Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (26 page)

She heard a click and then saw a sliver of light. Mumtaz shut her eyes. Cold air flooded into the boot and then she felt warm breath on her cheek. Someone’s face was very close to hers. A hand picked up her wrist and held it between slim fingers.

‘She’s alive.’

Mumtaz didn’t recognize the voice. It could be any middle-aged English man.

‘Let’s get him out first.’

Grunting noises followed. There were a couple of abortive attempts to remove what sounded as if it had to be a body at her feet.

They got it out and then they came for her. Cold air was soon replaced by a slightly warmer atmosphere and the sound of feet on floorboards. Then there was the sound of a door closing. They were inside somewhere. She was laid down on the floor.

She heard footsteps walking away. Did she dare open her eyes? The footsteps had faded out to her right but, because she didn’t know where she was, that didn’t do her much good. Wherever she was smelt musty and a little acrid. When she moved her fingers against the floor it was gritty. Her heart churning, she opened her eyes.

Except for some light from a window high up in the wall opposite, she was in darkness. Muffled male voices still drifted towards her from somewhere, but they were getting fainter. Were the men going back outside? In spite of the darkness, she looked around. Some light was getting in and so soon her eyes would adjust. She just needed to stay calm.

Her legs came into view. Stuck out in front of her, her feet held together with thin wire. To her left there was a pillar, which was slim and had some sort of scrollwork at the bottom. It was close and she could see that it was ornate. In the distance were others. Mumtaz had the impression of a building that was old and well built. Then she looked to her right.

The expression on his face showed very clearly that he had not died easily. His eyes were still open and his mouth was pulled back over his teeth; it made him look as if he was about to eat her. For a moment, Mumtaz wondered whether he was in fact
alive. She wanted to prod him with a finger just to make sure, but her hands were tied.

He had to be dead. There was so much blood. Where his throat had been slashed, there was a black wound. Dr el Masri’s blood had started to coagulate as soon as his heart had stopped. He was no danger to anyone now.

‘If your mother is there and she sees you, she’ll have my guts for garters,’ Lee said.

Shazia, sitting calmly beside him in the passenger seat, said, ‘So deal with it. I’m coming with you and that’s that.’

It had only taken Lee one phone call to find out the address where Dr el Masri’s car was registered. It was in one of those blocks of flats that looked as if they were made of Lego at Gallions Reach. The same area Amy had staked out when she had followed Antoni Brzezinski. Drugs had been involved. Nice neighbours, Lee thought.

‘When Amma was being held by that crazy Khan in East Ham, I had to watch it all on the TV,’ Shazia said. ‘I’m not doing that again.’

It had happened just before the Olympics. Mumtaz had taken a job for a young woman called Nasreen Khan, who had feared her husband, Abdullah, was not all he seemed. She’d been right. Her husband had not been a conventional, prosperous lawyer but an enforcer for a powerful crime firm. He’d had debts and a past that he found impossible to accept. Eventually his violent lifestyle had pushed him into a corner, and he had taken his wife and Mumtaz hostage at his house in East Ham. For almost twenty hours footage from outside the house had been broadcast
during TV news bulletins. Shazia had watched it all with her heart in her throat.

‘I’m nearly seventeen, Lee,’ she said.

He thought how young that was but didn’t say anything. Now on the A13 headed towards Beckton, Lee was trying to deal with the variable speed limits on the road and not descend into morbid fantasies about what might have happened to Mumtaz. Her headscarf had been stained with blood.

‘Try your mum’s phone again,’ he said to Shazia. ‘She might’ve got a taxi home or something.’

He didn’t really believe that. But it gave Shazia something to do while Lee wondered what the hell Mumtaz had been doing at the hospital on her day off. What had been so urgent that she’d stopped packing and driven to Ilford?

‘Still no answer.’ Shazia put her phone in her lap. ‘She’s in trouble again, isn’t she, Lee?’

‘I don’t know, love.’ Why would she have gone off with el Masri of her own accord? And what did the headscarf on the floor mean? Lee put his hand in his pocket to make sure it was still there. Shazia hadn’t seen it and he wasn’t about to show it to her.

‘You know why Amma always has to prove herself, don’t you?’ Shazia said.

Lee turned left onto the slip road leading to Woolwich Manor Road.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because of my dad,’ Shazia said.

Even at the Asda roundabout the road was almost empty. Two buses came out of Beckton bus station. Lee didn’t know what, if anything, he should say. He knew Ahmet Hakim had left his wife and daughter with debts. There had been some cruelty in that
marriage too. Mumtaz had never told him so, but he’d seen enough abused women in his time to know the signs.

‘He treated her like she was stupid,’ Shazia said. ‘He did that to both of us.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault,’ she said.

‘You must still miss your dad, though.’

She said nothing and then turned to look at him. Even out of the corner of his eye, Lee knew he didn’t like what he saw. Her expression made him wince. He changed the subject. ‘When we get to Gallions you stay in the car. Agreed?’

