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

by Barbara Nadel

It couldn’t go on.

  When a traffic warden came along and stood in front of the Mitsubishi and began writing a ticket, Naz Sheikh got out of it. Whether he charmed, bribed or threatened the man, she couldn’t tell, but he didn’t get a ticket. Then he kissed the old man’s hand, got in his car and drove away.

  Shazia didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t follow him. She didn’t have a car. She’d thought he’d be in that office the Sheikhs had, but it didn’t seem that Naz Sheikh actually worked out of an office in the conventional sense.

  She crossed the road and stood outside the minimart. She wanted Sheikh dead. Why hadn’t she just stuck her father’s hunting knife into his chest when he was standing beside the cashpoint, watching the minimart man take out money to give him? She didn’t care what happened any more. What was her problem?

  ‘Can I help you, young lady? Do you have a problem?’

  The voice was old but very cultured in an intensely British way. Shazia looked around to see who had spoken, but could only conclude it was the old Bengali man on the plastic stool. She frowned.

  He smiled. ‘Yes I know, I’m awfully posh aren’t I? Were you watching that young man who just came out of my son’s shop?’

  Shazia didn’t say anything.

  ‘You were, I know. I hope you aren’t in love with him.’

  ‘No!’ Just the thought made her feel sick.

  ‘Good. Because he is a bad man and you are a nice girl.’

  ‘No, I . . . I hate him,’ she said.

  ‘Mmm. Hate is a very strong thing. But then he deserves it. What’s he done to you, my dear?’

  She didn’t know what to say. Did she talk about her amma? Cousin Aftab? Her father? In the end she just said nothing.

  ‘I can tell it’s very bad,’ the old man said. ‘I expect you’re wondering what an old bundle of rags like me is doing with this voice, aren’t you?’

  He was confusing her. Shazia said, ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I went to one of the best schools in India,’ he said. ‘British-run, you know. My father was a very, very, very wealthy man.’

  ‘Why do I want to know this?’

  She began to feel her eyes tear up. Soon, people would start to look at her and then she’d have to run.

  ‘And now my son is a poor man who is obliged to pay money to a character who is a stranger to art, literature and science. He pays this money for no reason at all, except that he wants to remain alive . . .’

  Now she was crying.

  The old man put a dry, crumpled hand on her arm. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you have in mind, but no good can come of it. Not for you.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  A woman looked at her. Shazia glared back through her tears. The woman pulled her headscarf across her face and walked on.

  ‘I don’t think that lady deserved that.’

  ‘If you know where he’s gone, you must tell me,’ Shazia said.

  He took his hand off her arm and then looked her up and down.

  ‘You must tell me!’

  For a long time, maybe even thirty seconds, he held her gaze with his and then he said, ‘If it is so important to you, he is going to the Lucknow Cafe in Forest Gate. You know it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was a nice little mum and dad cafe selling coffee, tea, hot samosas and not much else. She hoped he didn’t have ‘business interests’ there. But he had to, otherwise why would he be going there?

  ‘Go there if you must, but don’t do a thing,’ the old man said. ‘Not to him. They bleed us these people, like sacrificial sheep. But when you fight them, they take your marrow. My father was once a very, very, very rich man and then he fought a man like Naz Sheikh and he lost everything.’

  *

  ‘I can’t take it.’

  ‘It’s yours,’ Brian said. ‘It’s clean.’

  ‘No! No, I mean I can’t take it, full stop,’ Paul Venus said.

  ‘But it’s—’

  ‘Mine? If it is, then where did you get it, Brian? Last time that money appeared on the radar it was in the hands of Tom de Vries, a boy who was stabbed to death. Where did you get it? I’m afraid of what you’re going to tell me, but I want to know.’

  ‘Do you?’ the gangster chuckled. ‘You’ve got your boy back.’

  ‘I have part of him,’ Venus said. ‘Brian, you tell me what you know . . .’

  ‘Or you’ll do what?’

  Paul Venus looked into Brian Green’s eyes and saw exactly the same thing he’d always seen. Nothing.

  ‘I didn’t kill that posh kid, if that’s what you think,’ Brian said. ‘Hand on heart I can say that.’

