by Ols Schaber
Three
From his parked car, Rebwar was observing the big dumper trucks exiting the floodlit building site. Even if these assignments could get him kicked out of the country, it was better than driving a taxi and then getting kicked out of the country. He watched the trucks’ muddy trails fade down the dark street, heading for some unknown dumping ground. It was a well-oiled operation. The double wooden gates were manned by a team of two men, dark-skinned, wearing every layer of clothing they possessed. The trucks would be hosed down before leaving the muddy pit. On their next run out, he was going in – to snoop around for any traces of Vasiles’s whereabouts. He drove past the entrance and parked by some cones that had been placed in front of the pavement. He switched on the hazard lights, grabbed his rucksack and left the car carefully stranded.
So as not to arouse too much suspicion, he walked around the block and waited close to the entrance wearing a hi-vis jacket and a hard hat. Two trucks eased out of the wooden gates and came to a stop. The first one blasted its horn and the sound bounced off the office buildings. Rebwar’s car was blocking its path out. The door crew walked out onto the street to see what the problem was, giving Rebwar the chance to slip onto the building site.
Inside, the floodlights blazed down into the huge deep, muddy crater. Heavy digging equipment lined the edge and, at the back, hugging the bare side of the neighbouring building, was a stack of portacabins. The bottom one had its lights on. He headed for it; he’d done his homework and had studied the website with the list of contractors and their personnel. In the spartan cabin were two men on their tea break.
‘It’s cold out there,’ said Rebwar rubbing his hands. ‘I’ve come to get some plans for Mike Carswell. There’s an emergency, and the idiot forgot to give me the keys to the office.’
The men turned around and looked at him blankly. They both seemed to be from Eastern Europe and wore tattered, baggy and muddy grey tracksuits under their hi-vis jackets. They shuffled their caked brown boots and drank cups of black tea. The one with the short fair hair looked at the other, plainly wondering who should talk first. The one with the tattoo of a spider’s web on his neck took the lead.
‘Back wall, mate.’ The man pointed his worn finger at it.
‘Lifesaver. Thanks, mate.’ Rebwar went over to the corkboard that held a collection of keys, each marked with numbers. He had counted seven cabins, and three of them were above this one. He wasn’t going to ask which one was which, as he didn’t want suspicious questions. He took 5, 6 and 7 before pulling a flask of rum from his pocket. ‘Fancy a chaser?’
Both looked around like naughty children about to steal something and smiled.
Rebwar poured the brandy generously into their mugs full of steaming tea. He had a quick swig and winked. ‘No rest for the wicked.’ He walked out.
His hunch had been right: they had numbered the cabins as they had stacked them. He opened Cabin 5, walked in, switched on the lights and they flickered into life. The fluorescent light bounced off the bare white walls and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the glare and take in the basic worn office furniture. To avoid suspicion, he was concerned to make it look as if he knew what he was doing. A computer stared back at him, his heart stopped, he had missed that revolution. He didn’t even know how to switch it on. He walked up to it, and his heart recovered as he read the yellow sticker on the black screen, Fucking broken again! He smiled, kissed his lucky ring and went over to the metal filing cabinets. He pulled one of the drawers. It was locked. Without hesitation, he went over to the desk and pulled out more drawers. In the second one was a simple cut-out key. He used it to open the filing cabinet and started with the bottom drawer. Inside was a mess of jumbled paper.
A door closed. He froze and listened. Some men were talking underneath. He carried on flicking through the drawers and taking out the papers he thought might be useful. Both trucks outside were still hooting their horns – at least they hadn’t pushed his car away. He moved the furniture back as he had found it. He stopped by the door and glanced back. He grabbed one of the black plastic tubes that typically held blueprints; he had to look the part of an engineer who was burning the midnight oil.
He ran back into the cabin and returned the keys to the chatting builders and put the rest of the small flask of rum on the table. He turned to the guy with the tattoo.
‘Vasiles? Have you seen him?’
