The Promised Land

by Barry Maitland

  It was after seven am when the women filed out of the glass tower and made for the van. They were exhausted now, heads down, wearily climbing inside. They drove back into Stepney, where the van made a stop and two of the women got out. Then across the river to Deptford, where two more were dropped off. Light was beginning to glimmer in the east as they came to the Elephant and Castle, another old familiar area transformed by new towers and construction cranes. They turned down Walworth Road and came to a stop near the turning into the East Street Market. One woman got out, wearing a red anorak, and Brock quickly pulled in to the kerb and followed her.

  She walked with long strides and he had to run to catch up with her as she turned into East Street, busy with vans and people unloading goods onto the pavements. She had her phone out now and was making a call as she wove around the obstacles. Past the Kyrenia Café and opposite the Halal Meat butchers she turned into a quiet side street, where he finally caught up with her.

  ‘Elena.’

  She stopped abruptly and turned to face him.

  ‘I need a quick word with you.’

  She stared at him, weighing him up, then said, ‘I don’t speak English,’ and turned away.

  ‘It’s about your Indian roommate. Did you know she’s dead?’

  She took no notice, striding on towards a 1960s block of deck-access flats.

  ‘Elena, please!’

  She looked back over her shoulder and spat, ‘Leave me alone or I call the police.’

  ‘If you don’t talk to me I’ll call the police, Elena, and you don’t want that.’

  Up ahead Brock saw a man in a black leather jacket striding towards them. As he reached Elena she nodded back over her shoulder at Brock and he barely had time to react as the man hit him hard in the stomach, then again in the face. He fell to the ground, trying to protect his head as the man began kicking him, silently, methodically. Finally he stopped, knelt beside Brock and felt for his wallet.

  Through the pain in his ribs and head Brock heard a yell. He looked up, feeling dizzy, and saw three people running towards him. One of them crouched down beside him, a big black face wrinkled in concern. ‘You all right, mate?’

  Brock groaned and tried to sit up as the man put a hand under his arm, heaving him upright. Looking around he saw that Elena and the man had disappeared.

  ‘I’ll call the coppers.’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘No,’ Brock said, grunting as pain shot through his knee when he put weight on it. ‘It’s okay. They left my wallet.’

  One of the men stooped to pick it up for him. His three rescuers were all West Indian, and the woman seemed to be in charge. She said, ‘Help the man back to the shop, boys, and we’ll clean him up.’

  He limped with them to East Street and the corner shop, Rosie’s General Store, which the woman appeared to own. There she ordered the men to bring a chair for Brock, a bowl of warm water and a towel, and the first-aid kit. As she worked on his face she said, ‘I think you’re goin’ to have a black eye, my dear. What were you doin’ back there anyway? What happened?’

  So he explained that he was working for a firm of lawyers trying to trace the family of a murdered Indian woman. ‘I think she’d been living around here with a Romanian woman. That’s who I was trying to talk to, but her friend didn’t like it for some reason.’

  ‘What was the Indian girl’s name?’

  ‘She called herself Shari Mitra, but that might not have been her real name. She was murdered on the twenty-sixth of October. The Romanian woman is called Elena Vasile.’

  Rosie considered this for a moment, then said. ‘I know that Elena and her friend, and I don’t like them. But she did have another girl living with her for a time. Only she said she was a Paki, not an Indian, and she was called Uzma. She would have been about the same age. She used to come in here, but I haven’t seen her in months. Have you, boys?’

  The men shook their heads. Then one of them said, ‘She worked at Enver’s for a while, but she didn’t last long. She thought she was too good to be a kebab girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rosie agreed. ‘Very well spoken, she was. Quite posh. Who murdered her then? Her old man?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Brock winced as she dabbed iodine on the graze across his temple.

  ‘She told me she’d run away from her husband.’

  ‘Yes, she told someone she’d been married to a rich man and it didn’t work out.’

