The Stolen Girls

by Patricia Gibney

  Curling her body into itself on the bottom bunk, she nursed her bleeding arm. The skin was broken in two crescents above her elbow. She didn’t like it when he bit her. It was always painful, but this time he’d drawn blood. Hopefully she wouldn’t catch a disease from his putrid saliva. He had made sure she suffered for leaving this morning. And now he had taken poor Sara, who’d only been trying to help her and little Milot. So much for giving the security guard at the gate a blow job. He had allowed her to go out, but the others had come after her anyway. They must have followed her. Or followed Sara. Did they actually know where she had been? She hoped not. And now she and Milot were back here. Incarcerated. She should have run when she had the chance. But where could she have gone? What was done was done. She’d kept her mouth shut. She hoped Sara would too.

  Pain itched between her legs. No matter how much she scrubbed herself afterwards, she was sure something remained, feeding off her insides. She tried to ignore the soreness and thought of other things worrying her.

  She hadn’t seen Kaltrina for days. No one would tell her where her friend had gone. Terrible things happened in this place, Mimoza knew that. Most people were too afraid to utter a word, but Kaltrina had opened her mouth. And now she was gone.

  All she could hope for was that the detective lady would help. She had thought it too dangerous to go to the police station; how could she make them believe her? So she’d taken a chance and gone to the address, the one written on a piece of paper he’d given her with the badge. Before he had abandoned her in their homeland. It seemed like a lifetime ago and she didn’t want to think about him now.

  The door opened and Sara limped in. She stood in the middle of the room, a black statue in the moonlight. Mimoza smelled the same horrible odour from the young girl, that still clung to her own body. Sara had been punished for helping her.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she said, rising up on her elbow, wincing in agony.

  Sara wrapped her arms tightly around herself and stared through the window, tears shimmering on her face.

  ‘Come. Lie beside me.’ Mimoza reached out and grasped the girl’s hand. It was slick with sweat. Sara turned and lay down beside her.

  Cradling her, Mimoza was careful not to wake her son, who was snaked against the wall in her bed. She soothed Sara like she’d done with her little boy earlier.

  Sara heaved with sobs until they eventually petered out, but her body still shuddered every few seconds and Mimoza listened to the shattered breathing until the girl drifted at last into a fitful sleep.

  Milot stirred, murmuring.

  ‘Shh,’ she said.

  The sheet rustled with her movement. Gently she traced a finger over his forehead, whispering a soft lullaby in his ear. She loved him so much, her spine tingled. He was all she had left in the world. And he’d been dragged with her on her long, harrowing journey. Was it her fault it had turned into a tortuous nightmare? He was her son, and if she’d made a mistake, she would rectify it.

  ‘Where will it all end?’ she mumbled in her mother tongue.

  With no answer to her question, sleep evaded her, and she was still awake when she heard the door open. As Sara was dragged to the floor, Mimoza tried to catch her. Familiar rough hands pushed her away and Sara was pulled out into the hallway, screaming.

  When the door slammed, Mimoza cradled her weeping son, silently praying for one small mercy.

  ‘Please don’t let them harm my Milot.’

  TWELVE

  He lifted the iron sheeting with his gloved hands, tugging it to the side of the trench. With a shovel he quickly dug out the loose clay. When it was deep enough for his intended purpose, he walked the short distance back to his white van.

  The temporary Men at Work signs he had erected at both ends of the narrow street a few minutes earlier ensured uninterrupted work. It was 4 a.m. and Ragmullin was asleep. The intermittent vibrations of cars along Main Street caused him little concern. No one was coming down this road. Rear shop entrances to his left and a car dismantler’s yard to his right. A small block of half-empty flats further down. All lifeless in the dead of night.

  With a quick glance around to be doubly sure he was unseen, he unlocked the rear doors, dragged down a narrow ramp and wheeled out a wide wheelbarrow covered with a piece of dark green canvas.

