“Then is it …” Connie stowed her cigarette between her lips and rooted in a stack of newspapers, magazines, and post that lay beneath the plastic basket from which she'd taken her cigarettes. She looked at the front page of one Tendring Standard, discarded it in favour of another, discarded that in favour of a third. “This?” She tossed the paper in front of Rachel. It was the one reporting the death on the Nez. “D'you know something about this, my girl?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Come on, Rache. I've not gone blind. I know you're thick with the coloureds.”
“Don't say that.”
“Why? You never made a secret that you and Sally Malik—”
“Sahlah. Not Sally. And I didn't mean don't say I'm thick with them. I meant don't call them coloured. It's ignorant.”
“Well, pardon me.” Connie tapped her cigarette against an ashtray. This was shaped like a high-heeled shoe, with the heel a resting spot for the fag. Connie didn't use this, since to use it meant to forego a few lungfuls of smoke, which was something she was clearly loath to do at the moment. She said, “You best tell me direct what's got your knickers knotted, girl, because I'm not up to playing mind games tonight. Do you know something about this bloke's death?”
“No. Not exactly, that is.”
“So you know something unexactly. That it? You know this bloke personal?” The question, once asked, seemed to push a button of some sort, because Connie's eyes widened and she stubbed out her cigarette so quickly that she upended the ashtray onto the table. “Is this the bloke you were going between the beach huts with? God Almighty, were you letting some coloured man do you? Where's your sense, Rachel? Where's your decency? Where's your value of yourself? D'you think a coloured man would ever give two figs if he put you in the club? Not bloody likely. And if he gave you one of those coloured diseases? What then, girl? And what about some virus? What's it called? Enola? Oncola?”
Ebola, Rachel corrected her silently. And it had nothing to do with getting poked by a man—white, brown, black, or purple—between the beach huts in Balford-le-Nez. “Mum,” she said patiently.
“Connie to you. ConnieConnieConnie!”
“Yes. Right. No one's poking me, Connie. D'you actually think that anyone—no matter his colour—would want to poke me?”
“And whyever not?” Connie demanded. “What's wrong with you? With a beautiful body and fabulous cheekbones and wonderful legs, why wouldn't some bloke want to have his way with Rachel Lynn Winfield every night of the week?”
Rachel could see the desperation in her mother's eyes. She knew it would be pointless—worse, it would be unnecessarily cruel—to wring an admission of the truth from Connie. She was, after all, the person who had given birth to the baby without a proper face. That would probably be as difficult a reality to live with as it was to live with the face itself. She said, “You're right, Connie,” and felt a quiet despair settle over her, like a net whose webbing was composed of sorrows. “But this bloke on the Nez? I didn't do it with him.”
“But it's his death you know something about.”
“Not exactly his death. But something related. And I wanted to know should I say something if someone asks me.”
“What kind of someone?”
“Maybe a police kind of someone.”
“Police?” Connie managed to say the word with barely a movement of her lips. Beneath the fuchsia blusher she wore, her skin had gone quite pale so that the streaks of make-up on her cheeks stood out like sodden rose petals. She didn't look at Rachel again as she spoke. “We're business women, Rachel Lynn Winfield. We're business women first and we're business women last. What we got—no matter how little it is—depends on the good will of this town. And not just the tourists’ good will, mind you, coming here in the summer, but everyone else's good will as well. You got that?”
“Sure. I know.”
“So you get a name as someone who opens her gob too easy and spills what she knows to every Tom, Dick, and Harry coming in off the street, and the only people who lose out are us: Connie and Rache. People shy away from us. They stop coming into the shop. They take their business over to Clacton, and it's no inconvenience for them to do that because they'd rather go somewhere they feel comfortable, where they can say, ‘I need something pretty for a very special lady’ and they can wink when they say it and know that wink isn't going to get back to their wives. Am I being clear on this, Rache? We got a business to run. And business comes first. Always.”
That said, she took up her Coke once again, and this time when she took a gulp, she pulled a copy of Woman's Own from the pile of bills, catalogues, and newspapers on the table. She opened it and began to study the table of contents. Their conversation was at a close.
