He tossed it on the floor. ‘I think you need a trip into town.’
‘Town? What town?’ The idea both enthused and terrified her. In town, there would be relief from the dullness of life, trapped in this dead-end, Highland valley where no-one ever came. But in town were people who might be suspicious, who might ask for her passport, demand to know what right she had to be there — and those people would send her back.
‘Just a day out. In Edinburgh.’ He shifted in his seat.
Asking questions got easier. She should have questioned him before. ‘What for?’
‘I need you to find someone for me.’
She looked at him, a look that she knew must be a vague one, because her brain was blank at the very thought. How could she possibly find someone in Edinburgh? ‘Do you think I can?’
‘Okay,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘I’ll be honest with you, as far as I can. I’m a bit worried that someone might be a bit interested in what you and the boys have been up to.’
Crime paid. It didn’t pay well, and the job security was nothing, but it paid. Celina put her forefinger to her lips and chewed at an already-chipped nail. If the society in which she, Jan, and the others had landed was as truly heartless as Cas warned her it was, she had no qualms about taking a bit to keep herself. Shouldn’t they all have properly been supported by the State? But she was smart enough to know that explanation wouldn’t go down well with the people they’d stolen from. ‘Interested in us?’
‘All I did,’ he said, suddenly fractious and self-justifying, ‘was to try and help you.’
‘And you did. You’ve been so good to us.’
‘But I can’t afford to keep you all. I would have done, if I could. That’s why I taught you to keep yourselves. That’s sensible.’ His bottom lip quivered in petulant weakness, like an aggrieved child. ‘It wasn’t even my idea.’
‘You’ve been kind.’ He needed reassurance and she would provide it. And in any case, he had been. They’d worked honestly enough for him in the summer. It was in the winter, when the work ran out, that the problem had arisen. The other summer workers had laughed and told them that everything would be fine, that they could pick up work anywhere, but she hadn't believed them. People like her and Jan, like Roch and Krystian and Milek, couldn’t make honest money. They’d come without a job and would leave with nowhere to go, and when she’d confided that in Cas, he’d reaffirmed that they’d have to go back if anyone found them. Then, after she’d spent days agonising about what she and Jan would do, he’d offered to look after them.
She shook her head, doing her best to seem sympathetic rather than judgemental. It seemed wrong to be skulking on the farm, in perpetual fear. Cas had offered them an alternative to starvation, and it would have been ridiculous not to take it. It’s okay, she reassured herself. He’s a good man. He cares about me. It must be all right.
Emboldened, she reached out to touch his neck again, and this time he looked up at her and smiled. ‘I don’t know what we’d have done without you.’
‘I did my best. And now this.’ He gestured at the newspaper, lying on the floor.
‘Who’s interested?’ Celina pretended not to care.
‘I don’t know if I’d say interested.’
Belatedly, the thought hit her. ‘Do you think Jan found someone? Do you think he told someone? Will we all be sent home?’ Her heart beat a little faster at the thought that Jan might accidentally have betrayed them.
‘I won’t let that happen.’ It was unusual for him to find such fierceness, when anything he said or did would inevitably bring him into conflict with Yer Man. ‘I promise I won’t let it. But I just want to know who they are. What they know. Look.’
He took out his mobile phone and flicked it on. Fuzzy pictures at first, then some a bit clearer. A man, standing next to a white car, talking to a couple with their backs to the camera. A police car, parked on the side of a Highland road, a roadside she recognised. ‘That’s along the way, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Just a couple of miles over there.’
When she thought about it, Celina vaguely remembered seeing distant blue lights on Sunday afternoon, just before Cas had gone out for ten minutes and stayed away all afternoon. At the time, it hadn’t registered, but now fear rose within her at the thought of being caught. It wasn’t as though she’d killed anyone. Like the rest of them, she had only stolen to look after herself — but it was enough. If the police came, Cas would go to prison and she’d be sent back, without her brother, and end up in the hell she’d fought so hard to escape. Except that this time, she’d be alone.
