Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (24 page)

Committed to Ilford Hospital by her family in 1955, Millie had been pregnant out of wedlock. She’d received all sorts of diagnoses including depression, schizophrenia and ‘moral weakness’. In 1959 she’d been given electroconvulsive therapy to ‘alleviate
her symptoms’ but that had been ‘unsuccessful’. Mumtaz couldn’t find any record of what had happened to her baby. Why was she reading Millie’s notes anyway?

Mumtaz put the notes down on the floor and began shuffling through another pile. Sara Ibrahim’s file had to be somewhere and, logically, because she had died recently it shouldn’t be too difficult to find. Unless someone had removed it. Getting involved in other people’s stories hadn’t helped Mumtaz, but each file led to a life she had only previously glimpsed through the eyes of her lecturers at university. Tales of life before the Mental Health Act, when pregnant women could be put away by their families and sexually active women were tricked into having hysterectomies. Men suffered too, but there were so many more female than male records. Women whose bodies had been under the total control of those who cared for them, at the mercy of those who pretended to care. She realized now that Salwa el Shamy’s husband had been a side issue. As soon as she’d been told that a young woman had taken her own life, and what might have happened to her, Mumtaz had been determined to get into Ilford Hospital. Was it because her own abuse was impossible to resolve? Was she trying to solve the problem of what had happened to Sara Ibrahim and why because she couldn’t deal with her own life?

Where was Sara’s file? Did it no longer exist? Surely even if someone didn’t want it found they wouldn’t actually destroy it, because that could arouse suspicion if the documents were ever requested. But then suddenly Mumtaz had an idea. She went over to where the old man had dumped the files he’d been carrying and squatted down on the ground. She moved the recently discarded files away and looked at the slightly dusty ones underneath.

*

Lee took the letter from the woman’s gloved hand. She’d announced herself as Salwa el Shamy over the entry-phone but she could have been anyone. Wearing the niqab made women just shapes. Lee said, ‘What’s this?’

‘I want that Mrs Hakim doesn’t continue her investigation,’ the woman said.

‘At Ilford Hospital?’ He opened the letter, which was terse and damning.

‘She don’t do nothing.’

Lee felt his face redden. ‘She’s been working flat out,’ he said.

‘Then why she have nothing against man who tell lies about my husband?’

‘Maybe because she needs more time,’ he said.

‘I don’t have time.’

‘Then I don’t know what to say. Investigations like the one Mrs Hakim is conducting for you are complex and difficult.’

‘I have no more time. Tell me what money I owe. But don’t do more,’ she said.

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘I do.’

She left. Lee turned to Amy. ‘Is it me or do people want everything yesterday?’

‘In general, yes. Lee, I’ve nearly finished,’ Amy said. ‘Do you want to check through what I’ve done before I go?’

‘No, just bung it all on my desk when you’ve finished and I’ll deal with it,’ he said. The business had gone from doing well to doing very little at a stroke, with only a couple of potential clients in the pipeline. It was all very well for coppers like Tony Bracci to talk about being a PI as if it were some sort of soft option. Not that he’d said anything like that recently.

‘There you go,’ Amy said. She put a large pile of papers on Lee’s desk.

‘Thanks, Amy. I’ll pay you what you’re owed for today, and for the Polish boy, and hopefully I’ll have some more work for you soon.’

‘Cheers, Lee.’

When she opened the door to leave, he could see that it was already dark outside. Mumtaz would be at home, packing. He wondered whether he should call her about Salma el Shamy but he decided against it. She’d know about that soon enough, when she came to work in the morning.

*

Even though she knew it shouldn’t be a shock, it was. It had been so badly done. Hatem el Shamy’s name hadn’t even been properly concealed. Just crossed through and replaced with ‘Dr el Masri’.

Sara Ibrahim’s notes told a story of a girl who had struggled with life. Born into a poor Anglo-Pakistani family in Canning Town, her father had been an invalid while her white mother had struggled with five children, almost alone. The mother, a semi-literate convert to Islam, had been too tired and ground down to worry about why Sara always seemed so sad. Until Sara tried to slit her wrists. Patchy treatments, ranging from talking therapies to drugs, had followed. But in the end, Sara had been admitted to Ilford. What lay behind the girl’s unhappiness was never, as far as Mumtaz could see, ascertained. As often happened in these circumstances, professional opinion was divided on what diagnosis to give Sara. El Masri, she noted, was inclined to believe that she had a personality disorder. That made her, to him, manipulative and attention-seeking. Dr D’Lima, who had
been called out to Sara one night in the previous summer, claimed to have witnessed Sara hearing voices which pointed towards a diagnosis that was more in line with some sort of psychotic disorder. Sara had either been knowing or delusional or maybe both. What she had certainly been was sick. Her notes detailed a long list of instances of self-harm, plus two suicide attempts.

