Jericho Road: A Nathan Hawk Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Mystery series Book 5)

by Douglas Watkinson

  “Another tooth,” she explained. “His baby teeth.”

  “Ghayas came to see you the other day, when you were sick. What was the problem?”

  She nodded at her son. “A chesty cough.”

  “That’ll be the damp. I can smell it in the walls. He’s better?”

  She nodded slowly, her means of creating thinking time.

  “Did Ghayas ever tell you about a girl called Maryan Kashani?”

  “We spoke only of ourselves, my son, our grandmother...”

  “That isn’t what I asked. No games, Amira, the very words I said to your brother. Did a girl called Maryan Kashani ever visit you at the circus?”

  There was a long pause which in a single word meant yes.

  “You know she’s dead? Murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “I intend to find who killed her.” I gestured to her son. “Beyond that, I’ve no interest. You understand?”

  She nodded, though I’m not entirely sure she believed me. She certainly didn’t drop her guard.

  While we’d been speaking her grandmother had risen like a graceful ghost, gone to the tap and washed her hands. She opened the bag her daughter had brought home, took out an onion and began to chop it into a pan, then to sear it on an ancient bottled gas ring.

  “What did Maryan ask you?”

  “She wanted to know who I came here with.”

  “You didn’t travel with your brother?”

  She shook her head. “My son, my grandmother and three others.”

  I asked her to tell me about them and she wasn’t evasive in her answer, merely uninformed. They had all kept themselves to themselves during the journey here but the youngest was a girl of 20 who was going to be a model and find herself a rich husband to take care of her. Amira raised her eyes heavenwards, indulgent rather than disdainful.

  “The other two?”

  “Married. Quite old. Fifty.”

  Now wasn’t the time or place to argue the relative definitions of old age. Besides, she went on to say that the woman had been kind, interested in Sami.

  “So you told Maryan about these three. What did she say?”

  “She asked more, much more, but I had nothing to tell. Nothing I knew. And then she cried.”

  Barista Steve had said she cried, but that was aimed at his good nature, his conscience. This must have been something else, surely. I asked what she thought had made her cry, specifically. The word made her frown.

  “The exact thing that made her cry, what was it?”

  She didn’t know, so she gave me the most likely reason. “That I knew so little about them all?”

  I glanced round the sty and tried to imagine living here, never mind bringing up a child in the pervading damp, with the lingering smell of pigs, and grey stonework, moss and mould growing in every crack.

  “What about you? Why did you come?” I asked, quietly.

  She turned away and steeled herself to answer that. When she turned back she was smiling, for the first time since we’d met, but it wasn’t a smile of pleasure, more one of resignation.

  “Just one year ago I was a big star. A hundred thousand men follow me on Twitter, to see my body, I think.”

  She paused, watchful eyes judging my reaction. Did I think she was delusional, spinning me a line or telling the truth?

  “I was a big name, as you say in the West. ‘Amira, the girl who flies like a bird’. I would twist and turn and split in the air, on a ring, a trapeze, a bar. My father would walk on a tight-rope, me on his shoulders. I would turn ... somersault in the air. No net below...”

  Not delusional, just daft, I thought, but then I’ve always had a thing about heights. She lowered her voice even further and said,

  “Then Isis came to Raqqa and my father was killed. From that day on I was a ... target, you say? No modesty, you see. I would be stoned to death when before I was in magazines, television, posters. People would see me in a shop and say ‘You are Amira, the girl who flies like a bird’. So I ran. With my son, my grandmother. And in Turkey I hear from Ghayas of a circus near to him who want performers like me! And he knows a man in France who will take us to England...”

  “From Abbeville? Driven in a van by a man of thirty, tall, rough skin on his face, fair hair.”

  She nodded.

  “Did he charge you? Take money?”

  “Four thousand pounds for each.”

  “You had that kind of money?”

  “Oh yes. I was rich then.”