‘Will they come here?’
‘I doubt it.’ He shook his head. ‘I bumped into the inspector on Sunday afternoon. He just wanted to know if I’d seen anything suspicious, but I managed to put him off. Thank God, I know him.’
On impulse, she laid a hand on his arm. ‘Oh, thank you!’
‘He’ll be back with more questions. I said I’d meet him at the café, so I don’t think they’ll come here, but make sure you warn those boys not to make a sound if they do. They won’t let you stay here if they find you out.’
The fear came again. ‘What can I do? Tell me what to do.’ If there was any action of hers that could protect her and the others, she’d do it.
‘First of all, we need to know what’s going on.’
Shaking off her hand, he flicked through the pictures on the phone again, this time bringing up another picture of a small white car, parked by the side of the road next to the police car. Two figures stood next to it, but Celina couldn’t see any detail of their face.
‘I couldn’t get a better picture. This couple called the police.’ He looked away. ‘I don’t know who they are, or what they know, or what they might suspect. But I think you might be able to help me find out.’ He folded the phone away. ‘I drove past, and I managed to get the registration number, but I couldn’t stop and look. Didn’t want to arouse any suspicion. But I want to know more about these people. I was talking to Dougie, and he’s unhappy about it, too.’
Dougie? She blinked at the strange new name, but in just a moment she worked out that he was talking about Yer Man. So now Cas’s strange friend had a name. She was allowed to know it, and that meant they trusted her, even though it was obvious Cas wasn’t telling her everything. ‘What can you do?’
‘God knows,’ he said, with a weary sigh. ‘But I hate not knowing. I hate not knowing anything.’
‘I hate not knowing what happened to Jan,’ she said on impulse.
He avoided her eye, reaching up a hand to flick her hair in a gesture of possession. ‘Maybe they’ll be able to tell us, if we get the chance to talk to them.’
‘You think they saw him?’
‘Yes,’ he said, as eager as she. ‘That must be it. Maybe they picked him up on the road and gave him a lift somewhere.’
‘And you think they live in Edinburgh?’
‘I know they do. It said it in the paper. It even said where. Not the street, but the area. So, we know where they live, and we have the car registration number. That makes it simple. We find the car. Then we can find them.’
If they found the couple and talked to them, she might find out what had happened to Jan. Her heart lurched within her at the idea of the city — beautiful, terrifying. ‘I’ll do it if you want. But maybe you—’
He shook his head, with vehemence that she didn’t expect. ‘No. I want you to do it. I’d rather they didn’t see me. I don’t want to do anything,’ he repeated. ‘Just find out about them.’
She looked at herself, scruffy, countrified, and cheap. ‘Can I get a new coat?’
‘Sure. I’ll stop and get you one on the way. And we’ll get something to eat. Now, let’s go.’
Energised by a decision taken, he jumped to his feet and headed for the front door. ‘Check the kids are safely locked up, would you? Dougie reckons they’d better not be out for a few days. Maybe take them a couple of beers to ease the boredom.’
She picked up a six pack of cans from the kitchen, and made her way back across the yard to the bunkhouse. ‘You’re not going anywhere for a few days, Cas says. So, I’ve brought you some beers.’
Milek was nearest the door; he jumped up when she opened it, and lunged towards her. Stepping back with a squeal, she remembered just in time that terrorising her was the only element of control he could ever exert. ‘You get away from me. I’ll tell Cas.’
‘And what’ll he do? Call the police? We’re all in this together.’
Krystian, crossing the room, stepped into the space between the two of them. Thank God, he was taller and stronger than Alex. Her breathing relaxed. ‘I feel sorry for Cas. This isn’t the way he wants it.’
‘What kind of a man is he?’ Milek spat, not at her but in the general direction of injustice.
‘He’s a good man. It’s his friend who’s making him do it. We should be grateful he’s looking after us, or it could be so much worse.’ She stepped back to the door, found a smile for Krystian, and received one in return. ‘I have to go now. He and I are going out for the day. I’ll be back later.’ And, closing and locking the door, she walked back to the house, thinking about her new coat.