What Mumtaz hadn’t expected was a copy of Sara’s post-mortem report. She’d thrown herself from the second floor of the acute ward and so her injuries were extensive. She’d broken her neck and had sustained injuries to her internal organs. And then there was something else that Mumtaz hadn’t expected. But maybe she should have done. She folded Sara’s notes up and put them in her handbag.

‘Mrs Mayfield!’

Shirley turned. Mr Cotton was looking particularly arrogant. She just wanted to go home.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’ve forwarded my report regarding your activities with Dylan Smith to the Trust,’ he said. He coughed hard.

‘Thank you for letting me know.’

She wanted to tell him that she really didn’t give a shit what he did, but she stopped herself. Whichever way she looked at it, she’d have to find a new job soon and she may still need a reference from Cotton. If he’d deign to give her one. If being under investigation by the Trust didn’t automatically preclude her from employment elsewhere.

‘Good night, Mrs Mayfield.’

‘Good night,’ Shirley said.

He walked past her and she saw him leave the building. It was cold and dark outside and she’d had a bad day with two patients on Acute who were clearly too delusional to know what was real and what wasn’t. One of them was insisting that she contact some no win no fee legal firm about an accident that couldn’t have happened. In a way, Shirley relished the idea of presenting a firm of ambulance chasers with a story about her client, the
singer Madonna and a poorly secured dustbin. On the other hand, she didn’t feel she needed it.

She locked her office door and began to walk down the corridor. There was an odd smell underneath the usual disinfectant and piss that she couldn’t place. It wasn’t pleasant.

*

Mumtaz watched Shirley leave. Most of the lights were off in the building now. If she remembered correctly where el Masri’s office was, it was dark. But would it still be open? Probably. Because the whole building would soon be locked, not everyone who worked there was particularly scrupulous about locking doors. But filing cabinets and computer equipment were another matter. They would be carefully stowed away. There was an argument that poking around el Masri’s office was pointless. What did she hope to find?

According to the post-mortem, the foetus Sara Ibrahim had been carrying when she died had been DNA-tested. There was no copy of the results in the file and she had no idea whether they were even relevant. But what was evident from the paperwork was that the DNA test had been requested by Dr el Masri.

Given the rumours about him, had el Masri suspected that he was the father of Sara’s child? If he had, why had he falsified her records to make it look as if he had ordered her observations? A senior nurse could do that, and Mumtaz felt that if el Masri had got Sara pregnant he would want his name disassociated from hers in any way possible.

She walked into the building, past the now unmanned reception desk and up the stairs to the corridor that led to the doctor’s offices. If anything connected to Sara Ibrahim was accessible in el Masri’s office, she was going to find it. Hatem el Shamy and
his guilt or innocence were now not much more than details. It was Sara and her baby that mattered.

*

Lee didn’t want to look over the paperwork Amy had done, but he knew he had to. Some of it needed his signature. He divided it into two piles, one for signing and the other for filing. Scanning through he realized just what a good month they’d had and he made a note in his diary to ring up the garage and organize appointments for the company cars to be serviced. The gig he’d got from Derek Salmon had been particularly lucrative. He looked at the figure on the bottom of Derek’s receipt with pleasure. That was one for the filing, but the more he looked at it the more he couldn’t seem to put it away.

The phone rang.

‘Wotcha.’

It was his new housemate, Tony.

‘Hiya, Tone.’

‘Just letting you know I may not be back tonight,’ he said.

‘You get lucky?’

‘Me? Lucky?’ he snorted. ‘Nah, work, mate.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, “oh”,’ he said. ‘Back of a van with a Coke bottle for a bog.’

He was on a stakeout. ‘Welcome to my world,’ Lee said.

‘You think?’

Lee said, ‘Thanks for letting me know, Tone. I’ll leave the chain off the door.’

‘Ta.’

