Out of the Ashes: A DI Maya Rahman novel

PRAISE FOR VICKY NEWHAM

‘An impressive debut … the multicultural community of Brick Lane is sensitively evoked and the heroine is ultra-hip’

Daily Mail

‘The first in a promising series … a female detective who has to negotiate cultural conflicts on a daily basis’

The Sunday Times

‘Slick, fresh and current’

Mel Sherratt

‘A remarkable portrayal of crime in modern, multicultural Britain’

Paul Finch

‘DI Maya Rahman is the heroine I’ve waited a lifetime for’

Alex Caan

‘A sensational debut; a current, timely police procedural featuring a DI like none you’ve ever seen’

Karen Dionne

‘A terrific start to an important new series’

Vaseem Khan

‘[DI Maya Rahman] is wonderfully complex and human, and the tension ratchets up nicely’

James Oswald

‘Clever, passionate and hugely thought provoking’

Lizlovesbook.com

VICKY NEWHAM grew up in West Sussex and taught Psychology in East London for many years, before moving to Whitstable in Kent. She studied for an MA in Creative Writing at Kingston University, where she graduated with distinction. She is currently working on the next instalment in the DI Rahman series.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Vicky Newham 2019

Vicky Newham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008240738

For my father, who I miss every day.

Contents

Cover

PRAISE

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

FRIDAY

Rosa, 2 p.m.

Maya, 2.30 p.m.

Maya, 3.30 p.m.

Maya, 3.45 p.m.

Dan, 3.45 p.m.

Maya, 4 p.m.

Maya, 4.30 p.m.

Maya, 5.30 p.m.

Maya, 6 p.m.

Maya, 6.15 p.m.

6.30 p.m.

Maya, 7.30 p.m.

Maya, 7.45 p.m.

Brick Lane, 1984 – Maya

SATURDAY

Maya, 7 a.m.

Maya, 8.30 a.m.

Maya, 8.45 a.m.

Maya, 9.15 a.m.

Maya, 10 a.m.

10.30 a.m.

Dan, 11 a.m.

Maya, midday

Maya, 12.30 p.m.

Maya, 1 p.m.

Maya, 1.30 p.m.

Dan, 2.30 p.m.

Dan, 3 p.m.

Maya, 3.30 p.m.

Maya, 4.30 p.m.

Maya, 5.30 p.m.

Dan, 6 p.m.

Maya, 6.45 p.m.

Maya, 7.30 p.m.

Maya, 8.30 p.m.

Dan, 9.30 p.m.

Maya, 10 p.m.

Maya, 10.45 p.m.

11.30 p.m.

Maya, 11.30 p.m.

Maya, midnight

SUNDAY

Rosa, 7 a.m.

Brick Lane, 1984 – Maya

Maya, 8.30 a.m.

9 a.m.

Maya, 9.30 a.m.

Maya, 11 a.m.

Dan, 12.30 p.m.

Maya, 12.30 p.m.

Dan, 2.30 p.m.

Maya, 5 p.m.

Maya, 9 p.m.

Feldman’s Newsagent’s, Brick Lane, 1989 – Maya

MONDAY

8 a.m.

Maya, 8.30 a.m.

Maya, 9 a.m.

Dan, 10.30 a.m.

Maya, 10.30 a.m.

Dan, 11.15 a.m.

Maya, 11.15 a.m.

Maya, midday

Maya, 1 p.m.

Dan, 1.55 p.m.

2 p.m.

Maya, 3 p.m.

Maya, 4 p.m.

Maya, 6 p.m.

Maya, 7 p.m.

Maya, 8 p.m.

Maya, 8.45 p.m.

Maya, 10 p.m.

Maya, 10.30 p.m.

TUESDAY

Dan, 1 a.m.

Maya, 7.30 a.m.

Maya, 9 a.m.

Maya, 10.30 a.m.

Maya, 11.30 a.m.

Maya, 12.30 p.m.

Maya, 2.30 p.m.

Maya, 4 p.m.

