An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) (10 page)

Lee watched Brian’s small, grey eyes glitter over the top of his
glass and he had to make an effort not to shudder. It was well known in police circles that Brian Green played rough. Born into poverty in Bethnal Green, like Ronnie and Reggie Kray, Brian had been the product of an Irish traveller and Jewish marriage. It had resulted in a sort of uber-Brit, a creature half man half bulldog, all malice. Oddly, he’d liked Lee even when he’d been a copper, though he’d never managed to buy him. Unlike now.

‘Brian, I’ll do it, provided you don’t hurt her if it all goes tits up,’ Lee said.

‘Hurt my Amy? Why would I—’

‘Brian, you knocked seven shades of shit out of Tina and we both know it.’

The grey eyes narrowed. Tina Bloch, Brian’s first wife, had never brought charges when she apparently smashed herself repeatedly in the face against a doorframe, but it was well known that she’d had some sort of liaison with a waiter in Spain.

Although he was shaking inside, Lee said, ‘I’ll find out about Amy for you if you agree not to beat the crap out of her if she is messing around.’

Brian Green knew better than to plead innocence with Lee Arnold. He and Vi Collins had been the only coppers who had ever come close to nicking him and he knew that to try and pull the wool over either of their eyes was pointless.

‘She won’t get nothing,’ Brian growled. Out in the garden, a vast string of multi-coloured fairy lights draped around a summer house, came on.

‘Any divorce settlement you might make is up to you, Brian,’ Lee said. ‘But you have to understand that as well as being a PI I’m also still a copper.’

‘You was a good copper, it’s why I want ya,’ Brian said. ‘I know you’ll be straight with me.’

‘Alright, but there’s a price,’ Lee said.

‘I’ll pay you anything—’

‘Beyond the cash,’ Lee interrupted. ‘I do what you ask, Brian, and you don’t lay a finger on that girl, understand? You promise me that on your mother’s life.’

Nasreen wondered what the man Mumtaz Hakim had told her about had been, if anything, to the woman in the photograph she’d discovered in her house. Was that face the face of Lily Smith, wife of Reginald and mother of Eric Smith, the one time reclusive owner of her new house?

Mumtaz had found out that Lily Smith had originally come from Poland. Together with her son, who had been called Marek Berkowicz, she’d arrived sometime after the Second World War. She’d married Reg Smith in 1948 and their son, Eric, had been born one year later. Nasreen had always been under the impression that Eric Smith had been an old man, but when he’d died in 2003 he’d only been fifty-four. She looked down at Abdullah who was asleep beside her and then back into the darkness that washed over her bedroom. Her mother had been right about the house that had once been the Smiths’, it was rotten. It needed
so
much work, but it was something more than that too. Mumtaz had told her a boy, not much more than a child, had gone missing from that house. That boy had been, or was, Marek Berkowicz. In 1955, in the depths of a smog-coated December night, he’d disappeared from the house –
her
house – and had never been seen again. He’d been fifteen.

Nasreen felt her stomach tighten and, alarmed, she forced herself to try and relax for the sake of the baby. Back in 1955 the
police had suspected Reginald Smith. Neighbours had told them that he didn’t treat his stepson right and they’d dug up the garden looking for Marek’s body. But they’d found nothing. No body, no blood, no Marek. He’d just winked out of existence, just like John had seemingly winked into existence when he first appeared in her garden. Until someone killed him. Again, Nasreen felt her stomach tighten and this time she got out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen where she could be on her own with her thoughts and make herself a cup of tea.

Had she done the right thing when she’d given Mumtaz Hakim Abdullah’s date and place of birth when she’d phoned? She’d failed to remember his late father’s name, although she did know that he had run an electrical shop. Now that she trusted Mrs Hakim, Nasreen had her checking up on her own husband and she felt guilty. If only John hadn’t been found murdered, maybe she could have just gone along knowing very little about Abdullah for the rest of her life. But his jealousy worried her. He had no family to temper it, no mother to scold him or father to listen to his fears and either agree with them or allay them. Had Abdullah found John in the garden when he was alone at the house and then killed him?

No. But …

Nasreen drank her tea and thought about how stupid that sounded. Why would Abdullah murder a man? Would or could he seriously believe that such a man could be a threat to him? She’d given John some food and drink, that was all. And yet she felt guilty – for doing it behind Abdullah’s back and for asking Mumtaz Hakim to find out whether her handsome and generous husband was who he said he was. Why was she wasting her money like this?

