A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  “They talked about all these IOUs Grint had outstanding and how the black bloke wouldn’t wait forever. Then Grint talked about the job and how it was coming along nicely. The black geezer said it had better had as he had need of it. Then Grint said that so did he. To use his exact words, he said, ‘I need to get out of here.’ I need to get out of here! How about that?”

  Paul Grint, as far as Lee knew, was having a new building done up in order to make a permanent church in Barking. Maybe he meant that?

  “So if you thought that Grint was dodgy, why didn’t you try and get some cash out of him? Some shut-up money?”

  Roy looked offended. Lee knew it was an act. When he needed a drink he’d do just about anything to get money and that included blackmail.

  “Oh, don’t tell me you found a conscience!”

  Roy, angry, leaned forward and said, “You wanna get me killed? There’s faces up the Mission from up west who say Paul Grint was a bit tasty back in the day when he used to sell hooky houses to immigrants!”

  “So you thought you’d tell me and get me to give you a bed?”

  “Not forever.”

  “Too fucking right it isn’t!” Lee said. “And it doesn’t give you any sort of intro back into Mum’s life either. As soon as I get some cash you can have a few bob and then piss off on your way.”

  Roy shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. “Nice.”

  “Consider yourself lucky I haven’t punched your nose off your face.”

  Roy was a useless, selfish, vicious waste of time, whose information could be wrong or completely fabricated. But Lee did have an old girlfriend who lived with a bloke who worked for Barking council and he would give her a tug with regard to Grint’s new church. It may or may not come to anything, and even if it did it wouldn’t earn him any money. Roy had never helped Lee earn a penny in his life. Lee looked at his watch and wondered how Mumtaz was getting on and whether she’d be back in time to see her new client at three.

  Everything had gone. The Clarks box, the filth that surrounded it, the blood on her hand. The TV was still on and she was watching some chat thing about people who suffer from sex addiction. It was as if she’d faded out of a nightmare and then faded back into life but it was fuzzy and diffuse. She was also thirsty and her head hurt.

  Some time passed, Maria couldn’t tell how much, and then the doorbell rang. She didn’t want to answer it. What if it was just a parcel? Or Jehovah’s Witnesses? Or somebody selling something? But then what if it wasn’t? What if it was the solicitor or Betty? She stood up and immediately felt dizzy and sick. She sat down again. She looked at her hand and couldn’t believe it was so clean, so dry. Every small piece of evidence of the horror she’d experienced had just gone. The doorbell rang again and Maria put a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. What was she going to do? She stood up again and then looked back at the sofa she’d been sitting on and saw that it was covered in a thin layer of her own hair. Had she been sitting there for days without moving or was her hair falling out now? She wanted it to stop. But only telling the absolute truth could even begin to make that happen and she was alone. The doorbell rang again.

  And then she heard a voice that she recognized. Pastor Grint called through the letter box, “Maria? Are you all right?” And then suddenly it was OK. Still unsteady on her feet, Maria nevertheless made her way to the front door and let Grint in.

  “Oh, my dear,” he said when he saw her, “what on earth is the matter?”

  And then the dam burst and she cried. When she finished crying and she could speak again she said, “Pastor, there was a box of blood. I put my hand into it!”

  Paul Grint looked around the room and then began to speak, but Maria cut him off. “I know it’s not here any more, but it was.”

  “Was it?” Paul Grint moved closer to her. “I’m not disbelieving you, Maria, but did it … did it mean anything …”

  She managed to say the word “Yes” just once before she started crying again. Try as he might, Pastor Grint could not get Maria to say what that meaning was.

  Baharat knew that look. “There’s no point in being angry,” he said to Sumita who now stood, stock-still in front of her cooker, raging. “The child is sick, Mumtaz can’t just leave her.”

  “That girl should go back to her own family!” Sumita said. “Why should our daughter have to do everything for her? And after what her father did!” She shook her head. “Mr. Choudhury’s son won’t wait forever. And what will people think?”