Rachel watched her running her long red fingernail down the list of articles contained in the magazine. She watched as Connie flipped to one entitled “Seven Ways to Know if He's Cheating.” The title made Rachel shiver despite the heat, so accurately did it hit the very nail on the very head. She needed an article called “What to Do When You Know,” but she had her answer, really. Do nothing and wait. Which is what, she realised, everyone should do when it came to betrayals petty or otherwise. Acting upon a knowledge of them led nowhere else but to disaster. The past few days in Balford-le-Nez had proved that to Rachel Winfield beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“FOR AN INDEFINITE stay?” The proprietor of the Burnt House Hotel fairly salivated over the words. As it was, he rubbed his hands together as if he were already massaging the money Barbara would have to part with at the end of her stay. He had introduced himself as Basil Treves and had added the information that he was a retired lieutenant in the army—in “Her Majesty's Armed Forces,” as he termed it—once he read upon her registration card that her place of employment was New Scotland Yard. This apparently made them compatriots of some sort.
Barbara supposed it was the idea of having to wear uniforms both in the army and for the Met. She herself hadn't worn a uniform in years, but she didn't share this bit of personal trivia. She needed Basil Treves on her side, and anything that served to put him there and keep him there was well worth preserving. Besides, she appreciated the fact that he'd tactfully made no mention of the condition of her face. She'd removed the remaining bandages in the car after leaving Emily, but her skin from eyes to lips was still a panorama of yellow, purple, and blue.
Treves led her up one flight of stairs and down a dim corridor. Nowhere was there much to indicate to Barbara that the Burnt House Hotel was a banner of delights just waiting to unfurl for her pleasure. A relic of long-ago Edwardian summers, it boasted faded carpets over creaking floor boards above which hung water-stained ceilings. It was possessed of a general atmosphere of genteel decay.
Treves seemed oblivious of all this, however. He chatted incessantly the entire way to Barbara's room, smoothing his sparse and oily hair up from a parting just above his left ear and across the gleaming dome of his skull. She would find the Burnt House had every possible convenience, he confided: a colour television in every room with a remote control device and another large-screen telly in the residents’ lounge should she decide to be sociable of an evening; tea-making facilities next to one's bed for a morning cuppa; bathrooms in nearly every room and additional toilets and baths on each floor; telephones with a direct line into the world upon the touch of a nine; and that most mystical, blessed, and cherished of mod cons—a fax machine in reception. He called it a facsimile sender, as if he and the machine were still on formal terms with each other, and he went on to add, “But you won't be wanting that, I dare say. Here for a holiday, are you, Miss Havers?”
“Sergeant Havers,” Barbara corrected him, and added “Detective Sergeant Havers.” There was no better time than the present, she decided, to position Basil Treves where she needed him. Something about the man's sharp little eyes and expectant posture told her he would be only too happy to assist the police with information if given a chance. The framed newspaper photo of himself in reception—celebrating his election to the town council—told her that he was the sort of man who didn't come by personal glory often or easily. So when the opportunity arose to garner a bit, he doubtless would be the first to jump at it. And what better glory than to be an unofficial part of a murder investigation? He might prove to be quite useful, and with only a little effort on her part. “I'm here on business, actually,” she told him, allowing herself a slight taffy-pull with the truth. “CID business, to be more precise.”
Treves paused outside the door of her room, its key dangling from his palm by an enormous ivory tag that was shaped like a roller coaster. Each of the keys, Barbara had noted when registering, was identified in similar fun-fair fashion: Other tags were shaped like everything from a dodge'm car to a miniature Ferris wheel, and the rooms they gave access to were named accordingly.
“Criminal Investigations?” Treves said. “Is this about … But of course, you absolutely cannot say, can you. Well, mum's the word at this end of things, I assure you of that, Detective Sergeant. No one will hear who you are from these lips. Here we are, then.”
