Deception on His Mind (58 page)

“Mum.” Behind her, Trevor spoke. Like his mother, he was shiny with sweat and grimy of body, but not flaring of temper. He too entered the sitting room.

Three people among the boxes and the furniture were two people too many. Charlie trailed his brother and swelled their numbers.

“What d'you want?” Shirl demanded. “You had your say with my Trevor. And a fine disruption you caused in this house going about it, by the way. You got his dad in an uproar, and he needs his rest. He isn't well, Trevor's dad, and you didn't help matters one little bit.”

Barbara wondered how anyone could manage to rest in a household in which earsplitting noise was the dominant feature. As it was, they were all virtually shouting at one another simply to be heard over the vehicular crashes on the television. Rap music added another element to the auditory chaos of the household. As on the previous day, it was booming from upstairs at a volume so high that Barbara could feel the vibrations of the sound in the air.

“I want a word with Trevor,” Barbara said to his mother.

“We're busy,” she replied. “You c'n see that for yourself. You aren't blind as well as dim, are you?”

“Mum,” Trevor said again cautiously.

“Don't you ‘Mum’ me. I know my rights. And nothing in them says a cop can come here and prowl through my belongings like they were her own. Come back later, you. We got work to do.”

“What sort of work?” Barbara asked.

“None of your business.” Shirl grabbed a box and heaved it to waist height. “Charlie,” she barked, “get on with it.”

“Do you know what it looks like, moving house while the police are investigating a murder?” Barbara asked.

“I bloody well don't care what anything looks like,” Shirl replied. “Charlie! Get off that bleeding couch. Turn off that telly. Your dad'll tan you good if you wake him again.” She turned on her heel and left the room. Barbara watched through the window as she crossed the street and entered the square, where a row of cars were parked. Charlie bellowed a sigh, picked up another box, and followed his mother.

“We aren't moving house,” Trevor said when he and Barbara were alone. He crossed to the television set and doused its volume. The picture remained: a helicopter in pursuit of a flame-engulfed pantechnicon. They were on a bridge. Disaster loomed for someone.

“What's up, then?” Barbara asked.

“We got the market square in Clacton. This lumber's for the stall.”

“Ah,” she said. “How'd you come by it?”

His neck turned red. “Isn't nicked, if that's what you're thinking, okay?”

“Okay. So how'd you get these goods, Trevor?”

“Me and Mum go to car boot sales at the weekends. We buy what we can, fix it up, then flog it for a higher price in Clacton. Isn't much, this clutter, but it helps us get by.” He touched one of the boxes with the toe of his boot.

Barbara observed him closely, trying to evaluate him for his level of guile. He'd already lied to her once, so his stock was low. But this, at least, was a reasonable tale. She said, “Rachel didn't corroborate your story, Trevor. We need to talk.”

“I didn't chop that bloke. I was nowheres near the Nez on Friday.”

“So she wasn't lying.”

“I didn't have no reason to do nothing to him. Sure, I di'n't like that he sacked me, but I took my chances when I nicked those jars from the factory. So I know I got to pay the price.”

“Where were you on Friday night?”

He raised a fist to his mouth and tapped it against his lips. It looked to Barbara like a nervous movement. “Trevor?” she prompted.

“Yeah. Okay. But it's not much good if I tell you cause there's no one who can say it's the truth. So you won't believe me. So what's the point?”

“The point is trying to clear your name, which is something I'd think you'd be fairly hot to do. Since you're not, it makes me wonder why. And wondering why leads me straight to the Nez. Your time card tells me you clocked in at work at half past eleven. Rachel tells me you left her before ten. That's ninety minutes to account for, Trevor, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that ninety minutes is plenty of time for a bloke to get from the beach huts to the Nez and from there to the pier.”

Trevor's glance went to the sitting room door, perhaps in anticipation of his mother's return for another box to load into their car for the trip to the market square. He said stubbornly, “I told you what I'm going to tell you. I wasn't on the Nez that night. And I didn't give that bloke the chop.”

“And that's all you have to tell me?”

“That's all.”

“Then let's go upstairs.”

