There was a rustling on the phone, and I heard the sound become more muted. The background sounds disappeared. He’d had it on speaker.
‘I’m just as concerned as you are,’ he said in a lower voice. ‘But management is after me. They think I’m too personally involved.’
‘But everything he was going to write, his whole story, it’s all true,’ I said.
‘We’ll keep checking,’ said Evans. ‘That’s all we can do. Check and double-check. Journalistic footwork. That’s how it has to be for now.’
Later, when I went down to the lobby and logged onto the Internet, the articles from the front page of The Reporter had been removed. All that remained was a discreet reference to a brief article, buried below the news of a planned top meeting between the United States, Israel, and the Palestinian leaders.
Chapter 18
Tarifa
Tuesday, 7 October
The woman was sitting in the lobby, waiting right behind the family of flamingos. She was in her fifties, wearing wide linen trousers and far too many necklaces. Miguel, the clerk at the front desk, had pointed her out with an apologetic gesture. Just like his father, wife, brother, cousins, and everyone else who either worked in the hotel or spent time with their relatives in the bar, he knew by now that I didn’t want to talk to journalists. Ever since the news about Patrick had appeared on TV, they had been protecting me. Not even some distant cousin had blabbed to the reporters that I was staying at the hotel.
The woman gave off an unmistakable fragrance of musk and smoke and rose oil. Obviously a dyed-in-the-wool hippie.
I stopped two metres away and crossed my arms.
‘I don’t give interviews,’ I said.
She stood up and reached out to shake my hand. A warm, gaunt hand with many silver rings on her fingers. The woman was nearly six foot five.
‘My name is Jillian Dunne,’ she said with a British accent that spoke of dark boarding schools. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Thanks and goodbye,’ I said.
She smiled gently.
‘I’m not a reporter,’ she said. ‘I’m here because there’s someone I think you should meet.’
I looked her up and down, noting the sandals she wore with the straps fastened around suntanned ankles, and all the beads strung on chains and cords around her wrists and neck.
‘You’re not a therapist, are you?’ I asked.
The woman laughed.
‘No, not really. This has to do with your husband.’
‘And?’
‘Certain people are saying that he was on a boat that capsized in the Mediterranean about two weeks ago.’
I didn’t say anything, just waited for what would come next.
‘But the thing is, that boat didn’t capsize at all,’ said Jillian Dunne. ‘And your husband was not on board.’
I stared at her.
‘How do you know that?’
With a sweeping gesture, she slung a scarf around her neck.
‘Come with me.’
She crossed the street, taking long strides, and turned right, towards the beach. The town had just now awakened from a sound siesta. Cars were parked halfway up on the sidewalks. A man was carrying garbage bags out of the back door of a shop.
‘Where are we going?’
I caught up with Jillian, whose thin garments were flapping wildly in the wind.
‘Some friends of mine have a café down here.’
‘And who am I going to meet?’
She smiled enigmatically. I had a bad feeling that she was going to take me to a tarot reader who would predict my future. Or maybe she would personally read my cards.
‘Do you live here in town?’ I asked.
‘Been here for twenty years.’ Jillian slowed down a bit, waving her hand to encompass all of Tarifa. ‘It was totally different back then. No tourists. We were bohemians, living for the moment, hitchhiking around. And some of us decided to stay.’ She laughed and ran her hand through her hair. There was a hint of sorrow in her voice. ‘I would never be able to adapt to British proprieties again.’
We passed a bullring that looked abandoned, with overgrown thickets all around. I had to walk faster to keep up with her.
‘Cornwall,’ said Jillian, smiling at me. ‘That sounds like a British name.’
‘A slave name,’ I said briefly.
‘Oh, right. It’s your husband’s name, of course. I didn’t think of that.’ She tugged at her necklaces. ‘I didn’t know that slaves had last names.’
