Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) (27 page)

He went back to the block of flats where el Masri lived and rang his bell, number thirty-five. He got no answer. Why had el Masri parked his car beside the old pub? He looked at it again. Had he forgotten his key or code or whatever he used to get into the garage under his flat? Lee rang again. What he needed was another resident with a key he could follow in. But the place was deserted.

He had no evidence that Mumtaz had gone anywhere with Dr el Masri. She was missing, but she was an adult and so the police wouldn’t class it as a disappearance for twenty-four hours. If the doctor was in his flat alone and he didn’t want to answer his door buzzer, that was up to him. But the new Mercedes S-class worried at him. He looked at it again and it was then that he saw a very faint light pass across one of the lower windows of the old hotel.

Lee ran back to his car and said to Shazia, ‘El Masri’s not in his flat. There’s something going on in the old building.’

She began to get out of her seat.

‘Oh no. You stay where you are,’ Lee said. ‘El Masri’s car’s
round there and he isn’t in his flat so I’m going to have a bit of a poke around.’

‘You think he might be in that old place with Amma?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lee said. ‘That’s why I’m going to have a look. I won’t be long.’

‘I want to come!’

‘Well, you can’t.’

‘I’ll be scared here all on my own!’

There was a side to this kid that was manipulative and wilful and Lee knew it.

‘Then lock the doors,’ he said as he began to head back to the hotel.

The van he’d seen earlier moved closer to the flats.

The ground beneath her feet was tiled. Cotton had a torch, which meant Mumtaz could see the pattern on the tiles was ornate. High Victoriana. She wondered what the passage was and where it was going. There were no doors leading off it and no lights. Made of vaulted brickwork, it was stuffy, like being in a tube tunnel. One of her big fears had always been getting stuck in a tube train and then having to walk along the tracks in the darkness.

Why was she complying with him? Cotton hadn’t directly threatened her. He’d not hurt her or held a knife to her throat. Her hands were still tied but if she turned and kicked him she could get away. The other man had disappeared with el Masri’s body and Cotton was neither young nor strong. She turned her head and looked at him. His eyes were dead. She turned back. If she was going to do anything to get out of this place she had to do it soon. The words burst out of her, ‘If you’re going to kill me, I need to know why,’ she said.

‘Why do you think I’m going to kill you?’

‘You killed Dr el Masri.’

‘Did I?’

She turned and looked at him again. Light from the torch lit his thin face from below.

‘Somebody did,’ Mumtaz said.

‘And you believe, without any evidence, that that person was me?’

The air in the tunnel cooled slightly. ‘You asked that other man to put his body, to use your words, “where it can’t be found”. What am I supposed to think?’

‘Maybe the other man killed him,’ he said. ‘Maybe
I
am helping
him
.’

There was a roaring sound that was familiar but also unknowable in that context. ‘Where are we?’

He pushed her forwards. She stumbled but managed to stay upright. The air around her was cold now and, as Mumtaz looked up, she saw lights and water and then she saw a plane take off.

*

The lock on the refurbished door was probably original because Lee had it open in under a minute. As he let himself into the old hotel, a plane from City Airport skimmed the roof. People paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to live in flats next door to a flight runway. The whole living in London thing at any price was fucking crazy.

Lee let his eyes adjust to the darkness, then he used the torch on his phone to look around. The place had been gutted. The bar had gone, ditto all the furniture, which had been rough even the last time Lee had been there. Outside it had looked well renovated, but inside it was a playground for spiders and, given its proximity to the water, probably rats as well. There were no voices now. But Lee was certain he’d heard them. And when he looked at the floor he could see footprints in the dust. He wasn’t alone.

Because he hadn’t been in the place for so long, he had only
the vaguest sense of its layout. He moved left. The bar would have been on his right. The main entrance was to his left, which was where, back in Victorian times, there had been a train platform to provide transport for travellers staying at the hotel into London. Somewhere there were stairs down to the old stables. But where? If he went back into his seven-year-old head they were right at the far end of the building. There had been stairs down and also stairs up to where the rich colonial travellers used to stay, back in the day. When it had been the Captain’s Brothel, rooms upstairs had been rented by the hour. He thought about that other knocking-shop he’d recently seen in Southend and then he remembered Susan. He hadn’t phoned her for days. Last time he’d looked he’d counted six missed calls to his mobile from her. He switched his phone to silent.

