She had her hands on her abdomen and her voice quavered. He could see that she was scared.
‘I er, I …’
‘This is my house,’ Nasreen Khan said. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
John looked away.
‘You should go home,’ she said. He didn’t answer. ‘You do have a home …’
‘I live in lots of places,’ John said. ‘Sometimes here.’
‘Here?’
‘I live in the shack,’ he said.
She clearly didn’t understand what he meant, so John pointed through the densest part of the tangle of trees and shrubs towards the back of the garden. She said, ‘You mean the wood pile at the bottom of the garden?’
John said, ‘I can show you if you …’
‘No!’ She took an abrupt step backwards. ‘No. I think you should go.’
John couldn’t remember when he’d first found the shack. The coppers had moved him on from his old billet down in Silvertown some time in the winter. Then there’d been the shack, Central Park sometimes, occasionally down by the river.
‘Where will I go today?’ he said to himself rather than to her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Where do you come from?’
John said it entirely without thinking, ‘Helmand province, Afghanistan.’
And Nasreen Khan’s heart changed in an instant.
*
It was a slow day – a slow week as it went – and Lee let Mumtaz go home early. Whatever was upsetting her wouldn’t be helped by sitting in the office with not much to do. She had a couple of appointments booked for later in the week – a missing husband and a background check on a potential bride from Leeds – so things could pick up. But Lee had bugger all. Clearly the upcoming Olympics were having an adverse effect upon infidelity in Newham. Lee let himself into his Forest Gate flat and put his keys down on the telephone table in the hall. From his living room he heard a low, cawing sound followed by a high-pitched rendition of that famous West Ham United anthem, ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’. Christ, he’d taught that bloody bird well!
Lee took his coat off and walked into the living room. The mynah bird eyed him with his usual slight suspicion.
‘Evening Chronus,’ Lee said. He rubbed the bird’s blue-black head with his fingers and Chronus stopped singing and shouted, ‘Up the ’ammers!’
Lee laughed. ‘You’re a poor brainwashed fucker, aren’t you?’
‘Bobby Moore! Trevor Brooking!’
Lee went into the kitchen and took a bottle of diet Pepsi out of the fridge. He poured some into a glass and drank it straight down. He wanted a pint of bitter, or gin, or anything that would get him out of it for a bit, but that was out of the question. He walked back into the living room and put the TV on. It was all gloom as usual: Egypt still in turmoil, the endless civil war in Syria, another British squaddie killed in Afghanistan. Then there was the farce of the London mayoral elections. Bumbling Boris Johnson, the clever, posh boy, not-so-idiot, or Ken – there go my Socialist credentials – Livingstone. He’d have to vote for someone, but who?
His mobile rang. He picked it up and saw that it was Vi. He put it down again and let it ring out. She’d been a bit keen lately and he wanted to nip it in the bud. It was all very well sleeping together occasionally but Lee didn’t want a girlfriend. Well, he didn’t want Vi Collins to be his girlfriend. The phone stopped ringing. Vi didn’t leave a message and Lee thought again about Mumtaz. Not for the first time he wondered whether he could pay her more. Thanks to the internet and modern home security systems, people were doing some forms of private investigation themselves. Not always well, but they were doing them. And that included some of Mumtaz’s covered Asian ladies. He’d thought about a career change, but where, if not to private investigation, did an ex-soldier, ex-copper go? The wonderful world of security? Lee had turned his Roman nose up at that years ago. Nights spent wandering about outside dodgy factories chasing down illegal immigrants jumping out of lorries? No chance.
The telly showed a picture of the squaddie who’d just been killed in Helmand province and Lee felt his blood pressure rise. They’d called the conflict he’d fought in the ‘First’ Iraq War. Then there’d been the ‘Second’ Iraq war and now the endless Afghan campaign. It made him mad. When was it going to end, for Christ’s sake?
*
Nasreen gave John a bottle of fizzy water she’d bought earlier in the day. He took it gratefully and drank it down.
‘Thanks.’ He smiled at her.
‘It’s no problem,’ Nasreen said.
