Displaced Page 24

  Farzana held Shirin’s hand. Still stained with blood it wasn’t pleasant to hold, but the young woman needed some human comfort even if she didn’t acknowledge it.

  Once the paramedics Farzana had called to the refuge had established that Shirin was not injured, the police had arrived. Shirin hadn’t said anything. She’d even refused the sanitary towel Farzana had given her after her examination. When her period had arrived was impossible to say, but it was heavy and the floor of the day room was slippery with blood.

  An officer called WPC Rhodes had taken down Shirin’s address, which she had passed on to officers at Notting Hill Gate. They were on their way to the apartment now. Farzana hoped against hope that what she felt had happened hadn’t. If Shirin’s period had come and her husband had found out, then she feared for both of them.

  Another refuge worker, Tasneem, brought her a cup of tea and told her that the other residents had all gathered in the biggest bedroom.

  ‘They’re really freaked out,’ she said.

  ‘Is it surprising?’

  ‘Have you managed to get hold of Mumtaz Hakim?’

  ‘No,’ Farzana said. ‘I’ve given WPC Rhodes her number. Don’t know what else I can do.’

  ‘Nothing. Are you sure Shirin doesn’t want a cup of tea?’

  Farzana looked at the young woman and shook her head. ‘I can’t get a word out of her,’ she said. ‘No one can.’

  It was going to be a fuck of a long night. The girl’s death had almost certainly been an accident, but the coppers still wanted to take statements from everyone on the site. It was just a mercy that the tea and coffee vans were still open. Not that the coffee at least was exactly drinkable. Lee took a swig, pulled a face, and then lit a fag.

  ‘Can I have one of them?’ Grace asked.

  ‘What? You wanna get cancer?’ Lee replied.

  His daughter, Jodie, smoked too, and he didn’t like that either, but he threw his packet of Silk Cut at Grace.

  She smiled and lit up.

  He knew the girls shouldn’t be left on their own, but he was worried about Mumtaz. As far as Lee had been able to see, what had happened to the girl, who was the site manager’s daughter apparently, had been a pure and simple accident. The kid had tried to throw herself back on the trapeze while hooking her feet around the ropes and had screwed it up. Unless the coppers found any evidence of foul play, that was it.

  Except that it wasn’t. Irving Levy had been there when the kid died and he had history with the fair. What, if anything, did his presence mean?

  Shazia nudged him in the ribs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Over there.’

  She pointed towards a small group of uniformed officers talking to what looked like a pair of comedy ‘Chinamen’ from a bad pantomime.

  ‘You know when we came to the fair last year,’ Shazia said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I got a bit lost looking for the loos and one of those women showed me where they were. She gave me the creeps.’

  Lee saw two shrunken figures dressed in black satin. They had those really long curly nails he remembered seeing in the Guinness Book of Records when he was a kid. People who did that, back in those days, were usually Chinese. Could they be the ‘Siamese’ twins, Ping and Pong?

  He said, ‘How’d you know it was a woman?’

  He’d always assumed that Ping and Pong were men.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Shazia said. ‘Maybe because she had a high voice?’

  ‘You say you were with a man when the incident occurred.’

  His manner was nice enough, but Eva automatically didn’t like coppers. They didn’t like fairground people and the feeling was mutual.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘You know him?’

  The copper, Sergeant Harris, had a round, red face, which looked like a sunburnt moon.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Not really? What do you mean?’ he said. ‘Either you know him or you don’t.’

  ‘You’ll need to speak to my father,’ she said. ‘He’ll explain.’

  ‘I wish someone would,’ Harris said.

  ‘My father will.’

  And if he didn’t – and she knew he wouldn’t want to – she would, inasmuch as she could.

  The police had set up a temporary incident room in one of the tea tents. Scene of crime officers were looking for evidence at the site of the girl’s death while PCs like Kerry Paternoster were taking names and contact details of fairgoers as well as interviewing witnesses like Irving Levy.

