Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (16 page)

Then a sound from outside his door gave him hope. It was a single sob again, just like the one he’d heard before his door closed.

*

‘Can I buy you a drink?’

Ken Rivers looked up into Lee Arnold’s face and said, ‘You.’

‘Yes, and in answer to your next question,’ Lee said, ‘I have been following you. Now, Ken, what’s your poison?’

Slumped on a bar stool in his best suit, his bow-tie hanging off at an angle, Ken Rivers looked like a caricature of a gambler who had just lost his metaphorical shirt.

‘I’ll have a Scotch, double,’ he said.

Lee caught the barman’s eye and ordered. Back on the casino floor, life had returned to normal after Ken’s big loss. All the bullet-headed men and perma-tanned women had moved on.

‘Here you go.’ Lee put the whisky in front of Ken and then paid the barman. Ken Rivers drank most of it down in one.

‘I told you I don’t know where Phil is,’ he said. ‘Why you still following me?’

‘Because you could have been telling me porkies,’ Lee said. ‘And because I’m curious how a bloke like you can keep on coming here and losing.’

He’d lost three thousand pounds in the space of two hours and, this time, his customary
joie de vivre
appeared to have deserted him. Still working at the roulette wheel, Susan looked over from time to time, frowning, but Lee ignored her.

Lee moved in closer to the old man and whispered. ‘Your son got away with one point two million quid, Ken. You’re a bright man, you can see where I’m going with this.’

The bar was made of some sort of dark granite and the lighting was low but Lee could see the old man’s face reflected in the highly polished surface and it wasn’t amused.

‘If I knew where the bastard was then don’t you think I’d be tapping him up?’ He finished his whisky and then ordered another one. He didn’t offer Lee a drink. ‘That’s just about cleaned me out,’ he said.

‘So why’d you do it?’

For a moment Lee thought that he was going to throw Scotch in his face, but Ken Rivers just turned his nose up. ‘Know what it’s like to look after a person with dementia, do you?’ he said. ‘She started going funny in the head almost as soon as we left London.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you gamble to take your mind off your troubles?’

He didn’t answer.

Lee said, ‘If you didn’t get the money from Phil then where did you get it?’

‘Mind your own business.’

Lee brought Leslie Baum’s latest email up on his phone and said, ‘Not from the sale of your flat to Shane Warner then?’

The old man drank the rest of his whisky.

‘I know Warner owns it,’ Lee said.

‘Then why ask?’

‘And I know he’s also a drug dealer and a thug. I saw his gorilla round your place, rent collecting. Did the girl upstairs sell her flat to Warner too?’

Still he kept silent.

‘What was the plan then, Ken?’ Lee said. ‘Bring your three grand here and win a bucketload so rent’s not an issue for a bit and you can carry on gambling? As plans go, I have to say it’s not one of the best I’ve heard. I’ve seen you lose before, Ken, and you lose big.’

Ken, his head down, said, ‘She always said I was a Jonah.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Said I couldn’t win a game of Snakes and Ladders and she was right.’

‘So why’d you do it then, Ken?’

Over at the craps table there was a roar of triumph.

‘Look, I told you I ain’t seen Phil and I ain’t,’ he said. ‘I never got no money from him. If I could’ve I would’ve done. Now I’m buggered. Leave me alone.’

Ken Rivers wasn’t a likeable man, but that didn’t mean that Lee couldn’t feel sorry for him. And his wife, wherever she was.

‘I want to help …’

‘You got the three grand I lost tonight? The four I lost last week?’

Lee said nothing.

‘No, I thought not.’

He made as if to get down from his stool but Lee stopped him. ‘Ken, before I was a PI I was a copper, Forest Gate. I know you know the manor.’

‘So what?’

‘So if I’m right and you’ve just lost all your cash then you could be out on the street. What does Warner charge you in rent, eh? Five hundred a month? Six?’

‘Five-fifty. I’ve got me pension, the wife’s …’

‘Can’t be a lot.’

‘It’d be enough if …’

‘If?’

Ken Rivers shrugged.

‘You owe Warner more’n just your rent, don’t you?’

There was a long pause before the old man said, ‘They say gambling’s a disease, don’t they?’

‘Ken, you need to tell someone everything,’ Lee said. ‘And that might as well be me.’

‘You won’t like it.’

‘Doesn’t matter what I think.’

He sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But not here.’

‘Where?’

He thought for a moment and then he said, ‘We can go to my place.’

Mumtaz had been fretting about Naz Sheikh all day. Ever since Amy had reminded her that the gangster had come to her office, she’d been trying to think of ways she could stop him doing it again. But she had nothing to threaten Naz with. Not really. So she phoned him. It was late and she hoped he was either in bed or in some club, drinking and womanising while his father and his brother weren’t looking.

‘Ah, Mrs Hakim,’ he said when he answered. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘If you ever come to my office again I will find a way to kill you,’ she said.

He laughed. She’d expected him to.

‘If you think I won’t serve time in prison for you, then you’re wrong,’ she said.

He laughed even harder. ‘You know, I can remember your late husband making similar threats,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I have to remind you how that ended.’