Walking from one end of the building to the other, he couldn’t find any stairs. He began to trace his steps back again when he saw a lot of plastic sacks stacked on the floor. He squatted down and looked at one. Fertilizer. Hadn’t Salwa el Shamy had a theory about Dr el Masri making a bomb to frame her husband? Lee couldn’t remember what kind of bomb had been found in Hatem el Shamy’s locker, but the use of fertilizer was common in homemade devices. He opened the bag and put his hand inside. It felt like such innocuous stuff, soft and squishy. There had to be about fifty other bags. Why have so much fertiliser? His hand hit on something hard. He pulled it out. It was a small box. Even using the torch he couldn’t read what was written on it because he didn’t understand it. Then he heard a noise. He looked to his left and there was a rat – and the stairs. Lee put the box down and stood up.

There was nobody in the bar. He’d seen no lights in the rooms upstairs. The stables, as he remembered them, were almost
without light. You had to open the double doors that had led out into a courtyard now long gone. But at least, if the doors remained, he’d have an escape route. He left the bags of fertilizer and walked down the stairs. As he put his feet down on the treads they creaked and splintered. He saw footprints.

The stables were still recognizable. Once he’d determined he was alone, Lee held his torch over his head and then scanned it round the space. Knackered but still intact, the stalls remained as he remembered them. There was even the occasional glint from a metal artefact that some Victorian horseman had left behind several lifetimes ago. Lee felt strange. With a drunk for a father, his childhood had not been happy and yet there were still things about it that he missed. Back then, ordinary stuff that ordinary people needed had been cheap. Basic food and booze was affordable, and everything medical, dentistry included, had been free. The world had been grey in many ways but what it hadn’t been was so confusing. Why had a doctor come to live in a flat in a place like Gallions Reach? Why had any of these people with their thousand-pound bikes and secure underground parking?

The old double doors were shut, secured by a padlock. There were a couple of windows high up that Lee didn’t remember and then there was a gap. An arch-shaped hole in the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Was it the door the old alkie had told him would, if opened, let water in from the dock? Lee went over to it. He tripped over something, but managed to stay upright. Another bloody fertilizer sack! He moved towards the arch. There wasn’t a door. But it was an entrance. He trained his torch inside and saw a vaulted tunnel with a tiled floor. There were fresh footprints in the dust.

*

It was too creepy. A woman wearing one of those furry headbands had come along and looked at her through the car window. Then a man in cycling gear with a thin face had knocked on the window and asked her what she was doing. It had just come out. ‘I’m waiting for my dad,’ she said.

‘And where exactly is he?’ the man had asked. He was probably only twenty-five, but he talked like an old person.

Shazia had said, ‘In one of the flats.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Mind your own business!’ she said.

As she rolled the window up, she heard him say, ‘You know you’re not allowed to park here, don’t you?’

He left. Pushing his bike towards the block on the right, she could see that he was angry by the way he walked. Like he was marching into war.

Then there was the white van. When Lee had gone round the back of the old building, it had driven up in front of the flats. People were in it, even though it had its lights off. But then so did Lee’s car. She wondered whether the people in the van were watching someone or waiting for something. Maybe they were watching Lee? Watching her?

That Lee had left her in the car had annoyed Shazia at the time. Now it pissed her off even more. She was cold, it was dark and weirdos kept looking in at the windows. She couldn’t listen to the radio in case the noise attracted even more attention and she’d left her iPod at home. She didn’t want to move to that tiny little flat Amma had chosen. She knew the move wasn’t Amma’s fault – her father had left them with a lot of debts – but she still resented her. She didn’t understand – sometimes she’d seen Amma with strange people, like the young man who’d sat in his
car outside the house. But Amma had never mentioned such people and how was she supposed to ask?

Shazia rubbed her hands together. Lee had taken the car keys so she couldn’t get any heat. How long was he going to be? He’d said he wouldn’t be long but he was taking forever. Bored and cold, she got out of the car and closed the door. It was freezing outside. For a moment she stood by the side of the car, shaking. Nobody was about now.

What if Lee and Amma were in trouble in that old building? He’d told her to stay where she was, but what was she supposed to do if he didn’t come out again? Should she call the police or would that ruin whatever Lee and Amma were investigating? She’d just have to go in and find out for herself. She made sure that her phone was on vibrate and then she put her gloves on. She walked towards the old building, her footsteps echoing loudly around the almost amphitheatre-like environment created by the blocks of flats. Lee had told her not to wear those boots.

What the noise from her boots also drowned out was a van door opening and then closing. Just after she walked past it, a figure jumped out, grabbed her from behind and pulled her into the vehicle.

*

She was standing beside the Royal Albert Dock. Another plane took off from London City Airport. Its runway, between the Albert docks and the George V docks, trembled. Water lapped at the entrance to the tunnel and at Mumtaz’s feet. How had she come to be here?

