A Private Business

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A Private Business Page 31

by Barbara Nadel


  “So what? How do you know that?”

  “So I think,” Vi said, “it’s very possible that Reverend Manyika may well tell us a story that doesn’t quite fit with Matthias’s confession.”

  “No he won’t.” Iekanjika narrowed his eyes. Vi noticed that Mr. Riordan appeared nervous.

  “Why not?” Vi asked.

  Iekanjika didn’t answer.

  “Because you can call on some hard nuts back in Harare to come here and do him in?” She leaned forward and said, “I know exactly who and what you are, Iekanjika. And unless you start telling me the truth I’m going to have to think about handing you over to some people who are expert at finding out just what kind of hold those involved in promoting, shall we say, the interests of their nation to the detriment of their own people here in the UK, actually have over those they claim to help and ‘enlighten.’”

  “Matthias Chibanda confessed, he killed Jacob Sitole.” He laughed. “This is ridiculous!”

  “Oh he killed Jacob, all right,” Vi said, “but he didn’t do it for Jacob’s phone. He didn’t do it because he wanted to—those boys were friends. He did it to keep you safe from discovery, Pastor. Matthias isn’t a bright boy, as you know, and so he told his mate Jacob about how you and Grint were going to get a load of cash off one of Grint’s parishioners. But then you found out, didn’t you? Sadly for you, by that time Jacob had already told Reverend Manyika. Now if you were not an anti-opposition agent for your country …”

  “So you go to your Reverend Manyika and you ask him then,” Iekanjika said arrogantly. “He will reiterate what I have said today. He will retract what he said in my house when, apparently, you were listening. Trust me.”

  XXXIV

  The body of Leonard Blatt was exhumed exactly one week later. Vi Collins spent a night out with what some back at the station called the Ghouls, the forensic scientists, in East Ham Jewish cemetery. They found the tiny bundle of bones just where Maria had said they would be, inside what remained of Leonard’s suit jacket. It had been full term, so the boffins said, although exactly how it had died was less obvious. But its spine had been broken at some point.

  Vi wandered the sad, wet cemetery and wondered what Maria’s girl would have been like if she’d let her live. She’d be over thirty. The child of a trusting youngster and a manipulative priest. Father Fernandez was dead now, Vi had checked. Poor Maria, she’d given birth, alone and quickly in a public toilet. People coming in and out all the time. She’d killed the baby not only to silence her but also because she didn’t know what to do with her. Had the “good” Father encouraged her to do so? Maria said that he hadn’t. She said he’d never known about the baby.

  Kids got in to messes and twists. They couldn’t, or rarely managed to, think calmly about what might be best. Kids were little animals, reacting. Some got away with it, others didn’t. Shazia Hakim had done a silly thing, letting dirty old Martin Gold wank in her garden while she and her friends acted silly on dope. Of course the sly old sod’s solicitor would argue that Shazia’s involvement with Martin had been consensual and she was, of course, sixteen. But Vi would argue that he’d blackmailed a nice Asian kid who didn’t want her mum to know she was smoking dope, or that she was being bullied into it by her friends. Adolescence was, Vi felt, still a fucking nightmare for kids in spite of ChildLine and all the anti-bullying initiatives that schools put in place these days.

  Maria Peters hadn’t been able to leave her daughter to be taken away by the Thames. She’d kept her in a box. Its awful smell had alerted Betty Muller to Maria’s secret which Betty’d kept for over thirty years—until she fell in love with Paul Grint.

  But what of Maria’s husband? Vi looked over her shoulder at the tent that had been erected over Leonard Blatt’s grave and she wondered. What had he known, if anything? Vi suddenly felt both very alone and sickened. What she needed was a good shag.

  Paul Grint was on bail—courtesy of a parishioner. He was still staying at his shonky old boarding house in West Ham. Lee imagined it to be similar to the sort of place where Roy fetched up from time to time, except that Roy wasn’t in any hostel now. He was back with their mum. Lee frowned.

