Free A Private Business by Barbara Nadel Page A

too, mustn’t we, Paul?”
    â€œOh, yes,” he said, “we must get Maria saved as soon as we can.”
    The cold had hit Lee like a wall as soon as he’d jumped out of the van. Neil was on for the night shift, and so he began to walk home. He put his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and trudged toward the flat. Another evening with Chronus, the telly and Mr. Muscle (bathroom)—the shower cubicle was a disgrace. The names of three local pubs—not his “safe” bolthole the Boleyn—popped into his mind and so he called his mum.
    â€œHow’s Roy?” he asked as soon as she picked up the phone. He knew full well how his brother was, he just wanted his mother to say it.
    â€œPissed,” she said.
    Lee sighed with that weird kind of fearful relief he always experienced when he talked to her about Roy. There but for the grace of God went Lee himself. He’d been a drunk and shoved painkillers down his neck like sweets. He knew why Roy boozed, even if he didn’t approve of how lairy it made him.
    â€œWhere is he?” Lee asked.
    â€œChrist knows.”
    It was dark already and a thin drizzle dampened his hair and his eyelashes. As he walked away from the van he turned and saw Maria Peters looking at him through her dining room window. She looked genuinely afraid. Even with Neil monitoring her every move from the van, she looked scared. He turned onto Capel Road and felt the wind from Wanstead Flats slap against the side of his face.
    â€œMum, you have to ask him to go,” Lee said.
    Rose Arnold snorted. This was not the first time they’d had this conversation. In a minute he’d bring up the angina and then she’d have to put the phone down on him. “Where’ll he go to, Lee? Eh? Where?”
    â€œThat’s his problem. He’s a piss head …” He just stopped short of saying
like his father
.
    â€œOh, I know what he is,” Rose said. “A piss head, a waste of space, a pain in the ass …”
    â€œMum, he makes you ill, iller …”
    And there it was: the angina. Lee knew he’d blown it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Rose liked to live in denial about her illness—it was the only way she could deal with it. She cut the connection and Lee said, “Fuck!”
    Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
It was enough to make you fall into the nearest pub and drink the bastard dry. Except that he wouldn’t, couldn’t. It was cold and wet and thebathroom needed a damn good scrubbing and anyway Chronus would be waiting. It was coming to something when your best friend was a bird, but at least he had the bloody thing. When he got through the front door of the flat he saw that the local paper had been delivered. On the front page was a large photo of the Olympic site over at Stratford with the headline S EX P EST T HREATENS 2012. Then he caught sight of the name DI Violet Collins and realized that Vi was in pursuit of a flasher. Some poor sod addicted to waving his cock at anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity was a bit of a low-level gig for Vi.
    Lee sat next to Chronus’s perch in the living room and thought about it. Mercifully, for once, the bird was asleep. Maybe it was the flasher in Maria Peters’ garden? The Olympic site wasn’t far away. But then in Lee’s experience some randy old bollock with his dick hanging out was not the kind of person who stalked others with any degree of subtlety. Every flasher he’d ever nicked had been more interested in exhibitionism than in actually assaulting anyone. Getting the knob out in public was, for some, all of the thrill.
    Lee picked up his phone and called Neil West in the van to check that everything was quiet on the Maria Peters front.
    â€œHer friend Betty Muller, the pastor bloke and another woman called Rachel have just arrived,” Neil said.
    Lee was aware that Betty Muller, Maria’s gray little friend