Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (15 page)

‘Leslie, why were you looking at the Land Registry anyway?’ he asked. ‘I told you to investigate Rivers’ finances.’

‘And his property isn’t part of his financial portfolio? DI Arnold, when I do a job, I do it properly or not at all. I’m the best there is at what I do, as Wolverine rather clunkily puts it.’

‘I wanted to know about Rivers’ bank account.’

‘I’ll get to that. But if he’s splashing a lot of money about then it could be cash he’s made from selling his flat to Mr Warner,’ Leslie said.

There were schemes whereby people could sell their homes, still live in them and pay rent. Equity release. It was something that mainly elderly people did, usually to prop up a small pension. It was often dodgy and the person who released the equity in their home generally regretted it. But it was generally done by companies rather than individuals.

‘Do you know who this S. Warner is?’ Lee asked.

‘No, but I can find out.’

Lee remembered the big bloke who had come to Ken Rivers for money that morning. Could he be S. Warner or was he just his muscle? Probably the latter. He’d asked about a girl called Cindy when he’d spoken to Ken – the girl with the old-style Mini and the baby. Was she a tenant of his too?

‘OK, Leslie, I’m gonna leave it with you,’ Lee said. ‘Get back to me when you’ve got some junk on S. Warner.’

‘I will consult with my colleagues,’ Leslie said and then he hung up.

Lee had seen a few of Leslie’s colleagues and wondered if they had actually been in his caravan, hiding in the bedrooms and stinking of spot cream, when he’d called. If they had, he had a nasty feeling they’d all been reading comics. He didn’t really care. What was exercising Lee’s mind was whether or not Ken Rivers had sold his flat and, if he had, whether he was using the money from the sale to gamble. It wasn’t Lee’s business but if it was the case, and Ken had his own money to burn, it could rule out any need for contact between father and son.. Maybe Ken and Phil really hadn’t got on?

His phone rang again. Lee moved away from the slot-machine place. ‘Hello?’

‘Lee, Vi,’ she rasped.

‘Wotcha. How’s it going in cut-throat land?’

‘It could be better,’ Vi said.

‘Sorry. What can I do for you? Stick of Southend rock? Large sugar dummy on a ribbon?’

‘Think I’ll pass,’ she said.

He heard her take a deep breath. It was something bad.

‘What is it, Vi?’

‘I think it’s yer girlfriend,’ she said.

‘Susan? What do you mean? What’s she done?’

‘I think she’s been calling me and then hanging up,’ Vi said. ‘Twice this morning, three times this afternoon. About an hour ago I called the number back. I thought it was some weird mistake. You know how it is with mobiles. But it went straight to voicemail. Told me to leave a message for Susan Castle. That’s her surname, isn’t it?’

Lee slumped against a wall. ‘Yeah.’

‘I mean I’m not saying it was definitely her but …’

Lee asked Vi to read out the phone number. It was Susan’s.

‘Did you leave her a message?’ Lee said.

‘Yeah, I asked her why she was calling me. I suggested she might have been given my number in error by somebody else.’

‘That isn’t likely, is it?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Yeah, but …’

He’d never given Susan Vi’s number. Why would he? She’d made it clear that she didn’t like her the first night they’d met and he’d been careful to make all his calls to Vi well away from Susan. She must’ve looked at his phone sometime when he was in the flat. A lot of people spied on their partners via their mobiles.

‘I’m sorry, Vi,’ he said.

‘Not your fault, or even hers,’ she said. ‘Women get possessive.’

He knew that. What Susan was doing, though common, was fucked up. Phoning Vi and then just going silent on her was creepy.

‘I’ll have words,’ Lee said.

‘All right.’ She paused for a moment and then she said, ‘You feeling OK, are you?’

‘Jaw’s still sore and I’ve got some bruises the size of dinner plates on my belly. But I can’t complain.’

Vi croaked a laugh and Lee could hear that in spite of her doctor’s orders she was drawing on a fag.

When he got off the phone, Lee had some thinking to do. He liked Susan but if she was going to behave like a nutter around him he didn’t want to know. To look at his phone, which she must’ve done, was a complete betrayal of his trust. At the same time, he was keen to go to the casino that night, so he’d have to keep her sweet for the time being. Ken Rivers had taken money out of his bank and Lee wanted to know what he was going to do with it. Lee hoped Ken didn’t think that he could pay his rent from his winnings, but he strongly suspected that he did.

It was cold and windy and so Rashida clung tightly to MJ’s side. Her friend was so fearless and confident, not even a gale could knock her down.

