Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(80)

Ahead of her, the pier shot straight out into the sea, widening at its end in spatulate fashion. Barbara walked to this point, where the old Jack ‘Awkins Cafeteria was being renovated and from which location Sahlah Malik had allegedly thrown the bracelet she'd bought for her fiancé.

From the shell of the old cafeteria rose the sound of voices shouting above the pounding of tools against metal and the loud hiss of a blow torch welding reinforcements onto the original infrastructure. Heat seemed to throb from the building, and when Barbara peered inside, she felt it pulsating against her face.

The workers were scantily dressed. Jeans cut off at the thigh, heavy-soled boots, and grimy T-shirts—or none at all—appeared to be the uniform of choice. These were big-muscled men, intent on their jobs. But when one caught sight of Barbara, he set down his tools and shouted, “No visitors! Can't you read? Clear out of here before you get hurt.”

Barbara pulled out her warrant card, more for effect than anything else, since he couldn't have seen what it was at the distance. She shouted back, “Police.”

“Gerry!” The man directed his attention to the welder whose protective headgear and concentration on the flame he was shooting towards the metal seemed to make him oblivious of everything else.

“Gerry! Hey! DeVitt!”

Barbara stepped over three steel girders that were lying on the floor, awaiting placement. She dodged several huge coils of electrical wire and a stack of unopened wooden crates.

Someone yelled, “Keep back! You want to get hurt?”

This apparently got Gerry's attention. He looked up, saw Barbara, and doused the flame on his blow torch. He removed his headgear to reveal a bandana-covered head. He whipped this off and dried first his face with it, then his shining and hairless skull. Like the others, he wore cut-off jeans and an armless T-shirt, and he had the sort of body that would quickly go to seed if exposed to the wrong kind of food or a period of inactivity. Neither appeared to be the case. He was extremely fit-looking and brown from the sun.

Before he, too, had a chance to warn her off, Barbara lifted her warrant card again, saying, “Police. Can I have a word with you blokes?”

He frowned, returning the bandana to his head. He tied it at the back and with the single earring hoop he wore, the overall effect was piratical. He spat onto the floor—to the side, at least—and dug into his pocket for a roll of Polos. He thumbed one out and popped it into his mouth. “Gerry DeVitt,” he said. “I'm the guv here. What d'you need?”

He came no closer, so Barbara knew he couldn't read her identification. She introduced herself, and although his eyebrows made a quick furrowing movement when she said New Scotland Yard, he didn't evidence any other reaction.

He glanced at his watch and said, “We don't have much time to spare.”

“Five minutes,” Barbara said, “perhaps less. No one's in trouble, by the way.”

He evaluated this, then nodded. Much of the work had ceased in the building anyway, so he waved the men over. There were seven of them, sweat-streaked, smelly, and patched with grease.

“Thanks,” Barbara said to DeVitt. She explained what she was seeking: verification that a young woman—probably dressed in traditional Asian garb—had come to the end of the pier on Saturday and had thrown something from it. “This would have been in the afternoon,” Barbara said. “Do you work on Saturdays?”

“We do,” DeVitt said. “What time?”

Since Sahlah had claimed not to know the exact time, Barbara speculated that if her story was accurate and if she had gone into work that day as an excuse to be out of the house alone, it would probably have been late in the afternoon, a possible detour she'd taken on her way home. “I'd say round five o'clock.”

Gerry shook his head. “We're out of here by half past four.” He turned to his men. “Any of you lot see this bird? Any of you still here after five?”

One man said, “You joking, mate?” and others laughed at the thought, it seemed, of hanging about any longer than necessary after a day's work. No one was able to corroborate Sahlah Malik's story.

“We would've noticed her if we were still here,” DeVitt said. He jerked his thumb at the other workers. “This lot? Let a good-looking bird come by and they're hanging by their knees trying to get her attention.” The men guffawed. DeVitt grinned at them and then said to Barbara, “This one you're speaking of: Is she a looker?”

She was very pretty, Barbara confirmed. She was the sort of woman that men looked at twice. And with the costume she was wearing—here on the seaside, where women dressed like Sahlah were rarely seen on their own—she would hardly have gone unnoticed.

“Must've been after we'd cleared out, then,” DeVitt said. “Anything else we can do for you?”

There was not. But Barbara handed the man one of her cards anyway, scrawling the name of the Burnt House Hotel on the back of it. If he remembered anything, if any of them remembered anything at all …

“Is this important information or something?” DeVitt asked curiously. “Does this have to do with—Since it's an Asian you're talking about, does this have to do with that bloke who died?”

She was just checking out some facts, Barbara said. That's all she could tell them at the moment. But if anything relating to that incident came to any of their minds …