A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  Mumtaz turned aside while Lee riffled through the pills on his desk. She spoke to her mother in Bengali. “Amma, I am at work.”

  “But Mumtaz, I have to know for the catering,” Sumita said. “With you and the girl we will be eight, without, six. I need to know. Mr. Choudhury and his son—”

  “I know full well that Mr. Choudhury and his son, who is an accountant, are coming and I do know why, Amma.”

  “Because Mr. Choudhury is your father’s friend.”

  “Yes, well, you just keep on telling yourself that,” Mumtaz said in English.

  “What?”

  “Amma, I have to work on Thursday night,” Mumtaz said, back in Bengali once again. “It’s just not possible.”

  “Working at night? What are you doing working at night? What’s happening to Shazia while you work at night?”

  Mumtaz sighed. “Amma, we have a big job on. I have to watch someone, a lady. This lady could be in danger.” And then remembering just how nervous her mother could be she said, “But you don’t have anything to fear on my account, I am just watching, I am perfectly safe.”

  “And …”

  “Shazia is being looked after by a friend. A nice woman.” She didn’t add that Vi was not only not Muslim but clearly not anything. That would have been way too much. “Amma, you know I need the money. Please don’t be difficult about this.”

  “But Abba—”

  “And Abba can stop trying to marry me off too,” Mumtaz said. She felt her face go hot and red. “Amma, I don’t want to be married off to anyone. Not Mr. Choudhury’s son, not that Pakistani dragon man from the television, not even Imran Khan.”

  Mumtaz ended the call. Lee looked at her quizzically for a moment but he didn’t ask her anything about her conversation. Hands amongst the tablets, he said, “So Miss Peters takes a lot of medication.”

  Mumtaz, still a little wound up, said, “I saw her take ten milligrams of diazepam and it barely affected her. I assume that she is taking the sixty milligrams of fluoxetine that her doctor has prescribed for her but I don’t know about the Ranflutin—which incidentally is the same as fluoxetine, I looked it up—or the codeine meds.”

  “You asked her about it?”

  “No.”

  “Mmm. She doesn’t present as drugged up,” Lee said. But then neither had he all those years ago. Not until it got really bad.

  “If the diazepam incident is anything to go by then she has built up tolerance,” Mumtaz said. “Ten mils is a lot and she just carried on as normal. But Lee, any of these drugs, or the interactions between them, may explain some of her experiences. They can make you forget things you’ve done, make you fearful, they can even induce hallucinations.”

  “And yet you saw an actual figure in her garden last night.”

  “There were lots of kids out last night, I heard them,” she said. “It could have been one of those.” She shrugged. “But then maybe it wasn’t. If Maria is, in effect, stalking herself then she is doing it in a way that has to be increasing her drug dependence. Those peacock feathers had her in bits.”

  “What’s she doing now?”

  “Her friend Betty is with her,” Mumtaz said. “They’re baking.” She shook her head. “One of the first things Maria did when Betty arrived this morning was to tell her about me.”

  Lee raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Christ.”

  “Betty felt that Maria would have been better served having someone from the church, preferably Pastor Grint, to be with her. I think they, the church, feel that all Maria needs is exorcism.”

  Lee put his head in his hands. “They would.”

  “But she was very against that, Lee,” Mumtaz said. “And I was surprised. For a woman who is as religious as she is, who has given up her career for this religion, well, it is odd.”

  Lee looked at her. He knew little about Islam but he did know that some of their beliefs were kind of parallel to some Christian traditions. He wanted to formulate some sort of question that was not either stupid or offensive, but she beat him to it.

  “It’s like me covering my head and yet at the same time eating pork,” she said. “It’s strange. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You think maybe she’s a hypocrite?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think so. I think she’s sincere. But she’s also afraid.”

  “Obviously.”

  “No, not just of whatever or whoever she believes is watching her, but of something else too,” Mumtaz said.

