He didn’t know the family himself, but he had heard rumours. They ran illegal gambling parties where people became indebted to them. That terrible Ahmet Hakim had possessed a gambling habit that he’d kept quiet before he’d married Mumtaz. The building society had taken the house because of it. She’d been left with nothing. He was just glad that his daughter hadn’t had to deal with such people on Ahmet Hakim’s behalf.
Had Shazia somehow become involved in gambling, or worse? She was a very ‘western’ little girl and probably even believed in living in sin and all that. Baharat couldn’t approve. But he couldn’t condemn either. That was her choice and, just like the terrible fierce-eyed boy Ali was allowing to use his house as a base for who knew what mischief, it was personal. He’d seen the boy only that morning. An Arab of some sort. Who knew why he was in England? He’d smiled a lot at Baharat and been very respectful until Sumita had come into the room, then he’d averted his eyes. After that, conversation had been stilted and Ali had been very obviously embarrassed.
Was he one of this new breed of young, merciless jihadis? Baharat couldn’t see him tolerating Mr Bhatti’s sexy PO box number, but then that was lying low since the recent trouble with that poor boy’s kidnapping. A policeman’s son! Then he’d heard that a friend of the boy had been murdered in Poplar. He shook his head. No, Ali’s new friend was much more likely to target old Rajiv for the tiny smear of eyeliner the poor thing was reduced to. Baharat remembered Rajiv’s old sari-wearing days with great affection. Rajiv’s father had been just the same, if not more flamboyant.
*
Lee gambled that Mumtaz would still be awake and that Shazia would be asleep when he called. It was one o’clock in the morning, but it had been an extraordinary day.
‘She was given sleeping pills by the hospital to bring home,’ Mumtaz said.
‘Maybe you should take one.’
‘Won’t erase the image of that man dying in front of my eyes with my daughter crouching by a wall like a terrified animal,’ she said.
‘No . . .’
He asked her what they’d said to the police and she told him. He said, ‘So not the whole truth?’
Silence.
He took a deep breath. ‘Mumtaz, we’ve been here before. I know you’re in hock to someone. I’m guessing it’s the Sheikhs. I’ve left you alone to deal with it because that was how you wanted it. But this changes things. I don’t think that Shazia killed Naz Sheikh any more than you do, but whether she did or not, she was there.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, also know there’s a possibility they’ll want to take revenge against you,’ he said. ‘Whoever is eventually convicted of his murder. You can’t do this on your own, Mumtaz.’
Silence again.
‘I won’t let you.’
‘Oh, so what will you do, Lee? Go to the police and tell them my statement was a lie?’
‘No . . .’
‘So how do you intend to do this?’ He could hear anger in her voice. He knew he’d provoked her. ‘You leave it alone, Lee, you leave it with me.’
‘I care about you. Both of you.’
He heard her take a breath. ‘Then leave it to me,’ she said. ‘Besides, we don’t know what they’ll do.’
‘We know they’re taking money off you right now!’
‘Leave it.’
She could sound really snooty when she wanted to.
‘Which you no longer owe.’
Yet another silence. ‘I’ll see you at work once this business with Shazia is . . . has clarified. I hope that’s OK.’
‘You know it is! Take as much time as you need!’
He heard her sigh. Then she said, ‘I know about Mr Green and Superintendent Venus. What will happen to them?’
‘Depends what evidence the police find,’ he said. ‘They’re examining the sports bag I believe Green took from Tom de Vries with Mr Venus’s money.’
‘But the Superintendent didn’t have anything to do with Harry’s kidnap.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Oh well then, I will see you.’
She put down the phone, leaving Lee staring at his handset, feeling helpless. If that woman wasn’t careful she could end up dead, and then how would his life be?
Chronus, rather appropriately Lee thought, came out with ‘West Ham till we die!’ then went straight back to sleep.
27
Two weeks later
‘According to the doctors, it was the blows to the head that did for him,’ Vi said.
‘Fucking hell.’