A man was curled into a squat beside the bundle she
recognized as el Masri’s body. Cotton pushed her down roughly onto the wet shingle. Then he tied her feet together. Mumtaz watched him go over to the other man.

He said, ‘You wanted an “in”, David. Now you have one.’

‘I didn’t want anyone to die.’ The man raised his head.

Mumtaz wasn’t shocked that Cotton’s accomplice was Dr Golding, but she was surprised. She’d had him pegged as a good guy.

‘Have you put stones in his clothes?’ Cotton asked.

‘Yes,’ said Golding. ‘But I just can’t …’

‘Push him in,’ Cotton said. He shook his head. ‘You have to take responsibility.’

Golding stared at him. ‘You killed him,’ he said.

‘And you were happy, because it meant that you could take his place.’

‘I caught you.’

‘Then why didn’t you call the police?’ Cotton said.

Golding carried on staring.

‘Because you wanted to make money,’ Cotton said. ‘And that is no criticism on my part.’

Cotton pushed el Masri’s body with his foot and watched it as it began to sink. Then he threw Mumtaz’s handbag after it. She gasped. There went her proof that Sara had been pregnant. Cotton spoke to her. ‘When Nurse el Shamy made him cover up that mess he was in with the Ibrahim girl, el Masri’s revenge was ruthless. Might as well have killed him.’

What ‘mess’ had Hatem el Shamy got into with Sara? Mumtaz could guess. Had Hatem el Shamy been her unborn baby’s father?

Cotton pushed el Masri’s body further into the dock. Bubbles began to appear. The chief consultant kept looking, but Dr
Golding’s eyes were on Mumtaz. She wondered what he was thinking and how he’d got involved in this. He’d found Cotton killing el Masri and then he’d helped him dispose of the body. From what Cotton said, it hadn’t sounded like a case of Cotton threatening Golding with dismissal if he didn’t help him. There was a business here and money, as Cotton had said. But what kind of business?

At last el Masri sank below the water and Cotton turned to Golding. ‘Too much disturbance to the water surface may attract attention,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave her a while.’

Golding looked at Mumtaz again. He stood up. ‘I suppose we have to …?’

‘Unless you want to go to prison, yes.’

‘I haven’t killed anybody.’

‘You’ve helped.’

Golding spoke with a voice that was cold. ‘I could say I was afraid of you. I could say that you coerced me.’

Cotton just smiled. He put his hands on Golding’s shoulders. ‘I’ve arranged for her car to be driven away from the hospital and dumped. I will be depositing what would have been el Masri’s share into your bank account. I know you know what that figure is. Now, do you still want to tell the police that I made you do all these terrible things that have so disturbed you?’

Golding said nothing.

Mr Cotton stood just inside the tunnel and lit a cigarette. ‘It wasn’t even as if you liked el Masri,’ he said. ‘You hated him.’

‘He was an unprofessional lecher,’ Golding said.

Cotton smiled again. ‘And you, David, are what the police call an “accessory”. None of us are perfect.’

*

The tunnel went straight out from underneath the building and then began to curve gently upwards. What was it? It wasn’t what the old alkie had told him years ago. A door holding back millions of gallons of water was bollocks. This tunnel didn’t have a door. He’d been just a kid when he’d swallowed that story. And alkies lied.

Lee heard voices. The air in the tunnel was fresher now. He was going to come out somewhere. But Christ knew what he’d find when he did. Now there was light up ahead he switched off the torch on his phone and hoped he didn’t trip on anything. He heard a man whisper, ‘I’m going to give her something.’

Peering through the darkness into the light, he saw two figures. The tunnel was amplifying sound. Lee took his shoes off and began to creep.

*

‘What are you doing here?’

‘What are
you
doing here?’ Shazia countered.

Tony Bracci rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t have to tell you. You have to tell me,’ he said.

It was cramped and stuffy in the back of that van but Shazia was relieved it was the police. When someone had grabbed her, she’d thought she was being kidnapped.

‘What’s Lee Arnold doing poking about round here?’ Tony said. ‘That’s his motor, isn’t it?’

‘Ask him.’

One of Tony’s colleagues cleared his throat.

Shazia said, ‘What?’

‘PC Jackman is clearing his throat so he don’t say anything he shouldn’t about stroppy teenagers,’ Tony said.

Shazia looked at Jackman, a PC in his late twenties who blushed easily. ‘That is
so
out of order!’

‘Shazia, what the hell is Arnold doing here?’