Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online Page A

part in one of its enrichment programmes.
    ‘Shazia!’
    From the look of it, most of the china had already been packed. Mumtaz hugged the girl. When she’d first married Shazia’s father, Ahmet Hakim, the girl had been resentful of Mumtaz. But when Ahmet had started to sexually abuse Mumtaz, Shazia, abused by him herself for years, realized that she had an ally. And after Ahmet’s death they had become even closer.
    ‘Thank you so much, darling. I was dreading the china.’
    Shazia wrapped a delicate teapot in newspaper and put it into a crate. ‘Well, I think that’s it,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Amma?’
    Mumtaz sat down on the nearest comfy chair. ‘You’re an angel.’
    Shazia laughed. ‘You don’t know what I want in return yet,’ she said.
    Mumtaz shook her head. ‘Whatever it is, you can have it. And yes, I would like some tea, please.’
    ‘OK.’ Shazia began to walk towards the kitchen. But then she stopped. ‘Oh, some man called today.’
    Mumtaz turned to look at her. ‘What man?’
    ‘Quite old, Asian. I didn’t know him. He asked me to tell him where we were moving to.’
    Suddenly Mumtaz’s welcome home turned sour. A ‘quite old’ Asian man could, possibly, be Zahid Sheikh, Naz’s father and head of the clan that had beggared her husband through his weakness for gambling – and who had killed him. After his death, Ahmet’s debt to the Sheikhs had become Mumtaz’s and she’d had to sell the house to pay it. Shazia knew nothing of this. Mumtaz, controlling her voice, said, ‘And did you tell him?’
    ‘No!’ Shazia said. ‘Of course not. I didn’t know him. Why would I?’ Then she went into the kitchen to make the tea.
    Mumtaz breathed more easily again. She was under no illusion – the Sheikhs weren’t going to leave her alone any time soon. Naz had made it clear that he wanted Shazia while she was still young and Mumtaz knew she’d have to pay, one way or another, to keep her daughter safe. But she didn’t want to make anything easy for the Sheikhs. No doubt they’d find out where she’d moved to soon enough.
    Mumtaz remembered that she hadn’t called Lee to tell him about her interview at the hospital. She took her mobile out of her handbag and brought up his number. When he answered she said, ‘I start tomorrow.’

4
     
    A man who was tall, broad and whose face was smoke-dried to the colour of dust, was crying. ‘They’ had been flying over in planes and dropping his father’s cremated ashes on the hospital. Why weren’t the staff doing anything about it?
    Shirley, who had been trying to make eye contact with this service user to no avail, said, ‘Terry, I know it’s hard to accept, but no one can stop planes flying.’
    ‘They can stop them dropping ashes! But they keep on doing it! Year in, year out!’ He looked as if someone had poured ashes over his head; grey hair and face, agonized grey eyes.
    Shirley let him cry. Sitting in silence beside her, Mumtaz wondered what Shirley was going to say next. The man was in the grip of a delusion that was clearly real to him. She knew what she would say to him, with her text-book knowledge, but what would Shirley do?
    ‘This issue of your father’s ashes is very distressing to you, Terry,’ Shirley said. ‘And I also know that it is really happening – for you.’
    He looked up.
    ‘But it isn’t happening that way for me or for the other staff here,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why that is but …’
    ‘I’m not mad.’ His voice, if not his face, was wounded. All hysteria had gone.
    ‘Nobody’s saying that you are,’ Shirley reassured him. ‘But sometimes, Terry, we all have to accept that the way we see the world is not necessarily the way other people see it.’
    ‘The pills they give you here don’t help either,’ Terry said. ‘I don’t take them. Make you mad, they do! Look at all these barmy patients in here! Couldn’t see a plane if their lives depended on it. Staff are