by David Mark
‘I didn’t do quite as you asked,’ spurted Molly, putting her hands behind her back to stop them doing anything peculiar or unbidden. ‘I asked some questions about that other missing girl. I think there’s more to this.’
Karol sucked the inside of his cheek, his eyes upon hers. Molly forced herself to hold the stare. There had always been a defiance about her – an obstinacy that led to slaps and shakes as a child and the premature end of adult love affairs. She could never bring herself to follow instruction – even as each act of wilful disobedience created ripples of fevered anxiety within her.
‘I figure,’ said Karol, at last. ‘You woman. You ex-cop. You friend of Meda. You not capable of leaving things alone.’
Molly searched his face for signs of rebuke but saw only a sly appreciation. She felt both relieved and disappointed. Some part of her had wanted his displeasure. Had wanted him to raise his voice in admonishment. She bit down hard on her lip, flicking her eyes towards Karol’s mouth as she did so and breathing deep. She couldn’t make sense of herself. Her thoughts were chaos and noise. There was sweat across her back and under her arms and her mouth tasted of pennies.
‘I might not have to go home for a while,’ said Karol, and as he leaned forward at the bar his shirt opened to reveal the complicated ink upon his lean, hairless chest. He caught the direction of Molly’s gaze and moved back immediately.
‘They’re nice,’ said Molly. ‘I’ve got a couple, but …’
Karol held up a hand to stop her as he reached into the pocket of his dark trousers and retrieved his phone. He spoke only once, and his eyes seemed to become black as he listened to the voice. Then he nodded and terminated the call.
‘Meda?’ asked Molly.
Karol drained his pint and stood up. His leather jacket was hanging on a hook beneath the bar and he pulled it on as if slipping into armour. He did not seem to hear Molly’s voice.
‘Was it Meda, I said,’ she asked again. ‘Karol, was it to do with Meda?’
He turned to her, pulling his cigarettes from the pocket of his coat and placing one, unlit, between his lips. ‘My partner get call. They want money. Meda is safe. Friends of ours trace IP address of the computer they use to make call. We go there now. Get her back. No worries. No problem. No payment.’
For a moment, Molly stood absolutely still. Just stared at him and breathed, slow and deep. Countless possibilities played out in her mind and she knew, with absolute certainty, that she could not do anything but follow her instincts.
‘I’m coming too,’ she said. ‘I’m not a liability. You want to get revenge or whatever and that’s all none of my business, but I care about Meda and I want to make sure nothing terrible happens and if you say no I’m going to have no choice but to call the police and neither of us want that. The girl who died, she had goose quills in her skin, and the kind of person who would do that is somebody who wouldn’t think twice about hurting Meda if they heard a bang on the door, and I don’t care what you say anyway because I will fucking follow you, and …’
She stopped in the face of Karol’s bemused glare. ‘I said OK,’ he muttered, rolling his eyes. ‘But change clothes. You bit fucking recognizable in your fancy dress. I tell your daughter.’
Molly pursed her lips into a line and declined to respond to the use of the phrase ‘fancy dress’. ‘Five minutes,’ she said, and hurried over to the table in the window, where the other barmaid was collecting glasses.
Twenty minutes later, Molly is sitting in the passenger seat of Karol’s car. It’s a boxy, unremarkable family vehicle with plastic covers on the seats. It smells of pine air freshener and disinfectant. Karol wears gloves to drive.
‘Horrible night,’ says Molly, a little shrill. The rain is beating down hard on the windshield and the city lights are a dizzying spray of lurid yellows and blues. They are heading east, moving through heavy traffic, drifting away from the tourist spots and the architectural icons. Passing abandoned factories and shops that hide behind graffiti-daubed shutters. The names upon the supermarkets and clothes shops take on more accents and consonants. Larger satellite dishes bloom like mould upon the long, flat-roofed terraces. Cranes are black slashes upon the charcoal grey of the skyline, though whether they are erecting buildings or pulling them down is hard to say. She feels a sadness as they head further away from the areas she knows. Wonders how her own little network of familiar streets looks to outsiders.
