Enough Rope: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery)

by Barbara Nadel

  Venus returned. ‘We have to deliver the money to a PO box address on Brick Lane,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on,’ Lee said. ‘Do you have any proof these people have Harry?’

  ‘Proof? What do you mean?’

  ‘Did your wife ask to speak to Harry when they called? Have they called since? Have you spoken to them?’

  ‘No, no.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘Look, I should have, but I didn’t. I just need to deliver the money they’ve asked for.’

  Lee sighed. OK, it was his son, but Venus’s copper’s instinct should have told him to ask for proof of life. He said, ‘When?’

  ‘Monday morning at ten.’ He downed his latest whisky. ‘I have to do it and I’m fine with that. I just want my son back unharmed.’

  ‘But . . .’

  If that had been all he had wanted, there would have been no need to tell anyone, let alone Lee Arnold.

  ‘I also want to know who they are,’ Venus said. ‘My wife picked Harry up from school last week. Two days later he left on his bike to go and visit his friend George in Twyford, but he never arrived. Then came the phone call and the following day his mother received the demand.’

  Harry was sixteen. Lee could remember being sixteen. He said, ‘Look, I have to ask this – have you or your wife been having, well, issues with your son lately? Forgive me, Mr Venus, but I know you and your wife live apart. I’m just wondering how that’s affected Harry. Whether it’s made him—’

  ‘Harry wouldn’t put his mother and myself through something like this!’ Venus said.

  ‘I have to—’

  ‘My wife and I haven’t lived together, apart from the occasional week during school holidays, for a decade. He is accustomed to our separation. Nothing has changed for him, and in fact I would venture to guess that he has probably done very well out of having a father in London and a mother in the country.’

  People often spoilt kids when their marriages failed. Lee wondered whether Harry had learned to exploit his situation. Or whether the boy, secretly unhappy, had just decided to take off with a heap of his parents’ money.

  ‘Something happened to my son between Henley and Twyford and I want you to go over there and find out what,’ Venus said. ‘I also want you to follow me when I drop the money on Brick Lane. I’ll pay you whatever it takes. You can rip me off to your heart’s content, Mr Arnold. I really don’t care.’

  ‘I won’t, Mr Venus. I’m not like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lee could have done with a fag to help him think it over, but that meant going outside, and he didn’t want to leave Venus on his own. Much as he was indifferent to him, this man was clearly very vulnerable.

  ‘When would you want me to start?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Venus said, ‘and I’ve got five hundred pounds for your immediate expenses on me now.’

  ‘You want me in Henley-on-Thames tomorrow?’

  Venus took a folder out of his briefcase and pushed it across the table. ‘Yes. Here’s some information about Harry, his friend George and significant locations like our family home. Plus my wife’s mobile numbers and the address of the hotel I’ve booked you into tomorrow night.’

  ‘You’re very confident I’ll say yes, aren’t you?’ Lee said.

  Venus leaned back in his chair. ‘I know you’ve not got a lot of work commitments, that your landlord has just put up your rent and that your assistant doesn’t usually work at weekends. Your friend DI Collins has, as you know, a very penetrating voice.’

  *

  She could hear Lee’s mynah bird going through his usual repertoire of West Ham United songs and lists of players as she picked up the phone. Mumtaz heard Lee yell, ‘Shut up, Chronus!’

  She laughed. She was in a good mood. Mr Ali had not been playing around with a long-legged blonde in Hackney, which had curtailed her job, but she’d enjoyed telling his wife about the Killing sweater. It was an unusual thing to do, and yet Mumtaz could see how it could happen. Some Muslim men, her own father included, had a masculine image to uphold, but inside they were really soft as butter. Mr Ali had so wanted to make something for his wife that she would treasure, that he had resorted to clandestine knitting classes. When she told Lee, she thought he’d be disappointed that the job hadn’t lasted longer. But oddly, he wasn’t.

  ‘Sometimes it goes that way,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Yes, but with the office rent . . .’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that either,’ Lee said. ‘That’ll get sorted. Look, the reason I phoned was to ask if you or Shazia could feed Chronus for me this weekend.’