‘It wasn’t a last name back then,’ I said. ‘Some of the slave owners named their slaves after the places they’d come from. Like London or Cornwall. The point was to show who the slaves belonged to. When Patrick’s great-great-great-grandfather was freed, Cornwall was listed as his surname. Nobody knows whether it was done by mistake or whether he deliberately chose that name, because a free man always has a last name.’
Jillian stopped next to a series of townhouses on the slope leading down to the sea. She pointed.
‘A friend of mine found a woman down there almost two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘On Monday. She was lying under a footbridge near the shore. You can’t really see it from here.’
‘On Monday?’ I took a deep breath.
The same day Patrick was found.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘Your husband was found about a kilometre from here.’
She didn’t have to tell me that. I had walked along the beach so many times over the past few days that I knew it in more detail than an aerial view on Google Earth.
‘The woman wasn’t dead,’ Jillian went on, ‘but she was in bad shape and had a high fever. We helped get her to a safe place.’ She looked at me. ‘I believe in individuals taking responsibility. Inaction is also a form of action.’
‘Is it this woman we’re going to meet?’ I started walking even faster.
‘I don’t know her name,’ said Jillian. ‘She didn’t say a word, not a single word after we found her. I thought she didn’t understand English or that she was in shock. You can’t imagine what they go through to get here.’
Jillian stopped outside a terracotta-coloured house. Part of the ground floor was painted turquoise, with flowers sticking out from the facade. The name ‘Shangri-La’ had been painted in big letters above the door. ‘Café-bar-surf-shop.’
‘This is where she’s hiding?’ I asked.
‘It’s better if you don’t know where she’s staying.’
Jillian took out a little tube and rubbed cream on her lips as she looked in every direction.
‘I brought her breakfast as usual this morning,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I set down the tray like I always do and poured tea into our cups.’
And then you sat down on the edge of the bed and talked that poor woman to death, I thought. Out of your infinite kindness.
Jillian pressed a hand to her chest.
‘And just think, she suddenly started talking. And you know what?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘She speaks excellent English.’
A bearded guy wearing an earring opened the door to Shangri-La, and Jillian kissed him on both cheeks. He locked the door behind us.
The café was a small room with tables made from old surfboards. The walls were painted with psychedelic patterns. Jillian disappeared behind a beaded curtain at the back of the bar. I followed, passing through a small kitchen and going up a narrow staircase. At the top we entered a room.
On a chair sat a black woman dressed in loose clothing made from green cotton fabric. On her feet she wore a pair of gold-coloured ballet flats that looked too small for her, and completely out-of-place.
I took a step closer and held out my hand.
‘My name is Ally Cornwall. Are you the person I’m supposed to meet?’
The woman smiled faintly. She was about thirty, maybe younger.
‘I can’t tell you my name,’ she said, shaking my hand. She spoke Creole English, just like James
had on the TV news report.
I sat down on the only other chair in the room. It was a cramped space, a windowless cubbyhole, barely eight square metres. Several crates stood along one wall. It smelled of old ashtrays.
‘She risks being sent back if anyone finds out she’s here,’ said Jillian, who was standing in the doorway. ‘That’s why the migrants are always so careful about revealing any personal details.’
The woman held my hand in both of hers.
‘Don’t believe that man,’ she said to me. ‘He wasn’t on the boat.’
‘Who do you mean?’ I felt my heart pounding.
‘That man on TV. He calls himself James.’
‘A friend made arrangements so she could have a TV where she’s staying,’ Jillian explained.
I kept my eyes fixed on the woman.
‘He says he was on the boat,’ she whispered. ‘But he’s lying.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, holding my breath.
The woman rubbed her forehead and nodded.
‘Not on that boat,’ she said firmly.
‘You mean the rubber boat that capsized?’ I leaned back and studied the woman. There was a slight discoloration in the skin around one eye. Possibly from a blow of some kind. ‘Do you know this because you were on that boat yourself?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘In the early morning hours of Sunday, two weeks ago? Is that when you tried to cross the straits?’
