An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) (29 page)

Lee got off the phone. ‘Shazia’s at home,’ he said.

‘OK.’ Vi turned back to Venus. ‘DS Bracci could go with Mr Arnold to take Mrs Hakim’s daughter to her grandparents’ place
while I tap up Sean and Marty,’ she said. Venus sighed, and then nodded his head. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘But DI Collins, do not suggest for a moment that the gun Khan has might have come from the Rogers brothers.’

He’d heard about the ruin of an old hospital at Upton Park via a blog on the Internet. The blogger, known as Mother’s Ruin, was some hipster photographer who sold prints of her Polaroids via a poncey shop on Spitalfields Market. But Gerry didn’t care. He just went wherever the ruins took him, and his photographs – which were very carefully set up – were only for the enjoyment of himself and his friends. Posh people like Mother’s Ruin were just trying to make money; Gerry, on the other hand, was all about preserving a London that was rapidly disappearing.

When he’d got off the tube at Upton Park he’d noticed there was a kind of excited frisson in the air, as if something amazing or awful was happening somewhere close by. But as soon as he’d left Green Street and, in line with Mother’s Ruin’s instructions, turned left down Walton Road and into Credon Road he’d forgotten all about that.

The old hospital, which had been called both Samson Street and Plaistow Hospital in its time, was on an island in the middle of four roads: Western Road, Credon Road, Bushey Road and Southern Road. But that wasn’t really what he was interested in.

Gerry walked around the perimeter of the hospital until he came to the entrance on Western Road. Knotted with weeds and trailing ivy, the old gates were protected by rolls of barbed wire,
but Gerry noticed that one of the rolls had been moved to one side. Maybe God or whoever was smiling down on him after all.

Moving a metal strut that had once been part of the main gate to one side, Gerry folded himself through the gap and then stood upright on a thick tangle of weeds. Pleased with himself, he took his camera out and began looking through the viewfinder for potentially interesting angles. There were fascinating bits and pieces everywhere – gateposts, tiles from the hospital roof, old dustbins, a generator shed – and also what looked like a red ribbon, which led off into a knot of thicker vegetation further towards the hospital. Gerry decided to follow it.

Then he saw her. At first she looked like some sort of 1960s mannequin in her mini-skirt, with her hair all bouffed up into a beehive like Amy Winehouse. Lying on the ground as she was, if Gerry hadn’t seen that she didn’t have a face, he would have thought that maybe she was just having a sleep. Instead, the shock of the look of her made him wet his pants.

*

‘Was Abdullah Khan at your party in Ongar on Saturday night?’ Vi asked Sean and Marty Rogers. They were in what they considered their ‘local’, the pub across the road from East Ham tube station. When Vi had called them they’d suggested they meet there rather than in their office on High Street South, which was, so they said, being ‘done up.’ They clearly feared the production of a warrant, but this time it wasn’t about them.

‘No, DI Collins, I don’t recall that he was,’ Sean said.

Vi looked at Marty.

‘Can’t remember Paul being there, love.’

‘Paul?’

Marty smiled. It looked to Vi a bit like the particularly
unpleasant grimace a snake makes just before it strikes. ‘Sometimes he calls hisself Paul, depending where we are.’ Marty said. ‘We have some Jewish business associates and they don’t like the Muslim thing much these days, know what I mean?’

Vi ignored him. ‘Where was he?’

Sean shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘At home with his missus?’

‘What does Abdullah Khan, or Paul, do for you? What’s his job?’

Again it was Sean who answered. ‘Oh, well as you probably know, DI Collins, Abdullah did train as a lawyer even though he never completed his course.’

They were rightly assuming that she knew certain pieces of information about Khan. They hadn’t even tried to deny that he worked for them. But then Sean and Marty were clever people.

‘So he advises you on legal matters?’

‘He does a bit of that – and a bit of this too,’ Sean smiled. ‘He’s very useful at sorting out issues we sometimes have regarding tenancies.’

Vi leaned across the table that stood between her and them and said, ‘He one of your enforcers, is he?’

‘Do we need a brief, DI Collins?’ Marty asked.

She shook her head. ‘I ain’t got time,’ she said. Out of the corner of her eye, she clocked Marty’s minder, Dave Spall. He looked even more miserable than usual.

‘Abdullah does a bit of rent collecting, which I’ll admit can get lively at times, but never on his part,’ Sean said. Then he leaned towards Vi and smiled. ‘We get some right scum in our places these days, DI Collins, but I never countenance violence.’