‘No, he left for home.’
Rebwar knew that he’d been missing for a week, so the man was clearly lying. ‘Was he a friend?’ he asked.
‘No, but…’ The man stopped fiddling with his cup and stared into Rebwar’s eyes. ‘Why you want to know?’
Rebwar looked around like he was going to tell him a secret. ‘Ah, he found something. Mike needs to talk to him.’
‘He can call him.’ And he looked down at the scuffed table.
‘Has he changed his mobile?’ He waited for the man’s answer.
‘No. Ask his wife. I know nothing.’ The man sipped from his cup, and he picked his teeth.
Rebwar took the hint: he’d had enough of the questions. ‘No skin off my nose, I’ll tell Mike to talk to his wife.’ From the file he had from Geraldine there was no mention of a wife. It was an interesting lead, but this wasn’t the place to have an interrogation. The door burst open, and a man with a red swollen face shouted in:
‘Need some help to move a car. Quick! Outside!’
‘On break, mate,’ answered the other guy. As both men waited for the man to answer, Rebwar surreptitiously swiped an ID from off the table. The man with the red face tutted and left. Rebwar followed him out and rushed over to the exit. He waved the ID card over the reader, and the turnstiles clicked open.
Rucksack in hand, he ran back to his car. It was surrounded by men with hi-vis jackets who were about to push it out of the way.
‘Wait, my friends, wait!’ he shouted at them. They all turned to stare at him.
‘This shit yours?’ one of the security guards asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You is bloody idiot. Time is money.’ With his blazing eyes, he pointed at a sign. ‘And no bloody parking.’
‘Was dropping a passenger off. She old and… How do you say?’ Rebwar bent his back and walked in a disabled manner. ‘You know.’
‘Well, you no park here again. Otherwise, we crush it.’ The other builders were either lighting up or returning to work.
‘Old lady live here and not walk very well.’
‘Well no good. You tell to move out. No cripples here. Understood?’
Four
The night sky glowed a dull, faded orange from the city lights. Rebwar parked his car in his allotted space in front of one of three concrete high rises. His was called the Dorney Building, a cladded grey tower with some darker vertical stripes where square windows let you peer out over the rich green neighbourhoods. What he hated most about it was the lack of a balcony, where he could have smoked and installed a dish to watch his team, Persepolis, play. Their windows shone like a lost lighthouse. He looked for his flat on the fifth floor then stepped out and stretched his weary body, brought another cigarette to his mouth and looked at his temporary home.
He lit his cigarette, inhaled, and collected his coat and his rucksack. He watched a gang of hooded kids cycle around on their bikes – off delivering their drugs. Last time he’d arrested children for drug running he ended up in jail. He was glad to have a new job, even if it was only a missing person case and something that probably had a simple answer. Or was it just because it was something he wanted to do – disappear. He didn’t have a team; no database, no office. He felt like a lone wolf. But it kept him away from this stacked shoebox of a flat. Going home was a daily dread when it should have been a delight. He looked at his watch, rubbed his stubble and walked to the door.
A slightly crackling and out-of-tune bell pinged and the beaten metal elevator doors screeched and rattled open. He rushed out of the acrid-smelling lift and t
urned left to face a door that had once been blue. He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket, realised he didn’t have a key and rang the bell. He waited for a second, rang again and banged the door. It opened to reveal a teenager in a grey t-shirt with the slogan: I’m sorry, did I roll my eyes out loud?
‘Don’t you have a key?’ muttered the boy through his long greasy hair, and shuffled back to his room.
‘How was school?’ Rebwar slid off his shoes and walked in.
‘Husband! Did you bring cash?’ Like a heavy base speaker, the woman’s voice resonated through the cardboard walls.
He looked up and swore silently at the low ceiling. He hadn’t gotten around to selling the coke that Geraldine had given him. ‘Evening, my dearest long-suffering wife.’ He straightened an oriental rug that was hanging on the wall in the hallway.