Swinging open the narrow door, he switched on the overhead light and stood back to let her enter ahead of him. When she had done so, he bustled past her, humming tonelessly as he set down her haversack on a collapsible luggage rack. He pointed out the bathroom with the proud announcement that he'd especially given her “the loo with a view.” He patted his hands against the bilious green chenille counterpanes of both twin beds, saying, “Nice and firm, but not too much, I hope,” and he flicked the pink skirt of a kidney-shaped dressing table to iearrange it. He straightened both the prints on the walls—matching Victorian ice skaters who glided away from each other, looking none too happy about taking the exercise—and he fingered through the teabags that lay in a basket waiting for morning. He switched on the bedside lamp, then switched it off. Then switched it on again, as if sending signals.
“You'll have all that you require, Sergeant Havers, and if you need anything more, you shall find Mr. Basil Treves at your service day and night. At any hour.” He beamed at her. He held his hands folded at chest height and stood at a modified kind of attention. “As for this evening, any final requests? A nightcap? Cappuccino? Some fruit? Mineral water? Greek dancing boys?” He chortled happily. “I'm here to serve your every whim, and don't you forget it.”
Barbara thought about asking him to brush the dandruff from his shoulders, but she didn't think it was the sort of request that he had in mind. She moved to open the windows. The room was so stifling that the air seemed to shimmer, and she wished that one of the hotel's mod cons had been air conditioning or even room fans. The air was still. It seemed as if the entire universe were holding its breath.
“Wonderful weather, isn't it?” Treves said jauntily. “It'll bring the visitors here in droves. Lucky you've come when you have, Sergeant. In another week we'll be booked to the roof. Not that I wouldn't have made room for you. Police business takes precedence, doesn't it?”
Her fingers, Barbara noted, were black-tipped with grime from having opened the window. She rubbed them surreptitiously against her trousers. “As to that, Mr. Treves …”
Birdlike, he cocked his head. “Yes? Is there something …?”
“A Mr. Querashi was staying here, wasn't he? Haytham Querashi?”
It hardly seemed possible that Basil Treves could stand any more at attention, but he appeared to manage it. Barbara thought he might even salute. “An unfortunate occurrence,” he said formally.
“That he was staying here?”
“Great Scot, no. He was welcome to stay here. He was more than welcome. The Burnt House doesn't discriminate against anyone. Never has done. And never will do.” He gave a glance over his shoulder towards the open door, saying, “If I may …?” When Barbara nodded, he closed it and continued in a lower voice. “Although to be perfectly honest, I do keep the races separate, as you'll probably note during your stay. This hasn't to do with my own inclinations, mind you. I haven't the slightest prejudice against people of colour. Not the slightest. But the other guests … To be frank, Sergeant, times have been difficult. It doesn't make good business sense to do anything that might engender ill will. If you know what I mean.”
“So Mr. Querashi stayed in another part of the hotel? Is that what you're saying?”
“Not so much in another part, but just away from the others. Ever so slightly. I doubt he even noticed.” Treves raised his folded hands to his chest once again. “I have several permanent residents, you see. These are ageing ladies, and they simply aren't used to the way times have changed. In fact, this is almost too embarrassing to mention, but one of them actually mistook Mr. Querashi for a servant the first morning he came down to breakfast. Can you imagine it? Poor thing.”
Barbara wasn't sure whether he was referring to Haytham Querashi or the old woman, but she felt she could hazard a fairly accurate guess. “I'd like to see the room he stayed in, if I may,” Barbara said.
“Then you are here because of his demise.”
“Not his demise. His murder.”
Treves said, “Murder? Good God,” and he reached behind him till his hand came into contact with one of the twin beds. He sank onto it, said, “If you'll pardon me,” and lowered his head. He breathed deeply and when he finally raised his head again, he said in a hushed voice, “Does it have to be known that he was staying here? Here at the Burnt House? Will the newspapers mention it? Because with business promising to pick up at long last …”
So much for his reaction having to do with shock, guilt, or the milk of human kindness, Barbara thought. Not for the first time, she had validation for her long held belief that Homo sapiens was genetically linked to pond scum.
