Strangers

by Carla Banks

  The pictures jumped through her mind in a series of snapshots: her, slipping a knife–the thin, sharp one with the slightly curved blade–into the sleeve of her blouse. Her, carrying Adam into the main room, holding the bottle. Her, putting Adam on the settee, settling him so his face was away from the room, so he wouldn’t see what was going to happen. Her, turning quickly and stabbing the knife deep into Nazarian’s throat as he talked on the phone. Nazarian, falling, as the blood spurted out…

  …like Joe.

  She couldn’t think about Joe now.

  The other man would be prepared, but she’d have a moment when he was taken by surprise. She saw herself pulling the knife out of Nazarian, turning towards the other man, moving forwards as he came to her. And the knife…

  Going into him. She’d have to push it into him as hard as she could. Into his stomach. The blade was only six inches long, but six inches was enough.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. She had to take the knife, go through the door, put the baby down, and…kill them both.

  And she knew she couldn’t do it. If she had had a knife in her hand when Nazarian hit her, if she’d thought he was about to hit her again, she might have been able to. If she saw them trying to harm Adam, then the move would be instinctive, but to go out there in cold blood…She couldn’t.

  She tucked the knife into her sleeve–she needed a weapon for protection if it came to that, and went back into the other room. Nazarian was still talking on the phone. The other man was pacing up and down, checking his watch, casting anxious glances at his boss. Roisin could feel him watching her as she sat down and offered Adam the bottle. He wasn’t hungry–she knew he wasn’t. He was too aware of the tension around him. Once they noticed him turning his face away, then…Nazarian had said it: We have the child. We go.

  Nazarian put the phone down. He could see what she was doing. Before he could say anything, she put Adam down on the settee and started unbuttoning the all-in-one sleeper he was wearing. She ignored the men as she unwrapped a clean nappy, moving as slowly as she dared. She could feel the cold touch of the knife blade against her arm. It felt huge and conspicuous, and it also felt small and useless. Her mind went round and round in futile circles. She was running out of time and she had no idea of what to do.

  She heard Nazarian’s grunt of interest and looked round. He’d found the papers she’d been reading, the ones that Joe had sent. ‘Those are private,’ she said.

  He ignored her and scanned them quickly, then glanced across at her. ‘He was an intelligent man, your husband,’ he said. ‘Please believe that I…’

  ‘Sir. It’s getting late.’ The other’s man’s tone was deferential, but urgent.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Don’t worry. Get him organized and we can go.’ He picked up the papers again. ‘What I don’t understand is…’

  He was talking to her. She allowed her hands to stop moving as she listened.

  ‘Come on!’ The other man’s voice was rough and impatient. ‘Get that kid sorted out. Now.’

  ‘I’m changing him,’ she said. ‘I’m being as quick as I can.’

  ‘There’s no more time.’

  He leaned over and was about to scoop Adam up, when Nazarian said, ‘Wait!’ His gaze had focused on Adam, had frozen as he saw the fair curls that had been released from the hooded garment, and his expression frightened her more than anything that had happened this evening.

  49

  Silence filled the room. Nazarian’s gaze moved from Adam to her, then across the room to the other man. ‘Did you know they…concluded the matter in Newcastle?’ he said. ‘Is everyone I employ incompetent?’

  The man shook his head. He looked pale.

  Adam, picking up the sudden tension in the air, began to cry. Nazarian’s gaze moved back to him. His mouth was set in a thin, angry line. ‘How long have you been caring for this child?’ There was a coldness in his voice now that hadn’t been there before. ‘And keep him quiet.’ It wasn’t a request.

  ‘You’ve terrified him,’ Roisin said. ‘That’s why he’s crying.’

  ‘And you will make him stop. How long have you been caring for this child?’

  For the first time, she knew that Nazarian was capable of hurting Adam. It was as if Adam had suddenly changed from something valuable to something that Nazarian no longer had any use for.

