A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  Sita lit a cigarette as she made her way down toward the canal. She lived over on Abbey Lane, Stratford and so crossing the canal and then heading up the Greenway was her quickest route home. It was late, but she wasn’t tired; punters had been thin on the ground, partly because it was early in the week and partly because large parts of London were experiencing riots. Even the eastern European construction workers from the site had stayed away. If only to get a break from the grim hostels and bedsits they all lived in, they usually turned up whatever the day of the week. But people were scared. As she walked across the bridge over the canal, Sita strained her ears to try and catch any noises of violence, but there was only silence.

  The ramp up to the Greenway on the other side of the canal was obscured by bushes and at night she didn’t much like it. But Sita also prided herself on her courage and so she made a point, even in the dark, of not rushing up it. As soon as she got to the top she’d be able to see the new stadium which would have a load of workers clustered round it, and so her risk was a calculated one. Sita sauntered. She could do little else in what she liked to call her “tranny shoes.” Six-inch stilettos in red faux snakeskin, her mate Tammy said they had a very “seventies cross-dresser vibe” which had made Sita laugh. That said, they were bastards to walk in. As she began her ascent of the slope she made a mental note not to forget her ballet pumps to walk home in next time. And then suddenly, from the left, almost in her face, was a man’s penis.

  “Oh, what the—” Like everyone in the area she’d heard about the Olympic Flasher. Oh God, how on earth could she be a bloody victim of him! Unafraid, she pushed the small, pale member out of her way with her handbag. “For fuck’s sake …”

  She had expected him to run away immediately. The Olympic flasher had not, after all, actually done anything to any of his victims to date. But he didn’t move and for a moment Sita felt her heart begin to speed up. What if she was going to be the exception? What if she was going to be raped? Well, if that was going to happen, she was going to get a bloody good look at him first. Sita lifted her head and stared him straight in the face. She just saw him before he ran. And when she did see him, she realized why he’d paused after she’d slapped his knob away. He’d seen her face too.

  Sita took her tranny shoes off and began to run after him. “Oi you,” she yelled as she got to the top of the ramp. “I bloody know you! Stop!”

  XXVIII

  Mumtaz spent the morning sitting in Lee’s car outside the house of a woman known only as Pat who may or may not be entertaining a man called Hardev Singh. His wife, a very capable, organized and yet deeply hurt Sikh lady had been Mumtaz’s three o’clock the previous day. Pat’s house, which was on Browning Road, East Ham had a front garden full of old mattresses and some dead pot plants by the street door.

  Mumtaz looked at her phone for what felt like the hundredth time and then put it back down beside her on the passenger seat again. Like all the Met Police officers, Vi Collins was now on riot duty for the foreseeable future. Even the officer who had been watching the house next door had left halfway through the evening to go off somewhere. Policemen and -women were coming to London from all over the country, trying to stop what seemed to be unstoppable. None of this helped Shazia, alone in the house and miserable. Mumtaz had left her that morning, apparently asleep, but she knew that Shazia had spent most of the night ranging around the house crying. How could that dreadful old man, Mr. Gold, make her do such a thing?

  In return for telling no one about their smoking habits, Mr. Gold had blackmailed Shazia into keeping the curtains and windows open in the living room while they all got stoned. Out in the garden, hidden by the trees, he’d happily masturbated. It was disgusting and it meant that not only had Shazia been forced to smoke dope by her friends, she’d also been suckered into putting them and herself inside some sick old man’s fantasy. Shazia, if at a distance, had been abused and that was a very difficult thing for Mumtaz to think about. Albeit through her busyness, Mumtaz had let Shazia down.

  Lack of movement around Pat’s house made her mind wander. Mr. Gold was one of Maria Peters’ tenants and so when it all came out, that would mean more trouble for her. Mumtaz’s phone began to vibrate and she saw that it was Lee who said, “My old mate’s boyfriend at Barking Council says there’s no building conversion or planning permission or anything in the name of either Paul Grint or the Chapel of the Holy Pentecostal Fire,” he said. “There’s nothing coming up for any Christian place of worship.”

