‘No.’
Lee looked away.
She wasn’t used to him being so guarded about a job. Obviously he had promised someone complete anonymity. But if whatever he was involved in was so serious, how could he do that?
‘I’m over in Chiswick tomorrow,’ she said.
‘At the Little Sisters of the Wotsit.’
‘You shouldn’t be so flippant,’ she said. ‘I’m sure the nuns are sincerely religious women.’
‘Who handed a baby over to an orphanage that probably employed paedophiles.’
Sometimes Lee could express a disdain for religion that bordered on hatred.
‘My client hasn’t told me anything about any abuse,’ Mumtaz said. ‘She just wants to find her birth mother. She’s got Huntington’s Disease, which is accelerating. She’s living on borrowed time.’
His mobile rang. He picked it up, listened for a moment, then left the office for the back stairs. Probably to have a cigarette. Mumtaz had noticed that he hadn’t eaten that morning. Although slim, Lee usually devoured a bag of cakes for his breakfast, but not on this occasion. And being so slim, when he didn’t eat he quickly looked gaunt. Whatever he was working on wasn’t making him happy. She wondered whether he was being coerced into doing it. She couldn’t imagine it. He had always been very clear that nobody who worked for him had to do any job they felt uncomfortable about. But did he apply that to himself?
When he came back inside he said, ‘Can you give Amy a bell for me?’
‘Yes.’
He sat down. ‘I’d like her to cover the office tomorrow if she can. If she can’t, give Ian a tug.’
‘You’re going to be out?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘All day.’
He didn’t look happy about it. Mumtaz instinctively didn’t like Lee’s latest job. It was time, she felt, to enlist some extra help.
*
The previous Mrs Green had put a dancing posse of stone fairies around the garden pond, if Venus remembered correctly. This one had put up a Japanese pagoda.
‘Taylor’s got good taste,’ Brian Green said.
They both looked down at the pond, which was, in Venus’s opinion, rather overfilled with koi carp.
Green sipped from a large glass of red wine. ‘Short notice,’ he said.
‘They called just after your wife left. I didn’t know what to do. It’s impossible for me or Tina,’ Venus said. ‘She has the money but the bank won’t release it just like that. She emailed me this.’
He passed a bank statement to the elderly man at his side.
Brian Green put on a pair of glasses and nodded. ‘I’ve always liked your Tina,’ he said. ‘Good little actress, nice singer, good friend. Handy with money too, always was. I hope you didn’t mind Taylor popping in to see you. She’s soft over kids you know. Can’t bear to think of ’em being hurt. I wanted you to feel supported. Know what I mean? In spite of everything.’
‘We can get it back to you next week,’ Venus said.
‘Have it as long as you like, Mr Venus,’ Green said.
Venus suppressed a shiver. Brian Green had been one of the East End’s most vicious crime bosses. In the late sixties and seventies he’d had his stubby fingers in just about every illegal racket going. But then, when he’d got enough money, Brian apparently went straight. He was always – apart from the odd glass of booze – a bit of a health nut, so he’d opened five gyms in east London and then another four in Essex. They were the sort of places that offered fake tanning alongside cardio workouts and only employed attractive instructors. They were very popular, very lucrative, and they allowed Brian to launder a lot of cash for an old friend or twelve from time to time. He also lent money. Paul Venus had borrowed money from Brian Green in the past, but not for over a decade and not this much. Not a quarter of a million.
‘Usual terms,’ Green said.
Last time he’d borrowed from Brian there’d been no interest payments. Just a favour. What would it be this time? Had the old gangster manoeuvred this whole situation just to get him under his thumb again? If so, why?
‘A quarter of a mil is a lot in cash,’ Brian said. ‘Where you gotta take it?’
Venus said nothing. If Green already knew, then he didn’t appreciate the taunting. If he didn’t, then it was none of his business.
‘It’s in the dining room,’ the gangster said. ‘Already counted. But if you want to count it out yourself, Mr Venus, that’s your prerogative.’