‘I haven’t been out this far before,’ says Molly, making conversation. She feels wired. Nervous. High.
‘No reason to,’ says Karol, moodily staring through the rain at the brake lights of the white van in front. ‘This not London. This Lithuania.’
She gives him a curious look. ‘Big community?’
‘Big? Ha! This is biggest Lithuanian city anywhere. You live here, you shop in Lithuanian shops, talk to Lithuanian people, eat Lithuanian food. You just pay your taxes to Britain.’
Molly tries to work out her driver’s opinion on the matter and realizes she cannot read him. ‘You ever want to move here permanently?’
‘I’d like to live anywhere permanently. But life’s not that way for me.’
Molly takes a breath. Tells herself she is purely being chatty. ‘You have a family?’
He shakes his head. ‘Once. Something like a family, maybe. Girlfriend with a kid. It not work.’
‘That’s your type, is it?’ she asks.
He ignores her, staring straight on. ‘Was supposed to be big fucking deal this area. Thatcher loved it, you know that? This was where all the bankers were supposed to live. Pretty cottages with views of the river where the businessmen could commute to Canary Wharf. It look like that to you? Twenty minutes from the millionaires and you’re in all this.’
Molly looks out of her window as they turn left on to a run-down street. The pavements at the foot of the lopsided trees are rising up where the roots are pushing through. There are battered England flags hanging from balconies of the three-storey apartment blocks above. The broken skeleton of a bicycle is chained to black railings around a parking area. There is a yellow clamp hanging half off the back wheel of the solitary vehicle parked on its pitted, rain-lashed tarmac. There are scorches on the paintwork where an axle-grinder has been taken to it.
‘This is Beckton,’ says Karol. ‘You won’t find many restaurants on TripAdvisor. It’s OK though. Nice people. Even the Poles and Roms.’
‘This is where she is?’ asks Molly, as the car pulls to a halt by the kerb. ‘Meda? Are you meeting your partner? What do they think is happening? Which house is it?’
Karol kills the engine and turns to his passenger. ‘You ask a lot of questions. Too many, sometimes, maybe.’
‘I just want to know …’
‘That flat,’ says Karol, gesturing at a first-floor corner premises indistinguishable from any of the others. ‘IP address is there. So I go upstairs and talk to the people inside. They tell me where Meda is. If everything is good in our life then Meda is up there eating ice cream and I bring her home with me. That the end of it. If not, I persuade them to tell me where she is. Then we go there. This my work. This what I do.’
Molly watches his mouth as he talks. His top lip does not move much but his lower lip rolls up pleasingly around his vowels. She wonders how she looks to him, sitting here on his plastic-coated seats in her jeans and plain vest top, man’s shirt and borrowed denim jacket. She feels strangely naked without her accessories. She finds herself wondering what it says about her – that she could be sitting here, in this moment, this now, with this man, and be regretting that she is not dressed in high-throated corset and ruffled petticoats.
‘You said you wanted to come,’ says Karol, shaking his head. ‘Get that out of your head. You can be here to give Meda a cuddle if she comes down with me. That’s OK. But don’t come up.’
Molly is already shaking her head. ‘No, that’s not what we agreed.’
‘We didn’t agree anything. I don’t make deals. I
say what is what.’
Molly opens her mouth, showing her displeasure. ‘You say what’s what? Not to me you don’t. What do you think you’ll do if I just get out and follow you? I’m not some feeble little thing. I want to help.’
Karol is shaking his head. The only light in the car comes from the light of a street lamp a few car lengths away. Karol is little more than an outline; a handsome, clearly defined jaw, angled cheekbones and short hair. Molly suddenly realizes how little she knows about this man; how fleeting their acquaintance. The absurdity of the situation strikes her. She is miles from home, in an area of East London that she has never ventured into before. She is in a car with plastic sheets being driven by a stranger who wears gloves and talks of having no home and who makes his living recovering kidnapping victims and has criminal tattoos carved on to his chest. The sensation of disquiet in her chest begins to become a wave of something more akin to fear.
