by Roger Hurn
DK raised his eyebrows again, only he did it slowly this time. I didn’t think anyone could make the act of raising their eyebrows seem threatening, but DK could. ‘So it was all Aisha’s idea was it?’
‘Yeah, it was. She told Rakesh to hire the car and she sorted out a room in a student house for Meena.’ Garjan swallowed and tried to continue, but it was like he had something big trapped in his throat that was stopping him from speaking.
So Rakesh took up the story. ‘It was her idea to put mud on the number plates and for us to wear hoods and masks. She said it would all be on CCTV so we had to make it look realistic. Aisha said she’d told Meena to go along with it all and Meena was cool with that.’ He looked daggers at his brother. ‘And it all would’ve been cool if you’d done your job properly, you moron, and put the mud on the number plates!’
‘Yeah, that was a bit of a schoolboy error,’ I said. ‘Now where exactly is the room where Meena’s hiding out?’
‘It’s in Guildford, right near the station.’
‘Fetch Aisha here.’ DK was imperious and Tomasz obeyed without question. Then DK turned his attention to Rakesh and Garjan. ‘I was right about you two, you are imbeciles. Aisha is the brains here.’ He sighed like a Lilo with a leak. ‘Goodness knows she always was the only one of you I could bear to be with for more than five minutes. She has everything; charm, intelligence, good looks and a nose for a business opportunity.’ He stroked his chin. ‘All right, she’s not a boy, but that doesn’t matter so much these days, and she certainly had you two fools doing her bidding. So yes, I think she’ll do very well indeed working with me.’
I could see something die in the two young guys’ eyes. An hour earlier they thought they were going to have a 20 per cent share each in a million quid. Ten minutes ago they thought they were set for “management” roles in their cousin’s criminal empire. Now they were heading for the scrapheap at the speed of light. Sometimes life sucks and it was about to suck some more. Tomasz burst back into the kitchen, but he didn’t have Aisha in tow. ‘Aisha has gone,’ he rasped. ‘And boss, she has taken your suitcase with her!’
Chapter Fourteen
I expected DK to go ballistic, but instead he pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. While he was pondering the situation my mind was racing ahead.
‘Did Aisha tell any of you guys about the diamonds?’
The two boys looked genuinely baffled. ‘What diamonds?’ said Rakesh.
‘Yeah, what the fuck are you on about, man?’ added Garjan. ‘Aish only said about the ransom money. She never said anything about diamonds.’
I believed them. It was becoming increasingly clear to me who was the real criminal genius in the Kapoor family – and it wasn’t DK.
‘What are you getting at, Ryan? Aisha didn’t know about the diamonds. That was all Danvir’s doing.’
‘Yes, but he’d involved Meena in it when he forced her to be his mule. Think about it. Aisha and Meena had become Facebook friends for real. They were plotting to rip you off and I bet Meena told Aisha all about her Uncle Dan’s little diamond scam too. After all, it was the two of them against the world with Beavis and Butt-Head here acting as their unwitting stooges.’
It was now that the previously silent Danvir decided to stick his oar into the mix. ‘This is an outrageous slur on the integrity of my niece. It is obvious to me that it was all your cousin Aisha’s doing. She is the bad apple here, Deepak. Meena is just a pawn in her game, like these two lads here.’
Beavis and Butt-Head nodded enthusiastically at this. ‘Yeah,’ said Garjan, ‘that crazy bitch has played us all for fools.’
DK tapped his teeth with his fingernails. ‘No, you were already fools when Aisha started playing this little game of hers.’ It was a putdown, but DK didn’t deliver it with any real venom. After all, Aisha had pulled the wool over his eyes too.
‘Is there any way we can hack into her Facebook account?’
DK glanced up at me. ‘Why on Earth would we want to do that?’
‘To prove what I’m saying – that Meena and Aisha were in this thing together.’ I glanced at Rakesh and Garjan. ‘Do either of you know her password?’ They shook their heads.
‘I can do it.’ It was Vikram who spoke. ‘I may not be much use as a bridegroom, and our favourite private eye here knows I’m a lousy student but, if I’ve learnt anything from my computer science course, it’s how to be a hacker.’