They went inside. The dining room, a vast space, contained a big table that it dwarfed. On the table was the money. Two hundred and fifty bundles of twenty fifty-pound notes, arranged in a pyramid. Venus looked at Brian Green. Was he having a laugh?
The old man looked at it, smiled and said, ‘Tasteful. Them eastern European bastards all involved in everyone’s business these days would’ve just slung it in some old black dustbin bag.’
*
Shazia felt crushed. Her friend Anita had said there were some waitressing shifts going at a new cafe called Forest Floor just north of Forest Gate station. As soon as her amma had left the flat, she’d raced over there. But all the jobs had gone already, mainly, as far as she could see, to girls who looked like Kate Middleton. When she’d walked in they’d looked at her like a herd of gazelles sizing up a predator.
All the jobs in the local paper seemed to be in telesales, which she knew she couldn’t do, and so she spent a few moments looking at cards in a newsagent’s window. Badly spelled ads for ‘cleaning’ were interspersed with word-processed requests for ‘models’ on slightly grubby paper. There was a Siamese cat for sale in Manor Park and an illiterate claimed to be an ‘imagration lawyer – citizenship guaranteed’.
‘Wotcha, babe.’
She turned.
Wearing a pair of very stained shalwar khameez, his beard dripping with sweat, was her amma’s cousin Aftab Huq.
‘What you looking for, love? A used motor?’ He laughed. Cousin Aftab, despite his appearance, was the most cockney bloke Shazia had ever met. A devout Muslim, he swore like a trooper, smoked like a fire and had an almost limitless capacity for kindness. ‘Here, they’ve got a Siamese cat over in Manor Park,’ he said as he peered at the advert. ‘Fancy one of them, do you?’
Shazia laughed. ‘No. Or rather, yes if I could, but Amma would kill me. No, I’m looking for a summer job.’
‘Oh, left that a bit late, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ She shook her head. ‘Stupid.’
‘Eye off the ball, love.’ Aftab lit a cigarette. ‘Mind you, there’s a lot of that telesales in the paper.’
‘I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘Forcing old ladies to buy kitchens they don’t want.’
‘You tried your Uncle Ali? Brick Lane’s always heaving this time of year.’
Shazia looked down. She knew she could probably get a few hours in the Islamic clothes shop her amma’s brother ran. But she didn’t want to work on Brick Lane. The hipsters made her feel out of place and the Muslim gangs gave her a hard time. And Uncle Ali was becoming more and more overtly pious. She imagined he’d want her to cover her head.
Aftab bent down to look at her face. ‘No? Yeah, he’s a bit of a stiff these days, old Ali. Don’t suppose I’d like to work for him meself. Gotta love him though, his heart’s in the right place. Mind you, there is another option, but you won’t like it much.’
She looked up.
‘Long hours, dirty, have to put up with all sorts . . . Me.’
‘Working for you? Well, yes, yes. Yes!’
‘Hang on! Hang on! It’s three weeks to cover for me warehouse man, George. He does serve in the shop from time to time, but he mainly helps me load and unload the van and stack stuff in the warehouse. It’s heavy work and you’ll get proper filthy.’
‘But it’s work!’
‘It’s work you’ll have to cut your nails for,’ he said.
Shazia whizzed her manicured hands behind her back. ‘Well, yes . . .’
�
��And we will have to get your amma’s blessing. But if you think you can handle a twelve-pack of tinned cat food and sacks of rice . . .’
‘I know I can!’
‘You might, but I don’t,’ he said.
Shazia deflated. Why had he mentioned a job to her if he didn’t think she was up to it? Did he know just how much she and her amma needed more money? Probably not.
‘So if your amma’s in agreement, we’ll give you a bit of a trial,’ Aftab said.
‘You will?’
‘You’re family. You obviously want to get some dosh together and I’ll pay you eight quid an hour. I’m just worried you might hurt yourself.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Well, let’s see,’ he said. Then he wiped his brow. ‘If I don’t get someone in soon it’ll bloody well kill me.’
