‘Thursday,’ he said.
He’d booked two nights at the Ibis Hotel, Schiphol. He hoped he didn’t need them.
‘First time you’ll’ve been away with a woman for a long time.’
Vi had the idea that, if he could, Lee would have an affair with Mumtaz. She was right except that an affair was not what he wanted. He desired much more. But he also knew that, due to the differences in their backgrounds, that was all but impossible. He tried not to think about it.
‘What’s the job?’ Vi asked.
‘None of your business.’
‘Oooh, confidentiality.’
She laughed. She always found the notion of confidentiality in private investigation amusing. A lot of coppers felt that way. PIs were just ‘plastic plods’ following people about and serving divorce documents. And even though Vi knew that Lee was much more than that, she liked to tease him.
‘I’d have to kill you,’ Lee said.
‘Fair enough.’ She sat on his bed. ‘But do be careful, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ He stroked her face. ‘Yeah.’
She stood up. ‘It’s a rough world out there,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘Well, don’t forget it.’
She left soon afterwards. Would she have taken off so quickly if they’d had sex?
Lee wasn’t sure. She’d had the look of a woman on a mission.
Whatever he said, they’d made their minds up. And Ali didn’t care what Ricky Montalban said.
What the boys were saying was that he’d had sex with them and then gone out. Then he’d killed Rajiv. Ali assumed his motive was supposed to be self-disgust. But ‘owning up’ to the sexual abuse wasn’t going to absolve him of Rajiv’s murder. So why hold his hands up to rape? It hadn’t happened any more than his killing Rajiv had happened. And the boys had gone out that night, not him!
Ricky had been tight-lipped on whether the police had any forensic evidence. Maybe what they had found hadn’t yet been analysed. As far as he could tell the real world of forensic investigation wasn’t like those CSI programmes his mother watched on the TV. Real life moved at a much slower pace.
Reverend Reid had set him up a bed in the corner of the cafe, which was kind. But he’d not slept since he’d been in the church. The previous night he’d heard kids mucking around outside. He’d heard them shouting and throwing stuff about. He’d heard the word ‘nonce’ used. Had word got out about him and his supposed ‘crimes’?
And if it had, how was he ever going to be able to leave the church without getting lynched?
‘Guv.’
‘Bob.’
Montalban didn’t usually take calls on a Sunday. But with Ali Huq still squatting in Christ Church he felt he had to. He walked out of the living room and into his small garden. As usual, he’d taken his mum to Mass in the morning and then she’d cooked him lunch. Now she was asleep in a chair in front of the telly.
‘The lab have got back with results on Rajiv Banergee.’
At fucking last!
‘Good.’
‘Well, good and bad,’ Bob said. ‘There were two sets of DNA found on the corpse. Both came from bloodstains.’
‘Matches?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Rock ’n’ roll.’
Maybe now those two little Syrian oiks would tell the truth.
‘One’s to a possession of class A …’
‘Which was?’
‘Coke,’ Bob said. ‘Two thousand and fourteen. Perps name is Amir Charleston, twenty-eight at the time and living with his parents in Holland Park. Worked or maybe still works for a merchant bank.’
‘Posh boy.’
‘Seems like it. Got fined, community service, slap on the wrist. Daddy’s a QC.’
Montalban rolled his eyes. ‘And the other one?’
‘Ah, well that’s where things get a bit weird, guv.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, that DNA reveals a familial relationship to the victim.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So no Syrian kids? No Ali Huq?’
‘No.’
Ricky sighed. ‘Got an address for this Charleston bloke?’ he said.
‘Yes and, of course, we’ve an address for Mrs Chopra, the victim’s sister,’ Bob said.
‘I’d better make my excuses to Mum, then,’ Montalban said.
‘Sorry, guv.’
Heidi sat on her front doorstep like she usually did when the weather was warm. Her husband, George, was working in the convenience store as he usually did on a Sunday and so Heidi was alone.