The woman closed her eyes and bowed her head.
‘You need to understand how difficult this is for her,’ said Jillian, taking a step closer.
‘Quiet.’ I raised my hand to stop her. The woman’s pain only stirred my own; I needed to hear every detail.
A fan could be heard whirring downstairs. The guy with the beard clattered some glasses. And the wind rattled the metal roof and balconies. Those were the only sounds.
‘They threw us into the water,’ said the woman faintly, her words hardly more than an exhalation. ‘They tossed us overboard to die.’ She still had her eyes closed, and I imagined what she must be seeing in her mind: the waves and the black sea and people flailing and struggling. My stomach clenched.
‘But you managed to survive,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering. ‘You made it ashore.’
The woman opened her eyes, revealing a black abyss.
‘A fisherman pulled me out, like a fish from the sea.’ I saw her facial muscles tighten.
‘And Patrick Cornwall?’ I said quietly. ‘He wasn’t on the boat?’
‘No, he wasn’t.’
I leaned across the table and took her hands.
‘Are you positive about that?’
‘For three nights we sat in the shed and waited,’ she said, turning to look at the wall. A poster had been tacked up, advertising a concert by some African musicians.
‘They told us not to speak,’ she said. ‘We weren’t supposed to say who we were, where we came from, or where we were going. On the first night we did as they said. We sat there in silence. The second night too. A girl started to cry. A woman hit her. I heard the slap. “Quiet,” she said. “Crying won’t help you get to Europe.” On the third night when it was so dark that we almost couldn’t see anyone’s face, someone whispered his name. “My name is Peter,” he said. “Peter Ohenhen.” The others hissed at him to be quiet, he would make the smugglers come, he’d be beaten for disobeying the rules, they might beat all of us. But then another person whispered. “My name is Wisdom. Wisdom Okitola.” And one by one we all whispered our names, first so quietly that only those sitting closest could hear, but then louder. The names tiptoed like spirits through the room. Teyo, Zaynab, Catherine, Toyin … We didn’t say where we’d come from, or where we were going. Just our names. A boy began talking about his journey, but the others told him to hush. “We have all travelled far to come here, and your journey is no greater than anyone else’s.” Nothing more was said, but when that night was over, we all knew each other’s names. “My name is Mary Kwara,” I whispered.’
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and turned to look at me, and then at Jillian, who was still standing near the door.
‘My name is Mary Kwara.’
‘How many of you were in the boat?’ I asked quietly.
‘Twelve. There were twelve of us besides the crazy men. There were three of them. I’ve thought about that the whole time. They were only three. They were the ones who should have ended up in the sea.’
The woman drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. One leg was bandaged. ‘This is how we sat, huddled up like this.’ I stared at the gold shoes on her feet. They didn’t seem to belong with the rest of her body. ‘His name was Taye. Taye Lawal. He was sitting in front of me. Just a boy. I whispered all the names, one after the other, as the boat was tossed by the waves.’
Mary Kwara fell silent and looked up at the ceiling. She lowered her feet back down to the floor.
‘No Patrick Cornwall,’ she said, meeting my eye. ‘There was no American.’
‘But it must have been very dark. Could he have used a different name?’
‘Eyes grow used to the dark,’ she said, in a firm voice. ‘I saw his picture on TV. He wasn’t there.’
I pounded my hand on the table and got up.
‘I knew it,’ I said, taking a few steps away in the cramped space and then sitting down again. I fixed my eyes on Mary’s face.
‘You have to tell this to the police. You realize that, don’t you?’
The woman shook her head and pulled back.
‘No police,’ she said.
I leaned towards her.
‘My husband was murdered,’ I said. ‘He wanted to catch the scumbags like those men who threw all of you into the sea. Don’t you want to see them put in prison?’
Mary held up her hands.
‘No police,’ she said.
