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

morning?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Good. Then just go about your business,’ Mumtaz said.
    ‘I will.
Ma’is salama
.’
    Although Mumtaz knew that meant ‘goodbye’ in Arabic she responded in English, just as she did with her English-speaking Bangladeshi clients. That she was a Muslim of Asian heritage was helpful sometimes in her work but it was also incidental. If she was to be free from accusations of bias she had to keep a professional distance.
    After she put the phone down, Mumtaz looked at her mobile again and switched it back on. Naz Sheikh hadn’t left a message. He’d only called to wind her up and she could do without that. At the weekend she’d have to load the car up with stuff from the garage to take down to the tip in Barking. It was a dirty job thatshe wasn’t looking forward to; the last thing she needed was Naz or any other member of his family hassling her for her new address. That, or some exhortation for her to be a ‘better’ Muslim woman. As if she were some sort of whore. And coming from a sexual predator like him! But then the Sheikhs and their ilk had double standards, not unlike Salwa el Shamy. Her reference to the Yemeni preacher who urged the faithful to kill unbelievers as a ‘holy man’ had not been lost on Mumtaz.
    *
    Ken and Bette Rivers’ flat occupied the lower half of an Edwardian house on a street just off the eastern side of the seafront, known as Southend’s Golden Mile. It sounded grand but although it had been tidied up in recent years, Lee could easily see it hadn’t changed that much. For a start there were still all the slot machine places with their promises of easy money and cheap teddy bears. Pubs he remembered his dad getting plastered in – ruining everyone’s day – didn’t seem to have changed at all. The Foresters, the Cornucopia and, of course, the Hope Hotel which, back when he’d been a copper, some Essex plod had told him used to rent out rooms by the hour. Then there was the smell. A combination of frying onions, sugar and chips.
    Sandra’s casino was at the other end of the seafront, on the western side of the famous ‘longest pier in the world’. A much tidier and more sedate area, the western seafront had once been famous for its ornamental gardens on slopes known as ‘the cliffs’. But in recent years the land had become unstable and vast areas of the gardens had been cordoned off as too dangerous for the public. But it was still preferable to the Golden Mile.
    Lee Arnold lit a cigarette and then stared down a kid who had been on the verge of asking him for one. The kid changed hismind. Lee walked past the Rivers’ flat, put his cigarette out and then wandered into a small cafe at the end of the road. On one side its windows looked out to sea, while on the other they faced the house Lee was watching. He sat down at the fixed plastic table that gave him the best view of the street and, when the waitress came to ask him for his order, he said, ‘Cup of tea and a plate of chips, please.’
    Susan hadn’t given him so much as a glass of water when he’d turned up at her flat half an hour earlier. She’d been in a bad mood about something and so he’d just dropped his bag in the bedroom, she’d given him her spare key and he’d left. He’d asked her if she really did want him to stay and she’d said that she did, but Lee wondered. Had she gone off him? Met someone else?
    Lee looked at some of his fellow diners. Seaside towns always had a selection of easily recognisable types. By the front door was the regulation alcoholic, age indecipherable, talking to a man so thin he had to be a junkie. An old woman in a battered Persian lamb hat lifted a transparent cup of frothy coffee to her crinkled lips with purple and brown veined hands, while a young couple with a baby in a buggy made roll-ups in preparation for leaving. A middle-aged woman, who could only be a prostitute, pulled her V-necked t-shirt up a little to hide her cleavage. Off-duty, she