‘What’s the truth?’
‘Harry’s a bit of a square peg,’ McCullough said. ‘At Reeds. I know it’s not Eton, but most of our boys are either titled or they come from very well established upper-middle-class families. Doctors, lawyers – that sort of thing. But Harry? Dad’s a policeman, mum’s a soap star. Whichever way you swing it, he is not among the elite.’
‘Does he want to be?’
‘Of course he does. He’s desperate to be in with the “in” crowd.’
‘So what . . .?’
‘I’ve never seen Harry bullied, Lee,’ McCullough said. ‘I would never stand for that, whatever the headmaster said. But I do know that he’s not always one of the gang. My reading of the situation is that if he doesn’t toe the line, he gets punished. Not physically, but . . .’
‘Is this like fagging or . . .’
McCullough laughed. ‘Oh God no! No, that’s much more Eton, Tom Brown’s Schooldays . . .’
‘I’m afraid I went to a comp,’ Lee said.
‘Which is perfectly marvellous,’ McCullough said. ‘But public school isn’t what people think. Pastoral care is a huge part of our job these days, and as Harry’s housemaster, as well as his English master, I do address issues like bullying. We discuss the notion of following the herd, popularity and bullying in English Lit classes. Harry isn’t bullied, but he is excluded by the others – including his room-mate George Grogan – from time to time.’
‘Why?’
‘For being out of tune with them, mainly. Boys of this age are very conservative, with a small “c”. They do what their peers do and if they don’t, things can go badly for them. Gay boys are particularly vulnerable. But Harry Venus isn’t gay. He’s just . . .’ He frowned, smoked and flicked his ash in the bacon again. ‘Different. Likes things that other people don’t like. Significantly, he doesn’t enjoy sport, which is a real handicap at public school. As I said before, he’s a square peg.’
‘Is George Grogan a particular friend?’
‘They room and they do share some interests, but Grogan is really, I’d say, best pals with Tom de Vries. They were at prep school together. Grogan, de Vries and Charles Duncan. Harry Venus came later. He was the new boy and, to some extent, he’s stayed that way.’
‘Does Harry get upset when he’s excluded from the gang?’
‘He used to. I’ve never seen him cry myself, but I have it on good authority that he has. Now, although I have no direct proof of this, I am told he takes his ire out on some of the younger boys. Not that any boy would ever say a word against any other boy to a member of staff. It’s not done. But I’ve caught whispers. Not enough to act, unfortunately.’
‘So he can be a bully himself?’
McCullough nodded.
‘Would you say that Harry is sneaky? Have you ever seen him, for instance, meeting people not resident at the school inside or near the premises?’
This was a double-edged question, designed to find out not only whether Harry had extra-curricular contacts but also whether people were getting into the school that shouldn’t.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Reeds may look like something out of a Monty Python spoof but it is actually a very sophisticated place these days. We have CCTV and we employ a firm of security guards to patrol the grounds during term time. Parents pay a helluva lot of money to send their boys to us. We have to give them value and not squander it on silly things like staff pay.’
He didn’t sound bitter, even if what he said was. Could a pissed-off, poorly paid teacher have spirited Harry away for the money? McCullough was based in Henley. But then his house, which Lee had looked up on Rightmove – or rather, houses like it – could sell for almost four hundred thousand pounds. What did he need a hundred grand for? DIY? Did he have a secret sexual vice someone was squeezing him over?
‘Some boys have been caught smoking cannabis on school premises,’ McCullough said. ‘Ditto alcohol. And I know that all and any boy can make a mistake, but Harry and his group are high-fliers. Harry himself wants a career in academia, de Vries will join the diplomatic service, like his father. Duncan fancies a career in the air force and Grogan is hell-bent on following his brother into banking.’
‘Not a doctor, like his father?’
‘George likes money,’ McCullough said. ‘And yes, I know that doctors earn high these days, but not the stratospheric sums that bankers do. Henry Grogan, George’s brother, was also at Reeds, I remember him well and George is, believe me, cut from the same cloth. Those two boys are going to be very rich one day.’
‘They’re not poor now.’
