Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(81)
“Doubt it will,” DeVitt said as he shoved the card into the back pocket of his jeans. “We steer clear of the Pakistanis. It keeps things simpler.”
“How's that?”
He shrugged. “They've got their ways and we've got ours. Mix the two and what you've got is trouble. Blokes like us”—and he indicated his workers with a wave of his arm—”don't have time for trouble. We work hard, have a pint or two afterwards, and then go home so we can work hard tomorrow.” He scooped up his headgear and his blow torch once again, saying, “If this bird you're asking about's an important part of things, you'd best have a word with the rest of the pier. One of them might've seen her pass by.”
She would do that, Barbara told them. She nodded her thanks and picked her way out of the building. Bust, she thought. But DeVitt was right. The attractions on the pier were open from morning until late at night. Unless Sahlah had swum or boated out to the end of the pier and climbed up to it in order to toss the bracelet dramatically into the sea from on high, she would have had to walk past all of them.
It was strictly plod work, the sort of questioning that Barbara had always loathed. But she began doggedly working her way from attraction to attraction, beginning with a teacup ride called the Waltzer and ending with a take-away snack stall. The land end of the pier was covered, a roof of Plexiglás arching over the arcade, the roundabout, and the kiddie rides. Here the noise was intense, and Barbara had to shout to make herself heard. But no one was able to confirm Sahlah's story, not even Rosalie the Romany Palm Reader, who sat on a three-legged stool in front of her den, dressed in swathes of colourful shawls, sweating, smoking, fanning herself with a paper plate, and watching every passerby for his potential to cross her palm with a five-pound note. If anyone had seen Sahlah Malik, Rosalie was the most likely candidate. But she hadn't seen her. She did, however, offer Barbara a reading: palm, tarot cards, or general aura. “You could do with a reading, luv,” she said sympathetically. “Believe you me. Rosalie can tell.”
Barbara begged off, saying that if the future was going to be as charming as the past, she'd much rather be in the dark about it.
She stopped at Jack Willies Wet Fish and Seafood, and bought a basket of deep fried whitebait, a snack she hadn't eaten in years. They were served with a suitable sheen of grease and a small pot of tartar sauce for dipping. Barbara took them back to the open-air section of the pier and lounged on one of the bright orange benches. She munched away and thought about the situation.
Since no one had been able to report seeing the Pakistani girl on the pier, there were three possibilities. The first had the most potential to muddy the waters: Sahlah Malik was lying. If this was the case, Barbara's next step was to ascertain why. The second possibility was the least plausible: Sahlah was telling the truth, even though not a single person on the pier remembered having seen the girl. Barbara had noted from her sojourn on the pier so far that the typical garb among visitors seemed to run heavily to black leather—despite the heat—and body rings. So unless Sahlah had come to the pier incognito—which was possibility number three—then what Barbara was left with was possibility number one: Sahlah was lying.
She finished her whitebait and wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. Leaning against the bench, she lifted her face to the sun and thought further, in another direction, back to F. Kumhar.
The only female Muslim name beginning with F that she could think of was Fatimah, although there had to be others. But assuming that the F. Kumhar to whom Querashi had written a cheque for ￡400 was a woman, and assuming that the cheque was somehow tied into Querashi's murder, what could one reasonably deduce the cheque had been written for? Certainly an abortion was a possibility: He'd been meeting someone illicitly; he was carrying condoms; he had more prophylactics in his bedside table. But what else was possible? A purchase of some sort, perhaps the lenā-denā gift that Sahlah was expecting to receive from him, a gift that he himself had not yet picked up. A loan of money to someone in need, a fellow Asian who could not turn to other members of her family for help. A down payment on an object to be delivered after Querashi's marriage: a bed, a sofa, a table, a fridge.
Even if F. Kumhar was a man, the possibilities weren't much different. What did people purchase? Barbara wondered. Naturally, they purchased concrete items like objects, property, food, and clothing. But they also purchased abstract items like loyalty, betrayal, and sedition. And they purchased the absence of items as well, by securing silence, temporising, or departure.
In any case, there was only one way to know what Querashi had purchased. She and Emily were going to have to track Kumhar down. Which reminded Barbara of the secondary purpose she'd had in coming to the Balford pier: tracking down Trevor Ruddock.
She blew out a breath and swallowed, tasting the lingering flavour of the whitebait and feeling the greasy deposit they'd left on the roof of her mouth. She realised that she should have bought a drink with which to wash the lard-laden mess down her gullet, preferably something scalding hot that would have thoroughly melted it and sent it on its havoc-wreaking way through her digestive system. In a half hour, she'd doubtless begin paying the price for her impulsive purchase at Jack Willies Wet Fish and Seafood. Perhaps a Coke would appease her stomach, which was already beginning to grumble in an ominous fashion.
She rose, watching the flight of two gulls who soared above her and alighted on the roof that covered the land end of the pier. She noted for the first time a set of windows and an upper storey above the arcade. They appeared to be for offices. They were one last place for her to seek someone who had witnessed an Asian girl walking on the pier and the first place she needed to head to seek Trevor Ruddock before someone on the pier put the word out to him that a tubby detective was on his tail.