‘It’s for your son, my useless husband.’
Rebwar found his wife in the kitchen. Hourieh was in her forties and filled the leopard-print shirt and faux beige leather skirt. She was adorned with cheap gold trinkets that swung and jangled. She was of aristocratic stock – or that is what she kept reminding him, not that he had ever found any evidence. She scratched her scalp with her sharp pink nails. Her thick sculpted black hair moved like a plastic mould. She lit a cigarette before opening the dishwasher and taking out a dirty ashtray.
‘You’ve been out all day, drinking coffees and sucking on a shisha at Shishawi’s? Don’t tell me – I don’t want the disappointment.’ She went over to the stove and turned up the gas on the pressure cooker.
‘I had a sandwich,’ lied Rebwar, as he felt his tooth pound.
She stood there staring with her heavily eye-lined brown eyes, holding her smouldering cigarette at head height. She was waiting for him to come up with more excuses about the lack of money and his reassurances that moving to England had been a good idea. Behind her was a fridge with a collection of faded children’s drawings and photos.
‘It’s coming. Patience, my desert flower.’
Her generous chest heaved the dangling jewellery with her sarcastic laugh. She had stopped registering his flattery and charm a long time ago. He lit a cigarette as if they were sharing a moment that had long gone and been forgotten. It was a stand-off: who was going to start the argument first. In the sizzling silence, he stared at the pressure cooker.
‘Your son got into a fight today,’ she said. ‘They might throw him out of school.’
‘I have told him to stay out of trouble. I will talk to him.’ He walked over to tap his cigarette on the ashtray on the kitchen table.
‘Hasn’t worked!’ she said, picking up a knife. ‘He needs his father.’
‘I will talk to him again.’
‘You need to provide to be a father.’ She cut a little slice off a cucumber and nibbled it delicately. He knew where this was going and he was in no mood to entertain her anger, but she carried on. ‘All those speeches about this Great Britain being the land where our dreams would come true. A nightmare! That is what it is. Like the Imans keep saying… they are the ones behind our troubles.’ She quickly dragged her cigarette to its filter and, before he could say something, she continued. ‘Now we live in this rat box.’ She laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Oh nothing.’ She carried on smiling.
‘Come on, spit it out, woman, is it about…?’ He held his thought about Bijan Achmoud, as it would trigger a siren of provocation.
‘I know what you’re thinking and, no, it’s not. It is about you being the rat who brought us here. Remind me what was wrong exactly with our life back home? We had a house, car, money, status, friends, decent food, cheap cigarettes.’ The pressure cooker fizzled with threat. ‘If only my baba were still alive! He would have set things right. He would have never let us come here. Never. Here we are no more than slaves to capitalist swine. We mean nothing to them. And remember how they have let us down.’
Rebwar took a moment to look at the old man’s photo, the one with him in his dress uniform: thick dark moustache, black eyebrows that overhung his dark eyes and a collection of irrelevant medals. He was a bastard, and Hourieh had forgotten all that. She had wanted to be a doctor, and he had stopped her. For Rebwar the photo hung like a dark omen of conspiracy theories, and Hourieh now saw him as her protector.
‘We had to leave. I was going to be arrested. Look what happened to Firoud.’ He wondered if Firoud was still in jail. The last time Rebwar saw him they had been arresting Kohd, the Iman’s son, for trafficking heroin. They should have turned a blind eye to it. Without the boss’s consent, it was always likely to end in disaster, and it did. ‘You can’t prod a hornets’ nest without consequences,’ he said out loud.
‘What?’ She turned away from the stove. His mind had wandered, and his wife had carried on talking.
‘Listen, husband. I’m going to meet up with Bijan.’
This was what she had been really laughing about. Bijan Achmoud was an old family friend of Hourieh’s – rich, aristocratic, corrupt. And he had just divorced his wife. Rebwar suspected that he might have been Hourieh’s first love. But with at least a decade or two age difference, it was probably some sordid daddy complex.