  ‘There was a lady with you when you witnessed the incident, I understand,’ she said to him.

  ‘The girl’s grandmother,’ he said.

  An Asian woman held his hand. A private detective from Newham. Kerry had heard on the grapevine there was some covered woman chasing down errant husbands and kids meddling in drugs. She hadn’t expected to come across her with an old Jewish bloke.

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘So why were you with her? The trapeze was set up outside the fair. What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was searching my memory.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  SOCO had only just started their investigation, but everyone she spoke to had been in no doubt that what had happened to the girl had been an accident. But there was a story here and she had a feeling it was important.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Back in 1962, when I was seven,’ he said. ‘I came to this fair with my mother and my one-year-old sister, Miriam. Miriam disappeared and has never been seen since. I have been looking for her, with the help of Mrs Hakim and Mr Arnold. We came here this evening to see whether being at the fair might jog memories I may have buried.’

  ‘We’ve made several visits this week,’ the Asian woman said.

  ‘You’re Mrs Hakim.’

  ‘Yes. Mr Levy is a client of Mr Arnold’s. I am Mr Arnold’s assistant.’

  ‘But you weren’t with him when the girl fell from the trapeze?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was Mr Arnold?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? If you were supposed to be helping him?’

  ‘Mr Levy wanted to be alone,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Sometimes, if someone is trying to recover lost memories, it’s better they are alone. Sometimes not. It’s a very individual process.’

  ‘Where were you, then?’ Kerry asked.

  ‘Mr Levy left Mr Arnold and myself at the base of the big wheel,’ she said.

  ‘I was going to go back there later,’ the old man interrupted.

  ‘But then my daughter and a friend appeared …’

  ‘You didn’t know they were coming?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The girls – my daughter is eighteen – wanted to go on the big wheel and so Mr Arnold took them. I stayed on the ground waiting for Mr Levy. It was my daughter, Shazia, who used her mobile to contact me when the accident happened.’

  ‘Your daughter saw it?’

  ‘From the big wheel, yes. She told me what direction I needed to take. I was afraid that maybe Mr Levy had seen what my daughter had witnessed. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed.’

  ‘And did Mr Arnold and your daughter’s friend see what happened too?’

  ‘Yes. They’re here somewhere. I told Lee, Mr Arnold, to take the girls away from the scene and look after them. That’s a terrible thing for young people to witness.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She just threw herself backwards off the trapeze and then she fell to the ground,’ the old man said. ‘I heard her neck break …’

  ‘What was the woman you say was the girl’s grandmother doing at this point?’ Kerry asked.

  ‘To the girl? Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘To you?’

  ‘She’d been following me. I’ve no idea why. I was trying to shake her off when I came across the girl. When she saw her, the woman lost interest in me.
She shouted at the girl to get down, but she wouldn’t. Then she swung very high and did what I suppose was meant to be a very clever trick.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else around?’ Kerry asked.

  A couple of the blokes were attempting to talk to what had looked like two old Chinamen. They’d put the trapeze rig up for the kid. But she’d heard neither of them could speak English. Talking to a slightly confused old Jew paled into insignificance.

  He looked at the Asian woman who said, ‘You must tell the police everything.’

  He sighed. Then he said, ‘When my sister disappeared, I was in a tent watching what was called, in those days, a freak show. It featured Siamese twins called Ping and Pong. I believe the figures I saw at the back of the trapeze rig tonight were Ping and Pong.’

  From 1962? Kerry leant forward and fixed the old man with her eyes.

  ‘You serious?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

  He said he was Hungarian. He certainly had an accent, but what did Dave Harris know? Hungarian? Bulgarian? Romanian? What the fuck was the difference?

  ‘So, Mr Horvathy,’ he said, ‘your daughter tells me you know this Mr Levy she was with when your great-granddaughter had her accident …’

  He’d offered his condolences and, although Eva Horvathy had cried, her old man – and he was a very old man – hadn’t.

