Displaced Page 19

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘And sad, to think that people still have to resort to such cruelty just to make money. I don’t understand. Money has never been important to me. But then of course, I have never wanted for anything.’

  ‘Only things money can’t buy,’ Mumtaz said.

  He paused for a moment and then he said, ‘You know, I find that I don’t even care what Miriam is like. Just that she exists. Just that my blood is not alone in this world. She can like me or not, it’s of no importance.’

  Mumtaz felt her heart squeeze. The chances of Miriam being alive were so slim.

  Vi didn’t drop Lee off outside Lesley Jones’s vast gothic house. She pulled over at the other end of the street.

  ‘Any man that bloody woman knows is her personal property – in her head,’ Vi said.

  Lee laughed. He knew what she meant. Lesley was unnerving, especially if she thought a man she fancied was sleeping with someone else. And she fancied most men she met.

  ‘She’s bloody good at what she does,’ Lee said. ‘And I’m a big boy now.’

  Vi raised an eyebrow and then said, ‘Thanks for last night, love. It was fun.’

  He shook his head as he got out of the car. ‘Don’t be daft, Vi.’

  Lee hadn’t meant to spend the night with Vi, but when she’d turned up at the flat to offload about the impact the so-called legal high known as ‘Spice’ was having on the borough’s poorest people, she’d needed more than a hug to make her feel better. Spice was everywhere – on the streets, in clubs, even flown in over prison walls using drones. It made users incapable of thought and often motion, and whoever was dealing it was targeting it at the most vulnerable. Even someone as battle-hardened as Vi had been shocked by what she’d seen.

  A boy he’d not seen before let Lee into the house. Lesley lay on a sofa in the middle of her massive living room, completely covered in a duvet. But when she saw Lee, she sprang to her feet.

  ‘Just having a small power-nap,’ she said. ‘Do you want tea?’

  ‘That’d be nice,’ Lee said. ‘Les, you can say no, but do you think you could have a look at this photo I told you about while I’m here? I’m a bit keen to get back to the client with something.’

  She looked delighted, which was bothersome, on one level.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You want me to compare it to that woman whose baby you had me age, yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, won’t take me five minutes …’

  ‘I know.’

  Lesley shrugged. ‘You’d better settle in on the sofa, then, hadn’t you?’ she said. ‘I’ll get you some tea, but if there’s anything else you want …’

  The boy was called Hubert and he was smitten. Amber hadn’t wanted to go to a pub. She and Lulu had been up for a coffee, but now Misty had met Hubert they appeared to be trapped in this pub.

  According to Misty, who had dragged her two friends into the toilets to speak to them, this Hubert was some sort of rich person’s son. He talked posh and said he had a flat in Chelsea, even though he looked as if he’d slept the previous night in a bin. And he had a green beard.

  ‘All the really rich boys have beards now,’ Misty had said when Lulu had given it as her opinion that Hubert was full of shit. ‘It’s like, look at Prince Harry.’

  ‘His beard ain’t green.’

  ‘Well, he’s not alternative, is he?’

  Lulu said, ‘What does that mean? “Alternative”?’

  ‘It’s a look,’ Misty said. ‘It’s, like, it’s different, you know. Anyway, I don’t care. He’s buying the drinks.’

  And so they were stuck. Amber had wanted to go round Camden Market and buy herself some clothes with the money her nagyapa had given her, but it wasn’t happening. She’d only been allowed out as long as she stayed with Misty. If the girls went back without her they’d get into trouble. But as time went on and Misty got drunker and drunker, both Amber and Lulu realised that they’d have to get back soon. Eventually, Lulu said, ‘If we miss the evening session we’ll get in trouble.’

  At first Misty ignored her. She was kissing Hubert now and he had a hand up her skirt. Lulu punched her arm. ‘Oi,’ she said, ‘we gotta get back!’

  For a moment the girls thought that maybe Misty had seen sense, but then she said, ‘Well, go back, then, I ain’t stopping you.’

