Bright Shiny Things

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘No you don’t. You didn’t know I was a pervert.’

  Mumtaz winced. To use such a word about oneself was weird.

  ‘You all disagreed with my views on Islamic disaffection,’ he said. ‘Abba told me I had no understanding of what jihad meant …’

  ‘We were alarmed,’ Mumtaz said. ‘To us, suddenly it seemed as if you lost your capacity for human empathy. Now we know the cause …’

  ‘Sin must be atoned for,’ he said.

  ‘And love must be nurtured.’

  He looked at her. She saw tears in his eyes.

  ‘And don’t tell me that what you had with Rajiv wasn’t love,’ she said. ‘Because I know you and I knew Rajiv, and you are and were, people with big hearts.’

  He began to cry. ‘How am I going to live?’ he said. ‘How?’

  ‘The police will find you not guilty.’

  ‘Oh? And?’

  Mumtaz knew that if and when he was exonerated, his life in and around Bangla Town wouldn’t be easy. People would talk, they always did. Some may even do more than talk.

  She put her head on his shoulder. ‘We’ll meet that when we come to it,’ she said. ‘As a family.’

  ‘The dishonoured family of a pervert.’

  ‘The family of a gay man who lost his love far too early,’ she said.

  The boy had been assigned the sort of duty solicitor who didn’t give a shit. The translator on the other hand was concerned.

  ‘Qasim hasn’t slept,’ he told Ricky just before they went into the interview room with the boy and his brief. ‘He’s very frightened.’

  ‘Is he?’

  Nabil had clearly been frightened at the end of his interview the previous evening. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said what he did.

  Ricky laid the pawn ticket down in front of Qasim and said, ‘Mean anything to you?’

  He could see that it did in the kid’s eyes, but his mouth said no.

  ‘Made out in the name of Taha Mirza, the boxer. Know him?’

  Qasim said he didn’t.

  ‘Weird,’ Ricky said, ‘because Nabil told me you do know him. He said that it was your idea to take Rajiv Banergee’s ring to him to pawn for you at Jones’s pawnshop on Commercial Street.’

  Hafez translated. As he spoke the boy’s eyes widened.

  Ricky continued. ‘Because you knew Taha Mirza, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘Gave you a few boxing tips, did he? Took you down that study group in south London?’

  Hafez looked quickly at Montalban. Although Nabil had admitted knowing Taha Mirza ‘a bit’, he hadn’t alluded to any boxing tips and he’d said nothing about any study group in south London. But then Nabil was, by far, the tougher of the pair. Still, he’d not hesitated to drop his friend well and truly in it.

  ‘The pawnbroker remembers one man and two teenage boys took that ring in,’ Ricky said. ‘Course Nabil claims he wasn’t there, it was just you.’

  Qasim said, ‘No!’

  ‘Yes,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Nabil is there!’

  Self-preservation was always something that could be relied upon, in Ricky’s experience.

  ‘So you’re telling me,’ he said, ‘that you and Nabil pawned Rajiv Banergee’s ring with the help of Taha Mirza?’

  Hafez translated. The boy sat still, with his mouth open.

  ‘So where’d you get the ring?’ Ricky asked.

  The boy said that it had been Taha’s ring.

  ‘Really? Not what Nabil said. He reckons it was yours. Not his, you understand, but belonging to you. Actually, it once belonged to poor old Rajiv Banergee. Worth a bit too.’

  Ricky could see that Hafez wasn’t comfortable translating that, but he assumed he’d done it anyway.

  The boy began to cry.

  ‘Good news is,’ Ricky said, ‘that the man who saw you in Arnold Circus with Rajiv Banergee says he saw you both stab him. In fact, to your credit, Qasim, he said he saw “the one with the scar on his face” – Nabil – cut him first.’

  Lee had work to do. He didn’t have broken ribs and the invoices he needed to send out wouldn’t post or email themselves. Also he had to go and buy a new mobile phone. His had disappeared into whatever weird half-lit spook land the ‘Emma’ at Forest Gate had come from.

