Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (4 page)

‘And you want him …’

‘He owes money to a client of mine.’

‘A lot?’

‘Proceeds from a house sale,’ the solicitor said. ‘Client’s his ex-wife.’

Lee looked up. ‘Wasn’t the property included in the divorce settlement?’

‘Yes and no.’ He shook his head. ‘Phil Rivers, the misper, is a bit of a bad boy, but one of those with a good body and a “heart of gold”. You know the type.’

Lee rolled his eyes. Yes, he knew that type. In his experience those Jack-the-Lad blokes either ended up being kept by gullible women or they went to prison for something petty where they were repeatedly sodomised by hard nuts.

‘My client, the wife, who is a lady of no small fortune, let Phil stay in the house after they got divorced on condition that if he wanted to move or she needed to sell the place it could be sold and they’d split the profits.’

‘What happened?’

‘Phil scammed her,’ Derek said. ‘Put the house up for sale privately, online. It’s in a nice part of Wanstead and so it went quickly.’

Lee narrowed his eyes. ‘Right.’ Even if Phil Rivers had advertised his house online, how had he managed to actually sell it without his wife’s permission?

‘You’re thinking how did he do the conveyancing, transfer the funds? Well, that was done through a bogus firm of solicitors called Myerson & Jackson. On their very kosher-looking paperwork they claim to have an office in Harlow. In fact they don’t and have never existed.’

‘But the vendor’s solicitors transferred their funds into Myerson & Jackson’s account.’

‘Correct.’

Lee shook his head. ‘I’ve heard about this but not come across it myself.’

‘Oh, it’s a growing problem,’ Derek said. ‘In this case Phil Rivers and/or whoever Myerson & Jackson really are got away with a cool one point two million quid.’

‘Fuck me.’ Lee looked around Derek Salmon’s brand-new chrome and glass office on Stratford Broadway and wondered what it had cost. ‘Derek, this is a criminal matter. Surely the buyers have contacted the police?’

‘Oh yes, but they’ve drawn a blank. The money was transferred, taken out of the bogus solicitor’s account, account was closed and Myerson & Jackson ceased to exist. It’s probably offshore now. Although whether that account is in the name of Phil Rivers is a moot point. The description given by Myerson & Jackson’s bank of the person who opened that account doesn’t bear any resemblance to Phil.’

‘He wasn’t working alone.’

‘Probably not.’

‘What about the wife?’ Lee said. ‘Surely she wants her money?’

‘Ah, there we have a complication,’ Derek Salmon said.

‘Why?’

The solicitor, who was tall, thin and aristocratic-looking, nevertheless retained his Canning Town accent. ‘Still loves him, soppy mare.’ He shook his head. ‘She wants Phil found, not so much because she wants her money back, but because she’s worried about him. She don’t want the police involved.’

Lee said. ‘This geezer’s broken the law and as for the bogus law firm … What about the buyers? They must still be pushing the coppers?’

‘Well, they were …’

‘What do you mean?’

Derek sighed. ‘They withdrew their statement against Phil Rivers and Myerson & Jackson when Mrs Rivers, the wife, paid them off in full.’

Lee was speechless. Not only was this Mrs Rivers very rich she was also, he felt, very stupid, too.

‘So the coppers aren’t looking for him,’ Derek said. ‘But Mrs Rivers is, which is where you come in. Of course, if you do find him, Phil’s story may well be that Myerson & Jackson cheated him, too.’

‘That’s bollocks!’

‘Probably.’

‘Definitely.’

‘We have to proceed with caution.’ Derek leant back in his large leather chair and smiled. ‘Sandra Rivers, Phil’s wife, is a very good client of mine.’

He made a lot of money out of her.

‘So, much as I might want to put a stop to scams like this one, on this occasion, I can’t assume that Phil Rivers is involved,’ the solicitor said. ‘Phil may or may not be Myerson & Jackson. Hopefully we’ll discover that when you find him. And for the moment, that is all I want you to do, Lee. Find him and tell me where he is, don’t attempt to engage with him yourself.’

‘Understood.’

Lee had worked on and off for Derek Salmon for a number of years and so he knew that he understood East London and its people. But he was also a lawyer, which made him, by definition, dodgy to an ex-copper like Lee. If he found this Phil Rivers, one way or another, he’d find out if his Myerson & Jackson stunt was a one-off. With money in the millions on offer, he suspected that it could become habit-forming.

‘So you’ll take it?’

‘Yes,’ Lee said.

The solicitor took a plastic wallet out of his briefcase and flung it across the table towards Lee.

