Deception on His Mind (31 page)

As he'd obviously been doing that very morning, much to Cliff's rising anxiety.

Cliff had come into the kitchen at six A.M., having awakened from a fitful sleep by the sudden knowledge that Gerry was no longer in bed at his side. He'd wrapped himself in a terry-cloth bathrobe and found Gerry where he'd apparently been for some time, standing fully clothed at the open window. This looked out upon five feet of concrete promenade, beyond which was the strand, beyond which was the sea. Gerry had been standing there, holding a mug of coffee, thinking the sort of private thoughts that always made Cliff begin to worry.

Gerry wasn't a bloke who generally kept his thoughts private at all: To him, being lovers meant living in each other's socks, which in its turn meant engaging in soulful conversations, frequent breast barings, and endless evaluations of “the state of the relationship.” Cliff couldn't really abide this way of being involved with a bloke, but he'd learned to put up with it. These were Gerry's digs, after all, and even if that hadn't been the case, he
liked
Gerry well enough. So he'd schooled himself to cooperate in the conversation game with a fair amount of grudging good grace.

But recently, the situation had altered subtly between them. Gerry's concern for the state of their union seemed to have faded. He'd stopped talking so much about it and, more ominously, he'd stopped clinging quite so tightly to Cliff. This made Cliff want to start clinging to him. Which was ludicrous, daft, and just plain idiotic. Which pissed Cliff off, because most of the time it was Cliff who needed space and Gerry who never wanted him to have it.

Cliff had joined him at the kitchen window. Over his lover's shoulder he'd seen that bright snakes of early morning light were beginning to crawl across the sea. Backlit against them, a fishing boat chugged north. Gulls were silhouetted against the sky. While Cliff was no lover of natural beauty, he knew when a vista offered the opportunity for contemplation.

And that's what Gerry had appeared to be doing when Cliff came upon him. He seemed to be thinking.

Cliff had put his hand on Gerry's neck, knowing that in the past, their roles would have been reversed. Gerry would have offered the caress, a gentle touch but one that demanded in spite of itself, saying: Acknowledge me, please, touch me in turn, tell me you love me as well, as much, as blindly, as selflessly as I love you.

Before, Cliff would have wanted to shrug Gerry's hand away. No, truth be told, his first reaction would have been wanting to
slap
Gerry's hand away. In fact, he would have wanted to swat Gerry right across the room, because that touch of his—so solicitous and tender—would have made demands upon him that he hadn't the energy or the ability to meet. But this morning he'd found himself playing Gerry's role, wanting a sign from Gerry that their relationship was still intact and foremost in the other man's thoughts.

Gerry had stirred beneath his hand, as if roused from sleep. His fingers made an effort at contact, but their graze felt to Cliff like a duty done, similar to one of those dry, stiff-lipped kisses exchanged by people who've been together too long.

Cliff had let his hand drop from Gerry's neck. Shit, he thought, and wondered what to say. He started with the obvious. “Couldn't sleep? How long've you been up?”

“A while.” Gerry raised his coffee mug.

Cliff had observed the other man's reflection in the window and tried to read it. But because it was a morning rather than a nightime image, it showed little more than the shape of him, a beefy man who was bulky and solid with a body hard and strong from labour.

“What's wrong?” Cliff had asked him.

“Nothing. I couldn't sleep. It's too hot for me. This weather's unbelievable. You'd think we were living in Acapulco.”

Cliff had tested the water in a way that Gerry himself might have done had their positions been reversed. He said, “You
wish
we were living in Acapulco. You and all those nice young Mexican boys …”

And he'd waited for the kind of reassurance that Gerry himself once would have wanted from him: Me and nice young Mexican boys? You daft, mate? Who gives a flying one for a greasy kid when I can have
you?

But it hadn't come. Cliff drove his fists into the pockets of his bathrobe. Hell, he thought with self-directed disgust. Who would've thought that
he'd
be wearing the sodding shoes of insecurity? He—Cliff Hegarty and not Gerry DeVitt—was the one who'd always said that permanent fidelity was nothing but a pit stop on the road to the grave. He was the one who'd preached about the dangers of seeing the same tired face at breakfast every morning, of finding the same tired body in bed every night. He'd always said that after a few years of that, only the knowledge of having had a secret encounter with someone new on the side—someone who liked the thrill of the chase, the pleasures afforded by anonymity, or the excitement of deception—would stimulate a bloke's body into performing for a long-term lover. That's just the way it was, he'd always said. That was life.