McCullough laughed. ‘Ah, the Grogan Arts and Crafts pile, with swimming pool attached. You’ve seen it?’
‘Yes. Through the trees.’
‘Couple of million there,’ McCullough said. ‘But that’s just normal round here, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. No, when I say rich I mean Friar Park, the massive Gothic pile where George Harrison used to live. I mean zipping around the lanes in a Lamborghini with a Rolex Oyster on your wrist and a girl with a title at your side. That’s where the Grogans are going.’
Lee drank some coffee.
‘I know it’s closed at the moment, but if you want to see Reeds I can get you in,’ McCullough said.
‘I may take you up on that.’
‘Anything I can do to help,’ he said. Then he leaned forward. ‘I have worked out that Harry’s buggered off.’
‘I’m watching him.’
He shrugged. Lee knew he didn’t believe him. Yet he worked at the kind of school where parents having their children watched was probably quite normal.
‘Harry’s parents aren’t the type,’ McCullough said. ‘His mother may be famous, but they don’t have security.’ And then he smiled. ‘But that’s my opinion, you understand. As I said, anything I can do to help.’
When Lee left Clarence Road it was with a sense of unease. The fact that Harry wasn’t quite the perfect child his mother believed him to be, coupled with McCullough’s conviction that the boy had ‘buggered off’, was stirring up eddies of silt around the edges of the case.
Before he returned to London, Lee went to a local beauty spot on the river called Marsh Lock. He watched the smart private launches vie with the slightly tatty canal boats for space in the picturesque lock. The lock-house garden and every other garden by the river was covered with flowers, and where those were in short supply then the lawns on their own were spectacular. One of them, all completely straight stripes, looked as if it were made of velvet. He thought about his own front garden, with its metre of grass and a half-dead hydrangea. Indoors he had a spider plant in the toilet.
Henley-on-Thames was a sort of paradise, if only for those who could afford it. Lee anticipated going home and then, on Monday, heading out to Tower Hamlets with something approaching trepidation. Why Tower Hamlets for the drop? But then, why not?
*
Some people reckoned that Baharat Huq was an anachronism. Mumtaz knew that her brother Ali believed that. He’d say, ‘He’s like some relic of the Raj, banging on about cricket and correct behaviour. Doesn’t he understand that the world’s changed?’
Mumtaz believed that he did, but he chose not to acknowledge it. At least not often. Occasionally, usually in response to some hate-filled piece of graffiti on Brick Lane, or if he saw youths hanging about on the street sneering at people who were not like them, he would let loose with a rant.
‘Where does all this hatred of Jews come from and why?’ he said as he put his spoon down on his empty dinner plate. Nobody had mentioned Jews and so the subject had come out of the blue. That was often the way with Baharat’s outbursts.
‘I think you’ll find, Dad, that it’s probably in response to the occupation of Palestine,’ Ali said.
Baharat waved a hand. ‘Ah, I know about that,’ he said. ‘But that is Israel. All the disgusting graffiti you see on every wall right down to Aldgate is about Jews – or homosexuals.’
‘Israelis
are Jews.’
‘Yes, but they are not like Mr Stein,’ Baharat said. Ronald Stein was one of his friends. Mr Stein, Baharat and a group of other men who had come to London from what had then been East Pakistan in the sixties met almost every day in a cafe three doors down from the Huq family home. They shared a passion for moaning.
‘A lot of the young boys, particularly, feel alienated here,’ Ali continued. ‘They see the UK government doing nothing to curb Israel, they come across Islamophobia in their lives . . .’
‘They should get jobs,’ Baharat said.
‘They have jobs.’
‘What, the boys who hang about on street corners wearing shalwar khameez and talking about Hadith as if they know something? They have jobs?’ He shook his head. ‘Nah. They dream of Ferraris they will never have and about that silly American who married Russell Brand.’
Shazia mumbled, ‘Katy Perry.’
Sunday lunch with her stepmother’s family was an ordeal for Shazia. Mumtaz had no doubt that she loved the Huqs, who treated her like a blood relative, but Baharat and her mother, Sumita, could be very irritating.
