But he immediately chastised himself. Whoever they were, now he’d alerted them. It was a Jewish cemetery and it attracted both far-right white supremacists and testosterone-fuelled Muslim jihadis. What scrawling a swastika on a gravestone dated 1904 did to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians was beyond Majid, but some people seemed to think it was a good idea. Majid and his family had had to listen on more than one occasion to the sound of people whooping with delight as they desecrated the graves of the innocent. One time Majid had hauled himself on top of the wall to be greeted by the sight of white men and Asians knocking down gravestones and then fighting amongst themselves. As now, he had called the police.
But this time was different. This time he’d heard fear in the voices on the other side of the wall. Someone, maybe a woman, had screamed. Once inside the cemetery, he thought he saw a figure disappearing over the main gates onto High Street North, though he could still see movement among the gravestones. Now he could hear sirens in the distance which meant the police were on their way. He narrowed his eyes and looked into the rain-soaked darkness. If he could get his hands on just one of them, and manage to hang on, he could give him to the police who for once might do something. Majid was not a big man and he was scared, but he was also worn out from years of caring about something that few others seemed to give a damn about. What harm were the dead doing to anyone?
Using his torch to guide him, Majid began walking through the gravestones towards the main cemetery gates where the police would come in. The gravestones were tightly packed. Jews had once been numerous in the area and Plashet Jewish Cemetery had provided a last resting place for their dead for generations. Not any more. Occasionally someone came and opened it up for relatives or basic maintenance, but that was all. Majid thought about his own father buried thousands of miles away in Pakistan and fought to hold back his tears. To have a place to come to honour a dead loved one was a right, and anyone who interfered with that was little more than a beast.
He heard the front gates rattle and saw the dark outline of a figure outside the cemetery. The police. ‘I’m coming!’ he shouted as he began to run towards the gate. ‘Some of them may still be here!’
He heard the chains attached to the padlocks that secured the front gates clanking as the police unlocked them. There were more police gathering now, more figures seen through the darkness and rain. Then suddenly Majid’s foot caught on something and he tripped. It was fortunate that he didn’t hit his head on a gravestone as he fell towards the ground. For a moment he was grateful just to be conscious and unhurt. But when he saw what he had tripped over, he wasn’t so sure. Majid jumped to his feet.
*
‘My Frank just texted to say the coppers are up at the old Jewish Cemetery,’ the barman, who Sean Rogers called ‘Queer Teddy’, said.
‘So?’ Sean said, without concern.
Teddy went on cleaning the table and made no comment. Mumtaz, watching them all, slid her eyes over to connect with Lee’s, when she saw Sean Rogers turn around and address him.
‘I bet you had a few call-outs on the old Plashet boneyard back in the day, didn’t you, Lee?’
Up until that point Sean hadn’t acknowledged that Lee was even on his radar. Lee knew that Sean liked to do his creepy, gangster act and he was good at it – just like his brother.
‘Once or twice,’ he said.
‘What you doing in this shit hole?’ Sean asked as Teddy looked theatrically offended. ‘Who you watching?’
‘Can’t a bloke go into a pub and have a drink?’ Lee said.
‘Ah, but you don’t drink, do you, Lee,’ Sean said. ‘Diet Pepsi, nectar of the recovering alkie, down the old Boleyn, that’s you.’
‘Maybe I needed a change. Saw your brother in the Boleyn a while ago. Now that’s not his stomping ground, or yours.’
The Asian man sitting opposite Sean stood up. Sean’s attention switched from Lee to him.
‘What’s up?’
The man shrugged. ‘Bit poorly.’ He didn’t look it.
Sean’s cold eyes immediately lit on Wendy Dixon’s face.
‘Mmm. Bit 1970s I suppose,’ he said.
The Asian man walked out of the pub without looking back.
Mumtaz watched as Sean Rogers leaned across the table towards Wendy.
‘I don’t think that nouveau hippy look is working for you, darlin’,’ he said loudly.
Wendy stared down into her drink. It seemed that Sean Rogers had lined Wendy up for the Asian but he hadn’t been too impressed. Sean had either been selling or giving Wendy to the other man, who had clearly refused his ‘gift’.
