An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) (23 page)

Lee looked her straight in the eyes and lowered his voice. ‘You need to tell me the truth even if you won’t tell them,’ he said, nodding his head towards the officers. ‘Who did this?’

‘It was a boy, they say, a—’

‘Don’t even try to bullshit me.’ He didn’t move his fierce gaze from her face. ‘If you’d been here, or Shazia …’

‘Don’t!’ Tears came, but she wiped them away with the edge of her headscarf. ‘We are all in the hands of Allah and mercifully He saw fit—’

‘Yeah, but you have to help him out you know, Mumtaz,’ Lee said. ‘This time the man upstairs was looking out for you, but what about next time? God helps them that help themselves, you know.’

‘And yet we are all in the hands of Allah and whatever it is our fate to—’

‘How can it be your fate to be bled dry, or even murdered, by a bunch of scumbags? Eh?’ He moved closer to her, so that he could whisper. ‘You’re a good person.’

‘No, I’m not!’

The fierceness of her rebuttal startled him and, in turn, it alarmed her. She put a hand up to her mouth, suddenly afraid that if she didn’t what she’d done to Ahmet would just tumble out and disgust him.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can’t pretend to understand any of this religious business. All I can do is say it like I see it, and I see you as a good woman who works hard and does her best for her kid. That’s it. Whatever your husband did shouldn’t still be affecting your life now.’

Mumtaz didn’t say anything. The police had taken a description from her neighbours of the man who had shot her windows out. It had almost certainly been Naz. She imagined him enjoying doing it.

‘But I can’t force you to do anything that you don’t want to,’ Lee continued. ‘I know that you won’t tell your family about this and I won’t try to persuade you otherwise. I know, remember, how people are around organised crime.’

She looked round, checking that none of the police officers were listening.

‘Now, like it or not, I’m staying here,’ he said. ‘I don’t care where you put us, on the sofa, up the bloody chimney for all I care, but there’s no way that you’re going to be on your own in this house tonight.’

She had all sorts of arguments against this idea assembled in her head, not least of which was her reputation, but she gave voice to none of them. After a moment’s thought she just questioned, ‘Us?’

‘I can’t leave Chronus on his own overnight,’ Lee said. ‘He’ll scream the flat down.’

Bloated, her feet swollen with fluid, Nasreen felt like a cow that needed to be milked. In addition to that her arms were dead, but that was not connected to her pregnancy. No, that was
him
. Again Abdullah had left her handcuffed to the bed all day, and this time she had wet herself.

She thought that he would be furious when he saw what she’d done, but he didn’t say a word. He changed the sheets and told her to have a shower. Then she had to cook. While she did that, he began hammering at the walls of the small utility room behind the kitchen. Nasreen fried off her spices and then she added onions, garlic and tomatoes. When there was a pause in the hammering she said, ‘What are you looking for?’

It had occurred to her more than once that all the hammering and breaking down of the fabric of the house had to be about more than just remodelling the place, but she’d never given voice to her suspicions before. The hammering did not recommence. With shaking hands, Nasreen added chicken to the pan. She stirred, watching the meat begin to brown and caramelise. And then there was a pain at her throat as her head was wrenched sharply backwards.

‘I’m not looking for anything,’ Abdullah said. ‘What makes you think I’m looking for summat?’

Although her first urge was to back down immediately, Nasreen said, ‘Because you keep making holes in the walls.’

‘I’m cutting out rot,’ he said.

She swallowed hard, it was difficult to talk with your head almost at right angles to your neck.

‘You don’t question me.’ He pulled her head back still further, one agonising centimetre more, and then he let her go. The chicken in the pan sizzled furiously and Nasreen smelt a faint burning. She turned the gas down.

Now back over by the table, he switched his CD player on and ‘Scarborough Fair’ drifted into the room again. He said, ‘The only reason I can see for this lack of respect is that you’ve been talking to your fucking mother.’

As well as being untrue, under these present circumstances this was impossible. Nasreen’s shell of self-preservation cracked. She’d not been raised to be anybody’s meek and terrified wife. ‘And how would that happen eh?’ she said. ‘Tied to the bed with no phone to—’

‘You cannot be trusted.’

‘
I
cannot be trusted?’ She stirred her pot, the sharp smells of cardamom, curry leaves and cumin making her eyes begin to water. ‘What is
wrong
with you? Why are you treating me like some sort of—’

He hit her so hard that she fell sideways onto the floor. It was just luck that she didn’t take the pan of boiling food down with her.

