A Private Business (20 page)

Here at last was a measure of peace and security that mirrored, in some ways, what she'd had with Len. But then the feelings of being watched began to roll in, the dread and then, of course, the terrible, terrible guilt.

Maria walked into her living room. It was so beautiful outside in her gardens, but she wasn't interested. If she went outside there was always a chance she'd be obliged to talk to some neighbor over the fence and she didn't want that. Betty had offered to come home and spend some time with her after the service, but Maria had wanted to be alone.

She sat down on the sofa and scanned the
Sunday Times
culture supplement for the TV pages. Usually on a Sunday
afternoon there was some sort of crime show on one of the channels. An old
Columbo
or
Murder, She Wrote
or something. Eventually Maria found a program that appealed to her on a distant cable channel. She leaned across to the sideboard behind the sofa and was about to pick up the remote control when she saw something she should have seen as soon as she came into the room. On top of the sideboard, tied together with a great big purple ribbon, like a bunch of flowers, were at least twenty perfect peacock feathers. Maria pulled her hand back and away from them immediately and only just managed not to scream. What were they doing in her house? Where had they come from? Who,
who
had put them there?

Glenys, her mother, had always been and remained a superstitious woman. It was something she had passed on to her children. Peacock feathers brought bad luck. To have them in a house was tantamount to inviting ill fortune across the threshold. Maria knew it was bollocks, but as she looked at the feathers she felt her throat begin to close and her eyes start to water. She would never, ever bring such things into her house, not even in her sleep, not even in her nightmares. With trembling hands she grabbed the phone and called Pastor Grint. But he was “temporarily unavailable,” as the electronic message had it. Maria felt alone and let down, although she knew that was irrational. Why should Paul Grint be at her beck and call all the time? Her legs shook as she stood up and stumbled
back toward the hall and the front door. The feathers were seeping malice—she could almost see it. She had to get out.

Much as she would have liked to have cooked Shazia a traditional English Sunday meal, Mumtaz just couldn't justify the expense this week. It was going to have to be dhal and to that end she'd had lentils soaking overnight. But she lacked cinnamon and also one of the most basic ingredients of
mitta dhoi
, the sweet—and cheap—baked yogurt treat she would use to try and take the edge off Shazia's disappointment. For that, as well as the yogurt, milk and sugar she already had, Mumtaz also needed a tin of evaporated milk. There were several convenience stores up on Woodgrange Road and so she headed off to get what she needed at just after midday.

Mumtaz spent rather longer in the Sylhet Convenience Shop than she had imagined that she would. Because the day was warm and bright, people were encouraged to talk as they went about their business in the good weather and Mumtaz stopped to speak to several ladies she hadn't seen for months. As she suspected they would, these women all knew about her job and one of them even suggested that they should “talk” at some point. The world of Bangladeshi women could be, at times, very small.

Mumtaz walked back from the shop down Osborne Road and into Richmond Road. All these streets were quiet and
leafy and it didn't take much to imagine how elegant they had been in the past. Mumtaz's own house was one of those that even had an old coach house in the back garden. Not that her house was actually
her house
in reality. Most of it belonged to the bank that had given Ahmed a very dodgy mortgage. It was a mortgage he had extended several times. She paid them what she could, when she could, but recent telephone conversations had involved the word “repossession.” As calmly as she was able, Mumtaz had asked only that they restrain themselves until after Shazia had finished her GCSEs. The girl knew nothing about any possible repossession and Mumtaz wanted to keep it that way for as long as she could.

She crossed the road at the junction of Richmond Road and Claremont Road. There was no traffic and so she didn't hurry. Had she done so, she wouldn't have heard the crying. But she did and, although she had to wrestle with her “nice-Muslim-lady-don't-get-involved” thing, she eventually gave in to her much more recent private investigator's curiosity. The sound was coming from her right and so she turned into Claremont Road and began walking back toward Woodgrange Road. Vast, tree-screened houses, just like her own, gently basked in the unseasonable warmth. Most of them were quiet. A lot of people had probably taken advantage of the weather to go out into Epping Forest or down to Brighton for the day. Maria Peters, half sitting, half lying on her doorstep crying, was an exception.
Mumtaz walked up to her front gate, pushed it open and then closed it behind her.