Lee put the phone down and looked at Derek Salmon’s receipt again. It had been printed on his company stationary, which Lee had seen many times before. Derek liked to display all the
quality marks the firm had earned on his paper as well as all the badges of organizations he’d joined over the years. Only the address was different. Lee recalled the shiny new office on Stratford Broadway with an unruffled Derek, newly single, sitting at its biggest, most opulent desk.

But the new office wasn’t the reason why he was looking at Derek’s stationery. He knew that something, even though he didn’t know exactly what, was troubling him about it. And then it came to him. His face cold with tension, he picked up his phone and dialled.

*

Everything was either locked away or absent. Only el Masri’s desktop computer stood out against the unbroken emptiness. There were no photographs of a wife or child, no stray cardboard files, no naff nick-nacks from the land of the Pharaohs. Mumtaz thought the word ‘anodyne’. And yet, to her, el Masri had seemed exotic. Had he used his difference to gain Sara Ibrahim’s confidence?

Young, troubled girls were vulnerable to doing things they didn’t like. Even her own stepdaughter, Shazia, had sometimes complied with her father’s sexual demands without complaint. She’d told Mumtaz it had been easier that way. It saved her a beating; besides, Ahmet had driven her self-esteem into the ground.

Had Sara felt like that too? Mentally ill, hearing voices that frightened her, taking refuge in self-harm, she’d been such easy prey. Her family were, by all accounts, barely functional and so she’d probably not had the familial support she deserved. But none of that meant that el Masri had abused her. He’d altered her medical records. There was no proof he’d ever had sex with her.

Mumtaz had to decide whether or not to log into el Masri’s desktop. It was highly unlikely that anything to do with Sara Ibrahim would be on the computer, but then again people could be very stupid. An inordinate number of paedophiles seemed to leave incriminating material on their systems. She hesitated for a moment and then she switched the machine on. The doctor’s home screen was pleasingly Egyptian. The god Anubis reared his jackal head up at her and said something she couldn’t understand. But it sounded menacing. It was also loud. Mumtaz looked behind to make sure she wasn’t being watched and then located the machine’s speakers and turned them off. Although Shazia had an Apple laptop, Mumtaz wasn’t familiar with them. The system asked for a password, and Mumtaz had to decide whether she’d try to wing it or not. In the end her courage failed her and she turned the computer off. Looking at its blank screen she wondered whether she should have taken a punt. But it was too dodgy.

Mumtaz sat back in the doctor’s chair and looked around the room. All the filing cabinets were locked, she’d checked them. She got up. There was no point staying. She walked towards the door. Then she stopped. Between two filing cabinets was a door. She imagined it led to el Masri’s secretary’s office. But she didn’t remember a door like that in the secretary’s room. She turned the handle. It opened towards her and, as she moved the door, she noticed that it smeared some liquid across the floor. Mumtaz found herself looking not into an office but a cupboard. Stuffed with coats and umbrellas, it smelt musty. Somewhere between metal and wet dog.

The liquid on the floor was coming from the cupboard. As far as Mumtaz could see, it came from a massive pile of coats right
in the middle. She put a hand down to touch the wetness. When she looked at her fingers they were red.

*

Cobbett was out on a job, and nobody would tell Lee where or what it was. Nobody would riffle through his evidence either. This was unsurprising, if frustrating. All Lee wanted to know was what the letter Ken Rivers had received from his son Phil’s solicitors, Myerson & Jackson, looked like. If he remembered correctly, all the trade association and quality mark logos were on an uneven right-leaning slant. He’d noticed it immediately when Cobbett had shown him Ken’s letter. Was it the same on Derek’s stationery? He looked at Derek’s letterhead again. It was. Had it been on the slant like that only since Derek had moved office or was he making that up? Did Del have his stationery printed elsewhere or did his people do it in-house? He didn’t know. Maybe he should ask him?

Even in his head it sounded weird. ‘Hello, Derek, you know your stationery? Do you get it printed or do it in-house?’ He couldn’t ask that. Lee looked at his watch. And anyway, it was almost seven p.m. If Derek Salmon was at his office, he almost certainly wouldn’t be answering calls.

If the printing fault on the Ken Rivers letter was identical to Lee’s receipt from Derek Salmon, what did that mean? At its most basic level it could be that Derek and Phil Rivers’ hooky solicitors used the same printing company. It didn’t mean they necessarily knew each other. Ken’s letter had stuck in Lee’s mind because of the wonky logos. If Derek’s stationery hadn’t looked the same, he would have forgotten all about it.

