A Private Business (38 page)

Lee looked down. “Yeah.”

An awkward silence passed between 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.”

“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.”

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.

Lee looked up. “Council say no,” he said.

She nodded. He knew what she was thinking. Perhaps
if he'd passed that snippet on sooner some of what had just happened could have been prevented. But she also knew that in itself it hadn't been much. It hadn't been looting and rioting.

“I'm interviewing Grint,” she said.

Lee nodded.

“Someone'll come for you to take statements.”

She walked back toward the door and then she turned. “Maria Peters'll live. You did some good vomit work there, Arnold.”

“You're lying.”

DS Bracci shrugged. “Am I? I'm not.”

“That man, that private detective, assaulted me,” Betty said.

“You had a cushion over another woman's face. You were trying to kill her,” he countered. Lee Arnold had smacked her good and proper but she'd been seen by a doctor who'd said she was well enough to be interviewed. “I'm not lying about there being no church in Barking, Betty.”

“I've seen the site. Paul took me. He would never lie to
me
.”

“Paul took you somewhere,” Bracci said. “But it weren't to no site he'd bought, rented or had planning permission for. He's a conman.” He watched her eyes mist. “Paul Grint always was and he always will be. God has not, Betty, saved his soul.”

She said nothing. Tony Bracci didn't know what was more painful, the look of her bruised eyes or the crushed look on her face. She'd loved Paul Grint. All the God-squad stuff aside, that had been the bottom line.

“I want to know why you tried to help Maria Peters kill herself. Was it for money?”

“Of course not.” She looked up sharply. “That woman killed her own child!”

Tony leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about it.”

“It was a long time ago.” She looked away.

“Obviously still bothers you.”

“I was her best friend. At school and then until … it.”

Tony didn't speak. He just waited.

She tilted her head up sharply. “I was married. She was trying to get into comedy and I went to her first audition with her. But she was sick because she was pregnant. Not that she remembered me being there. Just thinking about herself! That was always Maria! Just ran home after the audition—just left me. She had a baby, a little girl, in a toilet, and then she strangled her.” She cried, hugging herself. “She put her body in a Clarks shoebox and left it on the mud at Wapping Stairs!”

“How do you know all this?”

“I knew some of it already. But she told me and Pastor Grint the rest of it today.”

“Why?”

Through tears Betty said, “Because she wanted to be saved! Because Jesus was sending her terrible signs!”

Tony had imagined a tale of abortion.

“But, maybe because of guilt, she couldn't part with the little one's body,” Betty said. “She went back and got the box off the mud and she kept it. I went to the flat she got when she left her parents' place once and while she went out to get milk for our tea I looked around. There was a terrible smell and I wanted to know what it was. Then I found her, the little one, rotting in that box. That box that God made appear to Maria all these last months to force her to confess her sins …”

Tony Bracci had heard some things in his time … “What are you talking about?”

“She came to our church. She knew she had to. Jesus had called her and then, when she came to church, he began sending her signs to make her testify.”

“She found you, not the other way around?”

“Yes.” Then she leaned across the table toward him and said, “She arrived at church one day, alone. It was meant to be. Jesus wanted us to meet and he wanted justice, for her child.”

“And had you, before Maria arrived, ever told anyone else about what you'd seen in her flat all those years ago?”

“Marie had been in the papers some months before, making her comeback. When I saw it, it made me cross. So much fuss about her! But it made me sad too. No one
knew of her shame except me, and I knew she had to be heavily burdened and she was.”

“And so you told Pastor Grint about your old friend, did you?”