‘If you say so,’ Shazia said. Then she smiled and, to Lee, she came back to herself again. ‘If you must leave a young girl alone in a car in the dark …’

*

‘I’m not coming home, Omy,’ Rashida said. Snuggled deep in one of MJ’s luxurious sofas she felt warm and safe. Zizi was so relaxed she’d gone to sleep.

‘You’re at that dirty girl’s house, I know it!’ Salwa said. ‘I’ll call the police and those people will get into trouble.’

MJ’s brother came into the room, put a cup of hot chocolate down in front of Rashida and then left. Rashida said, ‘Call them and I’ll send them straight to Baba’s lock-up.’

‘You wouldn’t do that!’

Rashida knew that her mother was right, but all she needed was the threat. ‘You had me cut, Omy,’ Rashida said. ‘And that isn’t allowed here.’

‘What? Why are you bringing that up now? You had your operation in Egypt, it’s none of anyone’s business here.’

‘And you’ll get Zizi cut.’

‘I’ve said nothing about—’

‘When we go to Cairo for my wedding to that pig Anwar you’ll get her cut,’ she said. ‘She’s the same age as I was. It’s the perfect opportunity. Why wouldn’t you?’

Salwa didn’t answer for a moment and then she said, ‘Where do you get these ideas from that everything we do is bad? You have always been a good Muslim girl. Modest. What will your father say when he finds this out? My daughter, I am telling you, you have been corrupted. Your sister must be cut or no man will ever want her.’

MJ had already had sex and what she’d told Rashida about it hadn’t sounded unpleasant. She hadn’t been cut.

‘Your father is a freedom fighter,’ Salwa said. ‘Wrongly imprisoned in this country. Will you abandon him now when he needs you most? Baba needs us all to do our duty as his family and as Muslims. You want to be a good Muslim, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’ Rashida didn’t say anything else. But she wanted to. What she’d seen in her father’s lock-up, try as she might, couldn’t be unseen. With or without marriage to her cousin Anwar, and her little sister’s circumcision, she couldn’t go back in time to a place where she unquestioningly idolized her father.

‘Rashida?’

‘Omy, we’re safe, but in the morning I will call Social Services.’

‘They will take you away!’

She’d thought about it. She’d spoken about it to Krishna. She knew that they could end up in care. But she was almost sixteen and, if MJ’s family agreed to let them stay, which MJ said they would, there was a chance the sisters could remain together.

‘Where are you? Tell me.’

‘No.’

‘They won’t put me in prison,’ Salwa said. ‘If that is what you want!’

‘I don’t want that,’ Rashida said.

‘So what do you want?’

She’d never thought about it much. She did now, and then she said, ‘I want people to trust me. I want you to trust me.’

Salwa said, ‘Girls can’t be trusted, Rashida. They tempt men, they can’t help it.’

‘So men are just helpless?’

‘Yes!’

Rashida shook her head. She could talk to her mother until the end of time, she’d never change how she thought. ‘Goodbye, Omy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Her mother tried to say something but Rashida ended the call. It had been all very well being a small girl who was pious and unquestioning. But when her grandmother had held her down and cut her, that had been when questions she was still asking has started to occur to her. As a woman she was no longer trusted like she’d been as a little girl; every time she spoke English older family members in Cairo looked at her with disapproval. She’d searched the Koran to find something that helped her make sense of what had been done to her. But she found none. She’d nearly bled to death because of a folk custom and yet nobody would admit that.

MJ came in with a bowl of crisps. ‘You OK?’ she asked.

‘Mum’ll fight to get us back,’ Rashida said.

MJ sat down beside her. ‘Then we’ll fight her,’ she said. ‘Simple.’

*

There was only one vehicle parked in the vicinity of the Lego-like flats. An old Ford Sierra, it was in such a state it had probably been dumped. There were double yellow lines everywhere. Underneath the buildings were vast car parks. OK for the residents so why should anyone care about visitors or workmen? Lee found modern developments like this self-absorbed. Most of the residents, he imagined, were single with lots of disposable money they could spend on the type of car that has to be put in a garage. Fortunately it was probably too late for traffic wardens. He pulled over beside the old Gallions Hotel.

‘That looks a bit creepy,’ Shazia said.

It did. A bit faux Tudor, a bit stucco overload, Gallions was all late Victorian splendour and it was dwarfed by the Lego flats.

‘No one knows what to do with it,’ Lee said. ‘When I was a kid it was probably the roughest pub in the whole borough.’

‘What is it now?’

The entire building was dark and silent. ‘Just empty,’ Lee said. ‘Now look, I’m gonna go and see if I can track down this doctor’s flat. You stay here.’

He could see she didn’t want to. He headed off towards the block to his right. Whoever had built these flats had put them in front of the old hotel so they got the best views of the Royal Albert Dock and the River Thames. From a developer’s standpoint it made sense. Views sold. He looked down at his phone, which was where he’d made a note of el Masri’s flat number. He wouldn’t be able to see what any of the blocks were called until he got closer. Why did so many blocks have names you could hardly read? Or was it just his eyes?

