A Private Business (18 page)

“All religion's magic at the end, isn't it?” Murderer said.

“What do you mean?”

“Bloody belief in spirits, waving incense about, all that,” he said. “Smoke and mirrors. And I don't mean that stuff that Mark Solomons does on the telly. They get people under their spell, these religious types, and make 'em do things 'cause God says so. They do exorcism at them churches and all sorts of mad shit.”

“Why you never joined up, Murderer?”

A single middle-aged white woman came into the shop and ordered pie, mash, peas and a cuppa. It was lunchtime and the place was like a tomb.

“I had the chapter,” Murderer said. “As well you know.”

Vi remembered the Hells Angel chapter that Murderer had belonged to. She'd nicked at least five of its members in the past. “How does an old racist like you know about these Africans then?” she said.

Murderer, who didn't mind in the least bit being called a racist, said, “No names, no pack drill. I have women all colors, shapes and sizes in and out my place. Know what I mean?”

He was talking about the small army of carers who went into his ground floor flat on Plashet Grove to put him to bed, change his inco pads and look for pressure sores on his bum. So one of those girls had said something to him.

“Wouldn't take me long to track down any African ladies who work for you, Murderer.”

“She'd deny it.” He shrugged.

“If you're pulling my plonker …”

“Why would I do that?” he said. “You're the only copper I've ever known with a full set of nuts.”

Vi would have to go softly-softly on this whether it was a witchcraft killing or not. To explore “difference” too closely could smack of racism, while ignoring it completely helpfully opened the door to every fascist, send-'em-all-home nut on the manor. For the first time since she'd sat down, Vi looked up into Murderer's dry, cold face and she said, “Jerk me around and I'll make sure that you think that being paralyzed from the waist is a holiday.”

He didn't even bother to shrug. “So you gonna pay me or what?” he said.

Vi, who had already bought Murderer his lunch, pushed two twenty-pound notes across the table. He scooped them into a battered old bumbag on his lap and said, “Religion's ruining this country, you know.”

“Some people reckon it brings them peace,” Vi said. “Gives meaning to their lives.”

He pulled a sour face. “What, like the Asian women dressed up like dustbin bags? The Sikhs with their heads in bandage? The happy-clapping Christians staying virgins for
the Lord
? Do me a favor!”

Vi Collins didn't have a religion. Her mum had been an Irish Catholic while her father had been a Jew. The kids had ended up nothing.

“Religion's a magic trick,” Murderer said. “And like any magic trick it can go wrong and it can kill you. Look at Houdini.”

“Maria?”

She felt her stomach turn over. But she made the effort to smile into the telephone receiver. “Alan.”

“Love, I thought it was time I called a bit of an old truce,” Alan Myers said. “Don't like to be at odds with my artistes, whatever may have happened.”

He was still angry about the Comedy Store, but he was doing his very best to suppress it.

“I'm not one of your artistes any more, Alan,” Maria said. “You sacked me.”

“Oh, yes, well …”

He wanted something; probably someone to fill in for a sick comic somewhere. “What do you want, Alan?”

It was Saturday night and she had to spend time alone, praying for the strength to go to the new church in the morning.

“Do you want me to fill in for someone somewhere?” she asked.

There was a moment of silence, then he said, “No.” He
sounded vaguely hurt but then Maria knew of old what a good actor Alan could be.

“Alan, get to the point.” She heard him take in breath and then sigh. “Do you want me to do something for you or what? Because if you do I've told you I've finished with comedy. When Len died I needed something familiar in my life so I went back to comedy but it was a mistake.”

“But you were good, love. When you started back out on the circuit you were great.”

He was right. When she'd first gone back, she'd been brilliant. But because he was right she became flustered because she didn't want to be that person any more. “So you do want …”

“You out on the circuit? No.” Now Maria was shocked and she was hurt too—but why was that? “After all your performances breaking down and that, and then the Comedy Store cancelation, your name's a bit, well, poisoned at the moment.” He must have heard her sharp intake of breath but he didn't give her a chance to speak. “Maria, people are saying you look ill and I'm worried.”

