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

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Can I help you at all, Baharat-ji?’

  Zafar Bhatti had held a management position at the mosque until he had handed over to a younger man five years earlier. It was whispered that someone had seen him with pornography, but he was still very much a part of public life, and vocal in the anti-alcohol lobby. Baharat found all that unnecessary. If non-Muslims wanted to drink alcohol then that was their business, surely.

  ‘Ah, Zafar-ji, I was looking for um, a . . .’

  He looked at what he knew were plugs. Mumtaz hadn’t said exactly what she wanted him to find out. Like almost everyone else, she knew what Bhatti did to earn extra cash. What was he supposed to do about it? And why?

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘Plugs? I have every sort,’ Bhatti said. ‘Very cheap. B&Q? Ah! Not even in the picture. Go to those places on those industrial estates and they will cheat you.’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘But then you know it, Baharat-ji.’ He put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You know it!’ Bhatti had to know that Baharat didn’t do DIY. Not even in the early days when he’d first come to the UK. If he couldn’t pay for someone else to do things, they didn’t get done. He was frightened of electricity and everybody knew it.

  Bhatti was about to praise his stock to the skies again when a fat, spotty boy walked in carrying a rucksack.

  ‘Ah . . .’

  Imran Ullah, whose brother wore leather pants and had a car that people stopped on the street to look at, didn’t see Baharat Huq. But Baharat saw him. Mumtaz had said that the poor fat fool was Bhatti’s postmaster. What she wanted to know was how and when the boy went into the house next door to pick up his deliveries. Baharat assumed that Imran went through the front door, a view underwritten by Bhatti, who quickly hustled the boy out of the shop.

  After half a minute, Baharat also left the shop and found the pair of them outside on the street. He heard the boy say, ‘He won’t know where I’m going. What does it matter?’

  Zafar-ji didn’t see Baharat for a moment. In that time he said, ‘Baharat Huq is a gossipy old woman! Do as you are told!’

  Then he hit him.

  Baharat cleared his throat.

  ‘Ah . . .’

  He didn’t look at Mr Bhatti, but at Imran. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, Baharat-ji. I’m fine.’

  The boy had his head down. Bhatti used everyone around him badly, from his wife to his friends. Why should this dopey boy be any different?

  It was then that Baharat Huq realised that he had been looking at his daughter’s request for information from the wrong angle.

  Briefly, he smiled at Zafar Bhatti, and then he said, ‘I will come and look at plugs another time, Zafar-ji. The ones you have in stock are very nice, but I think I need to see a few more before I make my decision. Plugs are very important, don’t you think? Decisions about plugs should never be taken lightly, I feel.’

  ‘No . . .’

  Zafar-ji was clearly nonplussed by this behaviour. But what could he say? He was the man who was hiding something, not Baharat. He was the one who had struck the boy and that, Baharat thought, could now be crucial.

  8

  Yet another day’s unplanned leave. Venus knew that tongues at the station would be wagging. Especially in view of the fact that a blonde called Mrs Green had been in to see him. Now that old crocodile Vi Collins would be pairing them off. But let her. Paul Venus just wanted his son back. The boy hated him, but he was sixteen and boys of that age always hated their fathers. He’d told himself that all night long. It was normal. Except that the vitriol Harry spat at him every time they met was not.

  The last time they’d met he’d asked his father which clubs he belonged to. A seemingly innocent question. But Paul had known that it wasn’t. He was a Mason, and Harry knew it. So were most of his friends’ fathers. But they were also in prestigious gentlemen’s clubs like White’s and Boodle’s too. Places that only men of a certain social standing could go. Policemen were generally excluded.

  ‘It’s at clubs where jobs are given out,’ Harry had said. ‘Everybody knows that! How can I get a good job if you don’t have connections?’

  Paul had said, ‘On merit?’ It had just come out.

