Enough Rope: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery)

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Except for the housekeeper.’

  Tony shook his head. ‘Do you call underage sexual activity “care”? The kid told the old girl he was going away. Didn’t say where, didn’t say whether he was off on his own or with someone else, and she never asked. Comes from a bit of a hooky family herself, by all accounts, and so she wasn’t surprised. Tom said he’d contact her when he could. When he left, he said he’d get his car and then put her garage keys through her letterbox. And he did, but she don’t know when because she nodded off.’

  ‘But he didn’t take the car out of the garage.’

  ‘Dunno. Maybe he did and then drove it back again.’

  ‘Or perhaps someone else did. The person who killed him.’

  Tony shrugged.

  ‘Gotta disprove what Kev Thorpe saw first. Happy Agar the alkie and Tom with knives in their chests. Maybe they fought.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘What about the money Tom took with him when he left Princelet Street? Must’ve had to put that in a big bag,’ Lee said.

  ‘Oh, there was no sign of big money,’ Tony said. ‘Only a coupla quid.’

  ‘In the car?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Lee frowned. ‘I didn’t get the feeling that Laila Malik was lying about the money, did you?’

  ‘No, although she never said it was a large amount.’

  ‘Well it must be,’ Lee said. ‘What I mean is that someone has to have Venus’s ransom money. We know that Harry was at Tom’s house. Malik wouldn’t have mentioned money unless it was a significant amount. Her and Tom, she thought, going away together. You’d need some dosh to just disappear, especially when one of you is sixteen.’

  20

  ‘The boys who do want to understand the art of story are not many, but those we have are enthusiastic,’ Malcolm McCullough said. ‘And I do encourage them.’

  ‘And Hitchcock?’

  ‘As I tell the boys, he was the master,’ he said. ‘In my opinion there has never been a greater storyteller. Boys respond to film in a way they don’t to books, DI Collins. It’s the modern way. They relate to the world visually. Do you see?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  Her own sons would far rather watch a film or play a computer game than pick up a novel.

  ‘I don’t necessarily approve, but one must use the tools that work in order to educate, and old Hitch has been working for me for years,’ he said. ‘It’s all there. The human psyche in extremis, the philosophy of morality, murder and mayhem, which boys relish. Why do people kill? What beliefs, if any, inform a decision to kill? Can the destruction of another human being be a choice? Why are we fascinated by something so repellent?’

  ‘All sounds very interesting,’ Vi said.

  ‘It is! But it’s also a tool to get them thinking about how stories work,’ he said.

  ‘And what about Rope?’

  ‘In my opinion, his masterpiece. It’s based on a true story—’

  ‘The murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in Chicago in 1924.’

  ‘Well, DI Collins, you have been doing your homework!’

  ‘Wikipedia.’

  Was it the way she looked at him that made his good humour disappear so quickly? Or was it, finally, the realisation that Harry Venus had been kidnapped and Tom de Vries was really dead? When she’d told him, Vi wasn’t entirely sure that information had really gone in. The Much Honoured Malcolm McCullough, Laird of the Island of Balta, was not only lord of a place where nobody lived, he was also, she felt, a man who existed largely inside his own narrow view of the world.

  ‘Well . . .’ His upbeat mood and his smile returned. ‘Rope is a very loosely fictionalised version of the story. For instance, Leopold and Loeb never invited Bobby Franks’s relatives to a meal. They abducted the boy, killed him and then issued an elaborate series of ransom demands to his family. They wanted to commit the perfect crime. Oddly, given later events, both these boys, from wealthy Jewish families, were fascinated by Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch or superman, a superior being above both morality and the law, now, if a tad erroneously, associated with the Nazis. Of course, in spite of their extremely high IQs, they failed. They made schoolboy errors, because they were, after all, just schoolboys. In the film the pair are not Jewish and there is a teacher involved, the teacher who introduced the pair to Nietzsche’s ideas. He’s played by James Stewart and—’

  ‘The boys were renamed Phillip Morgan and Brandon Shaw,’ Vi said.