  There’d been six of them in the van, she said. Twenty-four thousand pounds. A business worth killing for? By the same token Amira’s liberty had come at a high price, not just in hard cash, but in the way she was forced to live. A fugitive, under the radar, a hostage to the black economy, all those phrases which depersonalise a victim. Even so, the important question was would she have murdered Maryan to protect her freedom?

  “Tell me this. You arrived in the van, all six of you. When?

  “Six months ago.”

  “Where did you stay, to begin with?”

  She smiled. “That’s the only question Maryan asked again, again, again. Did I know the name, where it was, who owned it...” She shook her head. “All I could do was describe the inside.”

  It was an attic, she said, but not one with dust and family relics, old toys and photos. A place fit for living. The young girl and the ‘quite old’ couple had moved on from there very quickly. A week afterwards, Amira and her family had come here, near to the circus.

  Her grandmother was now measuring out rice as the onion fried. The boy was buzzing round her as kids do. He spoke without being prompted, from the stomach you might say, no doubt asking when it would be ready. His great grandmother turned to Amira and said something about me.

  “She asks if you would like to share this, a kind of chilli?”

  I wanted to say no, but people’s generosity is a delicate thing. Refuse it and you cause offence that lingers, sometimes for years. Accept it and you seal a kind of agreement. With agreement comes trust.

  “Thank you, yes.”

  Supper was almost ... formal in the Ovadia household. A makeshift table set out in the Western way, knives, forks, spoons, even serviettes. Ladles to serve with, good manners from the child, even though his wobbly teeth still bothered him. At one stage I asked Amira,

  “The circus at Fielden, do they pay you ... properly?”

  She smiled, cagily. “Enough.”

  “And the person you rent this place from...”

  “Mr Kellogg.”

  “...how much does he charge?”

  “Four hundred pounds.”

  “A month?”

  “No. Every week.”

  The self-righteous half of me had been looking for a cat to kick ever since I’d entered this building and at last I had one in my sights. I felt for The Map, of course, only to discover that I’d left it in the Land Rover.

  I stayed with them a little longer, small talking my way round Amira’s uncertain future but I ended with two promises, the first being that her presence here was not my concern, I would never reveal it. The second was to reduce her rent. That surprised her. Did I know Mr Kellogg, were we friends, perhaps business partners? I said that in a manner of speaking we were and there’d been a clerical error in assessing her rent. She didn’t understand the words, but when I said from now on she would pay 200 pounds a week she understood perfectly. I waved aside further questions and, when supper was over I thanked them for it and left.

  Outside, it was dusk as I walked up the junk ridden hill towards the house. It was a hundred yards or so, long enough for my son Jaikie’s words to come booming out of nowhere. Some time ago, and several times since, he’d suggested that maybe I was getting too old for the kind of street fighting I was about to engage in with Mr Kellogg. I’d disagreed, of course. I’d said then, as I was saying to myself now, it had nothing to do with age, everything to do with technique.

  But that was hardly the poi
nt. Much as I would’ve liked to break open Mr Kellogg and pour his contents into a bowl, I figured that something more subtle was called for. Cajolery, with a dash of bribery. Hi, Mr Kellogg I thought we should have a chat. Oh, yes, replied the educated voice, chat about what? The rent you’re charging that young lady down in the ... apartment, bungalow, annex. I mean I wouldn’t want this to get out of hand, but on the other hand, there’s a way of handling ... Christ, where did all these hands spring from?

  I was at the front door by now and gently swung the bell, one of those brass affairs, the tongue halfway down a chain. Somewhere inside the house a dog barked and I heard a voice complain about that. A croaky, pickled voice. A few moments later the door was opened by an overfed creature from the Dickensian scene I’d first imagined. He was a man of fifty who looked nearer sixty, long greasy grey hair hanging down either side of his face. The skin was blue veined like a cheese, the eyes packed away in bags, the belly eminently punchable. We looked at each other for a few moments before I asked,

  “Mr Kellogg?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think we should have a chat. May I come in?”

