Deception on His Mind (55 page)

He could have left, but that would not only have postponed the inevitable, it would also have encouraged the cops to make a run south to Jaywick Sands in order to track him down at home. And he didn't want that. Holy shit, he couldn't have that, and he was willing to do just about anything to prevent it.

So when they came in his direction after having a go at the sailmakers and the mattress works, Cliff girded himself for the coming interview by removing his jewellery and rolling down the sleeves of his T-shirt so the tattoo on his bicep was hidden. Cops’ hatred of queers was notorious. The way Cliff saw it, there was no sense in announcing himself as a poofter while there was a chance they might think otherwise.

They'd shown their identification and introduced themselves as DCs Grey and Waters. Grey did the talking while Waters took notes. And both of them gave the eye to a display case featuring two-headed dildos, leather masks, and penis rings of ivory and stainless steel.

It's a living, mates, he wanted to say. But wisdom suggested that he hold his tongue.

He was glad of the air conditioner. Had it not been blasting away, he would have been sweating. And while the sweat would have been due in large part to working inside a structure fabricated from corrugated steel, in smaller part it would have come from nerves. And the less he displayed any symptoms of anxiety in front of the fuzz, the better he liked it.

They brought out a photograph and asked him if he knew the subject. He told them sure, it was the dead bloke from the Nez, Haytham Querashi. He worked at the mustard factory.

How well did he know Querashi? they asked next.

He knew who Querashi was, if that's what they meant. He knew him well enough to nod and say Good morning or Bloody hot day, i'n't it, mate?

Cliff was careful to appear as casual as possible. He came round the counter to answer their questions and he stood with his arms crossed beneath his chest, with one leg taking most of his weight. This posture emphasised the muscles in his arms, which he thought was a good idea. A muscular body equated to masculinity in the eyes of most straights. Masculinity equalled heterosexuality as well, especially in the view of the ignorant. And in Cliff's experience, most cops were about as pig-ignorant as you could get.

Did he know Querashi outside the industrial estate? was their next question.

Cliff asked them what they meant. He said that sure, he knew Querashi outside the industrial estate. If he knew him here, he'd know him elsewhere. He wouldn't exactly have a memory loss when it was after hours, would he?

They weren't amused by this remark. They asked him to explain how he knew Querashi.

He told them he knew Querashi outside work the same way he knew Querashi inside work. If he saw him in Balford or anywhere else, he said hello, he said Bloody hot day, he nodded in recognition. That was the extent of it.

Where might he have seen Querashi outside work? they asked him.

And Cliff saw once again how cops twist everything to suit themselves. He hated the bastards in that instant. If he didn't mind his every syllable, they'd have him strolling with Querashi in the same pair of knickers before they were finished.

He kept his temper and told them that he hadn't seen the bloke outside the industrial estate. He was merely telling them that
if
he'd seen him, he'd have known who he was and he would have acknowledged him the way he acknowledged anyone he recognised. He was that sort of chap.

Friendly, the cop called Grey remarked. He let his gaze wander over to the display case of goodies to make his point.

Cliff didn't challenge them with a belligerent What's that supposed to mean? He knew that cops liked to cause aggro because feeling aggro put you off-guard with them. He'd played this game more than once with the rozzers. It had only taken him one night in lock-up to figure out the importance of staying cool.

They changed gears on him, then, asking if he was familiar with someone called Fahd Kumhar.

He told him he wasn't. He admitted that he might recognise Fahd Kumhar on sight because by sight he knew most of the Asians who worked in the mustard factory. But he didn't know their names. Those names they have just sound like a slew of letters put together to make up noises and I can never remember them, he explained. Why don't those people give their kids proper names? What about William, Charlie, or Steve?

The cops didn't pick up on this friendly aside. Instead, they went back to Querashi again. Had he ever seen Querashi with anyone? Talking to anyone on the grounds of the industrial estate?

Cliff couldn't recall, he told them. He said he might have done, but it wouldn't have registered. There were people in the grounds all the time, lots of coming and going, lorries arriving, deliveries being made, goods being shipped.