“Miss Peters,” she said once she'd reached the front step and put a hand on the woman's shoulder. “Whatever is the matter?”

They both looked across the room at the bunch of peacock feathers. They had all been tied, very artistically, together with a purple silk bow.

“They bring bad fortune,” Maria Peters said. She bit her own lip and frowned. “I know it's all bollocks, but it's an old tradition—in the theater—and it's what my mother taught me.”

“What our mothers teach us, stays with us,” Mumtaz said. When she leaned forward to touch the feathers, she heard Maria wince.

“You don't think they bring bad luck?”

“No.” Mumtaz smiled. “I think only God gives and takes away.”

Maria wanted to say that that was what she tried to believe too, but she didn't. She said, “The point is, I didn't put them there, I wouldn't and I don't know who did, or would.”

“You think that someone is trying to frighten you again?”

She didn't want to say “yes.” But this time she
couldn't
have done this to herself. She would never have been able to bring herself to touch those … things.

Mumtaz picked up the feathers and turned to look at her. “If you want me to dispose of these, I'll do it gladly,” she said.

“That would be nice.” Maria smiled. But then she put a hand up to her mouth and chewed down on a fingernail.

Mumtaz put the feathers into her blue plastic shopping bag. She couldn't be sure that Maria Peters hadn't put the feathers there herself, it had to be a possibility. But it was only that. No one had ever really got to the bottom of her last bout of persecution fear.

“Would you like a friend or a relative to come and be with you?” Mumtaz asked.

Maria sat down. “Like my mother? I need her in my life like a hole in the head. If she calls I ignore her.”

“The police?” Mumtaz offered.

“No.”

“If you feel that your house may have been broken—”

“There's no sign of any sort of break-in.” Maria rubbed a hand across her face, smearing what was left of her mascara out toward her temples.

“Maybe whoever put these feathers here has a key.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No one else has a key but me. I love my friends and even my mum, in a way, but I wouldn't want them to be able to just come in when they felt like it.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes.”

But Mumtaz wasn't. Even when people didn't give keys away, people still managed to get hold of them. Her oldest brother Tariq had stolen their mother's key when he was a teenager, had a copy made and then put it back in her handbag before she noticed. For almost a year it had allowed him to come and go at will from the family home whether his parents approved or not.

“Whatever's going on here, I don't want people that I care about and who care about me, involved,” Maria said. “Not this time.” Sitting out on the doorstep she hadn't tried to call Grint or anyone else again.

Mumtaz sat down next to her. “But don't you think that people who love you would like to help if they can?”

The comedian looked into Mumtaz's eyes. “You've a background in psychology; do you think that I'm doing these things myself? Do you think I'm losing my mind?”

Unknown to Maria Peters, these were not easy questions to answer. Neither Lee, nor Neil nor Mumtaz had been able to actually witness Maria placing objects and moving things around back in February. But that didn't mean she hadn't been doing it. She was genuinely afraid of what she seemed to genuinely feel were the actions of an outside agency of some sort. But clearly some anxieties about her own sanity were present too. An honest answer in either the affirmative or the negative was impossible. Mumtaz said, “I don't know.”

“You don't
know
!”

“Miss Peters, things have happened in this house that no one as yet has got to the bottom of. But peacock feathers, which you hate, do not just appear out of thin air. Well, not
really
. I think that someone could be getting into your house somehow. I think that you should call the police.”

But Maria Peters shook her head.

“Why not?”

She didn't answer. She didn't need to. Last time the police had got involved with Maria it had ended with her not just dismissing them but also sacking Lee and the agency too. It had been something about not wanting to upset her friends, about not wanting to be watched “by men” any more. Lee was still of the opinion that her reasons had been bollocks. He really did think she'd lost her mind.

