Echoes of Guilt

by Rob Sinclair

  ‘Please,’ Brigitta said, as she continued to shuffle through the darkness towards the rear of the house.

  Dani and Easton followed. As she passed by the front room, Dani peeked in and realised the gloomy space beyond was being used as a bedroom. Brigitta certainly looked too frail to be getting up and down those stairs. So was the top floor used at all?

  They were soon inside a cramped sitting room at the back of the house. Long thick curtains were pulled across the windows, just slivers of light coming into the room around the top edge of the blackouts.

  Brigitta rummaged through the dark and groaned painfully as she lowered herself into an armchair.

  ‘Please,’ she said, indicating the adjacent sofa.

  Dani and Easton both took a seat. Dani’s eyes worked across the room. No sign of a TV. A table lamp on a unit in the corner glowed orange, but its low-power bulb was doing a lousy job of lighting the space. By Brigitta’s side was another unit where a series of candles burned away, their short flames flickering.

  Beyond the flames was a dull painting on the wall – Jesus on a cross? – though it was hard to tell in the dim light. Around the candles were various photos, cast in shadow, though Dani was sure each of them showed the same young woman.

  ‘You live here alone, Mrs Popescu?’ Easton asked.

  ‘What?’

  Easton repeated the question more loudly and clearly.

  ‘Yes. Yes. This is my home.’

  She said those words forcefully as though the house was perfectly suitable for a frail woman in her late eighties.

  ‘Mrs Popescu, we’d like to talk to you about your grandson,’ Dani said.

  A nod in response. Apparently she didn’t find it unusual that two police officers were here asking about him.

  ‘Are you happy for us to speak to you alone? Or do you—’

  ‘You’re here about Nic?’

  ‘Yes. Have you spoken to him recently?’ Dani asked.

  ‘Heh?’

  Brigitta cupped her ear. Dani repeated the question, louder and more clearly, much like Easton had moments before. She could sense him smirking beside her.

  ‘Nic? No. He doesn’t call me for weeks.’

  ‘He’s still in—’

  ‘My birthday. He called then. I’m eighty-six. No card, just phone call. He’s a busy man.’

  ‘Can you—’

  ‘But he did send flowers.’

  She sat forward and looked around the room, as though searching for them, then mumbled under her breath, ‘They died, I think.’

  ‘Is there a reason you’ve got all the curtains closed?’ Easton asked.

  Dani had wondered the exact same thing, though she wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask or not.

  ‘How I like it.’

  ‘Mrs Popescu, the reason we’re asking about Nic is that—’

  ‘You want tea?’

  Dani paused.

  ‘Heh?’ Brigitta said, cupping her ear again. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thank—’

  ‘In the kitchen. Please. Tea. Milk only.’

  Dani looked at Easton and saw the amused grin on his face.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Easton said, just beating Dani to it.

  She sighed as he got up and headed out.

  ‘Mrs Popescu, I need to ask you about two people I think your grandson knows.’

  ‘Nic?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Ah, he’s not such a bad boy. His heart is good. He used to live here. Did you know?’

  Dani smiled and got to her feet as she pulled her phone out. She picked out a picture each of Clara and Liam Dunne as she moved over to Brigitta and knelt down by her side. The smell of musky oldness filled Dani’s nostrils.

  ‘This man is Liam Dunne. But he might also have called himself Patrick, or James. I think your grandson may know him.’

  Brigitta was staring at the picture but she gave no reaction at all.

  ‘Do you remember ever seeing him? Or hearing about him?’

  ‘Him?’

  Brigitta pointed a shaky finger at the photo.

  ‘Yes. Him. Do you know him?’

  Her weary eyes found Dani’s now. She looked seriously surprised by the question.

  ‘No. I don’t know this man.’

  ‘How about this woman? Her name was Clara.’

  Brigitta focused on the screen again, this time only for only a second before she looked away and slumped back down in the armchair.

  ‘So that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Her? No. I don’t. But now I know why you’re here.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Another one,’ Brigitta said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ she said, shaking her head mournfully.

  Dani’s skin prickled, then she jumped when she heard the footsteps behind her.

  It was just Easton, carrying two mugs. He paused. ‘Sorry, did I—’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Dani said, focusing back on Brigitta.‘Mrs Popescu, what do you mean? Did you know Clara?’

  Brigitta shook her head.

  ‘Are you sure? You just said she’s dead.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’

  ‘She is. But… You also said another one. What does that mean?’

  Brigitta looked away now, to her right, to the series of photos in among the flickering candles.

  ‘There’s always another one.’

  Dani looked around to Easton who was still on his feet. In the darkness she could just make out the concerned look on his face.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Popescu, can you explain that?’ Dani said.

  Brigitta shuffled in her seat and reached out and grasped the nearest of the pictures. As Brigitta brought it closer Dani could see it was a black and white photo of a young woman, probably late teens or early twenties, with dark but pretty eyes and long dark hair.

  ‘Is that your daughter?’ Dani asked.

  Brigitta remained focused on the picture.

  ‘She was twenty years old. A baby, really.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She was taken. Just like all the others.’