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But all the medication … She’s damping her grief down, I know, but what else? You know, Lee, the fact that fluoxetine and Ranflutin are the same thing makes me uneasy. Why have Ranflutin if she has fluoxetine, and why all that possibly unprescribed diazepam too?”

  “She could have the boxes they come from elsewhere or she could have thrown them away.”

  “True. But the fact remains, Lee, that Maria has a huge amount of medication in her house and I heard her say herself that she gets it from ‘all directions.’ To me, that means not just the doctor, and I am going to have to ask her about it. If she is, in effect, frightening and haunting herself then she has to know that. And if someone who isn’t a doctor is supplying her with extra medication then we need to know who that is.”

  Lee shook his head. “You know I took you on, in part, because of your psychology background. These meds are of interest but I wouldn’t ask her about them just yet. I’d keep that in reserve,” he said. “This client seems to be turning you into some sort of therapist.”

  Mumtaz didn’t reply. Had she done so, he would have been able to see the really quite unseemly delight she was taking in her new role. After all, while she was thinking about Maria she wasn’t thinking about herself—or anything else.

  Lee cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, “that to one side for a moment, I’ve been asked by DI Collins to ask you to keep your ear to the ground with regard to the Chapel of the Holy Pentecostal Fire.”

  “Maria’s church.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why? You think that the people …”

  “I don’t think anything,” Lee said. “But the coppers have their eyes on the place. They think there could possibly be some sort of financial scam in the offing.”

  “But by keeping an eye on the church …” Mumtaz began.

  “You’re her minder, follow her,” Lee said.

  “To a church service? She feels safe there. She never actually wants to be watched in church.”

  “Of course to a church service,” Lee said. “Coppers can’t get in there. I can’t get in there. But you can—with a few modifications.”

  “But her friend Betty knows who I am.”

  “Follow her without her knowledge. Go in late, sit at the back. Assume another identity. You’re smart. You can do that, can’t you? See what you can pick up from the worshippers. That’s what this job’s about.”

  “Assume another identity?”

  He quite deliberately didn’t allude to her headscarf. But Mumtaz knew that was what he meant. She couldn’t go into that church with her headscarf on, it wasn’t negotiable.

  “Oh, and put those meds you nicked back,” Lee said. “Don’t want Miss Peters to know we know about them just yet.”

  Betty left before Mumtaz returned from her meeting. Afraid of what she might do or find or see, Maria sat on her doorstep waiting for her to return. Whether it was some person tormenting her, her own mind falling apart or Jesus, she still didn’t know. But what she was very well aware of was that being alone was no good. When she was alone, bad things happened and the past crashed into the present like a curse.

  A couple of the tenants from her house in the next street passed by and she had to make a conscious effort not to catch their eyes. It was a fine afternoon but sitting on her doorstep was not something that Maria did. It wasn’t what a landlord was supposed to do, she felt.

  She saw Martin Gold, the flashe
r Len had always liked for some reason and she let him catch her eye. Creepy though he was, she was prepared to be a little less aloof with him. Was it perhaps because his native language was English, because he was white? It was an uncomfortable thought but one that was probably true. Even with Mumtaz there was a distance that went beyond the professional. There were things between them, like Mumtaz’s headscarf, like Jesus, and Maria’s yearning for the audience she had now twice lost but still, in spite of everything and to her shame, hungered for. She watched the old Jew cross the road and then she saw him stop. A young Asian girl, thin and leggy, caught his attention and she watched him watch her as if he were mesmerized.

  Although she’d never met her, Maria recognized the girl; it was Mumtaz’s daughter. Martin Gold watched her with hungry eyes and Maria saw the girl cringe underneath his gaze. Did he fancy her? Did he maybe want to get his penis out and show it to her, knowing it would induce revulsion? Or fear?

  The girl ran while the old man made his way toward the shops on Woodgrange Road with a smile on his face. Maria knew that had Mumtaz seen the incident it would have disturbed her. No one wants their children to be letched over like that. If one has children. Maria imagined that the girl would probably tell her mother and then Mumtaz would have words with Martin Gold. And if that was indeed the case, which it had to be, then there was no need for her to tell Mumtaz too. After all, someone else was looking after the kid while Mumtaz was at Maria’s. The girl would surely tell that person. It wasn’t her business. When she did finally see Mumtaz walking down the road toward her, Maria waved and smiled and she immediately forgot all about Martin Gold.