  Wahid Sheikh hadn’t picked up the phone when Mumtaz had finally got her courage up to ring him. The delay left her feeling anxious. She’d tried to distract herself with her work, but it was tough. Finding out who, apart from Vi’s Uncle Bill, had worked for an organisation like a travelling fair was going to be difficult, especially when the details you needed were fifty years old. Fairground workers, even now, could very well be casual employees, which meant that they paid no tax or national insurance.

  The current owner of the fair was a man called Roman Lester, but tracking him down was proving difficult. He had an office in Hitchin, but every time she tried to call, the line just rang out. Then her mobile rang.

  ‘Mrs Hakim,’ a familiar voice said, ‘you rang me?’

  Even his voice made her cringe. Mumtaz pulled herself together.

  ‘Wahid-ji, yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you for getting back to me.’

  ‘It’s no problem.’

  He was always polite. It made him even more sinister.

  But it was now or never. She’d not feel she could do this again. She said, ‘Wahid-ji, I’d like to ask you something about my husband.’

  There was a moment’s pause and then he said, ‘What about him?’

  If she alluded to Ahmet’s murder he’d just put the phone down. They both knew what had happened to her husband, but neither of them could say that on the phone. Who knew who might be listening?

  She said, ‘I know that a lot of people have been in debt, as Ahmet was …’

  ‘It was a shame,’ he said. ‘A man in thrall to a gambling habit is a sad sight to see.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And yet debts must be paid.’

  ‘Of course. I’m not disputing that,’ she said. ‘However, what I find difficult to understand is why so many people are gambling addicts and yet only Ahmet is dead.’

  ‘Ah, well when it comes to addiction, some live and some die.’

  Her heart was hammering now. She said, ‘You know what I mean, Wahid-ji.’

  And now there was a long silence. He knew what she meant. And he also knew she knew that.

  When he did finally speak, his tone was much graver than it had been before.

  ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that the answer you seek is much more complicated than a humble man like myself can give you. Let me consult and get back to you.’

  ‘Very well.’

  She put the phone down and sat still for a moment, taking in some long, calming breaths. What did he mean by ‘consult’? Consult who? The rest of his family? Then she began to berate herself. Why had she even asked the question? Why hadn’t she just agreed to pay the old bastard more money and have done with it?

  What kind of can had she opened? And did it contain worms?

  Amber stared at the Tube map and said, ‘We need to get to the District Line.’

  ‘We came on the District Line, didn’t we?’ Lulu said.

  ‘Yeah, till Embankment, then we got the Northern Line up here,’ Amber said. ‘Here you see, from Camden Town down to Embankment and then on the District back to Barking. It’s easy.’

  It would have been had the girls caught the right train. But they took the Morden Branch instead of the Kennington train and ended up at Borough on the South Bank. Chatting, mainly about Misty, they didn’t realise where they were until it was too late. Then, instead of looking at the Tube map, the girls ascended to Borough Station. Panic was setting in and, when Amber suggested she phone her mother to tell her what was happening, Lulu stopped her.

  ‘They’ll never let us out again if you tell your mum,’ she said. Then looking down a road she di
dn’t know the name of she said, ‘Look there’s a sign there for London Bridge. If we go over that, won’t we be on the right side of the river again?’

  Amber said she thought they would and so the two girls began to walk in that direction.

  It took Mumtaz a moment to realise that the incoming call was not from Wahid Sheikh. It was Farzana, one of the workers with the Asian Refuge Sisters. What she said made Mumtaz go round to the refuge immediately.

  Farzana was in her office. A small woman in her thirties, she was a pretty, covered lady who looked delicate, but was as tough as boots.

  ‘She went out this morning and hasn’t returned,’ Farzana said.

  ‘Did she take anything with her?’ Mumtaz asked.