‘These mangoes are very ripe, so be careful,’ Sumita said as she placed a huge platter covered in fruit on the table.
‘I don’t know what the bloody woman is called,’ Baharat said. ‘And it is beside the point. Either these boys should be studying or they should be married and working.’
‘They do work,’ Ali said. ‘I told you.’
‘Work at what?’
‘That’s the point, Abba. They work in curry houses and cash and carry. They can’t get the kind of jobs that bring in real money and a sense of fulfilment.’
‘Then they should have gone to college,’ Baharat said. ‘You did. You, your brother and your sister.’
‘Yes, because you and Amma were always behind us,’ Ali said. ‘And you could speak English. Imagine how it must be to come from a family where only the kids speak the language, where the kids have to do everything for the parents and grandparents. What time is there for education when you have to go to the doctors with your mum, sort out council tax . . .’
‘Then the parents should learn the language,’ Baharat said. ‘For their children’s sake. I know of such families, of course I do! But this doesn’t excuse hatred . . .’
‘They see themselves, as Muslims, disadvantaged . . .’
‘So what has that to do with Palestine? Eh?’
‘Palestinians are members of the ummah. They’re Muslims . . .’
‘Not all of them,’ Mumtaz said.
‘Most of them. Abba, these kids see their fellow Muslims attacked all over the world and they want to do something about it, but they have no resources.’
‘Nonsense! They might not have resources themselves but these mad grown-up men who hang about the streets and preach jihad to these children do. They also are uneducated. Jihad is the battle that takes place in the soul as it wrestles to follow the correct path.’
‘It’s also the armed, physical struggle against oppression, Dad. Do you think that Muslims should just lie down and take Zionist oppression in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?’
‘No. But writing “Jew pigs, Hitler was right” on the walls of the local school isn’t going to help, is it? The old saying, two wrongs do not make a right—’
Ali threw his napkin down on the table and stood up. ‘And us?’ he said. ‘We eat Bengali food at a table, sitting up like Europeans. Why? Why don’t we sit on the floor? We used to.’
‘We improved ourselves,’ Baharat said. ‘Sit down.’
‘No! Improved ourselves? I can’t believe you just said that! So if it’s European, it has to be better?’
Sumita began, ‘Ali, my son . . .’
‘No, Amma! No.’ He held up a hand. ‘I can’t listen to any more of this stupid Eurocentric nonsense. Muslim youth is in uproar, and quite right too. What is there for them? Eh? Where can Muslims feel pride? Look at Egypt! Muslims won in that country, but then there was a coup—’
‘Because the Muslim Brotherhood were useless! Some people the world is better off without!’ Baharat said. ‘They killed. They burnt down churches and—’
‘Oh Abba, that was just anti-Brotherhood bullshit.’
‘Don’t swear in front of your mother!’
He looked at Sumita. ‘I apologise, Amma. Abba . . .’
‘The Muslim countries don’t help themselves,’ Baharat said. ‘Corruption and nepotism . . .’
‘Because they’re western puppets! Secular dictators . . .’ He put a hand up to his head. Then he looked at Shazia. ‘What do you think? You’re young. What do you reckon to these boys who just want some respect?’
Mumtaz could see that Shazia was cringing. She said, ‘Ali, let Shazia eat her lunch.’
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘I want to know what she thinks! Well?’
Mumtaz already knew. But even she wasn’t prepared for the answer the girl gave. ‘What do I think? I think, Uncle, that such boys should stop calling out “whore” and “prostitute” to girls on the street. And I don’t just mean uncovered girls like me, I mean decent, covered ladies like my amma.’ Shazia looked at Mumtaz. ‘They want women to stay in the house.’
‘No, not . . .’
‘They do! Men all over the world want that! Not just silly Muslim boys, this isn’t a religious issue, it’s about gender.’ She looked at Mumtaz again. ‘It’s about men making victims of women. Men running women’s lives through threats and violence!’ She stood up. ‘I’m sorry!’
She ran out of the room. Ali, still standing, didn’t know what to do with himself.
Mumtaz said, ‘You asked.’