Maya, 5 p.m.

WEDNESDAY

Maya, 8 a.m.

Maya, 9 a.m.

Maya, 10 a.m.

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

FRIDAY

Rosa, 2 p.m.

Rosa Feldman stood at the door of her Brick Lane newsagent’s, staring out at the street she’d known since she was four. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. It was the shop opposite, run by the young Lithuanian couple. Since first thing this morning, the lights had been off and the shutters down. Initially, she was relieved that for once, the ugly neon sign, with its air of Margate or Blackpool, wasn’t flashing outside her bedroom window, but as the morning progressed, she felt increasingly uneasy.

It wasn’t like them at all.

She couldn’t recall ever seeing the shop closed in the daytime.

A tap on the glass snapped Rosa back into the afternoon. It was Mr Walker from the off-licence a few doors down. He shouted a cheery greeting and waved as he passed the window. Regular as clockwork, off to get chips for tea. Rosa raised her hand to return the gesture, but the pain in her wrists and knuckles bit again. Damned arthritis.

Mr Walker’s knock was usually her reminder to think about their meal. Today was Friday after all. But without Józef, the Sabbath meal wasn’t the same and she didn’t bother with the rituals any more. In the last year, she’d lost weight and clothes hung off her spare frame. What was the point of lighting candles when there was only one of you? She’d steam a plate of yesterday’s chicken and potatoes. That would do her. Fortunately, she didn’t have to go far to get home, just upstairs to the flat, even if it was still freezing at this time of year.

Over the dusty window display, two men were putting a new shop sign up where Rosenberg’s jewellers used to be. Work had been going on for weeks, and it looked like the place was nearly ready to open. Alchemia, it said. A swanky new Polish bar by the looks of it, slap bang next-door to Mr Hamid’s curry house. He wasn’t going to be happy. So much had changed in Brick Lane since she and her family had arrived, and life moved so fast on the other side of the window, it made Rosa dizzy. The pace was relentless and the change uncompromising. Inside the shop, though, she felt safe. Change there was slow and predictable. Above her head, by the door, the fan heater droned noisily and made little impact on the chilly air, but she didn’t mind. It had always done that. And she barely noticed the crumbling plaster of the ground floor walls, or the mildew which clung to ceiling corners like a nasty rash.

Her thoughts slid back to the shop over the road. The place was usually open all hours of the day and night, selling its fancy five-quid soups to whoever could afford them. She had no objection to people earning a living, but her parents would be turning in their graves. They’d survived the Ghetto on two hundred calories a day. When they left Warsaw, and arrived in London, it was the handouts from the Jewish soup kitchen in Brune Street that kept them alive. It was extraordinary to think that what had been humble subsistence for many families was now a fad-food. She’d been over for a spy at the menu, of course, when they were shut. Apart from some matzo ball soup, she couldn’t find much she fancied and didn’t know what most of it was, let alone how to pronounce it. Keen-war, or something, a youth with a bicycle and a dog had told Rosa.

She sighed. She missed her old neighbours. Those were Sabbath meals to look forward to. They were exactly how her mother described Warsaw before the war. Mrs Blum from the bagel shop would make the challah. Rich, eggy and sweet. It had been ages since Rosa had felt one of those in her hands, soft and warm, in its pretty braid shape. The Altmans would bring the wine. The Posners, candles. And the Rosenbergs, the jewellers, always came with freshly made kugel.

But now her parents were dead, and all her Jewish neighbours were either dead too or had moved away.

Except Rosa.

And there was that feeling again, a gnawing emptiness, a sense that life had moved on without her. It was so unsettling. Every fibre of her being was exhausted by the continual need to think about whether to follow her compatriots out of the East End and into the London suburbs.

The sound of voices jolted her back into the present.

Yelling.

Music.

Outside in the street, a thumping bass beat started up. Tremors vibrated through the shop, and a booming noise invaded the silence of her thoughts. Yobbos, probably, spitting everywhere and pumping out music from one of those dreadful sound-systems. They’d pass in a minute.

