An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2)

by Barbara Nadel

  But then suddenly the calm, warm air was slashed through by what sounded like at least five sirens. Lee walked back into his office and looked out onto Green Street again. One police car whizzed past him, three others were coming out of the car park behind Forest Gate Police Station. Lee frowned. Maybe he’d been too quick to think that terrorist outrages in London were a thing of the past.

  *

  ‘Who are you?’

  Mumtaz knew she couldn’t own up to being who and what she was. Lee had always taught her If things get dangerous, you’re anything but a PI. If Abdullah Khan found out she was a private detective, who knew how he would react? Especially if he realised that she had at one time been investigating him.

  ‘My name is Habiba Anwar,’ she said.

  Abdullah Khan narrowed his eyes. ‘I know you from somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a friend of Nasreen,’ Mumtaz said.

  ‘She doesn’t have any friends,’ he said.

  ‘She did have …’

  ‘Before me?’ He pointed the gun at her and smiled. ‘I ruined her life.’

  ‘Oh Abdullah, you didn’t,’ Nasreen said. The urgency in her voice told Mumtaz that on some level, although she clearly hated him too, she meant it. It was a trait that she recognised. Abdullah Khan motioned to Mumtaz to move. ‘Sit on the bed.’

  Still down on the floor with Nasreen, she didn’t move. The ambulance siren had been quickly followed by other, slightly different sirens that she suspected were the police. Abdullah Khan had shot a window out which the paramedics had to have both heard and seen. It had been difficult not to. But whatever the truth was, they hadn’t even attempted to gain access to the house. Yet. Why had Khan done that? Had he just simply done it out of anger?

  ‘Sit on the bed.’

  ‘Your wife …’

  ‘Just do as I tell you!’ The shrieking of orders was as familiar to Mumtaz as his manipulation and violence. As Mumtaz rose and moved slowly towards the bed she fought to keep her loathing from her face.

  He went to the window, looked out and then went back to the bedroom door. Briefly his hand hovered over a CD player on a nightstand but then he seemed to change his mind about it. Not once did he even so much as glance at his wife.

  ‘Nasreen told me that you went out to get antibiotics for her,’ Mumtaz said, as she sat down on the Khans’ bed. ‘I think that she needs them now.’

  ‘She can have them for iftar,’ he said. He pointed to her handbag. ‘Got a phone in there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mumtaz said.

  ‘Give it to me.’

  She put her hand in her bag and took out her iPhone. He snatched it from her, threw it to the floor and then ground his heel into its screen.

  ‘Your wife needs antibiotics now,’ she said.

  ‘She can wait for iftar.’

  Mumtaz felt a cold prickling of her skin. ‘Pregnant women and sick people don’t fast during Ramadan,’ she said. ‘She is both.’

  ‘She keeps Ramadan,’ he said.

  The similarities between Abdullah Khan and her dead husband Ahmet were racking up. He too had insisted they all keep the fast while at night he drank alcohol and sexually abused both her and Shazia. He’d known nothing of Islam and this man was the same. Such people were all about public show, while privately doing as they pleased because they were ‘men’. Mumtaz said, ‘That is ridiculous.’ Then she looked at him. ‘You are ridiculous. And why did you shoot a window out, eh Mr Khan? Is it because you’re stupid?’

  He darted forward like a snake and jammed the muzzle of the pistol into one of her temples. ‘You dare to speak to me …’

  ‘Oh, don’t shoot her, please don’t shoot her!’ Nasreen screamed.

  *

  A bloke called Will had called them out. He was a paramedic from Newham General.

  ‘I heard the shot,’ he said. ‘Then I saw a bloke at the top window with a gun.’

  Vi Collins, Tony Bracci, and the paramedic team that had originally been called out to Nasreen Khan were in the house of a Mrs Janwari who lived opposite the couple. Mrs Janwari, an elderly widow, gave out cups of tea and bustled about making sure that everyone was comfortable.

  ‘The patient’s called Nasreen Khan, she’s twenty-seven, eight and a half months pregnant and suffering from suspected septicaemia,’ Will said.

  Vi took notes. The house opposite was familiar. Lee Arnold had asked her about its history. It was where nuts old Eric Smith the recluse had once lived, and where an alleged employee of Sean Rogers, Abdullah Khan, now resided with his wife.