Vi used to tell stories about Gallions. Her uncles had been patrons of the pub and when the American film director Stanley Kubrick had filmed
Full Metal Jacket
on the site of the old Beckton
gasworks, Vi had escorted some members of the production team into the building. They hadn’t wanted to shoot any scenes inside it, they’d just been curious to find out what it was. Then, back in the 1980s, it had been not much more than a ghost. Now it was a tarted-up ghost. Lee looked up at the block whose name he still didn’t know and lost count of the number of bicycles on nearly every balcony. Money with a green conscience.

He turned to make sure that Shazia was still in the car. It was then that he saw the Mercedes S-class. Aware that it was the latest model, he also recognized the number plate. Why hadn’t el Masri put it in his garage space?

*

The footsteps grew louder. Mumtaz forced herself to stop looking at el Masri’s face and shut her eyes. But her deception had been spotted. Silently, hands that were remarkably gentle unwound the wire from her ankles and a soft voice said, ‘You’re going to have to walk now.’

For a moment she tried to pretend that she hadn’t heard. The voice said, ‘Do stop playing games, Miss Huq.’

She opened her eyes.

‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ Mr Cotton said. ‘Or was there something more to your peculiar research today, eh?’ He held her handbag up and said, ‘Well?’

The other man, whose face she couldn’t see, dragged el Masri’s body away by its feet.

‘Where is he being taken?’ she asked.

‘Somewhere he won’t be found. But I asked you a question first,’ Cotton said. ‘What have you been doing today wandering around the hospital, sometimes covered with your headscarf, sometimes not?’

Mumtaz didn’t answer. He must have been watching her all day. Had she been that obvious? What was he doing here, wherever here was? And had he killed el Masri?

‘Sara Ibrahim was dead long before you came to us,’ he said. ‘Why so much interest in her?’

Mumtaz didn’t answer.

Without untying her wrists, Cotton lifted her to her feet. ‘Unlike el Masri you can walk, and so you’ll have to.’

But she didn’t move. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Me?’ He shrugged. ‘I’m taking you for a walk, Miss Huq.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Why is Dr el Masri dead? Did you kill him?’ Hysteria was beginning to get the better of her. Mumtaz made herself pause for breath.

‘So many questions. And yet you still haven’t told me why you’re so interested in Sara Ibrahim. Not related, are you? When you breezed into the Advocacy with all your qualifications I admit I had my suspicions.’ Still carrying her handbag, he pushed her forwards. ‘But in answer to one of your questions, at the moment I’m walking with you. Later I won’t be.’

That didn’t sound healthy.

He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’ll need to go to the left,’ he said. ‘Just a bit. Then there are some stairs.’

He was talking so softly, Mumtaz wondered whether they were somewhere they could be overheard. If they were, should she scream? She didn’t know where she was. This musty building could be in the middle of nowhere.

The stairs didn’t look very safe. She hesitated. With her arms tied behind her back, if she fell she wouldn’t be able to save herself. But he took her elbow and led her down. An even dustier and darker space than the one above yawned.

He pointed towards a space in front of her that was so completely black it looked like a void. ‘We go down there.’

Although she’d been frightened as soon as she’d seen Cotton, Mumtaz was now almost overcome with terror. ‘No.’

For thirty seconds there was no sound or movement except the ever-increasing beat of her heart.

Then he said, ‘Do you want me to carry you?’

She turned her head and looked into his eyes. He put a hand on her body and her skin shrank from it. Had he touched his patients when they hadn’t wanted him to? He pushed her very gently and she stumbled over something.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She looked down. It was a plastic sack. There were others behind it.

He moved them out of her way. ‘Mustn’t damage the goods,’ he said.

Did he mean the sacks or her? He put his hand on her body again.

Was this all about sex? Angry, she said, ‘Men! You’re just led like sheep by your sexual needs, aren’t you?’

He pushed her into the darkness. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘no sex here, Miss Huq. This is business.’

*

He hadn’t been inside Gallions Hotel for decades. In fact, when Lee thought about it, he realized that he probably hadn’t even seen the place since he was a child. His dad had taken him and his brother one Saturday night when their mum was away. That had been in the days when it had been called the Captain’s Brothel. He and Roy had run around inside between the dockers
and their women while their old man had got plastered and then vomited down his shirt. Lee’s main recollection of Gallions was that its basement had been a stable. No longer used for horses when he’d sneaked down there, it had retained the old stalls and some riding equipment. There’d also been a door that some old drunk had told him led to the Albert Dock. He’d said that if anyone opened the door the whole place would flood. That had given him nightmares. Forty years on, that story still gave Lee the creeps. And now there were sounds coming from the old place. He put his ear to a crack in a door and tried to work out whether he was just imagining that he heard voices. When he leant against it, the door moved.