  ‘I don’t know him, no,’ the old man said.

  ‘Yes, you do!’ the woman said.

  ‘I know of him.’ He shrugged.

  She said something to him, in his language, and Dave said, ‘In English, please …’

  ‘I said he does know him,’ Eva Horvathy said.

  The old man said, ‘And so do you, it seems.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve known about Irving Levy a long time.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How’d you think?’ she said. ‘The Twins told me. Decades ago.’

  ‘Did they tell you anything else?’

  ‘Like what?’ she said.

  ‘Like how your mother died?’

  ‘You killed her!’ she screamed.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s what you like to think, Eva. But that is very far from the truth.’

  She said nothing, but her face went white.

  And suddenly Dave Harris felt very awkward, as if he were intruding on a private conversation.

  The rich were another breed. What the fuck was the use of having a concierge if he didn’t notice a woman covered in blood leaving his building? What was his purpose if he didn’t realise the front door to one of the apartments was open? Not that Detective Constable Lockwood really gave a shit. The open door just made his life easier.

  ‘So you’ve not seen Mrs Shah today?’ he asked the concierge, who was clearly shrinking with embarrassment.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I saw Dr Shah come in at four.’

  ‘But you’ve not seen him since and you didn’t know his front door was open?’

  ‘No …’

  Lockwood could tell he wanted to stick around and see what was inside the Shahs’ flat. If the hall was anything to go by, it wasn’t going to be pleasant. Ghoulish twat. Lockwood told him to go back downstairs. When he’d gone, they entered.

  Until they found the body, which was in the master bedroom, the hall was the only space that was affected. Blood on the floor, up the walls.

  Dr Shah lay face down on the floor. He’d been stabbed in the back, but it wasn’t until some time later, when SOCO arrived, that Lockwood realised the main mutilation had occurred to the doctor’s face.

  His wife, if indeed it had been his wife who had killed him, had stabbed him in both eyes.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dave Harris didn’t know Lee Arnold, but he knew of him. A Newham lad, he’d been close with DI Vi Collins when he’d been a copper at Forest Gate. Now a PI, he was working for this old Jewish bloke Eva Horvathy had told him about. And, although there wasn’t, as yet, any indication that Amber Sanders had died as a result of foul play, there was a problem. It centred around the death of a woman and the disappearance of a child back in the 1960s. The missing child was still, officially, unsolved.

  Dave waited with Lee Arnold and the two girls with him at the park gates. One of the girls’ grandfathers was coming to get the kids. Dave was looking out for DI Bateman from CID. Once the kids had gone, Lee began to walk back into the fairground.

  ‘Don’t go off anywhere, will you, Mr Arnold,’ Dave said.

  ‘I’m going to find my partner, Mrs Hakim, and Mr Levy,’ he said.

  ‘They’re with my colleague, PC Paternoster, in the tea tent. We need to talk to Mr Levy.’

  ‘He was nowhere near the girl when she had her accident,’ Lee said.

  ‘We need to talk to him,’ Dave reiterated.

  ‘He’s my client.’

  ‘Which means we may have to talk to you.’

  Dave saw Lee narrow his eyes. ‘This is about my client’s past, is it?’ he said.

  Dave didn’t reply.

  Lee Arnold said, ‘Maybe we should have a few words.’

  One live child was all Gala Sanders had ever been able to have. She’d given birth to six dead children. Only Amber had survived. And now she was gone.

  ‘Mama, I need you to stop this now,’ she said to her mother. ‘David has gone to the hospital. I need you to be here for me.’

  But Eva Horvathy wasn’t listening. Gala wasn’t even sure whether her mother knew that Amber’s body had been taken away. Looking through a pile of papers in an old hatbox, Eva was in a world of her own. It was only when Gala shouted at her that she looked up.

  ‘Mama!’

  ‘He did this!’ Eva said. ‘He encouraged her. He destroys everything he touches!’