  “Chat about what?”

  “Couple of things ... involving the building.”

  He stepped a little closer and made his first mistake. “You from the Council?”

  “Do I look as if I am?”

  He chuckled sourly. “You all look the bloody same to me.”

  I looked away, trying to find a source of composure. All I could see was the orange glow from High Wycombe, bright enough to imagine it was burning to the ground.

  “You’ve had trouble with us before?”

  He jerked his head back at the house. “Listed building. Roof needs re-tiling. Money don’t grow on trees, I said to the geezer, so you give me a grant and I’ll fix it. If not, piss off.”

  I smiled at him. “But it does though, doesn’t it. For you. Grow on trees. Or in pig-sties.”

  He gave a long, slow sniff. One of the countless ways people have of playing for time. Maybe I should write another paper on it.

  “You got any I.D?” he asked.

  “No, but I do have, well ... a sort of calling card.”

  “Let’s have it then?”

  He held out his hand and the insult of him thinking I was a Council jobsworth gradually overtook me. Then he made yet another mistake by snapping his fingers and diplomacy took to the hills.

  I stamped hard on his moccasined foot, he screamed out and instinctively bent forward to nurse the pain. I grabbed the slippery hair and forced the head sideways until the body toppled onto the porch. I knelt down on his neck, no sign of that click in my knee that had been niggling me lately. He coughed and reached for air, his eyes, lips and tongue bursting from his face.

  “I bet the ‘geezer’ from the Council didn’t do this to you,” I said.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Hobson. As in choice. You listening?”

  I told him I’d nothing against free enterprise. At the right price. And four hundred pounds a week was not the right price. Two hundred was nearer the mark and that’s what his tenant would pay from now on. Unless he’d rather be paid nothing. Had he been in a position to do so he would have told me, no doubt, that it was none of my business.

  “I can have police here in twenty minutes, you in court tomorrow morning, eighteen months inside by the end of the year for harbouring illegal immigrants. I’m going to stand up now and you’re going to nod in agreement.”

  That’s what happened as he got to his feet, still wondering who the hell I was. I poked him in one of the bulging eyes. He winced and slapped a hand over it.

  “I’ll be back to check, regular basis. Capiche?”

  A dated word, used more on the telly than in real life, but Mr Kellogg understood it just fine.

  I turned and made my way back to Fielden Farm Park, thinking I would probably enjoy the walk, but in no time at all I was worrying. Yes, I’d confirmed my suspicions that Blake, Rollo and Terry Baines were trafficking people in from Europe and I’d just met one of them, Amira Ovadia, who in all honesty I should add to my list of suspects. She had family, responsibilities, which meant she had more to lose than any of the Hillside Six. And she’d been too happy, too ready, to talk to me, after her initial reservations. In most cases that works in the suspect’s favour, provided that what they’re happy to share is the truth.

  - 19 -

  Laura’s immediate reaction to what I told her didn’t come as a surprise. She was appalled that three people were living in a pig-sty though I have to admit I’d dressed up the horror of it. When I tried backtracking and said they were living well, given the circumstances, she didn’t buy it. The boy, Sami, was her main concern. No light, no school, no friends, no healthcare? How on earth could I defend such a position? And on top of that, when I confessed that I’d poked Kellogg in the eye after I’d got his agreement to the reduced rent, well ... was that really necessary?

  “You think I’m getting mean in my old age?”

  She looked at me, over the top of her glasses. “Old age?” she asked.

  “Amira’s phrase. Quite old. She was referring to the middle-aged couple she travelled from Abbeville to Thame with.”

  She remove the glasses altogether and tossed them onto the kitchen table. “Oh, I see. A young woman of what, thirty and a bit has just dented your ego and ... you’ve changed the subject.”

  “No, you did.”

  “The child’s health and that of the grandmother...”

  “What would you have me do, Laura?”

  She sighed quickly, irritably. “Go into Thame tomorrow, report all this to DCI Finchum.”