This might well have been a man Querashi would have been talking to, Waters told him. And with a nod towards the display case, he asked Cliff if he and Querashi had ever done business.

Querashi was a ginger, Grey added. Did Cliff know that?

This question cut a little too close for comfort, the way a knife blade can nearly slice into one's skin. Cliff closed his mind to the memory of his conversation with Gerry in the kitchen on the previous morning. He shut his inner ears to their words: accusations on one part and angry denials and defences on the other.

What about fidelity? Where did that go?

What
about
fidelity? All I know about it is what you say about it. And there's a hell of a lot of difference between what blokes feel and what they say.

Was it the market square? Is that where it happened? Did you meet him there?

Oh right, too right. Have it your way.

And the crash of the door put the full stop at the end of what went for their conversation.

But he couldn't betray any of that to the cops. No way could he let these blokes near Gerry.

No, he told them steadily. He'd never done business with Haytham Querashi, and it was news to him that the bloke was queer. He thought Querashi was supposed to be marrying Akram Malik's daughter. So were the cops sure they had their facts sorted out?

Nothing's ever sure in an investigation till a suspect's in the nick, Grey informed him.

And Waters added that if he remembered anything that he thought the police needed to know …

Cliff assured them that he'd have a proper think. He'd phone if anything popped into his head.

You do that, Grey told him. He gave a final look round the shop. When he and Waters stepped outside, he said, Flaming dung-puncher, just loud enough to be certain that Cliff overheard it.

Cliff watched them walk off. When they disappeared into the joinery across the pitted lane, he allowed himself to move. He went behind the counter, where his order desk was, and he thunked down onto the wooden chair.

His heart was racing, but he hadn't noticed while the cops were there. Once they left, though, he could feel it pounding so hard and so fast that it felt like it might leap straight through his chest to lay throbbing on the blue lino floor. He had to get a grip, he told himself. There was Gerry to think of. He had to keep his mind on Gerry.

His lover hadn't slept at home on the previous night. Cliff had awakened in the morning to find his side of the bed unruffled and he'd known at once that Gerry had never returned from Balford. His guts greeted this knowledge with a sickening twist. And despite the early heat of the day, his hands and feet had gone cold as dead fish at the thought of what Gerry's absence might mean.

He'd tried at first to tell himself that the other man had simply decided to work through the night and into the next day. After all, he was trying to complete the pier-end restaurant before the next bank holiday. And at the same time, he was working after hours on that house renovation in Balford. So Gerry had a good enough reason to be away from home. He might have gone directly from the first job to the second one, which was something he did quite often, in fact, sometimes working till three in the morning if he was anywhere close to completing a stage of the second project. But he'd never worked round the clock before. And in the past whenever he'd planned to work late into the night, he'd always phoned.

He hadn't phoned this time. He hadn't come home. And as Cliff had sat on the edge of the bed that morning, he sought clues within his last conversation with Gerry, details that might tell him of Gerry's whereabouts and of the condition of his heart and his mind. Except he had to admit that they hadn't had so much a conversation as an argument, one of those verbal brawls in which past behaviours suddenly become a bench mark for measuring present doubts.

Everything about their shared and individual pasts had been dragged out, aired, and laid down for a lengthy and intimate examination. The market square in Clacton. The gentlemen's toilet. Leather and Lace at the Castle. Gerry's endless work in that pishposh Balford house. Cliff's infuriating walks and his drives and his pints of Foster at Never Say Die. Who used the motorcycle had been brought up, as well as who took the boat out and when and why. And when they'd run out of accusations to hurl, they went on to shout about whose family accepted that one of their sons was a poofter and whose dad would try to beat the living shit out of his son if he knew the truth.

Gerry usually backed down from a fight, but he hadn't backed down from this one. And Cliff was left wondering what it meant that his lover—usually so mild and so earnest—had altered into a yobbo ready to take him on if taking him on was necessary.