  “So the new church, if nothing else, is a lie?”

  “Seems like it,” Lee said.

  “So where do we go from here?” she asked. She thought about Maria and how sick she’d looked whenever she’d seen her recently and she wondered what they, this faux church, were doing to her.

  “With all the coppers on riot duty, nowhere, right at the moment,” Lee said. “But I will give Vi the nod when I can. I’ll see you later.”

  Mumtaz put her phone back on the passenger seat and went back to half reading the newspaper she’d bought that morning. But it was full of pictures of people in hoods waving Adidas trainers about like trophies which made her feel sick. Was it any wonder that people were attracted to religion, even if it was extreme and manipulative, if this was the alternative?

  Mark had been fascinated by religion and what some psychologists called “group mind” experiences. The particular example Mumtaz always remembered was that of Fatima in Portugal in 1917. Three children claimed to have had visions of the Virgin Mary which culminated in seventy thousand people “seeing” a miracle. At the behest of the Virgin, the sun had “danced” in the sky, pinwheeling across the heavens and flashing with every color on the spectrum. Seventy thousand people. That was some religious fervor.

  When she’d run to Maria in that church when she collapsed, things had been very fervent. It had been difficult, Mumtaz recalled, to keep at a distance from it. Something Mark used to say when they played with hypnosis, explored its properties and its limits was, “Don’t join.” By this he had meant that to adopt the rhythms of the hypnotic state, particularly in a group, to enjoy and to participate was a recipe for losing yourself inside the suggestions that lived in the sounds and behind the sentiments of what was being said. One had to be at what Mark always called a “mental step” away and even as a Muslim in a place that was not of her own faith, that had not been easy for Mumtaz. In the past she had always been strong when it came to hypnosis and suggestion. Mark had wondered, at one time, whether in fact she was susceptible at all. But in the end, she had been. To him.

  Mr. Allitt had come and he’d gone but he hadn’t been happy. Maria hadn’t been dressed, she’d smelt of booze and her eyes had been puffy and red.

  “Is there anyone I can call for you, Mrs. Blatt?” he’d asked her. “I know we both have the church, which is a comfort, but … A relative perhaps?”

  Years ago she would have tried to get away with not handing his lovely Mont Blanc pen back to him, but she was a different person now. She gave him back the pen and the papers, signed. She’d said, “I’m fine.”

  But she could see on his face that he doubted her. She wondered why, but once he’d gone she forgot all about him and just took comfort in how much better she suddenly felt. Doing things right was just common sense as much as anything else. If you did things right then everything in your life was orderly and understandable.

  It was a warmish day and so Maria went to sleep on the sofa with the French windows open. When she woke up Betty had arrived and let herself in through the side gate into the garden, then through the French doors. She was going to stay with her until Pastor Grint arrived. Maria had asked him to come because finally she was ready to remove the obstacle that still existed between her and eternal salvation.

  Martin Gold was feeling confused. Young Shazia’s friends hadn’t come round the previous afternoon and he was beginning to wonder what was up. Since the school holidays had started back in July, they’d been ro
und most weekdays, smoking.

  He blamed DI Violet Collins. Rough old tart! Somehow she’d wheedled her way in with Shazia’s mother and she’d even taken the girl out in her car when Mrs. Hakim had gone somewhere or other the previous afternoon. Odd comings and goings in that house made Martin wonder if they were about him and so, just after he had lunch—a cheese sandwich—he climbed through the hole he’d made in the Hakims’ hedge and confronted the girl, who he knew was alone in the garden. When she saw him she took a step backward.

  “Where are your mates, Shazia?” he asked. “I was expecting you all yesterday.”

  Her thin shoulders trembled, which he liked. “Mum’s friend came round and then Mum came home from work early,” she said.

  “Your mum been friends with DI Collins for very long?” he asked.

  “A while. Why?”

  He shrugged. Then he said, “Girls coming round today, are they?”