What she said next, she said because it was true. And because she couldn’t stop herself. ‘I won’t have any money once the house is sold. Your extra “fees” will effectively kill me.’

There was a pause. She wondered whether she should check
the front and back doors. Shazia was in the house and what she’d blurted out, in anger, could have put her at risk. It was always Shazia that they threatened. She expected more of the same and at first she thought that was what she was getting.

‘Well, if you can’t pay, there are other ways,’ he said.

‘Touch my daughter and you’re dead,’ she said.

‘Who said anything about Shazia?’

Mumtaz cringed. She hated it when he used her daughter’s name.

‘We’ve been thinking. It occurs to us that there is another way you can pay part of your debt to us without involving the girl.’

She imagined herself spread-eagled on a bed waiting for Naz, his brother and his foul father to take turns raping her. Better her than Shazia.

‘When you’ve moved, we’ll talk,’ he said.

‘Will we?’

‘I think it will be to your advantage,’ Naz said. ‘You see, Mrs Hakim, our business is growing and, although we have a lot of friends in all sorts of places you probably couldn’t imagine, we always need more.’

‘I’m not about to become your friend. Forget it.’

He laughed again. ‘Oh, I’m not about to invite you over for tea, Mumtaz. But there are ways in which people can be friends that don’t involve being sociable. Friends do things for each other, you know?’

He wanted something. Whether it involved her body or not, Mumtaz wasn’t sure. But whatever it was had to be unpleasant because it was Naz.

She said, ‘Don’t involve Shazia and don’t come to my office again. Or hang out round my home.’

‘If you agree to talk about my proposition, I can do that,’ he said. ‘You know we’re not animals, Mumtaz. We understand that you’re in a very unfortunate position, partly of your own making, but you know, as fellow Muslims—’

‘Oh, spare me the lecture about the value of the umma,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t care who you extort money from.’

There was a pause. She heard him suck on his shisha and then he said, ‘But aren’t you forgetting something, Mrs Hakim?’

‘What?’

‘Your husband was a bad man,’ he said. ‘That was why he met an untimely end. That was why, if you remember, you failed to give the police any sort of useful description of the man who ended Ahmet’s life. I don’t think that sometimes you remember the very great debt you have to us. A debt that goes far beyond mere money.’

And then he cut the connection. Mumtaz closed her eyes. Every day, in her mind, she saw Ahmet fall and bleed out on the rough ground of Wanstead Flats. She saw Naz, his silver trainers shining in the dying evening light, running away from them. And she still, sometimes, saw her husband’s blood all over her hands as she tried, too late, to call 999 on her mobile phone.

*

It was a typical converted Edwardian house. The grand front door led into a small hall with two scruffy chipboard doors, one leading upstairs and one into Ken Rivers’ flat. There was a bit of dirty old rug on the floor and an overwhelming smell of damp. It was nothing that Lee Arnold hadn’t been expecting.

The old man opened the door into his flat and switched on the light. ‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ he said.

He wasn’t wrong. If Lee had to sum up the hallway, he would
have used the word ‘dingy’. Narrow and dominated by the colour brown (walls, heavily stuffed wooden furniture), it looked like the sort of place TV companies made misery documentaries about. Ken Rivers led the way.

‘You’ll have to excuse the state of the place,’ he said. ‘Since she went doolally it’s been hard keeping on top of it all.’

Lee felt his shoes stick to the hall carpet. His stomach turned. Old as he was, hard up as he was, even Ken was capable, surely, of scrubbing an old carpet with a bit of washing-up liquid. Other smells mingled with the damp – some organic, others less easy to place. Ken was effectively a man on his own so anything was possible. Lee knew where he was coming from. After his divorce, when he’d existed on booze and painkillers, his flat had been a shithole.

‘I’ll make a cuppa if you like.’ Ken pointed at a door. ‘Go in and make yourself comfortable.’

The door handle was greasy. Of course it was.

‘Switch the light on,’ Ken said. ‘On your right.’

He found it. That was greasy too and, oddly, it had a group of flies round it.

The lightbulb was one of those energy-saving things and so it took a while for Lee to be able to see what he was looking at properly. But even straight off he could tell that it wasn’t a sitting room. There was a dressing table, a linen basket and, most significantly, a massive brass bedstead right in the middle of what was not a very big space.

He turned. ‘Ken …’

There was just one blow, but it was to his head and it was hard. Lee Arnold hit the deck, smashing his face against brass as he fell.

*

‘Help me.’

Dylan’s voice was a ghost. It hung in the air for a moment and then disappeared. No one would be able to hear him. But he kept on saying it because he was in pain. A shot of morphine or even a couple of old school DF118s would do it. He didn’t want a doctor. None of them would help him.

He looked at the clock on the wall. They’d taken his bedside clock away because he’d tried to cut up with the hands. Fucking bastards. Said they didn’t want him to die, but they were happy to make his life hell. Didn’t they realize that he didn’t want to die either? The cutting wasn’t about that. It was all a game. In reality they didn’t give a shit about him. But if he died they’d have to answer questions and maybe even take some responsibility and that was all too much hassle.