  Making his way in the dark to the hole, he removed the canvas and tipped the wheelbarrow. The body tumbled into the ground. He laid her out and began shovelling the clay on top of her. Her pale skin darkened with each soft thud of earth. When he had finished, he hauled the iron cover back in place as silently as possible, though he was sure there was no one around to hear a thing.

  He checked his surroundings one more time before lifting the canvas and placing it on the wheelbarrow, then hurrying back up the street to his van. When he had everything inside, he pushed up the ramp and went to collect the signs. Back in the van, he smiled to himself as he headed away. He was getting closer and closer to his target.

  Job done.

  KOSOVO, 1999

  He didn’t know how many days he had walked or how long he had lain in the bushes. But his trousers were soiled and his feet bleeding. He looked at the darkening sky and listened to the many trucks passing by on the old dirt road. Why couldn’t he remember? Why was his mind full of black holes?

  ‘Hey, young fella, what you doing down there?’

  He hadn’t heard the truck stop. Curling into himself, he prepared for the gunshot. Maybe it would solve everything for him. Feeling a hand grab him by the shoulder, he yelped like a helpless dog.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re safe with us.’

  A slight wind kicked up, blowing a cool breeze over his bare chest. He understood a little English. He’d learned it at school. That seemed so long ago. The man was dressed in an army uniform. Another soldier glared down from the cab of their big green truck.

  ‘Are you lost, son?’

  He’d called him son. But he wasn’t anyone’s son. Everyone was dead.

  Looking up at the soldier, the boy was surprised. He had a face like Papa. Before Papa had… Before the war.

  The soldier glanced at his comrade. ‘Bring him with us?’

  ‘Well, hurry up. We’ve been driving since Macedonia. I’m fucked.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  The soldier lifted the boy and the driver hauled him into the cab. Sitting between the two of them, the boy scrunched his elbows into his body, making himself as small as possible.

  ‘You hungry?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Here you go. Have a bag of Tayto crisps. Got them sent over from home.’

  The boy wished the soldier would stop talking. He opened the bag and began munching. He was starving. How long since he’d eaten? Another black hole.

  ‘You don’t talk much,’ the soldier said. ‘Eat up. We’ll be at the chicken farm soon.’

  The boy did as he was told.

  DAY TWO

  TUESDAY 12 MAY 2015

  THIRTEEN

  The birds were singing a tune only they recognised. The dawn sunlight eased through a slit between the windowsill and the blind. A shard of light cut across the bed like a steel knife.

  Lottie plumped up her pillow and listened. The two wood pigeons began their harmony at the end of her garden. A mug of coffee in bed would be nice, she thought. Some chance of that happening. Adam used to leave a mug beside her, feather his lips over her forehead and silently close the door as he headed to work. But it was now almost four years since he had died and she was left with his shadow, living in a silent movie stuck in rewind mode.

  As the seconds churned, boring into her consciousness, she felt the familiar and uneasy loneliness that accompanied her memories. Wasn’t it about time she got over Adam? Everyone seemed to think she should be back to her normal self, whatever that might be. But now her life was like a black-and-white photograph, fading to sepia with time, and she struggled to find colour to inject into it.

  She slamm
ed her fist into the duvet and gritted her teeth to keep the tears away. It was no good. She was still angry at Adam, at his cancer, for dying and leaving her alone with three children. For not giving her the time to ask him what he wanted her to do with the rest of her life without him by her side. For not being stronger in the face of her grief. ‘God damn you, Adam Parker!’ she cried aloud.

  Throwing back the duvet, she jumped out of bed, fleeing her jumbled thoughts, and ran to the shower. As the water flowed in a swirl of suds down the drain she knew her attitude wasn’t good enough. Pull yourself together, woman, she scolded, and consciously she did just that. She was stronger than her memories.

  ‘Strong Lottie, that’s me,’ she said to the steamed-up mirror.

  She dried and dressed herself, and was ready to face whatever the day had to throw at her. And then she realised she was late. Again.

