An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2)

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Bad one,’ Lee said. ‘Did a lot of time.’

  ‘Tried to get some book deal on the back of having once met Reggie Kray when he was in Maidstone. One of the blokes was his son, Norman.’

  ‘Don’t know him,’ Lee said. ‘What’s he do?’

  ‘Norman and the other bloke do maintenance on rented properties for local landlords.’

  ‘Including the Rogers.’

  ‘Yep.’ Vi lit a fag. ‘And Sean particularly likes to keep those who work for them sweet. Give incentives. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Keep quiet about the illegal gas boilers and galloping mould in the flats and we’ll pay you well and give you the odd free shag.’

  ‘That, or they asked Sean for Wendy specifically,’ Vi said. ‘I mean if she owes him money, which we know she does, she’s his now to do what he wants with. I checked out the address of the flat and it too belongs to Sean.’

  ‘Could be him and his brother keep it as a “love nest”, Lee said, scowling. ‘Fuck, it’s like something out of fucking Dickens!’

  Vi laughed, a deep, scarred, mirthless rumble. ‘Welcome to free-market Britain,’ she said. ‘Bye-bye council houses, hello landlords who’ll charge you what they like, put 2,000 percent interest on your debt if you default and put you on the streets.’

  ‘So what can we do about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I thought you were going to contact Wendy Dixon? Offer her some sort of deal?’

  ‘I said that to make Mumtaz feel better,’ Vi said. ‘Wendy Dixon won’t take a deal! She might tell Sean Rogers I offered her one and I can’t risk that. How’s it going with that investigation Mumtaz was doing into the old Smith house by the way?’

  ‘Ah, well it’s funny you should say that—’

  Her phone rang. She took the call, listened, and then said, ‘That’s good. I’ll be there.’

  ‘So, what …’

  Vi stood up. ‘Unless Wendy Dixon comes to us and fingers the Rogers’ there’s nothing I can do. Not unless she’s assaulted or raped and she reports it.’

  ‘Mmm … But you know that Mumtaz’s client’s husband works for the Rogers’.’

  ‘What, the Smith house, Strone Road?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Vi narrowed her eyes. ‘Interesting.’ She stood up.

  ‘You off?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Tony Bracci has found something I was looking for,’ Vi said with a smile. She walked towards Lee’s front door.

  He said, ‘So that’s Wendy Dixon over and done with then is it, Vi?’

  She turned, smiled and said, ‘Oh, I didn’t say that, Arnold. I would never say that.’ And then she left.

  If the Rogers brothers and their business parter, Yunus Ali, had ever been off Vi’s radar they were certainly back on again now.

  *

  Kazia Ostrowska refused to speak any language but Polish. So at three in the morning, Vi had had to organise a Polish/English translator. But once communication had been established, Kazia gave them the silent treatment.

  ‘Your friend Dorotka told us you used the landline in the Bancrofts’ house to tell us about Mr Islam and his cannabis habit,’ Vi said. She hadn’t. Dorotka Walensa, in spite of her little girl looks, had proved to be a much tougher nut to crack than Kazia had been. She’d been silent treatment from the start. But then, as Tony Bracci had told Vi, he’d expected nothing less from a dyed-in-the-wool Wisla fan. ‘They’re beyond nuts,’ he’d said. ‘It’s like they’re all in the SS or something.’

  Vi leaned on the table between her and Kazia and said, ‘And the only way you could’ve seen him was if you went inside the Plashet Jewish Cemetery, which you’re not supposed to, are you Kazia.’

  The girl said something to the translator who said to Vi, ‘No comment.’

  ‘Oh, the no comment game. How original.’ Vi leaned back in her chair. She was knackered. After taking Dorotka in earlier that afternoon she’d done an unofficial obbo for Lee Arnold, and now she was back with Kazia Ostrowska and what seemed to be an attempt to smear Majid Islam’s character.

  ‘Doesn’t bother me, I’ve got all night,’ Vi said. ‘We’ve a recording of the voice that made the emergency call on Saturday night and if it matches yours …’ She looked up at the girl, who remained impassive. ‘It’s up to you. But let me give you a little snapshot of what’s going on in my mind at the moment, shall I?’