‘I won’t be long,’ says Karol, and he pats the pocket of his jacket as if checking for the outline of his wallet. ‘Don’t touch the settings on the radio, the car belongs to a friend …’
Karol doesn’t get to finish the sentence. His words are lost in an instant of sensory blackout; a moment in which her knowledge of herself, her physical being, her place within things, is entirely ripped away. She feels as though she has been consumed by blackness; swaddled in thick plastic and spun. She does not know which way is up or down, or which noises are in her head and which she can taste and smell. There is just the dizzying echo of the explosion and the certainty of pain as the windshield turns into so many shards of flying glass and the airbag flares in a sudden rush of colour and dust …
Karol is still bouncing back in his chair as the iron bar smashes into the window on the driver’s side. Glass shatters and it feels to Molly as if she is on an aeroplane with a missing window. She watches as Karol is wrenched from his seat as if taken by a ravenous wind.
A sound pierces the fog. Angry shouts and curses that ring out like a shotgun blast. Molly shakes her head, trying to make sense of herself. There is wetness on her face and glass in her hair. She pulls at the door handle and stumbles out on to the damp stone of the footpath. She pulls herself up and slides over the rain-jewelled bonnet of the car.
Karol is on his knees. A man in a colourful tracksuit top is standing over him, raising something long and unyielding above his head. Molly’s eyes fill with images from movies. She sees Samurai and Templars; arcing blades and the thud of decapitated skulls upon bloodied ground …
‘Stop! Please, there’s no need … no!’
Molly’s voice sounds ridiculous to her own ears; a sudden burst of English privilege piercing the rain-lashed air on this dark, derelict street. The man with the crowbar pauses an instant too long. The two men behind him, both barely distinguishable from the darkness that surrounds them, give a yell of warning, but the instant of hesitation is enough. Karol hits his attacker in the balls with his bunched right hand, an upper-cut thrown from the floor. The man grunts and drops the crowbar, which thuds off his head and then tinkles down on to the road as Karol’s attacker falls to his knees. Karol puts one hand on the man’s face and slams his head into the pavement with the sound of splitting wood. He hauls himself up as the other two men rush forward from the shadows. Molly had expected broad-shouldered, dead-eyed criminals but these two men are young. Teens perhaps. One of them is shouting something in Lithuanian, raising his hands as Karol advances. If he is pleading it does him no good. Karol grabs him by the front of his hooded jacket and throws him at the side of the car. He bounces off as if he has been run over and Karol kicks him in the face as he tries to rise. The third man tries to grab Karol as he turns but Karol slides expertly out of the inexpert grip and thumps his fist into the younger man’s back and neck, chopping him down as if felling a tree.
‘Karol, stop …’
He turns at the sound of Molly’s voice. There is blood all over one side of his face, and Molly finds herself thinking of Japanese symbols, as if his whole countenance had become an icon of Yin and Yang. The light catches the chunks and slivers of glass that cling to his hair and protrude from his neck. She opens her mouth in shock but Karol turns away before she can speak. He cradles his left arm in the hand of his right and Molly realizes he has been struck hard with the tyre iron. He hauls the man who did it into a seating position. Kicks open his legs and drops forward, kneeling on his bruised balls with all of his weight.
‘Ooh, Jesus fucking Christ,’ hisses Molly, wincing and looking away. She takes deep breaths, resting her hands on the warm metal of the car. She feels the rain upon the back of her neck. Sees lights flick on and then off again in the apartment blocks overhead.
‘Meda,’ she says, half to herself. The word gives her a sense of purpose and she moves to where Karol is crouching, his face millimetres from the anguish-filled features of the man who sits on the floor and tries not to puke as his testicles are ground into the road.
‘What’s happening?’ asks Molly. ‘Are they the ones? They have Meda …?’
One of the other boys looks up as he hears the name. Up close, Molly sees the boy is no more than sixteen. There are tears in his eyes and blood on his chin.
