by Jay Stringer
The house was silent and cold, sparsely decorated with pictures of her parents’ family and their homeland. Even though we had the whole place to ourselves, Ruth led us up into her bedroom and shut the door. The room was small but not cramped. The bed took up most of the far wall, and a cupboard filled the space next to the door. To our right was a window overlooking the backyard, and below it was a chest of drawers piled high with makeup, magazines, and a mirror. There was a film poster for Ghost World above her bed, and pictures of the Gaslight Anthem competed for wall space with Tulisa.
The girl immediately went to her bed and sat down in front of her open laptop, almost as if we weren’t in the room. Salma sat down next to her and tried to start a conversation. The girl wasn’t ignoring us, but her focus stayed on the screen.
“Ruth, this is Eoin. He’s going to help.”
Ruth just nodded and watched the screen. I was dying to see what was so engrossing, but I wasn’t going to step any closer until she’d accepted me.
“He Polish?”
“No, he’s a Gypsy. You know, like on Buffy?”
That seemed to me like a reference that showed Salma’s age more than Ruth’s, and I figured it would sail over the teenager’s head. I figured wrong. Her eyes flickered back to me for a second; she asked if I knew any fun spells.
“I’m not magic, unfortunately. I just know dirty jokes. I could probably sell you some lucky heather, though, if you wanted.”
She refocused on her screen, and my eyes met Salma’s as we both fell silent. I scratched my nose for something to do, and I noticed Ruth watching me out of the corner of her eye. This wasn’t working. I looked at the film poster again.
“You read the comic?”
“Yes.”
Almost.
“I haven’t gotten round to it. My little sister loves it. Persepolis, too. She’s always trying to get me to read that.”
She turned to look me up and down again, and this time her face opened up. Just by an inch, but enough for me to notice.
“I didn’t really like the film they made from that book. It’s a cartoon. Did you see it? I like real actors.”
She didn’t have much of an accent left. Poland had joined the EU in 2004, and I guessed that Britain was all she would remember. She probably acted British at school with her friends and Polish at home with her parents. Maybe she was as mixed up as I’d been as a teenager. Not that I’d really gotten over it. I stepped in close enough to see what she was watching on the screen. I didn’t recognize it, but it was clearly something involving vampires and sex. She didn’t seem to lose track of what was happening even though the sound was muted.
“Yeah, I’ve never been one for cartoons either. I need to be able to see someone acting, even if they’re really bad at it. I lose interest if a movie is animated. Unless it’s Toy Story, of course. I could watch that shit all day.”
Salma frowned at me, but Ruth got there first and said that she was a big girl who could handle the word “shit.”
I tried not to laugh. Salma’s shoulders sagged a little bit, and I knelt down beside the bed. Ruth smiled at me, and it changed her face. The baby fat and awkwardness of youth stretched into something brighter and more confident.
“My parents are always like that, too. It’s only recently they stopped spelling out swear words when I’m around. And neither of them can spell the English words properly anyway. They’re better at spelling curses in Polish.”
“I tell you what, I’ll swear in front of you if you promise to swear in front of me, yeah?”
She nodded. “And then you’ll kill the fucker who raped me?”
FOURTEEN
Salma looked more shocked than me, her mouth open wide enough to swallow her sunglasses.
“You okay to talk about it?”
Ruth shrugged a no but answered anyway. “Sure. I don’t really have anything to tell you, though.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
She gave me a look that told me I’d just asked the dumbest question in the world. “He was on top of me—of course I got a look at him. But not his face, if that’s what you mean. He wore a mask.”
“What kind of mask?”
“Like one of those things—uh, a ski mask?”
“Okay, was it like a wool thing? Holes for his eyes and mouth?”
She shivered and closed her eyes. Wherever she went, it wasn’t a happy place. She winced as she continued. “Yeah, one of those. What I remember the most is his breath. You’d think it would be the, uh, well, the other, uh, anyway, but no, it’s his breath. It was hot and really bad, and it—” She shook her head.
Salma squeezed Ruth’s hand and smiled an encouragement.
“It was all in my face, you know? If I opened my mouth to shout or cry, all I could feel and smell was his breath. I just wanted to get away from it.”
“Did you shout?”
“Yes. Nobody came.”
“Did he talk to you? Threaten you? Anything like that?”
She nodded, but it was barely noticeable. “He had a knife. He pushed it”—she rubbed her throat with her thumb—“here. He didn’t need to say much after that. He just pressed it harder when I moved. For a while, I thought he’d broken through to a vein because I went numb, like I thought I was dying.” Every last drop of color drained from her face as she recounted the memory.
“Okay. It’s all right, just take it easy. I tell you what: let’s just go back to the beginning, okay? You can skip over things if it gets to be too much.”
Salma watched me with a new interest. Ruth nodded.
“We’d been at the pub, a few of us. I was meant to go clubbing with them, but I didn’t really feel like it.”
“Why not?”
“Just tired, and it bores me. I don’t like the clubs; crap music and all the boys look the same. And the girls, the others, they have me there as a token, you know? Look how cool they are to let a Polski girl in.”
