Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (14 page)

Lee opened the caravan door and walked down the few metal steps to the ground. ‘You not going to Elvis Nite then, Leslie?’ he asked.

‘I’d rather have a colonoscopy performed by a lunatic using a
fence post,’ the brilliant mind of Leslie Baum replied. ‘Good evening to you, DI Arnold.’

*

Rashida sat between her two little brothers and ate her soup in silence. From across the table, sitting beside Zizi, her mother watched her. It was the first time that Rashida had eaten with her family in almost a week.

Eventually her mother said, ‘Remember how many copies of the Holy Koran you swore your oath on, Rashida? If you run away from school tomorrow you will burn in Hell.’

‘I won’t,’ Rashida said.

She felt Zizi’s eyes on her, full of mischief and some fear.

Salwa raised her arms and shrugged. ‘I have never known such schools as they have in this country,’ she said. ‘If a parent says that a child is sick, then a child is sick. How can they not believe? What’s the matter with them?’

No one said a word. The boys because they didn’t know any better, Zizi because she knew that her sister had done something bad but didn’t really know exactly what and Rashida because she was still in shock that her mother had actually believed MJ’s impression of Mrs Rose, the headteacher.

‘How can a school give a child a medical?’ Salwa continued. ‘It’s not decent.’

‘But they won’t do it now I’m going back, Omy,’ Rashida said.

Her mother shook her head.

‘And I won’t go anywhere but school,’ Rashida continued. ‘I’ve sworn an oath and I will keep to it.’

‘You will go to Cairo when term is over,’ Salwa said. ‘And know this, Rashida: it’s your father’s will that you marry Anwar.’

Rashida didn’t believe her but she said, ‘Yes, Omy.’

The younger of her two brothers, Gamal, said, ‘Is Rashida getting married?’

His mother stroked his hair. Rashida knew that Gamal was her favourite. He was a boy and, unlike her other brother, Asim, he wasn’t sulky.

‘Yes, she is,’ Salwa said in the baby voice she often used to Gamal. ‘Her time has come.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she was prepared a long time ago and she needs to marry before it is too late.’

‘Too late for what?’

Gamal was always asking questions. Asim stopped eating and slumped back in his chair. He hated too much talk and was much happier alone with his computer. Rashida stifled a smile. She’d caught him looking at online pictures he shouldn’t.

‘Before she gets too old,’ Salwa said.

‘Too old for what?’ Gamal asked.

‘For any man to want her. Men only like to marry girls when they are young and guaranteed to be pure. It is the Islamic thing to do.’

Rashida boiled. Her mother was so ignorant! The tradition of child brides and their ghastly ‘preparation’ was not Islamic but an evil folk-custom that affected all peoples of the Middle East, including those who weren’t Muslims. But she kept her opinions to herself and carried on eating.

‘When I grow up, will I have to get married when I’m still at school?’ Gamal asked.

This time Rashida’s sister, Zizi, replied, ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t be silly. You won’t get married until you’re really old.’

‘But will my wife be young?’

Salwa kissed him on the head. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about that, my little darling. Omy will find a young and tender bride for you. She will be as beautiful as a rose.’

Rashida put her spoon down and stopped eating. Suddenly she felt nauseous.

‘Hello?’

Mumtaz put a professional smile on her face. She’d packed kitchen equipment for hours when she’d got home the previous evening and was exhausted. ‘Mrs el Shamy, it’s Mumtaz Hakim from the Arnold Agency,’ she said.

‘Oh. Do you have news about el Masri? Have you seen him having relations with his patients?’

Like all clients, she wanted instant results.

‘No,’ Mumtaz said. ‘But I have heard rumours about inappropriate behaviour on his part. I’ve also made an appointment to see him next Tuesday.’

‘About his behaviour?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

Mumtaz sighed. She’d explained this. Now she was going to have to explain it again. ‘Mrs el Shamy, I’m gathering information about Dr el Masri. I’m not in the hospital as myself. As you suggested, I am working with the Advocacy. So I am undercover. I’m doing this so that I can collect intelligence on Dr el Masri for you. A few rumours about a doctor’s behaviour is not enough to interest either the police or the BMA, which is the organization that is responsible for disciplining doctors.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘I pay you a lot of money to do this.’

