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

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Or me. But then Green wouldn’t be involved would he?’ Tony said. ‘He knows the Super and his family.’

  Vi shrugged. ‘I dunno. Old habits die hard. If there was a few bob in it for him.’

  ‘Guv, the kids, including Harry, kidnapped the boy. Tom de Vries, neglected by his parents, wanted to go away with his older woman – or so he said – and the other kids were into this superiority thing that teacher of theirs peddles.’

  ‘McCullough, yes,’ she said. ‘Change of curriculum there, I hope. But I’m thinking about Green.’

  ‘Maybe Harry scrawled his number on the wall?’

  ‘Why? Harry’s phone was long gone by the time he went into de Vries’s house. He had his computer with him, which I suppose we’ll find out about once the techies get stuck in. And de Vries’s.’

  ‘Perhaps Harry tried to ring Green, Guv. If he got hold of a phone . . . He could’ve copied the number down from his computer.’

  ‘Why?’ She sighed. ‘Maybe there was no one else involved. Tom took Harry to his nan’s garage intending to leave him there to die while he sodded off with a load of cash. But then who killed him?’

  ‘Maybe he was mugged?’

  ‘So who killed Happy?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘And where’s the money?’

  22

  As soon as her amma went to work, Shazia left the flat. She didn’t know where any of the Sheikhs lived but she’d been told that they had an office behind a pound shop in Plaistow. And she knew Naz’s car. It was a red Mitsubishi Evo X and it had one of those ‘cherished’ number plates. She knew it by heart.

  Shazia got on the bus that would take her to the junction with the Barking Road. Then she’d walk. It wasn’t a bad day and she wasn’t the kind of person who got stopped and searched by the police – for a start she was a girl and she wasn’t black. But having her father’s hunting knife in her pocket made her feel uncomfortable.

  *

  ‘I need to pay you, of course, but also Mr Arnold, I wanted to thank you for all the work you did to get Harry back to us.’

  Venus was grey. Not just a few flecks in his hair, but his skin.

  Lee sat down. ‘How is he?’

  ‘The operation was apparently a success, but he remains unconscious. At the moment his brain activity is minimal. That may change in the next few days.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  He exhaled. ‘It’s hard to see your child in such a state. And you know, what makes it even harder is that I’m angry with him.’

  It was a rare fit of candour from Venus, and Lee realised he was probably its recipient because he wasn’t a colleague or a relative.

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘To put us through all this pain . . .’ He looked as if he were about to cry. ‘If, when, he recovers, I’m taking him out of that school. Yes, we had enough money to send him to public school, but we had no knowledge about how those places work. Tina went to a convent and I’m a grammar school boy.’

  ‘You went to Cambridge.’

  ‘Yes, and I should have learned from that,’ he said. ‘There’s Cambridge and there’s Cambridge. Cambridge for those of us from state schools, and Cambridge for those from public schools. It’s a much easier ride for them.’

  ‘So you wanted an easier ride for Harry? I’d’ve probably done the same in your position,’ Lee said. ‘We all want our kids to climb that little bit higher up the ladder, don’t we?’

  Venus smiled. ‘As you know, my grandfather was from Barking,’ he said. ‘I know most people in this station think I’m pure home counties, but that’s only because my father pulled himself up by his bootstraps. I had it easy. But my father’s parents were illiterate.’

  ‘You have the East End ambition,’ Lee said.

  ‘We all find our way. What we don’t do is listen to bizarre theories about superiority peddled by odd men obsessed by old crimes and their film interpretations.’

  ‘Mr McCullough.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If I’d known he was, albeit inadvertently, giving those boys ideas like that, I would have had more than just words.’ He bent down to pick up the briefcase, which was beside his desk. ‘Now I owe you money . . .’

  His mobile phone rang. He attempted to get to it on his desk, but it was actually closer to Lee, who passed it to him. Venus switched it off.

  ‘That can wait.’

  ‘Not the hospital?’

  ‘No. Mr Arnold, I can write you a cheque or I can have the money transferred into your account electronically . . .’

  Lee left Venus’s office a lot better off. He also left with more questions. Venus had rejected a call from Brian Green when he’d switched his mobile off. By his own admission, Green was a friend of the family. Why had he done that? Had it just been because he was busy with Lee? Green’s mobile number on Tom de Vries’s bedroom wall still haunted Lee. He wanted to ask Venus why that might have happened, wanted to know whose handwriting it was. But when he looked back at the glass cube office, he saw that Venus was on his mobile and he was frowning.

  *

  ‘My mother is in a care home, in Tufnell Park. They have this room relatives can use when they visit.’

  ‘So accommodation wasn’t a problem for you,’ Vi said.

  She’d given Malcolm McCullough a couple of addresses of guest houses in Newham – mostly clean if a bit scruffy round the edges – but he’d done his own thing. Tufnell Park, if she recalled, was one of those areas of north London that had become colonised by literary and actor types in recent years. When she remembered it back in the seventies, it had been a grim, gothicky suburb. Before grim and gothicky turned funky.

  ‘My mother is ninety,’ McCullough said. ‘She has every illness under the sun and so we all expect her to go almost at any minute. It was fine.’