  Mumtaz saw this but she didn’t make any sort of comment. Business was slow and Lee was worried. She ate her sandwich in silence at her desk until her mobile phone beeped to let her know that she had a text. It was Mark, he was back from Germany and he wanted to meet up.

  “That church Grint was signing massive IOUs for has been shut down,” Lee said as he looked at a news story on his computer. “The bloke who ran it was taking money for all sorts of old shit: exorcisms, identification of witches. There’s also evidence, from one of his own countrymen apparently, that he was spying on his own people for the folks back home.”

  “For Mugabe?”

  “A lot of the Zimbabweans over here are dissidents. Must have been a brave sort who dobbed him in.”

  “Is that why the boy from the other church died?”

  “Because he found out?” Lee shrugged. “Who knows? The Chibanda boy still sticks to his story it was all over a mobile phone. All the coppers can do is close Iekanjika down, lift whatever cash he’s taken by nefarious means and deport him.” Then he changed the subject. “How’s Shazia?”

  “She’s fine.” She smiled. Now that Mr. Gold was out of her life, on remand, she was much happier. She’d also decided to leave school and do her A levels at the local sixth-form college, far away from Hilary and Adele. She was making a fresh start, which was also much more financially advantageous for Mumtaz. No more skiing trips or expensive uniforms.

  Mumtaz sent a text to Mark inviting him to dinner.

  Betty Muller, alone, was actually in custody for assisting in Maria Peters’ attempted suicide. She wouldn’t give Grint to the police—she’d retracted her statement that he’d known about Maria’s desire to kill herself. But he had to have known! Betty had always told him everything—one always told a loved one everything.

  In addition to the three million pounds she had already given the church, Maria had left all the rest of her money and property to it in her will. There was no evidence to suggest that the solicitor, although a congregant himself, had forced her to do that. In fact the small amount of written correspondence between them indicated that the lawyer had actually counseled Maria to think long and hard about such a bequest. But she had ignored him.

  And now, locked away in that hospital out in Essex, she was only talking to her psychiatrist.

  Her phone beeped again. Mark replied that he could come over, but the best night for him was later that evening. Mumtaz thought about it for a moment and then sent him her address. She’d see him at eight.

  Betty had tried to call Paul on several occasions but his mobile number was always unobtainable. However, even if she had managed to get through she wouldn’t have been able to talk to him properly. Not with all those terrible, criminal women behind her clamoring to use the phone. Was this her life now?

  The divinely manifested signs that Marie had experienced had led her toward suicide. The police thought that she and Paul had put them there to drive Marie out of her mind. She hadn’t and he wouldn’t; it had been God. Betty had seen them too. The police said she’d had a key to Marie’s house in her handbag. But they must have put it there because she’d never had such a thing in her life. When Marie had called her that last time she’d rushed out of the house and rung Marie’s bell and waited for the groggy comedian to let her in.

  The police talked about manipulation but no earthly agency had manipulated Marie. When Paul had taken over the old pub in Canning Town, he’d done so because God had led him to that place. Another Christian, Pastor Iekanjika had been willing to rent it to him. It had been written. God had wanted Marie to have to face that location where her sin had first become apparent to her. Paul had said so.

  Betty had never been to an audition before or since. Marie had been frightened, so she’d gone with her. Then Marie had collapsed a
nd that awful man had laughed and said that she was probably pregnant. Marie hadn’t said anything and Betty hadn’t asked her. But Betty had noticed that she had put on weight. Then Marie had moved out of her mum and dad’s place and got a flat, but there was still no baby until Betty had found the box. That awful smell and all the flies, she’d thought it was the drains. Marie had gone out to get milk for their tea and Betty had found it in that box—an abortion, or so she’d thought. Betty had left immediately. The next time she’d seen Marie had been when she turned up at church. Paul had said it was a miracle for Marie to just appear like that. He’d said they’d have to support her while she came to terms with what she’d done. They’d have to do it gently, at her pace, as the realizations came to her. Because she had to want redemption. If not, then why had she come?

