A Private Business (14 page)

Neil joined them. “Thanks for covering up for me, guv,” he said to Vi.

“Don't worry, it's all on my mental balance sheet. As the Godfather would say, ‘If I need to call on you …'”

“I want to go home,” Maria said. “I want everybody to just go home.” Still crying, she walked away.

Neil moved in closer to Vi. “Can you do forensics on that sheet?”

“Not unless she wants to proceed. Why?”

“I want to see how much of her is on it,” Neil said.

“You think she might have done it herself?”

“I'm saying nothing,” Neil said.

“Client confidentiality.”

He didn't reply. There was no need.

“Forensic analysis costs.”

“I know.”

They looked at each other. Vi had known Neil for a very long time. “If laughing girl doesn't ask for it back, I'll do it,” she said. “But as I said, if I need to call on you …”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Vi leaned in very close to Neil's ear and said, “And we'll need something for comparison. Nick her toothbrush, a used glass, something.”

Mumtaz spooned the oil over the Yorkshire puddings and then put them back in the oven. Her mother, frowning said, “It's lovely of you to invite us to dinner, but … Mumtaz, I'm not sure that your father will like it. It seems very bland to me.”

The sound of her father's voice, shouting at the television, floated in from the living room. Shazia, sitting opposite Baharat on the sofa was plugged in to her iPod. The old man said, “Bloody Olympics! Look at all those bloody men from eastern Europe working in those construction jobs. What about jobs for local people, eh? That's what we were promised by Lord Snooty Coe.”

“Shazia loves a roast dinner,” Mumtaz said. “Her mother always made one, every Sunday.”

“But her mother was from Bangladesh!”

“She was from Birmingham,” Mumtaz corrected.

“Yes, but her family were from Dhaka.”

Mumtaz turned the heat down on the frozen peas and put a lid on the saucepan. “They were very English,” she said. “That was the way they wanted to be.”

Shazia's mother, Fatima, had been the last child in a family who had moved to Birmingham back in the nineteen fifties. Her mother had been well over forty when Fatima was born and the girl had grown up knowing nothing about anywhere east of Peterborough. The very few pictures she'd seen of Fatima were enough to convince Mumtaz that she'd been very beautiful. She'd also been
very obviously uncovered. Fatima Hakim had not worn a hijab and her clothes had been exclusively Western. Not for the first time Mumtaz wondered whether Fatima's spirit of independence had cost her her life. She'd died from a blood clot on the brain when Shazia was eight and Mumtaz could all too easily imagine how such a thing had formed. Ahmed had probably hit her. Or maybe he'd pushed her, probably forcing himself upon her, and she'd accidentally banged her head on something. Mumtaz had been hurt that way herself by Ahmed. That had been the least of it.

“So how is the new job going?,” Sumita said. Using Mumtaz's best cutlery she began to lay the kitchen table.

“OK.”

“So how is it being some sort of detective now. Does that mean that you have to follow people around?”

Mumtaz smiled. “Sometimes.” On Monday morning she'd have to walk along with all the other mothers to Anjali Butt's school in Plaistow, watching.

“Mmm.”

Her mother clearly didn't approve. Wandering about looking into people's private business was hardly a dignified thing for a Muslim lady to do.

Mumtaz left the cooker and went over to her mother and hugged her. “Amma, I have to make a living. For Shazia and for me.”

Sumita pushed her away. “The girl's own family should
take her,” she said. “Then you could sell this house and come home.”

“Amma, we've had this conversation!” Mumtaz, angry, walked away and stood over by the kitchen window. All but one of Fatima Hakim's immediate relatives were dead. Her brother, Faraj, worked in America. Ahmed's mother paid for Shazia's education but nothing else. Mumtaz had been through all that.

“I'm not selling the house, Amma. Not until I have to.” That wasn't too far away but it was all she had, all that terrible man had left her. She deserved it—if she could hang onto it. Shazia deserved it too.