But they didn’t.

The music got louder and louder, and – oh, typical – the group had stopped outside Rosa’s shop. All guffaws, swearing, floppy hair and hoodies. More voices, bellowing and cheering, and one by one, people were joining them. What on earth was going on? On a Friday afternoon, from lunchtime onwards, she was used to the steady trickle of people down Brick Lane, getting ready for a night on the tiles and a curry, but it was unusual to see so many people together. She edged over to the corner of the shop window to get a better view. The music had changed, and one by one people pulled black bandanas into masks, over their mouths and noses, and were dancing, if jabbing a finger in the air and screaming counted as dancing these days. Teenagers, by the look of them. Some younger. She wasn’t very good at judging age, and they all wore such similar clothes, but she’d put money on some of them not being a day over ten.

Rosa pressed her nose against the pane of glass. Outside, the street hummed with joy. There was an innocence to their dancing, even if the masks were a bit scary. And they weren’t doing any harm, were they? She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She used to know all the kids round here; knew their families by name, but none of this lot were familiar. There were at least ten of them, dancing in the street, throwing themselves about like acrobats, bending, leaping, twirling each other around. For a moment, Rosa was reminded of the tea room dances she and Józef used to go to before Agnieszka and Tomasz were born. They’d save for weeks, get dolled up in their best clothes. Oh, how much fun they’d been.

There were more than twenty of them now, maybe thirty. Someone was lighting sparklers and passing them round for the kids. She adored sparklers. And before she knew it, her fingers pulled the door handle and she was outside, the bell dinging shut behind her. The sulphurous smell set light to her dulled senses and she felt the day’s irritation shake itself from her shoulders. She was a kid again, at crisp November bonfires and balmy mid-summer street parties, with people passing sparklers round.

Rosa cleared her throat.

Coughed.

Her lungs weren’t good these days, weakened by years of a poorly heated flat, the damp shop walls, and Józef’s cigarette smoke.

She joined the throng of passers-by who were huddled, mesmerised by the dancing. Was it a student gathering? She was puzzled. Who was in charge? She couldn’t see any organisers or anyone giving instructions, and had no idea where the music was coming from. People were merging with the group of their own accord and encouraging others to do the same. They all looked so carefree.

The music brought a smile to Rosa’s cold lips. Her heel began to tap and she was lost to nostalgia. It was such a relief to forget the pain and drudgery of the last year. To forget her arthritis and money worries. Was that Lulu and ‘Shout’? Her heart leaped. Many a time she and Józef had danced to that tune. Her mind was flooded with memories of all the occasions when they’d danced together, his warm hand in the small of her back, guiding her forwards, the other clasping hers, keeping her safe. She felt a lump in her throat. They were glorious memories, even if they were now tainted by the agony of loss. It had only been a year and she still missed him so much.

A waltz kicked in, floaty and dramatic. Initially, it had been youngsters dancing but now it was people of all ages, lured over by the infectious atmosphere of Brick Lane on a chilly April afternoon. Hearing the waltz start, a Sikh man checked his turban and, with a huge grin, he clasped the hands of a woman in a navy-blue trench coat. She was giggling like a schoolgirl, a small flat bag diagonally across her body, her head tilted back, carefree and stunned, as though she hadn’t had so much fun in ages. Rosa guessed the woman was about her age. Perhaps she was a widow too?

Rosa’s hips started to sway, and she was tempted to go over and join in. What was she thinking? She was being silly. She couldn’t. Who would mind the shop while she was cavorting in the street?

Another crowd of youths piled in, hee-hawing and smoking, in their thin cotton clothing and baseball shoes. Some with their bottoms hanging out of their trousers, others in drainpipe jeans. Didn’t they feel the cold? Several more children were in tow. Why weren’t they all at school? Before Rosa knew it, one of them had taken her hand and led her towards the group. Elvis’ crooning tones wafted down the street and once again Rosa’s spirits soared. The teenagers looked so funny, impersonating the rock ’n’ roll moves of ‘All Shook Up’. It was the most fun she’d had on a Friday afternoon since . . .