Treves must have seen this conclusion on her face, because he went on quickly. “It's not that I don't care what happened to Mr. Querashi. I do. Indeed I do care most deeply. He was quite a pleasant chap, for all his ways, and I regret his unfortunate passing. But with business about to pick up, and after all these years of recession, one can't take the chance of losing even one—”
“His ways?” Barbara headed off his discourse on the nation's economy.
Basil Treves blinked. “Well, they are different, aren't they?”
“They?”
“These Asians. Why, surely you know. You'd have to, wouldn't you, working in London. Good grief. Don't deny it.”
“How was he different?”
Treves apparently inferred something more than she intended in the question. His eyes started to go opaque and he crossed his arms. Defences are rising, Barbara thought with interest, and she wondered why he was arming himself. Nonetheless, she knew it wouldn't do for them to be at odds, so she hastened to reassure him. “What I meant is that since you saw him regularly, anything unusual that you can tell me about his behaviour will help. Culturally he would have been different to the rest of your guests—”
“He certainly isn't the only Asian in residence,” Treves interrupted, still driving home the point about his liberality. “The Burnt House's doors will always be open to all.”
“Right. Of course. Then I take it he was different even to the other Asians. Whatever you tell me I'll keep in confidence, Mr. Treves. Anything that you know, saw, or even suspected about Mr. Querashi may be the fact we need to get to the root of what happened to him.”
Her words seemed to mollify the man, encouraging him to reflect upon his own importance to a police investigation. He said, “I see. Yes. I do see,” and proceeded to look thoughtful. He stroked his scraggly, undipped beard.
“May I see his room?”
“But of course. Yes. Yes.”
He led her back the way they had come, ascending one more flight of stairs and walking along a corridor towards the rear of the building. Three of the doors along the corridor stood open, awaiting tenants. A fourth was shut. Behind it, television voices spoke at a considerate, low volume. Haytham Querashi's room was next to this one, the fifth room at the very end of the passage.
Treves had a master key. He said, “I haven't touched it since his … well … the accident. …” There was indeed no euphemism for murder. He gave up searching for one and said, “The police came by to tell me about it—just that he was dead. They told me to keep his room locked up till I heard from them.”
“We don't like anything to be disturbed till we know what we're working with,” Barbara told him. “Natural causes, a murder, accident, or suicide. You haven't disturbed anything, have you? No one else has?”
“No one,” he said. “Akram Malik called in with his son. They wanted the personal effects to send back to Pakistan, and believe me, they weren't happy hikers when I wouldn't let them into the room to collect them. Muhannad acted as if I was part of a conspiracy to commit crimes against mankind.”
“And Akram Malik? What did he think?”
“Our Akram plays his cards ve-rry close, Sergeant. He wouldn't be fool enough to let me know what he was thinking.”
“Why's that?” Barbara asked as Treves swung open the door to Haytham Querashi's room.
“Because we loathe each other,” Treves explained pleasantly. “I can't abide upstarts, and he doesn't like to be considered one. It's a shame he immigrated to England, when you think of it. He'd have done much better in the U.S., where the first concern is whether you have money, and who your people are ranks down round your shoe size. Here we are.” He switched on the overhead light.
Haytham Querashi's room was a single with a small casement window overlooking the back garden of the hotel. It was decorated as haphazardly as Barbara's room. Yellow, red, and pink all battled to be the dominant colour.
“He seemed to be quite happy here,” Treves said as Barbara took in the depressingly narrow bed, the one armless and lumpy chair, the pseudo-wood of the clothes cupboard, and the gaps in the tassles on the shade of a wall sconce. There was a print above the bed, another Victorian scene, this one a young woman languishing on a chaise longue. The paper it was mounted on had long since gone dingy.
“Right.” Barbara grimaced at the odour in the room. It was the smell of burnt onions and sprouts too long cooked. Querashi's room was located above the kitchen, doubtless a subtle reminder to the man of what his place was in the hotel hierarchy. “Mr. Treves, what can you tell me about Haytham Querashi? How long had he been staying with you? Had he any visitors? Any friends that stopped by? Any particular phone calls that he made or received?” She pressed the back of her hand against the hot dampness on her forehead and went to the chest of drawers to have a look at Querashi's belongings. She paused and rustled through her shoulder bag for the evidence bags that Emily had given to her before she'd left the Crescent. She donned a pair of latex gloves.
