Bright Shiny Things

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘By the Sheikhs,’ she said.

  ‘Although there is—there has been no proof.’

  ‘Yes, but everyone knows they did it. He owed them money.’

  ‘Yes.’ She felt sick. How was she going to do this?

  ‘So? That’s over. There’s nothing we can do. There’s no …’

  ‘Shazia, when your father was stabbed I told the police that I didn’t see who did it,’ Mumtaz said. She paused for a moment. Her chest felt tight. God almighty she felt light-headed!

  ‘Amma?’

  ‘I lied,’ Mumtaz said.

  For a moment, Shazia did nothing. Then she sat forward in her chair. ‘Lied?’

  The room was spinning now. The stress was going to kill her!

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It was Naz,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I saw him do it. Shazia, I saw him stick the knife into your father and then I watched as … as my husband bled to death in front of me.’

  The girl was white.

  ‘But you called an ambulance and …’

  ‘Too late!’ she said. ‘I called it too late and I knew it! I waited until I knew he couldn’t be saved! Do you understand! I let your father die!’

  Nothing happened. No tears, no recriminations, no movement.

  In the end, Mumtaz said, ‘Do you understand, Shazia? I killed your father!’

  And then there was another pause. Mumtaz held her breath.

  The girl folded herself up on Mumtaz’s lap like a cat.

  ‘I would give anything to go back in time,’ Mumtaz said.

  ‘To my father’s death?’

  ‘No. To when you repeated my mistake. So I could have stopped you.’

  Shazia had told her everything. That the girl should have suffered the same terrible experience that had scarred Mumtaz’s life was almost unbearable.

  ‘Naz Sheikh would still be alive.’

  ‘But you would be free of guilt.’

  ‘I never said I suffered from guilt,’ Shazia said.

  Mumtaz felt cold. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Ahmet was your father. I should have thought how much his death would hurt you.’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  Mumtaz couldn’t see her face and she was glad. She liked to think that Shazia was crying, but she knew that she wasn’t. Ahmet had taken so much from her. Her virginity was almost a detail. He’d killed her love all except, it seemed, for her. But was that real?

  ‘Shazia, I did a terrible thing …’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  It seemed obvious. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Naz?’

  There was a silence. Then Shazia sat up. Her eyes were quite dry, her face, emotionless. ‘I thought you might go to the police.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re a good, moral person.’

  ‘Yes, well now you know I’m not …’

  ‘You are!’ She hugged her. Then she cried. ‘Only my mum ever loved me like you!’

  ‘Oh, Shazia.’ She put her arms around her.

  They both sobbed. Mumtaz’s phone rang twice but she ignored it. She hadn’t been expecting what Shazia had told her. When the girl had followed Naz Sheikh to that empty house in Forest Gate, not only had she watched him die, she knew who had killed him. She refused to say who. All she would say was that the killer was a good man who had been persecuted by the Sheikhs. He was a husband and a father and he was protecting his family. Mumtaz knew how he must have felt.

  Once she’d composed herself, Shazia said, ‘Anyway, why are you telling me this now?’

  Mumtaz took a deep breath. ‘Because the Sheikhs know,’ she said, ‘that I let your father die. They also know I have been keeping that knowledge from you. Over the years they have used many things I would rather people didn’t know against me. They threatened to tell the police that Uncle Ali had given a home to those Syrian boys. In fact the police knew already. More importantly, they were going to tell you what I’ve just told you.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t have cared!’

  ‘They didn’t know that and neither did I.’

  And to be honest, Mumtaz was still not sure whether she had done the right thing. Shazia had accepted what she had done far too easily. Ahmet, for all his wickedness, had been her father. But then what did Mumtaz know of child sexual abuse? She’d been an adult when Ahmet had abused her, an adult who had experienced an almost charmed childhood.

  ‘I couldn’t risk losing you,’ Mumtaz gasped. Her breath was coming short and painfully now. Shazia hugged her again.

  ‘Oh, Amma! You would never lose me, never!’ Then she said, ‘So do you pay them money to keep quiet?’

