by David Mark
‘They are family. Cousins to Meda’s mother. They were embarrassed when my partner told them their sister had put messages on that bastard Facebook about Meda. They were told to make sure the messages disappeared but then they drank and their shame became anger and their anger became directed at the nosy English bitch and her daughter who made them look like fools. And they decided to make themselves feel better. I’m sorry this happened. It will not happen again.’
Molly is shaking her head, glaring at the floor. ‘I don’t know how you can be so sure that she’s been kidnapped for ransom. There are bad people everywhere. For different reasons. Where was she last seen? Did she get to the shop? Who saw her? And why haven’t they called yet?’
‘Relax,’ smiles Karol.
‘Don’t patronize me. I’m concerned. You should be too.’
‘I am. I want her home. She not come home and Steppen not pay me. My partner get upset and then I have problems to solve. We want to go home. It’s miserable in London in December.’
‘How many have you got back?’ asks Lottie. ‘Hostages, I mean.’
‘We not call them hostages,’ he says. ‘They just people on little holiday that cost their family some savings. And we get plenty back.’
‘Children,’ she says. ‘How many have been children?’
Karol frowns down one side of his face. ‘Two boys taken from a rich Latvian builder last year. They came home fatter and healthier than they left.’
‘Little girls? Meda’s age?’
Karol twitches; the merest flash of discomfort showing at the corners of his mouth. ‘I know of one. The family did not get in touch until too late.’
‘They didn’t pay?’
‘Little girl didn’t know her parents’ number. No call came. She must have become too much trouble.’
‘What happened to the girl?’ asks Hilda, and Molly reaches out to put an arm around her.
‘Dumped,’ he says, without emotion. ‘South-west London. Left in a tangle of trees by the motorway.’
‘There would have been an investigation,’ says Molly, incredulous. ‘I’d have heard about that …’
‘You probably did,’ says Karol. ‘Probably saw a paragraph in the Metro and thought it was very sad, then turned to the fashion pages and got on with your life.’
‘Don’t act like you know me,’ snaps Molly.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Karol. ‘I’m tired. Still got to sit up all night and stare at phone. They will call. You need to know so bad? Meda got to shop. Bought what she came for. Four pints of milk, tin of tuna, packet of ham. We see receipt at shop. She bought extra tin of tuna with change. She seen twice walking back, swinging bag. Happy. Then she gone.’
‘I don’t know that area,’ says Lottie, rubbing a knuckle against her forehead. ‘My brain’s going. What are we going to do?’
Karol gives her his attention. ‘You do nothing. You leave to me. Meda be home for next dance class. You forget this and not speak of it and everybody be happy. Steppen most of all.’
‘I liked Uncle Steppen,’ says Hilda.
‘He liked you too. That’s why he send me to help you tonight.’
‘And if he hadn’t?’ asks Molly, wrinkling her nose.
‘You’d have handled it, I’m sure,’ says Karol, and he stands up, barely making a sound as he does so. ‘Please, go home, go to bed, wake up and enjoy the new day. That is all any of us can do.’
Hilda and Lottie are both polite enough to say goodbye. Molly just sits and chews her cheek, staring so hard at the table top that she expects it to burst into flame.
‘Do you think he’s right?’ asks Hilda at last. ‘Meda will be OK? She’s playing video games and eating and it’s all fine?’
Molly glances at Lottie and something passes between them. Molly puts on her best mumsy smile and cuddles her daughter.
‘I promise,’ she says. And her bruised cheek burns.
HILDA
I needed the lie. I was a kid, after all. Still full of fairy castles and princess parties and dreams of becoming a groom to a stable of unicorns. Mum was probably right to tell me what she did. But promises count, don’t they? A lie isn’t really that terrible of a thing, but a broken promise? That’s what some people would refer to as a sin. I sometimes wonder whether all that happened next was a punishment for that one sin. I shake that thought away whenever it bubbles up. That kind of thinking can lead to madness. It can make you think there’s a reason to it all; some kind of cause-and-effect to the whole thing. It means that terrible things could have been avoided if you had just been better, and I don’t want to think that what happened to me only happened because I forgot to say a thank you for something or said a mean thing or didn’t believe in God.
