Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (6 page)

Lee watched him. He didn’t do much. Ken Rivers used his front gate to hang on to and when he did move it was clear that his legs were stiff. Several people came and went down the pavement in front of the old man but he didn’t speak or even look at any of them. Ken Rivers didn’t want to talk to anyone. Decades of unemployment could do that to a person. But Lee thought that there was also something hard behind his eyes, something inbuilt. Lee could see Phil in his father but what he couldn’t spot, along with the younger man’s good looks, was the innocence that shone through from all the photographs he’d seen of Phil. Whatever people said, and in spite of what he had done, Lee couldn’t accept that Phil Rivers was mean. Unlike his father.

*

Shirley waited for her clued-up new advocate to answer her mobile, but she didn’t. Shirley hung up without leaving a message. It hadn’t been important. She’d wanted to talk to someone she could communicate with easily. It wasn’t that Mandy and Roy, her other two advocates, were useless but they were both ex-service-users and there were times when Shirley felt that that was a barrier. Roy, in particular, took quite heavy meds and could be difficult to get through to.

But even if Shirley had been able to speak to Mumtaz, she didn’t know what she would have said. She would probably have just chatted, talked platitudes and then said how much she was looking forward to seeing her again the following week. She wouldn’t have been able to share. How could she?

The service user Mr Cotton had spoken to her about had called her first thing in the morning. He’d been segregated and was being ‘specialled’ – accompanied by a nurse at all times. So the interview she’d had with him had been strained. Dylan was young, street-drug dependent, angry and a self-harmer. He was what Shirley had come to recognize as a ‘typical’ forensic service user. He came from a family in the nearby London Borough of Tower Hamlets notorious for its criminality and Dylan himself was on the unit because he’d killed someone. By turns delusional, furious and sad beyond consolation, Dylan had been involved in what Mr Cotton had called a ‘minor’ incident on the unit. However, the first thing that Shirley noticed when she walked in the room was that Dylan had lost a front tooth.

‘Timothy knocked my tooth out,’ Dylan said.

‘Timothy Pool? The ward manager?’

‘Yeah, man.’

Shirley felt her heart sink. Timothy Pool had managed the forensic unit for as long as anyone could remember. A small,
efficient nurse originally from Mauritius, nobody who knew Dylan would have been surprised that he’d got into a spat with Timothy. One of Dylan’s family’s hobbies was racism and Timothy was black.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, Dylan said, ‘I never called him nothing racist.’

The nurse observing cleared his throat.

‘So what happened?’ Shirley asked.

‘I wanted to go outside for a tab and Timothy said I couldn’t.’

Since the indoor smoking ban had come into force, there had been trouble over fags on all the wards. Back in the old days, cigarettes had been used to reward good behaviour – in fact on one of the acute wards they still were – but Timothy had always been a virulent anti-smoker and so on the unit that practice had ceased a long time ago. Patients were still allowed to go outside to smoke their ‘tabs’, dependent upon treatment compliance and good behaviour, but their friends or relatives outside the hospital had to supply the smoking materials.

‘Why not?’ Shirley asked.

‘Because he can,’ Dylan said.

‘That’s no reason. What do you mean, Dylan?’

He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and half closed and his clothes smelt of stale tobacco.

‘He wanted a ruck with me, man,’ he said. ‘He knew I’d kick off if he didn’t let me smoke.’

‘Why would he want that to happen?’ Shirley asked the question, but part of her knew the answer anyway.

‘Because he thinks he’s like some sort of fucking god,’ Dylan said. Then he looked up at the nurse and added, ‘You all stick your tongues up his arse.’

The nurse said nothing. But Shirley knew Dylan was right.
Timothy Pool, nurse, ward manager and devout Christian, was also a massive egotist. And because he’d been in charge of the unit for over a decade it had become his personal fiefdom. Ruling his staff with a mixture of guile, fear and favouritism, Timothy was not the excellent manager Mr Cotton thought he was. But he did everything the chief consultant said. In fact, Timothy was all over anyone who could put ‘Dr’ in front of their name.

‘What happened?’ Shirley asked.

Dylan licked his lips, which still had some dried blood on them. ‘I asked to go into the yard for a smoke and Timothy said no. I asked him why I couldn’t when I’d taken all me meds and not kicked off and he said it was because I was cutting up.’

‘Were you?’

‘No!’

She looked at his arms. They were covered with scars, but none of them looked new.

‘I showed him me wrists and I offered to take all me clothes off so he could check, but he didn’t want me to do that,’ Dylan said. ‘He said, “You know you’ve done wrong, Dylan,” and then he turned his back on me. Cunt.’

The nurse said, ‘Easy.’

‘Oh fuck off,’ Dylan mumbled. He said to Shirley, ‘He knows that people ignoring me sets me off and so he done it deliberate.’