DK’s eyes lit up at this news. ‘Vikram, old fruit, this is music to my ears. Perhaps you aren’t quite the waste of space I thought you were.’ He gave Vikram a warm smile. ‘When this kidnapping business is resolved, we will talk more of your hacking skills.’
Vikram was as good as his word and, in a few minutes, we were reading everything that went down between Meena and Aisha. I was right. Meena had spilled the beans about the diamonds and it was Aisha who’d come up with the plan not to tell Rakesh and Garjan about them. Mind you, Meena readily agreed with her. The two girls were expecting to clear a cool two million by the time they were done and neither had any intention of hanging around in Weybridge. They were going to use the money to help them disappear and reinvent themselves in the States. As Aisha put it, ‘Welcome to the 21st century girlfriend – where sisters are doin’ it for themselves.’
Chapter Fifteen
DK, Danvir, Vikram and I piled into DK’s Merc, and followed the Chuckle brothers as they drove to the student house in Guilford. DK was pretty agitated and kept on at Tomasz to keep close to them. OK, so they were a couple of boy racers, but Tomasz drove like the seasoned pro he was. In my opinion, for a supposedly lunk-headed muscle man, Tomasz was pretty impressive and a good man to go into the trenches with. I just hoped that I’d never have to.
We pulled up on a quiet street outside an Edwardian property that had definitely seen better days. I glanced around, but there was no sign of Aisha’s compact SUV. ‘Hey, it looks like the birds have flown.’
‘You’re no doubt correct in your observation, Ryan, but let’s reserve judgement until we get inside shall we?’
Unsurprisingly, neither Rakesh nor Garjan had been given a key to the house so DK marched up to the front door and knocked. After a few minutes, a girl with hair like a rook’s nest and wearing a furry dressing gown and hobbit-feet slippers opened the door and peered out at us. A waft of ganja went straight up my nose and I noticed she had the red eyes of a regular weed smoker. She simpered when she saw Rakesh and Garjan.
‘Hi guys. You come to see Meena?’
‘Yeah, it’s a family visit,’ said Rakesh.
The girl looked at DK. ‘Hey, are you her Dad?’
‘Something like that,’ said DK as he swept past her and bounded up the stairs to a room at the back of the house. ‘Is this it?’ he demanded. Rakesh confirmed that it was, so DK hammered on the door. There was no answer. DK stepped back. ‘Open it, Tomasz!’ he snapped. I expected him to kick the door in, but instead, Tomasz slid a credit card into the vertical crack between the door and the frame where the lock was, bent the card, leaned against the door and, hey presto, it popped open. As I say, Tomasz was way more than just a lunk-headed muscle man.
When we walked into the room we were in for a big shock. DK’s suitcase was open on the bed and fifty-pound notes were scattered everywhere. But that was eclipsed by the sight of a girl lying on the floor with a pillow over her face. I saw it was Meena as soon as I pulled the pillow away. I tried giving her mouth to mouth, but it was way too late for that. She was already as dead as mutton.
Tomasz knelt beside me and pointed to the side of her head where a large bruise was spreading out from her temple. ‘Someone hit her hard and then smothered her, I think.’
I agreed with his analysis and we didn’t have to look far to find what she’d been hit with. It was a paperweight showing Buckingham Palace in a snowstorm. Welcome to England, Meena, I thought. I was sick to my stomach at what Aisha had done to her. But I appeared to be the only one. Vikram, Rakesh and Garjan l
ooked like they wanted to be anywhere but here in a room with Meena’s dead body. Danvir was frantically searching for the diamonds and DK was instructing Tomasz to call in some back-up to remove the body and all traces that Meena had ever been in the house. I couldn’t let this all go unchallenged.
‘Hold up a minute here, DK. Meena’s been murdered by your cousin, Aisha. This is a police job now. You can’t just cover it up.’