I took comfort in that promise. Mum made it clear. Meda would be OK and nothing bad would have happened to her. Her words gave me a better night’s sleep than I expected. She repeated them as she cuddled me to sleep, spooned up behind me in her big four-poster bed with its lovely red and gold quilt pulled right up over our heads. She moaned a bit in her sleep, wincing every time she turned over, but every time a sound woke me I drifted back into our safe little burrow and comforted myself with the knowledge that Meda was probably having a brilliant time. I kept up that jollity all through breakfast. Even kept up the cheerfulness in spite of the bruising on Mum’s cheek and the pain that wrinkled her face as she brushed my hair and made my sandwiches. She was quiet on the walk to school. Hadn’t put her make-up on and was wearing nothing more remarkable than a pair of ripped jeans and a stripy jumper. Didn’t tell me to put my coat on and didn’t say ‘I-told-you-so’ when the sky tore open and great waves of rain came tumbling down from sky the colour of dead skin.
‘Love you,’ she said, at the school gates, but it was automatic and forced. I wanted her to say ‘be brilliant’ like usual, or try and embarrass me by doing a twirl or an elephant impression in front of the yummy mummies. She didn’t even wave. Just turned around and started trudging back home. I watched her go. She had her phone in her hand by the time she had cleared the playground. She was calling Lottie, I know that now. Starting to dig. Poking her nose in somewhere it didn’t belong. Taking a step down a road that would end in so much of our blood.
MOLLY
It’s a little after noon and Molly is grumbling her way down Fournier Street. Were there any sun she would barely recognize the question mark that her shadow makes upon the old stones. She is somebody who usually walks with her head up. Past lovers have remarked upon the swan-like elegance of her neck. Her adoption of such grace, of that certain poise, was a conscious decision. The people on the estate where she grew up had a tendency towards hunching their shoulders and disappearing, turtle-like, into the collars of their coats. As a teen she decided to accentuate her height and to walk with something approaching panache. Her new deportment led to accusations of her ‘having airs’. She was accused of thinking herself ‘better than she ought to be’. Dismissed by neighbours as a ‘snooty cow’ and ‘too big for her boots’. Her accusers would be delighted to see her now. She has pulled up the hood of her black coat and is hunkered down within it, wincing into the gale and keeping her eyes fixed on the slippery damp stone beneath her black knee boots. She is muttering to herself that the weather is ‘bloody ridiculous’ and knows that, in this mood, if she were to step in a puddle or topple off the kerb, she would either burst into tears or throw her handbag through a window. She considers herself as she comes to a halt. Were she sitting down, Molly knows she would be jiggling her legs up and down or tapping her fingernails on the table top. Walking through a rain that has been chopped into haphazard shapes by the tall buildings to her left and right, she is incapable of the sort of fiddly jitteriness that has always marked her sedentary moments. She contents herself with grumbling to herself and squeezing her hands into fists inside her soft fur mittens.
She forces herself to look up. Up at the imposing bulk of Christchurch. The guidebooks refer to its gleaming white
façade and elegant snow-coloured arches and columns, but the ceaseless traffic has stained the stone and to Molly’s eye, the whole edifice is the colour of water chestnuts and mildewed lace. She pauses where she stands. Re-adjusts her dress and coat. Checks her reflection in the darkened glass of the expensive salon. Looks back up at the spire. She feels a touch of connection, of significance, as she gazes up at the distant point. The Ripper’s victims would have looked up at the same spire every day of their lives. They would have quantified their journeys, their boundaries, their nearness to home, using this church as a marker. And each were murdered within the sound of its chimes.
