‘Two?’
‘Both Filipino. One worked in Akrotiri, the other in Nicosia. Where is your maid from?’
‘Sri Lanka.’ He jotted this down in the notebook too. I felt my body turn cold, despite the heat in the booth. Two other women had gone missing.
‘What could this mean?’ I managed to say. I found that I couldn’t speak much, my mouth dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Perhaps sensing this, he called out to one of the maids who was passing the booth.
‘Bilhana! Bilhana!’
A woman in an orange sari turned on her heel and arrived in the open doorway of the booth.
‘Tell Devna – two coffees.’ He spoke slowly, holding up two fingers. ‘Sugar?’ he said to me.
I shook my head. ‘Do you think they are connected?’ I said, once the woman had gone.
He responded by raising his eyebrows and opening both of his palms – he was at a loss. ‘I knew there was a problem when the first girl went missing,’ he said. ‘Rosamie. I placed her. She came here three years ago through an agency; she worked for a man who was no good to her. He beat her. God knows what else. She came to me for help. With some difficulty, I got her out of the clasp of her agent and found her a better home. She moved in with a British family in Akrotiri. They were good to her, and she was pleased with them. She would come here on Sundays, eat and talk with the other women. She was a good dancer too, loved the music here. One Sunday she didn’t come.’
He paused there. The phone rang again, but this time he turned it over and ignored it. ‘Billie Jean’ was playing in the back hall, and a couple of women were standing close to the booth chatting.
‘The next Sunday,’ he continued, ‘she didn’t turn up again, and I thought it was odd. The following one, her employer came here to tell me that she’d gone.’
‘She’d gone,’ I repeated. It seemed the only thing I could manage to say.
‘Mrs Manning went to the police, but they convinced her that Rosamie had run away to find employment in the north of Cyprus. Poor woman didn’t know what to believe. But I knew Rosamie. She came here beaming every Sunday because her bruises had faded, because she was happy with Mr and Mrs Manning. She would bring me a cake or biscuits, always thanking me. She said I had saved her life. Why would she run away? It doesn’t make sense. You see, when you clump people together and don’t understand their personal stories, you can make up any bullshit and convince yourself it’s the truth.’
By now the ash from his cigarette was long and he threw it in the ashtray and took another out of the box, holding it between his fingers without lighting it. At this point Devna came in with a tray of coffee, two glasses of water and a plate of sesame fingers. She was a slim girl who looked like she could easily have been fifteen, but there was an assurance and confidence to her movements and posture which made me think she was older. I hoped she was, at least. She wore faded jeans with slits at the knees and a brightly coloured shirt. Large, silver, hooped earrings shone through her dark hair as she leaned over the desk, placing the tray on top of some paperwork.
‘They don’t know anything about life,’ Tony said, looking at Devna. ‘They’ve come from small communities, labourers in fields.’ I watched Devna’s fingers as she took the glasses and cups from the tray, placing them on the table – long, dark, beautiful fingers, her nails painted earth-green.
‘They say they want to send money to their families, but a lot of them come to find freedom. They think they’re going to be flying free in Europe. Back home they usually earn 200 euros a month; here it’s around 500. But what do they do? They look at TikTok and photographs on their phones all day and think about which boys they like. Isn’t that right, Devna?’
Devna laughed but said nothing.
‘Don’t you like boys?’
‘I do,’ she replied with a smile, ‘but that is not why I am here.’
‘So why are you here? Tell Petra why you are here.’
‘Please, madam,’ she said, smiling again with glistening lips, ‘this is your coffee and water.’
‘If they were clever,’ Tony said loudly, more to Devna than to me, ‘they would save!’
Devna turned her back to him and winked at me. There was a faint smile about her lips, a knowing in her pitch-black eyes. I took the wink to mean: Don’t listen to him, we know perfectly well why we are here.
Someone called Tony from the kitchen. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said, leaving me in the booth with Devna.