  Rosie chuckled. ‘No, no, a man with a British passport who said he was rich—that old story. She was fed up at home in Pakistan and her family were desperate to get her married, so when she met this rich London businessman on the web they were all delighted, although he was quite a bit older. They got married over there and he brought her back to London, and that’s when she discovered that he had a grubby little hardware shop in Stepney in which he expected her to work twenty-four seven, and when she objected he beat her. Eventually she ran away, crossed the river and ended up here.’

  ‘I see. Do you know her husband’s name?’

  ‘No. But I’m sure a smart private eye like you will soon find him. You’d best take some judo lessons first, though.’ And she burst out laughing.

  Half an hour later, after a hot cup of tea and one too many jokes at his expense, Brock thanked them and limped back to his car. There was a yellow plastic packet stuck to the windscreen bearing the words penalty charge notice enclosed. He peeled it off and eased himself into the driving seat, examined his battered face in the mirror with a shudder, then pulled out his wallet to see whether he had any money left. It seemed the man hadn’t touched his cash or credit cards, and he thought everything was intact until he realised his driver’s licence was gone.

  His phone rang—Suzanne. ‘David! Where are you?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Um, Walworth … I’m following a lead. I was going to call you.’

  ‘Are you all right? You sound odd.’

  ‘No, no. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Where did you sleep last night?’

  ‘Um, in the car, on and off.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’ve got one more little job to do, then I’ll go home. I thought I might stay at Warren Lane over the weekend.’

  ‘What? No, you can’t, David. Ginny and her husband are coming for dinner tonight, remember? And you promised to help Miranda with her project this weekend. Are you sure you’re all right? You do sound quite … unsteady.’

  ‘I’m fine. Okay, I’ll try to get back by lunchtime. Maybe get some sleep this afternoon. Help Miranda tomorrow. Okay?’

  ‘Fine. Are you sure you’re fit to drive?’

  ‘Yes, yes. See you.’ He rang off, then realised he was parked outside a chemist. He went in and bought painkillers, then went next door for an energy drink, returned to his car and set off north again, back through Elephant and Castle towards the river. Half an hour later he was in Shadwell Road, lined with oriental food shops and travel agents with posters for cheap flights to Dhaka, Lahore and Mumbai. Another familiar hunting ground, this time unchanged from before. He came to the small police station in a row of shops and got out to look at the missing-persons posters in the window. And there she was, Uzma Jamali, a pretty, intelligent face, missing since last April. He went inside and said he might have news of her and wanted to speak to her husband. The duty constable looked doubtfully for a moment at the state of his face, then gave him the details—Mr Tariq Jamali at Jamali Hardware, 286 Shadwell Road, not a hundred yards away. Brock thanked him and returned to his car.

  A short, fierce-looking man was standing in the doorway of number 286, arms folded across his apron, glaring at passers-by as if to dare them to come inside, then becoming distracted by the backsides of two girls in short skirts walking by.

  ‘Mr Jamali?’

  He turned to Brock and his face lit up. ‘Yes, sir! Come inside, come inside!’

  Brock went in, looking at the boxes of hinges and screws, the racks of tools
and rows of stepladders.

  ‘There’s everything you might need in here, sir.’

  ‘Mr Jamali, I’m an investigator working for a firm of lawyers.’

  Jamali’s expression switched abruptly to alarm.

  ‘It’s possible we may have some information about your wife.’

  ‘Really? Have you found her? It’s been so long, I’d almost given up hope.’

  ‘It’s a question of identity.’

  ‘Ah, I understand.’ Jamali went behind the counter and took a photograph album from a drawer. ‘This is Uzma, my wife. You see how beautiful she is? These were taken at our wedding in Pakistan last year, and this one with her sisters in her parents’ house. I have more. Take one if you want, to show your lawyers. I reported her missing to the police on the tenth of April, eight hours after she left. She would have been thirty-two this last July the sixteenth. You see how beautiful she is?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And intelligent?’

