Deception on His Mind (67 page)

Kreuzhage assured her he would do what he could. She rang off. She spent a moment just sitting on the bed, letting its hideous counterpane soak a bit of the sweat from the backs of her legs. When she felt she had the energy to do so, she went to the shower and stood under it, too hot even to entertain herself with her usual medley of rock ‘n’ roll oldies.

FTER DINNER, BARBARA ENDED UP ON THE PLEASURE
pier solely because Hadiyyah had extended the invitation. In her usual impulsive and generous manner, the little girl had announced, “You must come with us, Barbara. We're going to the pier, Dad and I, and you must come as well. She must, Dad, mustn't she? It'll be ever so much more fun if she comes.” She'd craned her neck to see her father, who listened to the invitation soberly. The final diners of the evening, they were finishing their
sorbet-du-jour.
It was lemon this night, and they'd had to consume it in a rush before the heat reduced it to slop. Hadiyyah had waved her spoon in the air as she spoke, sending lemon droplets across the table cloth.

Barbara would have preferred a quiet sit on the lawn above the sea. Mingling with the doubtlessly odoriferous pleasure seekers on the Balford pier and building up a new patina of sweat were activities she could have done without. But Azhar had been preoccupied throughout dinner, allowing his daughter to carry the conversation happily in whatever direction she chose, and at any length. This behaviour was so unlike him that Barbara knew it had to be connected with Muhannad Malik's departure from the Burnt House and whatever had been said between the two men in the car park prior to that departure. So she was willing to accompany Azhar and his daughter to the pleasure pier if for no other reason than to prise from the man an account of what had passed between him and his cousin.

Thus she found herself on the pier at ten o'clock, jostled by the sunburned masses, her nostrils assailed by the mixed odours of lotions, sweat, frying whitebait, sizzling hamburgers, and popping corn. The noise was even more deafening at night than during the day, possibly because the carnies grew more desperate for custom as the closing hour approached. So they shouted for attention, attempting to beguile passers-by into tossing balls or spinning wheels or shooting ducks, and in order to be heard they had to match the volume of the calliope music from the roundabout and the whistles, bells, pops, and mechanical explosions of the games in the arcade.

It was to the arcade that Hadiyyah led them, having each of them by the hand. “What fun, what fun!” she sang out, and she seemed oblivious of the fact that what passed between her father and her friend was mostly silence.

On every side of them, a glistening throng played video and pin ball machines in the din. Small children raced among the fruit machines, shouting and laughing. A crowd of adolescent boys drove virtual reality race cars to the accompaniment of admiring shrieks from teenaged girls. A line of elderly women sat at a counter playing bingo, with the numbers being boomed out on a microphone that was wielded by a clown-suited man whose make-up had long since suffered the worst it could suffer from the relentless heat. No one in the arcade, Barbara noted, was Asian.

For her part, Hadiyyah seemed unmindful of everything: the noise, the smell, the temperature, the crowd, and being one of two parts of a distinct minority. She released her grip on her father and Barbara and whirled about, dancing from foot to foot. She crowed, “The crane grab! Dad, the crane grab!” and dashed in the direction of that particular game.

When they caught up with her, she was pressed against the front of the machine, her nose to the glass as she studied its contents. It was filled with stuffed animals: pink pigs, spotted cows, giraffes, lions, and elephants. “Giraffe, giraffe,” she sang out, poking her finger at the animal she wanted her father to try to win for her. “Dad, c'n you do the giraffe for me? He's ever so good at the crane grab, Barbara. Just wait till you see.” She spun on one foot and grabbed her father's arm. She urged him forward to the machine. “And when you win a giraffe for me, you must win something for Barbara next. An elephant, Dad. Remember the elephant you won for Mummy? Remember how I cut out its stuffing? I didn't mean to, Barbara. I was only five years old, and I was playing vets with it. It needed an operation, but it lost its stuffing when I cut it open. Mummy was in such a rage about that. She shouted and shouted. Didn't she, Dad?”

Azhar didn't answer. Instead, he applied his attention and his efforts to the crane grab. He did it as Barbara assumed he would do it: with the sort of solemn concentration that he gave to everything. He missed on the first try as well as the second. But neither he nor his daughter lost heart. “He's just practising,” Hadiyyah informed Barbara confidently. “He always practises first. Right, Dad?”

Azhar went about his business. On his third try, he positioned the crane quickly, dropped its hook efficiently, and snagged the giraffe that his daughter wanted. Hadiyyah shouted with delight and swept the small stuffed animal into her arms as if she'd just been given the single gift she'd desired for the length of her eight short years.

“Thank you, thank you!” she cried and hugged her father round the waist. “It'll be my souvenir from Balford. It'll be how I remember what a fine time we had on our holiday. Try for another. Please, Dad, won't you? Try for an elephant for Barbara's souvenir.”

“Another time, kiddo,” Barbara said hastily to the girl. The thought of being presented with a stuffed animal from Azhar was somehow disconcerting. “We don't want to drop our lolly all in one place, do we? What about pin ball? Or the roundabout?”

Hadiyyah's face lit. She darted ahead of them, squirming through the crowd on her way to the door. To get there, she had to pass the virtual reality race cars, and in her haste for fun, she elbowed her way into the group surrounding them.

It happened quickly, too quickly to see if what occurred was merely an accident or an intentional act. One moment Hadiyyah had disappeared into a mass of scantily clad adolescent bodies. The next moment she was sprawled on the floor.

Someone hooted with laughter, a sound barely discernible above the raucous noise of the arcade. But it was loud enough for Barbara to hear it, and she shot into the group without another thought.