  ‘Taken by who?’

  Dani’s heart was racing in her chest now. And when Brigitta finally looked away from the photo and caught Dani’s eye, it sent a chill right into her bones. Dani shivered and was sure she felt a rush of cold against her right side. The flames from the candles flickered more ferociously and Dani whipped her head around to the doorway.

  Easton was already back on the sofa, and there was no one else there. When she turned back, the candles were calming again.

  ‘Mrs Popescu, what do you mean she was taken? By who?’

  She leaned forwards and whispered fearfully. ‘The Strigoi. Sooner or later, they come for us all.’

  Dani shivered again, a split second before there was a crash from out in the hallway.

  Chapter 9

  Dani’s heart nearly erupted out of her chest. She jumped up and spun around. Easton too was on his feet and looking sheepish as he darted forwards to the doorway.

  ‘Bună ziua!’

  Dani relaxed a little at the soft and untroubled female voice. She was soon out in the hallway with Easton where a young woman, in jeans and white tracksuit top, was by the now closed front door, just scooping up some bags from the floor, her puffer jacket hanging off her arm. She flinched when she looked up at the two coppers.

  ‘It’s OK, we’re with the police,’ Easton said, holding out his warrant card for the woman to see.

  ‘I thought I saw a car,’ she said, straightening up and hanging her coat over the banister. ‘What do you want?’

  Like Brigitta, her accent was strong, though her grasp of English far more natural.

  ‘We were just asking Mrs Popescu a few questions about her grandson, Nicolae,’ Dani said.

  The woman said nothing now as she stared.

  ‘Your name is?’ Easton pr
ompted.

  ‘Stef. I’m her niece. Great niece, actually.’

  ‘Do you think we could talk?’ Dani said.

  ‘If this is about Nic, then I really don’t have much to say, but you can try.’

  The woman squeezed past and into the lounge. She took a sharp inhale of breath and then a jumbled flow of vowels and consonants rolled from her tongue at lightning speed as she moved over to the curtains and yanked them open.

  When she was done she turned to Dani and Easton in the doorway.

  ‘Sorry for this,’ Stef said. ‘I keep telling her not to live in the darkness, but she insists.’

  With the winter sunlight reaching into the room, Dani could make it out properly for the first time. Her eyes instinctively fell upon the candles and pictures next to Brigitta. Now properly visible, it was clear the arrangement was a long-standing shrine, and the pictures there included those of at least two different young women. Not Stef, though.

  Brigitta squirmed in her seat, her eyes squinting as she looked away from the glare and down to the floor. Stef berated the old woman once again though this time Brigitta bit back with her own Romanian tirade. Stef waved it off with an angry flick then looked over to Dani and Easton.

  ‘Could you tell me what this is about?’ Stef said, her tone bordering on hostile.

  ‘Perhaps we could speak with you alone for a few moments?’ Dani asked.

  Stef looked unsure but then relented and she led the way into the kitchen where she quickly rolled up the blinds and turned on the overhead spotlights to reveal a dated but well-equipped space.

  ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘Your aunt mentioned Strigoi just now,’ Dani said. ‘Do you know what she means?’

  Stef sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘She’s eighty-six, and her brain is barely there. Take no notice of her fairy stories.’

  ‘So what happened to her daughter?’

  ‘Claudia?’ Stef said and she looked a little unsettled now, but also suspicious.

  ‘Is that her name?’ Dani said. ‘The young woman in the pictures?’

  ‘Yes. A lot of those are Claudia.’ Stef looked down to the lino-covered floor. ‘She disappeared a long, long time ago. Before I was even born. When Brigitta still lived in Romania.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nobody knows.’

  ‘They never found her?’ Dani asked.

  Stef shook her head.

  ‘How long has Brigitta lived here?’

  ‘More than twenty years.’

  ‘And you?’ Easton asked.

  Stef glared at him. ‘About four.’

  She sounded almost accusatory, as though waiting for a retort from Easton as to whether that was a sufficiently long time.

  ‘How well do you know Nicolae?’ Dani asked.

  ‘He’s technically my uncle, but I don’t know him well at all. Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘Kind of,’ Dani said. ‘Are you in contact with him?’

  ‘Me personally? No.’

  ‘But Brigitta is?’

  ‘It’s more that he’s in contact with her. When he wants to be. There’s no phone number to call him on. No address to send him letters. He just gets in touch sometimes.’

  ‘So he’s living—’

  ‘In Romania. In the mountains near Brasov. It’s where our family comes from.’

  She took her phone from her pocket and typed away.

  ‘What do you do here?’ Easton asked.

  Stef looked up from her phone with a scowl on her face. ‘Here at my aunt’s home? Or here in your country?’

  Easton raised an eyebrow, perhaps questioning her snottily put together response. ‘You can answer both if you like. Not that I’m judging, just interested.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re following up on the death of a young woman,’ Dani said. ‘An unexplained death.’

  ‘A Romanian woman?’ Stef asked.

  ‘Actually, no.’

  That seemed to throw her. Dani took out her own phone and pulled up the same two pictures that she’d earlier showed to Brigitta.