She ignored his last comment. ‘What else does Khan do for you?’

‘He looks over tenancy agreements, leases, things like that.’

‘Don’t you have a proper lawyer to do that for you?’ Vi asked.

‘What, the day-to-day stuff? We’d be bankrupt if we had to use a brief all the time. Do you know what they charge?’ Marty said. ‘No, Abdullah’s a good lad, a jack of all trades with a legal edge. We’re sorry to hear he’s not himself. But it’s nothing to do with us. Can’t think why he might have lost it. We’ve only ever tried to help the lad.’

‘We bought that house for him,’ Sean said.

‘But he has to pay you back.’

‘Oh, we have a business arrangement, yes,’ Sean said. ‘But that’s how much we like him. We gave him the money to buy that house for him and his wife.’

And then a look passed between the two of them that Vi just couldn’t read. She wondered if either or both of them planned to add anything to what had just been said and she thought that maybe at least one of them did. It was something about lending Abdullah money for that house, but Vi was fucked if she knew what. Then nothing more beyond niceties were said and shortly afterwards she left.

On her way out of the pub, however, she did just stop to have a brief word with Dave Spall.

‘How’s Magda?’ she asked. That was the name that he’d given her as that of his latest girlfriend.

Dave looked up and said, ‘Who?’

*

One-handed, Abdullah Khan sorted through a small sports bag full of phones. Mumtaz squatted on the floor beside Nasreen who, it now seemed, had not yet gone into labour – but it wouldn’t be long before she did. Still Abdullah held the gun out in front of him, pointing at her head.

‘You know I’m not going to leave Nasreen like this,’ she said to him. ‘So you might as well put that down.’

He ignored her, and continued training his gun on her. Then he found what he was looking for in the bag. It was an old Nokia 3310 mobile phone. He switched it on. A million miles away from the probably very flashy number he normally used, Mumtaz reasoned he was using this phone to call the police in order to keep up the fiction of ‘Mursel’. It had been hours since he’d spoken to that police officer out of the window and Mumtaz wondered how the police were interpreting his silence.

He walked over to the windowsill and punched the number that Mumtaz had taken down for him into the old phone. Then he rang it and he said, ‘It’s me, this is my number.’ And then he hung up.

Mumtaz saw him look at the walls and run the pistol down the exposed plaster. He looked at her. ‘Do you know how to use a hammer?’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘I need you to do some labouring for me.’

‘Knocking yet more holes in your walls, Mr Khan,’ she said. ‘What are you looking for in this house?’

And then, just for a moment, he laughed. ‘If I told you, darlin’, you’d never believe me.’

‘Try me.’ Nasreen had dropped into a fitful sleep and so Mumtaz stood up.

Abdullah Khan shook his head. ‘Nah.’

‘Up to you,’ she said. ‘But if you want me to work for you, I have to know what I’m looking for. If I don’t, then how will I know if I’ve found it?’

He looked into her eyes. She could see that he knew she was right, but he was having a problem letting her into whatever
secret he held so close. Did he, she wondered, like her, suspect that the police might be listening in to their conversations?

‘I’ll watch you,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll know when you find it.’

*

Lee and Tony returned to headquarters at Mrs Janwari’s house. Shazia, now safely in the care of Mumtaz’s parents, had wanted to come back with them but that, she’d been told, was impossible. They’d left her in tears, which Lee had found hard. Of course the kid was worried sick about her mother, but being in the line of fire herself wasn’t going to help.

‘She had a bank card on her in the name of Wendy Dixon,’ Superintendent Venus told Vi Collins.

Lee, who had just walked through the door, said, ‘Wendy Dixon? I know her. What’s she done?’

‘She’s dead, Lee,’ Vi said baldly. Her face was grey and looked heavily lined in the gloomy light of Mrs Janwari’s living room.

‘SOCO have been despatched,’ Venus said. ‘All we know at the moment is that the victim is female, possesses a bank card in the name of Wendy Dixon and she’s been shot.’

They all looked at each other: Lee, Vi, Venus and Tony. Only Lee voiced what at least he and Vi were thinking, which was, ‘Wendy Dixon worked as a Tom for the Rogers brothers.’

Vi narrowed her eyes. ‘Could’ve known Abdullah Khan?’

‘He’s got a gun.’