Nasreen knew a little about men like John, if that was really his name. He was one of those ex-soldiers that were sometimes spoken about on the TV. Unable to adjust to civilian life after the rigours of Afghanistan, they drifted, homeless and often ill, on the outside of society. Her cousin Abbas had fought in Helmand. He’d lost an eye and his faith and was hiding from his nightmares in drug abuse. Before she’d married Abdullah, she had done some temporary office work for a mental health charity which had tried to help sick soldiers. She’d been touched by some of their stories, which had chimed with what Abbas had experienced. She knew that most people, for all the talk of the soldiers as ‘heroes’, didn’t give a damn.
‘The thing you call the shack …’ she began.
‘At the bottom of your garden,’ he said.
‘It’s just a woodpile.’ She paused. She still wasn’t entirely easy being on her own with him in her ruined garden, with evening coming on. If Abdullah ever found out he’d lose his mind. ‘My husband and I bought this house in an auction six weeks ago,’ she said. ‘How long have you been coming here?’
He didn’t know. Nasreen looked down the tight, rough tunnel John had forged to get from his ‘shack’ and into the part of the garden nearest the house and she said, ‘Did you rearrange the woodpile to make a shack out of it?’
‘A bit,’ he said. ‘It was something, a structure, once. But it collapsed, I reckon. It’s old.’
Although she knew what he was talking about, Nasreen couldn’t see much apart from branches and leaves. Again John asked her if she’d like to see his shack, and again she declined. At the end of the garden there was nothing of interest except the high wall that enclosed the old Plashet Jewish Cemetery. And if John suddenly ‘lost it’ or went for her, down there, no-one would know. As if reading her thoughts, he said, ‘Why are you here? On your own?’
‘Why do you ask? Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘You’ve always been with your husband when I’ve seen you before.’
‘He’s gone to work,’ she said, then thought that maybe that was a stupid thing to say when she was alone with an unknown man. ‘He’s a lawyer,’ she added. ‘He works strange hours. He could be back any minute.’
But John had drifted off. ‘Why are you here?’ he repeated.
Nasreen changed tack. She pointed at the old sink by the back door. ‘I wanted to see if I could move that,’ she said.
John looked at the large, heavily stained Butler sink. There was even what looked like the remains of a tap on the side of it. ‘On your own?’
It did look heavy and she wasn’t sure how she was going to move it, or even why she wanted to move it. It was probably just a case of striking one more thing off the long list of tasks that needed to be done in the house and garden. It wasn’t easy for her or Abdullah, living with her parents. Everyone was perfectly civilised and polite but she knew it was a strain – especially for her husband.
‘I’ll move it for you, if you like,’ John said.
‘Oh, no it’s not your—’
‘It’s no problem.’ He walked past her, his eyes fixed on the knackered old sink.
He took hold of it, a hand on either side. His fingernails were black, she noticed. He tugged and pulled and Nasreen began to feel guilty that he would strain himself. Suddenly he stopped and turned a red face towards her. ‘It’s plumbed in,’ he said.
Nasreen went over to see for herself
and, yes, the old sink was attached to a pipe. ‘That’s odd isn’t it? To have a sink outside?’
John looked vague again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe. You’ll have to get a plumber, I think.’
‘Yes.’ She looked up at him. He was well over six feet tall and behind all the hair and the unkempt beard, he had the look of someone kind.
‘What do you do for food, John?’ she asked.
*
Dinner was a basic dhal with rice. Luckily Shazia had been anxious to finish her homework so that she could watch TV later and so the food, or lack of it, hadn’t bothered her much. Mumtaz was so glad that her stepdaughter was enjoying college. She was just anxious that nothing should stop her from doing so.
Now that the girl was up in her bedroom doing her work, Mumtaz could roam the house looking for things to sell. She’d given up on the idea of selling kitchen equipment; it just wasn’t worth it. Even one of the many canteens of cutlery that Ahmet, her husband, had liked so much would barely fetch the price of a week’s shopping. Mumtaz went from the kitchen and into the room Ahmet had called ‘the games room’. It was where he’d sat with his friends, smoking, drinking and playing poker. Even with his friends, for fivers and tenners, he played it badly. With other people it was worse. She opened the large teak chest in the corner by the window and took out a bundle enrobed in sheets of tissue paper. She laid it on the larger of the two card tables and began to unwrap it, removing layer upon layer of thin, white tissue – a modern and, she felt, deserved mummification.