But Gerry wasn't supposed to
believe
that Cliff had actually meant what he said. Flaming hell, no. Gerry was supposed to say with sardonic resignation, “Right, mate. You keep on talking, ‘cause that's what you're good at, and talk is just talk.” The last thing Cliff had ever expected was that Gerry might take his words to heart. Yet with a stomach quickly turning sour, Cliff forced himself to admit that Gerry must have done exactly that.

He wanted to say belligerently, Look, you want to end it, Ger? But he was too frightened at what his lover's answer might be. He realised in a flash of clarity that no matter how much he talked about roads to the grave, he didn't really want to split from Gerry. Not just because of these digs in Jaywick Sands, a few feet from the beach, where Cliff liked to roam, nor because of the old speedboat that Gerry had lovingly restored and in which the two of them roared across the sea in the summer, and not because Gerry had been talking about an Australian holiday during the months when wind rattled the house like a Siberian cyclone. Cliff didn't want to split with Gerry because … well, there was something bloody comforting in being hooked up with a bloke who said he believed in permanent fidelity … even if one never got round to mentioning that particular point to him.

Which is why Cliff said with far more indifference than he actually felt, “You looking for a Mexican boy these days, Ger? Got a taste for dark meat instead of white?”

Gerry turned from the window at that. He set his cup on the table. “You been keeping count? Want to tell me why?”

Cliff grinned as he raised his hands in mock defence. “No way. Hey, this i'n't about me. We been together long enough for me to know when somethin's on your mind. All's I'm asking is do you want to talk about it?”

Gerry side-stepped and crossed the kitchen to the fridge. He opened it. He began to gather the ingredients for his usual breakfast, placing four eggs into a bowl and sliding four bangers out of their wrapper.

“You cheesed off about something?” Cliff reached for the tie of his bathrobe nervously. He retied it and returned his hands to his pockets. “Okay, I know I mouthed off nasty when you cancelled our Costa Rica holiday, but I thought we'd set ourselfs straight about that. I know the pier job's a big one for you, and along with that house renovation. … What I'm saying's that I know there hasn't been enough work in the past and now there is and you want to take the pickin's and you can't take time off. I understand. So if you been cheesed off about what I said—”

“I haven't been cheesed off,” Gerry said. He cracked the eggs and whipped them in the bowl while the bangers began to hiss on the cooker.

“Okay. Well, good.”

But was it good, really? Cliff didn't think so. Lately, he had begun to notice changes in Gerry: the uncharacteristic, lengthy silences, the frequent weekend retreats to the small garage, where he played his drums; the long nights he spent working on that private remodelling job in Balford; the intense evaluative looks he'd taken to giving to Cliff when he thought Cliff wouldn't notice. So sure, maybe Ger wasn't cheesed off at the moment. But he was definitely something.

Cliff knew that he ought to say more, but what he realised was that he very much wanted to leave the room. He figured that it would be wiser, anyway, just to pretend everything was fine despite all contradictory indications. That made more sense than running the risk of finding out something he didn't want to know.

Still, he remained in the kitchen. He watched the way his lover was moving, and he tried to suss out what it meant that Gerry was seeing to his breakfast with such a combination of assurance and concentration. It wasn't that assurance and concentration were out of character in Gerry. To be a success in his line of work, he needed both qualities. But neither of them was a quality that Gerry usually demonstrated when he was with Cliff.

Now, though … This was a different Gerry. This wasn't a bloke whose main concern had always been that problems between them got solved, questions got answered, and irritations got smoothed away without either of them raising their voices. This was a Gerry who sounded and acted like a bloke who'd put his oars in the water and knew exactly how far he had to row to get to the shore.

Cliff hadn't wanted to think about what this meant. He'd wished like hell he had stayed in bed. He heard the kitchen clock ticking loudly on the wall behind him, and it sounded just like the steady drumbeat that led the condemned to the chopping block. Shit, he thought. Fuck, hell, shit.