Chapter 19
‘I’m not having this. Part of our job is to tackle unconscious bias wherever we find it. And this is more than that — it’s deeply ingrained racism. I thought the police these days at least have the nous to pretend to be inclusive!’
Andy was on a crusade. Those of us in the office, trapped in the no-man’s-land between our admiration of his passionate intensity and an underlying fear of getting in his line of fire, kept our heads down. It hadn’t taken us long to learn that his temper flared up at the slightest suggestion of injustice and, though it died down again just as quickly, any one of us could be consumed in its violent intensity while it burned.
After my panic attack in Andy’s introductory meeting, I’d managed to avoid close contact with him, though I knew I couldn’t do that for ever. On this occasion, someone else, standing too close to me for my own comfort, was unlucky enough to catch the fallout.
‘Samira. I want you to get on to the police. I want an official complaint lodged about this intolerant and inflammatory language. Make it strongly worded. I won’t have it thought that our fellow citizens aren’t welcome here. Be polite. We’ll assume it’s an honest mistake. But I want those comments immediately and completely withdrawn.’
I kept my eyes on my computer, where what was a minor news story to the rest of the world had suddenly become the flame beneath a boiling crucible in our office. The bad experiences of the last year of my life seemed somehow doomed to intermingle as I flipped up a video clip of the insufferable, intolerant Nick Riley, busy expounding on the local crime wave and a death resulting from it, and blaming everything on an influx of Eastern European immigrants.
Andy, standing around in his fury, filled my head with the dark side of a passionate cause. DCI Riley in front of me on the screen, smug in his arrogance, reminded me of our near-fatal brush with a blizzard.
‘Tell them it’s outrageous to link any kind of crime to an ethnic group, without any evidence.’ Andy’s fury wasn’t spent. ‘Make it clear that if there is evidence, he must tell us, even if he doesn’t feel he can say what it is. If you can’t get to speak to someone senior, tell whoever you speak to I want them to call me as soon as they have someone available to answer my questions. And I want to see a copy of their equality and diversity policy. These people need us to stand up for them, and we’ll do it. Bronte!’
I jumped. He’d skidded to a halt in front of my desk, just as I thought myself safe. ‘Andy.’
‘Are you on top of this?’
‘Yes… I—’
‘Come into my office. Talk me through what you’re doing to deal with it. Bring your coffee.’
I jumped to my feet, once more feeling the surge of blind panic, but this time I was ready for it. Fire, riot, blizzards — I’d been through them all, and I always came through unscathed. There could be nothing left for me to fear but the consuming terror of fear itself.
‘Yes, Andy.’ I grabbed a pad, a pen, my coffee, and what was left of my composure, and followed him along into his office.
‘Sit down.’ He waved me to a seat next to the open door, which he kept wedged wide so that he could keep an eye on all the goings-on and so that everyone who needed it had free access to him. In reality, the room was an office in name only. Andy didn’t do hierarchies. There was a table but no impressive desk, and the chair next to it was as basic and functional as the others in the room. Even the most junior of us — me — had a better chair than the boss.
‘Now. Talk me through it. You’re our social media guru. Tell me how we’re going to give these short-sighted, small-minded fools hell.’
I had, inexplicably, lost my voice.
‘You’ve seen the interview he did on the news?’ He raised an eyebrow in a challenge.
‘Yes, Andy. I—’
‘You’ve seen some of the comments on social media?’
‘Yes—’
‘And you have a plan?’
I did have a plan, but the details of it deserted me. When I tried to remember what I’d jotted down as Andy had been prowling the main office, my mind went blank. When I looked at the notes in front of me, they were obscured by a wall of leaping flame. ‘Yes.’
‘Then let me hear it.’
I managed to look up from the page to challenge his impatience. Deep breaths. They worked. As long as you could breathe, as long as no-one was trying to strangle the last of the air from your lungs in the passionate defence of their version of justice.