Her red wedding sari came into view. Made of banarasi silk and decorated with zari and buta work, it was a sari fit for a Bollywood superstar. Ahmet had spared no expense and Mumtaz and her family had been dazzled. How happy she’d been! Not even a scowling Shazia, resentful that – as she saw it – Mumtaz had usurped her dead mother, could spoil her big beautiful wedding. Rich, handsome and generous, Ahmet had been the perfect bridegroom and her female cousins – and even some of her aunts – had been openly jealous of her. And although she had been nervous about her ‘first time’ alone with her husband, Ahmet had been so gentle it had been wonderful. Her father and mother, she had felt back then, had chosen carefully and well. But within a year she’d wished Ahmet dead.
She looked down at the dress with nothing but contempt. She’d take it to one of those vintage shops at the northern end of Brick Lane so beloved by those young white people known as ‘hipsters’. If she stuck to her guns, she’d get a good price for the sari. Also, it would probably be bought by someone who would do something self-consciously ironic with it. Some boy would make it into a jacket to wear to the pub or a girl would team it with a pair of combat trousers and a bag made out of old tractor tyres. The thought of its defilement pleased her. She went into the teak box again and found her wedding shoes and the heavily jewelled bag she had used at her wedding.
Her mobile rang. Mumtaz took it out of her pocket and looked at it. She put it down on top of her wedding sari. It was always like this when a payment was coming up. Relentless.
3
First she took him some mutton biryani and chapatis, but Nasreen quickly learned that John had a sweet tooth. Her mum made good baklawa which she took him, and he had a particular weakness for halua. She bought some from one of the shops on Green Street.
Whether or not she and Abdullah were working on the house, she’d go there most days and put a small box of food out for John just in case he was around. If she was alone they’d talk, and he’d tell her how much he’d liked the Afghan people and how sad he’d been to see so many of their beautiful buildings in ruins. She told him that if her husband was around she would hide his food in the long grass just in front of the trees.
‘You seem a bit afraid of your hubby,’ he said to her one day. ‘Why is that?’
‘John, it isn’t your business,’ she said, but she smiled.
He’d said he understood. Nasreen wished that she did too. Her husband was a good man.
When she was with Abdullah, sneaking food out wasn’t easy even if they were taking something to eat for themselves. He always wanted to look in the bag to see what she’d packed before they left her parents’ house. She had to pretend to have eaten more sweets than she had which had made Abdullah tell her that she should watch her weight. ‘Just because you’re pregnant doesn’t mean you can eat all day long,’ he said one day when she appeared to have eaten all the baklawa they had brought with them.
Nasreen had become pregnant as soon as she married Abdullah. They were both pleased, although Nasreen felt that buying a house and having a baby at the same time was probably a bit much. Abdullah had a good job, but he insisted on doing the renovation work on the house himself. It wasn’t easy on either of them, but the less money they spent on it the more they’d have for the new baby. Still, Nasreen couldn’t help thinking that he could at least have employed someone to do the heavy work. While she scraped paint and stripped layers of ancient wallpaper, Abdullah pulled out fireplaces and removed sinks, kitchen units and ancient built-in cupboards. Sometimes, after spending all day at the house, he would be exhausted. Renovation coupled with his job was too much for him, although Nasreen had learned early on in their marriage that her husband didn’t listen to any form of dissent. That she loved him and worried about him was, she sometimes felt, irrelevant to him. But then her father was of a similar type – if rather more gentle. He’d worked through two heart attacks so far and there had been nothing anyone in the family had been able to do about it.
Nasreen, for some reason she didn’t fully understand, told John about it.
‘It’s because men are stupid,’ he told her. ‘We’re always challenging ourselves and it’s bonkers. That’s why there are wars, because men have to front up to other men. We’re programmed to do it.’
Yet Abdullah wasn’t some empty-headed alpha male who was always ready for a fight. He was educated, a qualified lawyer, and he loved her passionately. But he was also very jealous and he didn’t like it if she spoke to or even looked at other men. It was only recently that she’d been able to get him to laugh about the teenage crush she’d once had on Will Smith when he’d been in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He’d been jealous of the Hollywood star for weeks. She’d asked him, ‘Don’t people have crushes on film stars and musicians in Bolton?’