Sumita shrugged. “Remarrying under such circumstances will not be easy,” she said. “But you're clever, Mumtaz, and this house is worth money, but the job and the girl … You know your father has some very well placed friends with lovely sons.”

Mumtaz always saw red when the subject of marriage arose. She'd been down that avenue once before and she didn't want to go there again. “Amma, my view of marriage is a lot different to yours,” she said. “You have Abba. I had a monster.” She moved closer to her mother again and looked her in the eyes. “He wasn't the Silver Prince, was he, Amma, he was a monster. A monster you and Abba chose for me.”

Sumita lowered her head. Her daughter's words hurt because they were true. She wanted to say that marriage
didn't have to be the way it had been for Mumtaz. She would find a man just like Baharat for her—somehow. Mumtaz would see.

“Oh, fuck, not this again!” Roy Arnold took a swig from his bottle of cheap cider.

Lee looked at him with disgust. “Mum wants to watch it,” he said. “So it stays.”

Roy was eight years older than Lee. But he looked more like a seventy-year-old than a man of fifty-two. Being permanently pissed for thirty years would do that.

“Fucking
Columbo
!” Roy waved a wet roll-up at the telly. “We've all seen it a million times before.”

“Yeah, but Mum wants it on!” Lee persisted. He grimaced at his brother, that useless carbon copy of their useless father. “And it's her house.”

“I live here too!”

He did and although Lee didn't like that one bit there really was no answer to it. His mum let Roy stay on whatever he did to himself, the house or her, just like she'd done with their dad.

“Oh, let him watch what he wants,” Rose said. She pointed the remote control at the TV and changed the channel to motor racing. “It's only bloody Sunday afternoon drop off to sleep telly.”

Roy smiled. “Handsome.”

Lee knew better than to argue. When he went, Rose
would be left alone with him and if Roy had had a bad time with his brother, he'd take it out on her. Rose Arnold was a tough old bird but she was getting on and she didn't need a beating from her son. Not that she'd ever told Lee about Roy's violence toward her, but he knew. He'd seen her put make-up on her face just to do the housework.

As ever, Rose had cooked her boys a nice Sunday dinner. Roast chicken, roast spuds, carrots, onion gravy, all the trimmings. Then hot rice pudding with raspberry jam. Lee had wiped his plate clean while Roy had fitted in the odd spud between booze and fags. Rose sat in her favorite chair over by the window and closed her eyes to the sound of screeching car tires. Lee had to put up with this almost every Sunday! Spending time with some alcoholic asshole just so his mother could have a few hours free from worrying about what he was going to do next.

Lee's mobile began to ring and so he slipped out to the kitchen to answer it. As he left, he heard Roy say, “Who's that? Dr. Watson? Mrs. Colombo?”

Prick!

Lee closed the kitchen door behind him and answered the phone.

“Boss?”

It was Neil West. “Yeah?”

“I'm at Miss Peters' place,” Neil said. “Can you get over here?”

Lee frowned. “What's happened?”

“She wants us to pull out,” he said. “Completely.”

“What! Why?”

“Good question, boss. There's just been an incident and if you ask me, I think she needs protecting more than ever now. Can you leave what you're doing and get over here?”

She knew they were only really bothered about her because of all the money she represented. Potential earnings. “I don't want to have my every move monitored any more,” Maria said. “I'm sick of it.”

She sat on one of her huge, overstuffed sofas while the two men stood. Later, Pastor Grint was going to come over and so she knew she'd have to dispense with these two soon and she wanted it over with. Hiring a private detective agency had been stupid. She wanted it finished before anyone apart from her mother and Betty got to know.

“Miss Peters,” Lee said, “you received a hate note, a threat of death today.”

Maria looked at her polished fingernails. “Just a prank.”

“
Death isn't funny
? I don't think so.”

“A lot of people know that I'm a comedian. It was a joke.”

“Miss Peters—”

“Mr. Arnold, I know that this job represents a lot of money for you—”

“You came to me, Miss Peters, you asked for my help.”

She didn't say anything. She just watched his face turn red.