  The translator, aware that Kazia could both speak and understand English, did not translate Vi’s words.

  ‘I’ve got a theory about why you were in the cemetery … But whatever you were there for,’ Vi said, ‘you came across Majid Islam smoking weed. You saw him, he didn’t see you, but you recognised him as the bloke who’d called us out the night we found the body of John Sawyer and the skeleton. The bloke who got you arrested.’

  Kazia said nothing.

  ‘And you know what I think you saw that as? An opportunity,’ Vi said. ‘Smear Mr Islam’s character, muddy the waters around his testimony and get you and also Bully Murray completely off the hook for John Sawyer’s murder.’

  This time Kazia looked confused.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I explain?’ Vi said. ‘It’s my belief that you and Mark Murray knew each other before the night when we found the body of John Sawyer. He told me some crap about following you in there because you gave him the come-on outside the cemetery. But you wouldn’t follow someone into a graveyard for sex just on a look, would you? What was it, Kazia? Met him up in East London for a bit of alfresco nookie before, had you?’ She watched the girl colour. ‘Kazia Ostrowska,’ she said, ‘you are going to have to talk to me if you don’t want me to charge you and your boyfriend with murder.’

  18

  Mumtaz thought that Shazia had forgotten her key. It wouldn’t be the first time. With the doorbell frantically playing ‘Green-sleeves’ over and over again, she opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Hakim.’

  He had his fingers around her throat before she could even breathe. Naz Sheikh kicked the front door shut behind him and pushed her back towards the living room. The conflict that existed between her fear and her anger rendered Mumtaz temporarily dumb. Then she felt his other hand on her breasts.

  ‘Stop that!’

  He carried on. ‘But we both know that you love it, Mrs Hakim,’ he said. ‘Why else didn’t you give the police my description when I stuck your old man like a pig on Wanstead Flats? Not just because you hated him, was it?’

  ‘I hate you!’ She did. But when Naz Sheikh had killed Ahmet Hakim on Wanstead Flats just over a year ago, she’d hated her husband more.

  He pushed her up against the doorpost.

  ‘You’re just your father’s thug!’

  He ground his hips into hers. ‘Your father is a gangster and so is your brother!’ she said. Although the Sheikhs hadn’t put her on the streets in order to service what were really Ahmet Hakim’s debts, threats against her and Shazia were constant.

  ‘I can’t wait to get my hands on that daughter of yours!’ Naz said into her face.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘I’ll have you too, Mrs Hakim,’ he breathed at her. His words were rasping and harsh now as if he were really having sex with her. Mumtaz felt her stomach turn. She wanted to push him away, but if she did that she didn’t know what he’d do.

  ‘Not that I like older flesh,’ he continued. ‘I like young things. Even if they’re damaged – like your daughter.’

  ‘Leave Shazia alone,’ she said. He knew all about what Ahmet had done to his daughter and yet he had no compassion. She was just a whore in his eyes, a whore who had called her own father to her bed.

  ‘Do you have our money, Mrs Hakim?’

  ‘It isn’t due yet,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I won’t give it to you until the due date.’

  ‘Yes, but do you have it?’ He tightened his grip on her throat while he rubbed himself up against her.

  Almost vomiting with disgust she said, ‘Yes, I have!’ And then she pus
hed him away from her. Instantly she knew she’d done the wrong thing.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Hakim,’ Naz said. ‘You’re going to regret you rejected the attentions of a real man.’

  *

  ‘You can’t arrest either Mark Murray or Kazia Ostrowska. Where’s your evidence?’

  ‘They were in the graveyard …’

  ‘In vaguely fascist mufti at the wrong time,’ the superintendent said. ‘You’ve no witnesses, no forensic evidence, DI Collins.’

  ‘There’s Majid Islam.’

  ‘A cannabis user.’ Superintendent Venus looked at Vi for the first time since their conversation had begun. ‘Can you afford to trust his word?’

  ‘Because he smokes a bit of weed, I should distrust him?’ She wanted to follow that up with Him and half the country? But she didn’t.