He hadn’t answered. But then Abdullah didn’t talk about Bolton much these days. When they’d first been introduced, his Uncle Fazal was with him and they’d talked about their old home town. Many people had moved to Bolton from Pakistan and Bangladesh in the Fifties and Sixties to work in the Lancashire cotton mills. Now the mills were all but defunct and people found other work, or went on the dole. Abdullah’s uncle had moved to London in the Eighties and Abdullah had lived at the boarding house in Poplar that Fazal owned when he’d first come to the city in 2005. As far as Nasreen could tell, her husband had only been back to Bolton once since he’d left: when his father died in 2011. His people were not like hers, they weren’t close.
*
Lee hadn’t expected to see Martin Rogers, not in the Boleyn. A pub with pretensions was more his style, or a wine bar or lap dancing club. But there he was, sitting at a table by the door, while one of his minders loudly ordered a bottle of champagne. Marty Rogers only drank champagne, or rather that was the legend that he liked to put about. Lee looked down into his diet Pepsi and ‘did invisible’. He’d been to school with Marty and his brother Sean but had no wish to speak to him. Lee had never arrested either of them, which was a shame.
‘Don’t tell me you ain’t got Cristal!’ the minder bellowed at the barmaid. Another Custom House scrote that Lee remembered from his youth, called Dave something or other. Twat had to know that a place like the Boleyn wouldn’t have one of the most expensive champagnes in the world.
‘We’ve got Moet,’ the barmaid emphasised the ‘t’. ‘Take it or leave it.’
Clearly Sandra, the barmaid, didn’t live in any of Martin and Sean’s sho
nky old properties otherwise she might have made a few calls to try and find some of Marty’s preferred tipple. The Rogers’, together with their ‘business’ partner Yunus Ali, were landlords that harked back to the days of Rachman. If you didn’t pay your rent you got a visit from their ‘boys’ or, even worse, Marty’s wife Debbie, a shoulder-padded, fag-wielding stick of malice known to be handy with a sharp instrument.
‘Oh, I’ll have the Moet,’ Marty pronounced it without the ‘t’. ‘I don’t mind.’
Sandra took a bottle of champagne out of the fridge and said, ‘Don’t force yourself.’
‘Oh, darlin’, I can slum it for once.’ Marty laughed.
He was clearly in an expansive mood for some reason, although Lee was still in the dark as to why he was in the Boleyn at all. An old geezers’ pub that went bonkers with West Ham fans whenever a match was on couldn’t possibly be his scene. Lee sipped his Pepsi, wishing it was a pint of bitter. Marty Rogers had always made his skin crawl.
Dave the minder paid for the champagne, popped the cork and took it over to his boss. Sandra had given him two glasses, but he only picked up one. Marty had never been a great one for sharing, not even with his brother. But then Sean had never been big on sharing either. They were both fucking psychos. Lee drained his glass and stood up to go outside for a fag. Marty Rogers’s minder was sitting across the pub from his boss, drinking ginger ale and looking pissed off.
Lee had to pass Marty as he walked towards the door into Green Street. He couldn’t stop himself from sneaking a peek at him. Marty, his dead green eyes refusing to smile in tandem with his mouth, raised his glass to Lee and said, ‘Hello there, officer.’
Lee didn’t hang around to see what Marty wanted, if anything. He got out of there, lit a fag and made his way to his office. For a moment back there the Plaistow air had smelt bloody foul.
*
Nasreen wasn’t at the house, even though she must have been earlier. She’d left him a box with some chicken curry and rice and a Mars bar. She was a lovely lady. In some lights she looked a bit like the girl whose dead face he had cried into as the dust blew over Helmand. Shot by a Talib sniper, they said, but John had known better. Her husband had done it, or rather, had it done by someone else. Everything inside John’s head screamed. Even now the memory of his own impotence in that situation made him claw the ground underneath him in frustration. When this didn’t help, and for no reason he could properly articulate, he began to dig.
An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) Page 2