‘I’ll tell you why I’m here,’ she said; and now that Tony was gone her voice was sharper, louder. ‘Tony is a good man, but he still doesn’t really understand. I came because I saw no other way forward at home. There was no work, nothing I could do. I have a brother who is disabled, he can’t walk or talk. My parents are old now. I have to send him money. Tell me, who will do this if I don’t? I was working night and day at home and it wasn’t enough. They say we have a better life here, but is that a reason to treat us like children, or worse, animals?’ There was a fierceness to her words. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ Her gaze was firm and penetrating.
‘Yes,’ I said, without looking away, feeling the full force of this woman’s determination and strength. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do. Have you told Tony this?’
‘Of course I have,’ she said. ‘He knows. He knows. He likes to tease me. The others don’t know, though. They see me as a robot.’
I gulped down the water and placed the empty glass back on the tray.
Tony returned and Devna winked at me again, smiled and left.
‘I can see that you’re distressed,’ he said. ‘And I want to hear your story. But first, let me tell you about the other missing girl, Reyna . . . Reyna was a different matter altogether. She came here five years ago with her sister, through an agency. Her sister, Ligaya, was relatively happy with her employers but Reyna was miserable. She worked for an old woman who shouted at her and she felt pretty homesick most of the time. One night, she went out and never returned. Ligaya came here, a wreck, a week later. She was crying a lot and I had to calm her down before I could understand anything. Reyna’s phone was switched off. She had left everything – her passport, other precious items, she went out with the clothes she was wearing and the shoes on her feet and never returned. The old woman wasn’t bothered – she was advised to find another maid, and she did. Poor Ligaya got my details from some other girls and came to me because she was afraid to go the police.’
‘Afraid? Was she an illegal immigrant?’
‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘She came here legally. She was afraid about how she would be treated.’
He struck a match on the box and it sizzled into a flame. He lit his cigarette and the smoke came out of his mouth in rings, which disintegrated and dispersed in grey wisps around the booth. He picked up his coffee and had a sip. ‘Help yourself,’ he said, signalling with his eyes to my coffee and the biscuits on the tray.
I took a sip. It was packed full of sugar, but I decided to drink it anyway – I needed it in the heat and stuffiness of the tiny booth with the fan that circulated the same smoky air. Scenarios flashed through my mind. Had all three women got involved with something that had led to their disappearance? Could Nisha have known Reyna and Rosamie? A shadow loomed in the corner of my thoughts. Had something else occurred, something darker . . . I couldn’t bear to think about it.
‘So, tell me,’ he said. ‘What makes you think Nisha hasn’t run away? Because I guess that is why you are here?’
I drank the rest of the coffee in one go, took a deep breath and told him the whole story: the trip to the mountains; her request to go out that evening which she hadn’t mentioned again; the crash I heard in the garden that night; realising the following morning that Nisha had gone; that her bed had not been slept in; that she had left her passport, her locket, her daughter’s lock of hair; and, most importantly, that she had not said goodbye to Aliki. I told him that she had been seen heading out at 10.30 on Sunday night, after
I had gone to bed, and that she had been heading in the direction of Maria’s, which was basically a brothel-type bar.
He nodded while I spoke, occasionally jotting things down in the notebook. Once again, his cigarette had turned to ash and it fell onto his beige trousers. He swiped at it, smudging it in.
‘Where exactly is Maria’s?’ he asked.
I gave him the address and he wrote this down too.
Then I showed him the bracelet that I had been clutching in my hand the entire time.
‘Some friends of Nisha’s found this by the Green Line,’ I said, ‘not too far from Maria’s. See how the clasp is broken?’
‘May I?’ he said, and opened his palm.
I placed the bracelet upon it. He looked at it closely, examining its every line, running his finger over Aliki’s name on its underside.
‘Who is Aliki?’
‘My daughter. This bracelet was a present to Nisha from us for her birthday a few years ago.’
He gave me the bracelet and sat there, pensive. There was silence between us for a while. Ricky Martin’s ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ drifted in with the sounds of cutlery and conversation and laughter. Tony looked around the dining area through the glass of his office booth, like a captain at the bridge of a ship.
