Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (2 page)

‘Oh, I see.’ Mumtaz paused. ‘You want to employ me to be your eyes and ears …’

‘Exactly. To collect evidence to give to the police.’

‘Does your husband know you want to do this?’ Mumtaz asked.

‘No. It’s not good he know.’

‘Because people will think he’s put pressure on you to get him out?’

‘Exactly. I never went to Ilford Hospital or met any of the people he worked with. So it is only Hatem’s word that I have. But he is an honest man and a good Muslim, Mrs Hakim, and I believe him.’

Mumtaz took a deep breath. ‘You know, Mrs el Shamy, even if we can prove that Dr el Masri is abusing his patients, that doesn’t also necessarily prove your husband’s innocence. All that will demonstrate is that the doctor is an unreliable witness.’

‘Which means that they will search his house, where they will find explosives.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘What else do I have?’ Salwa said. ‘Eh? What? Sit here with my four children and wait to be deported? Leave my husband to lie in jail for the rest of his life? Mrs Hakim, I will pay you to go into that hospital, join that advocacy group and find out what el Masri is doing. I can think of nothing else. Please, help me.’

*

Lee Arnold shook his head. ‘I think it’s well dodgy,’ he said.

Mumtaz, two steps above him on the iron staircase outside the back entrance to the office, said, ‘Lee, every bone in my body rebelled against the idea of listening to that man’s wife. But what if Hatem el Shamy was right about Dr el Masri? Hatem’s guilt or innocence aside, patients in that hospital could be being abused right now.’

‘I take your point but …’ Lee puffed on his cigarette. It tasted odd after all the chilli and garlic in that fish curry. He smoked it anyway. ‘I can’t think why el Shamy didn’t tell the police about the psychiatrist. However religious he is, it’s not his “shame”, is it? It’s el Masri’s.’

‘Maybe he didn’t because the police wouldn’t have believed him.’

‘Or maybe he made it up.’

‘Just for his wife’s ears? Why?’

‘I don’t know, I’m just putting it out there.’

‘I can’t stand by and let mentally ill women be abused,’ Mumtaz said.

He looked up at her. ‘Mrs el Shamy certainly knew which of your buttons to press, didn’t she?’

‘She knew I had a degree in psychology.’

He said nothing. Since Mumtaz had come to work for the Arnold Agency, he was all too well aware of how her reputation had preceded her, especially amongst the local female Asian community.

‘Mrs el Shamy will pay me to work for the Ilford Hospital Advocacy,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Depending on how many hours they give me – should I be recruited – and how much work I have to do on the case, that’s good money.’

She’d appealed to him on behalf of several possible clients before through the prism of money and it had always worked. Although not as skint as she was, he wasn’t far off, especially now he had a girlfriend.

He said, ‘If you want to go undercover, it’ll be difficult.’

‘Why?’

‘Because as if working for Salwa el Shamy wasn’t contentious enough, if you find any substance in her story you have to be
squeaky clean yourself, and going in as a private detective is not squeaky clean. Just like the police, we can be accused of entrapment. But then going in as Mumtaz Hakim, PI won’t work either, because the advocacy service won’t take you. And if Salwa el Shamy is right, and el Masri likes attractive young women then …’

‘But, Lee, I’m not a patient, I’m not vulnerable.’

He stared into her eyes and for a moment Mumtaz became silent. Such a job was fraught with hazard, both physical and ethical, and she knew it.

She said, ‘Let me contact the hospital advocacy service. Let me go for an interview. It’s mental health, they always need people.’

Lee looked down at his cigarette. ‘No.’

The outright negative took her by surprise.

‘Hatem el Shamy is a suspected terrorist – we can’t touch it. The police …’

‘The police don’t know his story about el Masri. They just think Hatem and the doctor are political opponents,’ Mumtaz said. ‘The hospital authorities didn’t take him seriously—’

‘Maybe because it’s not true.’

