City of Strangers

by Louise Millar

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I told you: I don’t know. I can’t work out the language – definitely not French.’

  ‘Right. Well, what about neighbours?’

  Factories stretched in a ragged line from where she sat, down towards the river cranes. ‘I suppose I could try a few.’

  There was silence. Then tapping.

  ‘Ewan?’

  ‘Sorry. Something’s come up on Sula’s story. Gotta go. Scotty?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you dare give up this fuckin’ story.’

  The phone went dead.

  She picked up her rucksack.

  Maybe he was right.

  What was the harm while she was here?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Edinburgh

  Now Sula knew what was inside that evidence tent, she wanted more. She continued along the cliff, following her GPS. It was half a mile down to Auchtermouth in the cove. It was after nine now. From what she could gather, a lot of these dog walkers went out after they’d dropped the bairns at school.

  The greyhound whimpered as she marched along. ‘Come on, you.’

  Sula walked in a circle until she saw a woman with black curly hair in wellies and glasses coming up from the village, with two Labradors.

  Sula waved. ‘Hello there. You going up the hill?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said, wary.

  ‘They’ve just stopped me on the path up there. The police have shut it off. I don’t know why.’

  The woman relaxed. ‘Ah. They’ve found two bodies, actually.’

  ‘No!’ Sula exclaimed. ‘Have they? Who?’

  ‘It’s been on the news – that Australian tourist David Pearce and some other poor soul.’

  Sula tried to look appalled. ‘Oh, I remember David Pearce. That’s terrible – who found him?’

  ‘Penny, down in the village. She’s in quite a state about it.’

  Sula covered her mouth. ‘Poor thing. That’s terrible. Well, the policeman said it would be open in an hour, so it looks like we’ll be going this way today, eh, Rover?’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ the woman said, turning in the opposite direction.

  Sula waved her on, then sat on a rock and lit another fag. Ten minutes later, two more dog walkers appeared and she led the greyhound onwards. These two were posh, in insulated waistcoats and Hunter wellies, one in her sixties and one in her thirties. They had identical thick-cut bobs, one grey, one brown. Mother and daughter.

  ‘Hello there,’ Sula repeated, adding a touch of Kelvinside to her own voice. ‘I’ve just been turned back up there. The police have blocked it off.’

  ‘Oh, have they?’ The mother looked suspicious. ‘I thought they’d opened it up again.’

  ‘He said they’re just finishing up,’ Sula replied. ‘Gosh, it’s a dreadful thing, isn’t it? Poor Penny.’

  ‘Oh, do you know Penny?’ the daughter said, eyes hungry for gossip.

  ‘Well, just through school, of course.’ Sula took a bet that Penny had at some point had something to do with a school. ‘I was going to pop in and see her later. Do you know how she is?’

  The older woman leaned towards Sula conspiratorially, her daughter listing at an identical angle. ‘I’m not sure she’s having visitors, to be honest. She’s quite sick with the shock. The dog was barking and barking. The fence was broken round the hole and she thought maybe a sheep had fallen in and . . .’

  ‘She looked in with her key-ring torch and saw the top of a head,’ the daughter finished.

  The women regarded each other with fresh horror, as if it hadn’t been all they’d been discussing for the past twenty-four hours.

  ‘Oh, I know, I heard,’ Sula said, screwing up her face like them. ‘It’s just a nightmare, isn’t it?’

  Her phone rang in her hand. ‘Oh, excuse me.’ Her accent reverted back. ‘Ewan, what?’

  ‘They’ve released the ID of the second body. Colin McFarlay.’

  Sula’s mouth fell open. ‘What? That scuzzy wee dealer, went missing in October?’

  The mother and daughter shot each other warning glances, and she walked off without looking back.

  ‘How do you remember so much when you’re so old?’ Ewan asked.

  Sula ignored him. ‘Why would an Australian tourist be buried on top of one of Edinburgh’s finest drug dealers?’

  ‘Kinky sex gone wrong?’

  ‘Months apart, Ewan – assuming they both died when they went missing?’

  She heard him tap his keyboard.