‘That’ll answer most of your questions about Phil Rivers,’ he said. ‘Some homework for you.’

Lee opened the wallet. ‘He local?’

‘North Woolwich,’ Derek said. ‘But his parents moved out to Southend ten years ago. Oh, and if you’re thinking that maybe he might have gone abroad, Phil doesn’t fly. Got a phobia about it.’

‘He can presumably get on a boat.’

‘Yeah, imagine he can. But Sandra reckons that if he can find a way to stay in the UK he will. She used to take him all over the world when they were married, but he hated “abroad” according to her.’ He shrugged. ‘How anyone can dislike St Tropez in the summer is beyond me.’

‘St Tropez?’

‘Sandra has a house there,’ Derek said. ‘And before you ask, Lee, she made her money from an online shopping site she has since sold on. Not bad for a girl from Shoreditch back in the days when it was a shithole.’

‘She’s older than Phil?’

‘When she met him he was working as a bit of extra muscle for a mate of Sandra’s dad. Remember Brian Barber?’

‘Oh, God.’

Brian Barber had been an old-time old lag who had run his antiquated crime firm, based around clocking cars, out of a shabby lock-up in Canning Town. Brian, who had been old when Lee remembered him, had been dead for a good fifteen years. Broken by illness and the enhanced security in modern cars,
he’d died a virtual pauper. If Sandra Rivers’ dad had been Brian Barber’s contemporary, then how old was she?

‘Sandra’s almost sixty,’ Derek said. The two men exchanged a look and then he continued, ‘So, all clear for now?’

‘I’ll get on to it,’ Lee said.

‘I’ll leave it with you.’

When he left Derek’s office and went to pick his car up, Lee looked at his watch. It was five o’clock and he imagined that Mumtaz would be out of her meeting up at Ilford Hospital and that Vi would have left the station to go home. He imagined Vi’s anxiety as she packed a small bag to go into hospital the following morning and wondered whether he should phone her. Later.

*

By the time Mumtaz got home she was drained. Being in the institutional atmosphere of the hospital for so long – Shirley had given her what had turned out to be a thorough guided tour – had tired and depressed her. How she was going to cope emotionally being there twice a week, she didn’t know. She started first thing the next morning!

Mumtaz had always believed that the mentally ill were the least regarded souls and what she’d seen up at Ilford had not changed her mind. It was particularly true on the chronic ward. As if the shabby clothes weren’t bad enough, the patients’ lack of curiosity had made her want to cry. That wasn’t good medicine.

But when she walked into her living room she saw something that made her feel better. She’d been dreading packing up the china. Yet here was her stepdaughter, Shazia, doing just that.

‘It’s Wednesday,’ the girl said by way of explanation. Wednesdays were short days at her sixth form college and students
could either go home to do some private study or take part in one of its enrichment programmes.

‘Shazia!’

From the look of it, most of the china had already been packed. Mumtaz hugged the girl. When she’d first married Shazia’s father, Ahmet Hakim, the girl had been resentful of Mumtaz. But when Ahmet had started to sexually abuse Mumtaz, Shazia, abused by him herself for years, realized that she had an ally. And after Ahmet’s death they had become even closer.

‘Thank you so much, darling. I was dreading the china.’

Shazia wrapped a delicate teapot in newspaper and put it into a crate. ‘Well, I think that’s it,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Amma?’

Mumtaz sat down on the nearest comfy chair. ‘You’re an angel.’

Shazia laughed. ‘You don’t know what I want in return yet,’ she said.

Mumtaz shook her head. ‘Whatever it is, you can have it. And yes, I would like some tea, please.’

‘OK.’ Shazia began to walk towards the kitchen. But then she stopped. ‘Oh, some man called today.’

Mumtaz turned to look at her. ‘What man?’

‘Quite old, Asian. I didn’t know him. He asked me to tell him where we were moving to.’

Suddenly Mumtaz’s welcome home turned sour. A ‘quite old’ Asian man could, possibly, be Zahid Sheikh, Naz’s father and head of the clan that had beggared her husband through his weakness for gambling – and who had killed him. After his death, Ahmet’s debt to the Sheikhs had become Mumtaz’s and she’d had to sell the house to pay it. Shazia knew nothing of this. Mumtaz, controlling her voice, said, ‘And did you tell him?’

‘No!’ Shazia said. ‘Of course not. I didn’t know him. Why would I?’ Then she went into the kitchen to make the tea.