MJ drew on one of her mother’s gold-collared menthol cigarettes. ‘We have to get you out of there, Rashida,’ she said. ‘I’ve spoken to my mum. You can come and live with us.’

Much as she loved MJ and her mum, Rashida couldn’t think of it. ‘No, you’ll all get into trouble and—’

‘My brother’s a barrister,’ MJ said. ‘He’s the straightest man I know but he has his uses. Krish will sort it all out legally. Don’t worry.’

‘MJ, you’ve done enough already,’ Rashida said. ‘Now I’m back at school, I’ll be OK.’

But she knew she was lying. MJ knew it too.

‘Rash, don’t be so silly,’ she said. ‘Your mum’ll just wait until the Christmas holidays and then take you to the bastard in Cairo. You have to leave, girl. You have to get out of there and tell Social Services what your family have in mind for you. Come stay with us, eh?’

The Joshis had money. Rashida had been to their house (without her mother’s knowledge) twice. They lived in a big modern place overlooking Wanstead Flats. MJ’s late father had been a
surgeon and had left the family a lot of assets and a big pension. Mrs Joshi spent it liberally – on her house, her two children and on herself. The first time she’d met Rashida she’d just had plastic surgery. ‘A tummy tuck,’ she’d said. ‘Not for some man, you understand. I was simply sick of looking at what looked like a jelly at the top of my thighs.’ Rashida had blushed. It had been bad enough that Mrs Joshi had greeted the girls wearing nothing but a short leopardskin kaftan and a pair of sky-high wedges, but details about her actual body had been too much. On the plus side, MJ’s family were kind. Like her other friend Kerry’s mum and dad and her numerous siblings, who lived in a stinking dump on the Barking Road, they were good people. That was all the more reason not to involve them.

‘I can’t,’ Rashida said.

MJ sighed. ‘So what will you do? Look, if it’s like a Muslim thing, you can do whatever you want at our house. You can pray, you can cover, you don’t have to be like me and Mum.’

‘I know.’

Rashida felt bad. Mrs Joshi and MJ were great but the way they lived was not her way and she was nervous about it. What if MJ’s brother turned up one day when she was alone in the house? What if Mrs Joshi had a man round? Rashida knew that she did from time to time because MJ had told her. Weirdly, she’d been all for it. ‘Mummy’s an attractive woman,’ she’d said. ‘Why should she spend the rest of her life mourning Daddy? He’s gone.’

Somewhere, she couldn’t remember in what book, Rashida had read that Hindu women threw themselves on their dead husbands’ funeral pyres. But maybe that had been a long time ago? She’d certainly not heard of it happening since she’d been in London and Mrs Joshi clearly hadn’t done that.

They arrived at the end of Rashida’s road. In a lot of ways, MJ
was like a boy. She even sometimes walked her friends home. She put her hands on Rashida’s shoulders. ‘Look, just think about it,’ she said. ‘You and me together, we got you back to school.’

‘You did.’

‘We both did,’ MJ said. ‘Don’t throw it all away, Rash.’

MJ kissed Rashida on both cheeks, which always made her feel uncomfortable. But she smiled.

‘See you tomorrow,’ MJ said and then she ran off back the way they’d come. Rashida watched her as she disappeared into the distance behind a cloud of menthol cigarette smoke.

*

‘This is my Uncle Bob,’ the boy said as he pushed the middle-aged man across the threshold of Leslie Baum’s caravan.

Leslie viewed the man, who stank of cigarettes and was clearly terrified, with suspicion. He knew the boy, who called himself ‘Gollum’ after the character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Uncle Bob was new to him.

‘What are you doing?’ Leslie asked.

The boy pushed the man down into the old deckchair Leslie had left out since Lee Arnold’s visit and said, ‘Just sit there, I’ll sort it.’

Leslie wasn’t good at children’s ages but he reckoned that Gollum was probably about fifteen. He still wore school uniform – Southend High School for Boys – but he’d grown a lot since they’d first met three years before. Gollum, for all his youth, was man-sized. He was also one of Leslie’s many informants.

Unnerved by the presence of another middle-aged man in his caravan, Leslie looked at his computer screen and said, ‘What is it, Gollum? Why have you brought your uncle … whoever he is?’

‘Bob.’

‘Yes?’ the other man said. Then he looked at the boy. ‘What’s going on, Pat? Who’s Gollum?’

‘Pat?’

Gollum whispered to Leslie, ‘Sorry. He’s a bit, you know, mental.’

Leslie flinched away from the boy. ‘What do you want?’

Gollum took his phone out of his pocket. ‘You texted,’ he said. ‘Information about an S. Warner? Might be a bit dodgy?’