  Vi leaned back in her chair. ‘So, Mr McCullough,’ she said, ‘we need to talk about your boys.’

  He frowned.

  ‘I’m not blaming you for what they did,’ she said.

  ‘Why would you?’

  Malcolm McCullough had only been obliged to give a statement about what he’d known about the Harry Venus kidnap. And that was minimal. There was no proof he’d had any hand in it, but his influence on kids like George Grogan, albeit unintended, left a bad smell.

  ‘This film, Rope,’ she said, ‘I’m not an expert, Mr McCullough, but I’m told it doesn’t feature on the national curriculum.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. But we are not a state school, DI Collins. Provided we teach the boys what they need to pass their GCSEs or their A Levels, we may add whatever enrichment to their classes that we please. They are boarders. In term time we are in loco parentis, which means that we must also entertain and inform our charges. That is what their parents pay for: enrichment. An educational experience that goes beyond the mere passing on of information designed to promote passing exams.’

  ‘But my understanding of this Hitchcock thing was that it was part of your English Literature classes,’ Vi said.

  ‘Alongside their set books, yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  He sighed. ‘Because, as I’ve told you before, DI Collins, some of our boys have an aptitude for story. They may become great writers. And I can think of no better model for them to follow than Hitchcock.’

  ‘Not Shakespeare?’

  ‘Even our boys are more engaged by the cinematic than the page these days,’ he said. ‘Hitchcock is my way of introducing the boys to story construction in a way they will relate to.’

  ‘Not because you’re obsessed with Hitchcock . . .’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Or the notion of superior intelligence in Rope.’

  ‘That film is anti-superiority! Good God, Hitchcock was a cockney! He was appalled by the Leopold and Loeb murder it was based upon. And like those real people, the characters in the film eventually come a cropper—’

  ‘Yeah, they do, but I think that some of your boys looked at
that film and saw an invitation to go one better,’ Vi said. ‘I watched it first thing this morning and you know what occurred to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you know that a lot of wealthy parents are buying up property for their kids in parts of the East End like Hoxton and Shoreditch? They’re fashionable.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So they come among ordinary people and they get hold of property it takes most folk a lifetime to buy and they go to the type of universities that ensure they’ll get good jobs, if they want them . . .’

  ‘It’s always been like that DI Collins. That’s how our society is.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But there’s a price, and I think we’ve just seen a bit of that being paid,’ she said. ‘Mr McCullough, what you did by introducing your passion for Hitchcock to these particular boys wasn’t wrong in itself. But like the teacher in Rope . . .’

  ‘Rupert Cadell.’

  ‘Jimmy Stewart’s character, yes. You gave these boys an image of flawed superiority that they felt they could better. Tom de Vries didn’t need that, as he was already sure of himself from what I can tell. But he was also vulnerable, because he was unwanted. And so, for a different reason, was Harry Venus.’

  ‘I wasn’t to know they’d do this!’

  ‘I know that. But they did, and Charlie Darrah-Duncan still won’t talk. I dunno if he’s got some misplaced loyalty thing going on, but Mr McCullough, you’re going to have to think about what you teach these boys in the future. They don’t need to feel better than other people, because they already have every privilege going. And those that don’t should be counselled. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Well, Reeds is changing anyway, so I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.’

  His face was white now and he looked as if he had a bad smell under his nose.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that Reeds is taking in half of eastern Europe next term,’ he said. ‘Oligarch offspring.’

  ‘All the more reason to be careful what you teach them,’ Vi said. ‘The very rich? The hereditary rich? I don’t see the difference.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I just see poor Harry Venus who should never have been at your bloody school. I see a boy who could be dying because he wanted to fit in. Christ, Mr McCullough, doesn’t it strike you as messed up, the way boys at your school have a tradition of defecating in unusual places? Who clears it up, eh? Do the kids even think about that?’

  ‘Depositing is not approved . . .’

  ‘No, and Dr Flanagan your headmaster told me that too,’ Vi said. ‘But I don’t think any of you have really tried to stop it. Like I told your boss, all schools have an obligation to report drug offences on their premises to the police. But no one ever reported Tom de Vries, did they? What happened?’

  McCullough turned away.

  Either Mr de Vries had paid Reeds off, or someone had decided that a drugs charge against a boy would look bad for the school. Or both. Dr Flanagan had not been forthcoming about it.

  ‘I know you’ll disagree, Mr McCullough, but I think that your new boys from eastern Europe might shake the place up for the better.’

  His face grew very ugly for a moment. ‘Oh, and you’d know about the sons of oligarchs, would you?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Vi said. ‘But I do know that you should never blame the sins of the father on the child. Look what that did to Harry Venus.’

  *

  Lee barely heard her. Just off the phone from Vi Collins, his head was full of Malcolm McCullough, Alfred Hitchcock and a theory that was just starting to take shape in his head. Had she just said something about meeting some woman at Ilford Broadway?

  ‘Her husband is a Salafi,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Which is a very strict, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. He has divorced her according to sharia law, not British law, and now—’

  ‘Yeah. Mumtaz, I’m gonna take the Micra. You all right with the Subaru?’ He stood up. Either he was going to find out what Brian Green’s number had been doing on de Vries’s wall or he wasn’t, but not knowing wasn’t an option. It would drive him mad.