Cousin Aftab had a disabled wife who couldn’t work and two daughters who both had jobs of their own. Usually he was helped by George, a white octogenarian who had once, it was said, tried out for West Ham United. His life wasn’t easy, especially when George went on his annual holiday to Great Yarmouth.
‘That person’s me,’ Shazia said. ‘Guarantee it.’
‘I hope you’re right, love,’ Aftab said. ‘And I hope you can put up with stroppy customers. One thing I’m not light on are bastards who give me a hard time in me own shop.’
*
Even tortellini in brodo, the only food she’d been able to eat for months, was becoming difficult for her. Mother Katerina spooned some liquid into the old woman’s shrunken mouth and then attempted to follow that with a small amount of pasta.
‘Come, Sister,’ she said, ‘just a little?’
But the old woman turned her head into her pillows.
‘For strength.’
‘No.’
Mother Katerina put the food down on the bedside table and stroked the old woman’s head. Sister Pia was ninety years old and had taken vows back in Italy over sixty years ago. She’d lived in England since the early fifties and spoke the language well, but with Katerina and her other Sisters it was always Italian.
‘Dr Smith will come tomorrow and she’ll want to know that you’re eating,’ Mother Katerina said.
‘I’m dying.’
‘You have cancer. Whether or not your time is near is for God to know. Forcing His hand is a sin, as you know, Sister.’
She said nothing.
‘When Dr Smith has gone, I will have to attend to a visitor.’
‘Not a visitor to me?’
‘Not if you don’t want to meet her, no,’ Mother Katerina said. ‘But you may.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she is coming to ask about my predecessor.’
‘Mother Emerita?’
‘She found a child,’ Mother Katerina said. ‘You remember? In a telephone box? A long time ago, but now that child, a woman, wishes to find her mother, if she can.’
The old woman, staring at her counterpane, behaved as if she hadn’t heard.
‘You were here at the time, Sister, were you not?’
There was a pause. Then the old woman said, ‘The little girl was left. Mother heard her crying and carried her from the telephone box. The Nazareth Sisters in Essex took her because she had no parents. We never found a mother. She was abandoned.’
‘Well, now she wants to find her mother, and so she’s engaged a private detective to help her,’ Mother Katerina said. ‘A lady called Mrs Hakim will be here at eleven o’clock tomorrow.’
‘Why? Mother Emerita is dead.’
‘She made a report of the incident at the time for the police. There’s a copy in our files. I will tell the lady what I know . . .’
‘What do you know?’
‘Not a great deal. Mother Emerita found an abandoned child. An appeal for information was made at the time, but nobody ever came forward.’
‘No.’ She paused. ‘Why are you inviting this detective? All this is known.’
‘Mrs Hakim wants to see where the child, Alison, was found and where she lived for the first few days of her life,’ Mother Katerina said. ‘Maybe, Sister, as the only person here who can remember that time . . .’
‘I don’t want to speak to her. There’s no point. I know what you know and nothing else.’
‘People skilled in investigation can sometimes uncover information from people that they may believe they have forgotten. It will do no harm, Sister.’
‘Reverend Mother, are you ordering me . . .?’
‘No,’ Mother Katerina said. ‘Not ordering. But I am asking you to consider meeting this lady. I know you are sick and that what you can and cannot do is dependent upon how you feel. I also know that time in your life was very challenging for you. But do please consider it. Our mission, remember, is to help mankind, and that includes Alison, who was given to us as a gift so many years ago.’
She left Sister Pia and went about her duties. The old woman told her, as she left, to extinguish the light in her room.
*
‘Does your wife know where the drop is?’
He heard Venus sigh at the other end of the line.
‘She should,’ Lee said. ‘If she knows, it’s extra insurance for you if things go wrong. Where is she? At work?’
‘There or at her girlfriend’s place. I gather you know about Cydney Denton?’ Venus said. ‘Tina’s phone’s off.’
Lee knew about Cydney Denton. At least twenty years younger than Tina, Cydney played her flirtatious niece in Londoners. She’d told him they were an item.
‘Just for the record, does your son—?’
‘Harry knows his mother and Cydney are friends. That’s all. There’s no need for him to be told anything else yet.’