  XX

  Alone, or when Maria was just with Betty—Rachel Cole seemed to have left the church now—they prayed quietly. When there was a group of them, as now, they were more voluble. On her own in her bedroom, Mumtaz listened to Pastor Grint lead about ten people in a made-up prayer that, to Mumtaz, sounded like a conversation. Shazia had been subdued when she’d spoken to her earlier, but she’d said she’d been OK. She and Vi Collins had apparently shared a vast take away pizza the previous night which had made her happy, even if she still wanted to know when her stepmother was going to return home. But then that was only natural. The girl’s life had been, albeit temporarily, turned upside down. Shazia had had quite enough upheaval and uncertainty in her young life, she didn’t need any more. Mumtaz’s thoughts turned to the subject of her late husband.

  Whatever Lee Arnold might think, making her cover her head had been the least of Ahmed’s faults. In fact it hadn’t been a fault at all, because before Ahmed had even been a thought in her father’s head, Mumtaz had wanted to cover. A level of modesty made her feel better, more secure, more engaged with her religion. It gave her a sense of belonging and everyone needed to belong somewhere. After 9/11 some women, in light of a level of anti-Islamic sentiment in the Western world, had abandoned their headscarves out of fear. They didn’t want to attract hostility or abuse and Mumtaz couldn’t fault them for that. But her own stance, though quietly pursued, was more positive. She hadn’t flown a plane into the Twin Towers, she’d been appalled by that act. Why should she hide who and what she was?

  Lee Arnold had treated the removal of her headscarf so lightly. In order to do her job she had to be able to change her identity from time to time and she’d known that was a possibility right from the start. But that didn’t mean that her emotions were quiet about it. To go into a Christian church was fine, but to pretend to be someone else in what was a holy place for some people, felt less than fine.

  Suddenly, from the living room where Pastor Grint was holding his prayer meeting, a sound that Mumtaz half did and did not recognize emerged. Beyond words or even recognizable human sound, it came to her ears in the same way as the sound of the dhikr, the ecstatic ritual that holy dervishes performed when they danced their way into remembrance of Allah. She’d only ever heard it one time when, years before, her parents had taken them all to visit her great-uncle Sharif back in Dhaka. He had been a dervish and once, late at night, a group of his spiritual brothers—including some of her young male cousins—had come to dance and commune in the way the Christians were doing now. Back in Bangladesh, the unaccustomed sounds of the holy ecstasy had unnerved Mumtaz. Her father and indeed none of her British Bangladeshi relatives did that and she had found it strange. Now was no different to that and her body, in spite of itself, shuddered. In fact, if anything, this experience was even more chilling than it had been back in Bangladesh. Now with her psychologist’s hat on she knew that spiritual ecstasy could be both divine and malignant, both real and horribly manufactured.

  Vi, as she liked to be called, was going to be late. Amma had come back briefly to make her some dinner but now Shazia was alone. Just her, some math homework and the telly: Come Dine With Me. A woman whose tits were way too big for her dress was putting on a dinner party for a girl who was allergic to everything, an elderly gay man and a boy with spots. But Shazia was finding it difficult to engage with either Come Dine or her homework. She was thinking about the next day. Hilary and Adele had said that they were coming round in the afternoon and Shazia didn’t know what to do. The old man next door knew something. She didn’t know what, but something. The way he’d told her had made her skin creep. Why had he done that? Did he want her to give him money to shut up about what he knew? Or did he want something else? Shazia closed her eyes just as the woman with the massive breasts served up a trio of puddings. One was chocolate, the others not even worth mentioning. Did the old white man want that? She couldn’t even think about it. Sex on any level was violent and disgusting.

