Bright Shiny Things

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘So …’

  ‘FYI only,’ Vi said.

  ‘Kensington’s a bit outside my area,’ Ricky said. ‘And yours.’

  ‘Yeah, but Aziz Shah’s on your manor.’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘No direct connection,’ Vi said, ‘but, as we know, this type of investigation generally works out to be pretty wide-ranging.’

  ‘Right. Big network was it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But it had the potential to grow. Just wanted to thank you for your help.’

  Ricky shrugged. ‘You’re welcome. But we never did that much. All I really done was find the killers of Rajiv Banergee.’

  ‘Which helped lead us to Aziz Shah and his associates …’

  ‘Who I know you was watching a long time before we got involved, DI Collins,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘Vi. You’re not wrong …’

  ‘So why the meet-up?’ Ricky said. ‘I can’t believe you’ve brought me all the way here so you can listen to me sparkling conversation.’

  ‘No. Although I might want you for your body.’

  He laughed. Overweight and with a face, some said, that looked a bit like a bull’s, Ricky had never considered himself attractive. Nor, as far as he was aware, had many other people. Nearly forty, he was still single and hadn’t been on a date for a good five years.

  ‘But as well as that,’ Vi continued, ‘there’s also said Aziz Shah the tailor.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Thought you’d like to know that sexual abuse charges by your two Syrian boys against Shah will be dropped,’ she said.

  ‘What? How do you know that?’

  Shah’s collar had been felt by Tower Hamlets, not Newham. But then Ricky knew that ‘another’ agency had been involved too.

  When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘Is this because he didn’t do it?’

  Vi shrugged.

  ‘So …’

  ‘You know Shah, probably better than I do,’ Vi said. ‘So you’ll know that he’s by way of being what could be described as a useful idiot.’

  Aziz the tailor had always had a way of being able to get himself out of the bad situations he frequently put himself into. It was said that with his loose tongue and obvious delight in anything salacious, he was an easy channel through which information could be broadcast.

  ‘Some people feel that Shah’s best off out in the world,’ Vi said. ‘His brother-in-law’s another matter.’

  All Ricky knew about Vakeel Uddin was that the Forest Gate lawyer had been responsible for bringing people from the Middle East into the country under guidance, so he had deduced, of the Light of True Belief organisation. Whoever they were …

  Vi, as if reading his mind, said, ‘Uddin was directly involved with that Light of True Belief mob. Shah wasn’t. He just did the day to day.’

  ‘Which included abusing those two boys?’

  ‘I dunno,’ she said. He almost expected her to follow this with And I don’t care. But she didn’t. All she said was, ‘Them kids murdered a man.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They admitted to it and were proud about it.’

  Yes, they had confessed, but Ricky hadn’t been aware they’d been proud of what they’d done. Where had she got that from? But then Ricky knew he’d probably never find that out. Vi Collins was one of those local, old-fashioned coppers who, nevertheless, moved between worlds. On the face of it she was simply a cynical, middle-aged detective. But with her easy contacts all over the Met and beyond, who really knew what she did when, from time to time, she appeared to move out of her role for a while?

  ‘The Light of True Belief won’t be seen again,’ Vi said. ‘But Shah will. I believe he’s staying on in your manor.’

  ‘But didn’t he find homes for kids …’

  ‘He ain’t doing that now,’ Vi said. She smiled. ‘Back to tailoring, I think, for Mr Shah.’

  Ricky was angry. A nonce, admittedly unconvicted, on his patch! He said, ‘And kiddie fiddling.’

  ‘No evidence for that, Ricky,’ she said. ‘Hearsay only. Have to be careful what we say.’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  ‘Yeah, but nothing,’ she said. ‘Get used to seeing Shah back on your streets.’

  Obviously someone had some sort of need to keep him there. Ricky hated these games ordinary plod was sometimes obliged to play on behalf of ‘secret’ plod. Aziz Shah was a nonce, Ricky had seen it in his eyes.

