City of Strangers

by Louise Millar

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘So far,’ she said.

  ‘OK, well, I’ll see what I can do. ‘

  ‘Thanks.’

  Nicu picked up his keys and wallet from a table. ‘Right. I’ve got to be somewhere, but if you’re hungry, there’s a place on the corner.’

  ‘Actually, I need to find a cheap hotel,’ she said. ‘Is there one nearby?’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Here.’ He beckoned her outside, took a key out of his jeans and opened the blue boat next door.

  He turned on the light and ushered her inside. To her delight, she saw it was his studio. More prints hung on the wall. There was a desk and printer, a light box, tripod and shelves of books. In the corner was a bed, a tiny kitchen and a shower room. It smelt delicious, of Indian oil and pine and woodsmoke.

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding out the key. ‘Make yourself at home.’

  ‘Seriously? I can stay here?’

  ‘Yup,’ he said, shutting the blinds.

  ‘Wow. That’s great. So do I pay you for it now?’

  Another bemused look. ‘Ewan said you’re working on spec?’ He chucked a bag off the bed. ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve all been there.’

  ‘Oh. That’s really kind. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’ He reached out his hand. Not knowing what else to do, she shook it. ‘Oh,’ he said, smiling, ‘I was just going to . . .’

  She turned and saw the outside light switch he’d been reaching for.

  ‘Sorry.’ She pushed back into the wall. There was something unsettling about him.

  ‘This is really great,’ she repeated.

  ‘See you tomorrow.’ Nicu Dragan walked off, hand in the air, heading for a green Jeep.

  She scanned the studio. That was a lie. This wasn’t great. It was far better than great.

  She waited till he roared off, then headed out to find food. The bar he’d mentioned was down an alleyway, and buzzing. People sat in the warm evening drinking globes of beer at outdoor tables. It was after 10 p.m., and nearly full. Starving, she entered. It had a hippyish vibe, with vintage wall lamps, and mismatched tables and chairs. At the bar, she found a stool and menu, ordered a cheese pannekoek, salad and beer, and listened to the Dutch, English, American and French voices above the music. A group of Australians sat on a communal table in the middle. It wasn’t dissimilar to the backpacking area in Bangkok where she and Mac had eaten in February.

  Her order arrived, and she took a sip of beer. Maybe it was the hit of alcohol in her bloodstream, but a sharp rush of excitement went through her.

  She was in Amsterdam investigating a story.

  Staying with Nicu Dragan.

  Re-energized after her food, she wrote, Thursday, in her notebook, and sketched a plan for tomorrow. Nicu might have contacts, but she couldn’t rely on them. Somebody in the city’s Romanian community must know Lucian, Anna and Valentin. They couldn’t have existed here for any length of time without contact. Her notes went as follows:

  1. Chase up Nicu’s Romanian contacts.

  2. Track down Romanian community groups, especially those for mothers and children, at a central library.

  3. Ask Dutch police about recent raids on illegal workers.

  She started the internet research on her phone at the bar, adding possible Amsterdam numbers and addresses to her notes, then, when weariness set in, packed up and went to find the toilet. A sign pointed down a dimly lit corridor into a back area, stacked with extra tables and chairs. There was one tiny toilet. The walls were a dull oyster-pink, and covered in graffitied messages. Inside, she squirmed to undo her jeans. When she was finished, she unbolted the door and pulled. Nothing happened.

  Tugging, she tried again.

  Music from the bar drifted under the cubicle door. She held the metal handle, kicked the bottom, and pulled again.

  ‘Come on!’ she muttered, the cramped interior closing in on her.

  It was then, in the gloomy light, she saw the smiley-face sticker on the door, written in three languages, one of them English: ‘I stick – please don’t close me!’

  ‘Oh God.’ She bent down in the minuscule space, feeling ridiculous, and tried to look under the door.

  ‘Hello . . . Is anyone there?’

  Nobody came.

  Table and chair legs came into sight, but no human ones. Far away, she saw people in the bar, down the long corridor.