  Until recently, DS Tony Bracci had lived in Lee’s spare room. His wife had thrown him out in favour of a younger man, but she’d just taken him back and so Tony was no longer available for bird-sitting.

  ‘Yes, that’ll be fine,’ she said.

  ‘Just tomorrow,’ Lee said. ‘I’ll be back Sunday night.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Great. Thanks.’

  She didn’t ask why he wouldn’t be around to feed Chronus at the weekend and Lee didn’t volunteer the information. It wasn’t her business.

  Just as the call ended, Mumtaz heard the front door open, then close, followed by the sound of her stepdaughter going to her bedroom.

  ‘Shazia?’

  The girl, a bright, tall, skinny seventeen-year-old, didn’t answer.

  Mumtaz left the kitchen and walked the few steps to Shazia’s room. After living in a five-bedroom house, the flat they shared now was cramped. It felt like living in a doll’s house.

  Shazia’s door wasn’t closed and so Mumtaz walked into her room. ‘How long is this going to last?’ she asked the girl.

  Shazia, who was sitting on her bed emptying her bag, did not look up.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I told you, as long as you insist on playing the victim, I don’t want to talk to you,’ the girl said. ‘Go to the police or speak to Lee and I’ll talk to you.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  Shazia looked up. Her eyes, which were dark and huge, were also very heavily made up. She looked stunning. She said, ‘I saw that Naz Sheikh today. He watched me get on the bus to college. He was smirking. Next time I see him, why don’t I just punch him, eh?’

  ‘Oh no! No!’

  ‘Why not? He deserves it.’

  Mumtaz felt her heart flutter. ‘Shazia, you mustn’t.’

  ‘Mustn’t?’ She went back to looking at the stuff in her bag. ‘Oh, just go away, Amma,’ she snapped. ‘Go away and leave me alone in my little rabbit hutch.’

  Shazia hadn’t had an easy life. Her mother had died when she was a child and her father, while fulfilling her every material whim, had sexually abused her. After his death and despite Mumtaz’s best efforts, she’d also had to suffer the trauma of having to move from their lovely family home to a tiny flat so that her father’s debts could be paid.

  In his ignominious career as a gambler, Ahmet Hakim had got himself in hock to a local crime family. The Sheikhs did it all. Slum-landlording, money-laundering, illegal gambling, people-trafficking and blackmail. And when the need arose to give their errant clients the occasional reminder about money owed, the Sheikh family were not backwards in coming forwards. Naz Sheikh, the youngest member of the clan, hadn’t so much as flinched as he’d stabbed Ahmet Hakim to death in front of his wife on Wanstead Flats almost two years before.

  ‘I can’t believe my father still owes those people money,’ Shazia said. ‘They’re ripping you off!’

  They were. The debt Ahmet Hakim had died for had been paid in full, with interest, when Mumtaz had sold their old house. But what Shazia didn’t know was that Mumtaz herself was in debt to the Sheikhs. When Naz Sheikh had killed Ahmet she’d seen him so clearly she would have easily been able to give his description to the police. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d watched her husband bleed to death into the scrubby Wanstead Flats grass. And the Sheikhs knew why.
She’d hated Ahmet. He’d made her life unbearable. Naz Sheikh had been her hero, and he knew it. He played on it. But no one else knew, especially not Shazia.

  ‘These people add interest payments onto interest payments,’ Mumtaz said. ‘As long as they say I owe them money, then I owe them money.’

  ‘That’s insane. You should stop paying them.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know why not, Shazia.’

  They’d talked about this.

  ‘Because they’ll hurt us? Amma, if you told the police, if you told Lee—’

  ‘It wouldn’t get any better!’ Mumtaz was yelling now. She didn’t like to yell. She made a conscious effort to slow her breathing. ‘Just leave it to me, Shazia. Leave it to me.’

  Naz Sheikh, her one-time hero, had her. The deal – pay up or Shazia gets told her precious amma had a hand in killing her own father – was unbreakable. Even though the girl had suffered so badly at her father’s hands he had still been her abba. Shazia would never forgive her. She would never get over it.