  * * *

  ‘You’re late,’ Boyd said, slamming a cabinet drawer. Files, stacked on top of it, slid to the floor.

  ‘Really? I could’ve sworn I was dead late.’ Lottie sat at her desk and powered up her computer. ‘Who are you now? My mother?’

  ‘How is your mother?’

  ‘Boyd, you know right well not to go there.’ She shoved her handbag under her desk and lifted the poppy-painted mug. She read her password, keyed it in and said, ‘Any updates?’

  ‘No identification of the victim yet,’ he said, picking up the files, sorting them alphabetically.

  ‘Do you ever stop?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trying to keep everything in order.’ She waited for her computer to wake up.

  ‘Just because you’re “sloppy Lottie” doesn’t mean we all have to be.’ He slotted files into the drawer.

  ‘Boyd, will you sit down, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘I meant to tell you. Yesterday morning I had a visit from a young woman and a little boy.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Boyd stood with a file in each hand.

  So much had happened yesterday, Lottie had completely forgotten about the girl and the letter until this morning. She took the envelope from her bag and slipped out a folded page.

  ‘It’s written in a foreign language,’ she said, passing it over to Boyd.

  He took it. ‘How am I supposed to know what this says?’

  ‘We need to get it translated.’

  ‘Why do we need to do that?’

  She ignored him and peeked into the envelope, surprised to see something wedged at the bottom. She was about to take it out when Superintendent Corrigan appeared like an apparition at the door.

  Corrigan opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word, Lottie said, ‘Yes, sir, I’m coming.’ She stuffed the envelope back into her bag.

  * * *

  Seated, slightly squashed behind his desk, Superintendent Corrigan said, ‘Jamie McNally is back in town.’

  ‘What? Does Boyd know?’ Lottie sat down uninvited. Shit, she thought. A few years ago, Boyd’s wife Jackie had left him for McNally, who was known to the gardaí as a small-time criminal. Last she’d heard, the couple were residing in Spain.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Corrigan said, removing his spectacles to rub furiously at his sore eye.

  Lottie grimaced as she watched him. ‘He’ll go mental.’

  ‘Inspector, you and I know Sergeant Boyd never goes mental. He’s the calmest one in the station.’

  ‘Will I tell him?’ Lottie asked. If McNally had come back to Ragmullin, she wondered if Jackie had returned also. How would Boyd handle it? She didn’t like to dwell on that.

  ‘I don’t care who tells him, but we need to find out why McNally’s back and what he’s up to.’

  ‘I’ll put Kirby on it straight away, sir.’

  ‘Do that.’

  ‘When did he arrive?’

  ‘Our intel says Wednesday of last week. This is all I need.’ Corrigan replaced his spectacles on the bridge of his nose but his finger searched beneath the glass to continue rubbing.

  Lottie flinched.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you need to see a doctor about your eye, Superintendent.’

  ‘You’re starting to get on my nerves now. I’ve got to listen to that shite from the wife. I don’t want to feckin’ listen to it from you too, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And put someone on McNally’s tail.’

  ‘On it already.’

  * * *

  After instructing Kirby to find out anything he could about McNally’s whereabouts, Lottie slumped back at her desk and began reading the accumulated case reports. Time enough to tell Boyd about McNally. Maybe Jackie hadn’t returned. But should she consider McNally as a possible murder suspect? He had history. Maybe not murder, as far as they knew, but history all the same. What the hell was he doing in Ragmullin?

  ‘Still no hits on the missing persons list. No one resembling our girl.’ Boyd tapped angrily on the keyboard.

  ‘Someone, somewhere is missing her,’ Lottie said. Her T-shirt clung to her skin, a rivulet of sweat pooled between her breasts and the wire of her bra burned into her ribs. The unease she’d felt earlier in the morning returned with a sharp stab of anxiety in her chest. She took a few deep breaths. It didn’t work. She blinked as the room slipped in and out of focus. Oh God, she thought. I have to be strong. I can handle this shit. Fuck it.

