He tied it at the back and with the single earring hoop he wore, the overall effect was piratical. He spat onto the floor - to the side, at least - and dug into his pocket for a roll of Polos. He thumbed one out and popped it into his mouth.
"Gerry DeVitt," he said. "I'm the guv here. What d'you need?"
He came no closer, so Barbara knew he couldn't read her identification. She introduced herself, and although his eyebrows made a quick furrowing movement when she said New Scotland Yard, he didn't evidence any other reaction.
He glanced at his watch and said, "We don't have much time to spare."
"Five minutes," Barbara said, "perhaps less.
No one's in trouble, by the way."
He evaluated this, then nodded. Much of the work had ceased in the building anyway, so he waved the men over. There were seven of them, sweat-streaked, smelly, and patched with grease.
"Thanks," Barbara said to DeVitt. She explained what she was seeking: verification that a young woman - probably dressed in traditional Asian garb - had come to the end of the pier on Saturday and had thrown something from it.
"This would have been in the afternoon," Barbara said. "Do you work on Saturdays?"
"We do," DeVitt said. "What time?"
Since Sahlah had claimed not to know the exact time, Barbara speculated that if her story was accurate and if she had gone into work that day as an excuse to be out of the house alone, it would probably have been late in the afternoon, a possible detour she'd taken on her way home. "I'd say round five o'clock."
Gerry shook his head. "We're out of here by half past four." He turned to his men. "Any of you lot see this bird? Any of you still here after five?"
One man said, "You joking, mate?" and others laughed at the thought, it seemed, of hanging about any longer than necessary after a day's work. No one was able to corroborate Sahlah Malik's story.
"We would've noticed her if we were still here,"
DeVitt said. He jerked his thumb at the other workers. "This lot? Let a good-looking bird come by and they're hanging by their knees trying to get her attention." The men guffawed. DeVitt grinned at them and then said to Barbara, "This one you're speaking of: Is she a looker?"
She was very pretty, Barbara confirmed. She was the sort of woman that men looked at twice.
And with the costume she was wearing - here on the seaside, where women dressed like Sahlah were rarely seen on their own - she would hardly have gone unnoticed.
"Must've been after we'd cleared out, then,"
DeVitt said. "Anything else we can do for you?"
There was not. But Barbara handed the man one of her cards anyway, scrawling the name of the Burnt House Hotel on the back of it. If he remembered anything, if any of them remembered anything at all ...
"Is this important information or something?"
DeVitt asked curiously. "Does this have to do with - Since it's an Asian you're talking about, does this have to do with that bloke who died?"
She was just checking out some facts, Barbara said. That's all she could tell them at the moment.
But if anything relating to that incident came to any of their minds . . .
"Doubt it will," DeVitt said as he shoved the card into the back pocket of his jeans. "We steer clear of the Pakistanis. It keeps things simpler."
"How's that?"
He shrugged. "They've got their ways and we've got ours. Mix the two and what you've got is trouble. Blokes like us" - and he indicated his workers with a wave of his arm -
"don't have time for trouble. We work hard, have a pint or two afterwards, and then go home so we can work hard tomorrow." He scooped up his headgear and his blow torch once again, saying, "If this bird you're asking about's an important part of things, you'd best have a word with the rest of the pier. One of them might've seen her pass by."
She would do that, Barbara told them. She nodded her thanks and picked her way out of the building. Bust, she thought. But DeVitt was right.
The attractions on the pier were open from morning until late at night. Unless Sahlah had swum or boated out to the end of the pier and climbed up to it in order to toss the bracelet dramatically into the sea from