  ‘Nothing obvious. Though this is interesting. David Pearce was on holiday here from Australia, but he was actually born in Edinburgh. He was visiting his father, Thomas Pearce, in Colinton.’

  Sula panted as she climbed back up to the body recovery site. ‘Pearce grew up here? So they could have known each other?’

  More tapping.

  ‘Unlikely,’ Ewan replied. ‘McFarlay was twenty-eight, so he’d have been born eleven years after Pearce went to Australia. Last address listed was Smack Row. And Colinton is nowhere near Smack Row.’

  Sula stopped to catch breath, watching frothy white water bang into black rocks below. She never understood why people liked the seaside. Cold and windy and boring.

  ‘Well, drug dealers don’t go hiking, so something – or somebody – brought Colin McFarlay up here.’

  She reached the road, and saw a little pizza cart run by an enterprising guy had been set up in the lay-by.

  ‘Right, keep looking. I’ll be back in an hour.’

  ‘How’s Betty, by the way?’ Ewan asked.

  ‘Who’s Betty?’

  ‘The dog, Sula.’

  ‘Oh, is it? Stupid. That’s how she is.’

  Ewan sighed. ‘Sula, my mum doesn’t like people being rude about Betty.’

  She reached the car. ‘Aye, and she also knows I’m the only one stupid enough to give you a job, so . . .’

  ‘Fair enough. By the way, that friend of mine, Grace, who was in? She might have a story.’

  ‘Listen, you, keep your mind on this. Not your girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh, hark at you, all jealous.’

  ‘Jealous, my big fat arse.’ Sula ended the call.

  The dog climbed onto the back seat, and dropped its head back onto its paws.

  Sula sat in the driver’s seat, and rang the police press office. Vani answered.

  ‘Vani, Sula McGregor here. What’s your comment that David Pearce and Colin McFarlay were buried upright inside a twenty-foot-deep pit cave?’

  There was a muffled exclamation. ‘Where did you hear that, Sula?’

  ‘I cannot possibly reveal my sources.’

  ‘Sula, I can’t—’

  She cut across her. ‘It’s going online in an hour. You know where I am.’

  Sula started the car and threw a biscuit to the dog.

  ‘Right, Fatty. Our work here is done.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  London

  After an hour stomping up and down Easter Way, Grace returned to the cafe, and dumped her rucksack on the pavement.

  She must have tried twenty factories, to say nothing of five pedestrians, two men on forklift trucks and a woman on a bicycle. Not a single one had heard of Lucian Grabole or could tell her where the Cozmas were from.

  Either they didn’t know or weren’t telling.

  She couldn’t let this go now.

  She had to know.

  The steamy window of the cafe had cleared, the workers vanished. She went inside to have a cup of tea and a think. It smelt of bacon and steam. Capital Radio blared.

  Grace took a window seat opposite Cozma’s.

  A man with dark curly hair, and oversized features that looked like they’d been sculpted out of bread dough by a child, emerged from a door behind the counter and called over, ‘What can I get you, love?’

  She read the menu, not hungry after the hotel’s greasy breakfast. ‘Actually, can I just have a cup of tea, please?’
/>   ‘No problem.’ The man picked a mug off a shelf. ‘Scottish?’

  He said ‘Scottish’ in a guttural London accent, with no ‘t’s.

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Get used to it round here. Everyone’s from somewhere. Where you from? Glasgow?’

  ‘Edinburgh.’ She willed him to stop talking. To give her space to think, to decide what to do next.

  ‘Thought so.’ He winked as he poured, then opened the hatch, revealing an apron smeared by tomato sauce.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the mug. The tea was orange and milky, and she gulped it, already wanting a refill. Did the Cozmas know Lucian’s family? Would they tell them? What if they didn’t, or the family didn’t know how to get in touch with the police in Edinburgh?

  The responsibility for this stranger’s death was becoming all-consuming. As if the closer she got to an answer, the stronger her need to see it through. A bereavement counsellor, she suspected, would probably have a name for it. Projection or transference or something.

  The man cleared dirty plates. ‘Down for a job?’ he said, nodding at her rucksack.

  ‘Just trying to find someone, actually,’ she said, struggling not to sound irritable.