  And then she told her about the ‘arrangement’ Wahid Sheikh had forced her to accept. Now she was shocked. She got up and whirled across the room as if she was having a fit. There was a change in the atmosphere in that room, which Mumtaz feared.

  ‘Marry him! Are you crazy?’

  Weak at the knees, she sat down on the floor and put her head between her knees.

  ‘I would never have let it get that far,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I just needed to—’

  ‘You took a risk with my life!’

  She knew she had. ‘I did it because I couldn’t risk your knowing …’

  Shazia raised her head. ‘That is the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard!’ she said.

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘So what happens now I know? What will he do when this “wedding” he has arranged is cancelled?’

  ‘He has no further hold over us, Shazia! Now you know, we are free.’

  Shazia jumped to her feet. ‘No we’re not!’ she said. ‘That old bastard who has been following me around will go mad. You know he will! He will punish both of us! I will have to marry him!’

  ‘No!’

  And yet she had a point and Mumtaz knew it. Cousin Aftab had tried to warn her and she’d closed her eyes to it. Wahid Sheikh wouldn’t take the loss of his bride lying down.

  ‘Not that I will marry him,’ Shazia said. ‘I’d rather die! You’ll have to sort it out!’

  And here was her hard shell of self-preservation again. What had Ahmet unwittingly created in this girl?

  ‘I’ll go and stay with Lee until my A-level results come through and then I’ll go straight to Hendon,’ Shazia said. ‘When I tell him what you’ve done he’ll probably give you the sack!’

  Mumtaz wanted to say He knows! Not that he knew what she’d done to Ahmet, he didn’t. He knew the Sheikhs had tried to get her to give up Shazia, although he didn’t know why. But if Shazia was going to go anywhere, that was probably the most sensible place for her to be. The Sheikhs would think twice about taking on an ex-copper and also Lee was probably the best person to explain what Mumtaz had done and why.

  But then the hardest blow of all arrived.

  ‘I hate you!’ Shazia said. ‘How dare you play with my life! You’re no better than my dad!’

  She left the room. Mumtaz heard the key turn in the lock on her bedroom door. There was a pain in her chest that was so bad, she felt as if she’d been stabbed. Minutes later she heard the girl unlock her door and run out of the flat. She knew she had to call Lee before Shazia turned up at his flat. In whispers and through tears, she told him everything. He arrived twenty minutes later and, when she opened the door to him, he took her in his arms and kissed her with an urgency she had never experienced before. When it was over, he said, ‘No more secrets, Mumtaz. None.’

  She put a hand up to his face. ‘Is Shazia at your flat?’

  ‘Yes.’ He kissed her again. ‘I’ve told her I’ve had to go out to get milk.’

  ‘Oh Lee, what am I to do? She said she hated me!’

  He guided her back into her hallway and shut the front door behind him. He said, ‘She’ll get over it. It’s a shock. Trust me, I wouldn’t lie to you. Not to you.’

  She felt his arms around her waist and although she knew that she should push him away she also knew that that first, impulsive kiss he’d given her had
changed things. What had been an insurmountable obstacle between them had simply melted away.

  Crying, she kissed him and, when he caressed her body, she didn’t try to make him stop.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  There were Jews next door. Not the ordinary type, these were like the ones who had lived in Stamford Hill. The ones who wore the big hats and sidelocks and had loads of kids. In themselves they were harmless enough. On the other side there were a load of Pakistanis. The father had a greengrocer’s business where most of them worked.

  Nobody bothered him.

  When he’d first moved in they’d all come out to have a good look at him. Of course they had. The Irishmen who lived in the squat opposite had stared out of their top windows. One of them wasn’t all that he seemed. His curiosity was beyond idle. His presence was no accident. His new British masters didn’t yet trust him.

  They’d given him a Greek name, Filippo Aristide. The first letters of each name were the same as his own and he could speak Greek – albeit not brilliantly. He’d learnt because his father knew the priests on the Plain. They had taught him. His father had wanted them all to be educated. He’d thought that was the key to success.