She’d lived with George in their two-bedroom flat on Avondale Road, Canning Town all her married life but she knew none of her neighbours any more. They’d all moved out to Essex. Now almost all the flats were owned by private landlords who rented them out to a shifting population of mainly young people. Her cousin Glad had told her that flats in Heidi’s block were selling for a quarter of a million quid! How fucking mad was that? Heidi and George were still council tenants.
Two young white boys walking along the balcony wasn’t an unusual sight. Heidi stubbed her fag out on the ground and smiled at them.
The taller of the two, a smartly dressed kid with blonde hair smiled back. ‘You Heidi?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, love,’ Heidi said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Can I have a word?’
‘What about?’
‘Your husband,’ he said.
Heidi felt her face drain.
‘My George? What—’
‘Oh, it’s OK,’ the young man said. ‘He’s fine. Can I come in? Just for a minute?’
Heidi was anxious to know what this young man had to say about George. She was too anxious. George was always saying how they shouldn’t let anyone they didn’t know into the flat.
‘Yeah,’ she said.
She got slowly to her feet. The tall young man followed her, while his mate stayed outside. Heidi led him down the corridor and into her kitchen.
‘Well, love,’ she said.
He punched her so hard, Heidi heard her nose break. Then she was on the floor.
Standing over her, he said, ‘You can tell George that’s from Mr Sheikh. Next time his boss, Aftab Huq, wants to try and humiliate Mr Sheikh in public again, you’ll think a broken nose is a birthday present.’
Heidi was speechless. Who the fucking hell was this Mr Sheikh? She’d never heard of him.
‘Ditto calling the police,’ the young man said as he rubbed the knuckles of his left hand on his T-shirt. ‘Don’t do it. Not unless you want to hurt really badly.’
And then he left. Only after he’d disappeared completely, or so it seemed, did the pain begin. And the shaking. But Heidi was determined she wasn’t going to cry. Broken nose or no broken nose, a little shit like that wasn’t going to make her break down.
As soon as she felt able to do so, she stood up and walked down the hall to where the phone was plugged in. She called George on his mobile.
‘Some fucking little bleeder’s just punched me in the mush!’ she said.
Amir Charleston no longer lived in Holland Park. No doubt chasing a ‘cool’ urban vibe, he’d got himself a flat in an old mansion block equidistant from the tech hub that is Old Street, Liverpool Street Station and Shoreditch High Street. It got no funkier. But then he was in banking.
Montalban asked him to come with them. Charleston, who was an attractive, fit-looking man, said, ‘I’ve not touched drugs since my conviction.’
But later, Bob Khan claimed to have watched him sweat as he made himself ready to go to Limehouse. Now in a large and rather cold interview room he was shivering. His solicitor, some high-flier from a big City of London firm, sat by Charleston’s side.
‘I was out running.’
‘All evening?’ Montalban asked.
‘No.’
‘So give me times.’
He sighed. Entitlement written all over him. He also had the
remnants of a black eye.
‘I left the office at around six. Jogged across to Commercial Street then down to the river and back again.’
‘Back to where?’
‘Spitalfields.’
‘What for?
‘I belong to a gym. In Hanbury Street?’
Montalban frowned. ‘I don’t know of a gym in Hanbury Street.’ He looked at Bob. ‘You?’
‘No, guv.’
‘Well, it’s not actually a gym …’
‘So what is it?’
‘Well, it’s a sort of a … A friend has some friends around to his flat and we, well, we box.’
‘A private boxing club. Where?’
‘I told you, Hanbury …’
‘What number?’
Charleston looked at his solicitor and then said, ‘I’d rather not say. My friends don’t have anything to do with this. They no more know this Banergee chap than I do.’
‘Says you.’
‘Says me, yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know this man. I’ve no idea how my blood came to be on his clothing. Maybe I passed him in the street? As you can see, my latest bouts did my face some damage.’
Montalban nodded. ‘How’d you get home after your “bouts” that night?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Probably got a cab.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘It’s been over a week. In the meantime I’ve been to our office in Frankfurt for two days.’