Molly spots Lottie as she pushes open the door to the Ten Bells. She is sitting in a battered leather sofa behind a low, careworn table. She is wearing a tight tartan waistcoat over a tiny vest top and her tanned, tattooed arms somehow look more beguiling than her constricted breasts. Behind her is a large painting of the pub’s front doors as they would have been in Victorian times. Molly experiences a dizzying rush of peculiar displacement as she looks at this older representation of the space which she is currently inhabiting. It feels as if she could simply blink and find herself transported; to be within the painting staring out at a different century and imprisoned forever within scabbed swirls of paint. It is all she can do not to reach out to steady herself like some pitiable romantic heroin overcome by a swoon.
‘Got you a Bloody Mary,’ Lottie says, smiling. She half stands to greet her friend but the sofa is low and she is holding an armful of papers and gives up on the operation before actually levering her buttocks off the cushion. She points at her mug of tea and grimaces. ‘I opted for a Bloody Awful.’
‘Being a good girl?’ asks Molly, slipping out of her coat and pulling up a wooden stool from a nearby table. Her head is pounding and she wishes she had given in to the urge to buy something greasy and full of sugar.
‘Post-mortem in an hour. They like me to be sober.’
‘Killjoys,’ says Molly, and gives the barman a smile as he brings her drink. He gives her a once-over and seems to like what he sees. In a gesture of emancipation, she feels obliged to conduct a half-hearted appraisal of her own. Decides that, despite the sumptuous beard and pleasantly floppy fringe, she could never be with a man who has tattoos of Sonic the Hedgehog on his forearms. She turns back to her friend.
‘Surprised you want to give your support to the enemy,’ says Lottie, gesturing expansively at the pub. There has been a bar on the corner of Fournier Street and Commercial Street for more than 250 years. This is where they drank. The fallen women. The victims. The slain. This is where they sipped their gin and dulled their wits before venturing out to sell their bodies for pennies in the hope of finding enough coin for an evening’s lodgings. It features on every Ripper tour in the East End.
‘This place isn’t the enemy,’ says Molly, sipping her drink and giving an appreciative nod. ‘We’re the enemy. This place was the one for the proper Ripperologists. They’ve got authenticity on their side. We’re the interlopers cashing in.’
Lottie considers this and tries to find a counter-argument. She gives up. ‘Room for one more, I guess. And it’s not as though they did it on purpose, is it? Not as though the landlord killed the hookers so that a hundred years on his business would have a nice marketing gimmick.’ She pauses. ‘Did she sleep OK? The little one?’
‘Seemed to,’ says Molly, nodding. ‘She’s a funny one, isn’t she? Couldn’t sleep on her own for a month after watching the Muppets for the first time but got eight good hours after watching Julien get his head kicked in and finding out her friend’s been bloody kidnapped.’
‘How is Julien?’
‘Still asleep, I’d imagine. I’ve taken him off the rota. He went down like a right sack of shit, didn’t he? Took a punch like a right fanny.’
‘I like it when you go all Northern. Don’t be too harsh on him though. He was defending your honour.’
Molly pulls a face. ‘He didn’t need to get involved. He just escalated things. I’m sorry he got hurt but I’m not some princess who needs saving. I don’t need a knight in shining armour, thank you very much.’
Lottie sips her tea and grins at her friend as she considers a memory. ‘You went mental. Never seen you go off like that. It was like somebody had shaken up a bottle of ginger beer.’
Molly folds her lips in upon themselves and lowers her eyes, looking bashful. ‘Instinct, I suppose.’
‘I thought you got trained in conflict management,’ laughs Lottie. ‘Arm up the back, that kind of thing. You hit him in the mouth. Full-on punch. With your fist!’
‘I don’t like bullies.’
‘I could tell.’
They sit quietly, listening to the rain hit the glass and the occasional shouts of delivery drivers, cabbies and cyclists conducting their daily three-way war of attrition. This is Molly’s favourite part of London. She buys most of her vintage clothes from the boutiques and independent traders across the road at Spitalfields Market. She has imagined running a stall herself, selling the kind of curiosities and knick-knacks to which she has always been such a slave. Can see Hilda beside her, all fingerless gloves and a money belt around her waist, haggling with customers and learning that effortless confidence that some Londoners seem to be full of. She likes the idea. Holds on to it for a couple of seconds before bringing herself back to the present.