“Miss Peters, if you'd like the agency—”

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no!” She shook her head violently. “Men outside my house looking into every corner! No, no, that was awful dreadful, like a nightmare!”

“You engaged—”

“Oh, I engaged Mr. Arnold and the rest of you, yes, but …” She slumped against the back of the sofa. “That wasn't the answer, was it.”

Mumtaz said nothing. The more time she was spending with Maria Peters the more she became convinced that what she needed was a doctor. But how to even begin to say such a thing? She wasn't the woman's friend or relative and although Mumtaz's confidence had grown
considerably since she'd been working for the agency, she still couldn't quite get to the point of telling strangers they were bonkers. She was lost in these thoughts almost completely when she heard Maria Peters say, “I'd employ you though, alone.” Mumtaz looked up and frowned. “If you would come and stay with me here, I'd pay you well,” Maria said. “I trust you.”

Mumtaz, taken entirely by surprise said, “I don't know if that will be possible. I'd have to speak to Mr. Arnold.”

“Don't hit him!”

Vi blocked the heavy fist of Luther Chibanda as it attempted to make contact with his son Matthias's head. Thwarted, Luther reeled away into the corner of the room, weeping.

“You must tell the police what has happened!” he shouted.

The boy, lying in the hospital bed, turned away.

“However bad and whatever it is, you must tell them.”

But still Matthias didn't speak.

Luther looked across the small hospital side room at the tall, impressive man standing over by the door and said, “Pastor, you must help us to get Matthias to speak. Please! He and Jacob were like brothers. We do not understand why this has happened.”

Vi saw how unmoved Iekanjika was and it made her skin crawl.

“Luther, I can pray for the boy only,” he said.

“Pastor, maybe he is possessed!”

“If that becomes apparent, then I will cleanse him. But at the moment—”

“You think that Matthias killed Jacob because of some, some earthly thing, some thing of greed or …” Luther Chibanda broke down in tears again.

Vi, at a loss amid so much that she didn't understand, put a hand on Luther's shoulder and said, “Mr. Chibanda, we will get to the bottom of this.” Even though she really didn't know whether that was possible.

“He must be possessed,” Luther Chibanda said, as much to himself as to anyone else. “He must be.”

Vi just caught, as she quickly glanced away from Luther Chibanda, a brief look that passed between Pastor Iekanjika and Matthias Chibanda. It was not a look of complicity or collusion or amusement or even disapproval. It was a look that told her that Matthias was terrified of Iekanjika.

“I told her that even if I could do it, she'd have to pay the agency and not just me,” Mumtaz told Lee. It was Monday morning and, after a truly awful Sunday afternoon with his mum weeping over Roy, who was missing again, Lee had needed the subject of Maria Peters landing back in his life like a hole in the head.

“But what about your other work?” he asked. “There's that dodgy husband over East Ham, and what about the woman who thinks her daughter-in-law's up to no good? You can't just walk out on them for some gig babysitting someone who's bonkers.”

“I know. But she'd pay us an awful lot of money.”

Mr. Savva, the landlord, had been completely deaf to any entreaties from Lee. So the rent on the office had gone up, as had the utility bills. Cars and vans needed servicing, insuring and taxing and although the agency was making more money than it had ever done before, income was still not keeping pace with expenditure—or Lee's debts.

Frustrated, Lee said, “But the woman in East Ham as well as the one with the daughter-in law want you because they trust you as an Asian woman,” he said. “I can't bowl out there and do what you do for them!”

“I told Miss Peters I would have to get your approval,” Mumtaz said. “I also said I was busy, that maybe for a while I could only spend part of my time with her.”

“She won't have surveillance equipment again?”

“No. She says she doesn't like being watched. I think she may have an issue about being observed by men. I've no idea. She was married and she seems to like men on some level.”