‘Just reminding you about the date for next month’s payment,’ he said. ‘It’s the sixteenth.’
‘I know that,’ she snapped. ‘Leave me alone.’
He could just see her features fall into a scowl.
‘Making sure there’s no mistakes,’ Naz said. ‘I’d hate to—’
‘Spare me your insincerities,’ she said, and cut the connection. He watched her throw her mobile down on her desk and then she disappeared from view. Shame. Although older than he was, she was a tasty-looking woman. That said, if given the choice between her and her stepdaughter Naz would be a bit stumped. The kid was cute.
*
Nasreen put the strange metal object on Mumtaz Hakim’s desk and placed the small photograph alongside it.
‘You found this on one of the back doorposts?’ Mumtaz asked.
‘Yes.’ Nasreen was surprised at quite how young Mrs Hakim was. She’d imagined her to be pretty but a bit motherly too. But, like they said, she was beautiful. ‘I’d like to find out who she is, if that’s possible.’
‘Mmm.’ She looked up. ‘Do you own your house, Mrs Khan?’
‘My husband does, yes.’
‘Because previous owners will be listed in the deeds and then there is the Land Registry.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She could have asked Abdullah to look it up, but she wouldn’t. ‘My husband is very busy,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to bother him with this.’
‘OK.’ She gave Nasreen a look as if she didn’t quite believe her.
‘I’m three months pregnant,’ Nasreen said. She knew this didn’t explain anything, but she felt compelled to say it anyway. ‘I’d like you to look into it.’
‘Very well.’ She smiled. She wore the most beautiful rose-coloured headscarf that was tied in such a stylish way it almost made Nasreen want to wear one herself.
‘I’ve money.’
‘Of course.’ Mumtaz smiled again. ‘Now can you tell me if you know anything at all about your house. Anecdotal stuff is fine.’
Abdullah had bought the house effectively on his own at auction. ‘It was empty for a long time,’ Nasreen said. ‘Years.’
‘Do you know who your husband bought it from?’
‘A firm of solicitors held the deeds, I believe.’
‘Do you know which one?’
Nasreen didn’t and it made her feel stupid. ‘No,’ she said. They’d been married when Abdullah had bought the house and yet she’d let him get on with it like some sort of helpless village woman. Her mum wasn’t like that. Although in public her mum always covered her head, like this Mrs Hakim, she was very much the mistress of her own destiny. Sometimes, Nasreen felt, her father was the junior partner in their relationship. Had she taken a step back into the past when she married Abdullah? Or was she simply reflecting a trend for increasingly traditional relationships that seemed to be growing in some sections of the Muslim community?
‘May I keep the photograph?’ Mumtaz Hakim asked. ‘And the …’ She picked up the metal capsule.
‘I don’t know what to call it, either,’ Nasreen said. ‘Yes, you may.’ And then something occurred to her, something her mother had said when Abdullah had bought the house. ‘One thing I’ve heard is that a man lived in our house alone for many years.’
Mrs Hakim began to write this down. ‘Do you know his name?’
‘No, but my mum said he was white.’ She bit her bottom lip. Her mother had advised her against buying that particular house. ‘She said that whenever she saw him, he looked very sad.’
*
It wasn’t easy for Mumtaz to distract herself from thinking about her own problems. A visit or a phone call from any one of the Sheikh family, especially Naz, always shook her up. Her feelings about him had always been ambiguous because, although he threatened and hassled her for money, Naz had also been the author of her freedom. As he’d plunged that knife into Ahmet’s chest back when she’d never even heard the name Sheikh, she had, in gratitude she told herself, wanted to give herself to him. In reality she had simply experienced a moment of pure, selfish lust. She began to sweat and, to take her mind off him, she looked at the photograph that Nasreen Khan had given her.
The woman in the picture didn’t look modern. Her hair, which was dark, was pulled back from her face, maybe into a pony tail or a bun. She looked about mid-thirties even though her features were what Mumtaz could only describe as ‘tired’. The woman had something about her that Mumtaz recognised. Here was someone who had lived – not always in a way that she had enjoyed.
The office phone rang and she picked it up. A male voice said, ‘Lee there?’
Mumtaz was a little taken aback by the terseness. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Mr Arnold is out. Do you want to leave a message?’