‘But what if it is?’ she said. ‘What if, irrespective of el Shamy’s status as a suspected terrorist, this doctor is abusing his patients? And there’s something else too, Lee.’

‘Which is?’

‘If el Masri had the support of his employers, then why go to the trouble of planting a bomb?’

‘
If
he did that.’

‘If he did that, yes,’ she said.

‘This is really a job for the coppers …’

‘But they’re not going to do it, are they? They don’t know,’ she said. ‘Hatem won’t tell them and so Salwa is using us to get to the truth by a different route.’

‘Does Hatem el Shamy know what his wife is doing?’

‘She says not. What are you thinking?’ When he didn’t answer, she sat down next to him on the metal steps. ‘Lee, I don’t know what’s really going on in that hospital. But if Dr el Masri did go to the trouble of building a bomb to frame Hatem el Shamy—’

‘A known Islamist back in Egypt.’

‘Yes. But if he went to all that trouble then I can’t accept that he was “just” covering up his own sexual behaviour. That, to me, speaks of something more, something that would have killed people. If el Masri framed Hatem, he was prepared to kill to do it. And if that is so, that makes him a very dangerous person.’

Lee Arnold put out his cigarette and then lit up another. Mumtaz didn’t like it when he chain-smoked but she knew that he usually did it when he was in some sort of turmoil.

She said, ‘I had a CRB check done when I worked for that mental health charity just before I got married …’

‘They’re not called the Criminal Records Bureau any more.’

‘Whatever they’re called, then. It’s still valid. Although it is in my maiden name, Huq.’

‘Mumtaz, be quiet,’ Lee said. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Ssshh.’

They sat in silence for a good five minutes. She knew that both of their cars needed servicing within the next two months and that business had been slow. She also knew how his mind worked.

Eventually she said, ‘A girl died, Lee. I looked it up online. Last year. She was called Sara Ibrahim and she threw herself out of a second-floor window. She was under el Masri’s care and she was very, very beautiful.’

They stared into each other’s eyes until, eventually, Lee blinked.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘you sometimes remind me of my Auntie Jean.’

Mumtaz cocked her head to one side. ‘Why?’

‘She was what they used to call a “Women’s Libber” back in the 1970s.’

‘A feminist.’

‘She worked in one of the first battered women’s refuges in the country,’ he said. ‘She’d do anything for women in trouble.’

‘That’s not a fault, Lee,’ she said.

‘I didn’t say that it was.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ she asked.

He stood up and then helped Mumtaz to her feet. For a moment their bodies almost touched. She moved away slightly and looked down.

‘You volunteer for the Ilford Hospital Advocacy as Mumtaz Huq,’ he said. ‘And let’s see what happens.’

‘So we can take Salwa el Shamy’s money?’

‘Reluctantly.’ He shrugged. ‘You have to know that I can’t believe her story. Her old man could’ve killed loads of people with his bomb and I find that difficult. Know what I mean?’

‘I do, but surely we have to keep an open mind?’

‘Yeah.’ Lee ground his cigarette end out with his boot. ‘But just don’t go into this thinking you’re gonna suddenly find out Hatem el Shamy is innocent.’

‘I’m not. I told his wife that even if Dr el Masri is guilty of sexually abusing his patients, that doesn’t prove that her husband didn’t make that bomb.’

‘Good.’

‘So now I contact Ilford Hospital Advocacy,’ Mumtaz said.

‘No.’ He put his cigarettes and lighter in his jacket pocket and walked up to the office door.

She frowned.

‘Go through that volunteer centre up Forest Gate,’ he said. ‘It’ll take a bit longer but it’ll make you look more kosher. If you go straight to the hospital and this doctor is abusing his patients while being protected by his colleagues, you rocking up out of the blue might make them all a bit windy. Know what I mean?

Mumtaz, following, said, ‘Yes.’

‘The devil’s always in the detail.’ He shook his head. He wasn’t happy.

She changed the subject. ‘How did your lunch work out?’ she asked. ‘Was it nice?’

