An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) (18 page)

‘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 if 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 …’

‘Seven hundred pounds,’ she said.

He looked at her, his eyes fixed in obvious shock.

Then she said, ‘So there, you can do nothing about it.’

He didn’t say a thing.

‘And even if you could, what about next month, the month after that? And after that? Lee, my debts are a bottomless pit.’ Still he said nothing and so she pushed it further. ‘And the seven hundred pounds I need this month isn’t even all of it. As you’ve noticed, I’ve been selling things. Now there’s nothing left.’ There was a silence, into which she added, ‘Except the house.’

Lee sat back down in front of her again. ‘And if you sold the house …’

‘If I sold the house and got a good price for it, I may be alright,’ she said. ‘But that’s very unlikely, Lee, in this financial climate.’

‘So you’re stuck.’

‘Yes, I’m stuck,’ she said.

‘So if you’re stuck anyway, what’s the point of going off and looking for a new job that’ll only pay you a couple of hundred quid more a month than I do, at the most?’

She didn’t want him involved. ‘I can’t ex—’

‘I’ll get seven hundred quid out of the business account now,’ he said.

Mumtaz felt her eyes widen.

‘I won’t take no for an answer,’ he said. He stood up. ‘You don’t have to pay me back.’

‘But …’

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it month by month. I’ll give you the money this month and then if you’ve a shortfall next month then you can—’

‘I can’t do that!’ Mumtaz stood, smoothing a hand agitatedly across her headscarf. She paced.

Lee went back to his desk and put his jacket on. Watching him, she said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘Like I said, to the bank.’

‘No!’ She put an arm up to stop him from leaving. It rested on his shoulder in what looked almost like an embrace. ‘I can’t let you, Lee! I just can’t!’

He gently moved her arm out of his path and said, ‘Unless you let me sort out the bastards who’re threatening you, this is the way it’s going to have to be. This is the way I’ll make it.’

Now there was a sight for sore eyes: Majid Islam deep in conversation with Zahid Sheikh – and both of them smiling. That wasn’t right. Since when had Majid Islam been thick with any of the local gangsters?
But then,
Vi thought,
since when had Majid Islam smoked cannabis?

John Sawyer’s body was due to be released to his family later on that day and there were no words of comfort that Vi Collins could give them. John was dead and they still hadn’t arrested anyone for his murder. She tried to comfort herself with the well-known fact that the friendless and dispossessed always presented a challenge if they were suddenly found dead. There was no-one to ask about their habits, their likes and dislikes, where they went and where they didn’t.

That John had been killed in the Plashet graveyard was no help at all. There’d been no signs of anyone climbing over the walls except for Majid Islam, Mark Murray – Bully – and Kazia Ostrowska. John had been stabbed so there had to be blood, but there wasn’t any, except at the site of his death. Why hadn’t he fought his attacker? It had to have something to do with the blow he’d received to the head before he was stabbed. Either he’d come to the cemetery unconscious somehow or he’d just materialised, dead, in the cemetery – with a skeleton in his arms. And where
that
had come from was anybody’s guess. It certainly hadn’t come from the Plashet and Vi was still waiting for DNA tests.

Everyone who’d been at the scene had been weird in some way – even Majid Islam, the erstwhile protector of the cemetery. None of them were what could be described as ‘regular’ people, but had any of them killed John Sawyer? No. Given that neither Kazia, Majid Islam or Mark Murray had any blood or fibres of any sort from John Sawyer’s body on them, it was unlikely.

And so that left just one possibility, the unknown man that none of the people involved claimed to have seen properly. The third man. She pulled up Bully Murray’s mum’s address on her computer system.

*

She was looking in the window of Topshop. All around her Westfield Shopping Centre buzzed with the sound of people. A couple of young girls looked at her and giggled, probably wondering why someone like Wendy was staring at a load of teenage clothes. She liked denim shorts over thick tights and she had the body to carry them off, but she was skint. She’d walked from Plaistow to Stratford so she could wander around Westfield because she was bored. She didn’t even have enough money for a cup of tea, especially not at the prices they were charging in there.