So the day had started out bad and had only got worse: waking up to find that Gerry'd done a bunk and looking out the shop window to see the coppers putting the cosh on everyone in sight.

Now, at the jigsaw, Cliff tried to give his mind to the work. There were orders to fill and puzzles to be cut, dodgy pictures to assess for their potential as future puzzles and decisions to be made about ordering in an array of novelty condoms from Amsterdam. He had at least sixteen videos to preview and reviews to write for
Crossdressers’ Quarterly.
But he found that he could think of nothing but the questions the cops had wanted him to answer and whether he'd managed to be so convincing that they wouldn't show up in Jaywick Sands to ask Gerry DeVitt's assistance in their enquiry.

• • •

THEO SHAW'S APPEARANCE
didn't suggest a man who'd slept the sleep of the guileless, Barbara thought. Shaw was carrying luggage under his eyes and these were nearly bloodshot enough to give him the look of an albino rabbit. When Dominique the Tongue-stud had announced Barbara's arrival at the pier offices for a second visit, Theo had started to say brusquely, “No way. Tell her—” but had choked off whatever else he'd intended to communicate when he saw Barbara standing directly behind the girl.

Dominique said, “She's asking to see the time cards, Mr. Shaw, last week's time cards. Sh'll I fetch them or what? I didn't want to do nothing till I talked to you first.”

“I'll handle this,” Theo Shaw said, and made no other comment until Dominique went swinging back towards reception in her orange platform shoes. Then he looked at Barbara, who'd entered his office without an invitation, installing herself in one of two rattan chairs that sat facing his desk. “Time cards?”

“In the singular,” Barbara said. “Trevor Ruddock's from last week, to be specific. Have you got it?”

He had. The card was with the accounting department, where the payroll was done. If the sergeant didn't mind waiting a minute …

Barbara didn't mind. Another opportunity to recce Theo Shaw's office was just fine by her. But he seemed to read her intention, because instead of heading off to fetch the requested time card himself, he picked up the phone, punched in three numbers, and asked that the card be brought to them.

“I hope Trevor's not in trouble,” he said.

The devil you do, Barbara thought. She said, “Just confirming a few details.” She gestured towards the window. “The pier looks more crowded today. Business must be picking up.”

“Yes.”

“Good for the cause, that.”

“What cause?”

“Redevelopment. Are the Asians part of it? Redevelopment, I mean.”

“That's an odd question. Why do you ask?”

“I was in a place called Falak Dedar Park. It looks new. There's a fountain in the centre: a girl in Arab garb pouring water. And the name sounds Asian. So I was wondering if the Asians are involved in your redevelopment plans. Or do they have their own?”

“Anyone's free to become involved,” Theo said. “The town needs investors. We don't intend to hold anyone back if they want to be part of the project.”

“And if someone wants to go his own way? Have his own project? With a different idea to yours about redevelopment? What happens then?”

“It makes more sense for Balford to accept an overall plan,” Theo replied. “Otherwise, what you end up with is an architectural hotchpotch, like the south bank of the Thames. I've lived here most of my life and, frankly, I'd rather like to avoid that happening.”

Barbara nodded. His reasoning made sense. But it also suggested yet another area in which the Asian community might be in conflict with the longtime residents of Balford-le-Nez. She left her chair and approached the redevelopment plans, which she'd noticed on the previous day. She wanted to see how the plans affected such areas as the industrial estate where Akram Malik had obviously invested so much money in his mustard factory. But she was distracted by a town map that hung on the wall next to the blueprints and the artist's renderings of Balford-to-be.

This map indicated in which sections of the town the most money would be invested. But that wasn't what interested Barbara. Instead, she took note of the location of the Balford Marina. It was west of the Nez at the base of the peninsula. With advantageous tidal conditions, someone sailing from the marina up the Balford Channel into Pen-nyhole Bay would have easy access to the east side of the Nez, where Haytham Querashi had met his death.

She said, “You have a boat, haven't you, Mr. Shaw? Berthed at the marina?”