‘Yeah, it was good,’ Lee said.

‘I’m glad. I’m just so sorry I couldn’t have been here to keep the office open,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Did you have enough time to enjoy your meal?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Plenty.’

*

The girl walked into the house with the ‘Sold’ sign outside without so much as a glance at him. But Naz just smiled. The arrogant little tart would get hers one day, what did he care? And now that her late father’s house was sold, her rather tasty stepmother would be giving him a nice wedge of cash in the not-too-distant future. He looked down the street, trying to ignore the old white man staring at him from across the road. The silly old shit sometimes ‘kept an eye out’ for the Hakim women. How did he honestly think he could protect himself, much less anyone else?

Then there she was, the stepmother, Mumtaz Hakim, in that terrible old Nissan Micra she drove, pulling up on the concrete slab that her late husband, Ahmet, had once used for his Merc. Unlike her kid, she’d seen Naz. When she got out of the car she
walked over to him and pulled him away from her property. Her forcefulness excited him.

‘What do you want?’ she said in a low voice.

‘Just checking on my investment,’ he said. ‘Making sure you haven’t changed your mind.’

‘And why would I do that?’ She pulled the front of her headscarf a little further down her forehead. Naz knew that in his presence she always felt the need to try to hide. With good cause. ‘I’ve exchanged contracts with Mr and Mrs Singh,’ she said. ‘We’re just waiting for a mutually convenient day for completion. You’ll get your money.’

‘And you’ll get a lovely new home in …?’

‘Never mind where I’m going,’ she said. ‘Our business together will be at an end.’

‘Oh, will it?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

The old white man across the street stopped gardening and called over, ‘Everything all right, Mrs Hakim?’

‘Mind your own fucking business. Cunt!’

She was amazingly strong when she wanted to be. When she pushed him, Naz nearly lost his footing.

‘Oh, Ron, I’m so sorry for that!’ she said to the old white man. ‘My nephew. Mannerless! What can you do with these young people?’

‘Oh, well …’ The old git clearly didn’t know what to say. He probably fancied her and so he’d almost certainly let it go.

But then she pushed him forward. ‘Apologize immediately, Naz,’ she said. He didn’t and just looked down at his feet. ‘Now!’

He mumbled something, simply to stop the whole thing. It wasn’t ‘sorry’ but it seemed to satisfy the old bastard because he went inside his house.

When he’d gone, she said, ‘Don’t abuse my neighbours. Don’t abuse anyone around me.’

He leant against her next-door neighbour’s wall. ‘Or what?’ he said.

‘Or one day someone will really lose it with you,’ she said. ‘Like the people who’ve just bought my house.’

‘Sikhs.’

‘Mrs Kaur is a lawyer and her husband is a very good amateur boxer,’ she said. ‘Don’t mess with them.’

‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘Why would I?’

‘Just don’t even think about it,’ she warned him. Then she started to walk towards her house.

The Woodgrange Estate in Forest Gate was a lovely place to live. The houses were substantial Victorian villas set in large gardens on tree-lined streets that were almost always quiet. If one could afford such a place, it was a good area to bring up kids. But it wasn’t cheap, even though the Sikhs Mumtaz Hakim had sold to had got a bargain. But then she’d been in a hurry to sell.

Just before she opened the front door and let herself in, Naz heard Mumtaz Hakim say, ‘Soon we’ll all be free of my husband’s debts and, consequently, you, thank God.’

She closed the door behind her.

Naz, smiling, knew that her relief was way premature.

Salwa didn’t tell any of her children about her meeting with Mumtaz Hakim except her eldest girl, Rashida. She was fifteen and so she could understand. But Rashida didn’t like it.

‘My father won’t get off,’ she said. ‘The world will end first.’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘It’s true. And if Baba knew you were doing this he’d go mad,’ the girl said. Sitting at the kitchen table, doing her homework while her mother washed up, Rashida went back to her books.

‘You’re not to tell him!’

‘I won’t.’

