A lot of Asian families had one or two members who pioneered their way out of districts where they were related to everyone, and into places that were ‘white’. In Bob Khan’s case, this was his Uncle Tanweer. Now residing in suburban splendour in Esher, Uncle Tanweer was fond of saying, ‘You will never be your own man in the ghetto’, whenever he came back to Brick Lane. However, for a police officer like Bob, there were consolations. Knowing ‘everyone’ could be useful. In this case that person was his second cousin, Yasin, who lived in the same block of flats as Suleiman and Zayn Chaudhuri.
While not wishing to actually ‘dob’ the Chaudhuris in, Yasin had alerted Bob to the fact that Zayn was in and out of his dad’s flat and back to his old petty drug-dealing activities. He just didn’t go very far.
And so Bob waited. Just another Asian bloke with his hood pulled down over his eyes, mooching around the streets, smoking and drinking from a box of mango juice. Montalban was at the end of a phone and so, as soon as Bob saw Zayn enter the flat, he’d get onto the blower.
But as the dead of night turned into the early hours of the morning, with no Zayn in sight, Bob began to become suspicious. Yasin had definitely seen Zayn leave at just before 9 p.m., but he hadn’t been back to the flat since. Where else could he be? All his well-known haunts were under surveillance. He’d just vanished. Had he been tipped off by someone? And, if so, who?
Yasin claimed not to know. But before Bob left in the morning she did say, ‘You know that the Huq family on Hanbury Street knew Rajiv-ji well.’
‘Baharat-ji’s family?’
‘Yes. The daughter, Mumtaz, was at John Cass School with me. She got married to a man up Forest Gate who was murdered.’
Bob remembered something about that.
‘A Hakim?’
‘Yeah. Well, she’s a private detective now. She might know a thing or two.’
As, according to Montalban, did her brother Ali. But Bob didn’t tell Yasin that.
Why was she still awake? Susi knew that with Bertram in charge of the place, no one could get her unless she wanted to be got.
She remembered this particular Huguenot house well. Halfway down Fournier Street, when she’d been a girl it had been lived in by a family of Jews. She’d gone to school with the daughter, Adelaide Silver. But when her family left, the house was up for demolition until it was bought first by a reclusive artist and then by Bertram Carney, who turned it into a boutique hotel.
Furnished with a mixture of expensive antiques and distinctly odd ephemera, the Weavers Boutique Hotel was, according to Bertram a ‘queer’s vision of a Victorian bordello’. And given that Susi had, in the past, brought attractive men, and boys, to the Weavers for some afternoon – or evening – delight, it had just the right vibe. It also had discretion. Even when Dilip had challenged Bertram at reception about his wife’s whereabouts, the old queen had said nothing. She’d been in this same room with an eighteen-year-old Moroccan. Maybe that memory was keeping her awake? Or perhaps it was the knowledge that Dilip, in spite of everything, was paying for her bed and board at the Weavers.
But then he had an ulterior motive. Looking good in court was going to earn him Brownie points when the divorce hearing happened. He had supported his wife when her brother died in spite of her infidelity. For her part, she would cite his impotence and his reluctance to do anything about it. Too ‘ashamed’ to go to another doctor for help! What nonsense. He didn’t care. Far too interested in his golf and his cars and vintage fucking wines. What had she been supposed to do with that? Rot away in a corner? Probably. Her best friend Miriam had taken lovers when her husband had lost interest and then, in court, she’d been punished. Banished from a five-bed mansion in Epping to a one-bed flat in Ilford. And not a store card remaining.
Susi had always liked Arab boys best. Because so many of them were sexually repressed, when the floodgates opened, they were beyond eager. One, who she had called ‘Saladin’, had been her best. In his thirties, he was tall, handsome and had a cock like a battering ram. She’d had him often until he’d gone to Bradford for some strange reason. She suspected it was to get married. She wondered what his, no doubt, timid young wife would make of his addiction to oral sex. How would her prim little mouth cope?
