Read An Act of Kindness: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 2) for Free Online Page A

fortunate that he didn’t hit his head on a gravestone as he fell towards the ground. For a moment he was grateful just to be conscious and unhurt. But when he saw what he had tripped over, he wasn’t so sure. Majid jumped to his feet.
    *
    ‘My Frank just texted to say the coppers are up at the old Jewish Cemetery,’ the barman, who Sean Rogers called ‘Queer Teddy’, said.
    ‘So?’ Sean said, without concern.
    Teddy went on cleaning the table and made no comment. Mumtaz, watching them all, slid her eyes over to connect with Lee’s, when she saw Sean Rogers turn around and address him.
    ‘I bet you had a few call-outs on the old Plashet boneyard back in the day, didn’t you, Lee?’
    Up until that point Sean hadn’t acknowledged that Lee waseven on his radar. Lee knew that Sean liked to do his creepy, gangster act and he was good at it – just like his brother.
    ‘Once or twice,’ he said.
    ‘What you doing in this shit hole?’ Sean asked as Teddy looked theatrically offended. ‘Who you watching?’
    ‘Can’t a bloke go into a pub and have a drink?’ Lee said.
    ‘Ah, but you don’t drink, do you, Lee,’ Sean said. ‘Diet Pepsi, nectar of the recovering alkie, down the old Boleyn, that’s you.’
    ‘Maybe I needed a change. Saw your brother in the Boleyn a while ago. Now that’s not his stomping ground, or yours.’
    The Asian man sitting opposite Sean stood up. Sean’s attention switched from Lee to him.
    ‘What’s up?’
    The man shrugged. ‘Bit poorly.’ He didn’t look it.
    Sean’s cold eyes immediately lit on Wendy Dixon’s face.
    ‘Mmm. Bit 1970s I suppose,’ he said.
    The Asian man walked out of the pub without looking back.
    Mumtaz watched as Sean Rogers leaned across the table towards Wendy.
    ‘I don’t think that nouveau hippy look is working for you, darlin’,’ he said loudly.
    Wendy stared down into her drink. It seemed that Sean Rogers had lined Wendy up for the Asian but he hadn’t been too impressed. Sean had either been selling or giving Wendy to the other man, who had clearly refused his ‘gift’.
    Mumtaz saw Sean reach across the table and take one of Wendy’s wrists in his hand. He squeezed, digging his nails into her flesh. It must have hurt her, but Wendy didn’t make a sound.

5
    Detective Inspector Violet Collins was knackered. She’d been in bed when she’d got the call to go out to the Plashet Jewish Cemetery on High Street North. It was the first time for months that it’d been just her, the telly, a ready meal and a packet of Marlboro, all in together for an early night. But that was just a distant fantasy now. She looked through the rain at her DS, Tony Bracci.
    ‘A regular stiff you told me about, but what’s this?’ she said.
    She pointed to a skeleton that lay beside the body of a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties.
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Bracci. ‘Maybe he was grave robbing?’
    It was a possibility. The dead man, with his straggly hair, torn clothes and filthy, food-caked beard looked rather less like a white supremacist and more like a crusty eco-warrior. They didn’t tend to dig up the dead in Vi’s experience. She looked around the old cemetery, trying to remember where her dad’s mum was buried.
    ‘Hardly the Valley of the Kings, is it,’ she said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘So where’s the bloke who found the body?’ she asked. The rain was relentless, and looking through it at Tony Bracci’s round, habitually disappointed face made Vi squint.
    ‘Over here.’ Tony led her towards one of the high brick walls that enclosed the cemetery. A group of coppers stood there beside two men. ‘He’s called Majid Islam. He lives on Shelley Avenue. Always making complaints about people mucking around in the cemetery.’
    ‘I know him, this place backs on to his garden.’ As she drew closer, Vi saw a tired looking middle-aged Asian man with a blanket round his shoulders. Beside him, being held by a couple of