Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  Capping each of these moments of doubt, however, had been a picture in Yasser’s mind: an image so clear that he might well have seen it in a photograph sometime. A baby in a dimly-lit room, was what he saw. The baby cried. Hungry, dirtied and visibly ill, Maggie’s child had been stolen and then – apparently – abandoned, the deed completed, the action performed. Left to weep alone.

  He had to find Maggie’s child. It had stopped being anything to do with choice.

  As Yasser closed down the machine, there was a knock on his bedroom door. The caller could only be one person (because Mum rarely knocked, and Dad never climbed the stairs, he just bellowed out Yasser’s name from the front door when he needed him). Yasser said, ‘Entrez-vous’ and one of his cousins, Shyleen, opened the door.

  ‘Not interrupting anything, I hope,’ she said.

  ‘I was working,’ Yasser told her.

  ‘At least you kept your trousers on.’ She sat on the edge of Yasser’s narrow bed – the very same bed on which they had undressed one another during Ramadam two years earlier. Shyleen was the second cousin who had helped Yasser with Maggie’s address when he gave her the licence plate number of the truck belonging to Maggie’s father.

  Yasser resisted the urge to argue with Shyleen, as they had as children and even as adolescents. A petty argument was what had led to the removal of one another’s clothes, and to the subsequent pregnancy scare that had turned to smoke but which had felt real enough – dangerously real enough – at the time. ‘How’s it going down there?’ Yasser asked her. ‘Am I wanted?’

  ‘Only by me… Oh your face.’ Shyleen laughed. ‘I’m teasing. They didn’t send me to fetch you, Yass, don’t worry. I just couldn’t deal with any more sympathy. It’s like too much chocolate.’

  ‘Yeah. About that…’ Yasser started.

  ‘Don’t. I know.’ The young woman held up her hands but she was not looking at her cousin.

  Yasser nodded. He was grateful that she had turned away. He had never been good with news of the illness of others; and he was no more competent now than he had been, two evenings earlier, when Shyleen’s mother had phoned to inform the family that her daughter had been diagnosed with an ovarine tumour of a polysyllabic name. Hearing that Shyleen had already sickened of sympathy made Yasser feel guilty but relieved.

  Directly after dinner, when his mother had asked the girl’s parents a question involving the word prognosis, Yasser had excused himself from the table, saying that he had homework to complete in his room.

  ‘Is there any other topic of conversation?’ he asked. ‘Or are they…’

  ‘It’s all me.’ Shyleen laughed again.

  ‘…So what do you wanna do, while they’re otherwise engaged?’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘You reckon? You wouldn’t believe what I’ve done in the last fortnight.’

  ‘Is that a boast, Yass?’ Shyleen asked, turning to face him with a distant smile on his face.

  Yasser considered the question. Was he boasting? Certainly it didn’t feel that way; but it did feel as it had felt while talking to Tim Branston in one of the college’s cafes – as though he would be glad to unburden himself of the story so far, to find a new witness; and as though, once he’d reached a particular point in the telling, he would become frightened to finish what he’d started. The weight of that untold would crush his chest; it would spill his innards everywhere.

  So he told her.

  2.

  And something nagged at Yasser while he told her. Something plucked at Yasser’s consciousness, time after time, as sentence followed sentence.

  Tommy.

  Tommy the so-called Brazilian.

  Yasser could not shake the opinion that Tommy was involved – was, in fact, knee-deep in shit when it came to this project and its prospects – and when at last, a fortnight having elapsed, he confessed this suspicion to Shyleen on the phone, his cousin’s predictable and refreshing resourcefulness arrived like a cool breeze on a pig farm.

  ‘Why don’t you follow him around?’ she suggested. ‘Hey, I’ll come with you! When I’m not at work, of course… We’ll have a bit of fun on our stakeout!’

  ‘…Every night?’

  ‘Or every day. Depending on our busy social schedules.’

  ‘But he’ll see us!’

  Shyleen sighed into Yasser’s ear. ‘Oh do grow a pair of balls, Yass,’ she concluded.

  3.

