Deception on His Mind (90 page)

“But, Guv—”

“You heard me, Mike. Goddamn it. That's an order.”

“Emily! Jesus!” Barbara cried. They were already too far away from the girl for Fogarty to swim to her before she drowned. And even if he attempted it—even if she herself attempted it with him—they would accomplish nothing but drowning together while the DCI relentlessly pursued her quarry into the fog. “Emily! Stop!”

“Not for some goddamn Paki brat,” Emily shouted. “Not on your life.”

Paki brat. Paki brat.
The words throbbed in the air. While in the water, Hadiyyah flailed and went under yet another time. That was it. Barbara dove for the carbine. She grabbed it up. She levelled it at the DCI. “Turn this fucking boat around,” she cried. “Do it, Emily. Or I'll blow you straight to hell.”

Emily's hand went to the holster she was wearing. Her fingers found the butt of the gun.

Fogarty shouted, “Guv! Don't!”

And Barbara saw her life, her career, and her future pass before her in the second before she pulled back on the carbine's trigger.

MILY FELL. BARBARA DROPPED THE GUN. BUT
where she expected to see blood and intestines all over the DCFs tank top, she saw only water from the spray that continued to soar up on either side of the boat. The shot had gone wide.

Fogarty leapt forward. He jerked the DCI upright in her seat. He yelled, “She's right! Guv! She's right!”

And Barbara went for the boat's controls.

She didn't know how much time had passed. It seemed like several eternities. She brought the boat about with such speed that they nearly capsized. While Fogarty disarmed Emily, she wildly scanned the water for the girl.

Shit, she thought. Oh God. Please.

And then she saw her, some forty yards off their starboard side. Not thrashing, but floating. A floating body. She shouted, “Mike! There!” And she gunned the motor.

Fogarty was over the side the instant they were close enough to the child. Barbara killed the engine. She flung the life jackets and seat cushions into the water, where they bobbed like marshmallows. And then she prayed.

It didn't matter that her skin was dark, that her mother had abandoned her, that her father had allowed her to live eight years believing they were alone in the world. What mattered was that she was Hadiyyah: joyous and innocent and in love with life.

Fogarty reached her. Hadiyyah was floating face down. He flipped her over, caught her under the chin, and began swimming back to the boat.

Barbara's vision blurred. She whirled on Emily. “What were you thinking?” she shrieked. “What the goddamn hell were you thinking? She's eight years old, eight
fucking
years old!”

Emily turned from the sea back to Barbara. She raised a hand as if to fend off the words. Her fingers curled into a fist. But above that fist, her eyes narrowed slowly.

“She's not a Paki brat,” Barbara persisted. “She's not a nameless face. She's a human being.”

Fogarty had the child at the side of the boat.

“Christ,” Barbara whispered as she dragged the fragile body inside.

As Fogarty clambered into the boat, Barbara stretched the little girl out on the floor. Scarcely breathing herself, without thinking about its use or futility, she began CPR. She moved rapidly between the kiss of life and the cardiac massage and she kept her eyes on Hadiyyah's face. But her own ribs ached from the pounding she'd taken. And every breath she took seared her chest. She grunted. She coughed. She pounded the heel of her hand beneath Hadiyyah's breast.

“Get out of the way.” It was Emily's curt voice. Next to her, right into her ear.

“No!” Barbara closed her mouth around Hadiyyah's.

“Stop it, Sergeant. Get out of my way. I'll see to it.”

Barbara ignored her. And Fogarty, panting heavily from his exertions, reached for her arm. He said, “Let the Guv, Sarge. She can do it. It's okay.”

So Barbara allowed Emily to work on the child. And Emily worked in much the same way that Emily Barlow had always worked: efficiently, seeing that there was a job to be done, allowing nothing to get in the way of her doing it.

Hadiyyah's chest gave a monumental heave. She began to cough. Emily rolled her onto her side, and her body convulsed once before it began to expel saltwater, bile, and vomit all over the bottom of Charlie Spencer's prized Hawk 31.

Hadiyyah blinked. Then she looked stunned. Then she seemed to take in the three adults who were hovering over her. Face perplexed, her glance went first to Emily, then to Fogarty, then found Barbara. She smiled beatifically.

“My stomach went whoop-dee-do,” she said.

T
HE MOON HAD
risen by the time they finally made it back to Balford Marina. But the marina was awash with light. It was aswarm with spectators as well. As the
Sea Wizard
rounded the point at which the Twizzle met the Balford Channel, Barbara could see the crowd. They were milling about the Hawk 31's berth, headed by a bald man whose pate glittered in more lights than were natural or necessary on the pontoon.

Emily was on the helm. She squinted over the
Sea Wizard's
bow. She said, “Brilliant,” in a disgusted tone.

In the boat's back seat, Barbara held Hadiyyah in the curve of her arm, the child swathed in a mildewed blanket. She said, “What's going on?”

“Ferguson.” Emily said. “He's phoned the bloody press.”

The media were represented by photographers wielding strobes, reporters carrying notebooks and cassette recorders, and a newsvan getting ammunition for ITV's ten o'clock broadcast. Together with Superintendent Ferguson, they surged forward and scattered down the pontoons on either side of the
Sea Wizard
as Emily cut the engines and let the boat's momentum carry them into the berth.