  She shrank back into the sofa, as if she had been cowed by his voice. It was barely a pretence. She could feel herself shaking. The knife was still tucked up her sleeve, but it felt minuscule in the face of the threat. And if she got it wrong…Before, she’d thought that, if she attacked them and failed, she would die, but Adam would be safe. They would take him, but they wouldn’t hurt him. Now…

  She picked up the discarded bottle, remembering a trick the women who lived on the estate where she grew up used to use. She dipped the teat of the bottle into the sugar basin that was standing on the table and pushed it into Adam’s mouth. His face contorted as he took a breath to cry more loudly, then he tasted the sweetness. She waited for a tense moment, but the strange new sensation had diverted him, and there was silence.

  ‘Not long,’ she said in response to Nazarian’s question. ‘He belongs to the girl downstairs, Mari. Mari had a fall. She broke her leg. I’m looking after him for tonight.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ the other man said. ‘The Seymour woman was coming here. That’s what she told them. This one went to get the kid. She was expecting her.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’ Nazarian’s voice was level, but his tone was icy, and the other man’s face paled. ‘Have you looked at this child? This is not my grandson! What that bitch told them must be true. And now they’ve…’ He was breathing deeply, trying to control his fury.

  Roisin forced herself to sit calmly and sent up a silent prayer that Adam would stay silent. When Nazarian lost it, he would lash out at the first thing that enraged him. She had seen anger like his before.

  Joe…

  Hang on, sweetheart.

  Adam turned his head away and, before she could do anything, he began to howl in earnest. She saw Nazarian’s arm draw back and she crouched down, curling herself round the screaming baby, trying to shield him with her body. She had a sudden memory of a picture she’d seen, a Palestinian man huddled against a wall, pushing his terrified son behind him as the bullets sprayed past, the soldiers firing indifferent to the fate of a child they saw as less than human.

  And the child lying dead.

  Her free hand fumbled for the knife.

  Then someone spoke from the doorway. ‘Enough. That’s enough.’

  It was Damien. His face was grey and he looked as though he could barely stand. His eyes were fixed on Nazarian.

  The scene in front of Damien seemed a long way away, but at the same time clear-edged and bright: Roisin crouched in the chair, putting herself between the baby in her arms and Nazarian’s raised fist. Behind her, balanced to move on the instant, a man he recognized as one of Nazarian’s people. A professional fighter. Roisin and the baby she was holding would be dead in a second if that man got his hands on them.

  Like Amy.

  He watched the faces turn towards him.

  ‘O’Neill.’ Nazarian’s rage was concealed in an instant. The baby’s crying cut the air, a sharp, compulsive sound.

  Damien didn’t have a weapon–there was no point. He couldn’t win a fight. But he didn’t need one. He held up his phone. ‘I’ve texted in names and dates,’ he said. He didn’t need to say more. Nazarian would understand. The numbers were coded in, the message was in the outbox–all he had to do was press one button and the message would go to the Newcastle police, the Met, Interpol and the UK and Saudi embassies. ‘No one knows anything–yet.’

  ‘Why should we believe that?’ The other man was moving towards Damien.

  Nazarian uttered a brusque order, and the man stopped. ‘Because it’s the only way to stop people getting hurt, right, O’
Neill?’

  ‘Amy. Have you forgotten about Amy?’

  Nazarian’s eyes moved to Roisin, and back to Damien. His gaze was level. ‘You’re judging me, O’Neill? If she’d been caught in Riyadh, that’s what she would have got.’

  ‘For what?’

  Nazarian’s voice was a whiplash. ‘For kidnapping! My grandchild. My grandson. No one hurts my family.’

  ‘And Yasmin? Your daughter?’

  ‘She’ll understand.’

  Damien’s gaze was fixed on Nazarian’s face. He wanted to find…regret? Guilt? Some recognition of what had happened to Amy. There was nothing. ‘She may not learn what you want her to from this.’