  ‘Did Nasreen Khan call you out herself?’ Vi asked.

  ‘No.’ Will looked down at his notes. ‘That was a Mrs Hakim,’ he said.

  Vi felt her heart jump in her chest. Mumtaz. But then Hakim was a common enough name, she shouldn’t rush to conclusions. ‘Any first name for Mrs Hakim?’ she asked Will.

  He looked at his paperwork again. ‘Nah.’

  Although Lee’s firm had had some involvement with Nasreen Khan some months back, Vi’s understanding was that all that was over. She wondered why Mumtaz would be in that house now. If she was in that house.

  ‘Thanks Mr Ross,’ she said to Will. She’d have to call Lee Arnold anyway, just to be sure.

  Vi picked up her phone, stood up and was just about to go outside to make a call when Mrs Janwari said, ‘Oh, I know the name of the Hakim lady. I saw her knocking on the door of the Khans’ house. She broke a window in their door, it was most strange. Her name is Mumtaz, she is quite a famous lady around here. A private detective, you know, a Muslim.’

  Vi stared at her. ‘You sure it’s Mumtaz, Mrs Janwari,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Tony Bracci raised his eyebrows.

  Vi went out into the old woman’s garden and wondered how she was going to tell Lee. Then she made the call.

  He picked up almost immediately. ‘Arnold Agency.’

  ‘Lee …’

  ‘Vi.’

  She took a breath. ‘Lee, I’m across the road from old Eric Smith’s house in Strone Road. Couple called Khan live there now.’

  ‘Yeah, that was the house that …’

  ‘We think Mumtaz is in there with the wife …’

  ‘Nasreen Khan.’

  ‘Yeah, and the husband an’ all,’ Vi said. She took a breath. ‘And Lee, he’s armed.’

  There was a long pause. She knew he wasn’t one to panic. He was absorbing the information. Clearly Mumtaz wasn’t with him or he would have just laughed. He said, ‘Explains the sirens I heard. I’m coming.’

  ‘Far end of Strone’s blocked off,’ Vi said. ‘We’ve got two SCO19 ARVs in place, the Plashet Cemetery’s full of coppers and we’ve got Venus at the scene.’

  ‘Mumtaz is my employee,’ he said calmly. ‘And I’m ex-job. I’m coming.’

  She heard a click as he ended the call. She went back in to Mrs Janwari’s house and pulled Tony Bracci to one side. ‘Lee Arnold’s on his way down here,’ she said.

  ‘So it is his Mumtaz.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Venus wants this end of Strone completely evacuated,’ Tony Bracci said.

  ‘Where’s he now?’

  ‘Upstairs in the bog.’

  ‘Get out and meet Arnold at the junction with Shrewsbury Road,’ Vi said. He’d be coming from Green Street and so he’d have to cross Shrewsbury to get into Strone.

  As if reassuring himself that he’d be okay out on the street, even with a gunman on the loose, Tony Bracci tightened his Kevlar vest around his middle. It also served to remind Vi that if Lee Arnold was coming onto the scene he should have one too. As Bracci made to walk out of the room she said, ‘And get a vest off SCO19 for Lee Arnold. He might like to think he’s immortal but I know better.’

  ‘Guv.’

  Tony Bracci walked out just as Superintendent Venus came down the stairs. He’d overheard their conversation and his face did not express approval.

  ‘This is your old friend ex-DI Arno
ld?’ he asked Vi.

  ‘His business partner is in the house with the suspected gunman, sir.’

  ‘And so you think that an ex-police officer who only knows one of the potential victims is an appropriate person to invite to this scene?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ he said.

  Vi saw the paramedics through the open living room door and she lowered her voice. ‘Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim did some work on finding out the history of the Khans’ house a few months ago,’ she said. ‘They know the wife, Nasreen Khan. They know of the husband, Abdullah, who could be an employee of Sean and Marty Rogers.’

  ‘Rogers and Ali?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She thought she saw him shudder. Bad memories of the previous Saturday.

  ‘I think we may be able to find out a bit more about the Khans from Lee,’ she said. ‘He could be very useful.’