  ‘Yes. They—’

  ‘The first ransom demand that was sent to Superintendent and Mrs Venus was in the name of a Mr B. Shaw,’ she said. ‘The Superintendent had to write that name on the envelopes where he put the first hundred thousand pounds he gave to his son’s kidnappers.’

  McCullough said nothing.

  ‘Another very elaborate demand for money was made a few days later, not in the name of Mr Shaw. That drop was to take place at the cemetery where Superintendent Venus’s grandfather is buried. But then the kidnappers gave up on that idea in favour of smashing my boss over the head in his own home and taking the money. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Whoever had Harry knew his family well enough to know where Mr Venus’s granddad was buried, and they had a key to his Islington flat.’

  The laird stared. Half-smiling, unmoving.

  ‘Now, we know that Harry stayed at Tom de Vries’s house in Spitalfields for at least some of the time he was missing,’ she said. ‘What we also know is that their mate Charles Duncan was working in the area and their other mate George Grogan was staying with his brother in Shoreditch.’

  ‘Henry.’

  ‘Yeah. And Henry had a few issues this time. Not so happy to have George around.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Something called “depositing”.’

  She let it hang there, in the air. McCullough looked everywhere but at her face.

  ‘George, or one of his mates, shat in a trunk Henry’s got in his lounge,’ she said. ‘Poor bloke was tormented by the stink for days.’

  ‘Oh, but depositing only happens at school . . .’

  ‘Really?’ She paused. ‘And it has nothing to do with the films of Alfred Hitchcock?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? You sure? Henry Grogan wouldn’t agree with you there, Mr McCullough. He reckons it’s been going on for years among boys who worship the ground you walk on.’

  ‘Nobody—’

  ‘No, let me rephrase that,’ she said. ‘They don’t worship you, these soft little arty boys, but they do worship the stuff you talk about. You put a positive spin on superiority. Must be so bloody easy. You in that school where the kids get top jobs because their dads have top jobs, because they went to Reeds and so did their dads.’

  ‘Yes. And what of it? That’s how it always has been. Although you’ll be happy to know it’s changing, DI Collins. Next term we have Russian boys, Chechens, people from an entirely different tradition.’

  ‘But rich.’

  ‘Oh, rich, but that’s all.’ If ‘pissed off’ could be embodied, it was Malcolm McCullough at that moment.

  Vi leaned on the table between them. ‘I’m not making a political point, Mr McCullough. I’m a copper, it’s not my place.’

  She knew she was lying and so did he.

  ‘What I need is to find out who kidnapped Harry Venus and why. Can’t ask him, because he’s unconscious. This will not only lead me to who committed that crime, but it may also shed some light on who killed Tom de Vries.’

  ‘A very talented boy.’

  ‘As you say. Now, I’ve still got George Grogan and Charles Duncan in custody because we’re pretty sure they know more about this than they’re saying. We’ve pushed those kids as far as the law allows, but they ain’t listening and they ain’t talking. Me and my officers agree that this is beyond us. Public school. What’s that? A whole set of loyalties we don’t unde
rstand. But I think they’ll listen to you, Mr McCullough. If I’m right, they’ve certainly listened to you in the past.’

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he whispered, ‘Do you think I may have inadvertently made the boys do something very bad?’

  *

  There could be no comforting Laila Malik. Her lover was dead and it was going to hurt.

  Mumtaz had been asked to leave the interview room while a female PC broke the news. Out in the corridor, she could hear her crying.

  ‘Mrs Hakim?’

  It was Alison Darrah-Duncan. She had a cup of vending-machine coffee in one hand and a packet of cigarettes in the other.

  ‘Alison.’

  ‘Just trying to find a way out of here so I can have a smoke,’ she said. ‘Started again yesterday. After twelve years!’

  ‘I’ll get you out.’ Mumtaz smiled.

  ‘Thanks.’

  They both leaned against the wall of the station car park and turned their faces to the sun.

