A Private Business

by Barbara Nadel

  As she walked past Brixton tube station and began trudging along Railton Road, Vi wondered where this news about the Olympic Flasher left old Martin Gold. If this apparently Asian man from Spitalfields did turn out to be the flasher then Martin was off the hook—for that. For what he’d made Shazia Hakim do was another matter. He had old habits and they were dying hard, if at all. It was fitting, Vi felt, that she should be thinking about old habits as she walked down Railton Road, Brixton. Back in the late seventies it had been known as the Front Line. This was because it was where the police and the local Afro-Caribbean community had always clashed. Vi remembered it well, not because she’d policed the area back then but because she’d had a mate who’d known a black guy who used to have what they called “Blues” parties. Blues had been noisy, crazy, rumfuelled and the sort of hash that used to get passed around had been second to none. Minus the violence and having two small kids at home and a useless husband, Vi remembered that time with affection. In the late seventies, Martin Gold had been inside.

  “I’m really sorry to bother you, Mr. Arnold, but is my mum with you?”

  Lee looked at his watch. It was nearly nine o’clock. Mumtaz had gone to meet up with her old college mate at five. “She’s not here, Shazia,” Lee said. “You’ve tried her mobile, right?”

  “Loads of times! It’s not even like her to switch it off for such a long time.”

  “You at home?”

  “Yes. Amma … Mum said she’d be back by seven at the latest. I’m worried, you know?” She sounded it. And frightened.

  Had Mumtaz gone off with the famous magical sensation, Mark Solomons? Had she been seduced away to some swanky restaurant in the West End followed by tickets to some up-market magic club? Lee couldn’t believe that for a second—even though Shazia wasn’t her biological child, she treated her as if she were.

  Lee was knackered after his altercations first with Foxy and then with Roy, but Mumtaz being on the missing list was worrying and so he said, “I’m coming round, Shazia.”

  “Oh.” There was some anxiety but also some relief in her voice. She was sixteen but, even so, being in that great big house on her own in a city that was tensed for more riots couldn’t be a nice feeling.

  Lee put his shoes back on. “It’ll only take me a tick,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She cut the connection.

  Mumtaz and Shazia lived less than five minutes’ walk away. Lee turned the TV off and glanced briefly at Chronus who was asleep again. Then he wondered whether Roy was still stacked out in the front garden, not that he cared. But when he opened the front door he saw that the garden was empty. Roy had either wobbled off to pastures new or someone had dragged his body over onto Wanstead Flats and either mugged him or beaten him up or both. Lee began walking toward Mumtaz’s house.

  Betty had arrived very quickly after she’d called her. Maria still felt woozy but she was no longer drifting in and out of consciousness. She took Betty into the living room and pointed at Mumtaz on the floor.

  “Is she dead?”

  Betty walked over to Mumtaz’s prone form and took one of her wrists between her fingers.

  “It was an accident!” Maria said. “I was sick and then, she … She, I was sick in her face. You couldn’t make it up!” And then just for a second she laughed. “She fell over. Over the table. Went down like a, like …”

  “Marie, I’m trying to feel for a pulse!”

  “Oh, sorry. Sorry, sorry!” She sat on the sofa. On the mantelpiece the clock ticked, the right cats, Gog and Magog, sat motionless in the grate and everything felt more normal than it had been for a long time. Except for all the tablets and the woman lying in her own blood on the carpet.

  Maria sat back down on the sofa and tried not to breathe in the smell of her own vomit. She’d thought that because she took a lot of medication anyway, it wouldn’t make her sick. But she’d mixed over a hundred pills up in that bag and swallowed over half of them.

  “Did you eat anything?” Betty asked, still holding on to Mumtaz’s wrist.

  She had. She’d eaten so little for such a long time and the fridge had been full of chocolate she’d had for months. The inner comedian, rearing up suddenly, had said what the hell?

  “You did, didn’t you?” Betty said. “That was really silly, Marie. Food’ll just make you sick.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you still really want to do this?”