‘I know,’ Mumtaz said. ‘But in order to make that investment worthwhile, you must let me do what I can to find out the truth. Wanting el Masri to be an abuser doesn’t make him one.’

‘But he is! Hatem said he was!’

‘Mrs el Shamy, I am not disbelieving your husband,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I’m working on it. It’s looking promising. Just give me time …’

‘You have two weeks, that is all!’ the Egyptian said and then cut the connection.

Mumtaz put her head in her hands. Of course money was an issue, she understood that more than almost anyone. But if Salwa el Shamy wanted to know the truth she would have to wait. Working to some arbitrary deadline was impossible. Anyway, even if she’d wanted to call her client back, Mumtaz couldn’t speak to her again that day. When she’d been packing away the kitchen equipment she’d had Naz Sheikh on the phone, twice. The first time he’d offered to help her move, for a price, and the second time he’d talked about her continuing ‘debt’. She’d ended up in tears. Luckily Shazia had been up in her room doing her homework and was none the wiser. But it was wearing Mumtaz down. As hard as she tried, throwing herself into her work, although helpful, was not blanking out the horror of her own situation. Once the house was sold she didn’t strictly owe the Sheikhs a penny. It was debatable whether she had ever really owed them anything. However it was too late for thoughts like those now. They’d issued her with a contract for a new ‘debt’, and although she still hadn’t signed it, she knew she’d have to.

At one time she had thought about trying to talk to others who were in debt to the Sheikhs. She’d heard rumours about a
Turkish kebab restaurant and a widow who had a fabric shop in East Ham. But how could she even begin to talk to them about it? The Sheikhs had houses that they rented out all over east London. She had once followed Rizwan Sheikh as he went on a rent-collecting trip around Canning Town and although she had tried to talk to one of his tenants afterwards, the man hadn’t been able to speak any English. A lot of the Sheikhs’ tenants appeared to be Middle Eastern and, from what she had seen of them, they all looked poor and frightened. Mumtaz strongly suspected they were in the country illegally. Not that she could use her suspicions to her advantage. If she tried to harm the Sheikhs by going for their poor tenants she’d find it hard to live with herself.

The office phone rang.

‘Hello, Arnold Agency.’

‘Hi, Mumtaz.’

It was Amy, the freelancer. She was watching Antoni Brzezinski, whose mother feared he was dealing drugs.

‘How’s things on the Keir Hardie Estate?’

‘Quiet. Antoni didn’t get up until eleven, when his mother got in from her cleaning job,’ Amy said. ‘Then they had a row and he left the flat in a strop. Now he’s hanging around the shops on Freemasons Road with an Asian boy and a white lad, both wearing black hoodies. They’re smoking cigarettes and the white lad and Antoni are drinking cheap cider, but nothing more.’

‘Some kids just get drunk, they don’t do drugs.’

‘I know, but it’s early days,’ Amy said. ‘How’s Lee?’

‘Working.’

‘Working?’

Mumtaz shook her head. Lee had gone back to work far too
soon. ‘On a case down in Southend. But you know how he is, Amy, you can’t tell him anything.’

‘I know.’ And then she said, ‘Hey, did that cute guy I found on the stairs come back or call?’

Naz. Mumtaz’s face dropped. ‘No,’ she lied, ‘he didn’t.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Amy said.

‘Yes. Isn’t it.’

*

The bloke knocking on Ken Rivers’ door was so big, Lee was concerned he might pop the buttons on his jacket. It was a very nice jacket, light grey with an attractive sheen. But it was too small for him. Lee sank down a little behind his steering wheel. A good minute passed before the old man came to the door. He looked angry and when he spoke he sounded it. ‘You can’t come in,’ he said. ‘She ain’t well.’

Lee didn’t hear what the big man said but then he heard Ken say, ‘I can give you a cheque now, or I’ve got a ton in cash and I’ll give you the rest later.’