‘What did you do then, Dylan?’

‘I never hit him. He says I did, but I never. I just tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, like. Then he’s screaming and next thing I know he’s punching me in the mouth while him,’ he pointed at the nurse, ‘and that lesbo Tricia, look on.’

Shirley knew that Timothy Pool and the nurses would tell an entirely different story. When she saw Timothy to hear his
account, he barely looked up at Shirley. It wasn’t just because she personally disliked him that Shirley didn’t believe what Timothy said but because she’d been in this situation too many times before. The management of the forensic unit was rotten to the core. The acute and chronic wards weren’t much better. But Mr Cotton, his doctors and the hospital management were happy and that was all that mattered. Except that it wasn’t. Shirley felt guilty every day she went to work and when she’d heard that Sara Ibrahim had killed herself she’d almost lost her mind. But she’d taken Mr Cotton’s shilling anyway.

As she was leaving the ward she saw Dylan again, who mumbled, ‘I know you won’t do nothing, but I had to ask, you know?’

And Shirley Mayfield had wanted to die.

Everything hurt. Throat, shoulders, arms, head, chest. Vi held up a piece of paper with the words: ‘It fucking hurts.’ Her companion, an overweight middle-aged man said, ‘Well, it will do, you’ve had your throat cut.’

The man, Tony Bracci, had been Vi Collins’s detective Sergeant for just over five years and he knew her well. Blond and blue-eyed, Tony’s vast family was originally Italian, although he looked more like a Viking than a Latin.

‘Know when you’ll be back?’ Tony asked. He wanted to offer his guv a cigarette because he knew she’d be gagging for one but then he also knew that it wasn’t allowed. If she coughed she could burst her Frankenstein-like staples, which didn’t bear thinking about.

Vi wrote down, ‘Two weeks.’

‘Oh, well, that’s not too bad.’

She gave him a look that said it was worse than he could ever think possible and then, bored with writing things down, she hissed, ‘What’s going on?’

‘Don’t worry about all that. Just get better.’

But he was on her turf, in her house, where even more than at the station she was mistress of all she surveyed. Vi didn’t have to speak to get Tony to talk.

‘Non-fatal stabbing on High Street North, perp was at the scene and gave himself up. He was the victim’s brother. Shit over an inheritance.’ He shrugged. ‘Peeping toms in East Ham Leisure Centre. That was yesterday afternoon.’

‘Peeping toms?’ Vi whispered. ‘More’n one?’

‘Three,’ Tony said. ‘Young lads who need to get laid. Nearly frightened the bejesus out of a pair of young ladies in swimwear. Oh, and that mini-mart on Katherine Road got done over again.’

Vi rolled her eyes. Some businesses, for reasons she’d never been able to fathom, seemed to have a sort of catnip effect on villains.

‘A typical two days in the life of a busy London borough,’ Tony said. ‘Oh and I went down North Woolwich yesterday evening to take a look at the old Gallions Hotel.’

Vi frowned.

‘You know, the old pub where …’

‘I know Gallions,’ she said hoarsely. ‘What about it?’

‘Well, there’s been rumours about it being either sold or rented out for ages. Who knows what the new people’ll do with it? I took some photographs, of the outside, like, while I still can.’

A little-known fact about Tony Bracci was that in the months since the Olympics he had become an active tweeter on Twitter. And although he didn’t have a lot to say to his followers, he did like to post up pictures of what he thought were significant local landmarks. Vi Collins thought that he probably wasn’t getting laid. But she looked at his photographs anyway. They showed a large Edwardian building surrounded by modern blocks of flats.

‘My mum’s brothers used to go up Gallions when it was called the Captain’s Brothel,’ Vi said. ‘And yeah, they went for the reasons the name implies.’

Vi’s uncles, like her mum, had been travellers who had made their living as itinerant builders and part-time farriers in and around East London. The first time Vi’s Jewish dad had met her mum, she’d been selling ‘lucky’ heather sprigs outside pubs.

‘I expect it’ll be turned into flats in the end,’ Tony said. ‘Everything seems to be, these days. Unless they make it a Tesco Metro.’

Vi shook her head. She hated the trend for turning once-thriving pubs into small, urban supermarkets. It robbed the world of boozers and also threatened corner shops and mini-marts.

‘Oh, and I’m bird-sitting for Lee Arnold’s mynah,’ he said.

‘Chronus? Where’s Arnold?’

‘Don’t know. Didn’t ask. Off the manor somewhere. He should be back by the weekend. He didn’t mention it to you?’

‘No.’

There was a bit of an awkward silence. Tony knew only too well what his boss thought about Lee Arnold and he knew that she wouldn’t be happy that he’d kept her out of the loop. He was probably only trying to spare her worrying about him. But Vi Collins wouldn’t see it that way.

Tony changed the subject. ‘So, apart from the pain, how are you, guv?’

