boast "ESSEX
NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR." Barbara took this journal back to her table and laid it on the plastic cloth, which was artfully embossed with tiny white flowers and splattered with the remains of a successful lunchtime.
The tabloid was a well-thumbed journal from the previous afternoon, and Barbara had to look no further than the front page because the death of Haytham Querashi was apparently the first
"suspicious demise" that had occurred on the Tendring Peninsula in more than five years.
As such, it was getting the journalistic red carpet treatment.
The front page displayed a picture of the dead man as well as a photo of the site where his body had been found. Barbara studied both pictures.
In life, Haytham Querashi had looked innocuous enough. His dark face was pleasant but largely forgettable. The caption beneath his picture indicated that he was twenty-five years old, but he looked older. This was the result of his sombre expression, and his balding head added to the effect. He was clean-shaven and moonfaced, and Barbara guessed that he would have been given to carrying too much extra weight in middle age, had he lived to see it.
The second picture depicted an abandoned pillbox sitting on the beach at the foot of a cliff.
It was built of grey, pebble-studded concrete, hexagonal in shape with an entry that was low to the ground. Barbara had seen this structure before, years earlier on a walk with her younger brother when they'd noticed a boy and a girl glancing round surreptitiously before crawling inside on an overcast day. Barbara's brother had innocently wondered if the two teenagers were intent on playing war. Barbara had commented ironically that an invasion was definitely what they had in mind. She'd steered Tony clear of the pillbox. "I c'n make machine gun noises for them," he'd offered. She'd assured him that sound effects were not required.
Her dinner arrived. The waitress positioned the cutlery - which appeared to be indifferently washed - and settled the plate in front of her.
She'd been scrupulous about avoiding a scrutiny of Barbara's bandaged face when taking her order, but now the girl gave it an earnest look and said, "C'n I ask? D'you mind?"
"Lemonade," Barbara said in reply. "With ice.
And I don't suppose you have a fan you can turn on, have you? I'm about to wilt."
"Broke yesterday," the girl said. "Sorry." She fingered the blemish on her chin in an unappetising fashion. "It's just that I was thinking of doing it myself, when I've got the money. So I was wondering: Did it hurt much?"
"What?"
"Your nose. Haven't you had it fixed? Isn't that why you've got all those bandages?" She picked up the table's chrome napkin dispenser and studied her reflection. "I want a bobbed one myself.
Mum says to thank God for what I have, but I say why did God invent plastic surgery if we weren't meant to use it? I'm planning to do my cheekbones as well, but the nose comes first,"
"It wasn't surgery," Barbara said. "I broke it."
"Lucky you!" the girl exclaimed. "So you got a new one on National Health! Now, I wonder ..." Clearly, she was meditating on the prospect of walking rapidly into a door with proboscis at the ready.
"Yeah, well, they don't ask how you want it set," Barbara said. "Had they bothered to inquire, I would have requested a Michael Jackson. I've always been a slave to perpendicular nostrils."
And she crackled her newspaper meaningfully.
The girl - whose nametag identified her as Suzi - leaned one hand against the table, noted what Barbara was reading, and said confidentially,
"They should never've come here, you know. This's what happens when they go where they're not wanted."
Barbara set down her paper and speared a portion of poached egg on her fork. She said,
"Pardon?"
Suzi nodded at the newspaper. "Those colureds.
What're they doing here anyway? Besides raising a ruckus, which they did real proper this afternoon, as a matter of fact."
"They're trying to improve their lot in life, I expect."
"Hmph. Why don't they improve it some-wheres else? My mum said there'd be trouble eventually if we let them settle round here, and look what's happened: One of them overdoses down on the beach and all the rest start carrying on and shouting it's murder."
"It's a drug-related death?" Barbara began to scan the paragraphs of the story for the pertinent details.
"What else could it be?" Suzi asked. "Everyone knows they swallow bags of opium and God knows what else back in Pakistan. They smuggle it into