The man gave a sigh of frustration. Mumtaz looked at her watch. It was one p.m. Lee had been taking Chronus to the vet, but he’d been gone a long time. She hoped that the mynah bird was OK. She knew how much he meant to Lee.
‘Tell him that Brian Green called,’ the man said. ‘I’ve tried his mobile, but it’s off.’
If he had Lee’s mobile number, then Brian Green was either a client or he knew Lee well.
The office door swung open and Lee walked in carrying a couple of cappuccinos. ‘Sorry!’ he said as he entered, ‘I—’
‘Oh, he’s just walked into the office, Mr Green. If you’d like to wait a moment, I’ll transfer you,’ Mumtaz said.
‘Ta, darling.’
She put Green on hold. ‘How’s Chronus?’ she asked as she watched Lee sit down at his desk.
‘A grumpy little sod,’ he said. ‘But not ill.’
‘That’s good. I’ve a Mr—’
‘Brian bloody Green,’ Lee said. ‘Yes, I know. Switched me mobile off in the vet’s, forgot to put the bleeder back on again. Put him through, Mumtaz.’
She released the call.
Lee said, ‘Hello Brian, how’s tricks?’
Mumtaz went back to looking at the photograph and the odd, paint-encrusted lump that Nasreen Khan had found it under. She’d never seen anything like it before. She picked it up and weighed it in her hand. It was heavy. Lee, she noticed, was watching her.
9
The Polish girl was a tough nut. She stuck to her story, insisting that she’d been in the Plashet graveyard alone and denying that she’d seen anyone in there except Majid Islam. Both Tony Bracci and Vi Collins doubted her story. There were a lot of footprints in the cemetery that didn’t belong to Mr Islam, Kazia or the victim. But so far there were no other witnesses. Except one. Lee Arnold had told Vi that someone had told him they’d overheard coppers talking about a skeleton. He wouldn’t give her a name, but she’d spoken to a couple of the uniforms who’d been on duty outside the cemetery gates that night and she’d come up with someone. While Tony Bracci went off to talk to Kazia’s brother Lech for a second time, Vi walked down to the Duke of Edinburgh pub on Green Street. She wanted to talk to Cheryl Bines, and the Duke or the Boleyn were the only stable points in her life. Where Cheryl actually lived was a mystery.
Vi didn’t go straight in to the pub. Instead she stood on the opposite side of the road, looking in the window of a shop that sold fabulous Asian costume jewellery, rhinestone-encrusted handbags and scarves of every colour, texture and size. Run by a couple of Sikh widows, it was a magnet for fashion-conscious, traditional Asian girls. Vi looked across at the pub. No sign of Cheryl yet, but if she ran true to form, she’d be out pretty soon. Sure enough, ten minutes later Cheryl came stumbling out of the Duke, swearing her head off. Vi crossed the road.
‘Hi, Cheryl,’ she said.
Cheryl looked up at her with red, hostile eyes. ‘Fuck off, lesbian!’ she said. Then realising that she might just have alienated someone she could lig off, she added, ‘Sorry, sorry. I’m just … I’m …’
‘Do you want me to buy you a beer?’ Vi said.
‘They’ve fucking chucked me out!’
‘Yeah, but I can go in and buy you a pint, can
’t I? We could both have a drink outside then, couldn’t we?’
‘That’d be very nice of you, very nice,’ Cheryl said.
Vi went inside the pub and bought herself a diet Pepsi and a pint of Kronenbourg for Cheryl. Whether she’d get any sense out of her, Vi didn’t know but one more pint wouldn’t make any difference.
When she came out, Cheryl was trying to make herself a roll-up but only succeeded in spilling tobacco over the pavement. Vi took the makings from her, built a decent fag and gave it to her. ‘Cheryl,’ she said, ‘couple of our lads saw you up round the old Plashet Cemetery the other night, when we found the body of John Sawyer.’
Cheryl looked at Vi through the accumulated years of booze and drugs, not appearing to remember her.
‘You a copper?’
‘Yes, Cheryl, Vi Collins,’ Vi said. ‘You know, DI Collins?’
‘Oh. What do you want then? I haven’t done nothing.’
