She saw a light come on behind the blinds in one of the rooms upstairs and she wondered whether Dave Spall was getting a shag. And then she wondered whether Marty knew about it.
*
‘Mumtaz?’
She’d been trying to let herself into the kitchen as quietly as she could, but she’d clearly failed.
‘Go back to sleep,’ she whispered. ‘Everything is fine.’
He pulled himself upright against the back of the sofa. ‘Yeah, but …’
‘Sssh! You’ll wake Chronus.’ She opened the kitchen door just as the bird opened one eye and then the other.
‘I’m forever blowing bubbles,’ he screeched, ‘Pretty bubbles in the air …’
‘Oh, Christ.’ Lee switched on the reading lamp that Mumtaz had placed on the coffee table. By the light of it, with his hair on end, he looked comically bizarre.
‘Shut up, Chronus!’ Lee said.
Mumtaz laughed. ‘Oh goodness, Lee, what is he to do? You taught him that song.’
She walked into the living room and rubbed the bird’s head. Usually when confronted by strangers, Chronus went quietly into his shell, but not with her. ‘Trevor Brooking!’ he cawed.
‘He just wants to please you,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’ Lee shook his head.
‘Bobby Moore! Geoff Hurst!’
‘Yes, enough now!’ Lee said, holding a warning finger up to the bird. ‘Enough!’ He moved back away from Chronus just a bit, his eyes still on the bird’s. ‘God Almighty, I don’t know why I have you sometimes, you’re nothing but trouble.’
Mumtaz, still stroking the bird, said, ‘Oh, you’d be lost without him. He’s your little boy, aren’t you, Chronus?’
Lee flopped back down on the sofa and pulled the duvet that Mumtaz had given him up to his chest.
‘Well, seeing as we’re all awake, how about some ginger tea?’ Mumtaz asked.
‘What, like the stuff from the health food shop?’
‘No, no, no. Proper ginger tea, like we make in Bangladesh,’ Mumtaz said, ‘with proper ginger.’
‘Blimey, isn’t that a bit hot?’
She smiled. ‘No, it’s actually very soothing. But if you’d prefer something else I do have ordinary tea or hot chocolate.’
She knew that Lee really liked coffee but she hadn’t had any of that in for months. All but the most disgusting incarnations cost too much.
‘Oh, I’ll try some of your ginger wotsit if you’re having some yourself,’ Lee said.
‘That was why I came down,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Do you want sugar in your tea?’
‘Yeah, thanks.’
While Lee calmed the bird down, Mumtaz went into the kitchen, sliced a ginger root, added loose tea and poured hot water over it. It needed to steep for at least five minutes and so she left it to itself and went back into her living room. For a good minute, unobserved by him, she watched Lee stroke and comfort Chronus back to sleep. There was a very gentle side to him that belied his big copper’s feet and sometimes aggressive demeanour. That he was in her house at all – she was only an employee – was proof that he was a good person who cared about others.
He turned away from the bird now and looked at her. ‘I think he’s off,’ he whispered.
Mumtaz smiled. She walked over to the chair that was opposite the sofa and sat down. ‘You have a way with him,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to call you the Bird Whisperer.’
Lee shook his head. ‘He’s just a big soft twit,’ he said.
There was a pause and then Mumtaz said, ‘Nothing’s happened.’
‘I didn’t expect it to,’ Lee said. ‘Organised criminals aren’t stupid. It’s why they’re successful and why people like you protect them. Not stupid equals dangerous, I know that.’
‘Lee, there is no way I’m going to—’
‘I know you won’t tell me who they are,’ Lee said. ‘But you have to know, Mumtaz, that I’ll find out.’
She felt herself go cold inside. He was a private detective and an ex-policeman, he’d find out in the end. And then what? Mumtaz did what she always did when she didn’t want to face up to something, she changed the subject. ‘Is Chronus eating properly now?’ she said.
But Lee’s eyes continued to hold her eyes, making it impossible for her to look away. ‘You have to face up to it sometime,’ he said. ‘I can’t be here every night. What happens when I go? When you’re alone with Shazia? When they do more than shoot your windows out while you’re at work?’