  ‘So you had him—’

  ‘Oh, I’d stop right there if I was you, Paul. I mean, what is the connection between me and Tom de Vries, eh?’

  ‘Your mobile phone number scrawled on his bedroom wall.’

  No change of expression or colour passed across the gangster’s face.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Harry was in that house wasn’t he? His handwriting . . .’

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  ‘Think you’ll find it is,’ Brian said. ‘Maybe he copied it down from his computer so he could use it if he got hold of a phone. Because he was in trouble. I’m touched and flattered, Paul, but it’s news to me.’

  The number had been written in a shaky hand and had not been instantly visible. But it had been there.

  Paul Venus clutched at a straw. ‘How did you know about Harry’s computer?’

  ‘Because you told me he had it with him when he disappeared,’ Brian said.

  He had.

  ‘I never got a call from Harry or that posh kid, Adele’s boy,’ Brian said.

  ‘So how’d you get my money?’

  ‘I called in some favours. I did it for you, Paul, and Harry. It’s all for Harry.’

  ‘You called in favours with . . .?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Don’t seem to matter where favours come from when it concerns you fucking Russian tarts,’ he said. ‘I know where you’ve got them from. I’ve even got photographs. It’s dead easy these days . . .’

  ‘No money has ever changed hands.’

  ‘No, but you give a lot of support to Russian gyms and health clubs, don’t you? Turning up to opening nights like a fucking Oscar nominee. Local bloody top cop saying “Come here and use this place, these people are kosher.” But they’re not. Places like that, full to bursting with drugs.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Oh, you don’t think it’s strange they give you free gash every time you get a hard-on? Think that’s all just about wanting to have their own gyms?’

  Of course he didn’t, but then Brian used to pull the same sort of stunts back in the old days. Worse. He’d not taken women from Brian, but money. Then he’d needed it. And how did Brian know? What contact did he have with the Russians? Laila Malik had bought drugs to give to Harry from a Russian at a gym in Wanstead. Had de Vries told Brian? Why would he? Brian had known his mother. But had he known Tom? How could he? Adele had left the family.

  ‘I’ve retired now,’ Brian said. ‘As you know. But I still have to earn, especially with Taylor to support, and it ain’t easy with all these drug-pushing Ivans on my doorstep now. Can’t have no more. Can’t manage the ones that’re already here.’

  Brian lived outside Newham. He had to know that Paul couldn’t do anything directly about this. But a phone call from Venus was all it would take to get the local police out to one or more of these gyms – on the Newham Super’s say so.

  The Superintendent’s anger bubbled over. Brian was lying! ‘I don’t know how you got involved with de Vries and—’

  ‘Who says I did?’

  ‘When Harry regains consciousness what’ll he say, eh?’ Paul said.

  ‘Harry? Poor kid’ll be traumatised I reckon. Won’t say much. Won’t say nothing about me, I don’t suppose. You
can tell him his Uncle Brian has been thinking of him.’

  Venus wanted to scream. Whether he took the money or not, he had to do what Brian wanted about the Russians, or his liaisons with girls like little Sasha would become public knowledge. The Russians were scum, he didn’t care about them. They’d indirectly poisoned his son. What he did care about was where that vast holdall of money had come from – and who had died to make that possible.

  ‘I can’t touch that cash,’ he said. ‘And you know it, Brian.’

  Unearned cash, even in small amounts, going into a serving officer’s account would raise suspicion. And giving it to Tina wouldn’t help. They were still technically man and wife and so the same rules applied to her.

  ‘I said I washed it for you.’

  ‘Yes, and you know I’ll still refuse,’ Venus said. ‘I know that if I point the finger at you in connection with Tom de Vries’s death, apart from the fact you have my reputation in your hands in the form of photographs . . .’

  ‘Wanna see?’

  Brian took his phone out of his pocket and dragged an image onto the screen. Venus frowned.

  ‘Quite apart from that,’ he continued, ‘I can’t prove any connection between you and de Vries except a phone number.’

  ‘No. Well there ain’t,’ Brian said. ‘Now, you want that money or what? Be like the old days, Paul,’ He smiled. ‘And if you think only the Ivans can get you women, you’re very wrong.’