  Mumtaz said, ‘I’m sorry you’re having to go through this with your son. As soon as I made a connection between Charlie and Harry Venus I had to pass it on.’

  ‘I know.’ Alison’s hand jerked as she took a puff on her cigarette. ‘And I did feel resentful towards you at first.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘I thought, “That woman’s brought me nothing but pain.” But then, maybe that’s not a bad thing.’

  ‘Pain?’

  ‘Because of you I know who my mother was,’ she said. ‘Her story’s sad. But since when did life guarantee any of us a happy ending? God, she was Argentinian, a place I’ve never even thought of going. Now I’m thinking maybe I should, while I can.’

  ‘It’s a very different place to the country Rosa grew up in,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I think it would be a really good thing for you to do. Visit the convent too. Mother Katerina is a very nice woman who told me you’d be welcome any time.’

  ‘Yeah. As for Charlie . . . I don’t know what he has and hasn’t done with his friends from that bloody school. But if he does get out of this unscathed, I will take him out of there, whatever Chris says. I know Tom de Vries is dead, but for a boy like Charlie there’s always another Tom waiting round the corner to terrify and manipulate him.’

  ‘You really think Tom bullied Charlie?’

  ‘My son’s gay in an environment where he can’t even admit it to himself,’ Alison said. ‘But the elite, like de Vries, can sniff that insecurity out. When Charlie first met Harry Venus I had some hope. Harry came from a family with no history at Reeds and he seemed like a nice boy. But then he began to behave like de Vries and George Grogan and so Charlie just conformed. I don’t know what they’ve all done or why, but I do know that it’s good it’s come to light. And I’m grateful that Charlie is safe. Do you know how Harry’s doing?’

  ‘The doctors are still trying to find out what’s keeping him unconscious.’

  ‘Poor boy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kids! According to Mumtaz’s father, Shazia wanted to go back to the flat. She was still boiling with resentment about the loss of her job, and Mumtaz didn’t like the idea of her sitting in the flat on her own, brooding. It wasn’t healthy. And yet she knew that her parents would be forever bothering the girl with conversation, food and group TV-watching sessions. Baharat and Sumita had been raised in Bangladesh, where, Mumtaz always felt, it was probably illegal to do anything on your own. Being alone was ‘odd’ and really not understood and was frequently a bone of contention between those born in Bangladesh and those, like her, whose only home was the UK. But she’d told Shazia she’d have to stick it out if she didn’t want to offend her parents, which was true. The girl had grumbled, but she’d finally agreed. Mumtaz just hoped she’d be home before dark so that Shazia didn’t have to spend another night in Hanbury Street. She also wondered what Lee was doing. Last she’d heard he’d been with Tony Bracci at the London Hospital. But now Tony was back at the station, where was Lee?

  *

  ‘I appreciate your coming to tell me, that’s very kind,’ Brian said.

  Lee sat down on one of the old man’s many leather sofas.

  ‘What I don’t get is why you come earlier and sat outside the house.’

  ‘Waiting for you to get up, Brian,’ Lee said. ‘Then when you were up, I got a call from DS Bracci at the hospital. So off I went.’

  ‘Ah.’

  He didn’t believe that was entirely kosher, but he couldn’t prove Lee was lying. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t.

  Lee leaned back into the thick luxuriousness of full-grain cowhide. One of Brian’s ‘boys’, Errol, kept it so shiny you could see your face in it. Brian liked to surround himself with people like himself. Obsessive.

  ‘I’ve got some more details now,’ he said. ‘You know Harry was found in a lock-up garage in Poplar?’

  ‘And he’s still unconscious, you say.’

  ‘At the moment, yes.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Odd thing is, he was found in a car that had been used by that boy who got killed last night.’

  ‘What boy?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear? Young boy and an old drinker were found dead in Poplar Rec this morning.’

  Brian Green shook his great meaty head.

  ‘Oh yeah. I tell you I’m really glad that Harry’s been found, but until he comes round this is going to be a puzzler.’

  Just like the last time he’d visited, Lee could see Taylor Green sunbathing out by Brian’s pool through the patio doors. He wondered if she ever did anything else.