Lee still couldn’t hear the big man talking. He risked lowering his passenger side window a little more. Briefly Ken appeared to look over but then he heard him say, ‘Well, that’s the way it is, take it or leave it.’

‘I can’t,’ the big man said. ‘You know that.’

Ken Rivers shrugged.

‘Tomorrow without fail,’ the big man said. ‘How’s that?’

Ken muttered something that Lee thought was probably an agreement. Then the big man said, ‘So, where’s Cindy? You know?’

The old man shook his head. ‘Went out in her car with the baby. I dunno where they went.’

‘Well, tell her I called.’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’

The man began to turn, ‘Don’t forget, tomorrow? OK?’

‘OK.’ Ken Rivers shuffled back inside the house and slammed the door behind him. The ape-like creature lumbered down the path and got into a BMW. He made a phone call and then drove away.

Ken Rivers owed money to someone. It was more than a hundred pounds and whoever the large and scary man had been, he hadn’t seemed to like cheques much. Lee took a punt and drove up to the leisure centre where he parked his car. He headed to the High Street and waited in a shop doorway diagonally opposite NatWest Bank. Just over an hour later he saw Ken Rivers walk slowly up the High Street eating a meat pie from a Greggs bag. Lee wasn’t surprised when the old man went into the bank. When he came out again he was tucking something into the inside breast pocket of his raincoat. What Lee wanted to know, however, was whether he’d got money out to pay his debt, or to piss up the wall at the casino.

*

Mr Cotton, the chief psychiatric consultant, looked down at his notes and then looked up at Shirley. He coughed hard. His face went red, and for a moment, Shirley felt alarmed. But then he stopped.

‘You’ve no staff corroboration,’ he said. ‘Not even anything from other patients.’

‘I’m working on that,’ Shirley said. ‘When Dylan originally complained I only spoke to him. Now I’ll need to speak to other service users.’

‘Yes, but even if you do, you know as well as I do that they can sometimes experience things that haven’t actually happened.’

‘Yes,’ Shirley said. ‘But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be heard.’

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I am merely pointing out to you the simple fact that any resolution of this complaint may well hinge upon the balance of probabilities that exist between the stories of Dylan Smith and Timothy Pool.’

‘I know.’

Shirley was aware of the slight catch in her voice. When her office door had finally slammed open the previous evening she’d screamed in shock, but she’d seen no one. In spite of her fear she’d run out into the corridor and looked both ways. Nothing. Now though, still shaken, she was determined to stay her course. She’d also put in a request for the caretaker to look at the lock on her door. There was always the possibility that there was something wrong with it. Although Shirley didn’t really believe that.

Mr Cotton folded himself back into the depths of his big leather chair. Shirley thought he looked like a roosting vulture. ‘I must say, I’m finding it hard to believe that a man like Timothy Pool would be violent to one of his patients,’ he said.

Shirley wanted to say ‘Where the hell have you been?’ but she didn’t. Although it was eighteen months ago, the consultant had had cancer and was still under treatment to monitor his health. He had to be at least partially distracted. ‘There have been other complaints about him in the past,’ she said.

‘But none of them have ever come to anything.’

Shirley said nothing.

He leant forwards. Hunched up, he looked even thinner
than he usually did. ‘Mrs Mayfield, when this Dylan Smith thing first happened, I thought you and I were on the same page,’ he said. ‘We usually are.’

He was right. They generally were. Not this time.

‘Mr Pool is one of my longest-serving and most reliable members of staff,’ he said. ‘He has a spotless service record. All his nurses support him a hundred per cent and he’s—’

‘What he is, is a bully,’ Shirley said. As soon as she said it she felt her face flush.

For a moment he just stared at her and then he said, ‘You do know that you will have to back that assertion up, don’t you, Mrs Mayfield?’

‘Yes.’ Her heart was pounding now and she felt a bit sick.

Mr Cotton sighed.

‘Timothy Pool has been ruling that ward by fear for years, maybe decades,’ she said. ‘You must know!’

‘In what way does Nurse Pool use fear?’