‘But if this detective can catch el Masri hurting his patients …’

‘Baba told you that the doctor had sex with them,’ Rashida said. ‘I heard him.’

‘I didn’t want to say …’

‘We live in London, Omy, everybody talks about sex.’

Salwa put the dishes away and sat down opposite her daughter. ‘We have to do everything that we can to help your father,’ she said. ‘Ever since we came here, he has been under suspicion.’

But Rashida said nothing. Unknown to her mother she was trying as hard as she could to concentrate on her History coursework. It helped.

‘Even now the long arm of Mubarak and his supporters stretches over land and sea and we are never safe,’ Salwa continued. ‘Look at your father! Mubarak had already fallen when he was arrested.’

The coursework, Medicine Through Time, had become particularly gruesome. Leeches were involved. But that was far preferable to what her mother was saying – and where her mother’s words were going.

‘It’s because of monsters like Mubarak that people in Europe think that Muslims are fanatics,’ Salwa said.

In some hospitals leeches were being used again, apparently. There was a chemical in their saliva that acted as an anticoagulant.

‘So many martyrs! And now at last we have a government that wants to institute Sharia law and all the Egyptians can do is complain …’

Rashida bit her tongue. Whenever the modern Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood was discussed it was always held up as a paragon of virtue. But if it was so good, why hadn’t her family gone home?

‘Omy, I have to finish my homework …’

‘Yes. Yes.’

Salwa got up from the table and went over to the cooker. She lifted the lid on a large pot of
kushari
. Lentils, pasta, rice and chickpeas in a tomato and garlic sauce, it was a family favourite, as well as being cheap. Salwa had to watch her money now that Hatem was in prison and she was living on benefits. Thanks be to Allah that her parents were paying for this private detective, even if it did come at a price. She watched Rashida get on with her homework and then, suddenly infuriated by the girl’s apparent calmness, she said, ‘I don’t know how you can just work like that with your father in so much trouble.’

Rashida looked up, adjusted the scarf that covered her head and said, ‘What good would it do for him if I stopped studying and just gave up?’

Salwa frowned. ‘We had paparazzi out in the front garden …’

‘That was months ago,’ Rashida said. ‘The world has moved on, Omy. Nobody is interested in us any more.’

‘But when he goes to court …’

‘When he goes to court it will be bad again.’

‘And what if they find him guilty?’

She looked to her daughter for some reassurance, but didn’t find any. The girl just sat with a straight face, occasionally looking at the books on the table. Infuriated, Salwa said, ‘You think more of those books than you do of your father! Selfish, that’s what you are, Rashida.’

But Rashida didn’t answer.

‘You care more about your future than you do about your family,’ Salwa said. ‘Well, let me tell you, Miss, we have plans for you so don’t get too comfortable with your school books.’

Rashida’s already pale skin turned white. She knew what this meant but it was the first time she’d heard anything about it. ‘You mean marriage?’

‘Of course. What else?’ The woman stared into the girl’s eyes and the girl stared back.

Then Rashida said, ‘I won’t consent to it.’

‘You won’t have a choice,’ Salwa told her. Then she went back to the cooker and stirred the
kushari
.

‘Omy, I don’t want to get married –’

‘You wish to be an old maid? You want people to pity you?’

‘I want to have a job,’ Rashida said. ‘I’d like to be a psychiatric nurse like Baba.’

‘Working with mad people? Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Why is it ridiculous?’ Rashida said. Her homework was well and truly interrupted now and so she left the table and went over to the cooker to stand by her mother.

‘Because it isn’t nice for girls to be around mad men who expose themselves.’

‘They don’t all—’

‘It’s not going to happen,’ Salwa said. She held up a hand. ‘No. Your cousin Anwar is very suitable. He has a good job and will provide for you.’

‘Anwar?’ Rashida shook her head. ‘You mean football hooligan Anwar?’

‘He’s not a football hooligan. Don’t be silly.’