  Shazia felt a familiar sickness rise in her throat. There was no way that she could put Adele and Hilary off. That would be just, social death! But if they didn’t come here then where could they go? They came to hers because their mums were always at home. Amma’s job had been, like, amazing! Sort of. She couldn’t put the girls off but she couldn’t take the stuff into school with her either; it was far too risky. Mrs. Reed, who was just an old bitch, had a thing about girls bringing make-up to school and so she searched bags regularly. It was too random to be safe. Shazia’s heart beat fast. She’d seen the old white man in the street earlier and he’d looked at her in that weird, creepy way that he had.

  The girl who was allergic to everything on the telly was throwing a massive strop about cheese. Shazia couldn’t stand it. Not the allergic girl on the TV but the uncertainty about the old man next door. He knew something and she had to know what it was. She’d hardly slept since he’d spoken to her on Sunday. What if he just appeared on the doorstep or even in the garden when Adele and Hilary were around? That would be like a total disaster!

  Shazia looked at her watch. Vi had said it was unlikely she’d be back before nine. It was now seven thirty. She’d have to go and see the old man. She’d have to. Shazia threw her math book to the other side of the sofa and stood up. She walked determinedly to the front door, closed it behind her and then lost her nerve. How was she going to go to that house and knock on the door and ask for him? Who was he anyway? He was the only white man in a big house full of Bangladeshis and what were they going to make of her asking to see a white man on her own and unescorted by her mother? Wouldn’t one of them tell Amma?

  Although it was warm, Shazia trembled in the soft spring air. She was caught. Stuck in a terrible place that, while not entirely of her own making, was a position that she felt had been exacerbated by her own weakness. What was she going to do? But then the matter was taken entirely out of Shazia’s hands. The old man, smiling, was walking down the garden path toward her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Reverend Manyika said.

  “You went to see Pastor Iekanjika,” Tony Bracci said.

  “He is a brother in Christ, why shouldn’t I? Why are you watching me? I have done nothing wrong!”

  “Last time I spoke to you, Reverend,” Vi Collins said, “I got the impression you and he didn�
��t get along too well.”

  “Then you were wrong. We do.”

  She knew that they didn’t. But Vi also knew that now was not the time to let on that Iekanjika’s house was wired for sound. According to the translator who’d listened to the tape, Iekanjika had said nothing to actually incriminate himself with regard to Jacob Sitole’s death. But he and Manyika had talked about money. Manyika had said that he didn’t want his own practices to be tarred with the same brush as Iekanjika’s. Iekanjika had just laughed. According to the translator, all through their exchange Manyika had sounded afraid. Then at the end of the meeting, Gazi Hussein had heard Iekanjika threaten Manyika by alluding to Zimbabwe, the country they had both apparently run away from.

  “Reverend, Matthias Chibanda, the boy we know killed Jacob, still isn’t talking to us. He’s terrified.”

  “Of you.”

  “Only in part, I think,” Vi said. Then she moved in closer toward him. “I think poor Matthias is afraid of something far more scary than the British police.”

  His face didn’t move. But she could see that he was sweating.

  “Don’t know what. Some spiritual terror?” Vi said.

  “You’re watching me!”

  “We’re keeping an eye on both the Bethel and the Peace in Jesus churches,” Vi said. “A boy from one church killed a boy from the other. We don’t know why. We have to know what’s going on. You’d tell us if you knew why, wouldn’t you, Reverend Manyika? Even if it meant falling out with your mate Pastor Iekanjika?”

  “I am a Christian man of God.”

  Vi glossed over the fact that to her that was no kind of answer.

  “Because if you don’t tell us and later on we find out that you knew, you’ll have God and us to deal with,” Vi said.

  Manyika said nothing.

  “Keeping Pastor Iekanjika happy could come at a price,” she said.

  “Pastor Iekanjika didn’t kill Jacob Sitole.”

  “No, but I think that he knows why Matthias Chibanda killed him and I think that Iekanjika is making sure that the boy keeps his mouth shut about his motives,” Vi said.