  *

  He had no trouble at the Lucknow Cafe. By the time Shazia got there, the old couple, from the expressions on their faces, had already paid Naz Sheikh and he was enjoying tea and samosas at a table in the window. She walked by on the opposite side of the road.

  At first she thought that she’d missed him because she couldn’t see his car anywhere. He had to have parked it in a side street. Shazia looked around. She was far too close to home and Cousin Aftab’s shop for comfort. She knew that the Sheikhs were well aware of her address, but when she couldn’t see Naz she could fool herself that he was miles and miles away. He finished up his samosas and left the cafe. Then he walked up the Woodford Road towards Wanstead Flats.

  Shazia had never been able to pinpoint accurately where her father had died, except that it had been on the Flats somewhere. He’d been stabbed. Her amma hadn’t seen who had done it. She must have been too shocked to take it in. Shazia wondered why she cared. Her father had beaten her and taken her into his bed to use like a whore. All he’d cared about had been her school grades – if they slipped it all got so much worse – so why did she give a damn where he’d died? Why did she always look out at the Flats and shudder?

  Naz Sheikh turned right onto Capel Road and Shazia began to feel cold. He was walking in the direction of her flat. Did he know she was following him? Then she saw his car and she thought that he was going to get in it, but he just walked straight past.

  Anxiety gripped her stomach again, Why hadn’t he got into his car? Why had he even parked it in Capel Road? Then, just before the turnoff from Capel to Lorne Road, Naz went through a gate, up a path and rang the doorbell of a house that was only two doors away from Lee Arnold’s flat.

  *

  ‘Hi, Bri.’

  It wasn’t often that Brian Green was shocked, but it wasn’t every day that a bloke slipped out from underneath his car and looked through his open window.

  ‘Arnold.’

  ‘Hello.’ Lee hauled himself upright and then opened the passenger door and got in the car. ‘Just to satisfy your curiosity, Brian, I slipped in under the side of Superintendent Venus’s motor first. Then I pulled myself along the ground so I was directly under you.’

  ‘Christ.’

  Venus had gone. Driven off like a boy racer with his pants on fire. Lee had reckoned that Brian would sit and ponder for a bit afterwards, and he had.

  ‘So you, er . . .’

  ‘Well, Brian, let’s see shall we?’ Lee said. ‘Did I hear everything you said to Mr Venus or didn’t I?’

  24

  It dawned on Shazia that her urge to stick a knife in Naz Sheikh’s guts was turning out hard to fulfil. When she’d left the flat that morning, she’d just wanted him dead. She hadn’t cared what it might cost her, and whether she did it in private or public hadn’t mattered. On top of what she’d listened to Uncle Ali say about Cousin Aftab to her dada, she’d also overheard her amma apologising to her cousin. She hadn’t said for what, but she’d been crying. Shazia had felt so guilty. Through her, the Sheikhs had got their claws into Aftab. She would rather have died than let that happen.

  But now he was in some house on Capel Road and she didn’t know what to do. A woman with blonde hair had let him in. He’d smiled at her in a way that left nothing to the imagination. He could be in there for, well, ages.

  Shazia looked at Lee’s flat and then at her watch. He was unlikely to come home in the middle of the day, but it wasn’t impossible. What would she say if he did? He knew she didn’t like to hang about around the Flats because of their association with her father’s death. So why was she there? And could she really just go up to Naz Sheikh and murder him in the street when he finally came out of that house?

  *

  ‘When you’ve been in the army and then become a copper, a lot of people think you’re just a thick thug who couldn’t get a job in a bank, and there is some truth in that,’ Lee said. ‘I mean, I do still count on my fingers, but then could I have made a bigger fuck-up of the banking system than the management of the Royal Bank of Scotland did? Nah. I certainly couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d wrecked my bank and then taken a big fat pension and a lump sum like that Fred Goodwin did. I’m not good at those things. You’re not. We ain’t all the same. But what I am good at is thinking through situations. Now I’m sitting here in your lovely Maybach, smoking a fag, which is irritating the shit out of you. I’m watching you sweat and wondering what the cause and the effect of this situation might be.’