How the other half lived.
‘Well, had you walked you would have gone through Arnold Circus to get to your flat, unless you decided for some reason to go another way, which I am open to.’
‘I really don’t remember,’ Charleston said.
Montalban had looked up Charleston’s father, the QC. He was the most English-looking man Montalban thought he’d ever seen. Amir had to be more like his Pakistani mother, dark and aquiline.
‘Maybe I did walk through Arnold Circus but I don’t remember doing so. Don’t you have CCTV footage?’
Montalban ignored him. There was no footage of the attack on Banergee. Like all too many street cameras, those on Arnold Circus had been inoperable. ‘We have to know who you were with that night …’
‘That’s impossible!’
The solicitor put a hand on Charleston’s arm.
‘Because if you don’t have an alibi, given what we’ve found, you could be royally fucked, Mr Charleston,’ Montalban said.
SEVENTEEN
The convenience store had never been shut on a Monday morning before. But Aftab could hardly ask George to man the barricades after what had happened to Heidi. Just thinking about what the poor woman had endured made him cringe with guilt.
Going to see Wahid Sheikh in his no doubt very ostentatious house in Chigwell was all Aftab could do. Throw himself on the old cunt’s mercy. If he had any. He certainly wasn’t going to tell Mumtaz or Shazia about Heidi – that side of the family had enough problems with his cousin Ali.
And yes, Wahid-ji’s house was like a cross between a Disney film set and a municipal building from the nineteen sixties. Inside was even worse. The old man showed him into a vast living room that contained three huge, gold-coloured sofas and the biggest television he’d ever seen. On the floor was what, the old man told him, was a real tiger skin.
‘My father shot it in 1935,’ he said.
But Aftab hadn’t come to discuss endangered wildlife.
‘Wahid-ji,’ he said, ‘I believe I owe you an apology.’
‘Do you?’
He smiled.
‘Well, it seems so,’ Aftab said. ‘Because if I don’t, then I can’t really fathom why the wife of one of my employees got punched in the face by one of your men yesterday.’
‘One of …’
‘With respect, Wahid-ji, you know it,’ Aftab said.
A young man with blonde hair came into the room and sat down next to the old man.
‘Ah, this is Hasan, my niece’s husband …’
‘With great respect again, Wahid-ji, I don’t care,’ Aftab said. ‘I’ve come to give you my apology for making you uncomfortable in my shop.’
He frowned. ‘Uncomfortable in your shop?’
‘Over the girl,’ Aftab said.
The old git was deliberately not understanding.
‘Ah. The bride,’ he said. ‘Yes, I was a little peeved.’
The bride? Aftab said, ‘Shazia Hakim.’
‘Oh, yes, well that’s very decent of you, but I assure you on my mother’s life that I had nothing to do with any attack upon your employee’s wife.’
Aftab didn’t know what to say. The bride?
‘Although I’m sure she doesn’t know it yet, the young lady is to be my wife when she finishes her examinations.’
The blonde man beside Wahid Sheikh smiled. Heidi said the man who’d punched her had been a blond, white guy. Aftab felt cold to his bones.
‘And you are not to tell her Aftab-ji,’ the old man said. ‘I want it to be a nice surprise for the young lady.’
It was DC Shamima Iqbal who had told them that Susi Chopra was staying in a hotel. Bob had been to her marital home only to be told by her husband that Susi was staying at the Weavers Hotel on Folgate Street. Apparently, it was where she always stayed when she was unfaithful to him. He had already started divorce proceedings.
When she managed to stop crying, Susi said, ‘I didn’t kill my brother.’
‘But you did assault him,’ Bob said.
‘He wouldn’t listen!’
Every time she moved, her jewellery jangled and tinkled.
‘Rajiv was always moaning about his business! I gave him a chance to realise the capital in that building. With the flat above the shop plus the outbuildings at the back it’s worth four million pounds. Even splitting the money two ways, he could have retired.’
