by John Harvey
‘You?’ Andreea said, following Lynn’s gaze. ‘You have children?’
Lynn shook her head.
‘I have little girl,’ Andreea said, quietly. ‘Monica. She is three.’
‘Here?’ Lynn asked, surprised.
‘No, at home with my mother. In Romania. Constanta. It is on the sea. The Black Sea. Very beautiful.’
She took a photograph from her purse and passed it across the table. Lynn saw a girl in a red-and-white dress with big, dark eyes and ribbons in her hair.
‘She’s lovely,’ Lynn said. ‘You must miss her a lot.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ Andreea wafted smoke away from her face. ‘I saw her last time at Christmas. When I went home for holiday. She has grown so big.’
‘It must have been hard to leave her,’ Lynn said.
‘Of course. But there is no life for me there. I am making life here, then I will bring her. Now I am a student.’
‘A student?’
‘Yes. I learn Tourism and Hospitality. And English. We have to learn English.’
‘Your English is very good.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And the job at the sauna?’
Andreea blushed and looked at the floor. ‘I have to earn money.’
‘There must be other ways.’
‘Yes, a few. I could work, maybe, at night in factory. Pork Farm?’
‘Pork Farms, yes.’
‘Some of my friends, they do this.’
‘But not you.’
‘No, not me.’ She tipped ash from the end of her cigarette. ‘I try it once.’ She made a face. ‘The smell. You cannot get rid of the smell.’
Lynn went to the counter and fetched a packet of biscuits and two more cups of tea. Aside from a few elderly people sitting alone, the café was more or less empty. The workmen – plasterers, electricians, labourers – who had been there when Lynn and Andreea had arrived had now gone.
‘Tell me again,’ Lynn said, ‘what you saw when you went into the room.’
Andreea stirred one and then a second spoonful of sugar into her tea. ‘Viktor, he was standing there, his hand like this . . .’ she reached one hand across her chest, ‘. . . holding his shoulder. He was bleeding.’
‘And Nina, where was she?’
‘I think . . . I said . . . she was on the floor.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘No, I am sure.’
‘She was on the floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Whereabouts on the floor?’
‘I don’t know, beside the bed. It must have been, yes, beside the bed.’
Was she simply nervous, Lynn wondered, or lying? Something about the eyes, the way they would never focus on Lynn directly when she answered, that and the way she sat, fidgeting, restless. She was lying, Lynn thought, but she didn’t know by how much or why.
‘Sally says you came running into the reception area shouting that Nina was dead.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember shouting, or . . .’
‘I don’t remember what I said.’
‘But was that what you thought? That she was dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘How could you be sure?’
Andreea’s voice was so low, Lynn had to strain to hear. ‘There was so much blood,’ she said.
Lynn leaned back and sipped her tea. She stripped the cellophane from around the biscuits and offered one to Andreea, who shook her head.
‘Before you got to the room,’ Lynn said, ‘you didn’t see anyone else? Someone running away?’
‘A man, yes.’
‘The man who had been with her?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Yes. He was bald and with tattoos, here . . .’ She touched her fingers against the side of her neck.
‘The left side?’
‘Both, I think. I’m not sure, it was so quick.’
‘What was he wearing, can you remember?’
‘A shirt, some kind of T-shirt, a football shirt, perhaps. And jeans.’
‘No coat? No jacket?’
Andreea thought. ‘No, I don’t think . . . No, no.’
‘The shirt, can you remember the colour?’
‘White. I think that it was white.’
‘An England shirt?’
‘Maybe.’
Andreea stubbed out her cigarette; drank some more tea.
‘When you got to the room,’ Lynn said, ‘Viktor apart, was there anybody else there?’
‘Only Nina.’
‘And the knife,’ Lynn said. ‘Where was the knife?’
‘On the floor. Between them. On the floor.’
‘You’re sure of that? Absolutely positive?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Lynn sat back and sighed. Earlier that morning, she had heard Viktor Zoukas’s version of what happened. When he got to the room, he said, Nina and one of the customers were already fighting. A short man with a bald head, shaven. Viktor didn’t think he’d seen him before. They were struggling for control of a knife. He thought Nina was already wounded, bleeding. When he tried to intervene, the man lashed out and stabbed him in the shoulder. He tried to get the knife from him, but fell and knocked his head against the wall. For a short while, seconds maybe, he must have lost consciousness. When he came to, the man had gone and at first he thought Nina had, too. Then he saw her, underneath the bed, the knife close by. He picked up the knife and went back out into the corridor and that was when the two policemen arrested him.
It wasn’t only Andreea who was lying, Lynn thought, it was Viktor, too. Somewhere between them lay the truth.
‘Nina,’ Lynn said, ‘did you know her well?’
‘I know her a little,’ Andreea said. ‘Not well.’ She had removed her jacket and hung it from the back of the chair. There were bruises on her arms, faded but still distinct.
‘Had she worked there long?’
‘I think, maybe, six, seven months.’ Andreea lit another cigarette and tilted back her head, letting the first shallow stream of smoke drift up towards the ceiling. ‘This her first job in this country. Since she came from Croatia. Her English is not very good. She and Viktor, they argue all the time. She won’t do this, won’t do that. She is always telling me that she will run away, leave . . .’ Andreea shook her head. ‘She is frightened of him, Viktor. She owes him money, I think, for bringing her to this country.’