  ‘All I wanted was the information. I knew Amy had something to do with it. One of my people saw her at the hospital that evening. She was veiled, but the veil slipped and he saw her face. He was curious–why was a Western woman wearing a veil? Why was that Western woman wearing a veil? He knew I had a connection with Amy, so he came to me with it. Once I realized she was still in Riyadh, that she hadn’t left, then I knew. OK, they went too far. But it’s the justice of the Kingdom. You kidnap a child, you die. I was just looking out for my own.’

  ‘Who was there to look out for Amy?’

  ‘That was never my responsibility.’

  Damien stayed in the doorway. He didn’t trust himself to stand without its support. The painful throbbing in his hand had faded to numbness. He hadn’t taken his glove off to look at it since he left Newcastle. There was no point, there wasn’t anything he could do until this was over. Black specks threatened at the corners of his vision. He wanted to kill Nazarian. He wanted to strangle him with his bare hands and feel the life draining out of him. Instead…‘If you go, now, I’m not going to stop you. After you’ve left, the authorities will get your name. You won’t be able to touch Roisin. And you won’t be able to come back to Europe.’

  ‘And my grandson?’

  ‘Do you think he’s still alive? I don’t. Whatever Amy knew…’ He shrugged. ‘It’s gone.’

  The silence stretched out. Damien waited for Nazarian to call his bluff. He was by no means as sure of his facts as he pretended. A lot of it was still guesswork. He held Nazarian’s gaze until the other man spoke. ‘Not entirely,’ he said. His voice was thoughtful. He gave Roisin a small bow. ‘I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you, Mrs Massey.’ His manner was cool and courteous, but Damien could see the anger in his eyes. Nazarian gestured with his head towards the other man, and then they were gone.

  Damien made himself stand until the door clicked shut behind them, then he managed to walk as far as the settee where he slumped down. The black specks threatened again, and he missed the first part of what Roisin was saying as she jumped to her feet.

  ‘…their car? Quick! The police might be able…’

  He reached out and managed to grip her wrist. ‘Let him go. He’s more dangerous here. They won’t keep him locked up–he’s too well connected. Amy’s dead because of him. Let him go.’

  She was looking at him in shocked disbelief from some distant point at the end of a dark tunnel. ‘Amy? He killed her? And Joe. He killed Joe. I’m not letting him leave.’ The baby’s crying went on and on. As if he was watching her from a great distance, he saw her make a visible effort to calm down as she tried to soothe the frightened child. He wasn’t sure if she would hear what he was saying. He was too far away from her now. ‘He didn’t kill your husband.’

  And then the tunnel swallowed him up.

  50

  Snapshots.

  Two girls, both in their late teens, outside a club. They are excruciatingly dressed in Goth style–pale faces, dark lipstick, black dresses. One, the smaller one, has ornamented her fair hair with beads and feathers, the other, tall and thin, has a blaze of red hair that hangs around her shoulders. Something has shattered their hard-won cool, and they are both laughing, their arms round each other.

  A girl leaning out of a train that is pulling away. She is waving and calling to another girl who stands alone, her hand raised in a forlorn farewell.

  A view from a high bridge, a study in shades of grey, the heavy girders making dark lines across the mist that rises from the water. The only colour is the faint glimmer from a warehouse sign.

  I remember that…

  A couple stand in the middle of a celebratory group. The woman is small, with fair hair, and the man, tall and dark-haired, has his arm round her. They are laughing. Fragments of bright colour are scattered on the ground around them and some have caught in the woman’s hair.

  Is this your wedding? He looks like a nice guy.

  A garden at night, lit by flames in an eerie silence.

  The light flickers as the flames climb up, a sickly orange against the shadows. There is no sound. Only the girl’s eyes are visible. Her face is veiled. The orange light reflects off the leaves. She reaches out to lift the veil…

  …Amy’s face looks back at her from the darkness.

  And Roisin was awake. It was daylight. She’d fallen asleep in her chair, and the TV was hectoring her with the morning news. Her head was fuzzy with confusion as the impossibly bright faces of the presenters turned serious, as if someone had pressed a button, and a photograph appeared on the screen. It was a portrait of a woman. Her head and shoulders were draped with the hijab, but even without the distinctive red hair, Roisin could recognize her. Amy.