Her name was poisoned? When she did manage to speak she just said, “People?”

“Well, Beppo actually,” Alan said. “Still lives with his ancient mother up Odessa Road. He saw you at one of the chemist's on Woodgrange Road. He said you looked thin and pale and he didn't like to talk to you because he said you looked like you wanted to be on your own.”

“Did he say what I was buying, by any chance?” Now she was cross. Beppo was a nosy, old-fashioned, queeny old clown who Alan still managed for some bizarre reason. She'd never liked him.

“Painkillers,” Alan said. Of course Beppo had seen what she'd bought. “Some of those with codeine.”

Maria saw which way this was blowing. “Oh, so now I'm a codeine addict.”

“You used to stick all and sundry down your throat in the old days!” Alan said.

“I had a headache, Alan, a bad one. I know you'd love to ascribe my behavior to something as sexy as addiction, but it just isn't true, not this time. You know full well why I can't perform the kind of comedy I used to any more and it's your problem if you won't accept it.” Jesus. Alan Myers couldn't even bring himself to allude to her religion. In the past he'd tried to ignore it, but maybe he'd been wrong to do that. Maybe he should have talked to her about it when all the Jesus stuff had first started.

“Maria, if you're ill you know that you can count on me to help you. All professional stuff aside, you're a lovely girl and—”

“Alan, I don't need your help. I have all the help I need.”

“God.”

“Yes, God,” she said. “I've finally come to my senses, Alan. I'm not the mess you discovered back in the year dot any
more. I'm not in thrall to the Catholic Church like I was when I was a kid. This is real.”

It took a lot to make Alan Myers lose his cool. But he, like Len Blatt, had seen Maria battle addiction before. And addiction came in many forms—not all of which were substance based. “Maria, these people, this church, they're manipulating you.” He could almost hear her sneer down the phone. “It's all fairy stories, what they're telling you. I've seen it all before. Trust me on this!”

“Oh and how is that?”

“They're drawing you in. Changing you. They just want your money, love.”

“No they don't! No, I sought them out, Alan. I needed God. I went looking for Him. Trust me on this and deal with it. Goodbye.”

Maria replaced the receiver to the sound of Alan Myers still wittering away about her “health” at the other end. Then she went over to the dining room window and looked outside through the drizzle into the street. Evening was beginning to drift over into night and people were hurrying home to get in front of televisions dominated by cheesy talent shows. When she'd been young every artiste, whether a comedian, a singer or a dancer had had to serve their time in dodgy pubs and clubs for years before TV stations came knocking. That was probably why just about everyone had been on something back then. Now, people just seemed to pop up from nowhere all the
time. Without even thinking about what she was doing, Maria poured herself a glass of port from the decanter on the dining table and threw it down the back of her throat. Then, for just an instant, she stopped.

Outside in the rain a familiar figure stopped in front of her house and she only just avoided making eye contact with her. It was that Asian woman from the detective agency. Mumtaz. For just a second that terrible time when she'd engaged the Arnold Agency came back to her and, not for the first time, she wondered how she'd managed to put that note on Len's grave for herself. She had no memory of doing that—or of putting the Clarks box next to the television.

It was a truly horrible feeling to be so conflicted. Mumtaz wanted to tell Lee about seeing Maria Peters—how sick she'd looked, how she'd been knocking back booze—but she also just wanted to let all that lie. It was Saturday night and Lee would probably be out with friends, and besides, Maria Peters wasn't their business any more. Except that to Lee she kind of was. She kind of was to Mumtaz too. She still had that flyer for the Chapel of the Holy Pentecostal Fire in her handbag. Mumtaz wondered if Lee fancied Maria; slim or thin, she was a good-looking woman, even if she was older than he was.

Her mother took a tray of samosas out of the oven and put them on the kitchen table. “When will you be able to come home again?” she asked.

“What?” Mumtaz hadn't been listening. Now she felt bad. “Amma?”

“Home, child,” Sumita said. “It would be nice if you could come and eat with us for a change sometimes. All you do these days is just pop in for half an hour occasionally, it's not enough.”