  ‘What, apart from her Prada handbag? No,’ Farzana said. ‘I wasn’t on this morning. Rukhsana signed her out, but she didn’t think much to it. Said that Shirin was no different.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘She’s always reserved, doesn’t really communicate with the other women unless she has to. With the exception of little Bijul.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Little Sikh girl,’ Farzana said. ‘Comes from a family of doctors, so class-wise she and Shirin have a lot in common. They also both dress in designer gear. If Bijul hadn’t come and had a word, I wouldn’t be so worried about Shirin.’

  ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘Apparently Shirin thinks she might be pregnant,’ Farzana said.

  Mumtaz felt a hole open up in the pit of her stomach. The reason Shirin’s husband had wanted to move a second wife into their home had been because Shirin had been unable to get pregnant. Or rather, that was the story he told to justify sleeping with another woman.

  ‘So, do you think that Shirin has gone back to her husband to tell him the good news?’ Mumtaz asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve asked Bijul, but she’s not in a good place and I can’t get much out of her.’

  ‘Can I talk to her?’

  ‘If she’ll speak to you,’ Farzana said. ‘She’s just seventeen and she’s suffered the kind of abuse that could make your hair stand on end …’

  ‘But we have to try and find Shirin.’

  ‘I know.’ Farzana stood up. ‘I’ll take you to her,’ she said. ‘Just don’t expect a great conversationalist.’

  The refuge only reported women who left them to the police if they strongly suspected that they had either been kidnapped or had quit under duress. Mumtaz doubted whether Shirin came into either category. If she thought she was pregnant, Shirin had probably gone back to her husband of her own accord.

  ‘How did she know she was pregnant?’ Mumtaz asked Farzana as they walked up the stairs to the women’s bedrooms.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Farzana said. ‘What bothers me is that she may have just taken the cessation of her periods as a sign. A lot of our women have menstruation issues when they come in here. It’s the stress.’

  Mumtaz remembered it well. She too had been unable to have a child by her husband. And the more he brutalised her, the smaller her periods had become.

  Farzana knocked on one of the doors on the top floor of the house and called out, ‘Bijul. It’s Farzana. Can I come in?’

  A small voice said, ‘Yes.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘If the woman dyed her hair black, then it’s difficult to imagine exactly what her real hair colour was,’ Lesley said. ‘But if we assume it was mid-brown – most European hair is mid-brown – then it’s only her hair dye that looks anything like the man in the photo.’

  Lesley had a range of photographs up on her computer screen. Those she’d scanned in for the comparisons Lee had asked her to do originally and the latest picture rescued from Irving Levy’s garage.

  ‘You wouldn’t say they’re related?’ he asked.

  ‘I couldn’t swear to it, but no,’ she said. ‘The bloke’s features are thick and heavy. He’s a looker, but he’s not going to win any medals for refined features. The woman’s a bit more refined and she does have those down-slanting eyes. I’d say they’re not related.’

  Lee sighed. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m not done,’ Lesley said. ‘While you were getting your beauty sleep, I performed some more measurements.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He could be related to the little kid.’

  ‘Miriam?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Like a lot of babies, her hair could’ve darkened, probably did – if she grew up. I know this because her skin is dark, unlike her mother’s, much more like that of her father. The kid as an adult has those big features.’

  ‘Like her father, Manny Levy.’

  ‘Indeed. I’d say that this photo could well be someone who came from the paternal side of that kid’s family,’ Lesley said.

  They’d assumed that the man in the photograph had a connection to Rachel because it had been found in her handbag. But maybe it was a picture of someone in her husband’s family? Possibly, unknown even to Irving, did his father had relatives on the Continent?

  Lee nodded. ‘Thanks, Les,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to let me know how much I owe you.’

  She shrugged. ‘No probs.’

  ‘Which means what?’ Lee said. ‘Three hundred quid? Four?’

  ‘Or you could go out and get a biryani for us and stay over,’ Lesley said.