Voices were shouting. Strobes were popping. A video cameraman jostled his way through the crowd. Ferguson was yelling, “Where is he, goddamn it?” Charlie Spencer was crying, “My seats! What the hell've you done with my boat seats?” Ten journalists were shouting, “Can I have a word over here, please?” And everyone in sight was searching the boat for the obvious—and unfortunately missing—celebrity, promised to be brought to them in chains, head bowed and repentant, just in time to avert a political disaster. Except they didn't have him. All they had was a shivering little girl who clung to Barbara until a slender dark man with intense black eyes pushed past three constables and two teen-aged gawkers.

Hadiyyah saw him. She cried, “Dad!”

Azhar reached for her, grabbed her from Barbara's arms. He clutched her to him as if she carried the only hope of his salvation, as indeed she probably did. “Thank you,” he said fervently. “Barbara. Thank you.”

WPC
BELINDA WARNER
kept the coffee coming through the next few hours. There was much to see to.

Superintendent Ferguson had to be dealt with first, and Emily saw to him behind closed doors. To Barbara's ears, their meeting appeared to be a cross between a round of bear baiting and a vicious colloquy on the position of women in the police force. It seemed to consist of raised voices hurling nasty accusations, aggrieved remonstrations, and angry imprecations. Much of it centred round the superintendent's demanding to know what he was supposed to report to his own superiors about “this monumental cock-up of yours, Barlow,” and Emily's responding that she didn't give a fuck what he reported to anyone just as long as he did his bloody reporting away from her office and let her get back to the business of nabbing Malik. Their meeting ended with Ferguson storming off with vows that she'd do well to prepare herself for disciplinary action and Emily shouting that
he'd
do well to prepare a defence for harassment, which is what she intended to charge him with if he goddamn well didn't let her get on with her job.

Waiting uneasily with the rest of the team in the conference room next door to Emily's office, Barbara knew how much of the DCFs career now lay in the palm of her hand. As did Barbara's own professional fate rest in Emily Barlow's.

Neither of them had spoken a word about those moments on the
Sea Wizard
that had led up to Barbara's seizing control of the boat. Likewise, PC Fogarty had himself remained mum on the subject. He'd gathered the weapons when they'd returned to the marina. He'd stowed them—along with himself—in the ARV. He'd gone on his way, back to patrol or wherever he'd been when he'd first got the word to report to the marina. He'd nodded at them, said, “Sergeant, Guv, nice work” in farewell and left Barbara with the distinct impression that what was said on the subject of the sea chase would not be up to him.

And Barbara wasn't sure what to do because she couldn't bear to think of what she'd learned—about herself and about Emily Barlow—in just a few brief days in Balford-le-Nez.

“We had a score of Asians … howling like werewolves.”

“One of those take-away marriages all boxed up pretty by Mummy and Dad.”

“They're Asians. They wouldn't want to lose face.”

The reality had been before her all along, but her blind admiration for the DCI had encouraged Barbara to overlook it. Now she knew that professional ethics required her to expose what she'd seen—without wanting to see—in Emily from the first.

But an allegation from Barbara would most certainly be met by the DCFs levelling a more damning set of charges against her. They began with insubordination; they ended with attempted murder. A word from Emily to London and Barbara was finished in CID. One did not aim and discharge a loaded weapon at one's superior officer and hope that moment's breach of sanity would somehow be overlooked.

When Emily rejoined the team, however, her face gave no indication of her intentions. She entered the room with a down-to-business air about her, and the manner in which she gave directions to her team told Barbara that her mind was on the job, not on retribution.

Interpol needed to be involved. Balford CID would make contact with them through the Met. The request they were making was basic enough. No investigation was being required of Germany's
Bundeskriminalamt.
All that was needed was a simple arrest: as simple as anything could ever be, once more than one country became involved.

But Interpol would require reports to send on to Germany. And Emily directed several members of the team to start gathering those reports. Others were set to work on the extradition proceedings. Still others were to assemble material for the press officer's use in the morning. And others were assigned to assembling data—activity reports, transcripts of interrogations, forensic material—to be handed over to the prosecutors once the police had Muhannad Malik in hand. At this point, pushing yet another trolley of coffee into the room, Belinda Warner informed Emily that Mr. Azhar was asking to see her and the sergeant.

Azhar had disappeared with his daughter almost as soon as he'd swept her into his arms. He'd shouldered his way through the milling crowd on the pontoon, making no response to the questions shouted at him, stoically facing the strobes as his picture was recorded for tomorrow's papers. He'd carried Hadiyyah to his car and he'd driven off, leaving the police to sweep up the pieces of what his cousin Muhannad had wrought.

Emily said, “Take him to my office,” and she finally gave a glance to Barbara. “Sergeant Havers and I will meet him there.”

Sergeant Havers and I.
Barbara's gaze flew to Emily's. She tried to read for substance beneath the DCFs words. But Emily's look was level, betraying nothing, and she turned on her heel and left the conference room. Barbara followed, waiting for a sign.

“How is she?” Barbara asked when Azhar joined them in the DCFs office.

“She's well,” he said. “Mr. Treves was good enough to have soup prepared. She's eaten and bathed, and I've put her to bed. She's been seen by a doctor. Mrs. Porter sits with her until I return.” He smiled. “She has the giraffe in bed with her, Barbara. The ruined one. ‘Poor thing,’ she said. ‘It's not his fault he got mooshed up, is it? He doesn't know he's a mess.’ “

“Who really does?” Barbara replied.