Józef would have enjoyed this. ‘Come on, Rosa,’ he would have said in his calm, decisive voice, and he’d have locked the shop, led her out into the street and begun whirling her around with that boyish grin of his.

A quick head count told her there were about fifty people dancing now and a good twenty more hanging around. The street whiffed of whacky-backy. Rosa had forgotten her nagging joints and aching legs; the grimy shelves with mounting dust; the delivery boxes she couldn’t carry. For a few sweet moments, she’d stopped feeling sick to death of the damn shop, of book-keeping and fretting over decisions. She didn’t care about any of it anymore. All she wanted was—

A loud splitting sound tore through the air, followed by a series of cracks and bangs. Rosa gasped as orange flames burst out of the top floor windows of the shop opposite, and billowed upwards. Swirling streams of black smoke inked the pale sky. Fire raged behind the first-floor windows, and the ground floor shop was filled with smoke and flames. She cried out in pain as acrid fumes hit her lungs, forcing her to clamp her hand over her mouth. Everyone was shouting and running for cover as burning timber peeled away from windows. Screams pierced the air as lengths of wood and red-hot embers rained down on the crowd below. Rosa’s legs were like jelly and she felt dizzy. She stumbled over something on the ground in front of her and lurched forwards. She made out a woman, clutching her arm.

‘Help,’ came the agonised cry at Rosa’s feet. ‘Please help me.’

Panic engulfed Rosa, and she was transported back to the sensory onslaught of the Warsaw Ghetto, to primitive memories of endless screaming, to the cacophony of bombs and blasts and gunshots. From behind, someone shoved her out of the way and she stumbled forwards. All around her, people were coughing, retching and staggering, scarves and hands clasped over their mouths, desperate to escape the blaze. The air was cloying. Putrid. She was plunged into blind terror, realising she could die. This wasn’t Poland, and it wasn’t the end of the war, but she had to get away from the fire and ring 999 before someone died.

As the blaze ripped through the roof, smoke continued to spiral upwards into the sky. Rosa staggered blindly towards the blue door of her shop, to the step and doorway, arms groping ahead for something to grab. The fumes bit at her lungs and she was gasping for air so much she was retching. Finally, her hands grabbed the handle. She used all her weight to heave the door open and stumbled inside, pushing it shut behind her as quickly as she could.

She sucked in some air.

It was like breathing through needles.

She had to get to the phone in the back room. Stands and magazine racks flashed past her as she lurched towards the till, gasping for breath and snatching for a hold. She hauled her way round the counter, head spinning, and grabbed the phone receiver from the wall. Her eyes were streaming.

Keep blinking, she told herself.

Breathe.

She tried to calm herself; to rub away the tears that the fumes had produced; to steady her shaking hands and press the buttons. What should she say? Was it terrorists? Had there been an explosion?

Just say FIRE.

Rosa felt her head starting to spin. Lights flashed, dots appeared and she went floppy. Her mind slipped sideways and everything stopped.

Maya, 2.30 p.m.

I scraped my scruffy hair into a ponytail and took a deep breath. It was the first moment’s peace in the MIT room since seven this morning. I opened the email app on my phone and scrolled down to the one from Forensic Services with ‘Mr K A Rahman’ in the subject line. The message had dropped into my private inbox moments earlier. My finger was poised, ready to click, when Dougie’s advice popped into my mind. ‘If you’re going to do this, you need to be prepared for all possible outcomes,’ he’d said.

Was I?

I wasn’t sure.

I’d given up trying to find out what had happened to Dad. We’d all accepted he was dead, until a year ago when Mum started saying he’d visited her. And now it seemed like he might be alive after all.

‘Emergency services have been on the blower, eh.’ Dan’s Australian accent cut through my thoughts. Never one to enter a room slowly, he lobbed his keys on the desk, curved his athletic frame down on the seat next to me and whacked the space bar on his computer. The impact made my desk shake.