“Were there any guys there with you?”
“A couple, yes. Robin was there.”
Salma leaned forward. “Our Robin?”
Ruth fidgeted a little, uncomfortable. It had to be a boy in the group whom she had some history with. “Robin? Did he go on clubbing with the others or stay behind?”
She looked straight at me as though I’d just kicked a puppy. “Robin didn’t do it. I’d know if it was him. I-I mean we—”
Enough said. Change the subject.
“So you walked home? Which pub were you at?”
“The Pig and Trumpet.”
Across the road from my flat.
“That’s a long walk, isn’t it?” Salma cut in. “Isn’t there a bus or a taxi you could get?”
“Standing round the bus station all dressed up at night? That would be asking for it. And the buses are worse, filled with idiots and drunks. The drivers don’t do anything to help.”
I asked her if she walked alone.
“Yeah. I’ve done it before, so I was okay. I just play my music and walk fast, let everything else go away.”
“What way do you walk? I mean do you stick to the main roads or cut across fields? How do you do it?”
Salma tried to ease things along. “I know I used to cut across this housing estate. My dad would have killed me if he’d known. He said it was full of racists. One time, a car pulled up beside me and I almost screamed, but it was just an old lady asking if I was lost.”
Ruth smiled a little. “In town I stay on the main roads. There are cameras and cars and all that. But after that it doesn’t make sense. I mean, if I stick to the main roads all the way home, it’ll take, like, an hour, right?”
“So you take a few shortcuts.”
“Uh-huh. I mean, it’s safer to be home quicker, right?” I nodded, and she continued. “I walked down Hydes Road. You know that way? I usually turn off at the top. There’s that alleyway that leads to Oxford Street. I like to go that way and then cross the river at the footbridge. That’s right by
us here, you know?”
“I know the way you mean. St. Luke’s Road, that alleyway. Down some steps and onto Oxford Street, then down to the riverbank. That estate’s usually quite safe at night.”
“Yeah. I always go that way. It’s the quickest. But that night I got scared.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. It felt wrong. The alleyway gets dark. It always does. But this time it just felt, like, I couldn’t see into the shadows, but something stopped me. I froze, yeah?”
“Did you see anything? Hear anyone?”
“It was just a feeling, like I knew not to go down that way. You know in horror films? I felt like that. I thought maybe I’d call my dad and get a lift, but I told myself I was being stupid. So I just played a happy song on my iPod and turned to go the other way. After a while it started to feel funny, you know?”
“Funny?”
“Like I was doing all these silly things—I was talking to myself in my head and counting how many steps until I was through the shadows and all of that—and it was all silly. I started to giggle, but not too loud.”
“Did you turn to look behind you at any point?”
“No, I don’t know why, but it was like, like if I didn’t look then there was nobody there, yeah?”
“We’ve all done that, yes.”
“So I walked down Hydes Road. You can turn off by the school and walk along the river—you know it? Then you get to the same bridge. I walked that way, and when I felt safer again I laughed.”
There was something there that was spooking her. I pushed.
“What happened when you laughed, Ruth?”
“Someone behind me laughed, too, like a mean version of mine. Kind of teasing, but worse. Yeah, like that. I could see the footbridge, and I just ran. I dropped my iPod somewhere and just ran. But then he grabbed me, and he had a knife and—”
Her mouth stayed open, moving as though she was forming words, but just a strangled noise came out, and tears started running down her cheeks. Salma pulled her into an embrace, and Ruth buried her head in her shoulder. I stood there feeling like a spare part. We waited until she seemed to have cried it all out. Then I touched the bed beside her foot, near enough to making contact without risking the real thing, and spoke as softly as I could.
“I just need to know a few more details, that’s all.”
She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her hoodie.
“Was he big? Skinny? How would you describe him?”
“He was shorter than you, maybe, just a little bit. But he was strong. His arms had muscles.”
“Did he say anything to you? Did you recognize his voice?”
“He called me nasty words. He said things like bitch. But that was all. His voice was different from what you hear around here. There was an accent I didn’t recognize.”
“English? Foreign?”
“No, English, I think. Or Scottish. Different, I don’t know. I let him, I just—”
“Did you see which way he went afterward?”
“He just got up, laughed at me, and walked away. He didn’t hurry or anything, like he knew I wouldn’t—” And then she tilted her head, her mind protecting her by going in a different direction. “I lost my iPod. My parents will kill me when I tell them.”
I knelt in close and put my hand on hers. It was an awkward moment, but I felt the need to make a connection. “Ruth, I know this is horrible, but you have enough to go to the police. You know that?”
She looked at Salma for a second before she dropped her eyes and shook her head. It felt like I missed something in that look, but I didn’t know what it was.
At the front door I asked Salma to go on ahead and wait by the car. She paused as though she was going to question me, but then she opened the door and walked out. I hung back, out of sight for a moment, and then walked out after her. As I pulled the front door shut behind me, I eyed my surroundings, looking for any faces. Even the kids who’d been sitting on the wall had gone. They’d left my car untouched, so they had been old enough to get the message. I turned and looked back at Ruth’s house. For the first time I noticed some markings, traces of fire damage around the edges of the front window on the ground floor. I wondered if they’d been burned out a couple times, too.