  ‘Oh, very! And well educated. Look, look.’ He pointed to a framed document hanging on the wall, a degree certificate for Uzma Dehwar, awarded a Master of Philosophy (English) from the University of the Punjab, Lahore. ‘Dehwar was her family name,’ Jamali explained. ‘Now, of course, she is Uzma Jamali.’

  ‘What do you think happened to her?’

  Jamali shook his head. ‘Alas, we had an argument that day and she ran out through that door and never returned. She was not happy here. London was a disappointment to her. It was not what she had imagined. I used to tell her: Uzma, Uzma, London is not the promised land! She had crazy ideas. She thought she might be a famous writer and dreamed of a life of luxury and idleness, but she did not understand that you must work hard for everything. I blame her parents for spoiling her. We had disagreements. All I wanted was for her to be like my mother, a good wife. So where is she now? You say you have information?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Mr Jamali. I’ll have to show her photograph to the lawyers. You say she left everything behind? All her personal things?’

  ‘Yes, yes, they are all upstairs, undisturbed, waiting for her return.’

  ‘Did she have any books?’

  ‘Yes, over here. I put them in this box to take them to the second-hand shop to sell them.’ He lifted it onto the counter and Brock looked at the covers. His head hurt and he found it difficult to focus. They all appeared to be by Pakistani authors, names unknown to him—Ishrat Afreen, Fatima Bhutto, Qaisra Shahraz, Sarwat Nazir.

  ‘Women writers,’ Jamali said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Not good for her. They turned her head.’

  ‘And you say she wanted to be a writer. Do you have anything that she wrote?’

  ‘No.’ He spoke sharply. ‘That’s what our argument was about that day. I caught her upstairs scribbling away while I was down here running the shop single-handed, so I took her papers from her and burned them, every page and notebook that I could find. But if you see her, please tell her that I forgive her.’

  Brock returned to his car and set off for Battle. Suzanne was busy with customers in her antiques shop and didn’t see him as he went upstairs, ran a hot bath, pulled off his clothes, poured a large Scotch, lowered himself into the tub and promptly fell asleep.

  An hour later Suzanne saw his coat lying on the stairs leading up to the flat. Puzzled, she picked it up and saw the dirt and the rip in the sleeve. She called his name, got no reply, then went up to the bathroom door and saw the top of his head, just visible over the rim of the bath, a glass of whisky untouched on the floor.

  ‘David?’

  No sound, no movement. She thought, Oh God, he’s dead, and went over and put her hand into the water. It was cold.

  ‘David …’

  His arm jerked suddenly and he lifted his head. ‘That you, Suzanne?’ he mumbled.

  She stared in horror at his face, the whole right side bloodied and bruised, the eye swollen shut. ‘What happened to you, darling?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. Hell, it’s cold.’ He began to shiver.

  She became all action, pulling the plug to drain the bath, grabbing a thick towel and wrapping it around him as he struggled to his feet. She saw the bruising down his side and the way he winced as she tried to hold him. She got him to stand by the radiator while she dried him, then found him fresh clothes and helped him dress. When she brought in his thick black coat, he looked confused and said, ‘What? What are you doing?’

  ‘Come on, we’re going in the car.’

  ‘I don’t think I can manage dinner with Ginny. I just need to lie down.’

  ‘We’re not going to Ginny’s.’

  She got him downstairs and out to her car, him groaning with every step. When he was buckled in and she started the engine, he said, ‘Well … where are we going?’

  ‘The Conquest.’

  ‘What’s that, a pub?’

  ‘It’s a hospital, David, and when we get there you’re going to have to tell them what happened to you. Did you have an accident? Were you knocked down?’

  He took a deep breath and finally seemed to focus. ‘In a way. I was knocked down by a thug who kicked the hell out of me. My own fault, should have seen it coming.’

  ‘Dear God, where was this?’

  ‘Walworth.’