Chronus copied his master and Lee told him to shut up. Vi had come to the flat to tell him about Superintendent Venus’s son, and all the bloody bird had done so far was play copycat.
‘If it had been just the drugs, he would’ve been all right,’ she said. ‘But those kids kicked that boy in the head like he was a football, and now he’s never going to be able to do anything for himself ever again. He’s awake, but that’s all.’
‘And his father?’
‘Flung his hands up to all of it.’
‘The Russians? Green?’
Vi lit a fag. ‘I don’t know whether Tom de Vries’s DNA on that bag clinched it for Venus or whether it was just his own guilt. But he confessed to misconduct and he dropped Green right in it. You know he borrowed money from Green to do the second drop? I had wondered how he’d managed to raise so much so quickly on his flat.’
‘What about George Grogan and Charlie Darrah-Duncan?’
‘I think Grogan is truly sorry for what happened, but Charlie isn’t. Looks dead behind the eyes to me. I wonder what de Vries was like. Some of the more intelligent lads have used the word psychopath. I wonder if Charlie’s the same. Who else but a psychopath wants to commit the perfect crime?’
‘You think that de Vries always wanted to kill Harry Venus?’
‘He was superior, he was just killing a lower life form. How could he resist? Especially when that silly old twat McCullough was inadvertently feeding his fantasies.’
‘He’ll never include the work of Alfred Hitchcock in his lessons again.’
Lee shook his head. ‘Christ.’
Chronus said, ‘Christ!’
Lee pointed at the bird. ‘Once more and I’ll stick you in the spare bedroom,’ he said.
Vi said, ‘You won’t.’
The bird looked at him knowingly.
‘Mumtaz back at work?’
‘No reason why she shouldn’t be,’ Lee said.
‘I’ve been meaning to go round and see Shazia.’
‘I’m sure she’d like that,’ Lee said.
Then he offered her another cup of tea and changed the subject.
Once Vi had gone, he spent some time with the bird, stroking his feathers and talking to him. He hadn’t given the poor sod a lot of his time in recent weeks. Waiting for the forensic report on the knife Shazia had been carrying had been nerve-racking. To his credit, Tony Bracci had thoroughly investigated the girl’s story, so there could be no doubt. Shazia had not killed Naz Sheikh. A neighbour at the back of the house had seen a man walk down the alleyway behind the property around about the time Naz would have been inside, but she hadn’t been able to describe him in any detail.
Maybe Naz’s killer would never be found. His family had a lot of enemies. Maybe the Sheikhs knew who’d killed him and were going to deal with it themselves. Perhaps, in the near future, an unidentified decapitated body would be found in Victoria Dock? He only cared if the victim was one of those the Sheikhs had persecuted. If it was a member of another crime family, he didn’t give a shit. People always focused on the street gangs that made life difficult for kids growing up in some parts of the borough, but the real power was still in the hands of the old-time gangsters, like Brian Green, and the crime families, like the Sheikhs, who had diversified their activities enormously in the past ten years. Connections ran through Europe across to the Chinese border as well as down into Africa. People-trafficking was the big thi
ng. And property. His own shonky old flat had doubled in value in five years and yet it didn’t make him happy. Underlying it was something rotten, and it reached right up from people like the Sheikhs to the very top of society. His mother’s dad, a Jew from Lithuania, had been a communist. His father had always laughed at his ravings against the rich and powerful, but maybe he’d had a point. Because now the rich and powerful weren’t just toffs, they could be anyone, and could frequently be out of plain sight. One thing the toffs were not was invisible.
He’d tried to talk to Mumtaz, but now that Shazia had been cleared of Naz Sheikh’s murder, she was unreachable. She just came to work, talked about her cases and went home. Any friendship that had existed between them had evaporated. Not for the first time in his life, Lee Arnold wished he’d acted when he’d had the chance. What he felt for Mumtaz was neither easy to express, nor straightforward. But it meant something and it was more than just admiration.
*
Old George was back from his holiday in Great Yarmouth.