  ‘Harry might not remember nothing,’ Brian said. He was already half a bottle of Rioja down and had just poured himself some more.

  ‘Might not, but just between you and me, the boy who was killed and Harry were mates.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘At school,’ Lee said. ‘No connection between the two incidents as far as the coppers can tell.’ He paused. ‘Mind you, your name came up.’

  He wanted to see something on Brian’s face. He knew he wouldn’t see much, but there was nothing.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The garage where Harry was found belongs to the nan of that mate of his, Tom de Vries.’

  Brian made a noise that could have been a laugh. ‘How would I know anyone with a name like that?’

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t know the kid,’ Lee said. ‘But you knew his mother.’

  ‘How’d you know that?’

  Not ‘Who is she?’

  ‘When Tom de Vries’s body was found in Poplar Park, the police were trying to make a connection between the boy and that area. And because Tom was a school friend of Harry’s, Superintendent Venus and his wife knew him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Mrs Venus, independently, knew Tom’s mum. Through your clubs, years ago.’

  ‘A girl from Poplar?’

  ‘Adele Berger,’ Lee said. ‘Called herself da Rosa?’

  ‘Oh.’ He smiled, slowly. ‘Adele, yes. Dancer.’

  ‘As you say.’ Lee smiled.

  ‘So Tina Wilton brought my name up?’

  ‘I think so, yes,’ Lee said. ‘But then, to be honest with you Brian, I wasn’t really listening to anything about you. I was more concerned about Harry. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  And he did, because now he did look a bit pale, in spite of his glassful of what he would have called ‘good red vino’.

  *

  Everything that came out of Malcolm McCullough’s mouth irritated Vi. It was like listening to a TV newsreader from the fifties. It also had very little effect upon Charlie Duncan, who just shook. Oddly it was George Grogan who cracked. By the time Vi eased the teacher out of the interview room, George was ready to talk.

  ‘We wanted to help Tom,’ he said. ‘He needed to go away with Laila. But Harry reckoned that if we asked for enough money, we could all have a bit. Tom said we’d start off small and see what happened.’


  ‘Why Harry’s parents?’ Vi asked.

  George shook his head. ‘He hates them.’

  ‘Don’t you all? At your age?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what’s different about Harry’s mum and dad?’

  For a moment George said nothing. His father, Vi noticed, had reddened.

  ‘They don’t help him.’

  ‘They pay his school fees and give him everything he wants, as far as I can see,’ Vi said. ‘What do you mean?’

  George was obviously struggling to articulate what he meant. But Vi wasn’t about to prompt him. What she knew to be the truth had to come from the boys.

  ‘I mean his father isn’t Reeds,’ George said. ‘Harry’s never really been one of us. But he wanted to be. He was proving himself.’

  Dr Grogan muttered, ‘Christ.’

  George looked at his father. ‘Dad, it’s not the sixties anymore. Class matters and so does money. Why do you think that all the people with the best jobs are connected or rich or both? If your father’s a plumber, you won’t end up being prime minister, will you?’

  Dr Grogan looked at Vi. ‘I apologise for my son, DI Collins,’ he said. ‘I should never have let him spend so much time with his brother.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do Henry a disservice, sir. He might be a merchant banker, but I don’t think he believes he’s superior. No, that’s Mr McCullough, isn’t it, George?’

  The boy looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Him and his Übermensch,’ she said.

  ‘Mr McCullough has nothing to do with what we did.’

  ‘I know.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘He just made you little snobs,’ she said. ‘Planted the seed that made you and your mates feel justified in putting Superintendent and Mrs Venus through hell.’

  ‘It was Harry’s idea.’

  ‘Sure it was. But I’m interested in why he came up with it,’ Vi said. ‘You said he was “proving himself”. To you? To Charlie? Or was it especially to impress Tom de Vries?’

  George’s solicitor wrote something down.

  Vi said, ‘Don’t think I’m trying to pin this on a dead kid. Don’t you do it either, George.’