  Vi said, ‘And keep your ear to the ground. Like I say, he’s got a loose gob, which he’s got very little control over.’

  So he was being kept on the loose, as Vi had said, as a useful idiot.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Three Months Later

  Lee wasn’t the same. But then neither was she. They’d shared an experience that neither of them could talk about. It could have brought them closer together. But it hadn’t.

  Mumtaz kept on telling herself she’d only been back at work for eight weeks. It would take much longer than that for them to get back to ‘normal’. Whatever normal might be. What it wasn’t, was a quiet Lee who jumped whenever the phone rang. That wasn’t him any more than she was the person who now took tranquillisers.

  Wahid Sheikh had, so he said, assembled an impressive amount of jewellery to give to his prospective bride. He’d told Mumtaz all about it. Of course it had been done to humiliate her. What he was saying was Look at all these lovely things I’m giving your daughter! It’s more than you ever could.

  She’d wipe that smile off his face. She’d do it that evening when she went home and told Shazia everything.

  The girls celebrated the end of their exams with a slap-up meal in the chicken shop. As well as Shazia there were five girls, including her best friend, Grace. Mamba, the gangsta object of Grace’s affections, sat outside smoking weed.

  Rabia, a very neat and clever girl whose parents came from Saudi Arabia said, ‘So what are we all doing now we’ve finished college?’

  Grace automatically looked out of the window at Mamba. Shazia rolled her eyes. ‘Work in my cousin’s shop to get some money and wait for my results, I guess,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve gotta go on holiday with my mum,’ Mary said.

  ‘Where?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘Skegness,’ she said. ‘In a caravan like last year. It’s shit. Mum fancies this bloke up there and so we have to go to be with him. When they have sex in the caravan it’s like trying to sleep next to elephants shagging.’

  The girls laughed. But Banveet, who came from a very religious Sikh family, blushed. ‘How do you put up with that?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ Mary said. ‘Tell ’em to shut the fuck up. But they don’t take no notice. I usually go out.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s sand dunes,’ Mary said. ‘I just muck about in them.’

  Mary had always been a tomboy. All the girls could imagine her rolling about in sand and getting really dirty. Mary didn’t give a toss how she looked.

  Kym, on the other hand, gave far too much of a toss. Whenever she moved her head, her blonde extensions almost had someone’s eye out.

  ‘What, at night?’ she said. ‘On your own?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I could never do that. Not without my Manny.’

  Only Grace and Kym had boyfriends – and Grace’s relationship with Mamba was open to question. She seemed to be a lot more keen than he was. Shazia watched him suck hard on his joint. Not once did his eyes flicker in Grace’s direction. But he did look at Kym. In spite of all the false hair, false eyelashes and fake tan, she was a very pretty girl. But she was also the girlfriend of a boy who was very high up in a rival gang. Manny Nwogu was a hardman who everyone knew carried a knife as long as his forearm.

  ‘Well, I’m going to Saudi,’ Rabia said.

  ‘To see your family?’

  ‘Yes, but also something else,’ she said. ‘Something, er …’ She laughed. Then she blushed.

  Shazi
a frowned. Rabia was a really brilliant girl who would probably get straight A-star results. She really hoped she wasn’t going to say what she thought she was going to say.

  ‘Mum wants me to meet this boy,’ she said.

  Kym squealed. ‘Oh, honey, that’s amazing!’

  More subdued, Banveet said, ‘To marry?’

  ‘Of course. Apparently he’s really handsome and really rich and he’ll let me have a career and everything!’

  Shazia, the only other Muslim at the table, pondered on the words ‘let me’ as she picked at her fried chicken. A girl as bright as Rabia should make her own decisions.

  ‘Have you seen a picture? Kym asked.

  ‘No. But I know that he’s handsome because my brother Salman has met him,’ Rabia said.

  Shazia and Banveet exchanged a look. Ban’s dad had tried to arrange her marriage once but she and her mum had refused to even think about it. Ban was lucky, her mum was a doctor as well as being the one who wore the trousers in their household.