‘She was here illegally?’
Andreea shrugged, a small, slight movement of her shoulders, barely noticeable.
‘When he argued with her, Viktor, did he ever strike her?’
‘Hit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, of course. He call her names and hit her. I kill you, he says, I fucking kill you, and Nina, she cries and says to me she will leave, but next day she is there again.’
‘ “I’ll kill you,” that’s what he said?’
‘Yes. But this is because he is angry. He does not mean . . .’ She balanced her cigarette on the table’s edge. ‘She make good money for him. The men like her. Why would he kill her?’
Lynn looked at her watch. ‘Listen, Andreea,’ she said, ‘I have to go.’ She took a card from her bag and placed it in front of her. ‘If you think of anything else, or if you just want to talk – about Nina, or about anything – give me a call.’
She got to her feet and leaned back down. Up close, she could see, beneath the make-up, the dark violet patches of tiredness around Andreea’s eyes, the faint patina of a bruise on her cheek.
‘What happened to Nina, it could have happened to any one of you,’ Lynn said. ‘It could have happened to you.’ She rested her hand for a moment on Andreea’s shoulder. ‘Come and talk to me. Don’t let it happen again.’
When she looked back through the café window, Andreea was still sitting there, smoke rising from her cigarette, staring into space.
It would be almost two weeks b
efore Lynn heard from her again.
11
The autopsy on Nina Simic showed that she had been killed by a single stab wound to the neck, of sufficient depth to suggest that considerable force had been used, a single-edged blade entering below the right ear and severing the common carotid artery as it moved diagonally down and round towards the central hyoid bone beneath the chin. There were defence wounds on both the upper and lower arms, as well as a number of small cuts to the hands, which suggested that she had struggled with her killer for the knife. There were also a significant number of other signs of trauma to the body, bruises and contusions, mostly on the arms and upper torso, some recent, others older.
Forensic examination of the knife found in Zoukas’s possession found that it matched in most particulars the weapon used in the attack. Further, there were three sets of fingerprints on the handle of the knife, Viktor Zoukas’s, Nina Simic’s and the smudged finger-and thumbprint of a third person, as yet unidentified.
Zoukas himself was questioned again and again.
All of the evidence so far could be made to support his story: a struggle between Nina Simic and an unknown assailant in which he had unsuccessfully attempted to intervene. Though inconclusive, medical evidence seemed to support his assertion that he had suffered a blow to the head which could have rendered him briefly unconscious. Nor was there any faking a four-centimetre-deep stab wound to the shoulder, almost certainly caused by the same blade.
Meantime, a small number of the men who had patronised the sauna that evening had been contacted, but by no means all. According to Sally, several punters had entered at more or less the same time, ten or fifteen minutes after two, often their busiest time, and she had not been able to keep track of who had gone with whom. She did have a vague memory of seeing someone who approximated to Zoukas’s equally vague description of a stocky, shaven-haired man with tattoos, but could not be certain if had been one of Nina’s clients or not. ‘Face it,’ she said, ‘short and near bald on top, between thirty and forty, you’re talking about most of the blokes who come here looking for business.’
The police continued their efforts to seek him out.
Perhaps, Lynn thought, her instincts were wrong and Zoukas was telling the truth.
Perhaps . . .
It was nearing the end of the day when Andreea finally phoned, her voice hesitant and indistinct.
‘Andreea,’ Lynn said. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.’
There was a pause, and then, more clearly, ‘What I told you before, it was not all true.’
Lynn felt a quick surge of adrenalin through her body.
‘Where are you?’
‘By the river.’
‘The Trent?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose. My friends, they live in Meadows.’
‘Trent Bridge? You’re near Trent Bridge?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘A big building with a green roof, can you see that from where you are?’
‘Yes, I can see.’
‘Which side of the river is it? The side you’re on or the other?’
‘The other.’
‘Okay. Wait there. I’ll come to you. Five, ten minutes. No more.’
Quick as I can, Lynn thought, before she loses her nerve.
At first, she feared Andreea had changed her mind. And then she saw her, stepping out from between two slender trees. There was a fine rain in the air and it was approaching dusk. Andreea was wearing a dark anorak, several sizes too large; her red hair had been pushed up inside a black beret, a few stray strands hanging free; closer to, Lynn could see that whatever make-up she’d been wearing earlier had mostly faded or been rubbed away.
Somehow she looked both older and younger than when Lynn had seen her last.
‘Do you fancy a drink?’ Lynn said, nodding in the direction of the pub by the bridge.
Andreea shook her head. ‘No. No, thank you.’
‘Then let’s walk.’
They set off along the river, the bridge at their backs, Lynn content for now to listen as Andreea talked about the couple she was staying with, the man from the Republic of Moldova, here studying at the university, and the woman from her own country, from Bucharest, the capital. Andreea had been frightened to stay in the flat she’d been sharing with three others and, for now, was sleeping on the settee in her friends’ front room.