‘Could there be a connection,’ I said, ‘between these three women?’
In response, he tore a piece of paper out of the notebook and wrote down the names of the women, including the date of their disappearance. ‘I am assuming that you are in contact with some of Nisha’s acquaintances?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said.
He handed me the piece of paper. ‘Please go back and ask them about these two other women. Had Nisha mentioned them? Are they known within her circle of friends? Once you start asking questions, I’m sure more questions will emerge. But you never know, there could be some answers in there, too.’
I stared for a while at the names of the women: Rosamie Cotabu 12th October 2018 and Reyna Gatan 23rd October 2018. What had happened to these women? How had they disappeared without a trace? And now Nisha would be added to this list: Nisha Jayakody 31st October 2018.
Tony asked for my details: my full name, Nisha’s full name, my mobile number, my landline and my address. He took it all down in his notebook.
‘I’m going to go back to the police,’ he said. ‘I’ll write them emails, I’ll visit, I’ll camp out on their front step, if I have to. If a Cypriot woman had gone missing, they would have searched the Earth to find her. Why are they not bothering with these women? Because they are foreign. They are not Cypriot, they are not citizens. They just don’t count.’
*
As I drove away from the sea, I could still hear the music in my ears, smell the food on my clothes. The road was almost empty on this Sunday afternoon. I was both reassured and troubled by my meeting with Tony. Most of the way home, the names and the dates flashed through my mind. Had Nisha ever mentioned these women? I really didn’t think so. Perhaps their consecutive disappearances were mere coincidence. But something – something dark and sinking and sinister – told me this wasn’t the case.
It was just before 6 p.m. when I arrived home. In front of her house, Mrs Hadjikyriacou had her black skirt hitched up to her knees, teaching Aliki a dance move, kicking about in her new red and cat Converse. Aliki was taking the lesson very seriously. Ruba had opened a foldable wooden table in the front yard and was bringing out bowls of steaming food.
When Mrs Hadjikyriacou saw me, she beamed. ‘We’ve had the most fantastic time,’ she said. ‘I’m getting rather tired though.’ She let her skirt drop down to her ankles and insisted that I join them for dinner.
We all sat together around the table. Aliki must have been starving because she was already holding her knife and fork, eager to start eating. She eyed the food in the bowl – a Nepalese dish of fine noodles and vegetables that instantly reminded me of the smells at the Blue Tiger. There was a jug of bright, freshly made lemonade, bowls of creamy white goats’ yoghurt and warm bread.
‘I was going to ask you how it went, but you look famished, so let’s eat first.’
Ruba lit the outdoor heater and brought out some colourful crochet throws for Aliki and me to wrap around our shoulders; they were of the softest wool and smelled of jasmine. ‘I made those after the war,’ Mrs Hadjikyriacou said, ‘when I first came to live here. Each is a flower that used to grow in my garden back home.’ And as we ate, she listed the flowers in alphabetical order.
Aliki liked this game because she challenged Mrs Hadjikyriacou with ever more obscure flower species.
‘How about the cyclamen Cyprium?’
‘No, they only grow in the mountains.’
‘How about the Cyprus bee orchid? They are very pretty. Our teacher likes flowers. He teaches us all about them.’
‘No. They usually grow in grasslands and open pine woodlands.’
‘How about the tulipa Cypria? My teacher, Mr Thomas, told us they are so hard to find, and they are the colour of deep red blood. Did you have any of those in your garden?’
‘No, but I’m pretty sure that my Auntie Lucia had some of those in her garden. She had three thumbs. Talking about three thumbs . . . have you heard of the monster that lives in the underwater caves near Cape Greco?’
Aliki shook her head, eyes round.
‘Some people say it has several heads and numerous limbs. But everyone who talks about the creature speaks of its friendliness. It is said to appear from the deep sea, attracted by fish caught in a net. Some people think it is a giant sea snake or a large runaway crocodile, but I have seen it with my own eyes and I can tell you that it looks like a prehistoric Plesiosaur. It was many years ago, when I was exactly your age, Aliki, that I went with my parents and my seven siblings on a summer trip to the sparkling waters of the east coast . . .’