‘Bored shitless.’

Tony looked around what was a very comfortable living room well stocked with books and DVDs.

‘Well, you’ve enough to keep you busy here,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but I want to be out there, don’t I?’ Vi said. ‘Fuck knows what you and the rest of the wooden tops’ll get up to while I’m laying on me sofa looking at
Judge Judy
. How’s Venus?’

Paul Venus, superintendent at Forest Gate nick was Vi’s and Tony’s boss. A middle-aged, middle-class man with an eye for a younger woman, he didn’t impress either of them or any of their
colleagues. To his credit he was a good negotiator with villains who’d lost the plot, but he was next to useless when it came to supporting his officers against bureaucratic bullshit from the Metropolitan Police high command and central government. Also, he didn’t like upsetting gangsters and that disturbed Vi in particular. Venus was either too frightened to be useful or he was in with them.

Tony said, ‘Still a tosser.’

‘Consistent.’ She imagined that Venus was enjoying the break from her skinny, middle-aged smoke-dried face. She was everything he disliked in a woman.

They sat in silence then. They’d had a chat and Tony had put the flowers he’d brought her in a vase and arranged them artlessly. With no work to talk about there was nothing left to say.

*

This time, when Naz called, Mumtaz answered her phone.

‘What do you want? I’m at work,’ she said.

‘Ah, but your white boyfriend isn’t with you, is he?’ Naz said.

Had he been watching the office or was he just guessing because she’d answered him promptly and not in a whisper?

‘What do you want? I haven’t got a moving date yet. When I do, I’ll let you have it.’

‘Oh, you mean when you’re going to move to Sebert Road? Just by the cemetery?’ he said.

Mumtaz felt her mouth dry up. She’d been so careful not to tell anyone – except her immediate family, Shazia and Lee. She’d found the ground-floor flat through one of her brothers and so it wasn’t even as if a letting agent had been involved. How had he found out?

‘I don’t know why you tried to hide where you’re going,’ he said.

Mumtaz coughed to lubricate her throat. ‘I didn’t. I just didn’t feel the need to tell you. How did you find out?’

‘Oh, we can find out anything.’

She remembered that a man who could have been Naz’s father had called at the house and asked Shazia where they were going. But she’d said she hadn’t told him anything. Maybe Shazia had told some of her college friends and word had got out that way?

‘I don’t know why it’s of interest to you,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I told you I’d pay you in full and I will.’

‘Will you?’

‘Look, it’s more important to me to get you off my back than it is to have money,’ she said. ‘I will pay you and we’ll be done.’

Her chest tightened. She didn’t believe her own words.

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Naz said. ‘You’ll still owe our admin fee, which is twenty-five per cent of the purchase price of your house. Then there is my charge.’

She began to notice her own heartbeat at the same time her hands started to shake. But Mumtaz knew she had to keep control. She’d expected something but this was worse than anything she’d imagined. She had to find out what these charges were. ‘What do you mean “admin fee”? For what? And what is your charge? I don’t understand.’

‘It’s quite simple,’ he said. ‘We take an admin fee from people who owe us money to cover the paperwork we’ve had to do to recover the debt.’

‘What have you had to do? Nothing!’ She was losing control and she couldn’t afford to. But the office had just shifted on its
axis and she’d started to feel hot, then sick. She grabbed hold of the side of the desk for support.

‘We have to instruct our bank, our solicitors, we have people we have to pay with the money we’ve been waiting on from you, Mrs Hakim,’ he said.

‘Twenty-five per cent …’

‘Oh, that’s very fair.’

That was another hundred thousand pounds. It meant she’d be paying the Sheikhs forever. She couldn’t speak.

‘And as for my own charge, well, that’s more to do with keeping something quiet for you.’

Although Mumtaz knew what he was going to say she still felt her ears try to close themselves against it.

‘If your stepdaughter got to know the real circumstances surrounding her father’s death …’

‘Stop!’

Mumtaz’s husband, Ahmet, had been murdered by Naz Sheikh. Mumtaz and Ahmet had been walking across Wanstead Flats, the open space between Forest Gate and Wanstead, when a young man had appeared. At the time Mumtaz hadn’t known who he was and had only taken in that he was handsome. Even when he’d stabbed her husband, and Ahmet lay dying, she’d still not been able to take her eyes off him. She’d been so grateful.

Later she’d discovered that his name was Naz Sheikh and that he belonged to a family of gangsters. Ahmet had owed them money. As well as physically and sexually abusing both Shazia and herself, Mumtaz’s husband had suffered from other vices. Principal amongst these was gambling, losing money to people far more powerful than himself. Ahmet had always been a show-off. All the money she’d been paying to the Sheikhs since his death had been to cover his debts.

‘You remember that evening when Ahmet died, don’t you, Mumtaz?’ Naz said. She could hear how much he was enjoying this.