  He wore his ‘doubtful’ face.

  ‘He’s on his way, sir,’ Vi said. ‘I suggest we wait and see what he’s got to say when he gets here.’

  He took a moment and then he said, ‘Alright.’ Then he looked in at the paramedics. ‘Are they staying?’

  ‘They want to, yes, sir,’ Vi said.

  He sighed. ‘Well, let’s get this lady and her neighbours away from here at least.’

  28

  Abdullah moved the pistol away from Mumtaz’s head and then shoved her so that she toppled over onto the bed. As she sat up, Mumtaz adjusted her headscarf and said, ‘If you don’t let Nasreen have antibiotics your baby will die. Do you want that, Mr Khan?’

  He didn’t say anything for a good minute. Things were happening down in the street – cars pulling up, the sound of running feet, the occasional crackle of a radio.

  Mumtaz watched his face. Things had happened in ways that he hadn’t anticipated and could not have wanted. And even though she knew that Abdullah Khan worked for the Rogers brothers in some capacity, Mumtaz didn’t know what he did or why he would have a firearm. And why had he used it – on a window? She looked down at Nasreen, who was weeping now, and she wondered about what she’d said in relation to the war veteran who’d been found dead in the cemetery all those months ago. Had Abdullah Khan really killed John Sawyer because he was jealous of him? Sawyer had been a tramp, how could anyone be jealous of someone like that? But then her own husband had been jealous of everybody. She still remembered the day he had told the milkman never to come to their house again.

  ‘Get her some water,’ Abdullah Khan said. ‘There’s a glass in the bathroom.’

  Mumtaz stood up. Abdullah pointed his gun at his wife’s head. ‘Try to leave and I’ll kill her,’ he said.

  ‘And kill your own child?’ She started walking past him, towards the bathroom.

  ‘There’s more than that at stake here,’ he said.

  Mumtaz stopped. ‘What?’ And then she looked around the bedroom and pointed at the walls. ‘What’s at stake, Mr Khan? Is it something to do with this house?’

  He stared at her for a moment and then he said, ‘Get the water and then my wife can take her antibiotics.’

  Mumtaz went into the bathroom whose walls were pitted with holes big and small, some of which showed water pipes beneath. She took a dirty glass from the side of the sink and washed it. Then she filled it with water and walked back into the bedroom. As she entered she heard Nasreen say, ‘What can be more important than our baby, Abdullah? Tell me.’

  But he didn’t. He put a tablet into Mumtaz’s hand and said coldly, ‘Give it to her.’

  *

  Families – whirls of mothers and babies, kids with toy guns, teenagers playing on games consoles, grannies, rough sorts in combat trousers and a typhoon of saris – escorted by police officers made their way round the Police Do Not Cross tape and the police cars that sealed Strone Road off from Shrewsbury Road and formed an orderly crocodile going somewhere. Lee saw Tony Bracci beyond the tape and called out to him. Tony beckoned him forwards.

  Lee passed two white women in tight fitting T-shirts talking in a language he couldn’t understand. He pushed past them, a couple of kids and a bloke with a tattoo of a dragon on his neck until he eventually got to Tony. For a moment neither of them talked, but looked at the eastern stretch of Strone Road. There were two armed response vehicles in the middle of the street. Crouched behind them on the northern side of the road were pairs of heavily Kevlared, helmeted and armed SCO19 officers.

  Tony put an arm on Lee’s shoulder. ‘Here,’ he said handing him a Kevlar vest. Automatically Lee opened it up and pulled it over his chest. They walked towards the cars and, as they got close, one of the SCO19 officers stood up and aimed his weapon at the windows of the Khans’ house while Lee and Tony went inside Mrs Janwari’s house opposite.

  The old woman had gone now and her front sitting room was occupied by DI Vi Collins, Superintendent Venus and a man who looked like Robocop. Luckily, Lee had seen such officers before.

  ‘This is SFO Dalton,’ Vi told Lee. Then she looked at Robocop and said, ‘Jim, this is ex-DI, now PI, Lee Arnold.’

  The two men shook hands. Dalton said, ‘You work with one of the hostages.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Lee turned to Vi and said, ‘I tried to call Mumtaz on her mobile but it just rang out.’