  Paul was the only person she’d ever told about the terrible thing in the Clarks box. The only one she’d ever trusted, the only one who’d understood. But when Marie had first arrived it was as if the whole thing had never happened. It seemed she’d forgotten—everything! But then as Paul had said he would, God had taken a hand.

  At the end, Marie had wanted to die. It had been her choice, her way of atoning. Betty had only been doing what Marie had wanted. After all, why should a child murderer live? Betty would have loved that child and let her live wherever she had come from. Why hadn’t Marie given the little girl to her? The bitch! Why didn’t anyone understand this?

  Anyone except Paul.

  XXXV

  “Maria sought out the church,” Mumtaz said.

  “Did she?” Mark smiled. It was late and he’d already spent hours talking about his show to Mumtaz’s stepdaughter, Shazia. Now she was in bed and they were alone. Mumtaz had just told Mark about Maria Peters, about Betty Muller and Paul Grint.

  “You think she didn’t?”

  “I think I could make someone seek me out with very little trouble,” Mark said. “Mr. Grint’s a conman, so he’s an amateur psychologist, that’s what conmen are.”

  “You mean by putting leaflets, booklets, et cetera in her way?”

  “Maria Peters was back on the circuit and so it wouldn’t have been difficult to find out where she lived. Then it was subliminal. I don’t need to teach you this stuff, Tazzie! Grint pulled her in and then gradually, using what he’d been told about her, including her old religion, he pushed her latitude of acceptance until she was believing that God was either putting stuff in her house or making her do it to herself—driving her mad. God was stalking her.

  “Pushing Betty’s name or her image in front of her may have helped too,” Mark continued. “From what you’ve said, that woman was obsessed with Grint. He could easily have taken her photo or put her name on his literature. She would’ve been flattered. Churches like that, leaflet all over the place.”

  “We actually got one at the office,” Mumtaz said. Then she frowned. “I’ll have to see if I’ve still got it somewhere.”

  “Grint engineered a trigger or triggers that set off Maria’s memories of Betty and then he just waited for her to turn up.”

  “Unless she really did just seek Betty out of her own volition?”

  He shrugged. “I’m telling you how a magician would arrange it, and I’m assuming Grint’s guilt. Sure, she could have just sought that particular church out. But if, as you say, Maria seems to have no memory of Betty at that audition in Canning Town, then why seek her out to splurge her guilt? To some extent she was blocking it out. After all, back in 1980 Betty just legged it out of her life. Maria must have found that confusing or frightening, especially if she thought she might’ve found the dead baby. Maybe she went into denial? And anyway if Betty—who I accept had a key to the place—didn’t put all those objects in Maria’s house, leave her all those notes, who did? And don’t say God.”

  “Grint.”

  “Of course. Grint or Betty, Grint manipulating Betty.”

  “But Betty maintains Grint’s innocence.”

  “Because she’s a desperate, middle-aged, divorced, childless woman.”

  Mumtaz looked down. In her own eyes she wasn’t much different from that and Mark knew it. He put a hand on her shoulder. “And she is besotted with Grint,” he said. “Getting at Grint through her will be tough.”

  He didn’t know what the gynecologist Ahmed had taken her to all that time ago had said. Mumtaz understood Betty Muller better than that woman would ever know.

  “Grint wanted Maria’s money and he got a tidy piece of it.”

  “So how do we prove any of this, Mark?”

  He shrugged again. “If Maria won’t ask for the money back and Betty won’t dob him in, I don’t know. As far as you know, did the police find any of Grint’s leaflets or booklets in Maria’s house?”

  “I don’t know,” Mumtaz said.

  “I’d check. And I’d see if you can find that one you got at the office.” Then he paused for a moment. “Grint didn’t turn up on any CCTV footage, did he?”

  “Of Maria’s house? No,” she said. “There is a shady figure in the garden on one of Maria’s own tapes, but half the time she didn’t even switch the system on in latter months.”

