City of Strangers

by Louise Millar

  Nicu drove south through Amsterdam, an elbow on the windowsill, seemingly unbothered by the gangs of bikes constantly crossing their path. He tapped his fingers to the music on the radio.

  ‘So are you off on a job soon? I saw you were packing?’ she asked.

  He slowed at a traffic light. ‘Yeah. Colombia.’ He said it casually, as if he was going to the office for a meeting.

  ‘Wow. What’s the story?’

  ‘A female vigilante group in Bogotá.’

  ‘Cool. For a newspaper?’

  ‘No time.’

  ‘No time for what?’

  He looked bemused again. ‘No, Time. Magazine?’

  ‘Oh, Time! God. Sorry. How long are you going for?’

  ‘Not sure yet.’ He turned up the music. She took it as a cue that he didn’t like small talk.

  Streets of four-storey apartment blocks gave way to wider, leafier roads. Nicu turned into a broad avenue that overlooked a private park, and pulled up by a large detached house. Number 1 stood behind a wrought-iron gate, a manicured courtyard and a fountain.

  Grace checked around. There were five more houses, equally as grand. Next door was the embassy of a small Middle Eastern country.

  This was not what she’d been expecting. She saw a quizzical look cross Nicu’s face and wondered if he was thinking the same.

  He handed her a gallery card. ‘Listen, I’ll be there for an hour.’ He pointed ahead. ‘Left at the junction, fifteen minutes’ walk straight. Otherwise, see you back at the boat. And I’ll see what else I can rustle up, contacts-wise.’ He slammed the gearstick back into drive and waited, expectant, as she got out.

  ‘Thanks.’ She stood outside the elegant house as he drove away, already guessing this was a waste of time. She’d bet her flat in Gallon Street that the dead man in the scruffy suit and shoes had never lived anywhere like this.

  Ten minutes later, Grace was glad she hadn’t made that bet official.

  Lucian Grabole’s former address was fronted by large cast-iron gates. When she rang the bell, a woman in her sixties in a housecoat and sandals, grey plaits on her head, came to the front door, and called out in Dutch.

  Grace replied in English. To her relief, the woman switched languages, and introduced herself as the concierge, Mitti.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mitti,’ Grace said, ‘but I’m trying to trace a man who lived here a year ago, called Lucian Grabole.’

  The concierge’s expression transformed. She clapped like a child. ‘Lucian? Wonderful! How is Lucian?’

  At least she knew him. This should make it easy to eliminate Nicu’s legal Lucian Grabole from her list.

  ‘Could I come in for a minute, please?’

  Mitti invited her in to sit by the stone fountain, beside a flowerbed of tall purple puffballs and ruby stalks, as vibrant as a butterfly.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I’m wasting your time here,’ Grace started as she began to describe the details of the dead man in her flat in Edinburgh. At first she thought it was her imagination, but each time she added a new detail – that the man was Romanian, his height, colouring and age, the wolf tattoo and the signet ring with a green stone – Mitti’s smile diminished further.

  Then, to her astonishment, as she finished up, the Dutch woman’s expression dissolved into grief.

  ‘This is the same man?’ Grace said, in disbelief.

  ‘Oh!’ The concierge nodded, dabbing the fleshy skin around her eyes, as tears formed. ‘This is terrible news. Poor Lucian.’

  ‘Oh no. I’m so sorry to upset you,’ Grace said. The phrase was becoming familiar. ‘Mitti, I’m trying to find Lucian’s family. I can see you’re really distressed, but could I ask you to tell me something about Lucian so I can tell them?’

  Mitti fought back tears, nodding, as Grace asked permission to use the voice recorder and switched it on. ‘Uh. He came from Romania.’ The woman’s skin was a little loose, as if it had been lifted, stretched and dropped back. It gave each expression more depth, as her features gathered like curtains. She sniffed hard.

  ‘Anything else?’

  Mitti wiped her nose with a tissue. ‘He was young. Only forty years old. He lived here for a year.’

  ‘A year? Till?’