But Rashida shook her head. ‘He’s an Al Ahly ultra-fan,’ she said. ‘Ask anyone. Ask Auntie Rabbah! She’s his mother and she doesn’t like it.’

‘Anwar is a good boy. He prays five times a day, he always observes Ramadan …’

‘He tries to gouge people’s eyes out at football matches!’

Salwa felt her face go hot. ‘Well, you’re marrying him and that is that!’

‘No, I’m not!’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘I’m not!’

‘The family have decided …’

‘Yes, but I haven’t, have I?’

Salwa pointed a
kushari
-scented spoon at her daughter. ‘It’s done,’ she said and then she turned back to the cooking. For almost a minute there was silence.

Then Rashida said, ‘Omy, don’t press me to marry that pig.’

‘It’s—’

‘Because if you do, I don’t know how I will be able to keep quiet about Baba.’

For a second it seemed as if Salwa hadn’t heard her, but then, without looking up from her cooking, she said, ‘What do you mean “keep quiet”? About what?’

‘You know what, Omy.’

When Salwa did look at her daughter it wasn’t with love.

Shocked if not surprised by her mother’s expression, Rashida said, ‘Don’t make me marry that bastard from Cairo and then you’ll never have to worry about it, will you?’

*

Newham could be a bit of a village. Mumtaz’s father often told her that even in the mega-city of Dhaka, back in his old home of Bangladesh, gossip spread like wildfire.

‘You couldn’t so much as walk across the street sometimes without some nosy parker telling your father some nonsense about how you’d looked at someone else’s sister,’ he would say. ‘Silly buggers without enough to do.’

And although Mumtaz didn’t think that there were many ‘silly buggers without enough to do’ in Newham, she was aware that when she went to somewhere like the Volunteer Network Centre there was always a chance that someone would recognize her as ‘that Mrs Hakim the private detective’. So, to minimize contact, she completed the registration pack online. The centre didn’t just handle volunteer vacancies from the borough but also from places outside Newham, too. She knew for a fact that they worked with Ilford Hospital Psychiatric Unit because she’d found a reference to the Volunteer Network on the
hospital’s own website. But she’d already decided to go into her interview as a relative innocent. She wanted to volunteer, she had a degree in psychology that she wanted to use and which made her suitable for a position in mental health services.

Just over a week after she’d completed her volunteer registration, Mumtaz got a call from a woman called Amina. She invited her in for a chat about her ‘options’.

Mumtaz was slightly nervous when she walked into the centre, which was on the Romford Road. It was a little bit too near her house for comfort. But she didn’t see anyone she knew and Amina, a small, uncovered Muslim girl in her twenties, took her through into a side room almost immediately.

‘I see you’ve got a degree,’ Amina said as she offered Mumtaz a chair.

‘Yes.’

‘What are you doing now?’

Mumtaz smiled. ‘These days I’m a full-time mother,’ she said. ‘My husband died and so I feel it is important to be at home for my daughter as much as I can.’

‘Sure. Sure.’

Whether Amina was one of those girls who believed that all covered sisters were oppressed, Mumtaz didn’t know, but she had a feeling it was possible. Whenever Amina looked at Mumtaz’s headscarf she tended to stare, and not in a good way.

‘So do you have any idea about what you’d like to do?’ Amina asked.

‘Not really,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Something useful … My daughter will be leaving to go to university in just over a year and I would like to get some work experience now so that I can look for a job when she goes.’

Amina narrowed her eyes and Mumtaz wondered whether the girl had recognized her. Or her family name. But then Huq was common.

‘Cool. With volunteering, doing something that you like is very important,’ Amina said. ‘But if you want to get back in the workplace then it has to be in line with your skill-set to some extent, too.’ She looked at Mumtaz’s application on her computer screen. ‘You can drive?’

‘Yes. I have my own car.’

‘That’s always good. But I don’t suppose you want to drive for a living, do you?’

‘I don’t really know. I’m just looking at options.’