“If you recall,” Lee said, “we're only in your life because you came to my office because you thought you were being watched. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but we've actually had no concrete evidence of anything untoward, apart from a pair of apparently mobile ceramic cats and some box you were fixated upon but wouldn't talk about, until today. Now I'm worried, you're apparently not. You have to help me here. What's going on?”

“Nothing.” But she looked away as she said it. “I'll pay you until the end of next week and you can keep the retainer. I just …” She looked up into what she now noticed for the first time were his very green eyes. “I don't like men watching me. It's nothing personal.”

“That box you were looking at appeared after that prayer meeting—”

She held up a hand. “I've no interest in it!”

It was bollocks. No one whose life was in danger ever cared a toss about who was protecting them. Lee sat down on a pouf in front of the television. “Miss Peters,” he said, “Neil has told me you sent the police away too.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because they were questioning entirely innocent people.”

“In your opinion. Even church people can be wrong 'uns.”

“These people aren't,” Maria said.

“Coppers have to start somewhere,” Neil added. “Your mates were at the scene. Coppers start with the scene.”

But she ignored him. “I would like you to switch off all your surveillance equipment now and then come and remove it as soon as possible,” she said.

“So you were mistaken about being stalked all along?”

“Clearly.” Her eyes looked wet and she bit her lip. “I'm sorry to have wasted your time.”

Lee shrugged. “You've paid for it,” he said. “I'd be more worried about the coppers if I were you.”

She looked at him and frowned, as did Neil West. But not for the same reason. Neil'd told Lee about the little deal he'd done with Vi Collins as well as how he'd nicked some of Maria's hair from the brush in her bedroom, in confidence—or so he'd thought.

“The coppers sent that note of yours off for forensic examination before you called the whole thing off,” Lee said. “It's in the system now. We've been coppers ourselves—we know. They'll look for fingerprints, DNA. If we're lucky we'll get a known face. Each and every incident has an incident number and this'll be no different. Whether you like it or not, the police are officially aware of it.”

Lee could see the way her confusion settled across her face in deep crevices. He felt as if he was watching some sort of internal struggle. She so clearly didn't want this church she'd become involved with to get embroiled in
anything potentially unpleasant even at a distance. She wanted, apparently above everything else, to protect them. But she was still scared, Lee could see that. Would now be the time when she admitted that she'd just stalked herself? He couldn't imagine why she'd do that unless it was to raise her profile with the public. But she'd been, so far, very discreet about the stalking as far as the public were concerned. Falling apart on stage was what people knew her for. As yet it was hardly enhancing her career.

“You can waste our time, but you can't waste the coppers,'” Lee said.

“I didn't,” Maria said. “Neil—”

“Neil called the police out to what was and is a police matter,” Lee said. “Apparently concrete proof like that? With the possibility of nabbing the perp on the spot? I'd've called them myself! We watch and we gather information and we protect on request. But when something becomes a criminal matter a time will come when we have to hand it over to the police. Do you see?”

She said nothing.

“Miss Peters, if you've anything you want to tell us …”

“You think I'm crackers, don't you?” She looked up at him with hatred in her eyes. “Think I'm a mad woman doing all this to myself.”

Lee didn't want to lie to her but he didn't want to make her even more angry either. But before he could formulate a reply she shouted. It sounded just like the old Maria.

“Oh, just get out the both of you! Send me your fucking bill, take your fucking stuff and leave me alone!”

Paul put his hands around Maria's in the position of prayer.

“Jesus, we thank you so much for giving our sister Maria the strength to tell us the truth,” he said.

Maria's closed eyes leaked tears. As soon as Pastor Grint had arrived with Betty, Maria had told him about the agency, the surveillance, the stalking. In return he'd told her something strange which nevertheless made sense.

“This is not the work of man,” he'd said. “This stalking as you call it, Maria, is the power of Jesus at work in your life.”

“The power of Jesus? Attacking me?”

“In a way, yes.”

She'd looked up at him and he'd smiled at her.