‘I didn’t expect her to go all feminist on me,’ he said. ‘She looks so . . .’
‘Empty-headed? Like a silly little fashionista?’ Mumtaz stood. ‘She’s a bright girl and you’d do well to listen to her, brother.’
She’d also caught the message for her in Shazia’s rant. By letting the Sheikhs blackmail her, Mumtaz was letting women down. She knew this, but, like the surly boys catcalling girls in the streets, the Sheikh family was a reality it was hard to do anything about. Mumtaz excused herself from the table and went to Shazia, who was crying in the living room, her eyes red and swollen. She sat down beside her.
‘You know I’m really proud of you, don’t you?’ Mumtaz said. The girl looked up. ‘You’re a better woman than I’ve ever been.’
‘Oh, Amma!’ Shazia wound her thin arms around Mumtaz’s neck and kissed her. ‘Please, please, please do something about those vile men! Please!’
But Mumtaz said nothing. She just smoothed the girl’s hair and kissed her. What could she do?
4
The door was so nondescript it was easily missed. Caked in filth, no one had even managed to tag it with graffiti. Just within the stretch of Brick Lane known as ‘Bangla Town’, it was on the left, before the Truman’s Brewery bridge, where the Bangladeshi community and the young artists’ territories divided. Lee, sitting in a small Bangladeshi cafe opposite, watched Paul Venus drop seven large envelopes through the letterbox. He’d never seen a hundred grand posted before. It was very ordinary.
Venus had put the street number and the name ‘Mr B. Shaw’ on the packages, as instructed. Also as instructed, he had left quickly without looking behind him.
Lee didn’t expect anyone to appear at the door for some time, maybe not even that morning. He’d looked at the building on Google Earth when he’d got home the previous evening. Just as Venus had told him, it didn’t have an obvious back exit. But whether it could be accessed via one or both of the buildings on either side he couldn’t tell. On the left, a house was boarded up, while on the right stood a small electrical shop. Lee sipped his coffee, which was milky and quite tasteless, and watched. For good measure, and without Venus’s knowledge, he’d put one of his casual operatives, another ex-copper, at the back of the building, just in case anyone slipped in or out. Amy didn’t know what the case was ab
out and she didn’t care, as long as she was paid. Concealing as much of this as he could from Mumtaz wasn’t going to be easy unless the case resolved itself quickly. Luckily, she had wall-to-wall appointments with potential new clients all day. But the Brick Lane area was her manor. Her parents lived on Hanbury Street and Lee knew that her father, Baharat, was often out and about. Running into him would be awkward.
He ordered another drink, tea this time, and half-read a copy of the Guardian. It wasn’t his usual reading material, but he’d found it on the table and picked it up. The headline concerned a group of Islamic militants called ISIS who had just sprung 500 of their men from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These men, loosely allied to Al Qaeda, had already conquered part of Syria. Lee looked around at the people in the cafe, who were all Asian, and wondered what they thought about ISIS. Apparently the group liked to be seen beheading people.
He looked at the door. He’d spent some time looking up B. Shaw, which was obviously not the real name of the person in receipt of Venus’s cash. That could be anyone. However B. Shaw had almost certainly not been chosen at random. People rarely, even if they didn’t realise it, chose names or numbers without reference to some sort of personal meaning. The obvious connection was the Irish playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw. Were the kidnappers radical lefties? Even without the ‘George’, was it too obvious? Did it have anything to do with the London School of Economics, which Shaw had helped to found? A student prank maybe?
Except that students didn’t do pranks any more. Now that all the kids were plugged into their iPads, they barely interacted. He thought about his daughter. Jody was always staring at her phone, swiping it, pressing it, spellbound by the magic it could do. He had no doubt that in a straight contest between her phone and her dad, the phone would win. He looked back at the newspaper. But then when kids came off their phones, was this inevitable? A lot of the ISIS fighters looked as if they were little more than kids. It was said that some of them had gone over from European countries, including the UK. Fired up by a passion to die for Islam, the press said. But Lee wondered if it was also about the excitement.
Enough Rope: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery) Page 4