‘The missus made me go and see the Chuckle Brothers at the theatre on the pier,’ he told Shazia. ‘I fell asleep,’
‘Maybe you should go somewhere else next year, George,’ she said. ‘For a change?’
But George frowned. ‘Can’t do that. Missus wouldn’t like it.’
He went back to stacking boxes of washing powder. It was nice being back in Cousin Aftab’s shop. Aftab himself looked happier and Shazia knew that she could hang out there all day if she wanted. She didn’t know what had happened about the protection money now that Naz was dead, and she didn’t ask. But that wasn’t why she was in the shop.
At eleven, Ludmilla came into the shop with baby Tomasz, and Shazia, apparently in a fit of kindness, helped her carry her shopping back to her flat on Forest Lane.
When they were out of earshot of the shop she said, ‘How’s your husband?’
‘Janusz? He’s fine.’
She gave the impression she didn’t want to talk about him. But Shazia did.
‘You know I saw you, Ludmilla,’ she said. ‘At the house on Capel Road.’
‘Capel Road? Over by the park?’
‘Wanstead Flats,’ Shazia said. ‘I saw you let Naz Sheikh into a house the day he died.’
At the time she’d hardly let herself believe it, but Naz Sheikh had told her. He’d tried to say something about her amma, about how she knew who had killed his father. But then his eyes had rolled and he’d said he had to tell her who had stabbed him before he died. ‘It was that tart from your cousin’s shop, and her husband.’
Then she’d known that she had to let him bleed enough so there would be no way back. Little Tomasz couldn’t be an orphan.
‘I was there,’ Shazia said. ‘I followed him.’
‘Why?’
‘So I could kill him myself.’
Ludmilla looked up at her. She had tears in her eyes.
‘I was the girl they didn’t name in the newspaper,’ Shazia said. ‘I found him.’
‘You go to police . . .?’
‘Yes, several times,’ she said. ‘But I said I didn’t see anyone. I won’t say I saw anyone. Ever.’
Tomasz chuckled and Shazia tickled him under his chin.
Ludmilla’s face whitened. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing.’ She carried on gently tickling the baby. ‘Look after Tomasz. Live your lives.’
‘He was a bad man, yes?’
‘He was a very bad man,’ Shazia said. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’
‘You have, I think, more than just his rudeness against him?’
‘Oh yes.’
Ludmilla stroked Tomasz’s head. ‘Us too.’
‘I don’t need to know.’
‘You do.’ She put a hand on Shazia’s arm. ‘You protected us. You must know.’
*
The house was ridiculous. Stone gryphons guarding the front door, two Ferraris on the drive, Viennese blinds – which Mumtaz had always thought looked like bunches of French knickers – at every window. It was new, this house, and vast and pseudo-Georgian. They might as well have put a sign outside the massive electric gates, ‘Gangsters Live Here’.
The door was open and a small, elderly man stood on the threshold. She didn’t recognise him, but she knew who he was.
When she approached, he stood aside to let her in. A hall painted in bright emerald green led into a white and gold room the size of her entire flat. It contained only a TV and four vast brocade sofas.
‘You may sit,’ he said. He spoke in English, but with a heavy Bengali accent.
She looked around. Was anyone else in the house?
‘We are quite alone,’ he said. ‘As I said we would be.’
She sat.
‘It is nice to meet you Wahid-ji,’ she said. ‘I appreciate your invitation to talk.’
He smiled. ‘I have made tea. Would you like some?’
‘Thank you.’
He served tea on a silver tray with salted nonta biscuits. Sumita had always made nonta biscuits on a Sunday and Mumtaz liked them. But her stomach was knotted with tension, which made eating difficult. She was in the Sheikhs’ house, with Naz Sheikh’s uncle.
‘So, I summoned you,’ he said.
The use of grandiose language made Mumtaz feel uncomfortable, but she said, ‘Yes.’
It was true, he had phoned and ‘summoned’ her.