  Were it not for Shyleen’s illness, the confession might not have happened; but by spraying a jet of Yasser’s anti-perspirant into her face, she managed to acquire two red eyes that gave her parents (and Yasser’s parents) the impression that she had been crying. When she announced that she and Yasser were going out for a drive, she was not so much as asked where. If the children had something to discuss, they deserved a bit of privacy with which to do so. ‘But no pubs!’ was Shyleen’s father’s parting shot – his only word of counsel.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go in mine?’ Yasser asked her, on the pavement.

  ‘What good would that do?’ Shyleen replied. ‘They know your car.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘The gyppos!’ She got in the driver’s side and gunned the engine.

  Yasser got in on the passenger’s side.

  ‘Belt up, boy! Clunk click for every trip innit!’ Shyleen barked at him in an impersonation of his own mother’s heavily-accented English. Then she laughed. And accelerated.

  ‘Slow down, Shy!’

  Shyleen was doing fifty by the end of the road.

  ‘Oh grow a pair for fuck’s sake,’ Shyleen told him. Without checking for oncoming traffic, she pulled them out onto the main vein through Bury Park (a late bus honked its horn). ‘Or I’ll turn my lights off as well. That’ll shit you up!’

  She laughed as she ran a red light.

  4.

  Nor did appeals to common sense or rationality find a favourable ear.

  ‘They’ll expect us back,’ Yasser tried, having lost faith in his own courage for the moment. ‘We haven’t got time, Shy.’

  ‘Oh we haven’t got time!’ Shyleen chuckled. ‘I’m the one with fanny rot! I’m the one going under the knife! They’ll allow us a moonlight flit.’

  ‘It’s not a moonlit night,’ Yasser countered, sounding grumpy.

  ‘And don’t sulk. Or you won’t see it again, boy, or wiggle your wand…’

  ‘Not in my mum’s voice. Please!’

  Shyleen laughed once more, and she gunned her car towards the roundabout. ‘Dunstable or Houghton Regis?’ she asked. ‘Which is faster?’

  ‘Same difference.’ Yasser sighed. ‘But there are speed traps going into Dunstable.’

  ‘Houghton Regis it is!’

  Earning a beep from another driver, Shyleen lanced over into the other lane and indicated right (a rare courteous touch for the road’s other users); with the speedo showing seventy, she barrelled the two of them down Poynters Road. Then she turned on the CD player. Shaggy was halfway through ‘Mr Boombastic’ and Shyleen joined him on the chorus.

  5.

  ‘Now what?’ Yasser asked her.

  ‘Are you still sulking?’

  ‘No… I wasn’t sulking.’

  ‘You’re sulking now.’

  ‘I am not sulking now,’ Yasser retorted. ‘I happen to be a worried man.’

  Shyleen snorted. ‘You’re worried!’

  ‘I know. But we shouldn’t be here, Shy, it’s not safe.’

  She turned to him in the car and widened her eyes in mock-horror. ‘Do those cows get a bloodlust after dark?’

  ‘Yeah they do, actually. It’s like Dawn of the Fucking Dead around here. Except with cows.’

  When Shyleen laughed, this time Yasser joined her; he couldn’t help himself. Joking aside, the road outside the
camp was eerie by night, but this was a fact that his laughter suppressed for a few seconds.

  ‘Do you think they’d be welcoming,’ Shyleen asked, ‘if we went in?’

  ‘A moot point,’ Yasser told her, ‘because we’re not going in. They’ll all be asleep anyway, just like we should be.’

  ‘Do you have work to do tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or college?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then cultivate a growth of cajones, ho. We’ve only just got here.’

  ‘Please, Shy – not the voice. Let’s go back, eh? I mean… what’s in it for you? Sitting in a layby in the middle of nowhere…’

  ‘With no one to watch us, eh Yass? Does that put any thoughts in your head?’

  ‘Christ… Well we’d have to be quick.’

  ‘Now don’t start getting sentimental on a poor girl…’

  Yasser looked to the left and right. The empty road was black as soot; there was no one and there was nothing, and that was all.

  Nevertheless, Yasser remained cautiously nervous. ‘They’ll know,’ he said.

  ‘Our parents or the gyppos?’