I grunted my disapproval and tucked my phone back in my pocket. ‘What about?’ After eighteen months of working with Dan, I still found some of his behaviour—

‘If you stop texting your boyfriend, I’ll tell you.’ He faced me, his hazel eyes red-rimmed and puffy. ‘Listen to this. First response has flagged up the smell of accelerant.’ He pressed ‘play’ on the recording on his phone.

‘Poleece?’ The woman’s voice was shrill. A heavy accent. ‘My husband is in the fire in Brick Lane. I think someone’s tried to kill him.’ Her words came out in snatches. There was a female voice in the background. It sounded like the person was prompting her. ‘I think someone’s murdered him.’

‘Shit.’ I searched Dan’s face for a reaction, but it was its standard pallid hue. ‘Do we know who made the call?’

‘Can’t trace it. Cell site data places the phone in East Ham but it’s an unregistered mobile. Goes straight to voicemail and there’s no personalised message.’

‘Is there a fire in Brick Lane?’

‘Yeah. Massive one. Uniform are there now with the fire brigade. Here.’ He passed me a transcript of the call. ‘No CID yet though.’

‘“My husband is in the fire” and “I think someone has tried to kill him”? We’d better get over there. I’ll tell Superintendent Campbell we’re going to check it out. What’s the shop?’

‘New place.’ Dan checked the incident log. ‘The Brick Lane Soup Company.’

‘You’re kidding?’ I stared at him. ‘That’s where the Jewish bagel shop used to be. Developers bought it a couple of years ago. There was a real hoo-ha.’ I could vividly picture the freshly cooked salt beef and bagels that had once sat in the window. I grabbed my jacket. ‘Come on. Let’s get over there.’

Minutes later, we were zig-zagging along the A13 from Limehouse, in the clank and clatter of the afternoon traffic. Lorries and red buses belched out choking fumes into the watery April sunlight.

In Brick Lane now, and on foot, the blue lights from the emergency services vehicles barely cut through the black smog which hung over the area. As we approached the street, heading north, discombobulated voices echoed through the haze. Two motorcycle responders tore past us, sirens blaring and blue lights flashing. Dan’s stride quickened, and I broke into a jog to keep up, past the takeaways of my childhood, the barber’s and money shops.

Up ahead, it was a scene of devastation. Smoke caught in my throat and I fished in my pocket for a tissue to cover my mouth and nose. I made out a terrace of three-storey buildings. Here, parts of the roof hung precariously over the shop I’d known since I was a child. Torrents of water were gushing down the street, and spray and fizz had sent puffs of steam into the atmosphere.

A few yards away, the liveried news crew vans were in a cluster, and their staff were frantically assembling satellite dishes, gangly tripods, panels of bright lights, video cameras and sound equipment. The BBC, Sky and ITV reporters were shouting into microphones over the noise of the water pump.

Carly, one of the Sky reporters, had just begun live broadcasting.

‘ . . . here in Brick Lane, it’s a scene of utter carnage. Earlier this afternoon, at around two thirty, emergency services were inundated with calls about a fire in the shop behind me.’ She stopped and pointed. ‘Many callers mentioned music and people dancing in the street before the blaze began. Locals are worried that this might be a tragic case of arson.’ Carly paused. ‘Unusually, it appears that the shop was closed today and . . . ’

We’d arrived at the red and white fire tape now. Outside the cordon, I counted four ambulances. Blue-light staff were escorting people with injuries and burns away from the fumes and into a mobile phone repair shop. Here, paramedics and ambulance staff were triaging care needs, dispensing first aid and carrying out emergency treatments. In the Indian restaurant next-door, uniformed officers were collecting contact details from passers-by and had begun basic interviews.

Dan and I hurried over to the uniformed police officer who was guarding the scene. ‘I’m DI Rahman. This is DS Maguire. Limehouse.’ While he added our names to the log, I told him about the woman’s call to 999. ‘She thinks her husband’s been murdered in the fire. Sounds extremely scared.’