by Tim Weaver
I waited again. She was facing me, her back to Healy, and I could see him getting impatient behind her, shifting on the spot, glancing back out the door and into the corridor, as if he expected the cavalry to arrive any minute.
Then, finally, a spark of recognition in her eyes.
‘You …’ she said.
She’d spoken through the plastic mask over her mouth, her voice quieter and less refined. I nodded, and then sat back, on the floor. ‘I hope they clean in here,’ I said, smiling. She didn’t react, but that was fine. Even if her trust could never be rebuilt, it was at least important that she knew we carried no threat. ‘Do you remember me, Marika?’
She just looked at me.
‘Do you remember when I found you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
She studied me for a moment, the bandages tight against her skin, disguising the tiny movements that experts in kinesics, in the language of the body, would have called illustrators, adaptors and emblems. Without the whole of her face, it was possible to miss some of its subtlety – but I still felt a slight shift in her, as if her defences had come down enough to allow me a little closer. ‘You save me,’ she said.
I smiled. ‘The doctors saved you.’
She didn’t reply, but I could see her face soften.
‘Where did you learn to speak English?’ I asked.
She removed the mask. ‘TV.’
‘You learned everything from TV?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you like to watch?’
‘The men take me …’ She paused. I didn’t say anything, but I let her know I knew she meant Wellis and Gaishe, and all the other worthless pond life that had had a part in bringing her here. ‘They watch football. Most of time just football.’
I nodded. ‘Do you like football?’
‘Yes. I play for the, uh …’
‘A girls’ team?’
‘Yes. In Cluj.’
‘You’re from Romania?’
She nodded. A flicker of sadness. ‘Yes.’
‘Were you as good as Gheorghe Hagi?’
The sadness disappeared and in her face, for the first time, was a hint of a smile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No one better than Hagi.’
I smiled back.
Slowly, her legs slid away from her body, like part of a defensive barrier coming down, although she kept the sheets and blanket in close as a protective shield.
‘Marika,’ I said after a while, keeping my eyes on her and not on Healy, who was half turned towards the door again. ‘Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?’
She didn’t move. Didn’t react.
I nodded again, letting her know I understood her reluctance. I shuffled across the floor, so I was about four feet away, still at her eyeline. ‘Let me tell you about the men who kept you,’ I said, ‘about the ones who hurt you. They will never hurt you again, do you understand? The two men that kept you, they’re gone and they’re not coming back. Now I need to find the others. But to do that, I will need your help, okay?’
She glanced at Healy, then back to me.
‘I know it’s hard.’
Tears blurred in her eyes.
Then she nodded.
‘Thank you.’ I reached into my pocket, removed my pad and placed it down on to the floor next to me. The girl followed every movement, a habit born out of having to predict the next development, the next attack, the next assault. ‘Do you feel ready?’
‘Yes.’
I asked her how she ended up in the UK, and from there she told us – in staccato, broken English – about her journey. She was one of four sisters, with an absent father and a chronically depressed mother. Tears continued filling her eyes as she told us how she was grabbed one day on the way back from school and thrown into the back of a van, and then the next time she was conscious, she woke up in a room full of men – four, maybe five of them – and they raped her repeatedly. She told me she was eleven at the time. It was all I could do to keep it together, to remain emotionless as the pain tremored through her voice, and I had to look down at my pad to prevent her seeing my anger and thinking it was directed at her. I wrote meaningless notes while she told me how she’d been pulled out of the room and into a lorry, then another van, except this time she was in a new country, and they didn’t even speak her language.
‘When did you first get here?’ I asked.
‘In UK?’
‘Yes.’
‘December,’ she said.
‘December last year?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’ve been here six, seven months?’
‘Yes. That was when I meet Adrian.’
The people who’d kidnapped her handed her over to Wellis, and from there she became a prisoner. As she talked, I realized she wasn’t scared of Wellis – or, at least, not like she had been at the beginning – but the way he’d used her and treated her had left her with a look of inevitability, as if being dragged from one punter to the next was all she should expect from life. She had no money. No one to run to. Nowhere to go. It was a heartbreaking moment; one of those times when it felt like you were watching someone drifting out to sea, knowing the fate that awaited them, and all you could do was watch from the shore.
‘He had friend,’ she said.
‘Adrian?’
She nodded. She’d referred to him as ‘Adrian’ throughout. She didn’t know his surname and had probably only learned his first name from listening to their conversations. ‘He had friend called Eric. He always …’ A pause. ‘He always look at me. Never say nothing. Just look. I didn’t like way he look at me.’
But eventually Eric Gaishe did more than look. I remembered Pell turning up the night I’d been watching their house, seeing him talk to Gaishe before driving off again. Gaishe must have told him Marika was unavailable, or Pell would have surely asked for her. Either way, it wasn’t much of a shift: one violent rapist to another.
‘Eric was one who hit head. I can’t remember nothing after. Just remember you. You save me.’