Mumtaz stood up. ‘Must go and get the tea,’ she said. ‘It’ll be ready now.’
*
He lifted her up and held her in the cold water in the bath until her calves and feet were covered. Nasreen screamed. He muttered at her to be quiet, too shocked by what had happened to say any more. Abdullah didn’t know himself why he’d pulled the cooking pot down onto her legs. It had been stupid, and now here he was saddled not only with a pregnant woman but with a woman who was injured too. How was he going to deal with that?
He couldn’t let anyone into the house. When she went into labour he’d just have to take her to the hospital and then stay with her until it was over. But then what would they make of her scalded legs? The skin was already starting to come off, revealing the raw flesh beneath. What would he tell them about that? He’d have to make sure she said it was an accident.
‘It was an accident,’ he told her, as he heard her gasp in agony.
‘No!’ she panted. ‘It wasn’t!’
He looked into her eyes and this time he didn’t see any hurt, only fury. Abdullah felt every nerve and muscle in his body contract away from her. It was like the first time he’d met her, when she’d just been a rather beautiful idea. He hadn’t loved her. That had come later and, later still, it had gone. Now she was secondary to the baby she carried, which was secondary to the house. He was running out of time.
Abdullah took Nasreen out of the bath and placed her on a towel he’d laid on the bare bathroom floor. She looked up at him with disgust and then she moved onto one side and groaned. He wanted to leave her there but he knew that if he did that her legs would end up sticking to the towel. He had to put some sort of cream on them. He looked in the bathroom cabinet, which was on the floor, but the only suitable thing he found was a small tube of Savlon. It was supposed to be for minor cuts and burns, but it would have to do. Nasreen whimpered and grunted as he picked her up to carry her to the bedroom and then, when he smeared the cream on, she cried with pain.
‘Why are you doing these things to me?’ she said. ‘Don’t you love me?’
He evaded both questions. ‘You’re my wife.’
What was love anyway? Women when mothers were sacred, but one couldn’t love such creatures, not as a man. To love women involved having sex with them. He remembered the first time with Nasreen, and how her eyes had unfocused when he’d entered her. She’d been so beautiful and if he closed his eyes he could almost taste her breasts on his tongue. But then she’d become pregnant.
Thinking about how she had been, he felt horny. Once he’d finished putting cream on her legs, he pulled her arms up and tied them to the headboard.
‘Oh, God,’ she gasped. ‘You can’t …’
‘I have to go out to get more cream,’ he said.
‘I need a doctor!’ Nasreen said. ‘Can’t you see!’ She wept. ‘What are you trying to do, kill me?’
If he didn’t get himself sorted out he’d burst. Hot now, he turned to leave the room.
But Nasreen called after him, ‘Are you trying to kill me, like you killed John Sawyer?’
For a moment, his back turned to her, Abdullah stopped. But then he ran down the stairs and out of the house.
24
The day Sean Rogers had come to the flat and broken the telly he’d also let a genie out of a bottle, because now Dolly knew what her mum did. It was Saturday afternoon and Wendy was putting her make-up on in front of her dressing table mirror. She’d have to leave soon, for Ongar.
‘This time, no,’ Wendy said. She turned around and smiled at Dolly. ‘No, Paul’ll be there this time, Doll.’
Paul, her mum’s new boyfriend, had something to do with the landlord. Dolly didn’t like him. She’d seen her mum bouncing up and down on him through a crack in her bedroom door. Every time he came round they spent every minute screwing.
Wendy turned back to the cracked dressing table mirror and put on her fake eyelashes. She’d only just seen Paul but, even though it was going to be at one of Sean’s parties, she was desperate to see him again. Not only was he good looking and hot, he seemed to love her body even though, at times, he could be cruel.
‘Does he make you come?’ Dolly asked.
Wendy turned back to look at her daughter again. She was used to Dolly and her twelve-year-old brother Frank swearing, but this was new. ‘Doll!’
The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t like him,’ she said.
‘What, Paul? What’s he done? He don’t work for Sean Rogers, he’s you know, like a businessman who works with him.’