The clock on the wall, so high up you needed a ladder to reach it, said three thirty-two. A long way to go until morning. But then what did morning bring that was so good? Tim Pool on duty and tea that tasted like gravy.

‘Help me.’

Tim Pool. He’d watched him for tells. He had a bunch. When he felt he’d got one over on you he puffed his chest out like a pigeon and tapped his forefingers and thumbs together. When he liked someone he dragged his fingers through his hair. Happiness was a foot twirl and when he was frustrated he clicked his tongue against his teeth. Good job he never played poker.

‘Help me.’

The left side hurt more than the right. He was sure he had at least one broken rib. Earlier on he’d wondered who had worked him over, but he knew he wouldn’t find out. One hard, bony fist was all he’d seen. The only thing he
knew
was who had sent it.
And the only thing he had to work out was whether or not he was going to give in to the threat.

His door opened. Instinctively, Dylan pulled his bedclothes up to his chin. At the end of the corridor, somebody yelled out ‘Di!’ It was Yates, calling to the wife he’d murdered twenty years ago. Eaten up with remorse, he did it every night.

Because the bedside lamp was on, Dylan could see the woman who came into his room. Small and blonde, she ran over to his bed and put something in his hands. ‘Co-dyramol,’ she said. ‘You must be in pain.’

Dylan had never seen her before but he took the tablets.

The woman hurried back to the door. Before she left she said, ‘What they did to you was wrong.’ And then she was gone.

Dylan, on reflection, didn’t care who she was or what she’d said. He just waited for the drugs to kick in. Then, finally, he went to sleep.

*

Susan was furious. Lee had sodded off and left her. Two-thirty the casino had closed and he’d just abandoned her with no transport. She’d had to get a lift with Dale and listen to him droning on about his body-building regimen all the way home. He’d also told her that he’d seen Lee leaving with that Kenny who’d lost big.

When Lee had first started asking her about high rollers, Susan had wondered whether he was investigating someone at the casino or even the establishment itself. Was he private detecting – whatever they called it – old Kenny? Or had the two of them simply gone on somewhere else for a drink? But then, Lee didn’t drink.

Susan looked at Lee’s coat on the end of her bed and went through his pockets. She didn’t know what she was looking for,
she just felt spiteful. She found a packet of fags. The bastard. Then Susan remembered the last time she’d been in Lee’s pockets and she felt guilty. She’d called that rough copper woman more than once but she’d never had the courage to speak to her. Then the woman had left a message on her phone. Had she tumbled who she was? Had she connected her to Lee? Did he know about it?

If he knew she’d called the old bird, he would be angry. He was mild and thoughtful and all those other things she’d been so attracted to, but he was also a bloke. A bloke who had women around him. Not just the old boiler but also that Mumtaz, too – not that she was any sort of threat. Those covered-up Muslim women were like nuns, except when they blew themselves up in Iraq.

What she called ‘normal’ Susan, didn’t like ‘jealous psycho’ Susan. But she had to live with her. There was no getting rid of her. Whenever she started a new relationship, up she popped like the proverbial. And even though part of Susan’s mind was occupied with worrying about whether Lee might be safe, jealous psycho Susan was wondering who he was with and what he was doing to her.

*

He knew this. He’d had it enough times. What he’d never had before was a KO that gave him hallucinations. Lee looked at the bluebottle flies on his arms and they seemed to look back at him. That was madness.

As he sat up, the room moved away and then tipped sideways. But it was OK because it was only concussion and it would soon pass. But there was a smell that was turning his stomach. It was familiar and not in a good way. Panic added to concussion was not a good mixture and so, in spite of the foul miasma that
engulfed him, Lee took a few seconds to breathe. Something was rotting in that room and, in spite of the fact that he felt he knew what it was, he ran through a whole gamut of possibilities that included dogs, cats and even goats. When he’d first become a copper he’d found the mummified body of a dead goat under the floor of an old widow’s house in East Ham. It was possible.

What he needed was fresh air. He knew he couldn’t stand up in case he fell, so Lee shuffled over to the door on his knees. He put his hand on the doorknob and turned. Nothing. Several dozen bluebottles landed on his arm. He was locked in.

He cleared his throat. ‘Ken.’

It was a weak cry and so he tried again, ‘Ken!’

He waited but nothing except silence came from beyond the door. He looked back into the room. Then his face started to hurt and he put a hand up to it. Blood. He checked inside his mouth for broken teeth but couldn’t find anything obvious. There was a lump in the bed, as if it was occupied. Was Ken’s ‘old woman’ asleep in this disgusting room? Or was it someone else? Was someone dead in there?

Lee kind of knew the answer to that. But he distracted himself by looking for his phone. When he found it, over by the dressing table, he saw that it was smashed. So he was locked in this room with God knew what and his phone was fucked. Great.

‘Ken Rivers, you shit!’ he yelled.

The sickness came on him suddenly and the next thing Lee knew he was looking at a puddle of stale Pepsi on a carpet with a pattern that made your eyes cross. Exhausted, he let himself lie down although the floor was filthy.

It was then that he saw the hand hanging out of the far side of the bed. It was very white and it was moving.