Mumtaz saw Sean reach across the table and take one of Wendy’s wrists in his hand. He squeezed, digging his nails into her flesh. It must have hurt her, but Wendy didn’t make a sound.
5
Detective Inspector Violet Collins was knackered. She’d been in bed when she’d got the call to go out to the Plashet Jewish Cemetery on High Street North. It was the first time for months that it’d been just her, the telly, a ready meal and a packet of Marlboro, all in together for an early night. But that was just a distant fantasy now. She looked through the rain at her DS, Tony Bracci.
‘A regular stiff you told me about, but what’s this?’ she said.
She pointed to a skeleton that lay beside the body of a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Bracci. ‘Maybe he was grave robbing?’
It was a possibility. The dead man, with his straggly hair, torn clothes and filthy, food-caked beard looked rather less like a white supremacist and more like a crusty eco-warrior. They didn’t tend to dig up the dead in Vi’s experience. She looked around the old cemetery, trying to remember where her dad’s mum was buried.
‘Hardly the Valley of the Kings, is it,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘So where’s the bloke who found the body?’ she asked. The rain was relentless, and looking through it at Tony Bracci’s round, habitually disappointed face made Vi squint.
‘Over here.’ Tony led her towards one of the high brick walls that enclosed the cemetery. A group of coppers stood there beside two men. ‘He’s called Majid Islam. He lives on Shelley Avenue. Always making complaints about people mucking around in the cemetery.’
‘I know him, this place backs on to his garden.’ As she drew closer, Vi saw a tired looking middle-aged Asian man with a blanket round his shoulders. Beside him, being held by a couple of constables, was what looked like a cartoon of a far-right thug except that his build was slight. A swastika tattoo covered one side of his neck. Vi ignored him and looked at the Asian who, in spite of the blanket, was shivering.
‘Mr Islam.’
He moved towards her, his voice trembling. ‘Yes?’
‘You might not remember me, I’m DI Collins,’ Vi said, ‘from Forest Gate.’
‘Oh, yes. Hello.’
‘Hello. You discovered the body?’
‘I fell over it,’ he said. Then he corrected himself. ‘Them. The man and the skeleton, I …’ He swallowed. ‘I’m always chasing people out of this place. There should be some sort of guard.’
‘So you dialled 999?’
‘From in here,’ he said. ‘I was in here when I called. I saw them, people, running about. I saw at least one get over the gate and get away.’
‘You shouldn’t really climb in here you know, Mr Islam,’ Vi said. ‘It’s dangerous.’
‘I know that!’ He shook his head. ‘And believe me, most of the time I wouldn’t dream of getting in here. The wall is high …’
Vi looked at it. It had to be at least eight feet tall.
‘But this time I heard someone scream,’ Majid Islam said. ‘I was in my house, in my dining room, and I heard screaming coming from here.’ He shrugged. ‘So I put a ladder up against the wall, and then I saw them.’
‘How many were there?’ Vi asked.
‘Three that I saw. One I saw get away,
the other must have got away and this one …’ He turned to face the figure with the swastika. Majid Islam moved in closer to DI Collins. ‘They’re always of that type,’ he said. ‘That, or they’re jihadi boys.’
Of course they were. Who else would break into a Jewish cemetery except white rights nutters and al Qaeda fanboys?
‘Do you know the dead man at all, Mr Islam?’ Vi asked.
‘No.’
‘Not a neighbour or …’
‘I think he looks like a homeless person. He does to me,’ he said.
‘And do you know that person?’ She indicated the figure with the tattoo.
‘No!’
‘By “know him”, I mean have you ever seen him before?’
He considered the question for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Thanks, Mr Islam,’ Vi said. ‘When SOCO have finished we’ll be able to take you home. Until then, I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to keep you here.’
He said nothing, clearly not happy, but resigned. Vi and Tony Bracci moved forward until they were standing in front of the skinhead being restrained by the two constables. A pair of the sharpest, bluest eyes Vi had ever seen looked at her with loathing.