‘Do you remember any of the other men who came to see you?’
Her eyes blinked, surrounded by the bandaging. Somehow I could see the answer without her saying a word: After a while I stopped paying attention.
‘Do you remember a guy called Duncan?’
A blank.
‘He used to film you?’
Now she remembered. From behind her, Healy couldn’t see her reaction but when I glanced at him he could see exactly what I was telling him: She remembers Pell.
‘He never told me name,’ she said, and her voice was so quiet it was barely even audible beyond the ECG and the murmur of conversations in the corridor outside. I didn’t interrupt, though, just shifted in, across the floor, a little closer. ‘He was … strange man.’
‘Why?’
‘He never say nothing. No words.’
‘Ever?’
‘No words,’ she repeated.
‘He hurt you?’
‘Yes. Hurt me.’
I remembered finding her in the loft, and remembered the words she’d managed to get out, through all the bruising and the blood and the damage: Don’t let him hurt me.
‘He was the one you were talking about?’
She frowned.
‘When I found you in the loft, you said to me, “Don’t let him hurt me.” Was that man – Duncan, the one who filmed you – was he was the one you were talking about?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
There was something in her face.
‘Marika?’
‘Yes. Him.’
But as she looked at me, a lie passed between us, and fear bloomed in her face. It wasn’t Pell she was talking about, just as it had never been Wellis. None of the DVDs Pell had of them were timecoded or dated, but if she’d landed in December, it meant the majority of them were filmed after Sam Wren’s disappearance.
‘Was it the man who watched you and Duncan that scared you?’
She
glanced at me, trying to figure out how I knew.
‘Was it him, Marika?’
It seemed to take her a long time to process the question, and when she finally did her legs came back up to her chest, and she resumed the foetal position. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘It was the man who watched you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he only watch?’
Tears in her eyes now. ‘Yes.’
‘So why were you scared of him?’
‘I don’t know how to …’ She paused. ‘Don’t know words.’
‘Can you try?’
The tear escaped and she automatically went to wipe it away, but all she felt at her fingertips were bandages. She sniffed. ‘He never show face. I just hear him behind me.’
‘You never saw him enter or leave?’
‘Never see him. Ever.’
‘Then how did you know he was there?’
‘I hear door.’
‘You heard him come in?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s it? You only heard him?’
‘I see his …’ She waved a hand. ‘In mirror.’
‘His reflection?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he look like?’
She shook her head. ‘Face was in dark.’
‘Shadow?’
‘Shadow, yes. Mostly.’
‘You never saw any of his face?’
‘Only once. A small …’
‘A small bit of his face?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he ever say anything?’
She was staring off now, beyond me, into the middle distance. She might have been able to darken the memories she had of the other men, but she couldn’t darken this one. Even faceless, she knew there was something up with him. Something bad.
‘Did he ever say anything?’ I asked again.
‘He say words to …’
‘Duncan?’
‘To Duncan. He say words to him.’
‘Like what?’
She blinked. ‘He call me “it”.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He say, “Fuck it. Hit it. Hurt it.” ’
‘He was telling Duncan what to do?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice breaking a little now.
I took out a photograph of Sam. ‘Could it have been this man watching you?’
She studied the picture for a long time, saying nothing, her eyes wide beneath the bandaging, shimmering a little in the light of the room.
Then, finally, she ripped them away and looked at me.
‘Yes,’ she said, a tear breaking free. ‘That could be him.’
The minute we were outside the hospital, Healy lit himself a cigarette and we stood there in the car park watching the rain come down. Neither of us said anything, Healy trying to figure out where to go next, me trying to process what I’d just found out. Marika thought the watcher might have been Sam, which meant there was also a chance it might not have been. But it was certainly getting harder to back Sam, to deny he was involved, and that was eating away at me. I didn’t call things wrong. I didn’t read people wrong.
Except maybe, this time, I’d done both.
As if on cue, Healy started shaking his head, and when I glanced at him, a caustic, self-satisfied expression formed in his face. My hackles rose instantly. ‘So you still somehow think he’s not involved then?’ he said, blowing a flute of smoke out.
I looked at him. We were standing beneath an overhang, rain running off the roof and exploding against the ground next to us.
He glanced at me and saw my reaction. ‘What?’
‘That’s all you can say?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That’s the first thing that comes into your head?’
He frowned. ‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘I get her to talk in there because there was no way she was going to talk to you when you’re bouncing around like you’re waiting for your fucking dealer. Last night, I meet you at the Tube because you can’t trust anyone and literally all you care about is bringing this home and stuffing it down everyone’s throat. I do that for you, I look past your flaws, your anger, your capacity to create an argument out of nothing – and, having seen what just happened in there, that’s the first thing that comes into your head?’
He just stared at me.
‘Do you even realize how alone you are, Healy?’
‘I don’t know what –’
‘That’s just your problem, Healy. You don’t know.’
And I walked away.