  Opening her bag, she unzipped the small internal pocket. Her emergency pill was there. Popping open the blister, she quickly swallowed the pill, grabbed Boyd’s bottle of water and washed away the chalky taste. Last one, swear to God, she silently prayed, and handed back the water.

  ‘Keep it,’ Boyd said, waving her away.

  She knew he’d seen her surreptitiously taking the pill and ignored his derisory look. ‘Any word from ballistics?’ she asked, knowing it could take weeks.

  ‘No.’

  Sighing, she noticed Boyd had dumped the letter on her desk. The foreign words seemed to mock her. Where had the girl and her son come from? And how could she help them?

  ‘I think we need to find this Mimoza. She mentioned her friend was missing, so it’s possible she might know who the victim is.’

  ‘That’s some leap in deduction.’

  She waved the letter at him. ‘Did you have any luck translating this?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t try.’

  ‘No worries,’ she said and started to type the words into Google Translate. It wasn’t making sense. She got up and rummaged through the stack of paper on Boyd’s desk.

  ‘Hey, I sorted those,’ he said, trying to pull them out of her reach.

  ‘I’m just looking for the phone number for that guy who found the body. Andri whatshisname.’ She continued to flick through the reports, opening files, leaving pages curled and untidy.

  ‘Petrovci?’

  ‘Yes, him.’

  ‘Why do you want to ring him? Isn’t he a suspect? A person of interest? I thought we were going to interview him again today.’

  ‘He found the body. That’s all. Ah, here it is.’

  Boyd shook his head. ‘I hope you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do.’

  ‘You know me too well, Boyd.’

  ‘I’m serious. This is—’

  ‘Career suicide? I know. But look at it this way. If he had anything to do with the murder, the letter might scare him into confessing. Or something.’ She hesitated for a moment before tapping the number into her phone. For some reason, she wanted to see Petrovci’s reaction to the letter. Right or wrong, she was going to run with it.

  Boyd noisily stacked his files back in order on his desk. ‘You’re on a kamikaze mission. Day two back at work, Lottie. Day two. Don’t do this.’

  She listened to the call ringing before being cut off.

  ‘Suicide,’ he muttered.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said, and waited a moment before trying the number ag
ain.

  FOURTEEN

  Andri Petrovci, with his boss Jack Dermody, loaded the work van and headed for Columb Street. The road management crew had been late arriving on site to divert the traffic and vehicles now trailed slug-like through the town. It took them half an hour to reach the new dig.

  This piecemeal pipe-laying to appease the retailers exasperated motorists who didn’t know where an excavation would spring up next. The contractors were like summer weeds sprouting in a smooth lawn, Petrovci supposed, unwanted and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

  As he checked the temporary traffic lights at the Main Street junction, his phone vibrated. He didn’t recognise the number, so he disconnected the call and shoved the phone back into his trouser pocket. When he looked up, a small fat man was rushing towards him.

  ‘Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?’ said the red-faced man, his ginger hair a beacon to the sun.

  Twisting round, Petrovci looked down at him and shrugged. He kept walking, brushing by the man, who only reached his shoulder. The man grabbed his elbow.

  ‘Problem?’ Petrovci asked.

  ‘How are the trucks going to deliver to my yard?’ The man pointed to the car dismantler’s depot. ‘Bob Weir. That’s me and that’s my business.’

  Petrovci swiped the man’s chubby fingers from his arm and strode onto the site. He knew Bob Weir from Cafferty’s Bar. Got a few earfuls one weekend as he’d tried to sip his Guinness in peace. But Weir’s voice had soured his pint so he’d left it on the counter and made his way home. Racism was rife in Ragmullin, he concluded. But they were only words. In his homeland, he had encountered racism at the barrel of an AK-47.

  As he picked up his tools, his phone vibrated again. This time he answered rather than having to listen to Weir’s ranting at the roadblock.