He glanced over at me and I didn’t like the calculating look on his face. He was weighing up the likelihood of me blabbing to the powers that be about all this. Everyone else here, apart from Tomasz, was family and as Tomasz was DK’s creature body and soul, that only left me as a weak link. Suddenly, my guts twisted as it hit me that it would be just as easy for DK to arrange for two bodies disappear. I made a mental note that if I got out of this mess alive, in future I would only work for clients who didn’t scare the bejazus out of me.
‘No police, Ryan. We’ve already agreed that.’
My mouth was as dry as a nun’s gusset but I tried again. ‘Yeah, but that was when it was only a kidnapping, DK. This is murder.’
DK smiled, but it was a smile made of shadows. ‘No, it is an unfortunate accident that need concern nobody other than ourselves and I will be most upset if you attempt to involve any law enforcement agencies in what is, after all, a family matter. Do you understand me, Ryan?’
I noticed that Tomasz was staring at me with blank eyes. I figured he could snap my neck as easily as I could snap a twig, so, like Sir John Falstaff in a Shakespeare play I studied at school, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. ‘I totally understand you, DK. I’ll keep my trap shut. But you aren’t going to let Aisha get away with this are you?’
DK blew out his cheeks. ‘Oh she will suffer for subjecting me to this inconvenience. I admire her audacity, but perhaps she has over-stepped the mark this time.’
DK was a real piece of work and I felt dirty just being in the same room with him, but I had my own skin to think about, and me being dead wouldn’t help bring Meena back. Only the living can get justice for the dead, I told myself. Yeah, I know it was crap, but I was trying to make myself feel better. I did the only thing I could to give her some dignity, and that was cover her face with a towel. At least Vikram had the decency to nod his approval of the gesture.
‘The diamonds have gone,’ wailed Danvir when he finally stopped ransacking the room. In all the time we’d been in the room he’d only given Meena’s body a cursory glance. He had all the empathy of a reptile.
‘Of course they’ve gone, Danvir. Aisha took them.’
‘But why has she left the money behind?’ Danvir swept his hands out in a gesture that encompassed the scattered notes.
‘Because they’re fakes – and not very good ones at that. A fact that would have become apparent when they opened the case and examined them closely.’
We couldn’t have been more stunned if DK had announced he was an alien from the Andromeda galaxy.
‘Fakes? What do you mean fakes?’ Danvir was beside himself with fury. ‘Did my niece mean so little to you that you would put her life at risk in this way?’
‘Yes.’ DK was totally matter-of-fact. ‘I knew you were in no position to pay the bride price, so your niece was worthless to me. There was no advantage to be gained for me or my family by going through with the marriage, but I could not be seen to lose face by being outwitted by a bunch of kidnappers. Such weakness has repercussions in my world. However, this was before I learned about the diamonds. They of course put a different complexion on the matter. Suddenly your niece had value again – and so did you.’ He gave Danvir a wan smile. ‘But, sadly, in the end, all those diamonds did was ensure your niece’s death by my cousin’s hand.’
A cunning look passed across Danvir’s face. ‘Then you owe me and my family blood money.’ He nodded at DK. ‘I’ll settle for the full cash value of the diamonds.’
DK’s eyes were as bleak as a nuclear winter. ‘Oh I’m sure we can come to some amicable arrangement, Danvir old chum. But now is not the time for haggling. Our immediate priority is to dispose of poor Meena’s body.’
I shouldn’t have asked. It was none of my business and I really didn’t need to know but the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘And just how are we going to do that? Wherever you dump her the police are going to find her and come asking questions.’
DK took on the air of a schoolmaster lecturing the terminally stupid. ‘Unlike many people who hail from the sub-continent, I have no aversion to pigs. In fact, I have an interest in a large pig farm in Wiltshire. Now the thing about pigs is that they are omnivores. They devour anything and everything that is put in front of them and gobble it down so no trace of their meal is left. They are nature’s recyclers.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Believe me, it is not the funeral I would have preferred to give Meena, but needs must when the devil drives. Don’t you agree, Danvir?’
‘Just so long as I get the money you can do what you like with her body.’ I realised I’d been unfair to reptiles when it came to comparing them to Danvir. They were way more evolved.
Tomasz’s mobile rang. He answered it, listened attentively then said something in what I could only assume was Polish. He cut the call and told DK that “the team” were on their way and would be outside within the hour.