  On his way to the mobile phone shop where he’d bought his previous handsets, he picked up a local paper. Amongst reports about summer fairs, stabbings and the joys of beekeeping he saw that a Forest Gate lawyer had been arrested under prevention of terrorism legislation. It seemed he’d been in touch with known terror suspects in the Middle East. Lee went back into the newsagents and bought a copy of The Guardian. Still nothing about any shooting at a house in Essex. Lee knew that the authorities could bury pretty much what they wanted, but that had been a big operation, involving multiple armed officers, road closures and ambulances.

  Admittedly Good Easter was fairly remote but it wasn’t in the middle of fucking Exmoor. The local people must have seen or heard something. And what about the families of the taxi driver and Djamila’s boyfriend?

  Lee had seen Fayyad al’Barri alive. Mumtaz had told him she had some memory about Fayyad laying on top of her, although she’d been in great pain at the time. But Lee knew. Fayyad had survived the gunfire that had killed Djamila. How, Lee didn’t know. He was also pretty dodgy on the subject of why, because something at the back of his mind was suggesting to him that Fayyad al’Barri hadn’t got through all that by accident.

  He wanted to call Vi and just ask her outright, but he didn’t. She wouldn’t tell him even if she knew and, chances were, that she didn’t. And much as Lee knew that for national security to have any meaning it had to be like this, it pissed him off. Because over and above everything else, Lee wanted to know where Fayyad was. More importantly, he needed to know what he was.

  ‘Why’d you do it?’

  Unlike Nabil, Qasim was crying. Ricky wondered whether Nabil was actually capable of tears.

  The kid said they’d seen ‘that man’, Amir Charleston, hit Rajiv Banergee and had gone to help him out.

  ‘But Mr Banergee was down on the ground,’ Ricky said. ‘Your man didn’t need no help.’

  Hafez the translator said something to the boy, which seemed to make him pull himself together.

  ‘He says that where he is from, that is what people do,’ Hafez translated.

  ‘What? Attack a man when he’s down?’ Ricky said.

  ‘No.’ The translator shook his head. ‘I know what he means, DI Montalban.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Hafez said, ‘What Qasim is describing is a phenomenon I know well from our country. I can only describe it as a blood fury or an infection of violence. When you are constantly in danger it takes very little to make you strike out against others. Two men begin fighting in a street in Damascus and this turns into a riot. People take sides. Not in an organised way but simply as their inclinations dictate. It is one of the many consequences of war. One fights to survive and then one just fights because one cannot stop.’

  Ricky could see that. The violence of war could be looked upon as a communicable disease. It was a decent analogy. But it didn’t reflect what Nabil had told him.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ricky said. ‘I get that. But that ain’t what Nabil said.’

  Hafez translated.

  ‘According to him,’ Ricky continued, ‘you killed Rajiv Banergee because you’d both been raped by your landlord, Ali Huq, earlier that evening.’

  Hafez translated and Ricky watched the boy’s face sink into confusion. He spoke.

  ‘What’s he say?’

  But the translator had to wait for the boy to stop. When he did, he said, ‘Qasim says that’s not true. He says that although Mr Shah told them that Mr Huq was a pervert, he never touched them. It was Mr Shah who made them have sex with him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I think when they first came to the UK.’

  He checked with the boy who confirmed his assumption.

&n
bsp; ‘It happens many times,’ Hafez said. ‘When children unaccompanied by adults come to a country, those who claim to help them sometimes take advantage.’

  ‘But not Ali Huq?’

  Hafez checked again.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘And yet Nabil and Qasim have accused him.’

  ‘Qasim now says this is a lie.’

  ‘Why?’

  The original plan, according to Qasim, was that the boys blackmail Ali Huq.

  ‘Why didn’t they blackmail Mr Shah?’ Ricky asked. ‘It was him who abused them.’

  Hafez smiled. ‘Oh, this also is familiar, DI Montalban. They are too afraid of Mr Shah. Those who traffic these people often beat and terrorise them. I know. Such people hold power over everyone. Those they traffic and those, often good people, who want to give them a home. It is a dirty business.’

  And Shah telling the kids about Ali’s proclivities made it even dirtier. Ricky wondered how many other refugees Aziz Shah the tailor had abused while maintaining his outward appearance as a ‘good’ man, devoted to his wife, his daughters and his mosque.