  “No.” She had her hands on her shoulders now, hugging herself.

  Martin was furious and his eyes blazed with it. “Why not?”

  She didn’t say anything. He could almost hear the cogs of her brain ticking over, trying to find something to say. Eventually she said, “We haven’t got any weed. We’ve run out.”

  He moved toward her. “Bad planning. But don’t they just want to come round for a chat? A muck about?”

  “No.”

  “Have you asked them?”

  “Yeah … No.”

  “Well, don’t you think that, given what I know about you, that might be a good thing to do?”

  Oh, he’d got used to a high level of eye candy since the holidays began! Martin needed his fix.

  Shazia walked backward toward her house. “Hilary’s gone out with her mum and Adele’s … She’s gone to, er, to …”

  “I know you’re lying, Shazia, and I’ll be honest, it’s making me cross.” He frowned. “You know, if you’re not nice to me, I won’t be nice to you. If your mother knew—”

  “Oh, please don’t tell my mother, please!” It had come out automatically but then that was a good thing. Vi wanted to actually catch Mr. Gold in the act but she was on riot duty together with every other officer in London. In the meantime Shazia had to behave normally until the old man could be caught.

  “Well, you’d better get your friends …”

  “But they’re not coming over today. I wasn’t lying! It’s just me today.” And then Mr. Gold smiled and suddenly Shazia felt very alone indeed.

  Martin Gold was suspicious but he was so used to having “fun” that he really felt he couldn’t possibly do without it. He thought about it for a moment and then he said, “Well then, I suppose I’ll just have to make do with you, won’t I?”

  “What do you want me to … Oh …” Her eyes filled with tears and Martin began to feel himself become very aroused indeed.

  He smiled. “Oh, don’t worry, my little thing,” he said. “You won’t have to do anything except watch—I promise.”

  * * *

  Roy flung Lee’s front door open and called after the man who was running hell for leather down the garden path. “Oi!”

  But Roy wasn’t wearing anything on his feet and so there was a limit to how far he could pursue the bloke. When he got to the garden gate he looked once down the street, but there was nobody about. Roy stared down at the fat envelope in his hands and turned it over twice. It was addressed to Lee and he had absolutely no right to open it, but Roy could smell money through the envelope. He went back inside the flat and sat down in the living room with the envelope still in his hands. The mynah bird was asleep, as it so often seemed to be. But Roy looked at it anyway, just to make sure that it was really out for the count. People said that they were very bright, mynah birds, that they could interpret human actions and know what they were doing. Roy slid a finger underneath the envelope’s seal. To him it sounded really loud but it didn’t wake the creature.

  Lee had said that he could stay for a week, but then what? It was all very well for his brother to say he couldn’t go back to their mother’s place, but where else was there? He couldn’t go back to the hostel and if he turned up at the happy-clappy church they’d probably give him a good hiding. Legging it with the collection hadn’t been his best move, but he’d been so fucking bored. Playing at Jesus just to get a bit of food and tea did not address his needs as a man who liked a drink. And anyway, if Paul Grint did get to know he’d overheard him talking to the black geezer, Roy wasn’t sure that was going to be a safe situation for him. He could of course have hung about and tried to blackmail the pastor, but people who knew Paul Grint of old all talked about how tasty he’d been in terms of violence in the past and Roy couldn’t take that. He couldn’t take on Lee these days. He watched the ten ten-pound notes slip out of the envelope and into his lap. There was a note with them which said, What I owe you. Bob.

  Roy looked at the money and he felt his mouth begin to go dry. A nice pint of Kronenbourg and a couple of vodka chasers would soon fix that. Then a quick hop over to Paddy Power and a little flutter and if there was an R in the month and the moon was blue he could make back what he’d spent out of this ton and more. He’d be back before four with the money and Lee would never be any the wiser. Roy hadn’t had a proper drink for weeks. He ran into the spare bedroom and got dressed without washing. As he made his way to the front door, whistling as he went, the mynah bird woke up, looked at him and squawked, “Own goal! Own goal!”