Mumtaz breathed more easily again. She was under no illusion – the Sheikhs weren’t going to leave her alone any time soon. Naz had made it clear that he wanted Shazia while she was still young and Mumtaz knew she’d have to pay, one way or another, to keep her daughter safe. But she didn’t want to make anything easy for the Sheikhs. No doubt they’d find out where she’d moved to soon enough.

Mumtaz remembered that she hadn’t called Lee to tell him about her interview at the hospital. She took her mobile out of her handbag and brought up his number. When he answered she said, ‘I start tomorrow.’

A man who was tall, broad and whose face was smoke-dried to the colour of dust, was crying. ‘They’ had been flying over in planes and dropping his father’s cremated ashes on the hospital. Why weren’t the staff doing anything about it?

Shirley, who had been trying to make eye contact with this service user to no avail, said, ‘Terry, I know it’s hard to accept, but no one can stop planes flying.’

‘They can stop them dropping ashes! But they keep on doing it! Year in, year out!’ He looked as if someone had poured ashes over his head; grey hair and face, agonized grey eyes.

Shirley let him cry. Sitting in silence beside her, Mumtaz wondered what Shirley was going to say next. The man was in the grip of a delusion that was clearly real to him. She knew what she would say to him, with her text-book knowledge, but what would Shirley do?

‘This issue of your father’s ashes is very distressing to you, Terry,’ Shirley said. ‘And I also know that it is really happening – for you.’

He looked up.

‘But it isn’t happening that way for me or for the other staff here,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why that is but …’

‘I’m not mad.’ His voice, if not his face, was wounded. All hysteria had gone.

‘Nobody’s saying that you are,’ Shirley reassured him. ‘But sometimes, Terry, we all have to accept that the way we see the world is not necessarily the way other people see it.’

‘The pills they give you here don’t help either,’ Terry said. ‘I don’t take them. Make you mad, they do! Look at all these barmy patients in here! Couldn’t see a plane if their lives depended on it. Staff are the same. Druggies, all of them!’

Terry started crying again and eventually Shirley called over a nurse, who wordlessly led him back to his room.

‘Chronic patients like Terry can seem almost normal when they’re not on their particular hobby horses,’ Shirley said as they walked out of the locked ward and into the open air. ‘With Terry it’s his father’s cremation. He’s fixated on it.’

‘Does anyone know why?’ Mumtaz asked.

‘Not that I know of. But he’s far too sick to leave so he’ll never have to deal with normal life.’

Knowing what she did about mental health and its reputation as the ‘Cinderella service’ within the NHS, Mumtaz wondered if anyone had ever asked Terry to explain what his fears meant to him. The nurses on the chronic ward had looked almost as torpid and badly dressed as the patients, the TV had been on at full volume, cranking out chat show nonsense, and every chair she’d come across had been stained beyond redemption. How could anyone work effectively in such an environment? How could the patients ever get well? But then she remembered that they weren’t expected to.

‘You’ll notice,’ Shirley said, ‘that I didn’t collude in Terry’s delusion.’

‘No.’ Mumtaz hadn’t imagined she would. Whatever iniquities remained within mental health services, the propagation of patient delusions was not one of them. Acknowledging a different perspective while retaining one’s own point of view had been a standard therapeutic response for many years.

‘You give the service user respect as an individual with a unique position while at the same time not playing a game of pretending to believe them just to make them happy and give yourself a quiet life,’ Shirley continued.

‘What about Terry’s idea that the medication the patients are given isn’t working?’ Mumtaz asked.

‘Well, it’s nonsense.’ Shirley smiled. ‘And he does take his meds, in spite of what he says. He has to, he’s sectioned.’ Then she said, ‘Do you smoke?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I need a fag. You’ll find that most of the service users and most of the staff smoke. But these days we have to do it outside. We’ve got a smokers’ corner behind the old laundry block,’ Shirley said. ‘If you want to join me, you’re welcome. You’ll get to meet just about anyone who is anyone in this place if you do.’

‘OK.’

They walked the length of the chronic wing until they came to a low red-brick building. Where there had once been windows, now there were wooden boards and a large chimney at one end, which looked as if it was in danger of collapse. Shirley led Mumtaz round the back of the building.

‘All the laundry used to be done on-site,’ she said. ‘But when it was decided that the hospital would close, it was contracted out to some private company. That chimney is over where the old laundry copper used to be.’

‘When is the hospital supposed to be closing?’ Mumtaz asked.

‘This time?’ Shirley shook her head. ‘Officially 2014, but in reality God knows. This place has been “closing down” since the 1980s to my knowledge. Hiya, Kylie.’