‘I’m surprised,’ says Lottie, cautiously. ‘Or maybe I’m not. I don’t know.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Surprised. That you wanted to know. That you’re not going to leave well alone. Is it the cop in you, do you think?’
‘I don’t know about any of that,’ says Molly, dismissively. She gives it a little thought. ‘Maybe I became a cop because I felt this way already and it seemed a way to get paid for it. I never really know what my motivations are for anything. I’m not sure anybody does.’
Lottie huffs out a lungful of air. ‘Somebody’s feeling cheerful. How’s your face?’
‘Sore,’ says Molly, flatly. She seems agitated. She wants to explain herself more thoroughly but simultaneously wonders if there is any merit in seeking a better collection of words to describe a mind-set which she does not really understand. ‘There’s a little girl in trouble. That’s wrong. That’s something which nobody can argue with. It’s wrong. She should be at home and instead she’s with somebody who is using her as a tool to make money. And instead of telling the police they’ve brought in this great bloody thug …’
‘That’s a bit strong,’ says Lottie, displeased at the description.
‘… and they’re going to pay whatever this person asks for and then no doubt beat the crap out of him as a warning to others.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ says Lottie.
‘Well, yes, but is it? I mean, there are laws. Systems. Ways of doing things. I get so cross about stuff when I think about it properly. It’s like, until you need to access certain services you presume that they work and that they’re there as a safety net if you need them. But when you need them and try to access them you discover that they don’t really exist and if they do, the waiting lists are over a year, and you find yourself suddenly feeling like you live in Albania or the Middle Ages and you can’t work out why all the immigrants want to come to this shitty little island …’
Lottie reaches across and puts her hand on Molly’s arm. ‘It’s OK,’ she says, soothingly. ‘You went through something horrible. It’s OK to sometimes still feel helpless.’
Molly gives a growl of frustration. ‘It’s not that. It’s not about before. About back then. This is about now. I don’t know if it’s being here, in this place, but sometimes I feel like we’re no more advanced than they were.’
‘Who?’
‘The ladies. Annie Chapman. Polly. Mary Kelly. His victims. The ones who sat where we’re sitting and talked about bad things happening to ordinary people and who ended up with their innards in the dirt. What’s improved?
What’s better? We’ve got iPhones and microwave meals and we live longer but … oh, I don’t know …’
‘This isn’t like you, Molly.’
‘It used to be,’ she sighs. ‘Two gears, me. Manically happy and giggly and full of energy, or reflectively miserable and willing to stick my head in a blender.’
‘That would be an interesting autopsy.’
Molly puts her head in her hands. She stretches her limbs while sitting still. Gives a little squeal of mock breakdown.
‘I’m doing my own head in,’ she says, pulling down the skin beneath her eyes and doing an impression of a chronically depressed bloodhound. ‘I’ve been awake all night and I don’t even know what I’m trying to work out.’
‘Whether to call the police?’ asks Lottie.
‘I’ve already decided not to do that. I’m not arrogant enough to think I know best. Karol might be exactly the right bloke for the job and this time next week Meda could be back at school and none the worse for wear.’
‘But …’
‘I think there might be something else,’ she says, turning her attention back to Lottie. She is struck for an instant by just how lovely her friend’s eyes are. Struck by the Malamute blue and the intense black pupils that dilate like spilled ink whenever Molly looks into them for longer than a moment. She feels momentarily flustered and tries to gather her thoughts. ‘If it’s a ransom, they should have heard by now. Shouldn’t they?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I think they should. I know, I know, who am I, right? But I mean, what if she’s gone missing and everybody presumes it’s a ransom situation because there have been others a bit like it, but while everybody is waiting around for the call, somebody completely unconnected has got her. Some pervert. Some sex offender. There are girls being used as slaves in big posh houses all over London right now. We think we’re so advanced and so far past all the ugliness but it’s all around us if you just look.’