  ‘Last spring.’ Mitti blew her nose. An unexpected anger entered her voice. ‘This makes no sense, that he would steal from your apartment. Lucian was not a criminal. See here?’ She pointed at the rubbish bins, tucked discreetly into a corner. ‘Every Tuesday he woke early to help me put these on the street. And in the garden.’ She pointed behind the house. ‘He worked here, too. Not for money. Because he liked to. He didn’t steal.’

  ‘What was his job?’ Grace asked.

  Her eyes brightened. ‘Oh, a painter. A decorator. Come.’

  She led Grace into an opulent communal hall, with a marble floor, and century-old oil landscapes adorning an ornate sweeping staircase.

  Mitti pointed to the intricate lace coving on the ceiling. ‘You see. He filled the cracks. He was so patient – little, little, little.’ She mimed Lucian daubing.

  They stood beside a polished walnut unit with six shelves with brass nameplates. Each held post for one apartment.

  ‘But he worked outside the house, too?’ Grace asked, wondering how on earth Lucian could afford this place.

  ‘Oh yes. He painted the new shopping mall outside the Ring.’ The concierge circled her finger. ‘The road round the city? He worked at night. He said it paid very well.’

  Grace took in the long silk curtains at the hall window. Even a night shift wouldn’t pay for this, surely, unless he and Anna rented just a room here, rather than an apartment.

  ‘Would you be able to show me where he lived, Mitti?’

  Mitti led her up three floors to a handsome wood-panelled door with a heavy brass knocker. The nameplate said, ‘Dr De Jonker.’

  ‘This was it?’ Grace asked. ‘Really? Could I look inside?’

  ‘No. The doctor is away,’ Mitti said. ‘I can’t.’

  Along the rear landing was a window. Grace walked to look out and saw a manicured lawn and pretty rose garden. More bountiful flowerbeds lined the boundaries, and a rope swing hung from an oak tree. This made no sense.

  ‘Mitti, I’m a little confused. Can I double-check a few things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, Lucian Grabole was a Romanian man of around forty, and we’ve agreed what he looked like?’

  Mitti’s eyes were rheumy now with tears. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he was a painter and decorator, and he lived here for one year?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With his family – a wife and child, also Romanian?’

  Mitti frowned. ‘Please repeat.’

  Grace did.

  Curtains of flesh gathered on Mitti’s brow. ‘No. No. Lucian was not married. He lived here alone. Always.’

  Grace thought she’d misheard. ‘He wasn’t married? He didn’t have a wife called Anna?’

  ‘No. Never,’ Mitti protested.

  Stumped, Grace tried again. ‘So there wasn’t a police raid here – looking for unregistered foreign workers? They didn’t just disappear during the night?’

  Mitti became indignant. ‘Here? Of course not. No, Lucian left because his mother was ill. In Bucharest.’

  Two pink dots appeared on her plump cheeks. She dabbed with increased effort at her tears as the news sank in.

  It was time to go and leave her in peace.

  ‘Mitti, listen, I’m so sorry to have upset you.’ Grace patted her arm. ‘I promise I’ll get back to you when I have official confirmation. Until then, could I possibly ask you to ring me when Dr De Jonker returns? In case he found anything in Lucian’s apartment?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mitti led her back out. ‘But I hope you are wrong. Lucian was a good neighbour to us. A friend to me. We liked him here very much.’

  It wasn’t professional, but Grace held out her arms, and Mitti fell into her with a sob, then waved h
er off with a wet tissue.

  Grace walked to the junction, stumped. If this was the same Lucian Grabole, why didn’t Mitti know Anna and Valentin?

  Each mansion on the avenue was as grand as Lucian and Mitti’s, set back from the road, with private parking. It seemed impossible that a painter and decorator could afford this.

  The road was empty apart from a gold executive saloon parked in front of the Middle Eastern embassy.

  Grace approached, pensive.

  There was a flicker in the wing mirror.

  She looked up, expecting to see a Middle Eastern driver in a uniform, waiting for a visiting dignitary.

  Instead, it was a pale face in a green hoodie, stainless-steel eyes locked on her camera bag.

  Grace’s heart skipped. Diving behind the car, she crossed over and walked quickly to the junction, gripping her camera strap. She needed to be more careful if she was travelling alone.