‘So what’s your story then?’ she asked.
The skinhead tried to pull an arm free and then spat down on the ground.
‘Charming.’
One of the constables said, ‘She doesn’t speak English, guv.’
‘She?! Are you sure?’
‘Yes, guv.’ The constable who was speaking looked embarrassed. ‘When we grabbed her to stop her escaping, we …’ He nodded towards the figure’s chest, covered in a loose, hoody top.
Vi tried not to laugh. ‘So if she can’t speak English, what can she speak?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well, find out.’ Vi looked at the swastika proudly displayed on the girl’s neck. ‘It’s bad enough we have to put up with our own scumbags without importing the bleeders. And we need to know what she knows about our body.’
‘Yes, guv.’
Vi turned to Tony Bracci. ‘I want everyone in every house that backs onto this cemetery spoken to, Tone,’ she said. ‘I know that wall is high but it ain’t soundproof.’
‘No.’
‘Do it.’ She waved him on his way, then watched as the Scenes of Crime officers erected a tent over the body and the skeleton. Tangled together they lay on top of some poor-looking graves, marked only with simple plates and surrounded by stones.
Vi looked around the cemetery, darkness now illuminated by SOCO’s powerful lamps. The wall was high, but it was still possible for people in the surrounding houses to see what was happening from their upstairs windows. And hear.
She looked at the tent that now covered the corpse and the skeleton and found herself feeling very cold. The body of the homeless bloke, or whoever he was, was one thing, but the skeleton was quite another. And it looked old. Nana Faye, her grandmother, was buried somewhere in Plashet. Vi’s hand came up and stroked the Star of David and the Cross she wore together on a thick gold chain around her neck.
*
From the very first time Wendy had told Sean she couldn’t pay the rent, she’d done everything that he or Marty ordered her to. To begin with it had mainly been blow jobs for their clients. The Rogers’ and Yunus Ali had a string of girls they liked to offer to men they wanted to get in with or impress. The women were often the Rogers’ tenants, usually behind with their rent. Nearly all the properties they managed were the sort that had young single mums living in them. Most of the girls were younger than Wendy. She’d watched Sean eyeing up her fifteen-year-old, Dolly. At that point Wendy had effectively offered herself up as what Marty called a ‘pig’. Basically she’d do anything for the men Sean made her go with, and for Sean himself. That Asian man hadn’t wanted her, so she’d have to pay the rent by going with Sean instead.
After Sean had sated his frustrations on her he wiped his dick on an old handkerchief which he threw on the ground.
‘You could at least make a few noises like you’re enjoying it,’ he said, as he watched Wendy put her catsuit back on.
‘You got what you wanted,’ Wendy said. She couldn’t be downright rude to Sean but she could state the obvious and get away with it. Just.
‘My brother’s wife’d knock you into shape,’ Sean said as he zipped up his fly.
Debbie Rogers was known for her brutality and just the mention of her name made Wendy’s heart pound.
Seeing her fear, Sean laughed. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I won’t give you to Debs just yet,’ he said. ‘But me and Marty are having a party next Saturday night where I want you to make up for what you never done tonight.’
Sean and his brother were fond of what they called ‘Blind’ orgies. Sean’s house in Ongar had a room that could be completely blacked out, into which he’d put a selection of his girls. Men, including Sean and Marty, would go in and take whatever girls they wanted. She and the others would have to satisfy whatever needs these men had all night long. Then they’d have to clean the place up afterwards. But if that was what it cost her to keep Dolly safe, then that was a price Wendy was prepared to pay.
Before she went back to the pub, Wendy looked up at the small, frosted glass window of the ladies toilets. They backed onto the yard, and although she’d told Sean that someone in the loo might hear them, he’d been too anxious to fuck her to care. The window was slightly open now. She was sure it had been closed before.
*
There was a lot of interest in what was happening in the old Jewish cemetery, but very little information. No-one that Tony Bracci had spoken to so far had, apparently, seen or heard anything, apart from Mr Islam’s wife and his teenage daughter. Mrs Islam had told him that ‘a lot of people round here are blind and deaf when it comes to that cemetery.’ The most he got out of anyone else was an old Sikh who just said, ‘BNP! BNP!’