‘No-one says you have.’ Vi sipped her Pepsi. It was horrible. How could Lee drink the stuff all day long? ‘Cheryl, you were at the cemetery—’
‘I never killed that bloke, I—’
‘No-one says you did,’ Vi said. Cheryl, although sometimes quite lairy, was incapable of actually inflicting wounds on anyone except herself. ‘But did you see anyone come out of the cemetery?’
‘Well, the coppers and—’
‘No, before the coppers.’ One of the officers had told Vi that when he’d arrived, Cheryl had been outside the front gates of the cemetery, drinking from a can of Special Brew. ‘You were outside the cemetery before the coppers arrived. Did you see anyone come out of the cemetery before they got there?’
‘There might have been someone.’
‘Someone? Who?’
‘I dunno,’ Cheryl said. ‘If I had another beer—’
‘No more beer unless you tell me what you remember, Cheryl.’
Majid Islam had seen what looked like a man vaulting over the cemetery gates and into High Street North, but he hadn’t been close enough to give the police a description and there was no-one else who could corroborate his story. Except maybe Cheryl.
‘Take your time,’ Vi said. ‘Was it a man or a woman? Black, white …’
‘Oh, he was white,’ Cheryl said.
‘He?’ Vi repeated what Cheryl had said to her just to be sure.
‘Yeah, like a sort of a bovver boy,’ Cheryl frowned. ‘Big boots … or was that his feet? Or was he a girl?’
Vi felt deflated. Typical bloody alkie nonsense. Didn’t know which way was up.
But then Cheryl did something that Vi had experienced various addicts do before. She suddenly came out with a small detail. ‘Had a ring in his nose like a bull,’ she said. ‘Caught the light from me can as he jumped over the gates.’
*
Nasreen Khan called Mumtaz before she had a chance to call her. ‘The previous owner of your house, before the firm of Wright and Baily LLP, was a man called Eric Smith,’ Mumtaz told her. ‘He was known to be a bit of a recluse. There’s not a huge amount more that I can tell you at the moment, although I can tell you that Eric’s father, Reginald Smith, owned the property before him.’
‘Were there any women in the house?’ Nasreen asked.
‘There was Eric’s mother, Lily,’ Mumtaz said. There was something else too, but she didn’t have time to go into that now. It didn’t involve a woman and so it was not strictly germane to the investigation. ‘Nasreen, I have an appointment in a moment. Can I call you back later?’
‘Yes, of course.’
The door-bell rang. Mumtaz said goodbye and stood up to open the door.
Ayesha Mirza looked terrible. She had purple shadows underneath her eyes that made her look as if she’d been punched. She sat down heavily in front of Mumtaz’s desk and said, ‘Wendy rung me up and told me she don’t want to see me no more. She won’t even see me mum!’
Perhaps Wendy wanted to protect them, Mumtaz thought. If she could, she would probably like to cut off from her children too. But Sean Rogers may have some sort of hold over them – the way that Naz Sheikh had his eye on Shazia. Mumtaz attempted to explain this to Ayesha but she just said, ‘Can’t nothing be done about Sean Rogers?’
All Mumtaz could do was repeat what Lee had said to her, ‘I’m afraid you either take on organised criminals like Sean Rogers and his partners or you don’t. And they play rough, Mrs Mirza. If you make a complaint against them, they could come for you, your husband and your children.’
‘But I can’t just leave Wend! Not now I know she …’ Her voice trailed off. She began to cry.
Mumtaz sympathised but was at a loss as to what she could do. Unless Wendy Dixon went to the police herself, or disappeared, she was stuck with Sean Rogers. And Mumtaz guessed that Wendy wouldn’t take either of those options. But like Ayesha Mirza, Mumtaz was loath to do nothing.
Eventually she said, ‘Mrs Mirza, I don’t want to raise your hopes, because I don’t know if there is anything we can do without Wendy’s co-operation, but let me speak to Mr Arnold. He used to be a policeman and so he knows the Rogers family.’
Ayesha Mirza looked up through her tears and she smiled. Mumtaz smiled back, hoping that she hadn’t encouraged the woman to have unrealistic expectations.
*
The pathologist’s report said that the skeleton was female. Vi looked up from her reading.
‘She’s been dead over fifty years,’ she said.
Tony Bracci had already seen the report while Vi had been out at the Duke of Edinburgh with Cheryl Bines. He’d tried to find Kazia’s brother, but Lech Ostrowski had been out God knows where.