He’d left a message for Cobbett on his mobile, although that
didn’t mean he’d necessarily get back to him. If Derek Salmon and Myerson & Jackson had used the same printer what did
that
mean? The letterheads and addresses for each company were different but if they used the same printer perhaps they had a connection of some sort. And if they had a connection then, potentially, Derek Salmon would know who they were.

So why had Derek hired Lee to find Phil Rivers? But then
he
hadn’t. Sandra Rivers had asked Derek to hire someone to find her ex-husband. Derek had told him that if he found Myerson & Jackson along the way then all well and good, but the target had been Phil.

Lee still had Sandra Rivers’ phone number on file. He took it out and dialled. He knew he shouldn’t; she was an ex-client, she wouldn’t want to be bothered.

‘Hello?’

He apologized for disturbing her. Profusely. Then he asked her about Phil.

‘You want to know why I gave you the heave-ho?’ she said. ‘Fair enough. And I’m sorry, Lee, I know that’s your living. But I was getting myself in such a state over it all. Derek persuaded me it was for the best.’

‘What, to give up looking for Phil?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do still love him, Lee, but Del was right. Carrying on was just hurting me. I’ll never get over Phil, but I do have to move on. He’s gone.’

And he was gay!
Lee thought, but he didn’t say it. He also didn’t say that he wasn’t surprised that Derek Salmon had advised Sandra not to carry on looking for Phil. He wished it had surprised him, but it hadn’t. By the time he put the phone down, all he could think about was how much Phil and his mates had paid for Del’s new offices. He also found himself wondering how
Derek and Phil had got together, who their associates were, and what, if anything, that had got to do with Salmon’s separation from his wife.

*

Her mother often looked determined, but not like this. By the time Rashida had got home from school, dinner had been cooked and her mother had the kids in their nightclothes ready for bed.

‘I have to go out tonight, Rashida,’ she told her. ‘You must put the children to bed. You understand?’

‘Yes. Where are you going?’

‘It’s not your business,’ Salwa said.

Rashida hoped that it wasn’t. Her mother had promised not to take them all to Egypt until the Christmas holidays, but she had seen her on the computer. She’d been on airline sites. Was she going out this evening to ask the neighbours to watch the house while they were away? Panic took hold of Rashida. She’d thought she’d have until the end of term; she didn’t have a plan. MJ had said that she could go and live with her family, but that would just get them into trouble.

‘Will you be long?’ Rashida asked her mother.

Salwa pulled a coat around her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. As long as it takes.’

‘What?’

‘What do you mean “what”?’

‘I mean, what are you doing, Omy?’

‘It’s my business,’ Salwa said. She walked towards the front door.

But just before she left, unable to stop herself, Rashida called out, ‘Omy, you’re not going out to do something about going back to Cairo, are you?’

Her mother turned. Her face was ugly with anger. ‘I told you, we are going back,’ she said. ‘You know this.’

‘Yes, but not now, not—’

‘We will go back when I say,’ Salwa said.

‘Yes, but that won’t be—’

‘That will be when I say, Rashida. Now please go to your room and do your homework. I will be back when my business is finished.’

And then she left. Rashida sat down on the hall floor and cried. She couldn’t trust her mother. And if Rashida was out of the country and married to her cousin in Egypt, Salwa would not care what the school said. They couldn’t do anything.

For a moment she just sat and listened to the kids playing upstairs and then she made a decision. Rashida ran into the kitchen and grabbed a pile of clothes from the radiator.

*

Up close the smell was unmistakable. The iron cut into your nose. Whoever or whatever was hidden underneath those coats had been walking around in the not-too-distant past. Mumtaz took a moment to compose herself and breathe. If it was an animal underneath the coats – although why it should be, she couldn’t imagine – that was one thing, but if it was a person it could be a crime scene.

Was it el Masri in there? She peered into the dark cupboard, but she couldn’t see anything distinctly. She knew she didn’t really want to. What she had to do was call someone. Blood was seeping from this cupboard and it was on her hands and she needed help. As so often happened, she didn’t have a tissue to hand and so she took off her scarf and used it to wipe the blood
off her fingers. When she’d got it all off, she took her phone out. There was no point messing about calling Lee, she’d just have to get the police out.

She didn’t hear so much as a footstep moving in her direction. So when the blow did come, it caught her entirely by surprise.