  ‘Our parents. Please don’t call em gyppos.’

  ‘Oh sorry, I forgot all the friendships you’ve made.’ Shyleen leaned towards him. ‘Tell me, Yasser,’ she whispered. ‘Are my words of sarcasm getting you motivated?’

  Yasser smiled. ‘They are, a bit,’ he admitted. He lowered his jeans zip. When he produced it, he was about halfway hard; and this was good enough for his kissing cousin. She lowered her mouth onto him, to see what she could do about the shortfall.

  But then Yasser saw Tommy the Brazilian’s truck.

  6.

  The vehicle turned out of the camp, its headlights bleaching the plants and hedges until it had straightened up. Now it approached Shyleen’s car, and the lovers within. Yasser tensed. Shyleen wouldn’t be seen – her head was below the windscreen – but Yasser’s face was in the Brazilian’s spotlights. With no better option available, Yasser ducked slightly and raised his hands to cover his features.

  The Brazilian drove past.

  Yasser relaxed.

  ‘What is it, Yass?’ Shyleen enquired from his lap.

  ‘That was Tommy.’

  ‘Hurrah for Tommy.’

  ‘Well, where’s he going at this time of night?’

  Shyleen sounded indignant. ‘Maybe he’s going to get a blowjob. You could pay me some attention, you know, Yass.’

  ‘Sorry.’ But he felt his erection dwindle.

  Shyleen sat up straight. ‘You’ve lost that loving feeling,’ she announced.

  Tucking his slim pickings back into his jeans, Yasser said, ‘The pub? A pub somewhere?’

  ‘Us or him?’ Shyleen was angry. She started the car and began an accurate three-point turn, not speaking for a few seconds.

  ‘Well, this was kinda your idea,’ Yasser told her.

  ‘Can’t believe I lost out to a pikey thug,’ Shyleen muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll follow him,’ she continued.

  7.

  If the journey out of Luton this evening had been marked (for Yasser) by a fear of the maniacal travelling velocity (and the shadowing terrors of car crash and speeding ticket), the journey back in the direction they’d come, trailing Tommy, was marked by alternative slabs of disquiet. Stay too far behind and they’d lose him. Get too close and he’d know that he was being followed. For Yasser, the perfect trailing distance (a wholly unknown quality) kept changing in his mind; he was a mile past being surprised that Shyleen could drive at a sensible velocity, and the nerves were playing havoc with his gut, with his groin.

  Why was Tommy driving towards Luton? This was the question uppermost on Yasser’s mind: posing it aloud had not helped one bit. ‘Maybe he’s going to see you,’ Shyleen had told him. Huffily Yasser had informed her not to make jokes, and she’d replied that she wasn’t joking.

  Maybe he was. Maybe Tommy the Brazilian was en route to Bury Park, with one thing on his mind: to use that drum of petrol in an act of arson, once and for all. On Yasser’s car? On Yasser’s house? Where else could he be going but Luton? He’d already passed the turnings off for everywhere else…

  ‘He’s going to the motorway,’ Shyleen seemed to promise.

  ‘He’s going to the airport,’ Yasser hoped.

  As it would turn out, Tommy was leading them to neither destination, although for the moment, with the right-hand indicator blinking as the truck pulled up to the Tesco roundabout, the second possibility still appeared valid. The airport was in this direction.

  ‘There are no flights after ten,’ said Shyleen. ‘We signed the petition.’

  ‘It might’ve landed already. He’s picking someone up.’ Yasser fidgeted in the passenger seat. ‘You’ll have to pull back a bit – there’s not enough traffic.’

  Indeed, the bypass road was hardly being used. If Tommy hadn’t noticed them so far, now might be a good time for him to start. There were only so many headlights, surely, that he could ignore.

  Neither Yasser nor Shyleen said much when Tommy led them onto the ring road, away from the train station (a third option that neither of them had taken seriously). The airport remained plausible as a destination: both of the pursuers, by this point, had all but taken for granted that this was where they were headed, when Tommy turned left and used the bus lane to move closer to the High Street, the shopping centre, the church, or –

  ‘The University?’ Yasser wondered aloud.