  Mark had a tan, just like he did on the TV. It wasn’t makeup and it suited him. Mumtaz watched as he amazed three young Sikh lads with a trick that had him apparently taking bundles of playing cards out of their clothes. In spite of the conversation she’d just had with Shazia, Mumtaz smiled. The girl had been in bed when Mark had phoned and so she hadn’t seen her before she’d left the house to go to work. Then she’d forgotten all about it until Shazia had called to ask her where she was.

  “I have to meet someone,” she’d told her. “It’s business,” she’d half lied.

  “Oh.” It had been more than just disappointment.

  “Shazia? OK?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” She too had lied, Mumtaz thought.

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “’k.”

  Shazia had ended the call. Trying not to think about what that catch of anxiety in her voice might mean, Mumtaz crossed the road and walked toward Upton Park Station and the little group of boys that surrounded Mark. Intent upon his various sleights of hand, he didn’t notice her until one of the boys said to her excitedly, “It’s Mark Solomons, man! Off the TV!”

  Mark had looked at the boy and then at Mumtaz and he’d beamed. “Ah,” he said, “my dinner date!” He reached forward to take her hand while putting his deck of cards back in his jacket pocket. The boys looked a little shocked to see a white man take the hand of a covered Muslim woman but none of them said anything. As Mark walked through the little crowd to get to Mumtaz she saw him take another pack of cards out of one of the boys’ pockets. When they’d gone, she said, “I see your thief skills are still sharp.”

  “As are your eyes.” He smiled. He knew better than to kiss her even on the cheek in a public place, even though he wanted to. The pie and mash shop was just opposite the station. Mark gestured toward it with one long, thin hand. “Shall we?” he asked.

  It wasn’t her kind of food at all but Mumtaz knew what Mark liked and, for the moment, it was all about him. “Let’s,” she said.

  Like two well brought up children, they crossed Green Street at the traffic lights. Mumtaz noticed that the pie and mash shop was quite empty save for the woman who always served in there. She looked out of the window into the street with an expression of almost terminal-looking misery on her face.

  “What are you doing here?” Lee tried to walk past the girl and get into the flat without having her follow him, but Foxy was young and quick and she was in before he could stop her.

  “I’ve always had
a thing about older men,” Foxy said.

  Lee looked into the living room and tried to see if Roy was about, but seemed not. He didn’t want to be in the flat alone with her.

  “But I haven’t got anything!” Lee said. If his own daughter and her mates, only a few years younger than Foxy, were anything to go by, if he didn’t have money she would soon lose interest. Not that his impecunity had stopped her before.

  She put a hand on his crotch which he instantly whipped away.

  “I’m skint, darling,” he said, “boracic, potless, without funds.”

  She laughed. “You give good orgasms.”

  You give good orgasms! What a mad, women’s magazine thing that was to say! Lee could feel the age gap opening up between them like the Grand Canyon. He’d have to be rude.

  “I don’t want to have sex with you again,” he said.

  But she just laughed. “Yes, you do.”

  “I don’t!” If his dad’s old mates up at the Boleyn could’ve heard him they would’ve been scandalized. Lee Arnold turning down a bit of hot totty like Foxy? But he didn’t want her. They’d had sex, it had been a laugh but now it was over.

  She walked toward him, making him feel as if he was being stalked.

  “You should get home,” he said. “There could be riots again tonight.”

  She put on a baby voice. “But I could stay here.” She jumped on the sofa and laughed.

  “Oh, no you can’t!” Suddenly angry, he reached down and pulled her up by one of her arms. Chronus, who up until that time had been silent, opened one eye and mumbled, “Own goal.”

  Foxy looked at the bird and then at Lee. “What’s he say?”

  Years of living with the bird had taught Lee that Chronus only ever said Own goal in one circumstance, and that was when he didn’t like someone. Lee pulled Foxy across the room toward the front door. “I didn’t invite you here. You have to go,” he said.