He screamed into her face, ‘You daft cunt! What you trying to do to me, eh? With your endless yack, your fucking family, your fucking friend in the fucking garden!’

He wasn’t
like
a lunatic, he was one. His face was red from
shouting, his eyes bulged and now she knew that he’d known about John.

‘So you killed him, did you?’ she said. ‘My friend in the garden? That was you, was it?’

He didn’t say anything.

Emboldened by his silence, in spite of the pain in her back and her side, Nasreen said, ‘Because somebody killed him. Was it you? Was it?’

He stood up and for a moment she thought that he might be about to kick her. But instead he said, ‘When the baby’s born you can fuck off.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, I will,’ Nasreen said.

And then he smiled. ‘Oh, but not with the baby,’ he said. ‘I’ll take that.’

‘No, you bloody won’t!’ Nasreen put a protective hand over her stomach. ‘You think I’d leave my baby with a psycho like you?’

His smile turned into a laugh. Nasreen began to feel cold. Maybe if she’d kept on appeasing him he would have eventually let her have more freedom and she could have escaped. But now that time was long gone. As he moved towards her, Nasreen tried to pull her legs as far up towards her body as she could.

He pulled down the cooking pot onto her feet and burning hot spices and chicken scalded her legs. Nasreen was suddenly in so much pain she couldn’t even scream.

*

Vi watched the house in Manor Park whenever she could. She saw it as protecting her investment. The girl Tatiana had come to her to shop Sean, Marty and Debbie Rogers. Vi had trusted her about as far as she could shove her and so she’d followed her home. Now she kept an ‘eye’. The house where Tatiana lived with two
other girls wasn’t obviously a brothel, but then operators like Sean and Marty were too clever to run loads of girls out of one house. Apparently respectable, the girls were just like any number of eastern European women in the borough. But Vi knew the signs: men arriving and leaving at odd times, permanently closed blinds, girls leaving to go places in the middle of the night … And then there was Dave.

Dave Spall was a great big ox of a thing who’d been employed as one of Marty’s minders for years. Like Marty he came from Custom House, where he’d built a reputation as a dirty fighter. Dave’d do just about anything to win. He smashed heads because he liked it, and Marty Rogers gave him free rein to do just that. In return, Dave seemingly allowed Marty to treat him like shit. Wherever they went together, Dave had to sit or stand outside the door or across the room, and although the Rogers brothers gave a lot of their employees perks Dave always appeared to be exempt. Vi had a theory about this, which went back to a time when Dave and the Rogers boys were kids. Dave, though no angel, wasn’t a psycho like the others. He wasn’t as clever as they were either. They’d frightened him into submission at an early age and now they were all too old to change.

Dave didn’t often do anything much without Marty, but he did visit this house in Manor Park. So far that first evening, she’d seen him twice – with flowers. Who they were for and why, Vi didn’t know. But if they were for Tatiana, she had to wonder whether Dave knew that the girl grassed up his bosses. As Vi watched, Dave came into view with flowers, and a big smile on his fat face.

Or had Marty finally let Dave have the odd free shag? It didn’t seem likely. Dave was the male equivalent of one of Sean’s ‘pigs’ – someone who would do anything, however degrading, to please.
Vi frowned. She thought she’d sold the idea of raiding Sean Rogers’s place in Ongar to Superintendent Venus, but even if she hadn’t, she knew she wanted to do it.

Vi watched Dave Spall go into the house and heard a female voice squeak with what sounded like joy. As a general rule, Vi tried not to get too excited about bringing villains down, but in this case she couldn’t resist a small shiver of pleasure. The Rogers brothers, together with their business partner Yunus Ali, had preyed upon the poor of the borough for long enough. Get rid of the Rogers, then she could start on the Sheikhs; and maybe by the time she retired there’d actually be a power vacuum in Newham for once. But then Vi frowned at the thought. Vacuums were dangerous things.

She saw a light come on behind the blinds in one of the rooms upstairs and she wondered whether Dave Spall was getting a shag. And then she wondered whether Marty knew about it.

*

‘Mumtaz?’

She’d been trying to let herself into the kitchen as quietly as she could, but she’d clearly failed.

‘Go back to sleep,’ she whispered. ‘Everything is fine.’