  ‘Yeah, one of those midnight lectures they’re so famous for.’

  The ludicrousness was not lost on Yasser either… but this was the way they were going, and beyond the University’s main building, what was there?

  ‘Hang back a bit,’ said Yasser. ‘I think he’s onto us – he’s taking us in a circle.’

  ‘What circle, Yass?’ Shyleen answered. ‘He could’ve done that around Dunstable.’

  ‘He wasn’t sure around Dunstable.’

  ‘We’ve come this far,’ Shyleen added in a defiant tone. ‘I’m not going home without an answer.’

  Yasser half-sighed and half-chuckled. ‘Had a feeling you were gonna say that,’ he told her.

  Surprising the cousins, Tommy pulled into a small parking area outside an eight-storey block of flats that displayed the University’s logo. It was student accommodation.

  ‘About that midnight lecture,’ Yasser said quietly.

  Shyleen did not pull into the parking area. On the off-chance that they had been lucky so far, she did not wish to stretch that streak of good fortune until it twanged. She parked by the kerb and killed the engine.

  ‘What’s he want with students?’ Yasser wondered.

  ‘Here.’ Shyleen handed him the keyring. ‘Keep the engine running, and if I’m running when you see me next, get us the fuck out of here.’

  ‘You’re winding me up, Shy,’ Yasser told her with a shake of the head but little conviction. ‘You’re not going in there on your own.’

  ‘What, a student dorm? You think they’re killing goats in a pentagon of chicken feathers?’ She opened her door. ‘There’s no time to argue, I need to see where he’s going – and he’s never met me before.’

  ‘I don’t know, Shy…’

  ‘Neither do I, but what could happen? He asks me if I was following him, I say no… I live here for all he’s aware.’

  And she was gone. Yasser’s vision followed her plump backside across the car park and towards a doorway crowned with a sign reading B Block. The door was still closing slowly and Shyleen caught it: Tommy had gained entrance to the building by buzzing up – he held no key but he did know someone inside.

  Suddenly Yasser was alone; it felt strange. He walked around the front of Shyleen’s car and got into th
e driver’s seat; he inserted the ignition key and turned the stereo that they’d soon turned off at the start of the chase back on again. The volume was too high for stationary listening, but as a genre selection modish R&B would do. Lowering the volume, Yasser settled down to wait for Shyleen’s reappearance, his eyesight locked on the B Block front door. When he checked his mobile he found that he had missed no calls – so far he and Shyleen had not been classed as missing or out too late. He wasn’t sure if this made him feel better or worse. He decided on worse.

  8.

  The distance between Shyleen’s parked car and the entrance to B Block was not great – a matter of fifteen metres, tops – but it was sufficient, at night-time, for Yasser to have been unaware that Tommy had made a sartorial effort to dress up for his evening out. While he might not have hit the town booted and suited, or with a tux and tie, he had at least donned a better class of smart-casual dress than Yasser had yet to see him in; and because Yasser had not said anything along these lines, Shyleen had formed a mental wardrobe for Tommy that did not match the clothes worn by the man leaking cologne in the Student Hall entrance foyer. Additionally, in the darkness of the car park, Shyleen had been unable to fix the man’s physical dimensions either. The man in the foyer, his back to her approach as he waited for the lift, was shorter but broader than she had made him from Yasser’s story, and Shyleen wondered if this was a different man altogether. If the real mark had slipped into the lift in the few seconds that Shyleen had needed to cross the car park, he might have reached any of the six or eight storeys by now; those seconds could have spelt the end of it, and this guy in grey slacks and a navy blue jacket, with his permafrost-hued hair slicked back and with a bucket of aftershave seeping in and out of his pores, could have come from any of the rooms on the ground floor.

  Shyleen came to a halt a few metres behind him. Smiling over his shoulder in a reptile fashion (she conjectured), the man offered her a good evening, then went back to perusing the strip of lights above the lift’s doors. He didn’t give a toss who she was. In Shyleen’s mind this meant that he didn’t live here. Having lived all her life in the Bury Park terraces, the knowledge of one’s neighbours was in the blood; strangers wore extremely different clothes.