  “You know I can’t do that. The Hillside Six, Amira and her family, straight back to where they came from...”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “Well, how about this! Let’s say I tell Finchum what I know. He ambles up to Hillside Farm, saunters over to Kellogg’s place and does ... all the right things. Empathetic, humanitarian, British.” In my tone I gave all three words their opposite meaning. “Meantime your friend Jenny and Rollo...”

  “She is not my friend!”

  “...and their friend Leonard Blake get wind of what’s happening and close down the whole operation. Like it never existed.”

  “So, you’re more interested in their comeuppance than their victims’ welfare?”

  We paused there, aware that we’d been at odds or, to put it another way, we weren’t even married and we were rowing. Laura stepped away, reached down for the dog bowl and waved it at me, shorthand for asking if I’d fed her yet. I shook my head, she opened a tin of dog food and stank the place out. The smell was pungent enough to remind us of the last time our nostrils were assaulted. Maryan’s dead body.

  “Are you any nearer to catching her killer?”

  I hadn’t the faintest idea. A week ago I’d thought that maybe Maryan was looking for a boyfriend. If I tracked him down I'd find her killer, but today, hearing that one of Amira’s travelling companions was a girl who ‘wanted to be a model’ I’d toyed with the idea that I’d clipped the edge of the sex trade. But Maryan had cried. Why? It almost certainly wasn’t over the girl. Which left the middle-aged couple. In my opinion she'd been looking for them. I thought they were her parents.

  That ended our disagreement about living conditions and brought Laura back on side. She asked if it was more educated guesswork, or did I have proof? If I was right, she said, and they were her mother and father, it brought them into the foreground. Why kill a girl whose only concern was to find them? Why not simply take her to them?

  “Rollo and co didn’t know who Maryan was, not at the time,” I said. "But you’re right to ask if I’ve got proof. I have to get into that attic. That penthouse, as the foreman calls it.”

  “You can’t just break into...”

  I held up a hand to steady her opinion of what I could and couldn’t do.

  “I think they
use it as a halfway house. It’s also the only place Rollo didn’t show me when I had the guided tour.”

  She gave me a look I’ve seen a hundred times, not from Laura but from others, colleagues, even bosses who’d wanted me to follow the expedient route knowing I’d happily break any heads or rules that stood in the way.

  “Rollo, Jenny, Bahamas,” she said. “They’re off Thursday this week, I believe. You could try chatting up the new housekeeper.”

  “They have a housekeeper?” I said, in the same voice my father would have used, full of outrage that an able bodied woman like Jenny Leveque couldn’t run a hoover round the house occasionally.

  “There are something like forty rooms there,” said Laura from the other side of dog bowl.

  My father was still talking and I was agreeing with him. “They live in six of them at most! Close the other 34 and Bob’s your uncle, no dust.” I paused. “What do you know about this housekeeper?”

  Only what Jenny had told her, it seemed, over their coffee in Rumsey’s. She was new. A replacement for an elderly village lady who’d gone to live with her son in Devon. Depending on how they got on the newbie might move in to Wotton House rather than come on a daily basis as her predecessor had done.

  “Was she there at the garden party?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “I drew quite a crowd, if you remember. I wouldn’t want her to recognise me.”

  ***

  I went up to the cabin, just before we turned in and emailed Jaikie not on the family forum, but one to one. I hadn’t expected him to still be up, what with early starts in the film industry and and his inherited vanity that says early to bed, early to rise keeps you healthy, wealthy and beautiful. But he answered me quick sharp.

  I’d written saying, ‘Jaikie, your advice, mate. I’m thinking of doing some role play, need to wheedle my way into a big house. Any suggestions from the pro in the family? Dx’

  He emailed back. ‘Dad, can you start using WhatsApp for this kind of stuff? I know you’ve got it on your phone and I showed you how to use it. Anyway, what kind of Big House? Big, beautiful, historical ... gardens?’