‘And you could have continued to live in comfort when your husband divorced you.’
‘Dilip is ridiculous!’ she said. ‘He threatens me! He says, you’re not getting a penny when we divorce! And so I say, but we bought this house together! He says, you have never worked. I have kept you all your life. I say, but I have supported you in the home so that you can pursue your career. Then he says, ah, but you couldn’t give me children, could you? And then I realised …’
‘Realised what?’
‘That because we have no children I do not have a very firm claim.’
‘Because you committed adultery?’
‘Ach.’ She nodded her head. ‘My husband did too. Admittedly long ago. But I have no proof.’
‘But he has?’
‘Photographs,’ she said. ‘He hired a detective.’ She leant forward in her chair. ‘DC Khan,’ she said, ‘I went to see Rajiv in the shop the night he died, but when I left him he was alive. We argued and I ended up hitting him. As I hit him one of my rings cut his cheek and also damaged my finger. We were both crying by then. He let me staunch the blood from my finger on his shirt. He was sorry and I was sorry. But he still wouldn’t move on selling the shop. I left.’
‘What time?’
‘Around nine. I went home. Dilip, my husband was away on business.’
‘Where?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘We haven’t talked for weeks. I didn’t go out again that night. I certainly went nowhere near Arnold Circus. When I discovered that Rajiv had been killed the next day, I was distraught. I came to Brick Lane, booked into my usual hotel on Folgate Street and tried to make sense of everything.’
‘You stay in Tower Hamlets a lot?’
‘Since my husband rejected me, yes. And that happened a long time ago, DC Khan.’ All her animation deserted her. ‘I couldn’t have children. When Dilip realised that … Well, he organised separate rooms. I didn’t cheat on my husband from choice. Not to start with.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us all this when we first contacted you, Mrs Chopra? You must know how this looks now.’
She sighed. ‘Of course I d
o,’ she said. ‘But I was afraid and for the most shallow reason.’ She shook her head. ‘I knew I had left my brother alive. Your officers told me that Rajiv had been murdered outside. I didn’t kill him. But I worried that if I told the whole story it might affect my inheritance.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. But I knew I didn’t want to speak to our family solicitor. Mr Patel is disturbed enough by my divorce. I am sure it is the same in Muslim families but in Hindu society everyone looks at everyone else when things like this happen. They judge. But at the same time they rub their hands in case there is something in it for them.’
Bob Khan couldn’t help smiling. ‘I’m sure that’s true of all families whatever their religion, Mrs Chopra,’ he said.
Lee was outside a hotel somewhere in Earls Court in his car. He was tracking the movements of the husband of a local actress who had been inside the hotel with a young girl for over half an hour. So far.
Mumtaz was finding it hard being Mishal on Skype.
‘So, my darling, are you looking forward to seeing me in person tomorrow?’ Abu Imad said.
‘Oh, yes.’
It didn’t look as if he was still in Iraq. He certainly wasn’t strutting around inside a tent carrying an AK47 over his shoulder. His surroundings looked like a nondescript office.
‘Now, when you arrive in Amsterdam,’ he said, ‘you must go to McDonalds and order a Big Mac meal. Stay in McDonalds until you are met.’
‘By you?’
He hesitated.
She said, ‘You are coming to meet me, aren’t you?’
He tipped his head to one side. ‘Maybe.’
‘Yes, but you said—’
‘Don’t question me, Mishal!’ He held up a hand. ‘I am a wanted man. Places like airports are really dangerous for me. Maybe, maybe not. But someone will meet you and we will be together.’
‘In Holland?’
‘Inshallah,’ he said.
Mumtaz had to work hard to keep control. What if he didn’t turn up? There was no way she could go to him. Putting up with his bullshit would all have been for nothing. It was also time she could have spent with her hard-pressed family. Her mother hadn’t eaten since that story about Ali had appeared in the local newspaper. Mumtaz really feared for her, and for Ali.
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