  Superintendent Venus, who had only worked with Lee for the last six months of his career in the police, said, ‘Please sit down, Mr Arnold.’

  Lee sat down in a soft armchair that was covered in wine-red velour.

  ‘Mr Arnold, we think that your assistant and a woman called Nasreen Khan are in the house opposite with an armed man, who we believe is Mrs Khan’s husband, Abdullah,’ Venus said. ‘The lady who lives in this house, Mrs Janwari, saw a woman she named as Mumtaz Hakim go into that house at approximately 10.45.’ He looked down at his notebook. ‘Then at approximately 11.05 a man Mrs Janwari identified as Nasreen Khan’s husband Abdullah arrived and let himself into the house. Mrs Janwari didn’t see the ambulance, which Mrs Hakim had called for Mrs Khan, arrive ten minutes later, but the paramedics’ TOA was 11.15. Can you tell me why Mrs Hakim went to visit Mrs Khan please, Mr Arnold?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lee said. ‘As far as I knew, Mumtaz went to the post office.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘About twenty past ten.’

  ‘The post office on Green Street?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So weren’t you concerned when she hadn’t returned to your office – which I understand is also on Green Street – over an hour later?’

  ‘Not really,’ Lee said. ‘I asked her to get stamps in the full knowledge that she’d probably look in some shops along the way for a while. She’s a Muslim and it’s Ramadan, she has to take her mind off food and drink somehow. She says she doesn’t mind if I eat in front of her and I was eating a cream cake when she arrived this morning. But I was still hungry after I’d finished it. I’ll be honest, I asked her to get stamps so she could go out and I could eat more cakes. We both knew what was going on.’ Then he frowned. ‘What’s all this about firearms? Are the women hostages or what? What’s the score?’

  ‘Someone, we think Abdullah Khan, fired two shots, one of which broke a front bedroom window, out into Strone Road at about 11.18. Paramedic William Connor called it in and we responded with support from SCO19. No demands have been made by Khan so far, who has yet to make contact, and so the status of the two women is still unknown. Now DI Collins tells me that you know something about the Khans, Mr Arnold.’

  ‘Nasreen Khan first came to us back in the spring,’ he said. ‘She wanted Mumtaz to find out who had lived in that house over there before her husband bought it. She’d found a mezuzah, a sort of a capsule with a prayer in it that Jews put on their door-posts. But this one had a photograph of a woman behind it. We found out that a Jewish woman who had been in Belsen concentration camp had once lived there with her English husband, but all that was by the by because later on Nasreen Khan asked Mumt
az to investigate her husband’s background. Mumtaz felt that the husband was really what Nasreen had wanted investigated right from the start.’

  ‘The mezuzah and the photograph were just an excuse?’

  ‘Maybe. Although I think that Nasreen was genuinely interested in who’d lived in her house too.’

  ‘What about the husband? What did you find out about him?’ SFO Dalton asked. For him, a firearms officer, it was all about the man with the gun.

  ‘Mumtaz did some digging and then I filled in a few gaps,’ Lee said. ‘Khan comes from an Asian family in Lancashire, where he said he did a law degree at Manchester University. That much we think is correct, but then it all gets a bit hazy. According to Nasreen Khan, her husband was a practising solicitor working for a reputable local company. Turned out he never qualified and he was working for Rogers and Ali.’

  Venus looked over at Vi Collins who met his gaze with steady eyes. The abortive raid on Sean Rogers’s house in Ongar still sat between them like an open sore. Neither of them so much as dared touch it. But both of them knew all too well that a shot had been fired by an unknown attendee at that party. Could that man have been Abdullah Khan?

  ‘What Khan does or did for Sean and Marty Rogers, we never got to,’ Lee said. ‘Mrs Khan refused to believe what we’d dug up and that seemed to be the end of that.’

  ‘But you say you don’t know why Mrs Hakim went to visit Nasreen Khan this morning?’ Venus asked.

  Lee shrugged. ‘No. We’d recently had a bit more intel on the Jewish family who used to live in the house from an old bloke I know from the Boleyn pub. But my understanding from Mumtaz was that she wasn’t going to pass that on to Nasreen Khan. She believed Abdullah Khan was the jealous type, know what I mean?’