They were suddenly in amongst a large group of people.

‘Hi, Shirley.’ Kylie was a young girl, probably no more than eighteen or twenty, and she wore one of those nylon tabards Mumtaz recognized as the uniform of the hospital’s cleaners. She smiled at Mumtaz. ‘All right?’

‘This is my new advocate, Mumtaz.’ Shirley lit a cigarette.

‘Hiya.’

‘Hi,’ Mumtaz said.

Mainly nurses, care assistants and cleaners, the smokers consisted of one large, apparently cheerful group, plus two smaller collections of people. One of these was made up of patients. Clustered around a blocked-off doorway, most of them sat on cracked paving stones and scrub grass sharing roll-ups. Occasionally one or other of them would glance up at the larger group and then look away quickly.

Shirley said, ‘They wait around for dog-ends. When we go, they’ll pounce on this patch.’

Mumtaz remembered when she’d worked with mental health service users briefly before her marriage and how keen they’d always been to have a branded cigarette. One of the group, a young man in a pair of baggy tracksuit bottoms, stood up and began to pace.

‘And we’ve got some doctors,’ Shirley said. The other group, more distant from the main group than the service users, was well dressed and exclusively male. ‘Psychiatrists smoke like troopers.’

There were four of them. All dressed in suits, the one that stood out for Mumtaz was a tall, blond man of about fifty. He
was so thin that she wondered whether he was unwell. To his right were two smaller men of about the same age, one slim, the other overweight. Both looked Asian. The fourth man was younger than the others and was white with dark hair.

‘The tall skinny chap is Mr Cotton, the chief psychiatric consult,’ Shirley said.

‘He looks to me as if he’s got cancer or something,’ Kylie said.

‘He did have it about eighteen months ago,’ Shirley said. ‘One of his legs. But he’s all right now, just thin.’

‘That why he walks a bit funny?’

‘The cancer? Probably.’

‘That young good-looking one is Dr Golding,’ Shirley told Mumtaz.

Kylie smiled. ‘Everyone fancies him.’

‘He won’t stay long,’ Shirley said.

‘Why not?’

‘He just won’t.’

Maybe she was influenced by Shirley’s words, but to Mumtaz the young doctor didn’t look comfortable. While the other three men chatted easily, he was a little on the periphery and she thought he looked as if he didn’t want to get any closer.

‘Who are the other two?’ Mumtaz asked.

‘The slim one’s Dr D’Lima and the fat one’s Dr el Masri.’

Mumtaz saw Dr D’Lima laugh and then look at the tall, white consultant and nod his head in agreement. Dr el Masri had a good head of hair and a moustache and his face was smooth, but his teeth stuck out. Other than that he seemed ordinary.

*

Lee looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. He wondered whether Vi had had her operation. She hated hospitals and so they could be
having problems calming her down. Either her blood pressure or her pulse went loopy whenever she got near a hospital, he couldn’t remember which.

He looked down at the plastic file on his desk, located a telephone number, and dialled it. He waited for a few moments until he heard a woman say, ‘Hello? Yeah?’

‘Mrs Rivers?’ he asked.

‘Yeah?’

‘Hello, Mrs Rivers, my name’s Lee Arnold, I’m the private investigator your solicitor Mr Salmon has engaged to locate the whereabouts of your husband, Philip.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ she said. ‘Del’s mate. He said you’d be in touch.’

Lee wasn’t sure he liked being described as ‘Del’s mate’ but he let it go.

‘It would be helpful if we could have a chat about Philip as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘As I’m sure you can appreciate, if I’m going to look for him I need to know as much about him as I can.’

‘Course.’

‘Convenient to you …’

‘Oh, I’m not doing nothing,’ she said. She sounded young even though he knew that she wasn’t. He had an image in his head of a petite blonde in high heels and hot pants.

‘I can come to you or we can meet at my office,’ Lee said. ‘I’m in Green Street, Upton Park.’

She laughed. ‘Green Street? Gawd blimey, I remember Green Street! Don’t think I’ve been down there for twenty years. Me and me dad used to go buying old toot for a laugh in junk shops on Green Street when I was a kid. Got me buyer’s eye in down there.’

‘Not many junk shops these days,’ Lee said.

‘I know. Been Asian restaurants and shops for donkeys’ years,’ she said. ‘Not the same.’

Lee waited for her to elaborate on what wasn’t ‘the same’ but fortunately she didn’t. Instead she said, ‘Why don’t you come here?’

‘If that’ll be better for you.’