  Gala said, ‘Nagyapa didn’t know she would end up killing herself! He loved Amber!’

  ‘Did he? Then why didn’t he protect her, eh?’ her mother said. ‘I’ll tell you, shall I, Gala?’

  ‘Oh, Mama …’ She’d heard things, crazy notions, from her mother about her grandfather for years. What her mother had against him, she didn’t know. Maybe she was mad? ‘I know I blamed him but …’

  ‘Because he is a murderer!’ Eva said.

  ‘Oh, Mama, not this …’

  ‘Yes, this,’ Eva said. ‘This I should’ve dealt with years ago. Well, now I’m going to tell the police everything. May God forgive me I left it so long!’

  DI Bateman was young, ambitious and adamant.

  ‘I want him down the station, booked in, in a cell, let him call his brief.’

  Dave Harris shook his head. ‘With respect …’

  ‘You’re going to tell me he’s old, aren’t you?’ Bateman said. ‘He’s also been accused of murder.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s what it seems,’ Dave said.

  The trouble, according to Dave, with some of the new, young CID officers were that they were permanently champing at the bit for a ‘collar’. Competitive with ordinary plods and their own, maybe going to university made them like this?

  Bateman took a swig from his bottle of water and said, ‘Explain.’

  Dave told him the edited highlights of his chat with Lee Arnold.

  When he’d finished, Bateman decided that, although SOCO were not yet finished at the accident site, he was going to have to meet with the bereaved family and Irving Levy.

  Farzana let go of Shirin’s hand.

  The WPC who took her put the cuffs around her wrists as gently as she could. But Shirin didn’t even seem to notice. Until she spoke or evidence appeared to the contrary, nobody could be certain that Shirin had killed her husband. But it seemed a safe bet.

  What Farzana and everyone else involved with Shirin had feared had come to pass. Her period had arrived. Possibly when she was home alone. God knew how she’d dealt with it. Had that been the point at which she’d lost hold of reality? Because to kill her husband, however cruel he had been, didn’t make sense. Far easier would have been to come ba
ck to the refuge. But then sense rarely had much to do with emotion.

  Had she waited for him to come home, told him and then he’d attacked her? It was difficult to see where all the blood that covered Shirin’s face and body was coming from. Maybe none of it was his? Although that was unlikely. Had he known her period had arrived, the chances were, he’d gone berserk.

  Farzana watched Shirin go and then put her head in her hands. Had Shirin known she wasn’t really pregnant all along? Or had her period simply been just late? Whatever the reason, it seemed that her husband had been less than understanding.

  And even if Shirin had killed him, Farzana couldn’t find it in her heart to condemn her. Murder was a sin but, as far as Farzana could see, Shirin had already paid for her crime upfront.

  When she was at university, Mumtaz had often played games with her fellow students. Some were board games, like Risk, while others were word games, usually played when her friends were drunk. Her favourite had always been ‘Cheap Film Titles’ where people thought up alternative cut-price titles to famous films. Things like ‘Saturday Night Light Sweat’ for ‘Saturday Night Fever’. Now squashed into a small caravan bedroom with six other people, she felt as if she was participating in a downmarket denouement of an Agatha Christie Poirot novel. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of an appropriate title.

  ‘My daughter thinks I killed her mother, but I didn’t.’

  Bela Horvathy got in before anyone else could speak. Mumtaz could see that he was old but, considering he was over ninety, he looked extremely vital.

  Eva said, ‘Now he’ll say that Ping and Pong did it. Watch him. Normally, he’ll do anything for them, except when it comes to his own skin.’

  ‘The Twins didn’t kill her either,’ the old man said.

  There were two police officers in the room; the older of the two said, ‘As I understand it, officially it was an accident.’

  ‘No it wasn’t.’

  ‘No it wasn’t,’ the old man said. ‘My daughter is right. What I think she also knows is that the woman who was my wife, wasn’t her mother.’