‘You think he’s going to see you? He’s probably too busy buying favours from an embassy official and fucking some whore.’
She tutted and lit another cigarette.
‘It didn’t work out last time? Did it?’ Rebwar said. ‘Like a snake, it came to bite us and here we are.’ He got up and tapped his cigarette into a bowl. The bowl had pieces missing from it – an antique from home – white with cobalt blue vine leaves. One day he thought he might glue it back together.
‘What?’ She tutted for his attention. ‘You think I don’t still have it?’ She posed, jutting her chest and bum out and she added a little cheeky smile.
He looked at his watch. For a moment he considered going to bed. There was no point; his insomnia was working the case. It was easier to follow up some leads. For a moment he considered smiling.
‘As my husband, I can only blame you.’
Steam gushed out of the cooker and a high-pitched whistle drowned out Hourieh’s rant.
Five
Geraldine had stumbled back into Soho after passing her case on to Rebwar. It had been a while since she had given him something. Usually, she had to pass it on to some barely functioning disgraced copper who had lost all respect for humanity. She generally wasn’t keen on handing on her more sticky cases to this shady organisation, but she had fallen on hard times and they had been there to help her. Geraldine would admit that they had looked after her; they were just not exactly on the legal side of the fence.
Now she was free to let her hair down and had found one of her favourite underground clubs. She-Soho, on Old Compton, was marked by a little open door that led into a basement of binge drinking, music and women looking for an escape. The black female bouncer greeted Geraldine at the bottom of the stairs, her broad white smile as inviting and welcoming as the Amazonian proportions that filtered out the chancers from the connoisseurs. The bar was thick with thirsty women needing attention. The music and lights were loud and colourful, which added to the heaving atmosphere of the den. A bouncing mound of flesh, a flesh she wanted to taste, to hold, to enjoy, to forget her past.
‘A beer and a Jager chaser,’ she shouted over to the boyish-looking barmaid, who gave her a naughty smile. Tattoos crawled down her long slender neck like an invitation to dive in and explore them. For a brief moment, Geraldine considered the prospect, but she was too young even for her. She scanned the club; a mix of darkness and flares of colour pounded to the music, intertwined with pulsing bodies. She handed some cash over to the girl, downed the shot then held her beer like a spectator at a wrestling match.
At the other end of the packed bar, Geraldine caught a girl staring at her.
She wore a slender two-piece suit with a white shirt. Her hair was down, waving freely around a happy tipsy smile. She
must have come in for a dare or from curiosity. Out there in the streets, she would blend in like wallpaper. Here she was like live bait in a zoo.
Geraldine, moving fast to take the high ground, bumped and squeezed her way to the end of the bar. She leaned in to smell posh moisturiser and shouted over the noise, ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
The girl looked up into her eyes as if she had forgotten something.
‘Yes, anything you like.’ She pointed to her beer.
Geraldine asked for another round from the barmaid, who sucked her thumb – for sure, a taunt that she was picking up a baby dyke. Geraldine showed her the middle finger, to which the barmaid jerked her hand up and down and mouthed ‘wanker’.
‘What’s your name?’ She watched the girl’s delicately proportioned mouth shout something over the drowning beats.
She said it again but louder. ‘Zara, with a Zee!’ And gave her a smile. The Zee made Geraldine tingle, something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
‘Office party?’ asked Geraldine, giving out an uncharacteristic giggle.
‘Sort of. It was a dare.’
‘Where are they? Your friends?’
‘Outside. Blokes of course. I’m supposed to report back in five.’
Geraldine pulled Zara onto the dance floor and she melted into the rhythm of bodies bouncing around. The lights flickered and, like a stop-motion film, she watched Zara dance around her like a hare in a field, flashing her white skin. Geraldine grabbed Zara. She was taut and fit but gave in surprisingly easily and Geraldine drew her into her own soft body and kissed her. There was no struggle, just a warming squeeze for more.