A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  Martin’s lips peeled back and he bared a set of brown and broken teeth. “I lost everything because of you people!” he said. “My job, my home, me kids!”

  Vi knew Martin of old and had seen and heard it all before. “So it’s nothing to do with getting your old bloke out and tossing yourself off in front of people who didn’t want to see it? All my fault? Martin, to be truthful, I couldn’t give a flying fuck what has and has not happened to you. My only concern is that you’re not wanking in public.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Good.”

  Vi hadn’t really believed deep down in her soul that Martin Gold was the same person as the flasher over on the Olympic site. Apart from anything else he was too old and, to be fair to the mystery man, all he was doing was getting his penis out. He wasn’t actually doing anything with it. Martin Gold had masturbated, he’d come at women at night in and around the East London Cemetery and he’d taken delight in ejaculating near them. He’d worn a hood and he’d frightened them and Vi had had no sympathy with him then or now.

  “So how you getting on with Len’s widow?” Vi asked. She hadn’t seen Martin since Len Blatt’s death.

  “She comes and picks up the rent. Sometimes, when it suits her, she gets some maintenance done.” Martin was still fuming. “One of the Asians said she might want to sell up, now she’s back on the stage.”

  “Must be worrying,” Vi said.

  The teeth bared again and he said, “What do you care?”

  Vi shrugged. “I don’t.” Then just to be certain she said, “Now, Martin, don’t take this the wrong way, but I need to have a bit of a poke about for a minute.”

  Martin Gold’s face blanched. “What are you looking for?” he said. “What now?”

  “Martin, mate,” Vi said, “we can do this the easy way or I can go and get a warrant. It’s up to you.”

  Once Pastor Grint and all the others at the blessing service had left Maria’s house, the comedian and Betty made eggy toast together and then sat down at the kitchen table to eat it. There was a message on the answerphone from her mother, but Maria just deleted it. She had nothing to say to her. Every so often, when Maria caught a glimpse of Betty, when she wasn’t looking, she found herself hardly able to reconcile the girl she’d once been with the woman she was now. Betty Muller had been very pretty. At school she’d had lots of boyfriends, but not, it was said, any sex. Her family had been Christians and she of course still was, although now with a different church from the one she’d gone to with her parents.

  At seventeen Betty had married a boy from her church and everyone had said that soon she’d have a baby, but she hadn’t. Betty had never had any children, and now divorced, alone, fifty and decidedly beige, she was never likely to have them. When, after reading their booklet, Maria had first gone to the Chapel of the Holy Pentecostal Fire, seeing Betty there had initially made her heart stop and then dance. She thought she’d lost her years ago.

  “I tell you, I felt like I was going crazy last night,” Maria said. She sprinkled some cinnamon over her toast and then took a bite. “I’m so grateful everyone came here to pray with me today.”

  “The church cares. That’s why Pastor Grint and the rest of us came to bless the house.”

  “I know.”

  Betty thought for a moment. “But if the cats are always there …”

  “They are! You know how anal I am about this house.”

  Betty chewed. Everything about her was small and that included her tiny mouth and little, bride-white teeth.

  “But the private detective guys couldn’t see anything on their tapes,” Maria said. She frowned. “Betty, do you think that there’s really something in what Pastor Grint says?”

  Betty’s thin face colored. “You know I do.”

  Maria put her knife and fork down on her plate. “Don’t get me wrong, I feel the peace of Christ growing in me every day of my life, but when Pastor Grint talks about demons and spiritual attack …” She raised her arms in the air and then let them drop loosely by her sides. “I don’t know what to think! Logic tells me that such things are just not possible.”

  “But Marie, you know that evil exists, it’s around us all the time. Only Jesus can deliver us from it. And until you are truly born again, your soul will be fought over by the powers of good and evil.” Maria and Betty had been best friends at school. Betty had always called her “Marie.” It was terrible that they’d lost touch for so many years. It turned out that Betty had been living less than a mile away from Maria all the time. “But Pastor Grint has cleansed this house now, for the time being.”