‘The skeleton didn’t come from the Plashet Cemetery,’ Vi continued.
‘No, guv,’ he said. ‘Gravestones have been vandalised, as per – swastikas, paint daubs, all sorts of abuse, but not the actual graves.’
‘Huh!’ Vi said. ‘Well, right-wing nutters would, wouldn’t they? Vicious but superstitious.’
‘I know. Hitler was into all that occult business. Tried to get his hands on the Ark of the Covenant. Thought the Jews had some sort of secret.’
‘That was Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ Vi said. ‘A film, Tone. But in essence you’re right. A lot of the fascists are into magic and rituals and all that. They’re all hung up on symbols and uniforms. Comes of having no lives and being bullied. Or not.’ She looked back at the pathologist’s report again. ‘Adult woman,’ she read. ‘Over thirty …’
‘Path clocked a lot of wear and tear on her,’ Tony said.
‘Mmm.’ Vi, reading on, said, ‘Reckons she worked hard.’
‘We all work hard.’
‘Physically,’ Vi said. ‘You know, like people used to in the old days. Not fannying around writing reports or worrying yourself into an ulcer. I mean doing washing by hand, hauling in coal from the back yard, walking miles to the shops and then bringing the stuff home on foot.’
‘As you said, it’s an old skeleton.’
Vi looked down at the report again. ‘Yeah.’
‘What do you think John Sawyer was doing with it?’
Her eyes still on the report, Vi said, ‘What makes you think he was doing anything with it? Just because he was found with it, don’t mean he had it with him when he died.’
‘Maybe the perp found him digging her up and then killed him?’
‘Yes, but he or she would’ve had to have found him elsewhere because the skeleton don’t come from the Plashet Cemetery,’ Vi said. ‘And SOCO established that John Sawyer was killed in the Plashet.’ She looked up. ‘Nothing missing from any of the other cemeteries on the manor?’
‘Nah.’
‘Try Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest too,’ Vi said.
Tony Bracci frowned. ‘What? You think Sawyer could have brought her from Bow or somewhere?’ He shook his head.
‘Why not? Beyond lurking around Green Street and Wanstead Flats and a few parks we don’t really know where John Sawyer went,’ Vi said.
Vi stood up. ‘Any idea about how John got into the cemetery?’
‘Not yet,’ Tony said. ‘What with the Poles or whoever they was, running about all over the place …’
‘Pole,’ Vi corrected. ‘Just one, so far, Tone. Kazia.’
‘Oh, yeah, but you know what they’re like, they’re—’
‘All the same?’ She laughed. Tony Bracci could be a terrible bigot sometimes. ‘Unless Kazia coughs we can’t assume that,’ she said. ‘The skill of course is to get Kazia to cough – without breaking her fingers.’
‘Which is what her own coppers’d do back home.’
Vi shook her head. ‘Don’t start with the racist bollocks. It makes us as bad as them. Put out some feelers for a white rights type with a ring through his nose, will you?’
‘A ring through his nose?’
‘Yeah. Cheryl Bines saw a bloke with a ring through his nose jumping out of Plashet Cemetery on Saturday night.’
Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘Sure she wasn’t just having a moment, guv?’
*
Lee couldn’t stop looking at the pond. Apparently it was stocked with koi carp, but it was the stone fairies skipping around the edge amongst the miniature conifers that had captured his attention.
‘She’s a lovely girl, my Amy,’ Brian Green said. ‘Looks after me, this gaff, herself. Know what I mean?’
Brian handed Lee a glass of diet Pepsi and sat down. His own tipple was some sort of red wine in a glass the size of a fruit bowl. They were in Brian’s conservatory overlooking his garden, which didn’t so much end as fade into the Essex countryside.
‘How long have you been married, Brian?’ Lee asked. He wanted a fag but he knew that smoking was not one of Green’s vices. Booze, the odd line of coke, and smashing people’s faces until their cheekbones cracked was more his style.
‘Just over seven years.’ Brian Green leaned forward until his massive head was just inches from Lee’s. ‘Seven-year itch. Know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, but Brian, do you know whether Amy is actually being unfaithful to you or …’
‘That’s why I want to buy you,’ he said. ‘So you can tell me.’
An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) Page 7