  Harry had harrumphed, which was something he had taken to doing ever since he’d started at Reeds. Maybe all the boys there did it? Paul didn’t know. It had been Tina’s idea to send him to what Paul considered a Woosterish time capsule. They had money, but they’d both worked hard for it and what was wrong with a decent grammar school? But Tina had insisted. He still didn’t really know why. She could have carried on working if they’d employed an au pair to look after Harry. Tina was ambitious for her son and Harry had wanted to go to Reeds, but had that decision also been influenced by her affair with Cyd? When Harry was at school, the woman lived in Henley almost full-time. But what could he say? He’d been having affairs even before they married.

  Harry had pulled a face when his father had mentioned merit. People apparently didn’t ‘do’ that any more. He’d turned into a nasty little snob, but he was still his nasty little snob and when Paul got him back he’d take him out of that school, full of over-privileged kids and supercilious ‘masters’. The grunts at work laughed at him because he was middle-class, and he could take that. But to be looked down on by a bunch of toffs was too much.

  Paul counted the money Brian Green had lent him again, just to make sure. It was still all there. Would he ever tell Harry his life had been saved by a man who used words like ‘serviette’ and ‘lavvy’? Then again the boy didn’t seem to mind those words when Brian used them. Why Tina still invited him to the house from time to time was a mystery. Did she still feel beholden to Green?

  Lee Arnold had swapped cars with his assistant and so he’d be driving an old Nissan Micra. He was going to start following him from just up the road outside Finsbury Park. He had this notion, because the cemetery was an open space, that Paul was in danger of being carjacked en route. Paul Venus didn’t know, or care. He hadn’t slept again and all he wanted was his son.

  He looked at his watch. In ten minutes he’d have to phone Lee Arnold to let him know he was leaving. He went to the bathroom to have a piss. As usual he didn’t bother to shut the door behind him.

  *

  It was nice driving Lee’s latest acquisition. An eleven-year-old Subaru Impreza, it was comfortable even if it didn’t have much in the way of speed left in it. If she’d still had the Micra, Mumtaz wouldn’t have even considered driving to Chiswick, but in the Subaru it was bearable. And anyway, driving gave her more flexibility than the Tube and it meant that she could be alone to think.

  Shazia had twisted Cousin Aftab’s arm into giving her a really unsuitable job in his shop. It was basically labouring. But the rent was due on the flat and her next payment to the Sheikhs was coming up. What could she do but agree to it?

  The gangster Naz Sheikh was annoyed that, so far, she hadn’t come up with any useful information for him from her police contacts. She’d already decided she was never doing that, but how was she going to keep Naz at bay while she dissembled? And for how long? Her father’s words about the world being better off without some people kept on coming back to haunt her. He’d been talking about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but couldn’t that sentiment apply to Naz Sheikh too?

  Of course it could, and she didn’t feel any sense of guilt about having such thoughts. That absence made her shudder. It was wrong to wish anyone dead, but she did and he deserved it. Just like she’d done with her husband. The similarity, coming to her suddenly, was a shock. What sort of person was she that she wanted people dead? And would the nuns at the Siena Sisters convent be able to see it on her face?

  *

  Lee called Venus’s mobile again, just to be sure. But he got no answer, again. He hadn’t called at the agreed time to say he was on the road and he also wasn’t picking up his mobile.

  Lee fired up the Micra’s engine and headed for Islington, his p
hone on the seat beside him, just in case. But he knew he wouldn’t need it. Something had happened to Venus. He didn’t know what or where, but he kept looking out for a black Lexus as he headed down the Blackstock Road towards Islington. Venus lived down by Highbury and Islington station, near where ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair had once had a house the size of a small country. Islington was trendy lefty territory characterised by copies of the Guardian scattered on old sofas in fashionable independent coffee shops, which were patronised by hordes of yummy mummies. At least that was the tale they told at Forest Gate nick, when Vi and Tony and the others ripped the piss out of Venus. But working for him had given Lee some insight into the Super’s character, and it wasn’t all bad. Yes, he was a middle-class twat who made his preferences for younger women very apparent, but he loved his son, he at least tried to be civilised around his ex-wife, and he was scared. He was human – even if right now, he was making Lee very anxious.