  “Mr. …” Lee had told her not to tell anyone his name. He’d told her not to tell anyone, apart from her mother, that she was being surveilled, but she’d told Betty almost immediately. “The private detective guy I told you about, he isn’t comfortable with the spiritual.”

  But Betty made no response.

  Demons, exorcism and possession were things that Maria was still unsure about. Her lack of belief in such things was one of the reasons why she had not as yet testified and been born again. Maria had seen Pastor Grint perform exorcisms, she’d just watched him cleanse her house. However, decades of first Catholic terror and then skepticism had left her with a nagging feeling that the people involved had to be deluded in some way. She was certain that what the pastor and the church as a whole was doing was done with good intentions but sometimes she cringed at it nevertheless. In a way, and in spite of feeling quite oppressed by him at times, Maria could see why Lee Arnold was a skeptic; such things made no sense. Except that when she found the church and saw Betty that first time and then Jesus came into her life she knew that His presence in her heart was real. His presence was changing her, making her into a better, more authentic person. He and His church were becoming part of her family—better than her family.

  Maria looked out of the kitchen window into her rain-soaked garden and Betty’s eyes followed her. “This house is beginning to feel like a prison.”

  “You miss your husband. You loved him.”

  Maria felt a tug of pain in her chest. When the word “heartache” was used in the context of loss it really did describe what happened. Her heart hurt for Len. He’d been years older than her, in no way physically attractive and he’d had terrible trouble with wind, but he’d been funny and generous, irreverent, clever, he’d loved her and he’d made her life work. He’d kept at bay the psychological demons that she knew for certain were real.

  “The memory of your husband has to be everywhere in this house,” Betty said. “When you have a good marriage you do everything together; choosing the furnishings, the decoration. I can tell that you put this place together with great care, Marie. If you feel it’s a prison then it’s a very beautiful one. You’ve been very lucky because God has given you this place to enjoy and to use for good if you so wish.”

  “Use for good?”

  Betty smiled. “It’s a big place, Marie, there are lots of things you could do with it that would help you and others. If you wanted to.”

  Maria looked from granite worktop to brushed steel fridge to star-like spotlights. Opulence. Betty lived in a rented one bedroom flat in Manor Park furnished out of second-hand shops. She had no husband, no money, no job. Betty was plain and quiet and yet her face glowed because Jesus had entered fully into her life and Maria was, if not envious, ambitious for that peace, that serenity.

  “I’ve been very lucky,” Maria said. “I should be more generous.”

  “You’ve worked very hard.” Betty put her knife and fork down and reached across the table to take one of Maria’s hands. “You’re over-strained, Marie. You need peace, a bit of time to reflect and be with Jesus and with the soul of your dear Len.”

  Maria knew that she was right. And she knew that as well as Jesus, she needed Len to be there too. Betty was very perceptive about that. She understood why Maria went to Len’s graveside as often as she did. She knew that, really, Maria wanted to be
with him.

  VIII

  What Neil was saying wasn’t anything that Lee hadn’t come across before. In fact when they’d both been in the police they’d had problems with people they’d been ordered to watch for their own protection. Most people had this desire to be completely alone from time to time, and so what Maria Peters was doing now was not out of the ordinary. She’d given the agency a list of places she visited regularly and East Ham Jewish Cemetery had been on it. Neil West, however, would rather have gone in there with her.

  “So you’re parked outside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyone else in there with her?” Lee asked.

  “There’s another woman.”

  “Visiting a grave.”

  “I guess. It’s hard to know. Jews don’t put flowers on graves, do they?”

  “No.” Fred up at the bar, mouthed at Lee. Did he want a drink? “Coke,” Lee said. “Diet.” Then back into his phone, “Clock anyone?”

  “No. Blue Ford Ka, old style, followed into Sandford Road but then headed off up toward High Street South. Got a Fiesta in front of me here but a bloke got out and walked into the house opposite. Otherwise, quiet as the proverbial. But then it would be. It’s cold, drizzling, dark. I thought these places shut up early in the winter.”