Jillian stepped forward and placed her hand on Mary’s shoulder.
‘That’s enough now,’ she said.
‘Let her speak for herself.’ I tried not to snap.
‘She’s from Nigeria,’ said Jillian. ‘If she comes forward, they will send her back. She has no right to stay in Spain or any other EU country.’
I tried to look Mary in the eye.
‘You’re the only one who knows about this,’ I said. ‘Presumably you’re the only passenger from that boat who survived.’
I saw something shut down deep inside those dark eyes of hers.
‘You’re the only one who can tell this story. Those bastards are going to get away. They murdered Patrick. Don’t you understand?’
I looked from the black woman to the white woman, whose hand still rested protectively on Mary’s shoulder.
‘She doesn’t have to say where she’s from,’ I pleaded with Jillian. ‘All she has to say is what she just told me.’
‘And who would believe me?’ said Mary, standing up. ‘If I lie about one thing, who will be able to tell what’s true?’
The green clothing she wore looked as if it had come from Jillian’s wardrobe. The same scent of musk and roses.
‘I’ve told you as much as I can,’ said Mary, bowing her head. ‘Seven months ago I left my home. And I haven’t yet reached where I’m going.’
I clenched my fists with frustration.
‘You can’t think only about yourself. This is about thousands of other people. Patrick was going to write about it, but now he’s dead.’
The woman stared at the floor.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You need to stop pressuring her,’ said Jillian, stepping between us. ‘She took a big risk just by coming here to meet you.’
I sank back down on the chair.
‘Then why did you tell me this?’ I said. ‘I can’t use any of this information. No one will believe me.’
‘He was your husband,’ said Mary. ‘You have a right to know.’
Then Jillian put her arms protectively around her.
‘Nico will drive you b
ack,’ she told the woman quietly.
As the beaded curtain clattered behind me on my way out, I heard Jillian calling to me.
‘And I assume you won’t tell anyone about any of this.’
As soon as it was one o’clock in Europe and eight in the morning in New York, I called The Reporter. Richard Evans hadn’t yet arrived at the office. I bit my knuckles in frustration and then whiled away the time by surfing various newspapers on the Internet.
The articles had diminished and the story was no longer front-page news. The angle had also shifted. James the immigrant was copiously quoted. Patrick’s name was not being mentioned as frequently. His death was no longer described as ‘a possible homicide’. Instead he was said to have ‘died while on assignment’. Now the focus was on the capsized boat and more generally on the traffic across the Mediterranean from Africa. The night before last, two hundred migrants had died in the waters between Somalia and Yemen. Ethiopians and Somalis who had hoped to become guest workers in Saudi Arabia.
The news about Patrick’s death was about to fade.
I took my breakfast up to my room. The desk clerk’s mother, or maybe she was his mother-in-law or aunt, patted me on the hand and refused to take any payment.
When it was nine-thirty New York time, Evans was finally in his office.
‘It’s a lie,’ I shouted triumphantly, the second he answered the phone. ‘Patrick wasn’t on that boat at all.’
‘Ally Cornwall,’ he said, sounding weary. ‘I know that you’re in mourning, but you need to leave the journalism to me.’
‘But I’ve met a witness. Someone who survived. And neither Patrick nor that James, the immigrant, was in the rubber boat. She’s positive about that.’
He sighed loudly.
‘Will she come forward? Will she give her name and allow us to photograph her?’
‘Of course she won’t. She came here illegally. She’s in hiding.’
‘Now listen here,’ I heard a door slamming, and then silence, ‘I’ve sent people halfway around the world to confirm your story, and nothing holds up.’
‘What do you mean?’ I sank down onto the bed, a rushing sound in my ears. Or maybe it was the damn wind. ‘What doesn’t hold up?’
‘I can’t publish an article accusing people of being slave traders and murderers without any proof. You need to understand that. The magazine can’t engage in any sort of personal vendetta.’
The Forgotten Dead Page 29