  Not that Venus was doing anything. As far as Lee was concerned he could be anything from unconscious to missing to dead. Whatever had happened, unless the whole thing had been some sort of double bluff, Venus wasn’t responsible.

  Looking out for Venus’s car made Lee hesitate at a set of lights. The driver behind, in typical London fashion, sounded his horn long and hard.

  ‘Yes, all right, impatient bollocks!’ Lee yelled at no one but himself.

  It was more likely that if Venus’s car had been jacked it had happened outside his house or in a backstreet. Lee turned onto Highbury Grove and then looked at his watch. The drop was now ten minutes away – in Barking.

  *

  The Tabard pub, an arts and crafts-style building, was on Bath Road, Turnham Green. Amazingly, there was still a phone box with a public phone in it outside. Mumtaz checked. It even worked. It was also overlooked by a church and two houses across the road; two others had a partial view. Hopefully Mother Katerina might be able to tell her whether Mother Emerita had ever identified anyone rubbernecking.

  It was a prosperous area, the houses large and mostly with sizeable gardens. The people were either very smart and fashionable, in a designer manner, or studiedly scruffy, a bit like the hipster kids on Brick Lane. Mumtaz didn’t feel in any way at home, but she did like the place. Turnham Green was somewhere she wished she could be, for Shazia’s sake. It felt safe.

  Over the road a curtain twitched in a red-brick house with cottage garden plants growing in the front lawn. Probably someone pitying her for not having a mobile phone. Mumtaz left the box and made her way towards the convent. She’d cut it fine to get there, which meant that eventually she had to run. By the time she arrived, she was sweating and her face was red. In stark contrast, the nun who met her had the skin of a porcelain doll.

  ‘Sister . . .’

  ‘I’m Mother Katerina,’ the nun said.

  Mumtaz became redder. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought you were a sister . . .’

  ‘No matter.’ She smiled. In her severe habit and wimple it was almost impossible to tell how old Mother Katerina might be, but Mumtaz imagined she was probably in her early forties. ‘Have you been running, Mrs Hakim?’

  ‘I was late . . .’

  The large front door led into a wide hall with a curving staircase on the left-hand wall.

  ‘Please.’ The nun ushered her forwards, to a door underneath the staircase. ‘This is my office. We can talk there.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Mumtaz was still breathing heavily. How had she got so unfit? She didn’t smoke, drink or even overeat. Well, not often.

  Mother Katerina’s office was entirely out of date, with the exception of the computer on her battered Victorian desk. A state-of-the-art Mac amongst oak filing cabinets, hard chairs and dark portraits of women with halos. Only the chair that Mother Katerina offered Mumtaz had a cushion. And that was thin.

  ‘Would you like some water? Coffee? Both?’

  Mumtaz sat.

  ‘Sister Sofia can make a wonderful cappuccino. I really recommend it.’

  Mumtaz took a calming breath. Her face was, she knew, still like a furnace. ‘Well, I do need water, but I’d love coffee too,’ she said.

  ‘That’s good.’

  Mother Katerina opened her office door again and called out something in Italian. Then she shut the door, sat down at her desk and opened the computer. ‘I have been in the process of scanning our records into the computer for some years now,’ she said. ‘Many of the old files are almost unreadable, they are so faint.’

  ‘You’ve been here long, Mother?’

  ‘The order took over the premises in 1951. I personally have been here since 1997, which was when Mother Emerita died.’ She looked up. ‘What is it you say here? Big shoes to put your feet inside?’

  ‘Big shoes to fill.’ Mumtaz smiled.

  ‘To fill, yes. She was very loved.’

  The office door opened and a hand put a glass of water down in front of Mumtaz and then withdrew very quickly. The door closed again.

  ‘But you are here to find out what you can for a lady called Alison.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mumtaz drank the water she’d been given in a couple of gulps. ‘She is sick with something called Huntington’s Disease, which is terminal. She wants to find her mother before she dies.’