  Maria looked at the vomit all over her clothes and her furniture and then she looked at the woman Betty was squatting down next to. “Is she OK?”

  Betty looked up and Maria felt her face pale. Oh, God, she thought, please not again!

  Then Betty said, softly, “She’s dead, Marie.”

  The scream that came out of Maria had a life all of its own. Betty tried to cover her mouth with one of her own hands but the scream just kept coming. Even when she slapped her around the face, it only abated for a moment. She shouted through it, “Oh, Marie, look, you just have to carry on! It’s the only way! Jesus knows you didn’t mean it, but …”

  Nauseous again, Maria vomited bile over herself and over Betty. If nothing else, that brought the screaming to an end.

  “Oh, Marie!”

  “What are we going to do?” she said. “Bet, we have to go to the police!”

  Once he’d made sure that Shazia was OK, Lee took a walk around the neighborhood. The leafy Woodgrange Estate, as the area where he and Mumtaz lived was called, was quiet and very desirable but it was also full of bushes, little deserted bits of garden, railway tracks and a cemetery—all places where people could, and did, get mugged. Heading down toward the top end of Green Street, he passed Maria Peters’ house, which was in darkness, and then turned into the road behind hers and wandered slowly in the direction of Woodgrange Road. There were a couple of deserted houses in that street and he wanted to just check them out.

  One of them, which had, he recalled, always been known as the Wilde House, was in a terrible state. Most of the roof had collapsed and the gap where the front door had once been looked like that black obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey, probably one of the most boring films of all time. Lee pushed the battered garden gate to one side and marched straight into the black obelisk. As he put his feet down on the rotten floorboards inside they groaned underneath his weight. These old places all had cellars; he’d have to be careful not to go flying through.

  Back in his coppering days, he’d come across the Wilde House a few times. An old man called Paddy Wilde had lived there. A recluse, Paddy Wilde eschewed the modern world and lit his home with candles and warmed himself by an open fire made from wood he cut from trees or nicked out of skips. As Lee recalled, he’d died intestate and then the house had been found to have subsidence problems. So now it just moldered and splintered, waiting for some sort of house death.

  “Lee?”

  He turned. The voice was familiar even if the figure that stood outside the front entrance wasn’t.

  “Sam?” He walked back outside and found himself looking at a tall man wearing what Lee always called “all the Muslim gear.” A heavily bearded man of what he knew was his own age. “Samir.”

  The man smiled. “Long time.”

  They embraced, naturally, but also in what both of them would have described as a very manly way.

  “What have you been doing?” Lee asked.

  Samir drew away and then smiled. “I teach now, man,” he said. Then he pointed to the building with the big electric gates. “That madrasah, loads of others all over the East End. You still in the filth?”

  Lee shook his head. “No, mate.” He struck a boxing stance and said, “Private detective.”

  Samir laughed. “Blimey! Still keeping the streets safe though, eh?”

  “Could say the same for you,” Lee said. “Teaching. Keeping the kids out of mischief.”

  “Caring for their souls.”

  Lee looked down. “Yeah.”

  An awkward silence passed betwee
n them. Samir and Lee had never agreed about the utility of religion, even when Sam had still been in the police with him over twenty years ago.

  “So, what you doing in the old Wilde house, man?”

  Lee sighed. “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “My assistant. Should have been home hours ago. Her daughter’s worried.”

  “A lady?”

  “One of your ladies, actually, Sam.”

  Samir looked confused.

  “Her family come from Bangladesh,” Lee said. “She covers her head.”

  “And she works for you?”

  “It’s a long story. But look, I’m worried about her,” Lee said. “You haven’t seen a lady, thirty-two, beautiful face, gray coat and headscarf, on her own?”

  Samir nodded—somewhere deep inside there was still a copper who didn’t miss much. “She went down the side alleyway,” he said.

  Lee felt his heart jolt in his chest. “When?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  “Did you see her come out again?”