  …the woman found last night in her flat in Newcastle’s Byker estate has been identified as Amy Seymour, a nurse who has recently returned from working in the Middle East…

  She turned up the sound, and the TV suddenly blared out. Police were shocked by the brutality of the attack…

  Amy. Her dream came back to her, a girl leaning dangerously out of the window of a train, waving, calling out as the train pulled out of the station and faded into the distance.

  Gone.

  Damien was in hospital. She’d driven him there the night before through a ghost London of empty streets where the night people moved in the shadows, as he tried to talk to her, his voice rambling incoherently through some narrative that was haunting him, but that she couldn’t understand…. burned her…I had to let him go…for now…She didn’t…

  She’d waited anxiously in the A & E which, in the small hours, was relatively quiet. Just her, Adam, asleep at last in the snug warmth of his carry-cot, and the few remaining drunks of the night. Damien had been admitted suffering from exhaustion, with an infection in his injured hand. It had been after three when she got back.

  She got wearily to her feet and went to check Adam. He was still sleeping, but as she stood over him the blue eyes opened and he looked at her. She lifted him out of the cot. Her phone rang and she fumbled for it one-handedly. It was Mari. ‘I’ll be home in a couple of hours,’ she said. ‘I’m just waiting for the doctor.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s just a bad sprain. I can walk on it in a day or two. Is he OK? Was he any bother?’

  Roisin opened the curtains. The sky was clear and the sun was shining. It was as if the night before had never happened. She looked out on to the street. The white van had gone.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No bother at all.’

  51

  Damien’s legs felt leaden as he dressed himself in the clothes he’d worn the night before. They were crumpled and stained. He wondered if the police investigating Amy’s death would track him back from Newcastle. He was probably safe. The precautions he’d taken against Nazarian’s people may have failed, but they should still protect him from the police investigation.

  His name might be among Amy’s papers, but he doubted it. She’d left her past behind. Someone might discover that a hunt had been done for Amy’s birth details the day of her death, but among all the people who used those records, would anyone remember him?

  He suspected that the police would come to Roisin though, and he needed to get to her first. Amy’s body, crumpled on the kitchen floor, was suddenly
in front of him.

  Do you still…

  Love you? Of course.

  Always.

  ‘…feeling all right?’

  A nurse was looking at him with professional concern and disapproval. Damien was discharging himself against medical advice. He made an effort and smiled at her. ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I’m going home to rest. I’ll look after myself.’

  ‘You do that. I don’t want to see you back in here.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Damien promised. She’d brought his discharge notes and his medication. He was to take an antibiotic for the next ten days to quell the infection that had started in his hand.

  ‘I don’t think you understand how lucky you’ve been,’ she said. ‘These things can be killers.’

  He smiled at her. ‘I was born lucky.’

  Outside, the day had dawned into early spring. The air was warm with a gentle breeze that brought some freshness to the streets. He found a coffee bar and called Rai. He wanted the rest of the story in place before he went to see Roisin.

  Rai greeted him with anxious queries about his health. ‘I’ve been to the hospital,’ Damien reassured him.

  Still dubious, Rai outlined what had happened since the call of the night before. Nazarian had arrived back in the Kingdom early that morning. He had spent a long time at the compound where Majid lived with his family, and had then returned to his own house.

  ‘Yasmin?’ Damien wanted to know that Yasmin was safe.

  ‘She has gone with her father.’

  ‘And the investigation, the missing child?’

  ‘They are saying the child is dead.’

  After he’d rung off, Damien ran his hands over his face. He felt as though he’d just run a marathon and still had miles to go. It wasn’t over. He had a promise to keep, one he’d made to Amy. He took a phone out of his pocket, the one he’d picked up at Amy’s flat, and scrolled through the names in the address book. Amy had to have a secure way of contacting her sister, and it was there in the list of names: Jassy. Before anything else, he had to make a call. He knew enough, now, to make Yasmin tell him the truth.