  ‘Round here? Who’s that, then?’

  She pointed across the road. ‘A man who worked there.’

  ‘Cozma’s?’

  The mug stopped inches from her lips. ‘Do you know the Cozmas?’

  He snorted. ‘I know everyone around here, love.’

  Grace lowered her tea. ‘You don’t know where they’re from, do you?’

  ‘Romania, innit?’

  Romania?

  Eastern Europe.

  She banged down her mug.

  ‘Yeah, they’ll be there now, if you wanna speak to them,’ the man said, placing some dirty mugs on the counter. ‘He’s there all hours, Mr C.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She grimaced. ‘Can’t do that.’

  ‘What? Not answering?’ he asked.

  ‘No, they’re there, but they won’t speak to me. I’ve upset them.’

  ‘How’ve you done that, then?’

  ‘Long story. I think the man I’m trying to find has died, and I’ve managed to cock up how I told them. They’re a bit angry with me.’

  ‘Yeah? Aw. Who’s that, then?’ he said, flipping a tea towel over his shoulder.

  ‘A man called Lucian Grabole?’

  The big doughy eyes stretched wide. ‘Lucian? No bloody way!’

  Grace stared. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Course I do. He was here for a few months last year. Always stopped in for a chat and a cup of tea. Lovely bloke. Jesus. What happened to old Lucian?’

  He knew him.

  Re-energized, Grace sat up and explained what had happened, hope returning.

  ‘Aw no!’ the man exclaimed. ‘Thought I hadn’t seen him for a while. And there was me thinking he was back in Amsterdam.’

  ‘He’s from Holland?’ Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together.

  ‘Nah, nah, nah. Romania, like the Cozmas. They’re old friends of his from the village back home. Amsterdam’s where he was living. Before he came here.’ He lifted the hatch, and put the dirty mugs in the machine. ‘That’s taken me right back, that has. I’m in shock. Cozmas didn’t say nothing. What about his wife, then? What’s happened to her?’

  Grace scrabbled for her phone’s voice recorder. ‘Lucian had a wife?’

  ‘Well, that’s why he was here, innit, looking for her?’

  ‘Sorry, um . . .’

  ‘Ali.’

  ‘Ali. Would you mind if I recorded this? I’m a freelance journalist investigating what happened to him. This is all new information.’

  ‘Yeah, no problem.’ He came out, turned a chair backwards to sit, gave her his name, repeated what he’d told her already, then continued. ‘Yeah, so Lucian told me him and her got split up in Amsterdam. An immigration bust or something, during the night when they were sleeping – they all run off, different directions. Police took the phones when they cleared the house, and Lucian couldn’t find her. She’d scarpered with the kid. Someone told him they’d come here, to London, looking for him at the Cozmas’. So that’s what he was doing – staying with them, doing a bit of work, waiting in case she turned up.’

  ‘So he was working here without being registered, too?’

  Ali looked coy. ‘Wouldn’t like to say, love.’

  ‘So, did he find them?’

  ‘Never seemed to. But I don’t know now.’ Ali shook his head. ‘Shame. Lovely bloke.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  Ali whistled. ‘Ooh . . . now you’re asking . . . Maybe a year? And you’re certain this is him, this dead bloke in Edinburgh?’

  ‘No, not yet, but I’m more sure than I was yesterday. Mr Cozma definitely seemed to recognize his description.’

  Ali nodded at each detail she repeated, and touched his shoulder. ‘Yeah, and a wolf here. Ring with a green stone. That’s him. One of Mr C’s pinstripes. Bloody hell, sad that is . . .’ His eyes darted above Grace’s head. ‘Tell you what, she might still be here, though.’

  Ali reached over and lifted up leaflets on a pinboard. At the back was a poster of a blonde woman and child. ‘Anna and Valentin: missing.’

  Grace felt the floor shift under her. ‘Oh my God. I’ve seen this. In Edinburgh. At the homeless shelter Lucian stayed at.’

  ‘There you go, then.’ Ali handed it to her, pleased.

  On second viewing, she recognized the phone number now. It was the Cozmas’ landline.