  ‘Hello?’ she shouted, waving a hand under the door.

  Nothing. She looked left and saw shadows. Then she looked right.

  A pair of man’s boots rested against a table.

  ‘Oh. Hello?’

  The boots didn’t move.

  ‘Sorry. Do you speak English? I’m stuck in here. Could you push the door?’

  Nothing happened.

  Guessing the man was wearing earphones or was on his phone, Grace banged the door. ‘Hello! Sorry! Could you kick the door, please?’

  Footsteps came towards her. Finally.

  She stood up.

  When nothing happened, she ducked down again. The boots were walking away.

  ‘Wha-aat? Excuse me, I’m stuck in here!’

  The man kept going.

  Something familiar about him tugged at her mind, but she was in such a panic to get out, it slipped away.

  It was four more long minutes before help finally came, by which time she was starting to imagine being locked in there all night.

  ‘Stand back,’ called a cheerful Australian man. He kicked the door twice.

  Grace thanked him, and escaped.

  The customers outside had drifted away, and a waiter was chaining up chairs. She turned back onto the shadowy canalside, and walked towards Nicu’s boat, shivering, despite the warm evening. It had been a long day. She needed sleep. Her thoughts turned happily back to the tranquil blue boat with its private exhibition of Nicu Dragan’s work, which she could devour at leisure.

  Up ahead, there was a flicker of movement.

  By a tree was the outline of a man. He stood close to Nicu’s boat, wearing a hoodie. His posture unnerved her. Perhaps because he was standing still, not leaning. Not moving his hands, or speaking.

  Grace crept into a doorway to watch.

  Lights had gone out in most of the houses and boats.

  Still the man didn’t move. She could see even less of him from this angle.

  Voices sounded behind her. To her relief, an Australian couple from the bar approached arm in arm. The man didn’t react, didn’t look round.

  Grace crept out, and stayed close behind them till she reached the blue boat, then crossed the ramp and let herself in before the couple were out of earshot.

  With the light still off, she opened the blinds a centimetre.

  The hooded man was walking away, as if he’d spotted a taxi he’d ordered up on the main road.

  ‘Calm down,’ she said out loud. Her nerves were shot today. Too much adrenalin.

  She turned on the lamps, showered, then, wrapped in a towel, took a walk around Nicu’s prints. There was a stunning one of a teenage acrobat in a wrinkled leotard, with huge false eyelashes, hanging from a rope above a tiger, in a story about Central Asian rural circuses. Another of an Arab woman in white running along a flat-rooftopped building dragging her children, while a hundred men ran in the opposite direction on the ground, guns in the air.

  Each was a work of art. She remembered now. Nicu Dragan’s work was powerful but incredibly intimate, as if he’d lived for years with the people he photographed. The kind of work she’d aspired to once.

  She pulled on a clean T-shirt, and climbed into bed, thinking about her encounter with him. Did he really have two girlfriends? She imagined them all in some cool, seedy bar in Amsterdam tonight. His life, clearly, was not conventional, like hers. Maybe it couldn’t be when you worked and travelled like he did.

  Before she knew it, the boat was rocking her into a lull.

  Then, just as she drifted into a delicious sleep, Grace’s mi
nd fired an image at her, sharp as glass.

  The back of the man disappearing into the bar.

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  No. That was impossible.

  She tried to focus on it again; then reality and dreams began to merge and it was Anne-Marie she was watching from behind in the bar, and Dad waiting at a table with Auntie Marjorie for her to arrive, worried about where she was. Before she could call out to tell him everything was OK, sleep devoured her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Edinburgh

  Dot, dot, dot.

  Now night had fallen in Edinburgh, the man prepared himself for his task.

  He appraised his drawing, and finished the eyes as he always did at the end. With the fine black pen, he dotted her irises, building them up, with a relentless tapping motion, recalling the fragile blue that always pierced his heart. The defiant expression that appeared when his arrogance pained her. Then he dotted back through the eyelashes to thicken them, recalling the flutter of them against his cheek.

  There. It was done. Two hours, a thousand dots.