  But then was Qasim telling the truth? Or was Nabil?

  Ricky knew who he’d put his money on.

  ‘Ask him how he knew Taha Mirza,’ he said.

  Hafez rattled off rapid Arabic.

  Nabil had clammed right up when Mirza had been mentioned and, looking at Qasim’s face as he replied, Ricky didn’t hold out too much hope. But he was proved wrong.

  ‘He says that Mr Shah knew him,’ Hafez said. ‘Mr Shah recommended they go to meet Mr Mirza as he had connections to a very good study group in south London. It is called, he says, the Light of True Belief.’

  Shah and Uddin’s ‘charity’.

  ‘Did he ever go to any of their meetings?’ Ricky asked.

  According to Qasim both he and Nabil had been twice. But they’d been told to keep their attendance secret. They’d been on their way back from just such a meeting the night they’d killed Rajiv Banergee.

  Ricky excused himself from the interview to go out and make a call to Newham.

  Shazia was exhausted. Sleepless nights worrying about her exams were coming thick and fast now. Every day was revision day and, although she appreciated the special cramming sessions her subject tutors were putting on, she had little enthusiasm. This one had been arranged by Mr Bright to take them on a whistle-stop tour through their English Literature syllabus.

  Grace stood beside her in the queue for the library where the ‘crammer’ was set to take place. She was wearing the type of clothes girls normally wore to go clubbing. Shazia had never seen such hot, hot pants.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ she asked her friend.

  Grace said, ‘Crammer, man. Like you.’

  ‘So why’re you dressed for a party?’

  Grace laughed. ‘Not a party,’ she said. ‘Just my style.’

  Grace was so transparent. She always made Shazia smile. She just hoped she didn’t get hurt one day.

  ‘Well, give Mamba my best,’ she said.

  Grace sucked her teeth, pulled a face and then laughed again. She knew she was an open book.

  Shazia felt tired and tense but she knew that she had to concentrate. Cramming sessions were only any use if you were awake. She had been worried that she might see that creepy old Wahid Sheikh outside the college or in the convenience store, which would have put a damper on her day. But he’d not appeared and Cousin Aftab had driven her all the way to the door of the college. George was going to pick her up and take her back to Brick Lane after college. It was really kind of them to do it. But Shazia was no fool. Although she’d closed her mind to it for much of the time, she knew that Wahid Sheikh wasn’t wandering around after her for no reason. He blamed her for his nephew Naz’s death and, in a way, he was right to do so. She could’ve saved Naz when she’d found him, stabbed, in that empty house in Forest Gate. But she hadn’t, because she hated him for beggaring her family and abusing her amma. She knew he wanted revenge and she sensed it was going to happen through her in some way.

  But she couldn’t think about that now. In five minutes’ time she’d be in the library.

  He was sweating heavily even though it wasn’t hot. Sometimes, heavy sweating could mean that a person was about to have a heart attack. He was fifty-five, overweight and terrified. He was the ideal candidate.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mr Shah? You look alarmed.’

  He wanted to say I’m in Scotland Yard, of course I’m alarmed! But he didn’t. Aziz Shah knew that if he wanted to stand any chance of getting out, he’d have to behave with the utmost respect and humility. That idiot-snake Vakeel Uddin would lay it all at his door. Maybe he already had?

  He’d have to tell the truth. Well, some of it.

  ‘What was your relationship to Taha Mirza?’

  Another idiot! Recruiting men and boys for jihad! What had he been thinking? Why had neither he nor Uddin recognised the business for what it was? A business! Bringing people in from Syria was lucrative. Why hadn’t they been content with that?

  ‘Mr Mirza was involved in radicalising people. Did you know that?’

  ‘No!’

  Mirza’s ‘gym’. What a joke! But how could a humble tailor like Aziz have done anything about it?

  ‘We know you recommended Mirza’s gym to at least two boys.’

  Aziz had nothing except sweat. Why had he done that? Because Uddin had told him to. It was all very well to pay due respect to more educated members of the family but Vakeel had always had an agenda. A lawyer and a religious nutter? How did that work?