Querashi, Basil Treves informed her, had been staying at the Burnt House for six weeks while waiting for his wedding. Akram Malik had arranged for the room. Apparently, a house had been purchased for the soon-to-be newlyweds as part of the Malik daughter's dowry, but as it was undergoing redecoration, Querashi's stay at the hotel had been extended several times. He went to work before eight in the morning and generally returned round half past seven or eight at night, taking breakfast and dinner at the Burnt House on weekdays, dinner elsewhere at the weekend.
“With the Maliks?”
Treves shrugged. He ran one finger down a panel in the opened door and examined its tip which, even from where Barbara stood at the chest of drawers, she could see was furred with dust. He couldn't swear that Querashi was with the Maliks every weekend. While it would make sense were that the case—”since in usual circumstances the lovebirds would want to be together as often as possible, wouldn't they?”—because these circumstances were rather abnormal, there was always a possibility that Querashi spent his weekend hours in other pursuits.
“Abnormal circumstances?” Barbara turned from the chest of drawers.
“An arranged marriage,” Treves explained, with delicate emphasis on the adjective. “Rather medieval, wouldn't you say?”
“It's cultural, isn't it?”
“Whatever you call it, when you force fourteenth-century mores upon twentieth-century men and women, you can't be surprised what develops as a result, can you, Sergeant?”
“What developed in this case?” Barbara turned back to take note of the items on top of the chest: a passport, neatly arranged stacks of coins, a money clip clasping fifty pounds in notes, and a brochure for a place called the Castle Hotel and Restaurant which was—according to the map that accompanied it—on the main road to Harwich. Barbara opened this curiously. The tariff sheet fell out. She noted that listed last among the rooms was a honeymoon suite. For £80 per night, Querashi and his bride would have been set up with a four-poster bed, one half bottle of Asti Spumante, one red rose, and breakfast in bed. Romantic devil, she thought, and went on to a leather case that, upon inspection, she found locked.
She realised that Treves hadn't answered her question. She glanced his way. He was pulling thoughtfully at his beard, and she noticed for the first time a few disagreeable flakes of skin caught up in it, product of a mild case of eczema that mottled the lower part of his cheeks. He was wearing the sort of expression that powerless people seeking power often wear. Lofty, knowing, and undecided about the wisdom of sharing his knowledge. Bloody hell, Barbara thought with an inward sigh. It looked as if she was going to have to massage his ego every step of the way.
“I need your insight into him, Mr. Treves. Aside from the Maliks, you're probably the best source of information we have.”
“I understand that.” Treves gave his beard a preening pat. “But you must understand that a hotelier is not entirely unlike a confessor. To the successful hotelier, what one sees, hears, and concludes is of a confidential nature.”
Barbara wanted to point out to him that the state of the Burnt House hardly justified the adjective successful being applied to him. But she knew the rules of the game he was playing. “Believe me,” she intoned, “whatever information you supply will be treated in confidence, Mr. Treves. But I've got to have it if we're to work together as equals.” She wanted to snarl when she said the final words. She covered this desire by sliding open the top drawer of the chest, searching through carefully folded socks and underwear for the key to the locked leather case.
“If you're sure of that …” Treves was apparently so eager to part with what he knew—despite his words—that he went on without waiting for her assurances. “Then I must tell you. There was someone else in his life besides the Malik girl. It's the only explanation.”
“For what?” Barbara went on to the second drawer. A stack of perfectly folded shirts was arranged by colour: white giving way to ivory, to grey, and finally to black. Pyjamas were in the third drawer. Nothing was in the fourth. Querashi travelled light.
“For why he went out at night.”
“Haytham Querashi went out at night? How often?”