  Mumtaz had told her parents that she couldn’t come to dinner because Shazia was ill. What she was ill with, wasn’t clear, but Baharat firmly believed that his daughter was making excuses. She’d met Aziz Choudhury once and it had been quite obvious that she hadn’t taken to him—who would? But he had money and the Choudhurys were a respected family. Allah alone knew what Hanif Choudhury, the hajji, would make of it all! But neither he nor Aziz were now coming to dinner. They’d have to share the food with the boys, their wives and the grandchildren. Baharat just managed to suppress a smile at the thought.

  “Mumtaz is no longer young. Soon no one will want her and then what will she do?” Sumita had been planning and then working on the meal for days. She was deeply disappointed.

  “She will carry on working,” Baharat said. “She has a house to pay for. What else can she do?”

  “She can take an offer of marriage from a decent family!”

  Baharat shrugged. “Mumtaz was always an independent girl. She’s a clever girl. Neither of the boys could have gone to university if we’d held guns to their heads. But Mumtaz—”

  “No husband, no children, her life is a disaster! A waste.”

  Baharat was a very even-tempered man. But this he would not take. Not about his Mumtaz. “Sumita, my wife, if our daughter’s life is a disaster it is partly because of us,” he said.

  She made a noise in her throat like a squeak and then she moved forward, her hand raised as if she wanted to hit him.

  But Baharat retained his calm gravitas, as well as his anger. “We married her to that man because he was rich,” he said.

  “Yes, but he wasn’t rich, was he, he was—”

  “He was rich, so we thought, he was good-looking and he came to me with all sorts of nonsense about how he was such a good Muslim, such a nice, nice man for my daughter.” Just the thought of it made Baharat suddenly shout with fury. “But he lied! The bugger lusted for our girl only, he treated her badly, he was a gangster and a criminal and if he was still alive now and I knew what I know, I would kill him with my own hands!”

  “Baharat—”

  “How do we know that Mr. Choudhury’s son will not do the same, eh? A man of nearly fifty, never married …”

  “He has been waiting for the right girl,” Sumita said. “Everyone says.”

  “Everyone?” He looked at her, remaining harsh in spite of the tears in her eyes. “Gossiping women? Mr. Choudhury has only lived here for a year. What does Mrs. Khan or Mrs. Dar or any of these women you speak to know about it? Eh?”

  Silent for a moment, Sumita was simply reordering her argument and Baharat knew it.

  “Well, you were just as keen for Mumtaz to meet with Mr. Choudhury’s son at the start.” she said.

  And he knew that was true. He also knew that quite early on in the process he had changed his mind, although why, exactly, he didn’t know, but suddenly it had all seemed like a very bad idea. Baharat got up from the kitchen table, picked up his mobile phone and walked toward the living room. “I am going to watch the news on the television,” he said. “There are protests, apparently, about the man who was killed by the police in Tottenham. There have been some riots. Some families have such terrible tragedies to bear.”

  Sumita wanted to say that their own family was one of them, but she didn’t. She just looked at all the pans on the cooker and shook her head in frustration. So much chicken! So much lamb!

  XXVII

  Maria prayed. Betty was with her and
they had the television on with the sound off, but the images that played out on the screen were horrific. Suddenly, London had just erupted. Only two days before, a man had been shot by police in Tottenham and now people were rioting all over the city, from Barnet to Croydon, from Ealing to Barking.

  Pastor Grint, having seen Maria through her tears, had gone to the church to meet with other members of the congregation to see if there was anything they could do. Buildings were burning, shops were being looted and kids who looked not much more than ten years old were hurling bricks at the police. It was a world of anarchy, of lack of respect, of frustrated opportunism. It was a world that Maria and her smart, comedy mouth had helped to fuel—so she believed.

  Her tears had made her feel no better. Pastor Grint had just sat by her side. He hadn’t punished her. But then why would he? “What,” he’d quite logically asked her, “am I supposed to be punishing you for?” She had to reveal whatever this sin was that appeared to be ruining her life and he didn’t know what that was unless she told him—and she wouldn’t speak. Besides, only God should punish, not man. She had tried to take Jesus into her heart, she had tried to repent and deny the devil but it wasn’t enough. As she knelt on the floor in front of her TV she felt sick. She looked at the pictures on the screen and she wondered why all these kids who were rioting thought that smashing up shops was such a good idea.