‘That’s good. Now we need to get those girls from downstairs out of the way.’ DK looked at Rakesh and Garjan. ‘I couldn’t help but notice the pot-head girl making cow eyes at you two when we arrived.’ He pulled out his wallet and handed over a fistful of notes. ‘Go back downstairs and take her and her chums out for a good time. Don’t come back for a couple of hours. Do you think you can manage to accomplish that simple task?’
The Chuckle brothers told him they could do it no problem. ‘Good,’ said DK. ‘Look on it as your first step on the road back into my good books. Oh, and if anyone asks about Meena tell them that her father is taking her back to India immediately as he is appalled to find that she is in a house full of depraved girls who take drugs. Now sod off.’
Rakesh and Garjan needed no second bidding. They nearly fell over each other in their rush to escape.
After they’d gone, there was an uneasy silence which I broke. ‘So how on earth did you lay your hands on a million quid of bent fifties at such short notice?’
DK eased himself onto the bed. ‘A bunch of not very efficient or talented counterfeiters made the fundamental error of setting up shop in my neighbourhood. They were a nuisance and a menace to themselves and others so I retired them from the business.’ He made apostrophe marks with his fingers when he said “retired”. ‘However, I decided to keep hold of their stock in case I could find a use for it one day. And that day arrived as we all know. You see, like the boy scouts, it pays to be prepared.’
It was advice I should have heeded because I certainly wasn’t prepared for what happened next. I should have been, because I knew as sure as hell that DK was no boy scout. He asked me to remove the towel from Meena’s face so he could look at her and pay his respects. I thought, ‘Yeah, you’re gonna feed her to the pigs, but you want to pay your respects. Gimme a break!’ But I didn’t say it out loud, I just did as I was told. Then as I knelt by the body and pulled back the towel, Tomasz took a snap of me on his mobile phone.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you bastard!’ I was furious and scared shitless at the same time.
‘Oh, stop being so melodramatic, Ryan!’ He clicked his fingers and Tomasz handed him the phone. ‘No one will ever see the photograph.’ DK studied it carefully. ‘But I must admit, to the casual observer, this looks like the photo of a killer with his victim.’ He handed the phone back to Tomasz. ‘So let’s call it my insurance policy just in case your conscience ever threatens to get the better of you and you decide to tell your old colleagues about Aisha’s unfortunate loss of control.’
He smiled at me and, as I stared at his face it was like looking
into the abyss.
Chapter Sixteen
I spent the next few days trying to track Aisha down. I had a word with a woman I knew in the Met’s Specialist Crime Directorate about who you’d go to if you had some hookey jewellery burning a hole in your pocket, and she gave me the names of a couple of fences. Tomasz and I went and had a chat with them, but we drew a blank even though we made it clear who we were working for and how grateful our employer would be if they cooperated with us.
I read all Aisha’s Facebook stuff looking for clues as to what she was planning but, apart from the stuff with Meena, it was all mind-numbingly boring waffle. In fact the only thing that surprised me was how much contempt she had for her mother. Apparently, mummy-ji was a grade-A bitch whose mission in life, according to Aisha, was to undermine her at every turn. But, as her friends all whinged about their parents to a greater or lesser degree, I dismissed it as the gripes of an over-privileged bunch of ungrateful little cows who were biting the hands that fed them.
Then I checked out all her known haunts and did my best to interview her friends in person to see if any of them had an inkling of where she was. As I’d already discovered, they were a bunch of high maintenance spoiled little rich girls with the kind of superficial polish that an expensive private education buys and they knew precisely nothing. I was beginning to realise that Aisha was a total chameleon. To all intents and purposes, she was just another pampered little princess with a high-end lifestyle and more money than sense, whereas in reality she was a cold-blooded schemer who was prepared to kill to get what she wanted.
Anyway, I was sitting eating a bacon sarnie and drinking tea in a café in New Cross after a fruitless visit to a couple of Aisha’s student pals at Goldsmith’s College, when a woman with long blonde hair and huge round sunglasses slid into the seat opposite me.