*

It was the house that they wanted, that was clear. The Sheikhs could have no other agenda. Ahmet had put his life, and by extension her life and Shazia’s too, in their hands. Mumtaz looked at the miserable little pile of jewellery in front of her on the table. That wasn’t even going to pay the gas bill let alone her debt to the gangsters. Three of Ahmet’s carpets had gone, and she knew that the other two weren’t worth nearly as much. There were some other better pieces of jewellery, but was she obliged to sell her entire past now? She’d have to sell the house and she’d have to sell it to them. That was how it worked. That was where it was always going to end up anyway.

She, or rather Ahmet, had originally owed the Sheikhs £100,000 which he had failed to pay back. This had now ballooned to just over £400,000 and counting. And if she couldn’t pay the £1,000 monthly interest fee, anything could happen. They’d take Shazia for a start. Mumtaz went cold. She’d offer herself to them ten times over rather than let them do anything to that girl. She had already suffered enough. But would they take her, a woman of almost thirty-three, in lieu of a sixteen-year-old? Of course they wouldn’t. Mumtaz looked at the local paper and saw a house just like hers for sale for £530,000. She had to be able to get half a million for it. But not from
them
. They’d take it from her in lieu of Ahmet’s debt and leave her and Shazia homeless. She’d have to pay legal fees and get her furniture moved to somewhere and she’d have no choice but to go home to her parents’ place in Spitalfields. Shazia would hate it.

Nasreen Khan, had asked Mumtaz to find out whether her husband Abdullah was who he said he was. He had no family, no obvious roots, and she felt she couldn’t entirely trust him. But even if one did know a man, could one ever entirely trust him? Her own husband had been a rich and respected man in the
Bangladeshi community, and she’d known his family before she’d married him. But he’d hidden what he really was: a gambler, a liar, a rapist and a child abuser. Just thinking about him made her feel sick. Nasreen Khan was in the dark and suffering who knew what at the hands of her husband. Mumtaz had known better than to ask. She might have frightened her away and then Nasreen would have done nothing.

She put the all but useless jewellery into her handbag and resolved to get what she could for it from a pawn shop. If the money would at least pay off the gas bill, then that was no bad thing. Even if they did get the house for basically nothing, the Sheikhs would make her pay any outstanding bills. For the moment, however, there was nothing to do but go to bed. She did look briefly at her phone and wonder whether she should call Lee. For months she’d thought about telling him she was in trouble, but she had yet to find the courage to do it. This time, like all the other times, ended in her leaving the phone where it was.

*

The girls all seemed to be drinking a cocktail called Porn Star. Malibu, pineapple, crushed strawberries, coconut syrup and ice. Just the thought of it made Lee want to gag. Nursing his diet Pepsi he stood at the end of the bar watching Amy Green and her mates get drunk. He felt like the dustiest suit in the wardrobe. Even being optimistic he had fifteen years on the oldest person in the place, the music was giving him a headache and the decor was only serving to enhance his discomfort.

‘Take one of me and Dani!’

Amy Green was just a kid, and like a kid she was keen for one of her mates to take a photograph of her with another girl who was wearing a short bridal veil.

‘Get in close then,’ the girl wielding the iPhone said. Amy and Dani pushed their heads together and screeched. There was a white flash.

‘Oh, my God, you’ve blinded me!’ Amy spoke with that rising inflection everyone under thirty used. It had wheedled its way into the country, via Australian soaps apparently, and had now taken root in west Essex. Lee hated it with the kind of energy only a parent with a child who uses that form can do.

Amy and Dani looked at the picture their friend had taken on her phone. Amy’s face fell. ‘Oh, my God, I look so fat.’

‘No, you don’t, you look lush.’

‘Do I?’

Dani put her hands on her hips and said, ‘Course you do, babe. Would I lie to you? Would I?’

Amy laughed. ‘Oh my God, I am like so ready for another drink.’

Another girl said, ‘I’ll get ’em. Do yous all want Porns?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And me.’

‘Yeah, babe.’

The girl teetered over to what Lee had been reliably informed by a young man in an Italian suit was a ‘genuine Swarowski crystal’ bar and asked for ‘Five Porns and all the trimmings.’