  ‘Mr Islam has often called us out to incidents at the Plashet Cemetery because his house backs onto it,’ she said. ‘He’s a nice man, sir.’

  ‘A nice man with a Class B drug habit,’ the superintendent said.

  ‘Yeah, but sir …’

  He carried on walking along the corridor in front of her, his straight, stiff back like a brick wall in her path. ‘Let the Polish girl go, DI Collins,’ he said. ‘Firm evidence has to be in place before we bring anyone down. Big or small, I don’t care. Clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Vi said, but not before she’d flicked the Vs at his back. Childish but necessary. He didn’t like her because she was middle aged, she drank and she smoked. She didn’t like him because he did press-ups in his office, sniffed around after young female officers and was a total twat who’d only got his job because of who he knew. Not that he was wrong, in principle, about firm evidence.

  Vi went down to the cells to tell Kazia Ostrowska the ‘good news’. Kazia hadn’t killed John Sawyer and she knew it. It was unlikely that either Mark Murray or Majid Islam had either. But she had a notion that one of them maybe knew, or had at least recognised, who had killed the soldier. Mark Murray was keeping a low profile but she knew where he was.

  *

  If Wendy closed her eyes she could still see what those two men had done to her. She kept her eyes open.

  With the exception of Dolly’s dad, who’d been a soldier who had buggered off abroad, the only man who had ever been gentle and sexy with her had been Paul. As those two dogs had been savaging her, she’d tried to keep her mind on him.

  But then they were just hideous old maintenance men. Paul had been a business associate of the Rogers brothers. A professional of some sort, Wendy imagined – a doctor, maybe, a lawyer or an accountant. But then Paul hadn’t been different from them because of what he did, he was different because of who he was. He was nice, and Wendy really wanted to get to know him.

  *

  ‘Nasreen, you know that if you feel ill I can be at your new house in a moment.’

  Nasreen looked at her mother and then she hugged her. She knew she didn’t approve of this move that Abdullah had imposed upon her so suddenly. She let her mother go and put some blouses from her wardrobe into a cardboard box. ‘Thank you, Amma, I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ she said.

  But her face told a different story and her mother shook her head with impatience. ‘Why does he want you to go now, Nasreen? Why all of a sudden now? The house isn’t ready.’

  ‘He wants us to be together, as a couple, Amma.’

  ‘But people live with their families in our culture. It’s what we do. I know Abdullah has no family to speak of but he is still a Muslim, he is no different from us.’ She sat down on Nasreen’s bed. She was only twenty years older than her daughter and she still looked very young. ‘Why this rush?’

  ‘Amma, I don’t know why Abdullah wants us to move tomorrow,’ Nasreen said, and her eyes filled with tears. Her mother stood up and hugged her. ‘Oh, my girl,’ she said, ‘is everything alright? Are you telling your Abba and me everything? We only want your happiness, Nasreen, only that.’

  ‘And I only want your happiness too, Amma,’ Nasreen said. Abdullah had given her the choice of either doing as he told her or suffering the ignominy of divorce. Not that she could tell her mother or her father that. It was bad enough that she knew her husband would abandon his unborn child rather than not get his own way.

  ‘You know your father has always been a very good man,’ her mother’s voice broke across her thoughts. ‘I had a difficult time giving birth to you, Nasreen. You know this. But what you don’t know is that it was Abba who decided that we should not have any more children.’

  Nasreen had always thought that she’d been an only child because her mother had been incapable of having further babies.

  ‘Abba couldn’t bear to put me through such an ordeal again. I would have done it,’ her mother continued, ‘but he was quite fixed on the idea that I should suffer no more pain.’

  ‘We are very lucky to have my Abba.’

  Her mother stroked Nasreen’s hair. ‘Your father is a good Muslim.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He honours women,’ she said. ‘But there are men who do not. They use religion as an excuse to drag up all sorts of terrible customs from the past …’

  ‘Abdullah isn’t like that.’ He hadn’t been. Abdullah had lived a modern life and they’d had a lot of fun together when they’d first met. How and when had he changed? He’d been jealous right from the start, but he’d never blamed her for that. He wasn’t blaming her for anything now. But he was still pulling her away from her parents. It’s the house, Nasreen thought, he has changed since the house!

