A Private Business by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online

bling out of thick footballers are some sort of noble feminist army? Sisters with breast implants doing it for themselves?” Vi sucked hard on her fag and pulled a face. “Do me a fucking favor.”
    Lee laughed. “Oh, Vi, you are such an easy mark.”
    She laughed. “And you’re a cheeky sod.”
    He put a hand out, ready to curl around her waist again, but then thought better of it and just lit up a fag. Vi had been his colleague, his best mate at the Forest Gate station and, for just one drunken night, New Year’s Eve 1999, his lover. His lover from another century.
    â€œSo if you’ve come to see Maria Peters, you expecting a car crash?” Lee asked.
    â€œYou mean like New Cross? I hope not,” Vi said. “Just collapsed apparently. Christ knows why.”
    Maria had told Lee that she’d fainted during the New Cross gig, in part because of the stalking. That made sense;one of the consequences of stalking was that the victim slowly but surely lost confidence in themselves, stopped eating, got sick. But he wasn’t about to share that with Vi. Maria had come to a
private
detective and that was what she was getting.
    Vi said, “Why you here, then? Thought you spent most of your time with your parrot.”
    â€œMynah bird,” Lee corrected.
    â€œWhatever.”
    â€œYou should know. Anyway, maybe I’m on the pull too,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
    Vi narrowed her eyes. “I’m not on the pull,” she said. “I’m here with our Ronnie. Don’t be a funny bugger, Arnold, you know I’m a strictly holiday romance girl these days.”
    â€œUp for a bit of Moroccan.”
    Vi looked about her anxiously. “Don’t fucking say that! Ronnie don’t know about any of that!”
    â€œI bet he does,” Lee said.
    â€œOh, fuck off.” Vi laughed. Lee Arnold was a strange but sexy fella and she still carried a torch for him from way back in the twentieth century. “Anyway, who you with then? On your Jack as usual?”
    â€œUnless you want me to join you and your son, Vi …”
    â€œNot a good idea.” Then she frowned. “You really on your Jack Jones, Arnold?”
    His face was open and innocent. It was a face Vi knew very well. “What are you up to, Lee?”
    â€œHaving a night out at a comedy club, Vi. What’s the matter with that? Am I not allowed entertainment or something?”
    Vi rocked back on her high, spiky heels and said, “No, you do what you like, love. But I know you, remember? And the Lee Arnold I know don’t go anywhere just to entertain hisself. You, you little bugger, are here for a reason.”

IV
    Catholic youth camp in Epping Forest—it was like a cross between a David Attenborough documentary and a porn fest for paedos. The life cycle of the centipede as witnessed on the front of Father Fernandez’s cassock. Each tent contained at least ten plaster saints with terrible, suffering eyes which, if you put your hands inside your sleeping bag, would start flashing an eerie blue light until Father Richards’d come in and spank you till he could take no more. Masturbation alarm systems—what a great idea that was! Comedians need gimmicks. Ken Dodd has his tickling stick, I have a statue of St. Augustine which flashes blue and plays the theme from
The Omen
every time I come
.
    Out in the audience, someone shouts,
Which isn’t very often!
There’s laughter.
    Ah
, Maria Peters says,
the gentle sound of spotty youth! One mention of masturbation and all the boys start to get nervous
. People laugh.
So Catholic Youth Camp was the first occasion I’d ever spent time away from home. Let’s face it, I come from Plaistow, it was the first time I’d ever seen grass. I didn’t knowwhat the fuck it was. Or trees. As soon as the tents were put up, I went inside and I stayed there
.
    Someone in the audience yells,
What?