  “No. But I had to go and counsel this kid,” Samir said. Then he looked down at his watch. “And now I’ve got a meeting.”

  She heard Betty help Maria take more tablets. Before, apparently, she’d swallowed them with water. This time it was port. Even though she couldn’t speak or move, Mumtaz knew that Betty had lied to Maria. Not only was she still alive, she could feel her blood moving strongly through her veins. She also knew that she could at the very least open her eyes even though she didn’t dare to do so.

  “I’ll stay with you until you go to sleep,” she heard Betty say to Maria.

  “Are you sure? I didn’t want you involved. But maybe until I become unconscious.” Was that a note of panic in her slurring voice? “What about her?”

  “I’ll deal with her,” Betty said.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  More drinking happened. She heard what sounded like a vocalized shudder.

  “It was an accident,” Maria said. “Maybe just leave her there?”

  “Maybe. Would you like me to pray for you, Marie?”

  “And the child? And her too?”

  “And Mrs. Mumtaz Hakim? She is a Muslim but yes, if you like.”

  Seemingly the feeling of paralysis was just an illusion, a product of the shock her body had sustained when she’d barreled over the table and smashed her head on the floor. She had a headache that was in a class of its own, but she could move and now she risked opening an eye, just a very little.

  Amid watery vomit, Maria Peters lay down on the sofa while Betty Muller crouched beside her with her eyes closed. “Dear Lord, accept the soul of this sinner,” she said, “this murderer of children. An eye for an eye, a life for a life …”

  Killer of children? An abortion? Had Maria had an abortion at some point? Born-again Christians didn’t approve. And now this Betty and probably Mr. Grint and the solicitor and who knew what other church members were trying to make her atone by killing herself. So that’s what they’d had on her. How had they known? Had she told them? Betty’s eyes slowly opened as she gently rubbed Maria’s temples.

  “… and knowing that your glory can only be attained via sacrifice …” And then Mumtaz’s eyes met hers and Betty stopped talking. Mumtaz unable to prevent it, blinked. Time suspended for both of them until Maria groaned and said, “What’s the matter?”

  Mumtaz saw Betty’s mild eyes harden and she said, “Nothing. Go to sleep. Go to Jesus. He’s waiting.”

  XXXII

  “No he isn’t, Maria! Jesus isn’t waiting! Suicide is a sin!”

  But Maria Peters didn’t move. Mumtaz tried to get up but found that she couldn’t. Betty rose to her feet and began to walk over to her.

  “Why are you assisting this woman to kill herself?” Mumtaz said. “Has she left you her money?”

  Not even in the wildest reaches of Ahmed’s violence had he ever kicked Mumtaz in the face. Betty Muller did not have such scruples. “Unbeliever.” It wasn’t even said in anger.

  Mumtaz’s jaw shifted to one side and then seemed to right itself again. She ran her tongue around her teeth to see if she’d lost any. She hadn’t. Betty turned aside and went to one of the chairs over by the French doors.

  “Why did you tell Maria I was dead?” Mumtaz asked. She could feel her face swelling as she spoke, her words beginning to distort. “You must have been able to tell I had a pulse!”

  Betty didn’t answer, but Maria made a noise that could indicate that she could hear.

  “Maria! This woman has lied to you!” Mumtaz said. “Whatever has happened, whatever you’ve done, God will forgive! Allah, God, He doesn’t want people to kill themselves, truly!”

  “That from you!” Betty flung herself down on top of Mumtaz and showed her the cushion in her hands.

  “How do you hope to—”

  “They’ll think she killed you,” Betty said.

  Mumtaz looked over at Maria whose eyes were now open again. And then everything went dark as she breathed in the scent of velvet. As the smell of velvet cushion began to suffocate the life out of her.

  For a moment she didn’t even feel as if she had any sort of strength with which to put up a fight against this woman. She was on top of her with a cushion over her face, smothering her. There was a thought in her mind that if Maria deserved to die then so, in a sense, did she. Except that she couldn’t because, unlike Maria, she had Shazia. That girl had suffered enough. Allah, but the pain of not being able to breathe was just hell! She tried to move her head from side to side, but this just made Betty Muller press down still harder on the cushion. Then she realized that one of her arms wasn’t pinned to the floor any more.