As he wrestled with his need for a cigarette, Lee wondered whether these people around him were actually genuine. At the insistence of his daughter he’d watched a TV ‘reality’ show called
The Only Way is Essex
. Now apparently, he was seeing it played out for real. People did fake tan themselves until they were orange, the girls did have fake tits and Amy Green and her mates said ‘Oh my God’ and ‘like’
all
the time. Amy Green and her mates also flirted. The club, which was called The LA Lounge, was like one
big mating ritual. Flirting and ‘getting off’ with people was the whole reason that it existed. Even Amy’s mate Dani, whose hen night this was, was fluttering her fake eyelashes at every man and boy who passed her.

Lee successfully swallowed a yawn. If Brian Green hadn’t given him a wad of cash to start watching Amy he would be at home listening to Chronus yelling about West Ham. But Brian, for all his faults, was a generous man and the financial temptation he’d put in front of Lee had been too great. The long and short of it was that, as usual, the Agency needed money. He wanted to give Mumtaz something extra too. Her mortgage, which apparently her late husband had taken out with some dodgy bank, was huge. She was selling things. He didn’t know what, but most days lately she was coming to work with a bag full of stuff, going to lunch and then returning empty handed. He never asked her about it. The formality that had existed between them when she’d first come to work for him was no longer there. Back in the early days, she’d called him ‘Mr Arnold’ and had never even alluded to her private life. As she’d learned to trust him, Mumtaz had opened up – somewhat. But there were still things he didn’t know about her and there was definitely more to her financial status than just a dead husband and a large mortgage.

‘Looking good costs money.’ Amy Green put her glass down on the table in front of her and flashed her eyes at a boy sitting opposite on one of the LA Lounge’s ‘signature’ purple sofas.

‘I know but you’ve well spent,’ he said. All of Amy’s friends laughed.

‘Major,’ Amy said.

The boy bought the whole lot of them Porn Stars then moved on, seemingly oblivious to what he’d just spent on a group of
girls he didn’t know. Lee wondered what he did and whether he could do it too.

By the time Amy and her friends left the LA Lounge they were all drunk and lairy and Dani and another girl called Micki had snogged a few lads. They’d all flirted, but nothing more than that. The baby-pink stretch limousine hired to take them all home was, Lee heard one of the girls say, ‘brimming with champagne’ and they fully intended to carry on drinking all the way home. Lee had a fairly extensive trip around Chigwell and Ongar, following the limo as it dropped the girls off at their respective houses. It was just his luck that Amy was the last on the list. On top of this, she spent fifteen minutes outside the house she shared with Brian in the limo. But when she got out she was waving a bottle of champagne about and so it wasn’t difficult to work out what she might have been up to.

Amy staggered to her front door and scrabbled about in her vast handbag for her keys. Lee saw her mouth the odd curse. The limo still stood in the drive, but Lee couldn’t see the driver except as a shadow behind the smoked glass windscreen. Amy, meanwhile, hoisted her massive bag up close to her face and put one of her hands beside the front door in order to steady herself. But as she did this she appeared to injure her hand, and said, ‘Fuck that!’

The door to the limo opened and a tall, dark, powerfully built young man got out and looked concerned. Amy, smiling now, whispered something to him and then blew him a kiss.

Wendy looked at the picture of the young soldier in the
Recorder
and wished that she’d known him. His face looked soft and kind and it was hard to believe that he’d ended his days being murdered in some old cemetery up Plashet Grove. Wendy sorted her washing into whites, coloureds and sex clothes. The kids weren’t allowed to see the latter, which she had to dry on the radiator in her bedroom – when she could afford to turn it on.

The weekend was looming and Wendy Dixon felt her heart beat more quickly just thinking about it. She’d told the kids she was going away with a mate. Dolly was quite happy to look after everyone provided there was food in the house, which there would be. The kids would eat even if Wendy didn’t. Sean Rogers’s sex parties were not heavy on food – not even of the nibbles variety. Wendy shuddered. In one way it was better that Sean’s parties were held in total darkness but it was also even more frightening. When the sex was over and all the men were outside by the pool drinking she’d find herself wondering which ones she’d serviced. A sea of brutish, predatory men talking about the things they’d done.