  Mumtaz changed the subject. ‘Lee wants us to feed Chronus tomorrow,’ she said. ‘He’s away for the weekend.’

  ‘With a girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’

  Mumtaz walked towards Shazia’s bedroom door.

  ‘You know you’re forcing him to look elsewhere because you won’t acknowledge what’s happening,’ Shazia said.

  The girl had some notion that Lee Arnold had romantic feelings for her. It was absurd.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Shazia. I’ve told you about romanticising.’

  ‘What, because he’s a white man? What does that mean, Amma? My father, the one who got us into this mess in the first place, was a Bangladeshi Muslim, and look how well he turned out. Eh? God, you’re so thick sometimes. Love is rare and you should never just ignore it. I know that and I’m only a kid.’

  Mumtaz dismissed her with a wave of her hand. Then she went back into the kitchen and put the radio on.

  2

  Lee Arnold had not been the sort of kid who willingly read Enid Blyton books. In fact, any sort of book was a rarity in his parental home and his older brother usually used those that did get in as missiles. But he did get exposed to the Famous Five and the Secret Seven at school.

  In an age of Glam Rock and skinheads, the characters had seemed like beings from another planet. All picnics and affectionate dogs, kids like George and Julian never said ‘fuck’ and certainly never got smacked by their alcoholic dad. Custom House was then one of the poorest parts of the London Borough of Newham. With the Royal Docks dying around them, none of the locals could afford holidays to Dorset or anywhere else. Lee and his brother Roy were lucky to get a day out to Southend-on-Sea and a hotdog while their father got pissed in a seafront pub.

  Now he was in Blyton land, and it was weird.

  Venus had booked him into a country pub, the Flowerpot, at a place just outside Henley-on-Thames called Remenham. He’d arrived early in the morning, wanting to get a jump on the day so that he could get to know the area and meet the missing Harry’s mother. When he’d first rolled up, the Flowerpot hadn’t even been open, so he’d driven around for a while, familiarising himself with the route between Henley and Twyford. It was sunny, the roads were reasonably clear and the view of the Thames Valley flashing between the cottages and vast riverside mansions was picturesque. In Twyford he parked up and looked at houses for sale in the area. Lee worked out that if he sold his flat in London and was careful with money, he could probably put down a deposit on a studio flat round there. Harry Venus was going to be a very rich man one day. If he survived.

  When he went back to the Flowerpot it was open, so he checked in. He was given a comfortable room overlooking a big beer garden that was the definition of idyllic. It had two bars, one large and modern, the other small and filled with dusty taxidermy and early risers with local accents. Lee ordered a coffee under the gaze of a dead stag, and called Tina Wilton.

  ‘Come over when you’re ready.’ She gave him an address on the Wargrave Road. It was minutes away.

  Lee finished his coffee and left.

  *

  Sleep had never been a realistic option. He’d watched the sun set and then rise again over the streets of Islington without so much as a snooze. Paul Venus felt like shit.

  In a sense, getting Lee Arnold involved had made his state of mind worse. Harry was in the hands of people who had threatened to kill him if the police became involved. And even though Arnold was no longer a serving officer, he was ex-job. So he knew the ropes, the signs, the tells that could give away even the most cautious. Like Paul Venus.

  When it had first happened, he’d called people – bar those in the job – that he knew. Significant people. He’d shouted at men who had other men who looked like Staffordshire bull terriers, ready to kill for them. But no one had known anything, or so they said. And Paul owed no one anything any more. He was straight with the world, as far as he knew. Except for occasionally taking the odd gift . . .

  But to stand a chance of finding out who had Harry, Lee Arnold should be told he’d spoken to such people at the very least, because the men with the other men who looked like Staffies lied all the time. Their women didn’t know what the truth was even if it slapped them. They didn’t want to. But how was Paul going to tell him? He wasn’t because he couldn’t. Even talking to such people was wrong, and he’d done much more than that in his time.