  “But he or someone had to have planted those notes and those objects,” Mark said. “Did things sometimes ‘appear’ after there’d been a lot of people in the house?”

  “After prayer meetings?” Mumtaz said. “Yes.”

  “Because as you know it’s easy to slip something in a corner when you’re in a crowd,” Mark said. “CCTV just records a mob. As for the note she received which was—”

  “Printed on computer. Notes actually; apparently she found one at her husband’s grave, where the child was buried. Some other allusion to her dead daughter, I believe. But she threw that one away. The one the police still have only had Maria’s fingerprints on it.”

  He shrugged. “Easy enough. Betty or Grint could have asked Maria to hold onto something for one or other of them for a second. They made sure they were wearing gloves. Simple.”

  Mumtaz poured more wine for her guest and then drank some Coke. “What I really don’t understand is how Maria could have had seemingly full knowledge about the child, which she kept, but be in total denial about Betty’s knowledge of it.”

  “She blocked it out. Maybe,” Mark said. “Maybe she just didn’t mention it to Betty because she was so ashamed. You’d have to talk to her psychiatrist. But I think that when her husband died something gave inside her. To finally give up on her daughter’s body was a big sacrifice for her. And yet at the same time by burying Leonard and the baby together she was putting the child into the care of a man she’d loved and trusted. Only later on, out on the circuit doing all the knob gags and whatever, did the double bereavement and the guilt really hit her. She was back in the old days when all she did, all the time, was rip people apart to keep her own demons at bay.” He shrugged. “In my opinion, that is.”

  She smiled.

  “She also took a lot of psychiatric drugs, some of which Betty gave her,” Mark said. “Psychiatric patients do give each other their drugs sometimes, it’s well known. Maybe she did it at Grint’s suggestion, which may not have been overt. I mean, we know he has hypnotic skills. Do you know if all the objects she told you about were real?”

  “I saw them,” Mumtaz said. “I still had the peacock feathers, I gave them to the police.”

  Mark took a sip from his glass. “From what you’ve told me she was in such a mess at the end, anything could have gone on. If Grint did plant suggestions in her mind then she could still have those in there. But unless that happens and somebody sees it, or unless she fingers Grint, if she even knows what he was doing …”

  “Grint gets away with it.”

  Mark frowned. “In this world, Tazzie, the world of faith, magic and illusion, anything’s possible.”

  * * *

  Lee opened the front door and saw Vi Collins standing on the doorstep.

  “It’s half past one!” he said. He had
n’t been in bed, just dozing in front of the telly. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  Vi pushed past him and entered his living room. As usual it was squeaky clean. Lee looked at her with sore, bleary eyes. “Vi?”

  She walked over to Chronus, asleep on his perch. “Came to see the parrot,” she said.

  “You’ve too much time on your hands since you caught that Olympic Flasher,” Lee said. “Vi, it’s the middle of the night and Chronus is a mynah bird. What do you really want?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh.”

  She flared, “Well don’t drown me in your enthusiasm, darling!”

  Chronus opened an eye and looked at her. “Well at least I woke you up,” Vi said. Then she turned and stared at Lee. “I’m not going to beg.”

  “Vi …”

  She raised a hand. “I’ll go.” She stroked Chronus’s head, smiled and began to walk back toward the front door. But just before she got there, Lee put his hand on her arm. She stopped.

  “Stay,” he said. “The bird likes you.”

  She took a step toward him and he placed his other hand on her hip.

  “I’m sorry …” he muttered. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Last century.” She moved in closer, so that he could feel her breath on his face.

  “Not exactly rushing into anything, are we.”

  She kissed him and Lee Arnold became silent.

  Maria wrote what she felt in the notebook Dr. Black had given her so that she could record her thoughts. She read the entry she’d just written.

  Paul Grint and Betty Muller are innocent of any wrongdoing on my account. I want Paul and the church to have all my money, all my property, all my goods. I am the only criminal. I killed my own innocent child. Please don’t blame any of the nurses or the doctors for this.

  And then she signed it.

 

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