I almost got lost trying to drive off the estate, with its winding roads that all seem to lead back to the same place. It was almost by accident that I came across the river and realized that I was near the scene of the crime. I drove along Price Road until I came to the footbridge that Ruth had talked about. I pulled over and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel for a moment.
“Do me a favor.” I turned to Salma. “Go on ahead. Walk across the bridge. We need to look at the other side. I’ll catch up.”
She stared at me for a second through the sunglasses, as if trying to figure me out, and then she shrugged and we got out. I leaned against the car and looked around at the houses on both sides of the river while she went on ahead. Then I followed on after a few moments.
The river looked tame, but it wasn’t. I knew the current was strong enough to drag even an adult under its quiet surface. The only sign of the water’s true nature was a brief drop about twenty yards from the bridge, where the river turned to churning white water as it smashed into an outcropping of rock. More than one child had never made it home after getting too close to that drop. On the other side of the bridge was a concrete path that led away to the next housing estate, and I could see children playing as they walked home; but that wasn’t the way that Ruth had walked. I stepped off the path onto the grass and mud of the riverbank and motioned for Salma to follow, but she looked down at her expensive shoes and then shrugged at me.
I looked down at my feet for any signs of struggle as I walked, but the mud wasn’t giving up any secrets. I would need to come back after dark, when I would be able to see things in the same light as Ruth and her attacker. I stepped back onto the path and wiped my feet, turning back toward the bridge and nodding to Salma that we were done.
“You were great in there, you know? I wasn’t expecting that.”
I nodded. I’d read that last part. “You didn’t want me in on this, did you?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. She walked on for a few steps, looking at her feet as though she hadn’t heard me.
“Back there, with Ruth, it looked like she was looking to you for support when I mentioned the police. Is there something else here I should know about?”
“No.” She was a terrible liar, but I let it go. “Okay, then, how about this Robin kid? Sounds like the next best place to look.”
“We can see him now, if you like. But be nice—he’s a good kid.”
I let that go as well. Salma seemed surprised, as though she was bracing for an argument on the issue. Once she realized I wasn’t fighting her, she asked a question.
“What was all that about? Making me go on ahead?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
“Come on. What were you up to?”
“I don’t know why someone commits a crime like this, but I know crime in general. People do them because they can. They do them because they see an opportunity. So there’s a good chance the guy we’re after could live in one of those houses over there, maybe someone who saw a chance and took it. I wanted to see if anyone noticed you, or who would have the best view of you walking alone.”
“You used me as bait?” She yanked off her sunglasses, and for a second I thought she was going to slap me. I would probably have deserved it.
FIFTEEN
It was an awkward drive to Robin’s house. Salma was intent on ignoring me at the same time as giving me directions, which resulted in a lot of last-minute braking and missed turns. Finally, we pulled up outside a row of terraced houses in Vicarage Road, which runs up the spine of Church Hill and leads right up to the two churches that sit above the town. We sat in silence for a minute before I made an attempt at fixing things.
“Listen, I know what I did was—” I paused, trying to slow down so I’d choose the right words. “Thing is, you hired me to do the things you don’t want to do, right?”
She eyeballed me and shook her head. “Yeah, but like you say, you’re supposed to do the things. I’m not here to take risks. I’m just here to help the kids.”
She got out of the car and walked toward the houses. I followed and caught up with her as we reached the door. Salma buzzed the button beside the heavy blue door, and it took a few minutes until we heard someone moving behind it. The kid who opened the door didn’t look a day over seventeen and was naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist. His natural build was very slight—if he turned sideways, I might have lost sight of him—but he was making up for it with a lot of muscle definition. His head was crowned by a shock of bleach-blond hair, and I hoped the mullet he was sporting was a result of an accident rather than a stylist. Buried away beneath too many tattoos to count were his well-defined biceps, and I thought back to Ruth’s description.
He was strong. His arms had muscles.
He greeted us breathlessly, grinning when he saw Salma but becoming far colder when he eyed me up. He looked at me with the beginnings of a challenge in his eyes. A kid’s attempt at looking tough.
“Robin, this is Eoin. It’s okay—he’s working with me.”
Robin offered me a thin smile. He still wasn’t convinced, but he invited us in. The front door opened straight into the living room. Sparse and badly painted, it had a large flat-screen television and shelves full of DVDs. My cursory glance revealed Hollywood blockbusters and porn. On the wall was a poster for Newcastle United, and a few pictures of Robin and someone else. I took a closer look at the pictures. He looked like a beefed-up version of Robin. His hair was darker and his frame was wider, but the features were almost identical. He had some years on Robin, but not enough to be a parent or uncle.
“My brother,” said Robin, confirming my suspicions. His voice revealed faded touches of a northeast accent. “Mike. He’s at work.”
Good. No interruptions.