But then Rajiv’s face appeared in her mind and Susi began to cry. Maybe if she cried hard enough the vision would disappear? She wanted it to.
NINE
Word was all the Boyz were going to be taken away by the feds. But not Zayn. He’d die rather than let them feel his collar. That fuckin’ Jake, Khan, had got him proper vexed, though, even if watching him strolling about looking for him was right jokes.
He looked across the smoke-filled room at the tiny mini-skirted girl sitting in the corner. Dressed like some sket with her tits hanging out, Rashida was a useful thing. When no fit girls were about, she did the business. Disowned by her family because she’d got up the duff, she lived well outside Zayn’s endz, out in Wapping.
‘You can stay long as you like,’ she’d said to Zayn when he’d turned up at her door. Then she’d put the baby with some skank next door so she could suck him off. Zayn wouldn’t ever actually fuck a woman until he was married. She’d be pure. Not some old dog like Rashida.
‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’
Mumtaz was nervous. Lee wasn’t surprised. Ricky Montalban was an intimidating character. Built like a brick shithouse, he had a boxer’s nose and long, thin, suspicious eyes. Like a snake. They’d gone to the same school, apparently. But Lee suspected that didn’t mean too much to Ricky.
His partner, DC Khan, was another matter. A good-looking boy in his early twenties, he smiled easily and, when Mumtaz asked about tea, he said, ‘Oh, that would be lovely, Mrs Hakim, thank you.’
She started to get up until Lee said, ‘I’ll do it.’ Then looking at Montalban he added, ‘I imagine you’ll want to speak to Mrs Hakim alone.’
‘Yeah.’
The older man slotted into Lee’s chair without asking permission and with ease. As Lee waited for the kettle to boil he recalled quite a few ‘Montalbans’ from his days in the job. Local, aggressive, entitled. If things had gone differently, these blokes would have become villains. As it was, they contented themselves with the ‘right’ side of the law and beating the crap out of the odd nonce from time to time. Or the wife.
Once he’d made tea, Lee went and sat outside on the metal stairs. They needed a bigger office. And they weren’t doing bad moneywise. But it still wasn’t enough to expand. Not yet. Lee lit a fag and tried not to earwig on the conversation inside the office. He failed.
‘Rajiv-ji was always good to us when we were children,’ Mumtaz said.
‘You and your brothers.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Ali?’
‘Of course, Ali,’ she said. ‘And Asif. Like me, he no longer lives on Brick Lane. But whenever he comes to visit he goes to see Rajiv-ji.’
‘I see.’ Montalban moved his large body forwards in Lee’s office chair. He said, ‘We know that Mr Banergee had been having trouble from kids on account of his sexuality.’
‘Yes.’ Mumtaz looked at Bob Khan. ‘Those Briks Boyz.’
‘You know anyone called Zayn Chaudhuri, Mrs Hakim?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘He’s the leader of the Briks Boyz, isn’t he?’
‘You know anything about any relationship he might have with your brother, Ali?’
This threw her. The Arab boys yes, but did Ali really have a ‘relationship’ – whatever that meant – with the Boyz?
‘No,’ she said. ‘My brother is a religious man. Why would he have anything to do with drug dealers?’
‘The Boyz are religious,’ Montalban said.
‘They say they are, but they still do drugs,’ she said. ‘Why do you think that Ali and Zayn have any connection?’
But Montalban didn’t answer. Leaning back in Lee’s chair now – clearly he was having problems getting comfortable – he said, �
�Do you know whether Rajiv Banergee was in a relationship with anyone?’
‘What, you mean …’
‘Did he have a lover?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Or rather not to my knowledge and certainly not someone local.’
‘In case they were spotted?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Rajiv-ji may have been flamboyant but he was far from stupid. If he’d been seeing someone local, don’t you think that people like the Boyz would know? If there was anyone, he was a long way from Brick Lane.’
‘What about in the past? You know if he had any exes hanging around?’