  ‘What about you, Shaz?’ Rabia asked.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah. Aren’t your family looking out for someone for you?’

  Grace answered for her.

  ‘No, she’s going uni, ain’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  And she probably was. Amma had banged on about university so much Shazia had sort of given in. It was probably a good idea to follow through with her place at Manchester. Hendon could come later.

  The shop door opened and a man came in. Asian, probably in his early twenties, he was clean-shaven, smart and extremely handsome. All the girls stared.

  ‘Two pieces of chicken and fries, please,’ he said to the boy behind the counter.

  Shazia consciously looked away.

  When he’d gone, Rabia said, ‘My Turki is more handsome than he was.’

  Mary said, ‘Ya think?’

  The other girls laughed. Shazia watched the man go to his car, a green Corsa, and drive off.

  ‘Don’t like his car much,’ Kym said.

  But Shazia did. Having a ‘normal’ car meant that he might just be a ‘normal’ boy, as in not flash. She liked that, mainly because it meant that he probably wasn’t like her dad.

  Newham was somewhere Bob didn’t know well. He had relatives in the borough but he rarely visited. On this occasion, however, his reason for being in the manor was work. After he’d stuffed some chicken and chips in his face, he was off to Forest Gate nick to see the formidable DI Violet Collins.

  Collins and Montalban had a bit of cross-borough working going on with regard to Aziz Shah the tailor. It seemed that now that Taha Mirza was dead, Aziz was taking it upon himself to train up young Muslim lads for the boxing ring. As far as anyone knew he had no qualification to do this. He hadn’t even known Mirza that well. So what was his angle? If any? His brother-in-law, Vakeel Uddin was in prison on remand pending trial for terror offences and so it would be reasonable to assume that Aziz would keep a low profile. Clearly he wasn’t.

  But then Bob was aware he didn’t know everything about the counterterrorism operation that had spanned Newham and Tower Hamlets. All he was really sure about was that Uddin, who had been a member of some dodgy Islamic study group in south London, had brought people, mainly kids, into the UK from Syria. Once in the UK they had been placed with families by Shah and then radicalised. Concurrent to this, another member of the dodgy group, Taha Mirza, had been training men up to fight for ISIS in Syria. Everything they’d done channelled into radicalisation.

  But there had been other players too. Not just the Light of True Belief people down in Peckham. Rumour had it that there were further connections that counterterrorism were keeping to themselves. Vakeel Uddin, it was said, had been to Syria. But no one seemed to know who he’d met there, if anyone. Bob, like his boss, Ricky Montalban, sensed that counterterrorism were still working on this network, in one way or another.

  In the meantime he’d report Shah’s latest activities to Vi Collins and hope she didn’t spend too much time trying to seduce him. Not that her approaches were aggressive, they were just persistent.

  ‘Jodie?’

  Ever since Shereen had phoned him that one time, Lee had taken to contacting his daughter every day. Knowing he’d, albeit unwillingly, broken the rules imposed on him by counterterrorism, he wanted to make sure that his mistakes didn’t rebound on his family.

  He heard the girl sigh.

  ‘You there?’ he asked.

  He knew she was, he just needed to hear her voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Just making sure you’re OK.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ she said. ‘Not with a man twice my age, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

  ‘Babe …’

  ‘Nobby no-mates as usual. The way you like it.’

  She was bitter. Her mother said she’d admitted she still had feelings for ‘Jase’ the racist ex-con. Last Lee had heard he was in Birmingham.

  ‘And yeah, I am looking for a job,’ Jodie continued. ‘But there’s nothing except selling sticks of rock to tourists or hideous Goth clothes to losers.’

  ‘So do that,’ Lee said.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she answered. Then she ended the call.