  When she arrived at Nicu’s gallery, an assistant told her he was still with the owner but to look around. One room featured a photo exhibition of Syrian refugee camps by an Italian female photographer she’d heard of; the other was Nicu’s.

  At the door, there was a biography and she sneaked a quick look. He’d been born in Romania, brought up in New Zealand, and studied at prestigious art schools in both New York and London. His work had been shown in a number of major galleries and featured in publications around the world.

  There were eight shots in his exhibition, each three metres high, hung in a purposely claustrophobic room. They were portraits of London rioters in 2011.

  She swivelled in the centre, taking in each one. He’d shot them close up, so their faces filled the frame. The combined effect was of giant heads surrounding and leering down at you. One rioter had a gashed head, and a glittering gallery of gold teeth. Another blew a kiss from split, bloody lips. One man peered through a gap in a white balaclava fashioned from a looted babygrow. A woman stuck her tongue between a pair of trainers, the sales label hanging off them.

  At first, their expressions appeared incendiary and threatening, but in their eyes, Grace saw more. They’d let Nicu steal inside the madness of those nights; revealed their frustration and sense of disenfranchisement.

  Her phone rang out in the silent gallery. ‘Hello?’ she answered.

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘Hello?’

  An office door opened. Nicu exited, looking taken aback to see her, as if he’d forgotten she existed.

  He motioned to the front door, and she followed him out to the Jeep.

  ‘Hello?’ she repeated into the mobile. Still nobody answered. She climbed in.

  ‘How did you get on?’ he said, starting the engine.

  ‘Weird – it was the same Lucian Grabole. Thanks for getting the address,’ she said, putting on her seatbelt. ‘Apparently, he worked as a painter and decorator. Do you think that’s odd that he lived in that house? A doctor lives there now.’

  Nicu waited for bikes to pass. ‘I reckon even a doctor would be hard pushed to afford that road. Maybe he was house-sitting or subletting.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Yeah. So what you going to do now?’ he said, pulling out.

  ‘I’ve got numbers for two Romanian community groups. I’ll see if they can help me track down Anna and Valentin. Maybe there’s a mother-and-baby group or something. And I thought I’d ask the Dutch police about raids on unregistered foreign workers.’

  Nicu scratched his close-cut beard, and that shimmer of warmth returned to his eyes. ‘Want me to do it? Might be easier with the language.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yup. I’ve got nothing on till I go to Colombia next week.’

  ‘That would be great, thanks.’ She went to retrieve the numbers and saw her phone was still running. The call was on two minutes and fifty-six seconds.

  ‘Hello?’ she repeated.

  The call ended.

  Nicu glanced over.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m wondering if that was the concierge at the apartment, or someone I gave my card to in London.’

  ‘Recognize the number?’

  She shook her head.

  Unknown.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  At Nicu’s suggestion, Grace used the computer in the tiny office, while he sat on the deck to ring the community groups and his own contacts from a recent immigration feature in Amsterdam.

  It was hard to concentrate. On the walls were more of his prints. Above her was a black picket-fence line of hand-silhouettes across the print, raised in dance against a background of roughly hewn rock ablaze with green and pink laser lights. A rave of some sort, she guessed.

  She enlarged her photos onscreen and transcribed Mitti and Ali’s conversations, then ran back the clip of her calamitous chat with the Cozmas.

  ‘Who’s that talking, Grace?’ a call came from outside.

  She got up and found Nicu leaning in the kitchen window.

  ‘Uh, Lucian Grabole’s Romanian friends in London. The Cozmas. They come from the same village. That’s Mrs Cozma. She got really upset. I kind of charged in, thinking it wouldn’t be him, and it was. They were so upset they wouldn’t speak to me anymore.’

  ‘Can you run it again?’

  ‘OK,’ she said, taken aback.

  His dark curls fell forwards as he listened to Mrs Cozma’s hysterical wails.

  ‘She doesn’t like you . . .’ he said, lifting his chin.

  Grace smiled ruefully. ‘No, I guessed. I probably should have—’

  ‘And she doesn’t like him,’ Nicu interrupted.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lucian Grabole. She hates him. Did you know that?’

  Grace paused the voice clip, privately questioning how good Nicu’s Romanian was. ‘No. That can’t be right. She was devastated when I said he might be dead.’