  ‘And you drove all the way back?’

  ‘Felt all right till I fell asleep. Just need to rest, love. Don’t seem to be able to see out of this eye.’

  ‘You sound concussed. Hang on, it isn’t far.’

  When they got there, she helped him to limp in to Emergency, where a triage nurse brought him a wheelchair and tried to get some details out of him. When Suzanne explained that he’d been attacked, she said she’d have to call the police, but Brock said no and showed her his old police ID card which he still had in his wallet and told her he was on a case and just needed patching up.

  While they waited Suzanne phoned Maggie Ferguson and told her what had happened. She wanted to speak to Brock, who took the phone and gave her a brief mumbled account. She said she’d come down to Hastings, but Suzanne persuaded her there was no point for now.

  Later, Suzanne was taken in to see the doctor, a young registrar, who was studying an X-ray film.

  ‘The cheekbone, here, the zygomatic bone, has a hairline fracture, you see? He was lucky he didn’t lose his eye. Also—’ he held up another film ‘—two rib fractures, here and here. Indications of concussion. He should have complete rest for five days and then take it easy for a further four weeks. No driving, no lifting, no strenuous exercise. We’ve dressed the wounds and they shouldn’t be touched for five days, then get his GP to look at them. We’ll give you some painkillers and a prescription for more.’

  Suzanne went in to see him, lying on a bed in the Emergency ward. Half the right side of his face was obscured by the thick dressing. ‘You look like a zombie,’ she said.

  He gave her a rueful smile.

  ‘I hope this has taught you a lesson,’ she said.

  10

  Kathy finished the call from Maggie Ferguson with a frown. It was extremely annoying that Maggie’s detective had apparently managed to do what she had not—discover the identity of Pettigrew’s third victim. But it was also unsettling. What else did Maggie now know that she didn’t? Was this the thread that she would use to unravel the prosecution case? Kathy now had to refocus on a job she had mentally closed almost two months before. She called to Alfarsi to get a car to take them to Stepney.

  Tariq Jamali looked more irritated than concerned. ‘I don’t understand. Do you know where my wife is or not?’

  Kathy said, ‘I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for bad news, Mr Jamali. It seems possible that the body of a woman found in Hampstead last October is Uzma.’

  ‘What? A body?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We’ll need to run more tests, but it does seem very likely that it’s her.’

  ‘But … let me see her. I will tell you if it is her.’

  ‘I’m afraid she was too badly i
njured for that to be possible.’

  ‘She was run over?’

  ‘She was murdered.’

  His eyes widened and he sank onto a chair beside the counter. ‘The Hampstead murders! Is it possible?’

  ‘She was found on the twenty-seventh of October, and until now we haven’t been able to identify her. She was using the name Shari Mitra. Have you any idea where Uzma was at that time?’

  He didn’t seem to hear at first, and Kathy had to repeat the question.

  ‘October? Six months after she left me? No, I have no idea.’ His look of shock changed to a frown of anger. ‘Why would she be in Hampstead? What was she up to there? Was she there to see a man? A wealthy man?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I know Uzma. Hampstead is rich people, yes?’

  ‘Had she done this before, gone after rich men?’

  ‘She thought I was a rich man, then when she discovered that I wasn’t she left me. She was a whore.’

  Kathy said carefully, ‘Let me understand you, Mr Jamali. Are you saying that Uzma was working as a prostitute?’

  ‘Working? Ha! Uzma didn’t work. But she had the mind of a whore.’

  Kathy changed tack. ‘This detective who came to see you, did he tell you why he came here?’

  ‘What do you mean? He came to find out about Uzma. I gave him a picture.’

  ‘But how did he find you? Why did he think Uzma was the woman he was looking for?’

  ‘He didn’t say. Actually, I didn’t like him. He had a dirty coat with a tear in it, and his face was bruised, like he’d been in a fight.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  Jamali shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He said he was working for a lawyer, that’s all.’