  ‘You told me, yes. May God have mercy.’ Mother Katerina shook her head and then looked at her computer screen. ‘I will do what I can. Now, the child that Mother Emerita found in the telephone box was called not Alison but Madonna while she was here,’ she said. ‘Maybe the name Alison came from the Nazareth Sisters she was sent to live with in Essex. I have a report on the child’s approximate age and her health, which was good. She was at most one day old. And small. Maybe, the doctor felt at the time, a little premature.’

  Mumtaz took out her notebook. ‘If I may . . .?’

  The nun said, ‘Of course.’

  ‘Madonna . . .’

  ‘Yes. Before the singer,’ she smiled. ‘1971. I was a child. You, I imagine, were not born.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was here for seven days before being transferred to the Nazareth Sisters. This was a hostel for young girls in those days,’ she said. ‘From Italy mainly, for study. But also from Spain, South America, all over. Having a baby here was not right for the girls or for the child.’

  ‘No.’ Mumtaz looked up. ‘Mother Katerina, the police must have been involved. Did Mother Emerita give them a statement or something?’

  ‘She did. We don’t have a copy, but . . .’ She clicked the computer mouse twice and then pressed some keys on the keyboard. ‘She wrote an account of what happened for our own records. It is in Italian, but I can read it to you if you would find it useful.’

  ‘I would, thank you.’

  Again the office door opened and two enormous cups of creamily frothy cappuccino appeared.

  Mother Katerina did not look up. ‘Grazie.’

  A voice answered, ‘Prego.’

  The office door closed.

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘She says, “I found the child in the telephone box on Bath Road, Turnham Green at 6.45 on the morning of the tenth of October 1971,”’ Mother Katerina translated. She looked up. ‘I’m sorry, this is a little hard. I may be slow. Mother’s handwriting is not easy, you know.’

  ‘No problem,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I couldn’t do it at all. It’s very kind of you to.’

  Mother Katerina waved a hand. ‘Nobody else was on the street at the time and Mother Emerita saw no one walk away from the box. She was entirely alone. It was cold and so she brought the child back here and then she called the police.’

  Mumtaz sipped her coffee. It had a slight cinnamon aftertaste and was sweet and creamy and delicious.

  The nun watched her face. ‘Good, as I told you, eh?’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  She smiled. Then she looked back at the screen. ‘So the police came and they took the child to Charing Cross Hospital,’ she said. �
��Once she had been examined she was sent back here. There was an appeal for the mother to come forward in the newspapers and on television. But nothing.’

  It was odd that Alison should have been taken to hospital and then returned to the convent.

  Mumtaz said, ‘Does she say why the baby was brought back here?’

  The nun scanned the screen. ‘No.’

  ‘Usually such children stay in hospital.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Also, Mother, Alison seemed to think that Mother Emerita saw someone watching, a neighbour maybe, when she found her in the phone box.’

  Mother Katerina sipped her coffee. ‘There is nothing about that here.’

  Alison had said the Nazareth nuns had told her that story.

  ‘Chiswick police may still have Mother’s original statement,’ the nun said.

  ‘I’ve left a message for them to contact me,’ Mumtaz said. That had been a mission. Unable to speak to anyone who was able to help her, she’d eventually had to leave a message on an answer-phone. If they didn’t get back to her, she’d ask Vi Collins to have one of her famous ‘words’ with Chiswick.

  Mother Katerina leaned back in her chair. ‘And then there is Sister Pia,’ she said.

  Mumtaz looked up.

  ‘Sister Pia is the only surviving member of the Order who remembers that time. She knew Mother Emerita very well.’ She hadn’t mentioned a living witness on the phone.

  ‘She is very old,’ Mother Katerina said. ‘And sick.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  She smiled. ‘To be honest with you, Mrs Hakim, Sister Pia has been sick all her life. Diabetes, arthritis, unnamed illnesses. It has been one torment after another.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ And yet Sister Katerina seemed more irritated than distressed by Sister Pia’s suffering.

  ‘And now at last, she is dying,’ she said. ‘Sister Pia has cancer.’