64
Five minutes later, Healy finished his cigarette and flicked it out into the bushes running along the back of the hospital. He immediately felt like another. He was angry. Pissed off. He’d allowed himself to be manipulated, persuaded that Wren wasn’t a part of this, and had then spent two days chasing his tail. Not any more. Fuck Raker. Fuck them all. He was going to take what the girl had told them – and he was going to put this to bed.
He moved off into the rain, pulling his jacket up over his head and making a break for it. But then, in his peripheral vision, he saw someone approaching and getting closer.
He slowed down. Looked around.
And his heart sank.
Sallows.
‘Well, well, well,’ Sallows said, thirty feet to Healy’s right, under a Metropolitan Police umbrella. In his left hand was a set of car keys. In his right was a digital camera.
Healy didn’t say anything, his eyes flicking to the camera.
‘Didn’t think this was your part of the world, Colm.’
Healy was about to form a lie, about to pretend he was visiting a relative, when he stopped himself. See how much he knows first. ‘It’s not,’ he replied.
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Following up a lead.’
Sallows smirked. ‘Did someone steal a chocolate bar from the gift shop?’ he said and then stepped closer, eyes fixed on Healy, watching for any shift of expression.
‘That’s more your area, Kevin.’
‘Is it?’
‘You don’t play with the big boys any more, remember.’
But Sallows didn’t react at all. No change in his face. No change in his stance. A fizz of panic stirred in Healy’s guts: the only reason Sallows wouldn’t take the bait was if he had something better. Healy glanced at the camera. Something like photos.
‘You’re a clever bastard, Healy.’ Sallows smiled, humourless and knowing. ‘Only you could pull off all that shit last year and still be standing here in front of me eight months later working the biggest case going.’ He made a soft sound, like he was still having a hard time believing it. ‘But here you are. Mr Squeaky Clean. Except, of course, we both know it’s all another lie.’
Healy didn’t respond. Sallows just looked at him.
‘Well,’ Healy said finally, ‘as nice as this has been, I’d better be going.’
Sallows suddenly made a move forward, right up close to Healy so they were only feet apart. Rain slapped against the umbrella, like a drumbeat, running off into the space between them. Sallows was completely dry. Healy was soaked through to the bone. ‘When you got me kicked off the Snatcher, you fucked with the wrong guy,’ he said, his voice suddenly laced with venom. ‘Colm Healy dropping me in the shit? Even you must see how fucked up that is? Everything about you, your situation, your lying and your back-stabbing, it boils my piss. I mean, you’re the guy who thinks it’s okay to wave guns in the faces of the people you work with. You’re the guy who worms his way back into the big time, who puts on this show for people – this fucking show that no one else is capable of seeing through – and you’re still here working it off the books.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘I saw you with Raker this morning. I’ve been watching this hospital every day since they brought that girl in here, because I know
Raker was the one who made that call the day she was found and I know he was the one who dumped Gaishe at that warehouse.’
‘What Raker does has nothing to do with me.’
‘There you are again, Colm. Lying.’
‘It’s not a lie.’
‘It’s a fucking bare-faced lie, just like everything else in your shitty little life. You and Raker have cosied up again, doing whatever the fuck it is you two do together. I saw it coming a mile off, so when the girl was found, it was just a matter of being patient. It was just a matter of waiting here for you. And I thought to myself, “What’s the best way of making sure that everyone knows just what a lying sack of shit Colm Healy is?” ’ Sallows held up the camera. ‘Your time is up, Healy. You’re done.’
Healy tried not to show emotion.
But it didn’t work.
Sallows broke out into a smile. ‘I’m realistic. I don’t expect Craw to take me back and, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to go back. I can’t work for a malicious little bitch like that. But I’m going to enjoy hearing about the moment she asks you to clear your desk.’
‘What do you want, Sallows?’
‘What do I want?’
‘There must be something you want.’
Sallows was still smiling. ‘I’d forgotten about your legendary sense of humour, Colm. What I want is for you to get what you deserve. And then, once I’ve done you, I’m doing Raker as well. You’re both going to get what’s coming.’
Healy imagined going for the camera, imagined grabbing Sallows by the throat and ripping him to pieces. He realized he was opening and closing his fists, all the anger and frustration and desperation channelled through his fingers. If he didn’t get the camera, everything was over. He was done. His life, his career, whatever semblance of normality he’d managed to claw back. But then Sallows glanced down, as if he knew what was going through Healy’s head, as if he could read the movement of his hands like words being spoken aloud, and he handed Healy the camera.
Except it wasn’t the camera.
It was just the case.
‘The camera’s in the car,’ Sallows said, watching the rain run down Healy’s face, hair matted to his head, clothes stuck to him. ‘I don’t know what concern that girl is of yours, I don’t know what you’re even doing here, or what you and that other prick have got planned. And to be honest, I don’t really care. Honestly, I don’t. What I care about is seeing you go down in flames – and if you take Raker with you, all the better.’