“At least twice a week. Sometimes more. And always after ten. I thought at first that he was going to see his fiancée. It seemed a reasonable enough conclusion, despite the odd hour. He'd want to get to know her, wouldn't he, before the wedding day. These people aren't complete heathens, after all. They may give their sons and daughters away to the highest bidder, but I dare say they don't give them away to total strangers without allowing them a chance to get acquainted. Do they?”
“I haven't a clue,” Barbara replied. “Go on.” She went to the bedside table, a wobbly affair with a single drawer. She slid this open.
“Well, the point is that on this particular night, I saw him as he was leaving the hotel. We chatted a bit about the upcoming nuptials, and he told me he was going to the seafront for a run. Pre-wedding nerves and all. You know.”
“Right.”
“So when I heard he died on the Nez, of all places—which as you may or may not know, Sergeant, is in the opposite direction to the seafront if you leave from this hotel intending to have a run—I realised he hadn't wanted me to be privy to what he was up to. Which can only mean that he was up to something he hadn't ought to be up to. And, since he regularly left the hotel at the exact hour at which he left on Friday night, and since on Friday night he ended up dead, I think it's safe to deduce not only that he was meeting someone whom he met on the other nights but also that this someone was a person he ought not to have been meeting in the first place.” Treves folded his hands at chest height once again and looked as if he expected Barbara to shout, “Holmes, you amaze me!”
But since Haytham Querashi had been murdered and since the conditions suggested the death was no random act, Barbara had already concluded that the man had gone to the Nez to meet someone. The only piece of information Treves had added was that Querashi may have made this a regular rendezvous. And, reluctant as she was to admit it, that was an extremely valuable titbit. She threw the hotelier a bone. “Mr. Treves, you're in the wrong profession.”
“Really?”
“Believe it.” And those two words weren't even a lie.
Thus buoyed, Treves came to inspect the contents of the bedside table with her: a yellow-bound book with a matching satin marker that, opened, displayed several lines bracketed off and an entire text that was written in Arabic; a box of two dozen condoms, half of which were gone; and a five by seven manila envelope. Barbara placed the book into an evidence bag as Treves tut-tutted over the condoms and everything that possession of such sexual paraphernalia seemed to imply. As he clucked, Barbara upended the manila envelope into her palm. Two keys fell out, one not much larger than the length of her first knuckle to the tip of her thumb, the other quite tiny, fingernail size. This second had to be the key to the leather case on the chest of drawers. She closed her fingers round both of the keys and contemplated her next move. She wanted a look inside the case, but she preferred the look to be a private one. So before she took action, she had to take care of her bearded Sherlock.
She thought about how best to do this while still keeping the man's good will. He wouldn't take kindly to the dawning knowledge that, as he knew the victim, he was one of the suspects in Querashi's murder until an alibi or other evidence eliminated him.
She said, “Mr. Treves, these keys may be crucial to our investigation. Would you step into the corridor and keep watch, please? The last thing we want at a moment like this is eavesdroppers or spies. Give me the word if the coast is clear.”
He said, “Of course, of course, Sergeant. I'm only too happy …” and hurried off to fulfill his commission.
Once he gave her the all clear, the heave ho, and the anchors aweigh, she took a closer look at the keys. They were both brass, the larger of them attached to a chain on which a metal tag also hung. This was stamped with the number 104. Locker key? Barbara wondered. And what sort of locker? Railway locker? Bus station locker? Personal locker somewhere on the seafront, the sort of metal cupboard in which people stowed their clothes while they were swimming in the sea? They were all possibilities.
The second key she slid into the lock on the small leather case. The key turned smoothly. She flicked the catch on the case to the right. The lid unlatched. She eased the case open.
“Finding anything useful?” Treves’ whisper came from the doorway, 007 in its intensity. “All clear on this side of things, Sergeant.”
“Keep guard, Mr. Treves,” she whispered back.
“Will do,” he murmured. She could tell that he was beginning to feel he'd been born to live the cloak-and-dagger life.
“I'm depending on you,” she said, and went for a between-the-teeth articulation, which she hoped would heighten the sense of intrigue which appeared necessary to keep him in line. “If anyone stirs … And I mean anyone at all, Mr. Treves—”