospect of making some decent money.
Not that money was Gerry's preoccupation, Cliff thought. Life would be a hell of a lot easier if only that were the case. If Gerry just trundled off to the job each morning and worked himself to exhaustion blow-torching away at that restaurant on the pier, life would be grand. He'd come home hot, sweaty, and tired, with nothing more on his mind than dinner and sleep. He'd keep thinking about the bonus that the Shaws had promised him could he have the building up and running by the next bank holiday. And he wouldn't turn his concerns anywhere else.
As he'd obviously been doing that very morning, much to Cliff's rising anxiety.
Cliff had come into the kitchen at six A.M., having awakened from a fitful sleep by the sudden knowledge that Gerry was no longer in bed at his side. He'd wrapped himself in a terry-cloth bathrobe and found Gerry where he'd apparently been for some time, standing fully clothed at the open window. This looked out upon five feet of concrete promenade, beyond which was the strand, beyond which was the sea. Gerry had been standing there, holding a mug of coffee, thinking the sort of private thoughts that always made Cliff begin to worry.
Gerry wasn't a bloke who generally kept his thoughts private at all: To him, being lovers meant living in each other's socks, which in its turn meant engaging in soulful conversations, frequent breast barings, and endless evaluations of “the state of the relationship.” Cliff couldn't really abide this way of being involved with a bloke, but he'd learned to put up with it. These were Gerry's digs, after all, and even if that hadn't been the case, he liked Gerry well enough. So he'd schooled himself to cooperate in the conversation game with a fair amount of grudging good grace.
But recently, the situation had altered subtly between them. Gerry's concern for the state of their union seemed to have faded. He'd stopped talking so much about it and, more ominously, he'd stopped clinging quite so tightly to Cliff. This made Cliff want to start clinging to him. Which was ludicrous, daft, and just plain idiotic. Which pissed Cliff off, because most of the time it was Cliff who needed space and Gerry who never wanted him to have it.