  The money drop on Monday would have to work. It would work.

  *

  Tina Wilton was posh.

  ‘When I started in the theatre back in the seventies you either had to be a debutante type, like Joanna Lumley, or a bit of a slapper,’ she said as she put a glass of iced tea down in front of Lee Arnold. ‘I opted for the latter because it seemed like more fun.’

  She sat down and lit a cigarette. They were in a large conservatory that overlooked the River Thames. Just like the Flowerpot, Tina Wilton and Paul Venus’s house had an idyllic garden and views across the river that probably ramped up the price of such a place by at least a hundred thousand quid. The house itself was very tasteful if rather ordinary. Harry’s bedroom had been surprisingly tidy and free of personality for a teenage boy.

  Lee got his cigarettes out. ‘Mind if I . . .?’

  ‘Oh, go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’m not my husband, Mr Arnold.’

  Paul Venus was a virulent anti-smoker, which was one of the reasons he disliked the chain-smoking Vi Collins so much.

  ‘In the seventies all slapper actresses had to smoke, it was the law,’ she smiled. ‘Now . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Bad for the skin, I know, but that’s what Botox is for isn’t it? And Rita isn’t exactly an ingénue, is she?’

  Rita was the character she played in Londoners. A hard-bitten East End matriarch who loved her thuggish ‘boys’ in spite of their crimes and doted on her spoilt young granddaughters. On one level, Lee was offended by what many felt was a caricature of East End womanhood, while on the other hand he had to admit he had known women like the awful Rita.

  He lit his fag. ‘Tell me about Harry,’ he said.

  The facade of tired bonhomie she had been maintaining since he arrived slipped. As did parts of her face. Tina Wilton aged ten years in a second.

  ‘Harry’s our only child,’ she said. ‘Don’t know what Paul’s told you.’

  ‘I want to hear what you’ve got to say, Miss Wilton.’

  Parents often had different takes on their children, which could be useful.

  She said, ‘We’ve spoilt him, materially. It’s classic, making up for not being there for him. We’ve both always worked and so Harry was raised by a succession of nannies and au pairs until he went away to school, when he was thirteen.’

  ‘Boarding school.’

  ‘Reeds in Ascot,’ she said.

  Lee was none the wiser, but imagined a large Gothic building, boys in boaters and ‘fagging’. Of
course he was probably wrong.

  ‘Is he happy at school?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Harry’s an A star student; his masters anticipates he will easily get a place at a Russell Group university. He’s a good all-rounder, but is especially adept at languages. He took his French and German GCSEs when he was fourteen and now, at no small cost to ourselves I should add, he’s having extra Mandarin and Arabic classes.’

  ‘The future is Chinese.’

  ‘So they say.’ She looked out at the river for a moment and then said, ‘Not good at games though. No coordination. It drives Paul wild. He can’t understand it.’

  ‘And yet Harry rides a bike.’

  ‘Yes, he likes that,’ she said. ‘I just think he can’t see the point of things like football and rugby, and I have to say that I agree.’

  Lee Arnold, lifelong West Ham United obsessive, said nothing.

  ‘But Harry’s fit and healthy and, as far as I know, beyond the odd glass of wine and the inevitable experimentation with cigarettes, I don’t think he’s got any addiction issues.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Harry has a small group of friends. In fact, I met an old friend of mine again through one of Harry’s. We worked in a club together years ago. Harry shares a room with George Grogan, who he was going to visit the day he . . . when he went,’ she said. ‘George is a linguist too. They’re close. It was George’s father, Dr Grogan, who first told me that Harry hadn’t arrived.’

  ‘Tell me about that day, Miss Wilton,’ Lee said.

  She leaned back in her chair. She still had a good figure, if a little soft around the middle.

  ‘Last Thursday,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t at work. I was just hanging around the house. Harry, I thought, was going to spend the day with me, but at breakfast he said he was going to cycle over to George’s house in Twyford. It was beautiful, like today, and the Grogans have a swimming pool. I quite envied Harry a day of lounging in the water. He left at about eleven.’