‘I don’t know, exactly,’ she said. ‘Maybe he threatens staff with the sack …’

‘No, no, no, that couldn’t happen. There’d have to be an investigation and if malpractice was so much as suspected, heads would metaphorically roll. Anyway, why would Nurse Pool threaten his staff? What would be the purpose of that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Shirley said. ‘To preserve his power?’

‘His power? Timothy is a deeply religious man. Power means nothing to him.’

‘Doesn’t it? I’m not so sure about that,’ Shirley said. ‘Listen, Mr Cotton, Timothy is always talking to service users in ways that he must know are inappropriate. Going on about the Lord and God and what have you. Nobody who works here is supposed to try to influence service users about politics or religion.’

‘I know Timothy can be a bit—’

‘He’s out of order,’ she said.

‘Do you have anything against Christianity?’

‘No! But it’s wrong to push it down people’s throats. Mr Cotton, I think that Timothy is a fanatic. One of my old advocates left last year because he thought that Nurse Pool was just plain wrong and he couldn’t work with him. And before you ask, that volunteer was not an ex-service user. Pool punishes his patients. He makes moral judgements about them not just in terms of their index offences but also their everyday behaviour.’

‘What do you mean?’

She said, ‘Well, there’s the smoking, which he doesn’t like, and Dylan told me that Nurse Pool sometimes tells his staff to watch out for anyone who might be masturbating at night.’

‘Oh, that’s preposterous!’ he said.

‘Is it? How do you know? Mr Cotton, I know that you want your hospital to run smoothly and I know you have the best interests of everyone here at heart, but you have to accept that staff can mess up.’

‘I do accept that.’

‘No, you don’t. Every time there is an incident involving a member of staff you tell me how great you think they are and how much confidence you have in them. And I know you don’t mean to put pressure on me to favour your staff over the service users but that is how it feels and that is what I’ve done in the past. And it’s wrong.’

His eyes were very blue she noticed as he stared at her.

‘What I mean is that it has been wrong of me,’ Shirley added. ‘To be influenced.’

Mr Cotton put his pen down. ‘Be that as it may,’ he said. ‘I have never sought to unduly sway you.’

He had but she said, ‘No.’

‘You do know I imagine that this case will almost inevitably involve your word on behalf of Dylan Smith against Timothy Pool’s.’

‘Maybe.’ Shirley knew that he was almost certainly right. The chances of any other service users coming forward to support Dylan were practically zero. When Timothy was on the ward, all the patients flinched. She’d seen them and passed by on the other side. But no more.

Shirley got to her feet. ‘Well, if that’s all …’

‘Sadly it probably is,’ he said. He was like a vulture again, hunched up in his chair.

‘It gives me no pleasure to do this,’ Shirley said. ‘But it is part of my job.’

‘I know,’ he said. And then he smiled. ‘But let’s hope we can resolve this amicably, shall we?’

‘I do hope so.’

‘And so do I, Mrs Mayfield,’ he said. His face looked strained again. ‘For my part I would like to get my hospital back to normal again as soon as possible.’

But Shirley doubted whether that would happen. Not if she had anything to do with it.

*

If he was honest, even Leslie Baum’s voice drove Lee Arnold mad. It was posh, obsequious, tetchy and slightly common all at the same time.

‘I beg to differ, DI Arnold,’ Leslie said as Lee tried to eat a seafront hotdog while holding his phone to his ear, ‘but I don’t think you can have consulted the Land Registry.’

‘Leslie, I did,’ Lee said. ‘It said that the property was purchased by Mr and Mrs K. Rivers.’

‘And then purchased just six months ago by a Mr S. Warner. When did you look at the registry?’

‘I dunno, a couple of weeks ago …’

‘Maybe it did take them time to update their records. But I doubt it,’ Leslie said. ‘You really do have to be meticulous, DI Arnold.’

‘Ken Rivers is still living in the flat.’

‘Doesn’t mean that he still owns it,’ Leslie said.

Disgusted by the amount of grease on his hotdog onions, Lee threw what was left of it into a bin. The bloody awful slot-machine place he was walking past was playing an electronic version of ‘Greensleeves’ at him. Lee wanted whoever was in charge of that dead.