Harry was almost an adult and probably knew anyway. In Lee Arnold’s experience, modern teenagers really did know everything most of the time. Which was depressing.
‘Are you at the drop site?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Lee said. ‘And if I was of a nervous disposition it’d give me the shudders. As it is, as a place to leave a large amount of cash, it makes some sense. But only some.’
Rippleside Cemetery in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham was a grey, depressing place even on a bright day. Bordered on one side by council houses and blocks of flats, on the other thundered the A13, one of the main arteries into London. The older parts of the cemetery were shaded by trees while the newer, often flashier, graves were left to take the full force of the odd, light grey sun that shone on the rain-starved ground. Lee Arnold’s eye had been immediately caught by a massive floral display in the shape of the word ‘Nan’. It was laid against a vast black granite memorial to a woman who, from the photograph that dominated the structure, looked like a serial killer. A car full of men with tattoos drove past slowly.
Did they have Harry Venus? Were they scoping out the site, just like Lee? But if they were, like him, they were in the wrong place.
‘I can see where I think it is,’ Lee said into his phone.
‘A winged angel, eight feet high. You can’t miss it.’
‘No. But there’s several of them,’ Lee said. ‘Angels were very popular in Victorian times as funeral monuments. Not like now when they sit on your desk and guard the BMW.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ His daughter had sent him a small ‘guardian angel’ model for his desk. Apparently she believed it would watch over him.
He began to walk over rough ground towards an avenue of trees. It led east to a very old part of the cemetery and the largest angel statue, as far as he could see.
‘I’ll leave the money behind the statue. They want it in a red sports bag. They specified that,’ Venus said. Then, nervously, ‘What did you mean by as a drop site it made some sense?’
‘That angel is one of the most visible things around here,’ Lee said. ‘There’s some cover from the trees, but cars can pull right up to it. So when you’ve gone, I’ll be able to see who picks up the drop very easily.’
‘That’s good.’
Walking over rough ground made Lee puff. He had to stop smoking.
‘Not for the kidnappers. And a red sports bag? Visible or what. That’s stupid,’ Lee said. ‘And I don’t believe they’re stupid. They chose their drop very carefully last time. I don’t get this.’
Now in front of the angel, he read the name on the plinth. ‘Septimus Couch’.
‘That’s it,’ Venus said. ‘That’s the right one. God, I know that statue! My granddad’s buried just over by the fence. Terrible afternoons in November spent dressing the grave with my grandmother.’
Lee looked up into the angel’s age-weathered face. It hardly had a nose any more. Its wings looked moth-eaten round the edges, battered by vandals. It was a sorry-looking thing. All that was left of Septimus Couch, 1851–1899, whose family had to have had a bit of dosh to put that thing up. Barking had always been a poor borough. Maybe the family of Septimus Couch went without to give him a grand send-off? Or maybe, like his daughter, they had believed in guardian angels?
Lee turned away from the statue. ‘I’m not buying this,’ he said into his phone.
‘That’s where they’ve told me to leave the money. What else can I do but what I’m told?’
There wasn’t anything.
*
Sumita had said that he shouldn’t get involved with Zafar Bhatti. She believed him to be a charlatan. But Baharat Huq had been insistent.
‘It’s for our daughter,’ he said. ‘There cannot be “no” when it comes to our children.’
‘And yet you argue with Ali all the time,’ his wife said.
‘Only because he’s a silly sod.’
Baharat had left before Sumita decided to make an issue out of his disagreement with his son about Islam. Ali was becoming very anti-western all of a sudden and Baharat wondered why. He also feared for his son. A respectable Brick Lane businessman, Ali could ruin his own reputation if the anti-terrorist police began to call. People informed all the time and Ali Huq was becoming ever more vocal about his opinions.
Now looking at strands of wire and electrical components he didn’t understand, Baharat Huq wondered how he might open a conversation with Mr Bhatti about his little sideline as a purveyor of forbidden messages. But he hadn’t thought it through.
Enough Rope: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery) Page 8