  Nicu came round into the boat, and joined her in the tiny office. She squeezed against the desk as he towered over her to take the phone. At least he was wearing a T-shirt. He replayed the clip, then paused it, lips pursed in concentration.

  ‘Yeah. She’s emotional – but it’s with relief, not grief. She’s happy the guy’s dead.’

  ‘I don’t understand – why?’

  ‘Listen.’ He held the phone closer to her so their hair was almost touching. The snatch of fast Romanian repeated. ‘This bit, here,’ Nicu said. ‘Monstrul este mort . . . ?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means “The monster is dead.”’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Edinburgh

  Sula sat outside a red-brick building in the Edinburgh suburb of Colinton, guessing it wouldn’t be much longer.

  The building was the type she’d seen before, thrown up by developers with no conscience about squeezing old folk into kennel-size ‘retirement apartments’ and taking their savings to pay for it.

  She’d put herself over a cliff before living in a place like this, letting some numpty wipe her arse.

  The door opened and a familiar face exited and climbed into a car.

  ‘That’s it – you get off to have your lunch,’ Sula said, watching the woman drive off.

  She walked into the reception and flashed a card quickly.

  ‘Sula McGregor to see Mr Pearce. Is DS Foley still here?’

  ‘That the family liaison officer?’ the receptionist said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. You’ve just missed her, sorry.’

  ‘Have I? That’s annoying – is Mr Pearce still here?’

  ‘Yes. Do you need to see him?’

  ‘Just for five minutes.’

  ‘Sure, this way. He’s having his tea.’

  An old wifey with spools of purple hair sprouting from a bald scalp was slumped in the living area, her bottom lip out, as bairns from the primary school sang songs. She fixed her eyes on Sula, desperate for escape.

  Mr Pearce’s room was down a long, featureless corridor, but his living quarters were more home
ly. Tidy. A comfy armchair, family photographs, bird ornaments on the windowsill. A photo of his son David Pearce as a primary-school pupil, fresh face and innocent eyes. Mr Pearce was smartly dressed in a button-up cardigan and slacks, his white hair brushed for his earlier visitor.

  ‘Mr Pearce, I’m Sula McGregor – here to speak to you about your son.’

  ‘Hello. Come in,’ Mr Pearce said, struggling to stand. He was hardly any taller when he did, so bent was he.

  Sula shook his hand.

  ‘OK, Mr Pearce?’ the receptionist said.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she smiled, closing the door.

  ‘Sorry to hear what’s happened, Mr Pearce,’ Sula said.

  ‘Aye. It’s a bad situation.’ His voice was indistinct, as if he was struggling for breath. He threw his chin up with each word as if trying to shake it out of his exhausted neck. ‘Are you here to find out what happened?’

  She touched his arm. ‘Now listen. Mr Pearce. I’m not the police. I don’t want you thinking that. I’m from the paper. I’m trying to find out what happened to your son, and Colin McFarlay. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And you’re OK with that?’

  ‘Aye. I want to know myself.’

  ‘Good.’ Sula turned on her tape. ‘Now, I’m sure the police have asked you this, but your son wasn’t a drug user, no?’

  ‘Ach no.’ Mr Pearce swatted the air. ‘He was not. He was a lecturer, at the university.’

  Sula nodded. ‘And he hadn’t been here for a while? He stayed in Australia, is that right?’

  ‘Aye, in Perth. And my other son.’ He pursed liver-coloured lips. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘What was your fault?’

  Mr Pearce coughed, a rattle in his throat. ‘Excuse me. Well, we went there, for my work, in 1959, when my boys were wee. I’m an engineer, too. We came back to Scotland in 1972, when they were nearly finished high school. But they wanted to go back to Perth. Felt Australian by then, you see . . .’

  ‘Right. And when David visited, did he always stay with you here, at your house in Colinton?’

  Mr Pearce’s wispy grey brows met. ‘No, no. David never was back in Scotland. Not for forty years, apart from his mother’s funeral. He was always too busy with his work. Him and my other son, Philip, paid for me and her to go over there. Once every year or two. But it’s a long way. And when my wife died, well . . .’