  But Nasreen had a lot to do and little time to spend questioning what her husband might be thinking or why. She remembered that there was a suitcase underneath her bed that was empty. She bent down and dragged it out under the pained gaze of her mother.

  *

  Something had happened to Mumtaz. Lee could tell just by looking at her. It wasn’t that she was any different physically from how she always was – even her voice and her expressions were as they had always been. Only her eyes gave whatever it was away. There was nothing behind them. It was like looking into the gaze of a psychopath – and Lee had clocked a few of those in his time. For some reason, she’d closed down.

  But now she was doing paperwork. Preparing a bill for the woman who’d asked her to look into her husband’s past and then backed off. A final bill, just like the one she’d already typed for Ayesha, the sister of Wendy Dixon.

  What was the point of going any further for Ayesha? There was none. She now knew for certain that her sister was a Tom, and she also knew that unless Wendy shopped her own landlord it was going to stay that way. For all the fanfare that blasted out about ‘Stratford City’, ‘2012’ and ‘regeneration’, Newham remained a place still marked by the vices that came with poverty: gang violence, prostitution, drugs and protection rackets. Come the end of September when both the Olympics and the Paralympics were over, would the little that the outside world had seen of the borough be forgotten? Lee couldn’t help but think that it would. Except for Westfield, the great big, fuck-off shopping centre.

  ‘Lee, I need to make more money.’

  It came out suddenly. Lee looked at Mumtaz, her head was still down over her paperwork. They’d been here before. Back in 2011 she’d got into a state about her mortgage, which was with some dodgy organisation her late husband had chosen. Mumtaz referred to them as ‘criminals’. He got up, walked over to her desk and sat down in front of her.

  ‘How much do you need?’ he asked.

  She looked up at him with those empty eyes which now looked slightly offended. They’d rarely talked money before. She’d never wanted to. But in spite of what she’d told Naz Sheikh, she was short on next month’s payment by seven hundred pounds and she had nothing of value left to sell – and that included her uncle’s Mughal coins.

  ‘Is it your husband’s dodgy mortgage?’ Lee asked. ‘I know you’re not happy about telling me who it’s with or you would have done so already, but i
f words need to be had …’

  ‘No.’ She smiled. ‘No, I need to earn more, Lee, for my expenses.’

  ‘Well, how much more? Give me a figure.’

  ‘We have no clients,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll get them. Something always comes along.’

  ‘I need that to be a certainty,’ she said.

  “Are you being leant on by someone?’ Lee asked. ‘These “criminals”—’

  ‘No! I told you—’

  ‘I know what you told me, but—’

  ‘Lee, I can’t manage on what I’m paid,’ she said. ‘I will have to look for another job.’

  It was like being smacked.

  ‘Another job? What?’

  ‘Anything that pays,’ she said.

  He wasn’t an idiot, he knew that he didn’t pay either himself or Mumtaz much more than minimum wage, but she’d managed at first. What had changed? ‘What they want you to pay this month, Mumtaz?’ he asked.

  She turned her head to one side.

  ‘I’ve watched you take things out at lunchtime and then come back empty handed. I know the signs and so do you. Tell me what they want?’

  Still she didn’t look at him. ‘Lee, I like this job very much,’ she said. ‘I’m telling you I might have to go if I get more money elsewhere because I respect you. But I have to earn more money. For what, is my business. But that is the end of it.’

  The weird eyes had gone now and she was crying.

  ‘Mumtaz …’

  But she held up a hand to ward off his sympathy. ‘No, no Lee, I will have to look elsewhere. I am so sorry, I …’

  ‘For God’s sake will you just tell me what you need! Or tell me who they are and I’ll …’

  He’d leaned over her desk and taken her chin between his thumb and finger before he’d even thought about it. But then he saw the fear in her eyes and he immediately let go. He got up and walked away from her desk. ‘What do they want this month?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, it …’

  ‘Mumtaz, you tell me you’re looking for another job.’ He turned to face her. ‘Then you won’t give me a chance to compete. Christ, I thought that you and me was business partners, I thought you and me was friends …’