  ‘We know about the Light of True Belief study group in Peckham.’

  They were only just ahead of Aziz when it came to that. When he’d found out the Light of True Belief was something other than just a money-making scam, he’d been furious.

  Aziz smiled. ‘We are a charitable organisation …’

  ‘With no charity number …’

  ‘Dedicated to rescuing people from war zones,’ he said. ‘I don’t know of any study group.’

  ‘Mr Uddin says you attended religious classes there on several occasions.’

  Lying shit! He’d always avoided the place because it was full of fanatics!

  ‘We also know, from a separate source, that you are alleged to have had sexual relations with some of these people you’ve been claiming to help.’

  ‘Who says such a thing?’

  Fuck, he was right in the eye of the shit now. What little bastard had blabbed? He knew they had those sods from Ali Huq’s place in custody.

  ‘Was it the poor boys who accused Mr Huq?’ he asked.

  His interrogators remained silent.

  ‘I think you will find that they are becoming confused between Mr Huq and myself. Mr Huq has certain tastes …’

  Zafar Bhatti had told him that Huq was a fairy years ago. Not that he’d said anything about Huq and Rajiv Banergee until very recently.

  ‘I mean he killed poor Rajiv-ji in a fit of homo lust …’

  ‘You know that do you, Mr Shah?’

  ‘Well, I … Well, it’s … You know … It’s …’

  ‘Unproven. Unlike Mr Huq’s innocence in the case of the two boys who lived in his house.’

  Innocent? Hadn’t the boys accused Huq of sodomy and all sorts?

  ‘Allegations of sexual abuse against Mr Huq have been withdrawn.’

  How? That was inconvenient. With Huq in the frame for all sorts of homosexual crimes both real and imagined, people’s attention had drifted away from Aziz completely. What had happened there?

  They told him that first one and then the other boy had admitted to the killing of Rajiv Banergee. You could have knocked Aziz down with a feather. Of course he didn’t know who had killed Rajiv, but those boys had not even been in his mind. Why?

  Then they told him it was partly down to him.

  Aziz stood up and waved his arms around. ‘I never fucked them! Never! I’m a proper man, not a p
ervert! How dare you!’

  But unfortunately for Aziz that wasn’t the worst thing that his interrogators told him.

  ‘How much, Mr Shah, do you know about this terrorist that Vakeel Uddin liaised with?’

  Terrorist?

  And then Aziz remembered. That terrorist.

  Baharat Huq left his house as soon as Ali told him. Qasim and Nabil had not only admitted to killing Rajiv but they’d also withdrawn their sexual abuse allegation against him. So his son was in the clear. Baharat walked down Brick Lane with his head held high.

  Of course some people looked at him as if he’d lost his mind and some others appeared disgusted. But he didn’t care. He knew that his son was innocent and that was all that mattered.

  ‘Baharat-ji!’

  He hadn’t noticed he’d just passed the Leather Bungalow. Susi Banergee, uncharacteristically very plainly dressed, hailed him from the doorway.

  ‘Mrs Chopra.’

  ‘Come in,’ she said.

  Inside, the Bungalow was even emptier than it had been before. But there were still chairs. Baharat had heard that Susi had been taken in by the police at one time, but he didn’t allude to it. She did.

  ‘I hit him the night that he died,’ Susi said as she handed him a can of coke. There were no tea-making facilities left on the premises. She apologised for the lack of drinks choice. Baharat said it wasn’t important.

  ‘Rajiv made me so mad,’ she said. ‘He’d been moaning for months that he didn’t want to run the business any more. I thought he’d be happy to sell. But he wasn’t. He said he’d do it in his own way in his own time. I didn’t have time.’

  ‘Why?’

  Susi shook her head. ‘I’m a very bad woman, Baharat-ji,’ she said. ‘Mummy-ji would have been so ashamed.’ She lit one of her Sobranie cigarettes. Blue. ‘Dilip is divorcing me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘We haven’t lived as man and wife for many years. I could never have children, you see. Dilip regretted marrying me.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘But that isn’t why he’s divorcing me.’