  “Usually.” The barmaid with the thalidomide arm came over and cleaned his table with her one manicured hand. Lee briefly looked up and smiled. “What did Miss Peters say to you about it?”

  “Said she needed some time alone at her husband’s grave. I said I’d follow at a distance. She wasn’t having it.”

  Lee shrugged. “You can see inside though, can’t you?”

  “Yeah, course I can see her.” Neil knew better than to actually comply with a client’s request for solitude. It was generally just whimsical. “She’s walking down the central pathway. If she starts to disappear from view, I’ll nip through the gates.”

  “Let me know when she heads back and I’ll take over when she gets home. Rung around a bit earlier and I’ve got a couple of other old faces interested in taking on some shifts.”

  “What about your new girl?”

  Old Fred put a diet Coke down in front of Lee and Lee winked at him. “I’m putting her on a new client,” Lee said to Neil. “Lady wants her teenage daughter watched. Reckons she could be in to drugs.”

  “You think that what’s-her-name is up to it?”

  “Mumtaz? Well the client’s covered, so’s her kid and so’s Mumtaz. So of all of us, she’s the one least likely to stick out like a sore thumb.”

  “Mmm. Funny, you know I never think of Muslim girls being on drugs.”

  Lee rolled his eyes. Neil was a good enough bloke but he did tend to think in stereotypes. “You wanna get out more,” he said.

  “Oh! Client slipping out of sight,” Neil said. “Call you later. Putting the phone on vibrate.”

  “OK.”

  Old Fred sat down next to Lee and smiled. “So what you done about Bob the Builder?” he asked. “He still owe you money, does he?”

  “Oh, yes,” Lee said. He didn’t look too bothered about it.

  They were joined by Fred’s mates, Harry and Wilf. All in their late seventies or early eighties, they’d known Lee’s late father and, like him, they’d been drinking in the Boleyn since the nineteen forties. Wilf, who had emphysema, rasped, “How come?”

  “How come he still owes me money or …”

  “How come I just see him walking about down Upton Park Lane,” Wilf said. “He never had a broken leg or nothing. What’s up with you, boy?”

  Lee looked into Wilf’s concerned, watery blue eyes and smiled. Even though he didn’t drink any more, this pub was his second home—he’d known it, and these old men, all his life. “But did he look worried, Wilfred?”

  “Worried?”

  “If he didn’t, he obviously hasn’t seen his missus today.”

  Harry supped his pint and said, “Tracey? Why?”

  Some young lads with skinhead haircuts barreled through the public bar doors, already pissed as parrots. Lee watched them lurch over to the bar and made sure they were polite to the barmaids before he continued.

  “I told Bob. I warned him,” Lee said. “My money this morning or there’d be consequences.”

  The old men leaned forward in their chairs, their ancient eyes big with their desire for a good old mouthful of gossip.

  Lee bent down across the table and lowered his voice. “You see, lads, Bob, as I told his Tracey, has a little bit on the side. Name of Kerry, she works out of an old container in Rainham. Entertains gentlemen callers, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh! Never!”

  “My dosh aside, in the interests of safe sex, I had to tell poor Trace,” Lee said. “Phoned her up this afternoon. She was none too happy.”

  “Don’t s’pose she was,” Harry said.

  But Fred, who’d sucked on his bottom set of dentures and furrowed his brow when Lee told him what he’d done said, “Bit of a low blow though, ain’t it, boy? Grassing on a geezer about his tart to his missus?”

  “Depends,” Lee said.

  “On what?”

  “On how many tarts a bloke actually has.”

  Wilf coughed and then spat mucus into a large, tattered handkerchief. “You ain’t telling me that Bob …”

  “Four, not counting Kerry. She’s the best of ’em,” Lee said. “All on the game. One’s as rough as fuck, looks like she hasn’t bathed for a month. Bob the Builder, my friends, will give me what he owes me because if he doesn’t I’ll tell Tracey about the others and if Tracey gets to know so will her Indian restaurant-owner boyfriend. Now he is a heavy geezer! The thought of possibly getting a dose of the clap off Tracey via Tracey’s husband’s rough old toms will not please him at all. Bob’ll work that one out quick enough.”