At some point almost every weekend Mumtaz's parents would eat at her house, mainly because Shazia didn't like having to drag all the way over to Spitalfields, which she hated. And if Mumtaz worked on a Saturday, Sumita and Baharat generally came over to look after the girl. On Sumita's part that was mainly as a favor to her daughter although Baharat did actually seem to get on quite well with Shazia even though she wasn't his real granddaughter. He also felt sorry for her as a child without parents whereas Sumita saw her more as an inconvenience. Without her it would be much easier to find a man for Mumtaz.

“Yes, but Shazia—”

Her mother dismissed her with the wave of a hand. “Ah, she can make Brick Lane her playground for once, it won't kill her.”

Mumtaz, who knew how scornful Shazia always was of the “losers” on the streets of Bangla Town, nevertheless bit her tongue. She took her phone out of her pocket and looked at it again. Her mother saw her and frowned. “Waiting for a call?” she said. Her voice sweated suspicion and Mumtaz knew why.

“I'm waiting for no one to call,” she said. “I am wondering if I should call someone myself.”

“Who? A man?”

Mumtaz breathed deeply and attempted to remain calm. After all, her mother couldn't help it if her entire thinking had always been dominated by either hoping for a man for herself or her daughter, keeping men, weddings, and children. That was how she had been raised.

“Yes and no,” Mumtaz eventually said.

“What is it?”

“Something to do with my job, Amma. Nothing romantic, I promise.”

Sumita placed a selection of samosas on a plate and said, “You should not be alone, Mumtaz. It isn't good for a woman. People talk about such women.”

Mumtaz didn't say a word. Suddenly, wiping out the microwave was something she could no longer ignore.

“You're an educated woman who keeps a nice home,” her mother said. “A nice, quiet gentleman would be very happy to care for you.”

Apart from the fact that Mumtaz had decided as soon as Ahmed died that she never wanted to be “cared for” again, the implication behind the words “nice, quiet gentleman” made her shudder. Her mother meant some old man, some venerable widower who wouldn't mind, too much, that she wasn't a virgin any more. Someone like poor, heart-diseased Mr. Choudhury. Mumtaz stopped
wiping the microwave and began to scrub it. For the moment, she quite forgot all about Lee Arnold and Maria Peters.

A tall, skinny, white girl with thick purple dreadlocks looked down at Vi's stiletto-shod feet and very obviously turned her middle-class nose up. This part of Hackney Wick, the area around Forman's smoked salmon place, was stiff with people like her, too cool for school. She was probably an artist, which was code for a trustafarian who until very recently had been Head Girl at Roedean. Vi Collins was aware that she was probably the most cynical and judgmental person in the known universe but she didn't much care. She'd come down to the Wick to talk to a bloke called the Reverend Charles Manyika, pastor at the Bethel Revival Church. It was where Jacob Sitole had worshipped and where his family still went.

In common with most of the “churches” around the Olympic site, the Bethel Revival was housed in an old warehouse. Opposite a tarpaulin-covered corner shop and next door to a place called the Happiness Club, which Vi knew for a fact was an S&M hang-out, it looked almost the same as the now demolished Chapel of the Holy Pentecostal Fire. But then the happy-clappy places did all tend to be out of the same mold. Around the corner was a church that called itself the Peace in Jesus Foundation. That was where Matthias Chibanda, the boy who she now
knew had killed Jacob Sitole, worshipped. She'd been there already.

Vi knocked on the door nearest to the sign outside and waited. After a few moments a tall, bespectacled, black man answered. Smiling, he introduced himself as Charles Manyika. As he took Vi through into a big, drafty hall filled with what looked like almost a thousand chairs, he said, “We are all very distressed about Jacob, he was a good boy.”

“Mrs. Sitole says the church is being very supportive,” Vi said. An elderly lady, dressed entirely in sunflower yellow asked the reverend if they both wanted tea and Manyika said that they did. He took Vi over to some soft easy chairs beside the large stage at one end of the hall and they both sat down.

“That two Christian boys like Jacob and Matthias should fight until one of them dies is beyond appalling,” Manyika said.