  Jackie Berman still looked askance at the Asians who had come to work in the Garden donkey’s years ago. Irving ignored it because Jackie was old and set in his ways. He thought about getting the old man to meet Mumtaz – she was probably the nicest woman he’d ever met – but then he decided against it. Jackie didn’t like change and being around women – any women – was, for him, change.

  It wasn’t raining for once and so he’d left the house and crossed the road. He couldn’t sleep anyway and so a walk around the park might do him good, provided he didn’t get mugged. Although he wouldn’t take the risk of walking down South Park Drive on his own and so limited himself to a stroll along Longbridge Road to Faircross and back.

  He ended up standing in front of the main entrance to Barking Park. The fair had shut down for the night and, although the site was far from quiet, there were no more flashing lights, bangs, whizzes and general hubbub. The main gate was closed and so even if his unconscious mind had wanted to get in and have another look at the freak show van, his body wouldn’t have been able to do so. But he walked up to the gates and was going to rattle them to make sure, but then he saw the padlocks and so he just stood there, looking.

  Nothing inside moved, or rather it didn’t move at first. To begin with it was just voices, whispering. Beyond the gates, a little conversation in sibilant expirations rather than words caught his ear and held it. Like snakes in conversation, it was a communication in the letter ‘s’ and it fascinated him. Irving pushed his head a short way through the bars of the gate and strained to hear what was being said.

  Then it stopped.

  For a moment he thought that his ears had tuned the sound out, but then Irving realised that the snake whispers had gone. He was about to leave and go home when he saw a movement in a bush beside the path. He quashed the urge to say Is anyone there? as it really wasn’t his business. Whoever was there was in the park; he was outside. It was none of his concern.

  But he carried on looking anyway. For a bit.

  Then as he turned to go he saw, just out of the corner of his eye, a face that he knew.

  ‘I don’t know for sure,’ the girl said.

  Bijul, apparently seventeen, looked about twelve. She sat stiffly on the edge of her bed, her tiny, stick-like legs encased in black skinny jeans, her body swamped in a red, petal-print top. Her hair had been cut into a hard, asymmetric bob. To Mumtaz, she looked not unlike what she had always imagined an elf to be.

  ‘She missed her period,’ Bijul continued. ‘But I don’t know whether she actually did a test.’ She looked from Mumtaz to Farzana and then back to Mumtaz agai
n. ‘She didn’t say where she was going.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Yes. She just went out.’

  ‘And yet you were the only person Shirin talked to.’

  ‘Shirin is the only person I can speak to,’ Bijul said. ‘Some of them, the other women, don’t speak English. My Punjabi is basic, to say the least. Shirin was the same with Urdu. Some of these women in here come from villages in India and Pakistan.’

  Mumtaz couldn’t work out whether Bijul thought badly of the other women in the hostel or not. She was clearly very young and had to be frightened to find herself in such a place. Like Shirin, she wasn’t accustomed to ‘village’ women. It wasn’t her fault or theirs.

  ‘All Shirin said was that she was going out,’ Bijul said. ‘She didn’t say where and I didn’t ask. As I say, she’s like me, she’s used to going out.’

  Most of the other residents didn’t budge from the hostel, afraid that their abusers might see them. But for all her fragility, Bijul, according to Farzana, did go out and so, of course, did Shirin. They were used to the world outside the home and missed it when they were confined. Mumtaz knew how these women felt.

  Mumtaz said, ‘When Shirin told you she was pregnant, was she pleased?’

  ‘I don’t think she knew what to feel about it,’ Bijul said. ‘When her period didn’t come she was afraid at first, but then I think she was happy about it. She told me she hadn’t really wanted to leave her husband, even though he’d hurt her.’

  ‘Do you think she may have gone back to him?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Bijul said. ‘She was frightened of him. She was frightened of her own family too. Her marriage was important to them.’

  Mumtaz looked at Farzana, who said, ‘We can’t report her missing until she’s been gone for twenty-four hours because she’s an adult.’