‘I know there was a white guy who used to come round to Rajiv-ji’s shop sometimes when I was a child,’ Mumtaz said. ‘A City type. But they only chatted. Maybe he was just a friend?’
‘Do you remember his name?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘All I can remember about him is that he was very thin. Maybe Asif would know? Or Ali?’
And then something popped into her head. It made her feel sick. For a moment she tried to use this sickness to justify saying nothing. But she couldn’t.
‘Oh, ah …’
‘Yes?’
Whenever Ricky Montalban looked at her, she felt as if he was staring into her soul. Had he been like that as a child? She couldn’t remember.
‘Rajiv told me something once …’
‘About a man?’
‘He didn’t name him,’ she said. ‘But he did say that they were in love and that he was a Muslim.’
Did Bob Khan move his chair nearer to her just so he could hear better or because he was anxious to hear her words almost before she’d spoken them?
‘When was this?’
‘He told me … must be about eighteen months ago,’ she said.
‘Which was when …’
‘I don’t know when the affair took place,’ she said. ‘I got the impression at the time that it was long ago.’
‘Why did he tell you?’ Bob asked.
‘I was investigating a PO Box address,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Apparently this man and Rajiv communicated via this address.’
And then Ricky Montalban asked Mumtaz if she knew who had administered that PO Box.
People on the Lane didn’t grass, but Rajiv Banergee had been murdered. And so she gave Ricky the name which he, and Bob, both recognised immediately.
When the two detectives left, Mumtaz went with them to go and get some lunch. They watched her walk down Green Street while Bob had a cigarette and Ricky breathed in the smoke. He’d given up five years ago, but he still loved the smell.
He looked across at Forest Gate Police Station and said, ‘We’ll go and see if DI Collins is about while we’re here. She’s proper old school but I think you’ll like her and she knows this manor inside out.’
‘Guv …’
‘What?’
‘Mrs Hakim,’ Bob said. ‘Look. Talking to that bloke.’
Ricky looked. ‘So?’
‘That’s Wahid Sheikh,’ he said. ‘I bet your DI Collins knows him.’
‘He related to Rizwan Sheikh?’ Ricky asked.
‘He’s his big brother. Lives in Bangladesh. But he’s been over here for about a year now.’
Ricky knew of the Sheikh family but because they operated outside his patch he didn’t know much.
‘Rizwan bought up a load of ex-council property when it was cheap back in the 1990s,’ Bob said.
‘Slum landlords.’
‘And the rest.’ He frowned. ‘Mrs Hakim doesn’t look too happy about talking to Wahid.’
‘Maybe she lives in one of his houses.’
‘Mmm.’
It was possible, although Bob doubted it. Baharat-ji, her father, was an honest man. He couldn’t see him allowing any of his children to have dealings with gangsters. That said, he clearly wasn’t a significant influence on his eldest son, and his daughter, it was said, had married a man who’d been distinctly dodgy. What Bob’s dad called the ‘old ways’, by which he meant children doing what their parents told them, were breaking down all over the East End. There were rich pickings to be had in the streets that had once been slums and people were clawing each other to shreds to get at them.
‘Oi! Ricky Montalban! Get out my manor!’
Bob heard his boss laugh.
A skinny, middle-aged woman in a tight dress and high heels ran across the road and punched Montalban playfully on the shoulder.
‘Vi!’
‘What you doing on Green Street?’ she said. Then she looked at Bob. ‘Hello.’
‘DC Khan,’ Ricky said, ‘DI Collins.’
‘Hello.’
Did she really flutter her false eyelashes at him?
‘Well, you’re wasted in Limehouse, aren’t you darlin’? Fancy a move east?’
Montalban shook his head. ‘Put him down, Vi. We’re here about the death of a cross-dresser on Brick Lane.’
DI Collins looked away from Bob.
‘I heard about that,’ she said. ‘So what you doing here?’
‘Came to see one of the victim’s old friends,’ Montalban said.
‘Anyone I know?’
‘Couldn’t possibly say.’