‘Because now that my nephew is dead, we must renegotiate his agreement with you. My brother, his father, is too distressed to take on the work at this time.’
‘I understand.’
‘Mmm.’ He drank his tea and ate a biscuit. ‘Now, I have looked at the paperwork drawn up for my nephew by the lawyers we use here in the UK, and I must say that I find some of it a little irregular.’
He was going to ask for more money. Mumtaz put a hand up to her head.
‘It was my understanding,’ the old man said, ‘that it was your husband who incurred a debt to my family.’
‘Yes.’
‘You sold your family home to pay this debt when your husband died.’
‘I sold everything,’ she said. ‘And, Wahid-ji, my husband was murdered.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
If Wahid Sheikh was what he claimed to be, then he knew. Because he would have ordered it.
‘You know that people wonder why I live in Dhaka, when most of the family live here in the UK,’ he said. ‘But then I say, “Our business is global.” With the internet and wonderful innovations like Skype, what does it matter where one lives any more? Business is everywhere now, it is twenty-four seven, and as long as you have agents that you trust in your various territories, nothing can go wrong.’
Mumtaz’s heart couldn’t sink any further. He was the overall head of the clan. ‘Wahid-ji.’
‘But this is not always true. And in this case . . . yours . . .’ He opened his arms. ‘It is my belief that my nephew pursued you needlessly.’
For a moment she thought she had misheard.
Seeing the look of confusion on her face, he repeated. ‘Needlessly, Mrs Hakim. We have obtained the monies from you owed by your husband. Agreements drawn up by my nephew subsequent to that may, I say may, now be deleted.’
Mumtaz was speechless. Did he mean that her debt to the Sheikhs was cancelled? He’d spoken on the phone about ‘normalising’ the relationship between their families. Was this what he had meant?
‘I can see that you have no money or assets. You work, from time to time, alongside the police based at Forest Gate police station. It was my nephew’s belief that you would be able to provide my family with intelligence from that source,’ he said. ‘But from what I can gather it seems that you would not have access to anything useful. You are a private detective, not a police officer.’
‘Yes.’
‘So it would seem to me that an obligation to report police activity on your part should also become redundant.’
Mumtaz was
beginning to like this man. He was the head of the Sheikh family, but he was clearly intelligent and reasonable.
‘However . . .’ he said.
*
Ludmilla’s flat was sparsely furnished, but very bright and clean. On the walls were pictures of relatives back home in Poland and of Ludmilla’s late mother, who had been Russian.
When they got in, she put Tomasz down for his nap and made coffee for herself and Shazia. Sitting at the kitchen table, they looked out at the railway line that ran into the London Liverpool Street terminus.
Ludmilla said, ‘What I told you about Janusz and the Sheikh man when I see you at the railway station, that was true. But that was not why he died.’
‘Then why?’ Shazia said.
‘Because Janusz, he was told to,’ she said.
‘By who?’
She sighed. ‘I tell you Janusz has job at gym. It is in Wanstead. It’s beautiful, really. But the man who runs it, he’s not so nice. He sells drugs to kids. Steroids. He is a drug-dealer, you know?’
‘Yes.’
‘He work with people all over the world,’ she said. ‘For drugs. Also that man, the Sheikh and his family. But they cheat him. They give him things not real drugs, something else. And this man, Russian he is, he says he will teach them a lesson.’
‘So your husband . . .’
‘Janusz says he will give the Sheikh man a beating. He wants to do this because of what names he call me. But then the boss, he say no, he wants Janusz to kill him. My husband says no! He is not a killer. But the Russian say he has said yes already, that he will lose his job, that I will be, um, what you say when someone makes you to have sex . . .?’
Shazia gasped. ‘Raped?’
‘Raped. Yes.’ She shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘The Sheikh man goes to Mr Huq’s shop and I see him. I flirt. He is easy to interest. The Russian knows a house on Capel Road we can use. I arrange to meet him there. Tomasz I put with my friend Kelly.’
Enough Rope: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery) Page 29