‘But if he works with him then he must be a gangster,’ Dolly said. ‘Anyway, I don’t like him.’
Angry, Wendy turned back to her mirror and said, ‘Nobody asked you to.’
‘Well, that’s good then, ain’t it?’ Dolly got up and left.
Alone, Wendy carried on with her make-up routine. When she’d finished, she just sat and looked at herself for a while. She’d never see thirty again, and even then she didn’t look that good for her age. What she did have going for her was all to do with how good she was at sex. Wendy looked down at her stomach, encased now in skinny jeans, and wondered how she’d managed to get them on. Either she was really bloated or she was pregnant.
*
The glaziers had just gone when Lee arrived at Mumtaz’s tree-draped house. He’d timed himself to get there just as they left, but he had someone else with him too. When Mumtaz opened the door, she saw Lee first and then, looking down, she saw an old man in a wheelchair.
‘This is Arthur,’ Lee said, as he pushed Arthur Dobson across the threshold and into the hall. ‘And he’s got a story you might be interested in.’
‘Hello, love,’ the old man said.
If she were honest, Mumtaz was somewhat taken aback by the sight of an elderly stranger in a wheelchair coming into her home, but she welcomed Arthur warmly and did her duty as a hostess by making tea for him and prising what remained of their biscuits away from Shazia. It was Ramadan now and so food and drink were prohibited to Mumtaz during the hours of daylight.
‘I went to see the wife’s sister the other day,’ Arthur said, ‘after I spoke to Lee here. So all that stuff we talked about old Reg Smith and his wife Lil was fresh in me mind.’
Much as Lee knew that Mumtaz had to confront what was happening to her, he also knew that she needed some distraction, and Nasreen Khan’s mysterious old house continued to provide that. Arthur Dobson had contacted him, although coming to Mumtaz’s house had been entirely Lee’s idea. As the old man spoke, Lee kept one eye on the street outside, which was dingy and grey.
‘So anyway the wife’s sister, she’s in a nursing home up Manor Park – I don’t get to go unless me cousin Wilf takes me – but she ain’t funny in the head or nothing. But like my Helen was, she’s Jewish, like.
‘Your wife’s sister.’
‘Evelyn, yeah. She remembers Lily Smith well, she went to her funeral. But more to the point, she remembers her sister too,’ the old man said. ‘And she give me a name.’ He took a small piece of paper out of his pocket, which he held a long way away from his face to read. ‘Sara Kaminski,’ he said. ‘And that name, Kaminski, that was Lil’s name afore she got married.’
‘Well, that’s er …’ Mumtaz didn’t really know what to say. It was good to be able to put a name to the face on the picture behind the mezuzah, if indeed that was Sara Kaminski. However …
‘Ah, there’s more,’ the old man said. ‘The Kaminskis wasn’t just anybody. They was rich. According to Evelyn, the father of the girls was a big jeweller in Warsaw, but then they lost every thing to the Germans in the war – or so you might think. But Evelyn said that Lil once told her that unlike her and her son, her sister never went to no concentration camp.’
Mumtaz looked at Lee. ‘I thought you said that the sister did go to a camp.’
‘It now seems that was an assumption,’ he said.
‘The sister bought her way out,’ Arthur said. ‘She paid the Nazis to let her go. That’s what Lily told Evelyn. There was a lot of bad blood between them two because of it.’
‘She used the jewellery from her father’s shop?’
‘Must’ve done,’ Arthur said. ‘Lil weren’t at home by then. She was off married to a bloke called Berkowicz who died in Belsen.’
‘Do you know if Sara tried to help her?’ Mumtaz asked.
‘Gawd knows.’
Mumtaz felt a little bit nauseous. Surely Sara Kaminski had to have tried to help her sister Lily and Marek? Hadn’t she? But Lily and Marek had been almost dead by the time Reg Smith found them in Belsen. And yet if Sara Kaminski had abandoned them, why had she apparently been welcomed by Lily to her house in Strone Road?
‘Sara come here in late 1954, stayed till sometime in 1955,’ Arthur said. ‘And according to Evelyn, Lily was glad to see her.’
