Free An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) by Barbara Nadel

local paper. He’d gone to the newsagents in Green Street and bought the
Newham Recorder
but there was no mention of bones being found in the Plashet Graveyard. There was just a sad little story about a man called John Sawyer, who’d been found stabbed in the back on Saturday night. He’d served in Afghanistan apparently.He was only twenty-seven, had been homeless and mentally ill and no-one had given a damn. A few of Lee’s old mates from Iraq had ended up like that. He hadn’t. He’d joined the police, lost his marriage and become addicted to booze and painkillers. Serving one’s country was an honour that came at a price, Lee thought as he watched a cold rain lash down on Green Street.
    *
    There was no picture of John Sawyer in the newspaper, but Nasreen knew that it was him. His age seemed about right, he’d been a soldier in Afghanistan and he’d been homeless. It had to be John. Abdullah came in from the garden, soaked through.
    ‘The guttering needs doing,’ he said.
    Water had suddenly poured through the open bathroom window.
    ‘Oh.’ She put the newspaper down.
    ‘Anything in the
Recorder
?’ he asked.
    ‘Not much,’ she said. She should have said
the homeless man who used to live in our garden is dead,
but she couldn’t. If Abdullah found out she’d known about a man living in their garden he’d subject her to protracted interrogation. If he knew she’d fed John, his questioning would be furious and, she feared, without end. His jealousy of other men, in her experience, knew no limits.
    Soon after they’d married, one of her cousins, Rafiq, had come to stay. Rafiq’s father had spent a lot of time working away from home. His mother was dead, and Rafiq had often stayed at Nasreen’s house when they were children. He was like a brother to her. As soon as he arrived they’d reverted to how they’d always been with each other – mucking around, joking, laughing loudly. Then Rafiq had tickled her, just for a laugh.
    There was nothing in it, but Abdullah hadn’t taken it that way.He’d pulled them apart and then he’d hit Rafiq, hard. Neither Nasreen nor her parents had known what to do. None of them had seen Rafiq since.
    As Abdullah walked past her into the living room, he briefly touched her shoulder. It was an affectionate touch and she wanted to turn to him, kiss him. But she daren’t because by this time she was crying. John was dead and no-one knew why – but she feared her own terrible thoughts. Surely, even if Abdullah had found John in the garden, whatever had happened she as his wife would have been the first to know? Nasreen’s next feeling was one of shame. Whatever else he was, Abdullah was her husband and she owed him trust and loyalty.

8
    ‘Where’d you hear about a skeleton, Arnold?’ Vi Collins asked Lee as they sat out in the cold in the garden of the Golden Fleece. Lee had had the morning off to take Chronus to the vet – he’d been off his food for a few days. He’d met Vi as he was going out to his car after depositing the mynah bird back in the flat. She’d offered him a drink and the Golden Fleece was the nearest boozer. He’d taken her up on her offer and then he’d asked her, naming no names, about the weird little bit of intel Cheryl the alkie had given him outside the Boleyn, about a skeleton found with the body of John Sawyer in the Plashet Jewish Cemetery.
    ‘I just heard,’ Lee said.
    ‘Well, you must’ve heard from some sort of nutter,’ Vi said.
    ‘So there isn’t any skeleton?’
    ‘I chose my words very carefully, Arnold,’ Vi said. ‘I talked about “a” skeleton, not “the” skeleton.’
    ‘So you’re saying that the whole skeleton thing—’
    ‘“A” skeleton,’ Vi repeated. ‘“A” as in “a”.’
    Even though Cheryl the alkie was a notoriously unreliable source of information, Lee could read Vi Collins and so her inability to
actually
answer his question by talking about ‘the’ skeleton was telling. Somewhere a