  Eyes had always been a problem for Mumtaz. When she’d had to study sight and perception at university, she’d been excused the video the lecturer had prepared for the group about eye surgery. But this woman was trying to kill her and so Mumtaz made herself slam her hand around Betty’s face until her fingers found her eyes.

  The scream the woman made sounded like a dog being whipped. A loud, piercing yelp. She let go of the cushion and flung her head backward. Her hand now free, Mumtaz pulled the cushion from her face and then looked at her fingers just to make sure the woman’s eyes were not hanging from her nails.

  But then Betty, her eyes red but very much in her head, launched herself at Mumtaz and the two woman began to tear at each other’s faces and bodies on the floor. Decidedly the weaker party, Mumtaz felt all the breath leave her body again as Betty pinned her to the floor and began to claw wildly at her face. The woman said nothing, not even making any noises, which was strange and, as it went on seemingly forever, eerie. Trying to get at Mumtaz’s eyes, Betty’s fingers pried her hands away from her face. For a moment, when her arms were flung sideways and her face was uncovered and vulnerable, Mumtaz saw the clawed fingers come for her. And then, just before they reached her face, they pulled back. Sharply.

  “Lee!”

  He’d punched Betty Muller once on the side of the head and was now standing over her.

  “Mumtaz!”

  “Lee call an ambulance!” she rasped.

  “What’s gone on here?”

  “Lee, just call an ambulance!” It was difficult for her to speak. Her jaw and her throat felt as if they’d been stamped on.

  Lee called an ambulance and the police. The place looked like some sort of drug house. “Pills?”

  Mumtaz pulled herself across the floor toward the prone figure on the sofa. “Maria’s swallowed a load. Sit her up.”

  Lee left Betty Muller on the floor and hauled Maria’s slack body up into a sitting position.

  “Lee, we have to make her sick.”

  He knew what to do. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it. “Shit.”

  Maria Peters said something unintelligible and Mumtaz shouted, “Just do it!”

  He stuck his fingers down the back of the comedian’s throat and felt her gag. He did
it again. Some water dribbled from her mouth and then he did it once more.

  It all came out of her on a river of booze. And once again it flew straight in to Mumtaz’s face.

  “Oh, Christ!” Lee held Maria’s shoulders. “Mumtaz!”

  “Don’t worry about me!” She wiped a hand across her swollen jaw and her nose and then heaved herself up beside the comedian and held her arms. “Go and make sure that Betty Muller doesn’t get away.”

  Lee looked at the small body on the floor. It wasn’t moving and so he went over and felt for a pulse. He’d hit her hard. When he’d seen her trying to kill Mumtaz he’d just done what he’d had to.

  “How is she?”

  There was a pulse and it was strong. For once Lee was grateful that he was no longer twenty-five. “She’s OK. What is this?”

  Then they heard the sirens.

  Maria Peters, breathless and exhausted said, “I killed my daughter.”

  Epilogue

  XXXIII

  The police picked Paul Grint up at a boarding house in West Ham; they found Pastor Iekanjika at home at his devotions. DS Tony Bracci got a message over to Vi Collins in Brixton and she returned to Forest Gate as quickly as she was able.

  Waiting their turn to be interviewed after Betty Muller and the preachers, Lee and Mumtaz sat in the soft interview suite nursing cups of coffee. Shazia had been taken to the Huqs’ house in Spitalfields.

  Mortified to be wearing the awful white jumpsuit the police had given her, Mumtaz was nevertheless relieved not to be covered in sick any more. They sat in silence—Mumtaz’s jaw was very sore and speaking was hard—side by side, not looking at each other or touching until, eventually, Vi came in.

  She stared at them for a few moments until she spoke. “So no church in Barking,” she said.