“Shit. Pakis,” someone was saying.

“Just lookit that dress.”

“An Oxfam special.”

“Thinks she's going to meet the Queen.”

Barbara grabbed the limp, sweaty T-shirt of the boy nearest to her. She twisted it into her hand and jerked until he was less than two inches from her face.

“My little friend,” she said evenly, “appears to have tripped somehow. I'm sure one of you gentlemen would like to help her, wouldn't you?”

“Sod you, bitch” was his succinct reply.

“Not even in your dreams,” she said.

“Barbara.” Azhar spoke somewhere behind her, sounding eminently reasonable as he always sounded.

In front of her, Hadiyyah was struggling to her knees among the Doc Martens, sandals, and trainers that surrounded her. Her silk dress had become soiled in her fall, and beneath her arm the seam had ripped. She didn't look so much hurt as surprised. She gazed round, her face bewildered at the sudden confusion.

Barbara gripped the boy's T-shirt more firmly. “Think again, wanker-man,” she said quietly. “I said that my little friend needs some help.”

“Fuck that, Sean. There's two of them and ten of us,” someone to Barbara's left advised.

“Right,” Barbara said pleasantly in answer, speaking to Sean and not to his counsellor. “But I don't imagine that any of you have one of these.” With her free hand she felt in her shoulder bag until she had her police identification. She flipped this open and jammed it into Sean's face. She was too close for him to be able to read it, but reading it wasn't what she had in mind for him.

“Help her up,” she said.

“I di'n't do nothing to her.”

“Barbara.” Azhar spoke again.

She saw him out of the corner of her eye. He was going to Hadiyyah. “Leave her,” Barbara said. “One of these young louts”—another twist of the T-shirt—”is hot to prove what a gent he can be. Isn't that right, Sean? Because if one of these young louts”—another more savage twist of the shirt—”fails to prove what needs to be proved, the whole flaming lot of them are going to be phoning Mummy and Daddy from the nick tonight.”

Azhar, however, ignored Barbara's words. He went to his daughter and helped her to her feet. The adolescents gave him plenty of space to do so. “You've not hurt yourself, Hadiyyah?” He reached for her giraffe, which had flown from her hands as she'd fallen.

“Oh no!” she wailed. “Dad, it's got all ruined.”

Sean still in her grasp, Barbara looked over. The giraffe had somehow become stained with ketchup. Its head had been flattened by someone's shoe.

A boy out of Barbara's range of vision sniggered. But before she could deal with him, Azhar said, “This is something that can be easily repaired.” He spoke like a man who was aware of everything else in life that was well beyond mending. He worked his way out of the group, Hadiyyah walking in front of him, his hands on his daughter's shoulders.

Barbara saw the dejected angle at which the child held her head. She itched to head-butt Sean and drive her knee directly into his bollocks, but instead she released him and wiped her hand on her trousers. “It takes real dreck to go after an eight-year-old girl,” she said. “Why don't the lot of you celebrate the accomplishment by doing yourselves proud somewhere else?”

She shoved past them and followed Azhar and his daughter out of the arcade. For a moment she didn't see where they'd gone because the number of pleasure-seekers seemed to have grown. On her every side was a mass of black leather trousers, nose studs, nipple rings, dog collars, and chains. She felt as if she'd just burst into a crowd of S & M conventioneers.

Then she saw her friends. They were to her right, Azhar leading his daughter out of the pavilion and onto the open section of the pier. She joined them.

“…manifestation of people's fear,” Azhar was saying to Hadiyyah's bowed head. “People fear what they don't understand, Hadiyyah. Fear drives their actions.”

“I wouldn't've hurt them,” Hadiyyah said. “I'm too little to hurt them anyway.”

“Ah, but they aren't afraid of being hurt,
khushi.
What they're afraid of is being known. Here is Barbara now. Shall we continue our evening? Allowing a group of strangers to determine whether we find joy in this outing seems ill-advised.”

Hadiyyah raised her head. Barbara felt a tightness in her chest at the sight of her little friend's bleak face. “I think those planes are calling to us, kiddo,” she said heartily, indicating a ride nearby: tiny aeroplanes soaring and falling round a central pole. “What d'you say?”

Hadiyyah watched the planes for a moment. She'd been carrying her soiled and ruined giraffe, but now she handed it over to her father and straightened her shoulders. “I especially love aeroplanes,” she said.

T
HEY WATCHED HER
when they couldn't ride with her. Some of the amusements were child-sized: the miniature Army Jeeps, the train, the helicopters, and the planes. Others were made for larger occupants, and in these the three of them rode together, dashing from the teacups to the Ferris wheel to the roller coaster, always managing to stay at least one step ahead of disappointment and dejection. It wasn't until Hadiyyah insisted on three consecutive rides on the miniature sailing ships—“They make my stomach go whoop-dee-do,” she explained—that Barbara had a chance to talk to Azhar alone.

“I'm sorry about what happened,” she said to him. He'd taken out his cigarettes and offered her one. She accepted. He lit them both. “Rotten thing. On her holiday and everything.”

“I'd love to shield her from every pain.” Azhar watched his daughter and smiled at her laughter as her stomach whoop-dee-do'd on the simulated wave which crested and fell beneath her tiny ship. “But that's the desire of every loving parent, isn't it? It's a wish that's both reasonable to possess and completely impossible to fulfill.” He lifted his cigarette to his lips and kept his eyes fixed to Hadiyyah. He said, “Thank you, however.”