‘Yes.’

When the police had asked her to describe her husband’s attacker, she’d only given them a generic description. Young, dark-haired, wearing trainers. It could have been almost any young man in the borough. And yet she could have told them about every item of clothing he wore, his silver trainers, the tiny blemishes on his fine, smooth cheeks. He’d been like the hero in an old story her mother had told her when she was a child, the brave and handsome Silver Prince who had saved Bengal from all sorts of mythical beasts and bloodthirsty despots. She’d been so naive. With a first-class honours degree in psychology, she’d fallen prey to the oldest myth in the book – the saviour prince.

‘You didn’t know who I was then.’

‘No.’

And when she had found out, she’d been too terrified to go to the police. Not because she was afraid they might find out about her collusion in the escape of her husband’s killer, but because Naz had made threats that involved Shazia. And because it always worked, he hadn’t stopped since.

‘So, we have an agreement in principle?’ Naz said. ‘You pay me and my family what you owe and Shazia need never know what you did. Or rather what you didn’t do. And she’ll be safe, you have my word.’

He’d drooled over Shazia. Watching her as she left the house to go to college. Mumtaz had seen him sitting in his car or casually walking on the opposite side of the road. Because he knew that Shazia had been raped by her own father, Naz looked on her as little more than a prostitute.

Mumtaz closed her eyes. ‘We have an agreement,’ she said.

‘Then I’ll get a document drawn up for the administration fee,’ he said. ‘My charge we’ll keep between ourselves. An agreement between friends.’

It seemed he didn’t always want to share everything with his father and his brother.

Only just managing to stop herself crying, Mumtaz said, ‘Why are you doing this? Why us? What did Ahmet ever do to your family that was so bad?’

There was a moment of silence. Then he said, ‘You know, Mrs Hakim, your husband was always full of excuses. Whenever the time came for him to pay us, there was always a reason why he couldn’t. The stress of it made my dad quite ill and I find that hard to forgive.’

‘Yes, but that was Ahmet …’

‘And you are his wife,’ Naz said. ‘Mumtaz, I’m doing this because I can. If I wanted to work and be like an ordinary person I’d’ve bought myself a little mini-mart somewhere or studied hard and become a solicitor. But Allah has chosen another path for me …’

‘Allah? Allah! Allah has nothing to do with what you are!’

‘Or you, I think, a whore who works on her own with a Christian man,’ he said. And then his voice dropped to a hiss. ‘Don’t disrespect me or the Holy Name of Allah, Mrs Hakim. You saw what I did to your husband.’

He cut the connection and for a moment Mumtaz just sat and looked blankly at the phone. Although she’d never told Lee about the Sheikhs, she was aware that he knew she was in trouble. He’d suspected she owed money to people like the Sheikhs and he’d warned her that unless she went to the police she’d never be free. But how could she do that?

If Naz was found guilty of Ahmet’s murder, she’d have to admit to her own part in it. Shazia would know everything and, although she had hated her father, how would she respond to Mumtaz if she knew she had murdered him? Would she hate her? And even if Naz went to prison, that would still leave his father and his brother on the loose and what would they do to her then?

Not that Naz was likely to be found guilty of Ahmet’s murder.

A more likely scenario was that Naz would be exonerated. He’d have had all sorts of false alibis in place before he set out to murder Ahmet. She’d be accused of making a false allegation, which would raise more questions about her than about the Sheikhs. If she accused her dead husband of sexual abuse she could ruin Shazia’s reputation, in some people’s eyes, at least. And even a free and easy, western-dressing girl like Shazia valued her reputation, even if she said that she didn’t. More importantly, contact with the police would enrage the Sheikhs. What they’d do to punish her, Mumtaz didn’t dare think. Even running away wasn’t an option for her. If she and Shazia just disappeared, how would they live? Who would console her parents when they went mad with worry? What would it do to Shazia’s education? And how could she ever leave Lee Arnold on his own with the office, the bills and a queue of enraged clients?

Oh, why had he had to go to Southend this week?

*

Ken Rivers did a lot of what Lee’s mother Rose called ‘faffing about’. The previous day he’d spent most of his time in a seafront pub nursing two pints of bitter and looking at a copy of the
Racing Post
. But he hadn’t gone to put a bet on. Unless he did it online which, at his age, seemed unlikely. He’d spoken to the barman about television and the weather and later he’d had a chat with
another elderly man about his ailments. He had arthritis, angina and also what he called ‘prostrate trouble’, which probably meant he had a leaky bladder. He hadn’t mentioned his missing only child at all and he had seemed neither unduly disturbed or upset. When he’d left the pub he’d bought a pint of milk and a packet of fags in a local shop and then gone home. Lee had watched the flat until it got dark and then he’d gone back to Susan’s.