‘Sure.’ She looked back at the screen. ‘I guess ideally you’d like to use your degree?’

‘Well, yes, I would actually. That would be ideal, but—’

‘Psychology, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cool.’

It was difficult trying to be casual when all Mumtaz wanted to do was get inside Ilford Hospital and find out what was going on. But Lee had been adamant about patience. He’d said, ‘Look, all these volunteering types know each other. Come over too eager about mental health at the volunteer centre and they’ll tell the hospital you’re some sort of nutter. Believe me, they exist.’

‘Ever thought about bereavement counselling?’ Amina asked. ‘I’m thinking psychology, yeah. The organization I’m looking at will train you.’

‘Mmm.’

Amina looked up. ‘Not you?’

‘Yes, but …’ Mumtaz shook her head. ‘A bit close to home.’

‘Oh, your husband …’

‘Yes.’

‘Right.’ She looked back at her screen and clicked her mouse a few times. ‘You know there is a car service attached to Newham General if you do want to drive …’

Mumtaz leant forward. ‘Which is?’

‘It’s for elderly or disabled people who find public transport difficult. You take them backwards and forwards to their outpatients appointments and they pay your petrol costs. It’s driving, but you do get to meet people.’

‘Mmm.’ She didn’t want to say ‘no’, but it wasn’t close enough to the advocacy programme. She said, ‘The trouble is, to be honest, that I do have to drive my daughter about quite a lot.’

‘So you don’t want to do more of that than you have to? Cool.’ Amina looked back at her screen again.

To her credit, Amina tried just about every type of volunteering remotely related to mental health before she got to advocacy. To
her
credit, Mumtaz didn’t jump for joy when she did finally get there.

‘So, mental health advocacy at Ilford Mental Health Unit. Used to be called Ilford Hospital Psychiatric Unit?’ Amina said. ‘That’s representing patients, speaking on behalf of them to medical and administrative staff.’

‘In what way?’ Mumtaz asked.

Amina looked back at her screen. ‘Like, when they have a complaint about something,’ she said. ‘Often they don’t feel confident enough to speak up for themselves. So they have an advocate. But anyway this project, Ilford Advocacy, train.’ She looked up, expectantly.

‘Mmm.’

‘I mean, I know it’s like
real
mental health, which is why I left
it till last,’ Amina said. ‘It’s cool if you say, like, no, because it’s not the best environment. I mean, like, it’s a unit now and not an actual hospital but it’s still …’

‘Mmm.’ Mumtaz played at considering her options and then she said, ‘Yet if I don’t like it I don’t have to …?’

‘Oh, you can leave any time you like,’ Amina said. ‘Volunteering is so up to you.’

With difficulty Mumtaz left it for a moment and then said, ‘OK, I’ll try the advocacy.’

Amina smiled. ‘Cool!’

*

Doing the advocacy surgeries on the regular wards was bad enough, but on the forensic unit it could be pointless. If something had kicked off in the last twenty-four hours, or if one of the patients had tried to kill themselves, then all anyone – patients and staff alike – would do was sit. The patients because they were drugged up to help them deal with whatever had gone on, the staff because they were knackered.

Shirley sat down at her desk and switched her computer on. She was down to just two reliable volunteers and doing it all almost on her own was as much fun as toothache. But she couldn’t let her service users down. It wasn’t their fault if most people who chose to volunteer to help them were either ill themselves, suddenly decided they couldn’t stand the mentally unwell or wanted to bring Jesus, by force if necessary, into their lives.

Booted up, the computer let Shirley into her email. Her heart sank. There were the usual ‘To all staff’ bulletins from the hospital management. These told her what term was correct to use when talking about patients this week, how well the Trust was
doing financially and included numerous invitations to team-building events with staff on acute wards one and two, the forensic unit or the chronic ward. Every one of them redefined the word ‘tedious’ and so Shirley deleted them all. However one email did catch her eye: ‘Possible New Volunteer’. When she opened it, Shirley felt a vague glimmer of hope.