A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  “Why?” Manyika looked into her eyes. “Why do you think these things?”

  “Reverend, are both you and Pastor Iekanjika refugees from the Mugabe regime?”

  “Yes, why else would we be here?”

  “I don’t know,” Vi said. “You tell me.”

  But he just shook his head and said, “I can’t. I don’t know what you mean.” But his eyes were frightened.

  Vi said nothing. Manyika looked at Tony Bracci. “Why don’t you ask Pastor Iekanjika these things? Why are you asking me?”

  “Pastor Iekanjika won’t talk,” Vi said. “And anyway, Reverend, you ever see a television program called The Weakest Link?” Tony Bracci smiled. “Why would I put myself through trying to speak to Iekanjika—who won’t talk—when I can speak to you, who will? You are my weakest link, Reverend, get used to it.”

  Maria had emerged from her prayer meeting exhausted. Whether the participants had danced as in the dhikr, Mumtaz didn’t know. But she recognized the heavy, almost drugged-looking quality around the comedian’s eyes and it made her wonder how the regular services at the church were conducted.

  The comedian, exhausted, went to bed. Mumtaz watched TV and then she went out into the garden for a while. This night was much quieter; she couldn’t hear any childish voices yelling text-speak into the night. And yet there was still a feeling of tension. Earlier in the year, people, including a lot of very young people, had staged sometimes violent protests in central London about the government’s policy of increasing university tuition fees. In all but name (the government insisted upon calling it a “downturn”) the country was in recession and a lot of people had lost their jobs. What some called “traditional” Conservative policies allied to an international economic crisis were fueling fear and unrest. And in her own community Mumtaz remembered very well how the immense amount of sympathy for the US and the West in general just after 9/11 had turned into something else when the Americans and the British had invaded Iraq. Now the divisive elements shrieked loudest. The fascist British National Party, the Muslim boys who daubed homophobic slogans on the walls of shops on Brick Lane, the kids who dreamed about joining al Qaeda. She called Shazia, hoping for a light chat about school and make up and handbags.

  But the girl was subdued, almost monosyllabic. Eventually Mumtaz had to ask, “What’s the matter? Did you have a bad day at school?”

  “No.” Her failure to expand made Mumtaz even more anxious. Usually if Shazia didn’t want to talk about school, she just changed the subject.

  “Shazia, can I speak to Vi, please?” Mumtaz asked.

  “’k.”

  The next voice she heard was Vi Collins. “Hi, Mumtaz.”

  “Vi, I’m sorry,” Mumtaz said, “but is Shazia all right? I know she’s a teenager but …”

  Mumtaz heard Vi tell Shazia that she was going to take the call in the kitchen so as “not to disturb you watching your program.” Noises of first the living room and then the kitchen door closing behind her ensured that Vi could not be heard by Shazia. “She was quiet and red-eyed when I got in,” Vi said. “That Come Dine with Me thing she likes was just finishing and she was sitting down next to a load of homework. I asked her if she needed any help—not that I could do much I don’t suppose—but she said she was OK with it. I know you said she does well at school, but do you know how she is with friends or …” she hesitated a little, “boyfriends?”

  Mumtaz thought for a few moments. Shazia always said she had friends and sometimes she went off shopping with other girls to Ilford. She was pretty sure that Shazia didn’t have a boyfriend.

  “Because this age can be a bitch,” Vi continued. “I remember my boys. All arguments and fights and some really nasty little mind games going on. And girls, of course.”

  “Shazia only talks about Daniel Radcliffe, you know the Harry Potter boy,” Mumtaz said. “Her father … she is still, I think, maybe nervous of talking about boys because her father, my husband, he disapproved …”

  That was putting it so mildly it was almost a lie.

  “Maybe it’s just a mood,” Vi said. “John, my eldest, had them something rotten when he was a teenager. One minute he was the best kid in the world, the next he was like that cartoon of the Tasmanian devil.”

  “Shazia can be moody,” Mumtaz said. “But she isn’t usually quiet about it. If she’s upset she tends to stomp around and—”

  “Oh, hang on, she’s coming!” Vi interrupted. Then Mumtaz heard her say, “Shazia, sweetheart.”