  Standing up, he took down yesterday’s drawing of her, the one with the hint of crow’s feet around her eyes, her hair short to her chin, and replaced it with today’s. In it, her hair was soft around her shoulders, dark as when he had first met her, waved and gentle on the jutting clavicle of her chest and slender shoulders.

  The usual ache for her power-punched him in the stomach.

  The night stretched ahead.

  With the woman upstairs away, he did his exercises earlier than normal, the towels wrapped round the creaky ceiling beams. Then, for tomorrow, he switched the food plates around in the fridge and marked up his TV schedule, both with eyes closed. When that was done, he sat on the stool, turned off the lights, and settled down to watch.

  As it did every night around this time, the tower block came alive.

  A hive of lights.

  Curtains shutting, lights switching on and off. Faces at the windows, watching other people’s lives, hiding tears, searching for a night-shift partner or parent, hoping for more, wishing for someone else.

  He could almost hear it. A cacophony of blaring televisions and radios, shouts into kitchens and bathrooms, screams and cries, barking dogs and boiling kettles, washing machines and electric guitars and video games, banging walls, the endless whoosh and ping of lifts.

  On the fourth floor, a hand ran a toy plane across the window, the owner’s mother at the next window, ironing, presumably unaware of the wide-awake child.

  Two men hung over the balcony two floors above, hands pointing down.

  When you saw this many people gathered in one place, after a while, they stopped being people. They became like his drawings, a thousand tiny dots, faces as indistinguishable as ants.

  Nothing defining.

  Just like him.

  A man without a voice. A man without a name.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Amsterdam

  Grace woke the next morning in a sweaty tangle of sheets, grabbing air, as she was shunted gently by the wake of a passing boat.

  Where was she?

  She sat up, eyes puffy, trying to remember.

  Someone was knocking.

  ‘Hello,’ she croaked. Wrapping a blanket round her, she fumbled to the door. Sunshine exploded in.

  Nicu Dragan stood on the doorstep. ‘Morning.’ His reaction to her disarray was hidden behind sunglasses.

  ‘Sorry. What time is it?’ She squinted into the sun behind him.

  ‘Nine.’ He jiggled his car keys. ‘There’s a guy at City Hall owes me a favour – I’m going to see if he can find an address for your Lucian Grabole.’

  She rubbed her eyes, trying not to drop the blanket. ‘Thank you. Should I come?’

  ‘I need to get going – see you later.’ He waved again, and walked off. A man, clearly, of few words.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She dressed, wishing she’d set her alarm, and headed out. The cold, shadowy Amsterdam of last night had vanished. The canal was a ribbon of taupe-coloured silk. Haphazard window boxes were filled with cheerful hollyhocks and roses, the road bustling with life. She saw now that the doorway she’d hidden in last night was tiled with pretty antique blue-and-white tiles, the doors made of delicate black ironwork.

  At the bridge, she fell in alongside the troops of cyclists, their bikes piled with bunches of flowers, children, laptops, shopping bags and even a guitar. The cafe was at the far end, with outside tables that wobbled on square cobbles. She ate a pastry and coffee, sucking herself in as moped riders with no helmets and bikes zipped round the corner inches from her back. There was a shout below. A woman watered pots on the canalside, waving at her twin sons in a street park as they leaped across a series of flat-ground trampolines like frogs.

  She took out her camera.

  Ever since she’d arrived in London, she’d wanted to shoot everything. Maybe it was just the change of scene, but she hadn’t felt like this in years.

  When Nicu arrived back, after ten, Grace gave him a few minutes, then went round to his boat.

  He answered, bare-chested again, eating an apple. ‘Hey. I have an address for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  She followed him, unsettled once more by his casual attitude to T-shirts.

  Sunlight flooded through voile curtains. The boat smelt of ground coffee. Nicu lifted a pot from the stove.

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘Thanks. So what did you find?’

  He poured two cups and headed across the sitting room. ‘Come through.’

  To her astonishment, he entered the bedroom.

  ‘Um.’ Unsure, she waited, then crept forward.