‘We need the money. It wasn’t our idea. It was wrong … I’m sorry …’
Molly looks at Karol, who releases his grip on his captive and crosses over to the boy who had spoken. He hauls him upright and hisses a stream of angry Lithuanian into his face. The reply is garbled and frantic and Karol spits blood on the floor when he is done. He grinds his foot into the frothy red sputum as if he is extinguishing a cigarette.
‘Karol? Is she here?’
Karol pushes the youngster away and he sprawls on to the floor at his feet. He leans down and puts his thumb into the left eye and is rewarded with an instant scream of agony. Molly moves forward on instinct and Karol gives a shout of frustration and straightens back up. He swears to himself then drags the biggest of his attackers from his prone position beside the vehicle.
‘You’re saving these fuckers’ lives,’ rumbles Karol, and he fumbles in his pocket for his cigarettes. He wipes a hand on his face and seems to pay no heed to the blood that soaks his palm. He lights his cigarette and in the sudden flame of the lighter, Molly sees the streak of red on the white stem of the cigarette.
‘What about Meda?’ Molly asks again. She becomes aware of a pain above her right eye and raises a hand. She feels a sliver of glass poking into her eyebrow and she floods with a great wave of nausea and dizziness at the touch. She feels herself tottering and then Karol’s hand is at her elbow and he is steering her to the vehicle and laying her, gently, in the back seat. She looks up, a high whine in her ears. Lead weights pull at her consciousness and she feels the dim sensation of Karol’s blood dripping from his cheek to land on her upturned face, and then all she can hear is the purr of the tyres on the road and Karol’s quiet voice, muttering into his mobile phone, as he tells his employers that they have been scammed. That his attackers never had Meda in the first place. That she is still missing and that nobody is claiming responsibility for her kidnap. He tells them that the girl is almost certainly dead.
Molly cannot hear the response of the man to whom Karol speaks. But somewhere inside herself, in a place that has witnessed violence and blood, she fancies that she can make out the white hot shriek of a soul in pain.
From: Harriet Johnson ([email protected])
To: Eve Burrell
Subject: Enquiry about death masks for doctoral paper
08/08/2013 8.48 p.m.
Hi Eve!
Sorry for the delayed response. The life of a mortician is just so rock’n’roll! I wanted to give a proper answer to your rather intriguing query. Do I make death masks? No, unfortunately that is not a request I have received, nor training I have. I am sure it would be possible, but I’m not sure how – would the casting material damage the skin? You see, some problems we have after embalming (and sometimes witho
ut embalming) include the skin on the face ‘burning’. This is a drying out of the skin, causing areas to become a dark yellow/brownish color. Skin loses its moisture, and I wonder if doing a mask would work against me. BUT I would love to learn how … maybe that is something I could look into … also, desquamation would be of high concern … and the time it would take could be concerning … There are several guides on how to perform the process available online but I can’t vouch for their usefulness. I understand William Blake underwent the process of having a replica made of his face while still alive and it showed him with a pained expression because the clay kept pulling his hair!
I DO get many requests for hair clippings, clothing to be returned, etc. We also fingerprint everyone and can send it to a company who uses the fingerprint to create jewelry and the like. One gal requested her husband’s toe print … We didn’t ask why …
A modern memento mori that I do on a regular basis would be separating cremated remains for the decedent’s kids/family to have in a keepsake urn, necklace charm, blown glass item, etc. Each family member could have a separate part of the ashes of their loved one to memorialize.
Many families take pictures of their deceased loved one at the funeral. Even if I have someone prepared for closed casket, no viewing, I ALWAYS prepare them as if a million people will see them. This is one reason why.
I have been asked to return the clothing of the deceased before – depending on its condition, I have responded no. Also to take pictures of tattoos (I have heard of the company who preserves tattoos, but have not had a request to do so). I have seen hospitals do a plaster cast of children’s hands and feet that families appreciated. Stones can be made out of these casts too. Hospitals and hospices can do hand prints too (this is easier when the person is alive).