Outside one house, a gang of Asian youths lurked in hoodies trying to look hard. Ignoring them, he knocked on the door of the house at the end of Colston Road. It was eventually answered by a young white woman with a baby on her hip. He held up his badge and said, ‘Police.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘what do you want?’
Tony picked up an accent in there but he didn’t recognise it.
‘Just wondering if you heard any noises coming from the old cemetery earlier this evening?’ he said. ‘Maybe you saw someone climbing over the wall?’ The side of the house and the garden were bordered by a new section of wall that had been built to block up an old second entrance.
‘Over the wall?’ Her eyes widened. She was blonde and small and Tony rather fancied her. ‘No, that’s crazy,’ she said. ‘No, I heard nothing. Baby cries, you don’t hear anything else.’
He moved on down Colston, briefly into Shrewsbury Road and then onto Strone Road, which had the largest number of houses backing on to the cemetery. Through the rain and the darkness Tony looked up at the houses that surrounded him. They were all of a type, Edwardian terraces, like so much of the borough. Hard though it was to believe now, Newham, or West Ham as it had been known, had been built as a rather genteel suburb, intended to house clerks and their families from the docks and the City. But it had soon turned into an ocean of poverty like Whitechapel, Bethnal Green and other manors ‘out east’. And Olympics or no Olympics, it hadn’t changed that much. House prices could be as high as they liked, but while people filled their front yards with old mattresses and flats meant for six people housed twelve, Newham would still be Newham. Tony knocked on a door that looked as if it had had acid thrown at it, and waited for someone to answer.
*
‘He might as well have done her in front of the whole pub,’ Lee said as he put a cup of tea down in front of Mumtaz.
Wendy Dixon had walked home after Sean Rogers had sex with her round the back of the pub. He’d told her to ‘fuck off’ while he got in his Daimler and drove away. Mumtaz had watched Wendy drag herself down a
wet High Street North. She’d wanted to give the poor woman a lift even though she knew that she couldn’t. Shortly afterwards she’d met up with Lee back at the office.
Lee sat behind his desk. ‘You got it all on camera?’
‘Yes.’ It had been vile. Sean Rogers had just slammed himself into her. Mumtaz remembered such encounters herself. The only way to deal with them was to pretend that you weren’t there.
Lee said, ‘Good.’
She’d had to stand on one of the toilets and hold the camera up to the gap between the back window and its frame. Luckily no one had come in. She wondered if all the trouble had been worth it. Now her client would know that she’d been right about her sister, but so what? Would that change anything for Wendy?
‘I’m afraid that Mrs Mirza, Wendy’s sister, will use our evidence to try and get her and her children to go and live with her and her husband,’ Mumtaz said.
‘That’d get her away from Sean Rogers,’ Lee said.
‘Yes, but why should she have to move?’
Lee looked at her and smiled. Mumtaz wasn’t naive but sometimes her sense of justice made her sound like she was. ‘Because she’s Sean Rogers’s tenant and if she isn’t paying her rent then the law will be on his side. You know that.’
Mumtaz sipped her tea.
‘And even if we did tell the coppers that Sean is screwing one of his tenants in lieu of rent, what do you think they’ll do? Wendy’ll support him anyway, she’ll have to if she wants to stay in one piece.’
‘I heard him talk about wanting her to be at a party he’s holding next weekend. She’d have to “make up” for what she hadn’t done this evening.’
‘With the Asian guy?’
‘I assume so. Lee are you sure that DI Collins wouldn’t find this interesting?’
‘She would if Wendy Dixon would shop Sean Rogers,’ Lee said. ‘But she won’t. The Rogers boys and Yunus Ali own hundreds of properties in this borough and if you can find any one of their tenants who is prepared to grass them up, then you’re better than Forest Gate’s finest. Rogers and Ali are a crime empire and it takes time and extraordinary courage to take an empire down.’
An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) Page 4