‘I’d be surprised if Sean and Marty didn’t have guns somewhere too,’ Vi said.

‘Knowing Sean and Marty they’re probably well hidden though, guv,’ Tony said.

‘Ballistic analysis will confirm the calibre of the weapon used to kill the woman and then compare it to the bullet we removed
from the wall of Sean Rogers’s house,’ Venus said. ‘In the meantime, Khan has finally made contact. We must now consider the women he is holding hostage and get food and drink to them. One of the women is pregnant. And even if Khan won’t let her be treated medically we must ensure that she receives nourishment.’

Lee went over to one of the windows and looked up at the sky. ‘Not dark yet, Superintendent,’ he said. ‘No point.’

‘Oh, yeah it’s Ramadan,’ Vi said. ‘But aren’t pregnant women allowed to eat?’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Lee said.

‘I’ll phone Khan now.’ Venus turned aside to make the call while Vi, Lee and Tony went into the hall.

‘So we just keep on turning up the Rogers brothers,’ Lee said.

‘Dave Spall, Marty’s minder, was at the Rogers’ favourite pub when I got there,’ Vi said. ‘I asked him about one of the girls at that house where my snout lived. The girl, Magda, was supposed to be his girlfriend but he didn’t know who she was. He was going with my snout, Tatiana, I know it. But Gawd knows where she is now.’

‘Gone ahead of Wendy Dixon, guv.’

‘Maybe, but we have to prove it, don’t we, Tone and with no body …’

‘Maybe Dave Spall’s a way in,’ Lee said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, Sean and Marty have always treated him like shit and if they
have
disposed of a girl that he was keen on …’

‘Lee, love, Sean and Marty Rogers kill people who betray them,’ Vi said. ‘Dave’s been with them two since school, as you know. What’s gonna make him dob them in now, eh?’

Lee said nothing.

‘Dave’s got a kid over in Hackney,’ Vi said. ‘Sean and Marty’ll know where. As they have with everyone, they’ve got Dave by the bollocks and he knows it. No, we have to get a connection, direct or otherwise, between Sean and Marty and something tangible. Wendy Dixon knew Tatiana, she told me herself, but with her gone …’

Venus, off the phone now, came into the hall. ‘Khan is insisting they don’t receive food and drink until the sun has set,’ he said.

Lee shook his head. Nasreen Khan aside, Mumtaz struggled with the Ramadan fast anyway and after the day she’d had she’d be parched and weak and he was worried about her.

Venus looked at Vi. ‘Get food organised with a local halal restaurant,’ he said.

‘Sir.’

‘I’m going to go and speak to the neighbours who live on the left hand side of the Khans’ property,’ he continued. At present all the residents of the eastern section of Strone Road were holed up in the hall of Monega Primary School. He looked at Lee and said, ‘I need to have ears in there now.’

*

The first time that Mumtaz hit the bedroom wall with the hammer Khan had given her, Nasreen woke up.

‘What’s going on?’

Abdullah Khan didn’t even look at her. Instead he said to Mumtaz, who had stopped, ‘Carry on. What are you waiting for?’

Mumtaz didn’t move. ‘Nasreen,’ she said, ‘she can’t sleep through this.’

Abdullah raised his gun level with her head again. ‘Do as you’re told,’ he said.

Mumtaz shook her head, but she did as he asked her. Weak
though she was, she found that once she got into a rhythm with the hammer she could make good progress. Old, brittle plaster flew off the wall with comparative ease revealing sometimes brick, sometimes wood or cladding or cavities behind. Every so often he would tell her to stop and then he would sort through the detritus on the floor and minutely investigate the section of wall that had just been attacked. Whenever he did this, when Mumtaz stopped to catch her breath, she could hear the sound of Nasreen crying. Whether it was out of distress or pain she didn’t know, but just by the look of her it was clear that she wasn’t in labour which was the main thing.

‘Alright, go on.’ Having looked and found nothing, Abdullah told Mumtaz to smash the wall again. She pulled her arm backwards and wished that she had the strength and the speed to run towards him and bash his skull in. But her eyes were barely focusing and her mouth and throat, starved of water, were so dry. She struck the wall.

Quite how many times Mumtaz belted that wall, she didn’t know. But every time he looked and found nothing Khan became more agitated. At first he’d just looked nervous and run his fingers through his hair. But then, as time went on he became more vocal, muttering ‘Fuck it!’ underneath his breath and then, later still, shouting the same thing at the ceiling.