Vi laughed. It was like listening to sandpaper on rough ground.
‘So you gonna ask us over to your gaff for a cuppa then, Vi?’
Then the laughter stopped. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Sorry boys, bit busy at the moment.’
Bob would have seen this exchange as just another example of senior officer dick swinging about who was the busiest, if he hadn’t noticed where Vi Collins was looking. It was straight at Mumtaz Hakim and Wahid Sheikh.
Shereen didn’t like it when her husband worked from home. He used it as an opportunity to drink in the day. When she was home herself, it was doubly unsettling. She had a .75 contract which meant that she worked four days a week. What she didn’t need on her one day off was Abbas rattling around the house bewailing his fate into a whisky bottle.
‘Why have we not heard from Lee Arnold?’ he said.
He was turning the Tooth of Jonah over and over in his hands. Maybe he felt that handling the artefact brought him closer to Fayyad? Shereen knew it had that effect on her. Whether it was an actual tooth from the actual whale that ate the Prophet Jonah was immaterial. It was something that Fayyad had loved and it was something from home.
‘We have to just let him get on with it,’ Shereen said. ‘That’s what we agreed.’
‘He could be doing nothing for all we know.’
Shereen put the crochet work she had been trying to finish down. ‘You know that’s not the case, Abbas,’ she said. ‘Lee is our friend. He would like to involve the police—’
‘So maybe he has!’
‘No, he hasn’t! He promised you. Remember?’ She stood up. She didn’t want to be in the room with him if he was going to be like this. ‘We leave him to it! He will get back to us when he thinks fit.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘When? I don’t know,’ Shereen said. ‘He’s helping us for just expenses, remember? Lee is a good man but I’m sure that he and Mrs Hakim have to make a living. I know I do!’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She picked up her crochet hook and her wool. ‘I don’t know, Abbas,’ she said. ‘Or rather I do, but I don’t want to discuss it. I’m tired of the subject.’
‘You know why I drink,’ he said. ‘You know that I have to.’
Shereen shook her head with impatience. She’d heard it all before. What Abbas sometimes seemed to forget was that the whole family had been through the trauma of Iraq’s dissolution. They’d lost their home, their faith, their past and, sometimes Shereen felt, even their dignity.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.
Abbas poured himself a very large whisky. ‘You don’t want to talk about anything,’ he growled. ‘One of your sons is a terrorist, our daughter Djamila spends her time with a freak.’
‘Fazil isn’t a freak.
He’s a nice young man.’
‘He has no job,’ Abbas said.
‘He’s looking. Jobs are hard to come by these days.’ She tried to look into her husband’s eyes, but he avoided her gaze. ‘You don’t like him because he’s a Turk.’
Abbas tossed whisky down his throat. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I am a socialist. I’m not a racist.’
‘Yes, you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen you looking at him with distaste. What is it? That his father is a carpet dealer? That he has a London accent?’
Abbas didn’t answer.
‘Admittedly his hair is a little strange,’ Shereen said. ‘I don’t understand why a young man with nice hair would choose to shave it all off. But it’s Fazil’s choice. He’s a nice young man and he’s nice to our daughter.’ She went to leave the room and then turned back. ‘Oh, and he’s not a religious lunatic. And for that alone, we must thank God – or whoever.’
Shereen walked into the kitchen.
Once she had gone, her husband poured himself another drink and then muttered. ‘Don’t you be so sure, Shereen.’
‘When does this man find time to fight jihad?’ Mumtaz said.
Abu Imad had sent her so many messages it was impossible to read them all.
Lee got up and looked at her screen. Most of the messages were questions. These ranged from did she find him attractive to who was her favourite West Ham player and why. Where he wasn’t questioning, he was berating.
Mishal, are you there? Answer me.
I am making time for you, please make time for me.
Sometimes he whined.
I so want to see your lovely face, hear your voice. Please send me your Skype address.
‘Would a teenage girl be flattered by this?’ Lee asked.
Bright Shiny Things Page 8