‘But I understand that just after she left, Marek disappeared,’ Mumtaz said.
The old man shrugged. ‘You thinking that maybe Sara took him with her?’
‘If Sara had money …’
‘What d’you mean? That Lily sold Marek?’ Lee asked.
‘No, not precisely,’ Mumtaz said. ‘But Lily had married Reg, with whom she had a new child, Eric. At the time, back in 1955, some of the police believed that Reg Smith didn’t like Marek very much. Maybe Lily thought that he’d have a better life with her sister.’
‘Yeah, but if she gave the kid away then why were the police called out on a Missing Person gig?’ Lee asked. ‘Surely if Marek went abroad with his aunt then there was no need for the law to get involved.’
‘Mmm, I can see that.’ Mumtaz put her chin in her hands. Then she said, ‘There’s something not right with that story.’
‘Which is why I brought Arthur to see you,’ Lee said. ‘I think there’s something missing.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’ Still looking out of the window he narrowed his eyes. ‘But it’s …’ Lee stood up quickly and began to run.
‘Lee?’ Mumtaz jumping up too followed after him. ‘Lee? What?’
But he was out of the living room, into the hall and out of the front door, way ahead of her.
‘Some bastard with a fucking mask on!’ she heard him yell, as he ran into the street.
*
Sean Rogers was immensely pleased with himself. He usually looked very satisfied with his lot, but this was way beyond that. Even Marty’s wife Debbie noticed.
‘What’s with you?’ she asked him as she casually looked at a pair of Ukrainian teenage girls having sex on a makeshift stage in the middle of Sean’s lounge. The party had been going for a couple of hours now and things were hotting up.
Sean didn’t answer her. Years ago he’d had a short fling with Debbie, before Marty had married her. The woman was beyond cold and she hadn’t changed in the intervening years.
‘There’s some judge in the blind room so I put a foreign girl with fake tits in with him,’ Debbie said. ‘I’m assuming we need him.’
‘You can never have too many high court judges,’ Sean said. Then he asked her, ‘Where’s my girl from Plaistow?’
‘With your best boy, as usual these days,’ Debbie said. She sneered. She didn’t practise the kind of favouritism that Sean and Marty sometimes indulged in.
‘Just because he can terrify people …’ she began.
‘Useful skill,’ Sean said, and then he laughe
d. ‘You have it too, Debs. Anyway I respect him, he takes care of my business, I take care of his, and he’s grateful. I like that. Let him have his fun. He’s taken with the little slag for some reason. But don’t worry, Debs, I won’t let it go on.’
‘What? Because she owes you money?’
‘And because he’s mine too. I like him but he still owes me.’ Sean smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Debs,’ he said, ‘I’ve not gone soft or nothing.’
*
When Lee came back he was out of breath and empty handed. The masked man who’d been peering into Mumtaz’s living room window had all too easily out-run him. He had been, Lee rationalised, not much more than a kid.
Arthur Dobson said, ‘No luck, son?’
‘No,’ Lee gasped, and sat down on the sofa while Mumtaz went and got him a glass of water.
When she came back, Arthur said to her, ‘Too many kids with nothing to do but cause bother these days.’
Mumtaz had expected the old man to carry on with a plea for them all to do National Service, but he didn’t. Lee drank his water between panting.
And then out of the blue, Arthur said, ‘Maybe she was dying.’
Lee frowned, while Mumtaz asked, ‘Who?’
‘Sara Kaminski,’ Arthur said, taking their thoughts back to the original topic of conversation. ‘Lee, you said that the photograph of the dark-haired woman was hidden behind that mezuzah thing in the Strone Road house.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, maybe it was some sort of memento,’ the old man said. ‘It’d explain why Lily spoke to that Sara and was alright with her even after all what she done by not sharing her money. If someone’s dying all that sort of thing don’t mean nothing – believe me.’
Lee knew that Arthur was dying and so he clearly understood what he was talking about.
‘But even if Sara was dying, that still doesn’t explain Marek,’ Mumtaz said.
‘Maybe he went to wherever it was she come from to help to take care of her,’ Arthur said.
An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) Page 19