‘Well, at least you’ll be able to park,’ she said.

He looked back down at the file. ‘West Heath Road, Hampstead?’

‘That’s the one,’ she said. ‘There’s gates but if you just press the buzzer on the wall when you get here, I’ll let you in. Do you wanna come over now, Mr Arnold?’

He thought about how long it was going to take him to get all the way across north London. And he wanted a bit more time with Phil Rivers’ file before he met his missus. He said, ‘How’s two?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘See you then.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Rivers.’

‘Anything to know where Phil’s gone,’ she said and then rang off.

Lee leant back in his chair and picked up the file. Phil Rivers was the product of one of those old council tower blocks that had been built in North Woolwich back in the 1960s. Phil’s father, Ken, had been a docker and had lost his job just a few years after his son’s birth when the Royal Docks had closed in 1981. He’d been in his forties then and hadn’t worked since. It had been Phil’s mum, Bette, who had kept the family going by increasing her hours at the Tate & Lyle sugar factory at Silvertown. In terms of male role models, Phil’s first had been a jobless man who had probably been infuriated by what he had almost certainly seen as his emasculation. Lee had had uncles like that
himself. Ex-dockers embittered by unemployment and loss of status. Uncle Charlie had thrown himself under a tube train.

According to Derek Salmon, Ken Rivers knew what his son had done and that he was missing. Phil’s mother was in the early stages of dementia and so she didn’t. Lee had considered going to visit the old couple but had then changed his mind. Parents could be too close to their children to be honest and so he’d decided to simply observe them. Ken and Bette Rivers had moved to Southend, not too far from Susan. A couple of days by the Thames Estuary, combined with some time with his girlfriend, would be very nice. Mumtaz was perfectly capable of taking care of the office on her own for a few days. Although he knew that she had a lot on her plate, what with her house move and the el Shamy assignment. Maybe he’d pop back occasionally, depending upon what he found in Southend.

He looked at his watch again. There was no way of knowing whether Vi was having surgery or not unless she phoned him. He was suddenly lonely. Mumtaz was doing her ‘voluntary work’ at Ilford Hospital and he wished she was around. Lee went out onto the metal steps outside the office and smoked a cigarette. He looked at people moving about, loading and unloading fruit and vegetables to and from lorries, men chatting and laughing in languages he couldn’t understand, kids making noise for the hell of it. He knew he should be mugging up on Phil Rivers’ biog so that he was ready for his meeting with the ex-wife. But Lee also needed to absorb what he knew about Rivers so far. With the exception of the few years when he’d worked for the old car thief Brian Barber, Phil Rivers had spent most of his life being funded by women. First his mum, then his wife. Until he’d met Sandra he’d never even left home and yet it had been Phil who had divorced her. Why? Unless he’d planned to sell the house
and bugger off for some time, it seemed to Lee as if Phil was blowing his life up. Phil’s wife had kept him. Derek Salmon had been of the opinion that Sandra was besotted with her husband and let him do whatever he liked. So if he’d wanted to cheat on her he could probably have got away with it. On the face of it, the divorce didn’t make sense.

*

There were four photographers outside the front of the house, one from each of the tabloids. Salwa was just grateful that the children had gone to school before they’d arrived. She’d phoned Rashida to tell her to pick the younger ones up after school. Her daughter had said, ‘Only if you say I don’t have to marry Cousin Anwar.’ Salwa had not agreed to that, but she knew that Rashida would collect her siblings anyway.

Some Yemeni preacher had tried to get a visa for the UK and had been denied because of his open support for al Qaeda. This story had led to other cases, both old and new, about so-called Muslim ‘hate preachers’ in the national press. And although Salwa’s husband Hatem had never preached a word either for or against al Qaeda since he’d come to Britain, his continued incarceration in Belmarsh Prison, and especially its cost, had become newsworthy again. Salwa heard one of the men outside shout, ‘How much do you get a week while your husband’s in prison, Mrs el Shamy?’ and ‘Now the Muslim Brotherhood are in government in Egypt, why can’t you go home?’

Salwa hid in her kitchen. Newspapers like the
Daily Mail
and the
Sun
had already decided that Hatem was guilty of planning to blow up his hospital and nothing she could say would change what they wrote. But when Mumtaz Hakim got evidence against Ragab el Masri for sexual misconduct, the whole case would
unravel. She was confident. Salwa put a boiled sweet into her mouth and told herself that again. But her teeth ground nervously against the pear drop and eventually she crunched down too hard and broke a molar. Salwa cried.