An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) (27 page)

‘Mr Khan, your wife needs a doctor,’ Mumtaz said. So this tall, handsome, furious man was the lawyer husband. It was the first time that Mumtaz had seen him. She could imagine how he could easily have turned Nasreen’s head. She knew the type. She stood up and walked over to him. ‘I’ve called an ambulance.’

‘Why? She’s my wife.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Did you break my front door window?’

‘I did,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Your wife was screaming out in pain. Someone needed to get to her.’

‘You have to go now,’ he said.

Mumtaz remained calm. ‘No.’

There was a moment when he didn’t seem to understand her.
Then he grabbed her arm in a grip that was as hard as death and pulled her towards him. Practised in the art of not giving men the satisfaction of hearing her pain, Mumtaz didn’t murmur.

‘Get out of here,’ he hissed. ‘Now.’

His fingers dug into her flesh, clawing through her jacket and her blouse. ‘No,’ she said.

And then they all heard the siren.

‘Oh, they’re here,’ Nasreen said.

‘Yes, they are.’ Mumtaz turned to smile at her. Then she turned back to the infuriated man. ‘Paramedics’ll be coming in any moment now, Mr Khan,’ she said. ‘If you’d rather leave …’

And then he did something that Mumtaz had not anticipated. He put his hand into the pocket of his jacket and took out a gun.

The bullet exploded into the bedroom ceiling. Mumtaz covered her head with her hands and hit the floor. Then he shot out the smallest of the bedroom windows. Another explosion. Outside on the street she heard a man scream. Abdullah Khan said, ‘It’s too late for any of us to leave now.’

‘I can’t work out what it’s for,’ Vi said.

‘Well, it’s a festival of sport, isn’t it,’ Constable Roberts said.

‘Yeah, but who wants it?’ Vi dragged hard on her fag, in the full knowledge that Superintendent Venus could see both her and Roberts from his eyrie at the top of the police station. If he had been looking, which he wasn’t.

Roberts, a young black copper originally from Notting Hill, said, ‘David Beckham, Lord Coe, Boris Johnson …’

‘Oh, so we should all go mad for sport because a bloke who calls his kid after a number, a Tory windbag and a man who looks like he’s got a blizzard on his head says we should?’

Roberts shrugged. ‘It is what it is,’ he said. ‘I’d like to be able to buy a flat back near me mum and dad but it ain’t happening. Life’s not fair, guv.’

She looked at him and shook her head. ‘You must fucking hate Hugh Grant.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, we had the Portobello Road effect years before that film came out. Anyway, I think the Olympics’ll be good. We’ve got some great sportsmen and women in this country and by that I don’t mean any dumb footballers.’

Vi laughed.

‘Oh, it’s crap though, isn’t it, guv?’ Roberts said. ‘Some bloody boy paid £200,000 a week …’

‘You’re just jealous …’

‘Well, yeah, maybe but …’

‘Guv, you gotta come! Quick!’ It wasn’t often that anyone saw Tony Bracci run and it was never an edifying sight, involving as it did a lot of sweat and redness about the face. But this time he looked white bordering on grey. ‘Tone?’ She ground her fag butt out with her heel.

‘Something’s going on in East Ham,’ Tony Bracci gasped. ‘The Super’s called out SCO19 …’

‘So it’s an armed …’

‘We think so, yes,’ Tony Bracci said. ‘We’ve got to get to it. The Super wants us all in now.’

He turned and began running back towards the station. Vi and Constable Roberts followed.

*

Lee looked at his watch and wondered what was keeping Mumtaz. She’d been nearly an hour and he knew that the queue in the post office couldn’t possibly be that long. He put the final bun into his mouth and went over to the window to look down into Green Street. It was a slow Monday during Ramadan and so there wasn’t much movement. There was certainly no Mumtaz. But then he’d sort of implied that she take her time. She didn’t have any appointments until the afternoon and business was slow. People were on holiday – cheating husbands were temporarily tolerated, wayward daughters curbed by the strictures of being in close quarters with their parents for two weeks and even moonlighting workers were taking a break. Everyone who could had buggered off to get away from the Olympic influx.

Lee went outside and sat on the metal stairs to smoke. The weather seemed to be heating up, which was good news for the Games. Much as he didn’t feel anything much about them himself, he hoped that they went well. He didn’t want any incidents to mar the occasion. Over the years, London had had more than its share of terrorist outrages and bomb scares. When Lee had been a kid it had been the IRA, then later it had been offshoots from the IRA, then, in 2005, the day after the Olympic bid had been won, al Qaeda had taken their turn. Poor old city. When his parents had been children it had been bombed to bits, although maybe all of that ‘poor old London’ thing was on the wane now. Vast new apartment blocks had risen up everywhere, including in Newham, and flashy landmarks like the Shard on the south bank were giving London a whole new world city vibe. But that was only part of the story and Lee Arnold knew it. Down in Custom House, his mum still rented the same council house she’d had since before his older brother Roy had been born. She still bought her groceries off cheap markets and her household goods from pound shops. A lot of people were being left behind by the reality of shiny new London.

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 Arnold?’ 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.’