He looked immediately alarmed, the very picture of a bloke with something to hide. With his mother not there to tell him what his rights were in the situation, it was clear to Barbara that she had the upper hand. She made for the stairs. He was hot on her heels.

“There's nothing up there,” he said. “And you got no call to be—”

She swung to face him. “Did I say I was looking for something, Trevor?”

He stuttered, “Y-you said …”

“I said let's go upstairs. I have an itch to make this conversation more private.”

She continued to climb. The rap music came from behind one of the doors, but it wasn't the door to Trevor's room this time. Since it was accompanied by the sound of water roaring out of a large tap, Barbara assumed that one other member of the family was using the unintelligible chanting as an accompaniment to a bath.

She entered Trevor's room, holding the door open for him and shutting it behind them. Once inside, she sauntered to the table where his spider paraphernalia was spread out. She began to sift through it.

“What're you doing?” he demanded. “You said you wanted to talk in private.”

“I lied,” she replied. “What's this about anyway, all this junk? And how'd you get into spiders, such a nice lad like you?”

“Hang on!” he cried as she shifted a collection of half-assembled arachnids to see what was in the box beneath them. “Those'll fall apart.”

“I
was
wondering how you held them together, when I was here yesterday,” Barbara admitted.

She rooted through various sizes of sponges, through tubes of paint, through pipe cleaners, black plastic beads, straight pins, and glue. She moved aside reels of cotton in black, yellow, and red.

Trevor said angrily, “You got no bleeding business with that.”

But Barbara saw otherwise when she moved two old encyclopaedias to one side. Crammed between the volumes and the wall was another reel. But this one didn't have cotton wound round it. It was wound with wire.

“I think I have business with this, though.” She straightened and held the reel up for him to see. “Want to tell me about it?”

“About what? About that? It's just some old wire. You c'n see as much yourself.”

“That I can.” She slipped the reel into her shoulder bag.

“What d'you want with it? Why're you taking it? You can't take something from my room like that. And it's nothing anyway. It's just some old wire.”

“Used for what?”

“Used for anything. Used for fixing that net—” He jerked his head at the fishing net above his door, where the model spiders still cavorted. “Used for keeping the spider bodies together. Used for …” He struggled for another use. Words failed him, though, and he advanced on her. “You give me that bloody wire!” He said the six words through his teeth. “I didn't do nothing and you can't make it like I did. And you can't take nothing without my permission because—”

“Oh, but I can,” Barbara said pleasantly. “I can take you.”

He gawped at her. His eyes bulged and his mouth fell open and then snapped shut.

“D'you want to come quietly for a chat at the nick, or do I need to phone and have some assistance sent over?”

“But …no …why … I didn't do—”

“So you've said,” she told him. “So I expect you won't mind giving us your dabs, will you? Someone as innocent as you doesn't need to worry about where he's left his fingerprints.”

Aware of the difference in their sizes and strength, Barbara didn't give Trevor a chance to resist. She had him by the arm, out of the room, and on the stairs before he had the opportunity to protest. She wasn't so lucky, however, in the case of his mother.

Shirl was hoisting another box—this one to her shoulder—while Charlie made himself less than useful by playing with the television. She caught sight of Barbara and her eldest son as they were halfway down the stairs. She dropped the box.

“Now, you hang on!” She made a dash for the stairway and blocked their path.

“You don't want to interfere, Mrs. Ruddock,” Barbara told her.

“I bloody well mean to know what you're doing,” Shirl replied. “I know my rights. No one let you into this house, and no one agreed to talk to you. So if you think you can waltz in here and expect my Trevor—”

“Your Trevor's a suspect in a murder,” Barbara said, overheated and patience worn to gossamer. “So step to one side and do it nicely before more than one Ruddock gets run into the nick.”

She advanced anyway. Trevor said, “Mum! We don't need no trouble. Mum! D'you hear?”

Charlie had come to the sitting room door. Upstairs, Mr. Ruddock had begun to yell. At that moment the youngest boy ran towards them from the kitchen, a jar of honey in one hand, a bag of flour in the other.

“Mum?” Charlie said.