‘Why were you frightened?’ Lynn asked.
Andreea stopped to light a cigarette. Cars passed slowly along the Embankment, headlights burnishing the rain.
‘This man,’ Andreea said, ‘he came to see me.’
‘Which man?’
‘I don’t know his name. He was a friend of Viktor’s. I have seen him before, at the sauna. He came one night when I was sleeping. He make me put a coat over what I am wearing and go with him to his car. Somebody else was driving. They take me to this place, I don’t know where it is. All . . . all rubbish, in big . . . I don’t know how to say . . .’ She gestured with her hands.
‘Containers?’
‘Yes, I think maybe so, containers, yes.’
‘Some kind of refuse dump.’
‘Refuse, yes. Rubbish. He make me get out of the car and I am sure he is going to kill me. I am certain of this. He has a knife and I think I am going to be dead like Nina, he is going to cut my throat.’
Andreea stopped and in the halting light Lynn could see the sweat beading her forehead, the shake of her hand as she held her cigarette.
‘He made me tell him what I told the police, and I told him there was nothing. I had seen nothing. Except Nina on the floor. He asked me if I mention Viktor and I say no, of course not, I did not know Viktor was there. He make me get down on my knees and holds the knife against the side of my face, here.’ Andreea touched her cheek, a slow line from below her ear to her neck. ‘He say I am good girl. He say if I ever say anything different to the police, he will kill me and throw me in the rubbish. And then he make me . . . you know, with my mouth. And then he take me home but I am too frightened to stay there. I come here to Meadows.’
‘And the sauna? You haven’t been back to the sauna?’
Andreea shook her head.
‘What will you do?’
‘I have a good friend in London. Leyton? Leytonstone? I am not sure. Perhaps they are the same. Alexander. He comes from Constanta, like me. He is student there. He says I can stay with him. He can even get me job, he thinks, in a bar. Or if not, in hotel, cleaning I think.’
‘What about your own studies? These courses you’re doing?’
‘Alexander thinks it may be possible to transfer somehow, I don’t know. But it will be safer there, in London. Yes? You think?’ She grasped Lynn’s arm.
‘Maybe. Yes, perhaps.’
They drew level with three men of indeterminate age, sitting on a bench, passing a can of cider back and forth. A short-haired mongrel dog lay curled on the ground between them and raised its head to growl and show its teeth as they walked past. One of the men held the can out towards them, good-naturedly, and Lynn smiled and said no thanks.
‘Despite the threats this man made,’ Lynn said, ‘you still want to change your story about what happened?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’
A little way further along there was an empty bench and they sat facing the water, the traffic at their back. Andreea fumbled for a cigarette in one of the pockets of her anorak.
‘Nina,’ she said, ‘she was nice to me. One time especially I remember, she saw that I was upset. I had a letter from home, from my mother. There was drawing Monica had made of two people. Holding hands. How do you call them? Match men?’
‘Matchstick men.’
‘Yes. Like that. One big and one small. It was Monica and me. My mother had written our names on the top.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Nina, she had a child, too, she told me. A boy. When she was fifteen. She had not seen him for a long time. She hold me and tell me not to cry. I will see my little girl
again.’
Andreea stopped and turned her face towards Lynn, the tears now running down her cheeks.
‘I want to tell the truth of how she died.’
Lynn smiled reassuringly. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Tell me in your own time.’
Andreea flicked away ash and the end of her cigarette briefly sparked. ‘There was a man,’ she said, ‘the man I spoke of, a customer, he and Nina had started to fight. I don’t know what about. Something, perhaps, he had asked her to do. I don’t know. I am across corridor, close, I can hear them shouting and then, I think, I hear the man leave, still shouting at her, fucking whore and things like that, and I think now it will be all right. But Viktor, I hear him go into the room and there is more shouting and Nina she starts to scream and I know he is hitting her, hitting her bad, and I am frightened for her, so I go into the corridor and the door it is open, just a little, not all the way, but I can see she has a knife, and when Viktor hits her again she stabs him in the shoulder, like this, here, and Viktor falls back against the wall and the knife falls to the floor and I am very frightened and I call her name, Nina, Nina, and she turns to look at me and starts to come towards the door and the next thing I see Viktor is on his feet and has the knife in his hand and he stabs Nina in the neck, from behind, and this time there is so much blood, more blood, and I run before Viktor can see me, I go running to Sally and tell her I think Nina is dead.’
She stopped, drained, shaking, looking at the slowly darkening sky.
‘Viktor,’ Lynn said, ‘he doesn’t know what you saw?’
‘No,’ Andreea said. ‘And he must never know.’
Lynn rested a hand on her arm. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re very brave. And don’t worry. He won’t hurt you. Neither him nor his friend. I promise.’ Even as she spoke, knowing how hollow the words were. Promises are like piecrusts, wasn’t that what her mother used to say?
They kept Andreea under wraps, took a statement from her in an out-of-the-way police station, questioned her some more. Andreea’s name would not be used when her statement was finally disclosed, as it had to be, to the defence before the trial; she would be simply Miss X, Miss Y. But from the statement, Lynn knew, it would not be too difficult for the defence team to work out her identity.