  “I’m going to bed,” Mumtaz heard Shazia say.

  “You all right, love?” Vi asked. “Feeling unwell?”

  “No, just tired.”

  Mumtaz heard the kitchen door close and then she said, “I must make some time for her, I think. Make her some food like a good Bangladeshi amma. Food is love.”

  “I reckon that’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll tell Maria I have to go and make tea for Shazia after school tomorrow. She’ll understand.”

  “That’d be favorite.”

  “I’m sorry, Vi, that things are like this. I can’t think why she’s so subdued. Maybe it is just the fact that I am not there.” And then she added by way of explanation. “But we really need the money. If I wasn’t—”

  “You don’t have to explain it to me, love,” Vi said. “My old man had an allergy to work so I had to keep five people all on me own when the kids were at home. I like Shazia, she’s a lovely girl, but this is all new to her and she might, as you say, just need a few hours alone with you.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ll organize that. Thank you, Vi. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’re doing.”

  She heard Vi make that crackly smoke-dried laugh of hers. “Me and Lee Arnold go back to the Flood,” she said. “Any friend of his is a friend of mine.”

  Mumtaz was genuinely touched. She ended the call and went back in the house again with a feeling of, if not well-being, some confidence. Vi Collins would look after Shazia until Mumtaz herself could find out what was wrong. The girl was safe in the police officer’s care. Mumtaz walked through the living room and into Maria’s considerable dining room. The street outside was quiet and still and it took her a few moments to realize that someone was actually outside the garden gate. He was tall and young, his trainers were silver and he made her heart miss two beats. Months ago, for a few seconds, out on Wanstead Flats he had almost blinded her with his beauty. He had been her Silver Prince and he had killed her husband. He was also the man she had not given a description of to the police. What did he want? Did he want to silence her? Mumtaz toyed with the idea of going outside and telling him his secret was safe with her. But then her nerve failed her and she just sank back into the living room shadows until he eventually walked away.

  XXI

  A lot of the old Hackney Wick drinking dives and strip clubs had been cleared away in preparation for the Olympics. But some remained and there was one, a swingers club, that was just simply called Jollies. To Lee Arnold, who had been standing outside the place since just after midnight, it looked about as jolly as a bout of dysentery. But he was waiting for a bloke he’d seen go in there, and photographed, eight hours before so that he could discreetly take his photograph again when he came out. The man in question, an apparently model husband, was no longer wanted by his wife and with what seemed to be some good reason.

  Coincidentally, Jollies was just three doors away from the old warehouse that was now known as the Peace in Jesus church. Someone who could have been the possibly dodgy Pastor Iekanjika that Tony Bracci had talked about had gone in at about two and hadn’t come out. As far as Lee could tell he’d been alone. Not that he’d spent the long dark hours thinking exclusively about happy-clappy churches. First he’d thought about his brother, who usually invaded his mind when he was alone. There’d been more scenes back at his mum’s place and Lee was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the only thing that Roy was ever going to understand was a bloody good hiding. It’s
what he’d often wished he’d given his father. Not just a duffing up, a proper beating. He didn’t like the idea and had no desire to do it but Roy couldn’t just go on making their mother’s life hell. After that, he’d thought about other things—anything. Then, at just after six am, Mumtaz had called. He’d told her he’d be watching some dodgy man for an indeterminate amount of time. The phone had vibrated against his leg and because it was her he’d answered it. Maria Peters, Pastor Grint and some of the other Pentecostal Fire people had had a prayer meeting at the comedian’s house the previous evening. Mumtaz, although unaware of what had actually been said during the meeting, had described it as hypnotic. She’d said they’d all entered some sort of trance while they prayed. That, together with the fact that she was still grieving for her husband, and all the meds that Maria seemingly took, didn’t appear to Mumtaz or Lee to be a healthy combination.