I listened to the story and devoured the food on my plate. Ruba ate with us and was vigilant should we need anything – occasionally refilling our glasses with lemonade, or passing around the bread and yoghurt. Her eyes darted about the table; from time to time she smiled at me or Aliki and gave a slight nod, but she never spoke.
There was a light on above my flat. Yiannis was sitting on the balcony looking out across the street. I knew that I would need to speak with him, tell him about the Blue Tiger and share the information that Tony had given me. I prayed that he would know something.
The man with the army boots and the windbreaker is sitting on a rock. He drinks some hot tea from a flask and stares without blinking at the still water of the lake. Beside him is a black suitcase, lying on its side. After a moment, he straightens his posture, focuses his eyes, looks around and places a hand on the case.
Five or more beetles are crawling over the hare’s fur. Some feed on fly eggs, larvae and maggots; others devour its flesh. They like the dark, the time when they feel most free. With their flat bodies, they crawl into the empty socket of its eye, feeling their way around with long antennae. A black whip snake glides past, raises its head and continues to the edge of the crater. It trickles like a shining stream down to the lake, but it does not enter.
There is no breeze tonight and the sky is full of stars. A half-moon gleams, dropping its bone-white light upon the pecan trees and fruit trees, down upon the distant river where dragonflies swarm, down upon the sunflowers and the dirt path, leading to the homes in the village, where most people are asleep. A TV flickers in one of the bedrooms; a night light glows in another. In the guest house, a cockroach, enticed to the room by the sugared almonds, feeds on the paper of an old book of fairy tales sitting on a wooden shelf. The widow is snoring. She has left the washing out on the line. A cat, with the stripes of a tiger, watches from behind a rosemary bush, planning to catch a lone dragonfly that has found itself far from the fresh water of the river – a scarlet dragonfly with ghostly, red-veined wings.
When the breeze picks up again, the man with the army boots and the windbreaker and the su
itcase is no longer there.
18
Yiannis
T
HERE WERE FLYERS OF NISHA all over the neighbourhood. On every corner, there she was. Even from my balcony I could see her, glued to the pole of a street lamp outside Yiakoumi’s antique shop, and on my walk, hanging from the canopy at Theo’s, stuck to the wooden pillars and walls of the restaurant. Passers-by glanced at them but mainly took no notice. Only the other maids paused, contemplating Nisha’s picture, with something in their eyes like fear – or perhaps it was recognition, a fearful look in the mirror.
The birds from the hunt in Akrotiri had filled the fridges in the spare room. I needed to clean them, but I couldn’t find the discipline to sit down and focus.
Feeling uneasy, I grabbed my coat and headed downstairs. Crossing the street, I pulled off one of the flyers from a lamp-post and headed to Lakyavitos station.
*
I was kept waiting for forty-five minutes before I could see the chief constable, Vasilis Kyprianou.
‘I understand you’re here to report a missing person,’ he said, opening a notebook and clicking a silver pen.
I nodded and placed the flyer on the desk.
He glanced down at it briefly, then up at me, ‘I see. Can I get you a coffee?’
‘No, thanks.’
He picked up the phone and asked for one coffee and some biscuits. I proceeded to tell him about Nisha and how she had disappeared without her passport.
‘I know that her employer came to report her missing but had no success,’ I concluded.
He put his pen down now and with a gesture that seemed to suggest that he wasn’t fussed, he closed the file. ‘And who are you to her?’ he asked, tapping the flyer roughly with a finger.
I hesitated.
‘Her lover?’ There was a slight smirk on his face.
‘Well, I wouldn’t put it like that.’
He smiled now. ‘I don’t blame you, a lot of them are extremely beautiful. I wonder sometimes, though, if they really are as beautiful as they seem or if it’s because they look different, exotic, if you know what I mean?’
Songbirds Page 16