  Brian Green, who was sweating more heavily than Lee had ever seen him do before, said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, Brian, that you just gave Superintendent Venus three hundred and fifty thousand pounds,’ Lee said. ‘I heard you tell him yourself that it was the ransom money for Harry. Which of course makes me wonder how you got it, just like Mr Venus did. And I know you’ll say you got it through a third party at great trouble to yourself and you’re not allowed to say, blah, blah, blah. But like Venus, I saw your number on Tom de Vries’s bedroom wall. Unlike Venus, I owe you nothing, and I know more than he does.’

  Brian Green remained silent.

  ‘Oh I realise you can have me killed,’ Lee said. ‘You’ve had lots of people murdered in your time. I think you had Tom de Vries killed. I can’t prove it just from a telephone number scrawled on the kid’s bedroom wall. Harry Venus knows you, that I can prove. Although why he should write your mobile number on the wall of a house where he was being held hostage, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll tell us when he wakes up? Did Tom de Vries get it out of him? Did he know that his mother once knew Harry’s mum’s friend Brian? Did Harry boast about his gangster “uncle”? I think yes to all those questions. The coppers know that Tom and Happy the alkie didn’t kill each other. The old boozer had a broken wrist. Neither of them had the other one’s blood on him. Sloppy, Brian.’

  The gangster said, ‘I think Venus needs to distance himself from these Russians.’

  ‘As if it’s your business.’

  ‘It’s everyone’s business. They’re drug pushers.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Lee said. ‘But too many for you eh, Brian? Want them off your manor. So why not just blackmail Venus with your photographs? Why all this?’

  ‘Maybe the money’s mine.’

  Lee frowned.

  ‘Personally,’ Brian said. ‘Maybe I gave him my own money, out the goodness of my heart. He’d only take money he thinks is his.’

  ‘How can you say that? You know he’s as bent as a nine-bob note.’
/>   ‘Bent? Venus?’ He laughed. ‘Depends what you mean. He’s never taken money from me without paying it back.’

  ‘How? By covering your back? Turning a blind eye?’

  ‘I understand he don’t take money from the Russkis.’ He paused, then he said, ‘My relationship with Tina’s another matter. I like to treat her from time to time, but she ain’t a copper is she? And, well, back in the day I never gave her money without some sort of exchange of services going on.’

  So somewhere, in all likelihood, there were mucky pictures of Tina Wilton.

  ‘Spare me.’

  ‘Venus has some money. Good for him. Maybe he can get himself another flat. That makes me happy.’

  ‘All because you fucked his missus a million years ago and have a soft spot for her,’ Lee said. ‘How heart-warming. But you know, Brian, I have a better theory in my head than that.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. Wanna hear it?’

  Brian said nothing.

  ‘I don’t think you knew who was behind Harry’s disappearance when it first happened,’ Lee said. ‘I think you only knew about it when Tom de Vries called you.’

  ‘I never knew the boy.’

  ‘Bear with me,’ Lee said. ’I think that Harry told Tom about his gangster “uncle” to curry favour with him. He must’ve tried everything over the years to get in with that kid. Fucking hell, he even kidnapped himself! Your name must’ve come up, if only because the boys’ mothers both knew each other through you. But then they fell out, and when Harry didn’t want to play Tom’s game any more, Tom forced Harry to give him your phone number because he had a plan. Silly Tom tried to blackmail you didn’t he? High on this delusion he had about committing the perfect crime, he made you an offer. Harry for safe passage out of the country with all of Venus’s money was it? Someone, from you, met him in Poplar Rec, someone who wanted it all to look tidy, just like you always do. The alkie was there so he killed him too. Nice and neat. But not before he’d found out where Harry was and got the keys to the car the coppers found him in. Then keys back to Tom’s nan’s, because you knew her, didn’t you? Then off with the money, a quick peek in the garage to see whether Harry was still alive and away. You showed him who was boss, didn’t you Brian? Then all you had to do was wait for Tina to remember where Tom’s nan lived. And you knew that she would because you had. Whether Harry was alive or dead by that time wasn’t your concern.’