  A couple of Hasidic Jews, on their way to Forman’s, the salmon smokery, as well as a slightly plump Asian bloke walked past Lee without looking at him. They didn’t look at each other either. It was as if they lived in parallel worlds. Which in a sense they did. If a Hasid and a fundamentalist Muslim spoke it would, Lee felt, probably be a bit like infidelity.

  He looked at his watch and wondered how much longer his client’s husband could “swing” for. He was one of those shitty little city traders who’d wrecked the economy and so it was difficult to have any sympathy with him, or his wife. In spite of what had happened, he was still employed, and she still did bugger all except get her nails done, have fake tans and have glitter sculpted round her vagina. They lived in a massive, ugly house out at Ongar and both of them drove Ferraris. And he chose to spend his time with a load of wrinkly, dodgy couples in an old factory office down at Hackney Wick.

  A sound like thunder made Lee jump and he saw the big black guy he’d seen go into the church earlier come out. He was talking, or rather shouting, into his mobile phone. It was in English and it was about money. He said, “Get it to me, cash, or there will be consequences!”

  She had dreamed about the child, what she would have been, what she imagined she would have looked like. Maria woke up crying in a cocoon of sweat and when she took the cup of tea that Mumtaz had made her from the kitchen unit, her hand shook. She only just about managed to concentrate on what Mumtaz was saying when she told her she needed to go home for a few hours. It was a Deliverance night at the church and Maria was going to have to make a decision.

  Mumtaz had put fruit and cereal out on the worktop for her but Maria didn’t want it. Yesterday, Mumtaz had cooked some sort of curry which she’d only pretended to eat. But she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t actually remember when she had last been hungry.

  Maria phoned Betty who was due to arrive to get a lift with her to church at six thirty but then, just before she put the phone down, Maria remembered that Mumtaz was going to go and spend a few hours with her daughter at four. The thought of being alone when she might do anything, when anyone might do something to her, was too much.

  “You can’t get here a bit early, can you?” she asked Betty. “At four?”

  “I don’t see any problem with that,” Betty said.

  “Oh, thank God,” Maria said. The relief was enormous.

  Betty turned to Paul Grint as she put the phone down and he noticed there was a slight smile on her face. He frowned in disapproval. “Don’t be judgmental, Betty,” he said. “It’s a sin.”

  “She’s in pain,” she said.

  “For the good of her soul.”

  She gazed up at him, trying to soften the look in her eyes because she didn’t want to shock or frighten him. “Of course. Even if she does deserve it anyway.”

  “Even if she does deserve it,” he said. “Everyone has the potential to have a beautiful soul, Betty. Maria is a beautiful person and we must bring her to Jesus as soon as possible. He wants her soul badly and so do I. Now I’d like you to stop giving her your pills. I know you’re still doing that.”

  Betty shrugged. “She asks me,” she said. “She’s always afraid of running out.”

  “We mustn’t build her tolerance up even more,” Grint said. “That would be wrong. We don’t want to hurt her, do we?”

  Betty’s small mouth tightened. How could he, a virtual saint, say such a thing about her?

  “He was in there from 02:05 to 08:10,” DC Gazi Hussein said.

  “Alone?”

  “Seemingly, ma’am.”

  Vi Collins frowned. What had Iekanjika being doing at his church alone, in the middle of the night? “And he came out ranting at someone?”

  “Demanding money,” Gazi said.

  “Did he say a name?”

  “No. When he went into the church he locked the door behind him. I tried the door at the back, but no joy. Couldn’t see much through the windows, most of them are covered with screens. He didn’t make a sound.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A couple of Hasidic Jews waiting for Forman’s to open and a bloke outside Jollies spending hours on end trying to decide whether he wanted to swing or not.”

  Vi shook her head. Men were such ridiculous creatures! Her ex-husband had always said he’d suffered from crippling guilt whenever he’d been unfaithful. She’d put up with it for the kids’ sake until they’d left school and then she’d told him she really didn’t give a shit. She looked at DS Bracci. “Tone?”

  “Difficult to get a lot of intel out of the Zimbabwean authorities—some of them, including their president, still see us as the colonial enemy—but I spoke to a woman who told me that that nice Reverend Manyika is most definitely not welcome back in Harare.”