‘I’m sorry. Yes. I’m planning a strongly-worded Facebook post. A series of tweets across various different platforms. Making sure that the Facebook posts go into different groups. Asking for shares and retweets. Organising our supporters to comment, and to write to the police.’
It was a poor effort, and Andy was less than impressed. ‘Hashtags?’
‘God, yes. I forgot the hashtag. We’re running with the hashtag #weareallone. I’m going to put together a few more and see if we can get those taken up.’ I breathed again, at last. ‘Mariam’s out just now, but she and I will talk it over when she gets back into the office.’
He nodded, regarding me with those cool, brown eyes, his temper dying down as rapidly as it flared up. Andy might be a man capable of anger, but he was equally capable of forgiveness. There were plenty who could learn from him.
‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment. ‘That sounds good. I know you can deliver, even if you aren’t talking a good game right now. I meant to say you’re doing a good job on the Syrian campaign. Well done.’
‘Thanks.’ I closed my pad and leaned down to retrieve my coffee mug. The interview had been easier than I’d expected. I was winning. ‘Shall I go and start—?’
‘No.’ He leaped to his feet and kicked aside the wedge of wood that kept the door open. I hadn’t noticed it before — hand-carved, by the look of it, in some fantastical Eastern style. The door swung shut, and he stood in front of it. ‘I need to talk to you about your attitude.’
‘My attitude?’
‘Yes. You obviously have a problem with me. What is it?’
I put my coffee down again, in case my hand should shake so much that I spilled it, and folded over a corner of my pad. There was no reason why I shouldn’t tell him. It was astonishing that he hadn’t worked it out for himself. Maybe he had, and he wanted to hear it from me.
Either way, I would tell him, because Andy was one of the good guys and we all had to give up something of ourselves in the name of what was right. ‘It isn’t you. I’m sorry. I need to pull myself together. You remind me of someone, that’s all. It’s trivial. I shouldn’t let it get to me.’
When I looked up, he was still standing by the door, staring at me in deep thought. With one of those sudden movements so characteristic of him, he bounced acr
oss the room and sat down on the chair next to me. ‘I see. Thank you for being honest. Do you want to tell me more?’
‘No,’ I said, repaying his honesty in kind. ‘I don’t. But I owe it to you. So, I’ll try.’
He nodded. ‘I respect that. Go on. Tell me which monster in your past I look like.’
‘It isn’t what you look like. It’s your passion.’ I twisted the pen in my fingers. ‘I had a boyfriend once. He was just as passionate about justice. He talked about it all the time. He fought for it. He was arrested for it, got locked up. I believed in him.’ I was silent, trying to gather my thoughts and arrange them into words that made sense. ‘It turned out he was a policeman.’
I looked up when I’d said it. Andy was nodding, an expression of sympathy on his face. ‘I see.’
‘You may have heard of the case. It was in the papers, though I wasn’t named in it. But he was. His name was Eden Mayhew, and when he found out that I knew who he was, he tried to kill me.’
Silence descended upon us. In my head, Eden smiled his murderer’s smile. I shivered.
‘I do remember that story. I didn’t know it was you. You should have told me.’
‘I didn’t think it mattered.’ I put my hand down and took a welcome sip of my now-tepid coffee. ‘I thought I was over it. But when you started talking so passionately, I couldn’t help remembering.’
And that was the vileness of it, the terrible baseness of Eden’s treachery. He’d robbed me of my capability to believe that anyone was good, that anyone was without an ulterior motive — not just Marcus, but everyone else, too. I reached for a tissue and dabbed a tear from my eye.
‘Have you had counselling?’ Andy’s scowl was no longer aimed at me, but at a world brimming with injustice.
‘No. I was offered it, but there are people who need help far more than I do. And it isn’t as if there are limitless resources, even though there ought to be.’ It was amazing how much better I felt once it came out. I wasn’t so deluded as to think that the evil in my past had disappeared, but by admitting to my fear I’d finally given myself a chance of conquering it.
Storm Child (Dangerous Friends Book 3) Page 12