  ‘Her name was Clara Dunne, though she also went by Clara Doyle. We’re also enquiring about her brother, Liam Dunne.’

  ‘He’s dead too?’

  ‘Missing,’ Dani said.

  Stef took the phone and studied the pictures for a few seconds.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know them.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Easton asked.

  ‘Why would I lie?’

  ‘Clara lived not too far from here, in Oldbury,’ Dani said. ‘She had pictures of your uncle in her room, alongside her brother.’

  ‘Pictures? Like—’

  ‘Clippings. Not framed photos. Not personal pictures. Clippings, pinned on the wall.’

  Stef looked truly puzzled now.

  ‘I’m really sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ She looked at her watch then shook her head impatiently. ‘Look, I’m behind already. I need to wash and change Brigitta, make her lunch, then I need to get back to work.’

  ‘And work is?’ Easton asked.

  She gave him that same snotty look. ‘I’m a cleaner.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Dani said. ‘We’ll get out of your hair.’

  She pulled out a card and handed it over to Stef who looked at it suspiciously for a few seconds before taking it.

  ‘If you do think of anything, about Nicolae, or Liam, or Clara, just give me a call. Anything at all.’

  Stef didn’t say anything more.

  Dani and Easton turned to leave. As they passed by the lounge, Dani stuck her head inside to thank Brigitta and to say goodbye. The old lady was slumped in the armchair, eyes closed, snoring loudly. The black and white picture of Claudia remained held close to her chest.

  Dani looked over to the shrine one more time, tried to push away the creepy feeling that continued to build, then turned and headed for the door.

  Chapter 10

  Banging and clattering from somewhere down below woke Ana from her alcohol and drug-fuelled sleep. She winced in pain and held a hand up to her throbbing head, squeezed her eyes shut, hoping the pain would subside.

  It did, at least enough for her to keep her eyes open for more than two seconds, though as she focused on the room in front of her, she wished she was still asleep. At least when she was asleep, passed out, unconscious, whichever, she was some place other than here.

  She reached across the armchair to the side table that was crammed with empty vodka bottles and plastic cups. She picked up one of the cups then groaned as she got to her feet and plodded barefoot across the sticky carpet to the ‘bar’ – a corner of the bachelor pad room that Victor had set up and which comprised of a shoddily built wooden bar, mirrors and stools, and a wall filled with bottles and optics; though the usual course of events for a party was that the bottles all ended up being passed around the room and tossed aside when empty, like they had last night.

  Ana’s welcome home party, so Victor had called it. The party, for his and his friends’ exclusive benefit, had consisted of Ana and three young women she’d never met before plus Victor and ten other seedy men. Plus enough alcohol and cocaine to… to what?

  Just thinking about that made her groin and her insides ache.

  Ana filled her glass with water. Downed it. Did the same thing twice more then turned back to the room. It was a mess. The space – about thirty feet by thirty feet – wasn’t only used by Victor as a party centre, but as some sort of office for the warehouse below. There was no bed here. Anybody who stayed long enough to need sleep crashed out – or passed out – on the carpet or whatever item of furniture they fancied. This sleazy and sordid room was, in Victor’s mind, an impressive introduction to the new women he added to his roster.

  That was the other reason they had stayed here last night. There were new women arriving soon, he’d told Ana.

  She gulped at the thought of that and felt another knot in her stomach that she knew fr
om past experience would rarely leave her as long as she stayed under Victor’s watch.

  Another crash from down below. Shouting now. And dogs barking.

  That was odd.

  Ana moved across the room and grabbed a silk robe to cover her semi-naked and cold-to-the-touch skin. There was no one else in the room with her. She wracked her mind but could remember little of the night before. Just how Victor liked it. Though she could remember his gurning face on top of her, the smell of his alcohol breath as he thrust back and forth.

  Ana rushed over to the sink and threw up the meagre contents of her stomach, then dry heaved a few times as she tried to erase the memories.

  No, those memories would never fade.

  A scream from below now. A man’s scream.

  What the hell was going on down there?

  Ana walked over to the door. Tried it. Unlocked. Likely because Victor was still here, downstairs somewhere. He wouldn’t have left her unattended and unsecured if he’d gone out. The bathroom and kitchen to what had perhaps originally been nothing but a regular office space above a bog-standard commercial property, were both along the corridor here, and Ana was given relatively free access to them while Victor or his men were around – even if they would question her movements if they saw her hanging about outside the office.

  She peered out. No one else in sight along the corridor. She carried on out, hunched down, moving slow, her feet soft and quiet on the cheap laminate wood floor. She moved over to the closed door to a small storage room. This door, too, was unlocked. She opened it, as quietly as she could, and glanced up and down the corridor again before she stepped into the dark space, leaving the door ajar, to listen for sounds from outside.

  Ana crept into the corner and crouched down by the metal shelving unit, then carefully pulled away the dusty boxes underneath that sat on top of a large MDF board and contained who knew what. She pulled the board aside, too, to reveal a gouge in the suspended floor that had a one-inch hole driven right through the plasterboard ceiling below, and gave a glimpse into the smaller of the warehouse areas on the ground floor.