  She looked away from the TV and into the corner and there was the Clarks box again. Large as life, but without a speck of blood in sight. She looked at Betty and wanted to ask her whether she saw it or not, knowing that she didn’t want to know the answer. The kids breaking in to PC World and Phones 4u didn’t have a clue either. No one did. Not even Pastor Grint. She was alone. But then it had always been that way—really. It had always been that way and now it had to end.

  Eventually she managed to say to Betty, “You know I want to be with Len.” And Betty had looked at her and she’d smiled.

  “Oh, my goodness, what a nice surprise!” Mumtaz felt her face flush. It was the shock. Out of the blue, Mark Solomons had phoned her.

  “I got your number from your dad ages ago, when I heard that your husband had died, but then I didn’t call. I am such a moron!” she heard Mark say.

  “You’re busy.”

  “I’m a moron,” he corrected. “God, Mumtaz, I was so horrified to hear about your husband. Fuck, man, to just be killed like that! And you were there, I—”

  “So, Mark, your shows are amazing!” Mumtaz said. She didn’t want to go over Ahmed again. If it were ever humanly possible she never wanted to even think about it. “All that stuff we learned at uni really sank in, didn’t it.”

  There was a pause. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to talk about her husband. But then, almost audibly, she sensed him reasoning it out, coming to a conclusion that had to be wrong but which worked for Mark and his chain of logic.

  “Yes, the show,” he said. “Psycho-magical-behaviorism.”

  She laughed.

  “David Blaine without the sense of humor bypass,” he said. “I’m lucky.”

  “You’re clever.”

  “Yeah, but you know how I do it, don’t you.”

  “Oh, not always. Not now.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes.”

  Neither of them spoke. There had been a kiss, just the once, long ago. It had sat between them ever since, not knowing what to do. It had unnerved them both.

  “So …” She gesticulated, trying to find the right words. “Why the call?”

  “Why now? I’m at Mum’s,” he said.

  Mark’s mum lived at Gants Hill, just a couple of miles down the road. Mumtaz felt her blood pump at his closeness.

  “I live in Cornwall now,” he said. “Mousehole. It’s fantastic. Good for a so-called magician too. Lots of legends and all the King Arthur thing and of course loads of crazy hippies and pagans running around wearing bits of trees and stuff. But Friday I’m off to Germany, for a TV thing, and I’m catching a flight from City Airport. So I thought I’d spend a few days with Mum.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Tazzie, if you’ve got any time, I’d love to see you,” he said.

  No one had called her “Tazzie” for years. Only Mark and her old uni friends had ever used that name. She didn’t see any of them any more.

  “Oh, Mark, I have a job …” She also had Shazia and she covered her head and there were … problems too. What would he make of her now?

  “Oh.” He sounded disappointed. Mumtaz was disappointed too.

  “And anyway it might not be safe,” she continued. She was disappointed but she was also afraid. “These riots …”

  “Yes! Shocking! Looting and everything. But then if you build up people’s material expectations and then tell them they have to face redundancy …”

  “You think the riots are about the recession? What about the man who was shot by the police?”

  “Poor bloke, but it’s gone way beyond him,” Mark said. “Fuck knows where it’s going. Tazzie, I could come over and see you. I wouldn’t expect you to come here. Forest Gate, isn’t it?”

  It was all too much! Her three o’clock appointment had been a lady who needed evidence against her violent, straying husband, yesterday if possible; then there was all the drug chaos with Shazia, the weird neighbor and then there was also …

  “Tazzie?”

  Lee had told her what his brother had said about the Chapel of the Holy Pentecostal Fire. He’d said that Roy could very easily be lying. He didn’t trust him in the slightest. But what he’d told Lee had very much played into Mumtaz’s fears about the church. The psychology on show had gone beyond the “ordinary” for a religious service. Why? Mark had had a particular interest in cults and what was known as the “group mind” at university. Should she maybe take him into her confidence, or was she just finding an excuse to see him again?