Leslie always contacted his many acolytes when he had some sort of job or investigation in hand. Sometimes it concerned the secret rulers of the world, sometimes it was about alien abduction, and on a few occasions it was a favour for DI Lee Arnold.

‘Do you know an S. Warner?’

‘No, but Uncle Bob does.’ He looked at Bob and smiled. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Shane Warner? He’s a nutter,’ Bob said. ‘Don’t wanna have nothing to do with him.’

Leslie turned to look at this Bob who, now he came to regard him properly, did look a lot like some of the ‘mentals’ he’d come across in prison.

‘He’s your real uncle?’ Leslie asked Gollum.

‘Dad’s brother,’ Gollum said. ‘Bob, tell Spider-Man what you told me about Shane Warner.’

Bob flinched. ‘Spider-Man? Where’s Spider-Man? What you talking about, Patrick?’

The boy shook his head impatiently. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Leslie. Then he turned to Bob. ‘Look, I told you we all have other names. I’m Gollum and he’s Spider-Man.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you have other names?’ Bob said. ‘What’s this? Some
sort of paedo ring or something? You don’t want to get into nothing like that, Pat, it’s sick. There’s blokes over Shoebury way they say have them interests …’

‘Bob, we’re not paedos,’ Gollum said. ‘I brought you here to tell Spider-Man what you know about Shane Warner. Remember?’

Bob looked as if he was thinking hard for a few moments and then he said, ‘What, my Shane Warner?’

‘Yes. Tell Spider-Man about him.’

‘He buys things,’ Bob said.

Leslie frowned. ‘What things?’

‘Anything. Cars, women, hooky booze, property, drugs. Mainly drugs. He helps out people in trouble,’ Bob said. ‘He’s helped me out.’

‘At a price?’

‘Always at a price,’ Bob said.

‘So who is he, this Shane Warner?’ Leslie asked. ‘Do you know where he lives?’

‘No,’ Bob said. ‘He used to come in a big posh car but he sends his blokes to do business now. I ain’t seen him for a long time.’

‘What “business” did you have with this man?’

Bob put his head down.

Gollum got close to Leslie again and whispered, ‘This bloke or his people used to buy drugs from Bob. Psychiatric stuff …’

‘Largactil,’ Bob said. ‘I got fags and packets of biscuits with the cash.’

‘We didn’t know he was doing it for years,’ Gollum said. ‘Then he lost it and ended up back in hospital. The doctor said that you hadn’t been taking your medication, didn’t he, Bob?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But if he doesn’t …?’ Leslie asked.

‘I can’t get by,’ Bob said. ‘There’s bills and rent and food and
fags and everything. Some people like to take medication and they’ll pay for it. Or they used to. Shane Warner.’

‘So he’s a drug dealer?’

‘Yes,’ Gollum said.

But Bob said, ‘No. He used to buy meds. Not now. But he owns a lot of property from York Road down to the seafront.’

‘York Road, Southend? The red-light district?’

Bob said, ‘Yeah. I live there.’

‘He’s got a bedsit,’ Gollum said.

‘So this medication …?’

‘Largactil? I have to take it,’ Bob said.

‘He’s got schizophrenia,’ Gollum told him..

‘So they say.’

Leslie looked at Bob and Bob looked away. The ‘mentals’ used to sell their meds when he was inside. The heavy stuff, the medicine he imagined schizophrenics would take, zoned people out and made the time pass more quickly. There was a market for it on the outside too.

‘Did or does Shane Warner deal in non-prescription drugs too?’

‘What like dope and coke?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yeah. He does everything,’ Bob said. ‘’cept not prescription meds any more. Don’t buy them now. So they say.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Is he your landlord?’ Leslie asked.

‘No,’ Bob told him. ‘But he owns a lot round my way. His blokes go round collecting rent. They’re all massive.’

‘And Shane? Is he massive?’

Bob shook his head. ‘Nah. Tiny he is. Sort of pale and he’s got
thin hair and he’s skinny. He’s got a mean face. Know what I’m saying?’

‘No.’

‘It’s sort of caved in on itself and the chin’s pointed,’ Bob said. ‘Like a rat. But he’s always surrounded by pretty women. He’s got money. Money talks.’

Leslie didn’t like Bob. He didn’t like anybody if he was honest. Emotion was a place he didn’t go. But there were times when he wished he could do something to put a stop to some of the horrific abuse that took place in the world. He’d tried to destroy the Genome Project because he knew that people would only mess with it and make it a bad thing – which they had. Higher intelligence, like Leslie’s, was required to control such things. With drugs, vast minders and possibly violence involved, this Shane Warner thing was clearly a job that only a superhero could do. He’d have to tell Lee Arnold to back off. Only a Man of Steel could take this job forward.