  What was he doing?

  There was a bag on his bed, and a pile of folded clothes, travel items and camera equipment. But no Nicu.

  A soft breeze caressed her arms.

  Tiptoeing forwards, Grace saw lush greenery pressed against the bedroom window – then an open door off the back of the boat.

  A garden?

  Walking out, she saw a floating deck, a few metres deep, harnessed across the whole length of the black boat. Pots of bamboo and other tall plants screened half the frontage, creating a perfect urban jungle. Nestled in the middle was a wrought-iron table and chairs where Nicu had placed the coffee. A ginger cat sunned itself.

  ‘Wow. This is amazing.’ She took a seat.

  ‘Yeah, it’s good. I copied theirs.’

  Next door, she saw a fit-looking couple in their late seventies, her with a white crop in a potter’s top, him bald with a white beard, watering plants on their own deck. Further up the canal, a young couple sat smoking on an old leather sofa, on a much smaller version, floating on tyres, two bikes lying by their feet.

  It was beautiful. Blissful.

  Nicu picked up a wine bottle and three glasses, and passed them into the open kitchen window. Grace bit back a smile as she sat down.

  The two women last night had been on the deck when she arrived – not in his bedroom.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ she said.

  He lifted a hose. ‘You have to be. Noise travels on water. Especially at night. Not that anyone’s told Hugo and Magriet.’

  His eyes signalled the elderly couple, and the comment was so unexpected she choked on her coffee.

  If he noticed, he didn’t react, pumping water and spraying the plants. At the water’s edge, a black-and-white coot and her chick swam by, creating deep ‘V’s in the silky water.

  She composed herself. ‘So, that’s great about the address – where is it?’

  ‘Oud-Zuid. South. I don’t know if it’s your guy, though,’ Nicu said, stepping round the cat.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s registered to work. Or was. He hasn’t lived here for over a year.’

  There was a flutter above. Shielding her eyes, Grace saw a tall heron on the roof.

  Nicu carried on, seemingly oblivious. ‘He’d registered h
is address at City Hall, and had a BSN number – like National Insurance, so . . .’

  She reached to stroke the cat. It kicked her away with a cross paw.

  ‘Oi.’ Nicu bent down beside her and stroked it. ‘Be nice.’ This time, it stretched out, happy.

  ‘But worth checking, you reckon?’ Grace asked.

  Nicu pushed up his sunglasses. His brows were dark and defined, his lashes long. They accentuated the intensity of his gaze. Today, she saw a shimmer of warmth in it, but it made it no easier to meet.

  Photographer’s eyes.

  Did she do that to people, too?

  ‘I don’t know. It’s your story,’ he frowned.

  She stared at the bottom of her cup as if there was something interesting in there. ‘Thing is, I’m not sure it is yet. It’s Ewan’s idea to pitch it to the editor at Scots Today. Right now, I just want to find out why this guy died in my flat.’

  He stood up and turned off the hose. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he died in my flat. And I want to know why he was there. That’s the angle of the story, anyway, if I write it. And if I don’t find out, there’s no story.’

  He sipped his coffee. ‘So the police have no idea?’

  ‘Well, they’re checking the name Lucian Grabole, but there are loads of other avenues to try, too. It’s not a murder enquiry, so it’ll take time.’

  ‘So, nothing to stop you checking it out, then?’

  ‘Nope. Anyway, thanks for that. Have you got the address?’

  He handed her a slip from his pocket.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, reading it. ‘Where are we now?’

  ‘Oud-West. West.’

  ‘And is it far?’

  ‘Twenty-minute drive.’ Nicu checked his watch. ‘I’ve got to go to my gallery this morning. I’ll drop you, if you want?’

  ‘Really? Thank you.’

  ‘And use the computer in the kitchen office if you need to.’ His mobile rang and he went inside, ducking his head.

  There was something about the way he moved that intrigued her. He was tall, but his movements were lithe and easy, as if he was comfortable in his own skin. Unhindered.

  She re-read the address he’d given her, her stomach fluttering at the thought of what she might find.