  “OK.” She thought she heard a sigh of relief. “But I work in Upton Park—Green Street. Could you meet me there?”

  “I could.”

  “I should finish at five tomorrow,” Mumtaz said. “I could meet you at the tube station. We could … Look, I’ve got a stepdaughter, my late husband’s child. I have to get back for her but I can spare an hour.” He didn’t answer. Had her apparent coolness put him off? “There’s a pie and mash shop we could go to …”

  The pause continued for a while and then he said, “Sure. Yes, that’d be great. Yeah, brilliant.”

  “So I’ll see you then?”

  “Upton Park at five? Looking forward to it.”

  They both said goodbye and then Mumtaz put the phone down. Mark had sounded disappointed at being given so little time with her, but she couldn’t help that. Between work, Shazia and the police operation to trap Martin Gold there was a lot to do. Apparently neither of Shazia’s friends were going to speak to her again once it was all over. But then youngsters got angry very quickly and then changed their minds even more rapidly. Not that that observation had stopped Shazia bursting into tears and going to her room with no food inside her. In her mind her peer group had just gone at a stroke. The fact that neither she nor any of the other girls was going to be arrested seemed to make no difference. If Shazia did but know it, the whole situation could have been so much worse.

  Mumtaz went into her kitchen and made a cup of tea, picturing Mark’s face in her mind. Not conventionally handsome—he was far too thin and had hair that was way too mad for that—the thought of seeing him again nevertheless made her shiver with anticipation.

  Vi reached down and picked the young man up off the pavement. She tried to ignore the fact that he looked like a total twat but it was difficult. With his “ironic” old school blazer, several sizes too small, plus his expensive old-man brogues and his waxed handlebar mustache he was the epitome of a local tribe some called “hipsters.” Rare in Newham, these privileged middle-class youngsters were common in Hackney, especially around Mare St
reet, parts of which were now on fire.

  “Come on, mate,” Vi said as she pulled him to his feet, “up you get.”

  “Oh,” he said, clearly shocked, “you’re a woman.”

  Vi had been at Lakeside with Shazia for just under an hour when she got the call to say that all leave was canceled. She’d had to dump Shazia home, get to the station and it was then that she was bundled into a van to come over to Hackney. Now on Mare Street in full riot gear, she’d already had a chair leg chucked at her head and these bloody posh kids were just getting in the way.

  “A boy took my bike,” the young man said. “What are you going to do about it?”

  A rubbish bin burned brightly on the opposite side of the road. It was surrounded by girls who all wore oversized earrings and swore, loudly.

  Vi looked at the young man and sighed. “Description?”

  “He was wearing a hood.”

  “Oh really?” Vi put her hands, one of which held a riot shield, on her hips and said, “Go home. Sir.”

  “Yes, but my bike …”

  Something, possibly a car, exploded down near the library. A great cheer went up. “Look, just fuck off, will you?” Vi said to the young man and then she headed off in the direction of the explosion. As she ran, she was passed by what looked like a whole family making off with a massive flat-screen television. A man had been shot, cities were in flames and all people cared about was the size of screen they watched EastEnders on. Vi wanted to take it off them but there was a fire in the middle of the road and so she had to just let them get on with it.

  Two coppers with northern accents ran alongside her and one said to the other one, “I was thinking of transferring down south. Don’t think I’ll bother.”

  A bottle containing what smelt like piss hit the ground in front of them and sprayed all over Vi’s boots.

  She called herself “Sita.” It was a Hindu name which had the double advantage of both hiding her true identity and being a bit of a two fingers up to who she really was. A Muslim girl from Ilford, her real name was Saida and, as she always told the other girls she worked with, “I ran away from an arranged marriage to a big fat slob so I could dance for other big fat slobs instead.” Sita was a lap dancer and she’d just finished her shift at the Pussy Palace down on Dace Road, on the edge of the Olympic site.