  He’d never been to Manchester before. The part where he lived was called Cheetham Hill, which was a very multicultural place. Not unlike East Ham, it had a lot of Asian grocers, halal and kosher butchers, shops where saris could be purchased and where Turks would cut your hair. It also, in places, had another life, which was why he had been sent there.

  He’d proved himself in London. He’d been believed when he’d said he wanted to change sides. Now, in place of the Light of True Belief, there was a small, but efficient group bringing young men from Syria and Iraq to Cheetham Hill. Some of them were really good speakers, so he’d heard from the Irishman. But he couldn’t get involved too quickly. That would look dodgy.

  The debrief, after Essex, had gone on for months. He didn’t know how long exactly. Some events he’d had to repeat and write about over and over. When Djamila had killed their father was one example. He’d cried every time he’d told it. She’d been so brainwashed she’d executed Abbas with a smile on her face. Not that she had. She had been glad he’d died, of course, but it was doubtful she’d have actually been able to do it. Djamila had always been her daddy’s best girl and, although she knew he was a lush and an unbeliever, who claimed to hate him, she couldn’t have killed him. Abbas would have pleaded with her and, in spite of everything, she would have crumbled. He’d had to do that. The old man with his screaming and shouting would have messed everything up. As would Djamila. But then he’d always known that she would have to be dispensed with eventually. It was odd to think that initially she’d got him involved. In doing so she’d colluded in her own death.

  Djamila had more than suspected him. If he’d let her live she may have turned her gun on him after she killed the Hakim woman. The stupid Turkish boyfriend had told him as much when he’d arrived. Djamila had said she doubted her brother’s loyalty. She’d said she’d seen him meet people that he shouldn’t.

  Had she? It was unlikely. The only person she’d ever seen him meet was that stupid lawyer Vakeel Uddin. A useful idiot if ever there was one. A fool he’d first met out in Syria and then made contact with on one of his many trips to London. Why did some people visit war zones when they had no intention of fighting? Was it simply to convince themselves that their betrayal of their own country was worth it?

  Filippo Aristide was a photographer. He even had a studio on Cheetham Hill Road. He worked alone, which was good, and already had a list of clients when he arrived. Very considerate of his new masters. Filippo was divorced – his ex-wife and kids still lived in London. He’d lived up north for a while. He liked it. But while not in the market for another wife, he did want a girlfriend, just as long as she wasn’t feisty.

  He’d laughed with the Irishman about that one. He, the Irishman, had said that he couldn’t imagine anything worse than a woman who just lay on her back and didn’t feel a bloody thing when you fucked her. How they’d laughed at that! And he knew what the Irishman meant. An unmoving plank of a woman wasn’t much fun. But one who screamed and hurt and sometimes died, was. He wondered what the Irishman’s views on that would be?

  He’d probably kill him.

  That amateurish network back home had needed to be closed down. What was happening in Manchester was far more professional. He’d have to tell his new masters the job wasn’t going to be easy. He was pretty sure the Irishman would disagree. He’d kill him.

  His old masters in Syria were waiting to come and shop at the Trafford Centre. He had to be ready to welcome them. Winners in the land of the kaffir. Not like his parents.

  One day, Fayyad al’Barri knew, he’d get the Tooth of Jonah back from his mother – the police had given it to her. How he had enjoyed imagining the pathetic hope on his mother and father’s faces when they had received the tooth – and then he’d crush it in front of her stupid face.

  ‘That,’ he would say to her as it disintegrated, ‘is for forcing your children to reject their culture and their religion.’

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  About the Author

  BARBARA NADEL was born and brought up in the East End of London. She has a degree in psychology and, prior to becoming a full-time author, she worked in psychiatric institutions and in the community with people experiencing mental health problems. She is also the author of the Inspector Ikmen series, set in Turkey and published by Headline. She lives in Essex.

  @BarbaraNadel

  By Barbara Nadel

  Bright Shiny Things

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  allisonandbusby.com

  First published in 2017.

  This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby Ltd in 2017.

  Copyright © 2017 by BARBARA NADEL

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–2018–7