He pulled himself upright against the back of the sofa. ‘Yeah, but …’

‘Sssh! You’ll wake Chronus.’ She opened the kitchen door just as the bird opened one eye and then the other.

‘I’m forever blowing bubbles,’ he screeched, ‘Pretty bubbles in the air …’

‘Oh, Christ.’ Lee switched on the reading lamp that Mumtaz had placed on the coffee table. By the light of it, with his hair on end, he looked comically bizarre.

‘Shut up, Chronus!’ Lee said.

Mumtaz laughed. ‘Oh goodness, Lee, what is he to do? You taught him that song.’

She walked into the living room and rubbed the bird’s head. Usually when confronted by strangers, Chronus went quietly into his shell, but not with her. ‘Trevor Brooking!’ he cawed.

‘He just wants to please you,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’ Lee shook his head.

‘Bobby Moore! Geoff Hurst!’

‘Yes, enough now!’ Lee said, holding a warning finger up to the bird. ‘Enough!’ He moved back away from Chronus just a bit, his eyes still on the bird’s. ‘God Almighty, I don’t know why I have you sometimes, you’re nothing but trouble.’

Mumtaz, still stroking the bird, said, ‘Oh, you’d be lost without him. He’s your little boy, aren’t you, Chronus?’

Lee flopped back down on the sofa and pulled the duvet that Mumtaz had given him up to his chest.

‘Well, seeing as we’re all awake, how about some ginger tea?’ Mumtaz asked.

‘What, like the stuff from the health food shop?’

‘No, no, no. Proper ginger tea, like we make in Bangladesh,’ Mumtaz said, ‘with proper ginger.’

‘Blimey, isn’t that a bit hot?’

She smiled. ‘No, it’s actually very soothing. But if you’d prefer something else I do have ordinary tea or hot chocolate.’

She knew that Lee really liked coffee but she hadn’t had any of that in for months. All but the most disgusting incarnations cost too much.

‘Oh, I’ll try some of your ginger wotsit if you’re having some yourself,’ Lee said.

‘That was why I came down,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Do you want sugar in your tea?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

While Lee calmed the bird down, Mumtaz went into the kitchen, sliced a ginger root, added loose tea and poured hot water over it. It needed to steep for at least five minutes and so she left it to itself and went back into her living room. For a good minute, unobserved by him, she watched Lee stroke and comfort Chronus back to sleep. There was a very gentle side to him that belied his big copper’s feet and sometimes aggressive demeanour. That he was in her house at all – she was only an employee – was proof that he was a good person who cared about others.

He turned away from the bird now and looked at her. ‘I think he’s off,’ he whispered.

Mumtaz smiled. She walked over to the chair that was opposite the sofa and sat down. ‘You have a way with him,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to call you the Bird Whisperer.’

Lee shook his head. ‘He’s just a big soft twit,’ he said.

There was a pause and then Mumtaz said, ‘Nothing’s happened.’

‘I didn’t expect it to,’ Lee said. ‘Organised criminals aren’t stupid. It’s why they’re successful and why people like you protect them. Not stupid equals dangerous, I know that.’

‘Lee, there is no way I’m going to—’

‘I know you won’t tell me who they are,’ Lee said. ‘But you have to know, Mumtaz, that I’ll find out.’

She felt herself go cold inside. He was a private detective and an ex-policeman, he’d find out in the end. And then what? Mumtaz did what she always did when she didn’t want to face up to something, she changed the subject. ‘Is Chronus eating properly now?’ she said.

But Lee’s eyes continued to hold her eyes, making it impossible for her to look away. ‘You have to face up to it sometime,’ he said. ‘I can’t be here every night. What happens when I go? When you’re alone with Shazia? When they do more than shoot your windows out while you’re at work?’

Mumtaz stood up. ‘Must go and get the tea,’ she said. ‘It’ll be ready now.’

*

He lifted her up and held her in the cold water in the bath until her calves and feet were covered. Nasreen screamed. He muttered at her to be quiet, too shocked by what had happened to say any more. Abdullah didn’t know himself why he’d pulled the cooking pot down onto her legs. It had been stupid, and now here he was saddled not only with a pregnant woman but with a woman who was injured too. How was he going to deal with that?

He couldn’t let anyone into the house. When she went into labour he’d just have to take her to the hospital and then stay with her until it was over. But then what would they make of her scalded legs? The skin was already starting to come off, revealing the raw flesh beneath. What would he tell them about that? He’d have to make sure she said it was an accident.