  ‘Well, yes . . .’ She looked surprised and a little alarmed. ‘Lee, are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ he said. ‘But I need to go out for a while.’

  ‘Where?’

  They always told each other where they were going, for security. Being out of contact was dodgy, they’d both learned that lesson the hard way. But he couldn’t tell her. She’d talk him out of it. He put his jacket on.

  ‘Keep your phone on.’

  Avoiding those huge green eyes, he looked down as he loaded his pockets with keys and pens and change. He walked to the office door and then glanced back. And wished he hadn’t.

  Her face said it all.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ she said, and turned back to her computer screen. He left, but he felt like a bastard.

  *

  She spotted his car on Balaam Street, outside a minimart just like Cousin Aftab’s. An old man sat on a plastic stool outside, his fingers running though his prayer beads. His eyes were sad, and Shazia wondered whether Naz Sheikh had just threatened him.

  But then she saw Naz come out of the shop, followed by a man who looked like a younger version of the old man. Shazia tucked herself in behind a boy holding a bottle of cider in the doorway of the Job Centre.

  The man and Naz began walking across the road. One of the gangster’s hands was on the man’s shoulder. They passed her on their way to the Barking Road. She didn’t hear either of them speak.

  As soon as they’d gone, Shazia moved to follow them.

  The boy with the cider bottle said to her, ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  He looked down at the ground and said something she couldn’t hear. He was pissed. Whether it was because he didn’t have a job or whether it was the booze that made him unemployable, she didn’t know and didn’t care. She followed Naz and the man and they went to exactly the place she thought they would go.

  23

  ‘My dad’s buried here, somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t you know where?’

  ‘I can tell you where Jack the Ripper’s buried.’

  Paul Venus didn’t want to be sitting in Brian Green’s stuffy Maybach. All his cars stood out, but this one was particularly visible. Even in a rarely visited cemetery.

  ‘Open the window, Brian, it’s like an oven in here!’

  The old man shrugged and opened his window a crack.

  ‘Aaron Kosminski, he was called,’ Brian said. ‘Died in the madhouse and they buried him here. A lot of people think he was the Ripper.’

  ‘What are we doing here, Brian?’

  He’d had to tell Tina he had work that just couldn’t wait and he’d told his colleagues he had to go out to get spare clothes for his wife at the hospital. It all felt squalid.

  ‘Well, you know, Paul, that I’ve had the best interests of Tina and Harry in me mind for bloody donkey’s years.’

  The gangster with a heart act had worn thin years ago.

  ‘So I wanted to apologise to you personally, for not being able to do quite enough to help your boy,’ he said.

  If he’d dragged him all the way out to East Ham Jewish Cemetery just for this, Paul would be pissed off. But he knew he hadn’t. Brian only went to the trouble of leaving his home and his child bride when he had to.

  ‘In the boot you’ll find something that belongs to you,’ Brian said.

  He’d asked Paul to park behind him.

  ‘If I pop the boot then you can take it out and put it in your motor.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Go and have a look,’ Brian said.

  Paul felt his legs shake when he opened the door. As he got out he saw a car pull up just outside the gates.

  *

  Venus’s car was parked directly behind Brian’s, but the BMW was empty and there were two
figures in the Maybach. Lee watched. From that distance nobody would be able to see who he was, but he put sunglasses on anyway.

  A second passed, no more. A figure, a slim, tall man, got out of the Maybach and went round to the back of the car. Lee couldn’t see whether he was peering in the Maybach’s boot or just staring at the rear to look for damage. Had the BMW back-ended the Maybach just before he got to the cemetery? Then he saw Venus lift something up and then put it down again.

  It had taken Lee by surprise to see that Brian was not only being followed by him, but by Paul Venus too. He’d pulled up outside Green’s house just over half an hour ago, in time to see the Maybach roll out onto the street. He’d kept his distance, but at Manor Park he’d noticed that a familiar BMW had inserted itself between Mumtaz’s Micra and the Maybach and was clearly following Brian.

  The original idea had been to go to Brian and ask him outright, ‘What was your number doing on Tom de Vries’s bedroom wall?’ It was why he’d taken the Micra. Brian didn’t know that car. He could park in front of his house and be completely anonymous to the gangster until he decided he wanted to go in. He’d known he could easily lose his nerve. Harry Venus was safe. Why stir up what could be a whole heap of trouble?

  As he watched, Venus got back in the gangster’s car. Quickly. They began to talk animatedly. If only he could hear what they were saying. Then Lee Arnold had an idea.

  *

  They went to the cashpoint on the Barking Road. Of course they did.

  When they walked back down Balaam Street, the shopkeeper looked broken. As they stepped over the threshold into the mini-mart, the old man looked straight ahead as if he wasn’t there.

  Shazia wanted to scream. How many people did that family have in their pockets and how many more did they want? How could Naz talk about Islam and morality when he was the greediest man she’d ever met? Not even her late father came close, and that was saying something. Her abba had always bought himself everything he wanted, and he’d wanted many things.