  Lucian Grabole had been searching for Anna and Valentin in Scotland – staying with friends in London to find her.

  An elderly, hunched man entered the cafe wearing a hat with earflaps, despite the sunshine.

  ‘All right, George? Tea?’ Ali said. ‘George is one of my regulars.’

  Grace nodded politely, rereading the poster. ‘So Lucian’s wife, Anna, might not know he’s died?’

  Ali went to make tea. ‘Aw. Sad, innit? Why don’t you scribble your number on there, love? If she comes looking for him, she can ring you. You can tell her what’s happened.’

  Grace repinned the leaflet to the board, photographed it in situ for the story she might write, then did what he suggested. With Ali’s permission, she took a few more shots with him in the background handing tea to George.

  She paid for her tea, and picked up her rucksack. ‘Listen, thanks for this. It’s been really helpful.’

  ‘No problem. But try Mr C again,’ Ali said, pouring tea. ‘Probably just caught him at a bad time.’

  Grace opened the door. ‘I don’t know. He was pretty upset.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Lucian was an old friend of theirs. Go on – see what he says now he’s had a chance to cool down.’

  Grace looked across at the Cozmas’. ‘Thanks. I might do that.’

  It was a lie. She would, but not right now. Now, she wanted to find Anna.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Edinburgh

  ‘It’s Wednesday, midday, and here’s what’s happening with the weather where you are!’

  The man sat on the stool in Mr Singh’s storeroom, headphones on, wanting to punch the babbling weather presenter in the teeth, as he taunted him with reports of ‘intermittent showers’, with ‘broken spells of sunshine later today’.

  In a moment of weakness, he let himself imagine the taste and feel of fresh water not tainted by chlorine. A place where sunshine toasted his skin, not a ferocious blast of sickeningly hot electric air from a machine. Where the breeze was gentle and scented, and didn’t sweep in uninvited under a door, bringing the stink of rubbish and petrol fumes, and dog shit.

  A check of the clock.

  A minute after midday, now. Fifty-nine minutes to go.

  Hunger yawned. He walked to the window to distract himself, and saw the same dirty clouds from yesterday. A blackbird took off from a garage roof, and became smaller and smaller as
it flew into a round, soggy cloud past the tower block. The effect was of a dilating pupil.

  A naked man with a large belly stretched in the window on the eighth floor, displaying himself to the city.

  Pig.

  He checked the clock again. Fifty-seven minutes.

  Unable to stop himself, he opened the fridge and regarded the two plates of tinfoil-covered food on the shelf. As usual, he’d switched them round and pushed them to the back, so that when it came to choosing, there would be an element of surprise. A moment of sharp anticipation in the sludge that was each day.

  He made himself shut it, and returned to the window, stomach rumbling.

  What would it be? The egg-and-cucumber sandwiches, or the pasta and bacon?

  The naked man had gone now. A new set of curtains opened on the tenth floor. A bodiless arm was pushing them back. It hung in the air for a second, then vanished.

  An English voice filled his headphones. Someone who’d designed a new vacuum cleaner.

  He let the details about its unique detangler fill his head. It took his mind off things.

  At lunchtime, as his saliva glands readied themselves for action, the man heard a noise.

  He threw off the headphones and crouched, ready to fight.

  There were footsteps in the corridor outside; then the door handle twisted three times.

  ‘It’s me,’ a quiet voice said.

  He unlocked the door, and shuffled backwards.

  Mr Singh stood in the doorway with a plastic bag. The grey in his beard was spreading like a rash. ‘Sorry I couldn’t come yesterday. My wife was doing the accounts.’

  The man took the bag hungrily, and checked inside. A new pack of tinfoil. A loaf of bread. Three more pasta salads. A cucumber, tins of meat and cheese.

  He gave his rubbish bag to Mr Singh.

  The newsagent’s brow, as usual, wrinkled as he tried to find a way to word his concerns. ‘Listen, my wife needed to use the toilet yesterday. I said I’d left the storeroom key at home. Last week, I said the corridor was blocked with a delivery. I’m running out of excuses.’ Singh pointed to the upstairs flat. ‘And now this – the wife hearing you the other night.’