“Shirl!” Mr. Ruddock shouted.

“See!” Brucie cried, and poured the honey and the flour together onto the floor.

Barbara watched and listened and silently clarified Trevor's statement. The Ruddocks didn't need any
more
trouble. But what was often the case was that those not in need were blessed with more of what they already had.

“Take care of the kids,” Trevor said to his mother. He cast a sideways look towards the stairs. “Don't let him get at them while I'm gone.”

M
UHANNAD SHOWED UP
for mid-afternoon prayers. Sahlah hadn't expected him to do so. The argument with their father on the previous night had bled into the morning's breakfast. There had been no further exchange of words about Muhannad's activities with respect to the police investigation, but still the animosity that lingered between them had charged the air.

“Be concerned about offending these bloody Westerners if that's what you have to do,” Muhannad had snapped. “Just don't ask me to do the same. I won't allow the police to question even one of our people without representation, and if that makes your position on the town council difficult, then that's just the way it's going to be. You can trust what parades as the good will and noble intentions of this filthy community as much as you like, Father. You're free to do so because as we both know, the world has plenty of room for fools.”

Sahlah had shuddered, waiting for her father to strike him. Instead, although a vein throbbed in his temple when he replied, Akram's words were calm.

“In front of your wife, whose duty is to obey and respect you, I will not do as I ought, Muni. But there will come a day when you are forced to realise that promoting enmity gains one nothing.”

“Haytham is dead!” was Muhannad's response, and he made it slamming his fist into his palm. “Wasn't that the first blow struck in the cause of enmity? And who struck that blow?”

Sahlah had left before Akram replied, but not before she'd seen her mother's hands fumble at the mess she was making of her embroidery, and not before she'd seen Yumn's avid face absorbing the altercation as if the hot words between father and son were feeding her blood. Sahlah knew why. Any antagonism between Akram and Muhannad had the potential to push the son away from the father and closer to his wife. And that's what Yumn had wanted from the first: Muhannad entirely and solely to herself. In the traditional way of things, she could never have him solely. He had duties to his parents that precluded this. But tradition had flown out of the window with Haytham's death.

Now, in the courtyard of the mustard factory, Sahlah saw that her brother had come to stand in the shadows—behind the factory's three Muslim women—while the other workers faced the
mihrab
that Akram had fashioned into the wall, so that they might direct their prayers eastward towards Mecca. But Muhannad didn't engage in any of the bows or prostrations, and when
shahada
was recited, his lips didn't move in the profession of faith: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet.”

These words weren't in English, but everyone knew their meaning. As they knew the meaning of the
Fatihah
that followed.

“Allahu Akbar,”
Sahlah heard her father murmur. And her heart was sore with the need to believe. But if God
was
most great, why had He brought their family to this: one member pitted against another, each engagement between them an attempt to illustrate which person had power and which was forced by age, by birth, or by temperament to submit?

The prayers continued. Inside the factory, the few Westerners whom her father employed took time from their own work like their Asian counterparts. Akram had long ago told them that they might use the periods each day during which the Muslims prayed as a group to pray formally on their own or to meditate. Instead, Sahlah knew, they hurried out to smoke in the lane, as happy to take advantage of her father's generosity as they were willing to remain in ignorance about the tenets of his religion and his way of life.

But Akram Malik didn't see that. Nor did he notice the way their lips curved slightly behind his back, offering smug smiles of superiority in the face of his foreign ways. Nor did he observe the glances they exchanged—eyes moving subtly skyward and shoulders shrugging—each time he shepherded his Muslim employees to the courtyard in which they said their prayers.

As they were doing now, and with a devotion that Sahlah herself couldn't pretend to feel. She stood as they stood, she moved as they moved, her lips formed the appropriate words. But in her case, it was all performance.

A movement out of the ordinary caught her attention. She turned. The outcast cousin—Taymullah Azhar—had come into the courtyard. He was speaking in a whisper to Muhannad. In response to whatever Azhar was telling him, Muhannad's face went rigid. In a moment, he gave a single sharp nod and indicated the door with a canting motion of his head. The two men left together.