Gerry had taken his breakfast to the table. It was a hearty meal to see him through till lunch: eggs, bangers, two pieces of fruit, toast, and jam. But when he had it laid out with cutlery in position, a glass of juice poured, and a napkin tucked into the top of his T-shirt, he didn't eat. He just stared at the food, curled his hand round the juice glass, and swallowed so loud that Cliff had to think he was choking on a stone.

Then he looked up. “I think,” Gerry said, “we both need to have blood tests.”

The kitchen walls swam. The floor felt unsteady. And their shared history came back at Cliff in a sickening rush.

Who they'd been would always haunt them, two blokes who lied to their respective families about how and when and where they'd met: in a public loo at a period of time when “taking precautions” wasn't near as important as buggering the first bloke willing to have it. He and Ger knew the truth about each other, about who they'd been and, more important, who they could easily go back to being if the time was right and the temptation was there and the market square loo was empty save for just one other accommodating bloke.

Cliff had wanted to laugh, to pretend he'd misheard. He'd thought about saying, “You daft? What the hell're you on about, mate?” But instead, he said nothing. Because long ago he'd learned the value of waiting for panic and terror to subside before saying the first thing that came into his head.

“Hey, I love you, Gerry DeVitt,” he'd finally declared.

Gerry bowed his head and began to weep.

Now Cliff watched the two cops yakking outside Hegarty's Adult Distractions, just like two biddies over their tea. He knew they'd soon be going to every business in the industrial estate. They'd have to do it. The Paki'd been murdered, and they'd want to talk to anyone who might have seen the bloke, talked to him, or observed him talking to anyone else. Next to his digs, the industrial estate was a logical place to begin. So it was only a matter of time before they got themselves over to Hegarty's Adult Distractions.

“Shit,” Cliff whispered. He was sweating despite the air conditioner in the window that blew a frigid breeze in his direction. What he didn't need right now was a run-in with the rozzers. He had to keep them away from Gerry. And he had to avoid telling anyone the truth.

A
N IMPRESSIVE TURQUOISE
cruisemobile swung into the industrial estate just as Emily was saying, “We can be sure of one thing, based on the fact that Sahlah didn't know who F. Kumhar was. He's a man, as I've thought from the first.”

“How d'you reckon that?”

Emily held up a hand to hold Barbara's question at bay for a moment as the car rumbled into the lane. An American convertible, it was all sleek lines and leather interior with chrome that glittered like polished platinum. Thunderbird sports car, Barbara thought, at least forty years old and perfectly restored. Someone wasn't hurting for lolly.

The driver was a tea-skinned male somewhere in his twenties, with long hair tied back in a ponytail. He wore wrap-around sunglasses of a style that Barbara had always associated with pimps, gigolos, and card sharks. She recognised him from the demonstration that she'd witnessed on television the previous day. Muhannad Malik.

Taymullah Azhar was with him. To his credit, he didn't look particularly comfortable arriving at the factory like a fugitive from
Miami Vice.

The men got out. Azhar remained by the car, arms folded across his chest, while Muhannad sauntered to join the two police officers. He removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the pocket of his white shirt. This was perfectly ironed and fresh-looking, and he wore it with jeans and snake-skin boots.

Emily made the introductions. Barbara felt her palms getting damp. Now was the moment for her to tell the DCI that no introduction to Taymullah Azhar was going to be necessary. But she held her tongue. She waited for Azhar to clarify matters on his part for his cousin. Azhar glanced Muhannad's way but held his tongue as well. This was an unexpected turn of events. Barbara decided to see where it led them.

Muhannad's gaze passed over her in the sort of scornful, evaluative look that made Barbara itch to sink her thumbs into his eyeballs. He didn't stop walking towards them until—she was certain—he knew he'd come too close for comfortable conversation.

“And this is your liaison officer?” He gave ironic emphasis to the adjective.

“Sergeant Havers will meet with you this afternoon,” Emily told him. “Five o'clock at the station.”

“Four o'clock suits us better,” Muhannad countered. He didn't try to disguise the statement's purpose: an attempt at dominance.