*

While she’d been getting ready to go to work, Susan had kept glancing at her phone. Now she was at the roulette wheel she seemed to have forgotten about it. Lee was seeing her through fresh eyes since his conversation with Vi. There was no doubt that Susan had called her because he had recognized her number. But why had she done it? Why had she stolen Vi’s number from Lee’s phone? He knew that women could be jealous but he hadn’t thought that Susan was capable of being quite that jealous.

Vi could occasionally be a pain with her demands on his body. But he understood Vi. He wasn’t sure he understood Susan. Did Susan want a live-in lover, or even a husband? She had made a
point of asking him if he ever wanted to move out of London. Did that really mean anything?

The more Lee looked at Susan the more he fancied her. She was voluptuous and very dirty in bed. What wasn’t to like? Well, except that possessiveness allied to a clear propensity to involve herself in his private stuff. Lee drank his Diet Pepsi and wondered when and if Ken Rivers was going to put in an appearance. That afternoon he’d received a call from an old informant about the primary focus of his investigation, Phil Rivers. The snout, who lived in Manor Park, claimed to have seen Phil on the Romford Road buying fruit and veg from some Turkish mini-mart. Lee really needed to check that out, although quite what Phil would be doing back in the East End he couldn’t imagine. Surely too many people still knew him there?

Lee finished his drink, put his glass on a table and reached for his fags. Just in time he remembered he couldn’t smoke inside anywhere that was a public place any more and put the cigarettes away.

Then he heard Susan say, ‘Good evening, Kenny, nice to see you.’

Ken Rivers’ now familiar voice replied, ‘Good evening to you too, Susan. Let’s see what Lady Luck can do for me this evening, shall we?’

Lee turned his face away and moved into the shadows at the edge of the room.

*

The door to his room opened and then closed again. Dylan pretended to sleep. If it was Harman it was best to let him do what he needed to. After all, he never touched him. But Dylan curled into a foetal position, his back to the wall, just in case. There was
a pause and then, to his horror, fingers wound themselves around the back of his neck. Dylan tried to speak but first something was stuffed into his mouth and then a hood was pulled roughly over his head.

Fuck! What was this? Had Harman tired of wanking and wanted to go further? But then he remembered that Harman was fat – and weak. A strong, bony fist punched him once in the stomach and all the breath in Dylan’s body disappeared. Before he had time to recover, a second blow, a rabbit punch to the kidneys, made him want to cry out in pain, but his voice wouldn’t work.

The blows kept coming, in silence. Breathing was almost impossible. Dylan skirted around the edge of consciousness. His head was full of light that sparkled brightly every time he was hit and there was a smell of piss he knew was his. But he noticed something else too, something more important. Only his torso was taking a pounding. Whoever was thumping him didn’t want his bruises to show and there was some comfort in that, because it meant that his attacker didn’t mean to kill him.

This was a warning and, in spite of feeling as if he was about to pass out, Dylan had taken note.

As quickly as the assault had started, so it stopped. One final, deep, thrusting blow to the ribs then nothing. But Dylan couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. Liquid bubbled out of his nose. It tasted salty and metallic. He didn’t hear anyone leave, but as he pulled the blood-soaked pillowcase off his head he heard first what he thought was a sob and then the sound of his door closing.

Dylan switched on his bedside lamp and saw his blood- and saliva-soaked T-shirt. He knew he’d have to look at the damage inflicted on his skinny body sometime, but took a few moments to prepare himself. There were still a few oxygen starvation lights going off in his head and his hands were too shaky to do
much. Eventually, Dylan sat up. Then, when he felt able to, he lifted up his t-shirt. The flesh on his belly was every shade of purple from almost black to pale violet. When he moved it hurt so much he wanted his attacker to come back and kill him. Dylan let his T-shirt drop again. If he thought about what damage might have been done inside his body he couldn’t handle it and so he made himself think about who might have done it. Timothy Pool was not on shift and he had fingers like wanker Harman’s, thick and fleshy, not bony like his attacker. But it had been a message from him, albeit delivered by an unknown fist. Mrs Mayfield, the advocate, was finally taking Dylan seriously and Tim couldn’t do much about her. But he could nobble Dylan. And he had. How could he go on with his complaint if this was where it was going to lead? He couldn’t call for a doctor because no one would listen. For all Dylan knew he could be dying already. Suddenly he was frozen again – in terror.