  Mumtaz had gone home early so she could cook a special meal for Shazia now her exams were over. Lee envied their relationship. He envied the way Shazia, however difficult she could be, always knuckled down to work and study. But then she wasn’t mesmerised by bling and plastic tits. According to Mumtaz, what floated Shazia’s boat these days, was a desire to work in policing. Lee hoped that if she did go into the job she would not be disappointed. Asian women didn’t get an easy time of it. Casual racism was the least of it, as Lee well knew. Was it any wonder so many Muslim kids turned to the dark side of their religion when the word ‘Paki’ was still such common currency in so many places?

  However, not for the first time, he wondered what, specifically, had turned Fayyad al’Barri’s face towards Islamic State. Djamila had been instrumental in his conversion but something other than sibling fellow feeling must have been involved. Had his defection to ISIS been sparked by one particular incident or just a build-up of many slights and insults over the years? He’d had a good career going in banking, as far as Lee could remember. But sometimes, often, a good career wasn’t enough. Also Fayyad hadn’t had a girlfriend, or anyone significant in his life. Had he perhaps been secretly gay? Had joining ISIS been his way of atoning for that ‘sin’? And what about Djamila?

  Both Fayyad and Djamila had seen more violence in their lives than most. Growing up on the Plain of Nineveh, they’d seen many, many violent men attempt to take over their home. In the end the violent men had won. And had that been at the root of their divergence from the world of their parents? That winning violence? Had they really learnt that, in the end, hate, violence and barbarity always won?

  If they had, it was hardly surprising. But what still puzzled Lee was why Abbas had died. Someone had killed him – either Djamila, Fayyad, the taxi driver or Fazil. He knew he’d never know who had actually done the deed. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t speculate. Assuming that either Djamila, Fayyad or both of them had killed Abbas, then why? Abbas had been a devoted father, he would have done anything to protect those children, whatever their crimes. And why had he had to die? Had he perhaps tried to leave the house again to go and get help? Had he tried to persuade his children to stop following Islamic State? As he went back over the events of that day, the time he had spent waiting outside that house after Abbas had left him seemed very short. But had it been?

  He wondered whether Shereen knew. Surely she would have to be told at some time. Abbas had been her husband, Djamila her daughter. And, he thought, Fayyad was her son. Lee had seen the young man in that room with those counterterrorism officers. He had been alive – then. Djamila was dead, although he hadn’t seen her body, but Fayyad had lived.

  Lee couldn
’t help wondering whether there was a reason for that.

  Although she could hardly eat because her stomach was so constricted, Mumtaz waited until after their meal to tell Shazia the truth about her father’s death. The girl had been so happy to have finished her exams, Mumtaz felt she had to give her at least a few hours of joy.

  Shazia had suggested that they both spend the evening watching ‘daft DVDs’— kids films and superhero movies. Mumtaz said she wanted to talk to her first.

  The girl was tall and slim, like her father, but she had the gentle features of Ahmet Hakim’s first wife, her mother. Although they’d had an awkward start to their relationship, she was a good kid and Mumtaz loved her. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was hurt her.

  But then if she went to Wahid Sheikh as his wife, she’d be more than hurt. She could very easily end up dead.

  When Mumtaz had finished the washing-up she came back into the living room where Shazia was draped over one of their battered old wing chairs. She sat down on the sofa. Then she said, ‘Shazia, I need to tell you something.’

  For a moment Shazia looked confused, even a little worried. But then her face brightened and she said, ‘Are you finally going out with Lee?’

  She smiled. Shazia had long entertained the hope that her amma and Lee would get together romantically. And Mumtaz was no fool. She knew that Lee was attracted to her. But she also knew that she was way too damaged by her relationship with Ahmet to let another man into her life for the foreseeable future, even if she was attracted to him. And she was …

  ‘No, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘It’s about your father.’

  Shazia frowned. She didn’t like talking about her dad. He’d hurt her so badly she preferred to pretend, for much of the time, that he’d never existed.

  When she did speak, she said, ‘What about him?’

  Mumtaz swallowed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you know he was murdered …’