  “Mmm.” Wilf looked down into his pint and shook his head.

  Harry just sat saying nothing. Then Fred said, “It’s like that morning show in the East End these days, ain’t it?”

  “What morning show? What do you mean?”

  “Jeremy Kyle,” Fred said. “The whole world’s like Jeremy Kyle now, ain’t it?”

  Lee drank his Coke straight down and said, “Always has been actually, boys.” Then he smiled. “Thank God. If it wasn’t I’d be out of business.”

  The picture showed a slim young girl wearing a hijab. She was almost the same age as Shazia but she went to one of the local comprehensives. Not for her the wilder reaches of Woodford Green and the delights of Bancroft’s. Her name was Anjali and when her mother “Danielle” had come to the office she had been wearing a niqab.

  Lee had been a bit taken aback, but Mumtaz had half expected it. When she’d first spoken to the woman on the phone, she’d gathered from her tone and the fact that she whispered that she probably came from the sort of family where full veiling was not going to be a surprise. She wanted Anjali watched because she feared that the girl was getting involved with drugs.

  “Her school grades have slipped and she’s always tired now,” she’d told Mumtaz. “And she is sometimes disrespectful to me.”

  Mumtaz had, gently, tried to point out that tiredness, slipping grades and the odd bit of disrespect for her mother were really rather small crimes for a teenager to commit. When she had first met Shazia and the girl had gone on a full-scale offensive against her, it had been bad. But then Shazia had had a very good reason.

  “Anjali was always such a good girl,” her mother had continued. Then she’d added, “I don’t want her father to know.” She’d turned her veiled face to Lee. “I have some money of my own so I can pay you. Just … discretion. Please.”

  Looking at Anjali’s photograph, Mumtaz struggled not to experience an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. Her father had been so different from everybody else’s father. She’d gone to university, he’d left the covering or not covering of her head up to her. He hadn’t forbidden her from working outside his shop even tho
ugh he’d employed a good, solid dose of emotional blackmail, which had worked. Then Ahmed. But Ahmed had lied to her father, he had tricked him as surely as he had tricked and cheated everyone.

  From the sound of it, Anjali was just being a teenager. Her family were religious and had high standards and so they saw what was quite natural in a girl of her age as worryingly divergent—maybe. Mumtaz had thought that Shazia’s crazy tantrums were just teenage angst allied to the inevitable protest a child would make at the prospect of a new mother coming into its life. And Shazia with her fashionable clothes, her private school and her every material whim catered for had looked like a very typical spoiled little princess. It was only when Mumtaz actually witnessed Shazia’s pain that she discovered the truth.

  Mumtaz bit down on any tears she may have left inside her and concentrated on Anjali. The child was to be her first real case out in the field and part of her relished it. Lee Arnold was trusting her to put into practice techniques she had only observed and talked about—and he was going to pay her a bit more to do it. It was a pity that she hadn’t been able to carry on with the Maria Peters job but she also saw the sense in it. Unlike Lee and Neil she would not look out of place waiting outside school gates, following young girls along the street.

  Downstairs she heard the front door open and then close.

  “Shazia!” she called down. “You OK?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  She wanted to ask her whether or not she’d seen anyone, any man wearing silver trainers lurking around the house, whether anyone had followed her back from the bus stop. But she didn’t. She’d warned her, now she had to leave it at that. To do anything else would raise the girl’s suspicions and Mumtaz didn’t want that.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” Mumtaz said. She put Anjali’s picture back inside her file and then went over to her bedroom window. It was dark but by the light of the street lamp outside, she could see that there was no one out there. If not with words, she had warned him to go on his way and she prayed with all of her soul that he had heeded the pleading in her eyes last time she’d seen him. He was not wanted. He never could be. She just wanted to forget about him, for both their sakes.