  “Why not?”

  “Witchcraft,” he said.

  “Witchcraft?”

  “A right dab hand with the bones and the children’s body parts, apparently,” he said. “Came here claiming political asylum which was granted back in 2003.”

  “Did you find anything out about Iekanjika?”

  “Been a British citizen since 2005, but he’s got a British wife. Couldn’t get a thing out of them about his politics, his status or nothing. No comment.”

  “So both of them could be dodgy.”

  “Yes, guv.” Tony paused for a moment and then he said, “But you rate Manyika, don’t you.”

  “I don’t rate him, Tone, I just personally don’t have reason to suspect him of involvement in Jacob Sitole’s death.” Then she raised her arms in the air in frustration. “If only bloody Matthias Chibanda would speak!”

  “But, ma’am, haven’t we got enough forensic evidence against him to put him away for Sitole’s murder anyway?” Gazi Hussein said.

  “Yes, but I want to know why he killed Jacob,” Vi said. “Don’t you?”

  “Well, yes …”

  “Two boys, who had been friends, who both called themselves Christians. Different churches, I grant you. But where does a fatal stabbing fit into that?”

  “Boys can get carried away,” Tony said. “Hormones.”

  “That I understand, Tone,” she said. “But if that was the case why doesn’t Chibanda just say so? The kids had a fight, he was wounded himself. And he knows he’s going down whatever. Why doesn’t he speak?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When he was laying in that hospital bed and I went to see him, he was terrified. I questioned him and it was like there was a stopper in his mouth physically preventing words from coming up. Part of him wanted to speak, I know! But he couldn’t,” she said. “I’d also like to know why he looked particularly terrified when Iekanjika looked at him. There was real dominance going on there.”

  “But if he doesn’t speak then how can you know what he’s thinking?” Gazi asked.

  Vi turned to Gazi and stared him hard in the eyes. “Not been with us long, have you, love?” she said. Tony Bracci smiled. Here she goes! he thought. “One way or another I’ll find out why Jacob Sitole died and I’ll get whoever is frightening the life out of Chibanda—u
p to and including Iekanjika. Whoever’s doing it there’s a whiff of superstition and magical wotnots in the air and I don’t like it. Each to his own when it comes to religion but there can be a dark side to unquestioning faith and I won’t have none of it!”

  “But ma’am, we also have the Olympic Flash—”

  “Oh, I’ve not forgotten him either, Gazi,” Vi said. “But just at the moment I’m a bit more bothered about a dead kid than I am about a bloke getting his todger out down by the canal. Know what I mean?”

  Martin watched Shazia open the French doors into the garden as he’d instructed and he heard one of the other girls say, “Pull the curtains across, someone’ll see!”

  Shazia said, “No they won’t! It’s just, like, our garden.”

  “What about your neighbors?”

  “They can’t see anything,” Shazia said, shakily Martin thought. “There’s a hedge. Anyway, look, the windows have to be open or the place’ll like, smell. And if I get grief from my mum that will be, like, horrible, you know.”

  The other girl went quiet. In one fluid movement that surprised even him, Martin slipped through the hole he’d made in the hedge and walked behind the flower beds until he found the “sweet” spot. This was the place where he’d worked out he could see into the house without himself being seen.

  All three girls were inside and they were all sitting where Shazia had said they would be. They hadn’t done anything yet but it wouldn’t be long before they did. Martin unzipped his trousers and began to tickle his penis. He’d have to be quiet when he did finally come, but then he was used to that. He’d had years and years of practice at that.

  Her mother just had to have another go!

  “Not only is Mr. Choudhury and his son and both your brothers coming but so is Mosammet with her husband Rejan,” she said to Mumtaz. “Can’t you come?”

  Mosammet had been Mumtaz’s best friend at secondary school and she would have loved to have seen her. But it just wasn’t possible. It was four o’clock already and she needed to get back home for Shazia. “No, Amma,” she said as she waved goodbye to Maria, “I told you I have to work.”