“Nobody could. I spent most of my teenage years in hiding, living in fear of my mother. I won’t go back to that again.”
He squeezed ahead of me down the stairs, stopping on the next landing and turning to face me.
“At least move out of your flat temporarily. It’ll take him a matter of minutes to find your address on the electoral register. Next thing, he’ll be on your doorstep. Look, I’m not trying to frighten you, I’m just being realistic. This man is very good at what he does.”
“I don’t care. I’ve done nothing wrong.” I stepped around him and kept going.
“Listen to yourself, Bronte. You’re a witch. To Kohl, that’s justification enough.”
I barrelled through the fire-doors at the bottom and out into the corridor.
“And what about those Novices? What are you doing to protect them?”
Kinsella rolled his eyes. “I grant you that it’s not a perfect situation but I’m trying my best to rectify that.”
“But this is the time that they need your protection. I know what they’re going through right now. My mother told me that we were going on holiday. Then, when we landed in Russia everything changed. I ended up a virtual prisoner. Those girls need someone they can trust, they’ve had enough false promises. You need to get them away from Stahl before you make a bad situation worse.”
“Stahl isn’t the issue here,” Kinsella was saying. “Trust me, I’ve looked into her eyes and it’s like gazing into infinity. There’s nothing there. Plus, she’s kept totally isolated from the other women. They’ve no idea she’s even there.”
“Which just goes to show how little you know about witches. She’ll find a way to draw on their craft, I know it.”
Kinsella had gotten ahead of me and, maddeningly, held the next door open.
“Be assured, we’re going to have them moved as soon as we can find alternative accommodation.”
“If Helena were still in charge she’d never have let you put them together in the first place.”
That gave him pause.
“We’re stretched pretty thinly at present. And you’re not helping by refusing to co-operate. At least let me put a trace alert on your phone.”
“Not going to happen.”
We were approaching the foyer. I just needed to get out of the building.
“I never wanted any of this,” I said. “I just wanted to do a good job.”
“And you did. But, it’s often how these things turn out. Stuff happens and we just have to deal with it. Think about it from Millie’s perspective.”
I handed my pass to the woman on reception. I was letting my anger get the better of me. I resented the way that Kinsella was handling the situation – as if the Novices had created this problem themselves. I just needed to get out of the building. Get some air.
“What’s Millie got to do with it?”
“You live in the same flat, don’t you?”
I hated him for saying that but it was true. If I insisted on staying put wouldn’t I be putting her in danger as well?
“But she’s not on the list,” I said.
“No, but she is a witch.”
I ground the heel of my hand into my eye socket. “I don’t want to have to deal with this right now.”
“And perhaps you don’t have to. Look, what about a compromise? What if you let me put some men outside your flat: keep an eye on both of you?”
I put my hands on my hips. I was tired of arguing but there was still the issue of Millie’s safety to consider.
“Let me think about it.”
*
Marcus was parked out the front when we got outside and Kinsella got into the passenger seat without another word. Marcus lifted one finger off the steering wheel by way of acknowledgement but, when I didn’t respond, he waited only long enough for Kinsella to fasten his seat belt before pulling away.
I pulled my cigarettes from my bag and went to sit on a low wall. My hands were shaking as I lit up.
A few minutes later Amir pulled up in a mini-van. He opened the side door and then went back up the main building. He emerged pushing Helena’s wheelchair. When she saw me she beckoned me over.
As I approached Amir eyed me warily.
“I just wanted to say goodbye,” Helena said.
I nodded. “If it means anything: I think you’re doing the right thing.”
“I wish I could say the same about you. Are you sure that you won’t re-consider?”
I let out a long sigh. “I’m not sure about anything anymore.”
Helena reached out and took my hand. “I tried to stand my ground and look what happened to me. This job – The Bear Garden – it destroys people, Bronte. Promise me that you won’t let that happen to you.”
“You have my word.”
As soon as she’d released me Amir started propelling her towards the van but stopped when Helena twisted around in her seat.
“That thing at the library,” she said. “It was wrong, what I did. I should have handled it differently.”
“I appreciate that.”
Amir lifted her out of her chair and placed her gently in the passenger seat. Then, once he’d stored the wheelchair, he drove off.
*
Valeria led us through the university’s vast dining hall. It was a big, bright space with windows all along one side. It looked large enough to comfortably accommodate two to three hundred students. The fifty Novices would have probably only have filled four of the long trestle tables. It was an odd place to house them but I had imagined their circumstances to have been a great deal worse. The buildings had been designed to cater for two thousand students and so everywhere we went echoed with our presence. It felt like everyone else had gone home for Christmas and we’d been left to rattle around in their absence.
When Kinsella had offered to show me where the Novices were being held I’d decided to invite Millie as well. After the shock of discovering myself on the Church’s wanted list, I realised that I needed a bit of moral support. Valeria, who was in charge of the day-to-day running of the facility, had agreed to show the three of us around.
Kinsella had filled us in on the background of the place on the drive over. The University of North London had been struggling with falling rolls for several years and the combination of expensive accommodation matched with a disastrous Ofsted report had been enough to all but guarantee its demise. The governors had looked for help from city investors who had set up a new planning team tasked with switching the university’s focus from vocational training towards business and engineering. But in order for all these changes to be implemented it was deemed necessary for the original campus to be sold off and the whole university re-located to a green acre site near Essex. The new look university had already begun targeting more lucrative students in both China and Africa.
Kinsella explained that The Bear Garden was in talks to acquire the old site as a new security facility and training centre.
“The Student Union offices are just round here.” Valeria showed us the way.
We followed her out into a separate common room: groups of inter-changeable seating grouped around small coffee tables. Over on our left were three pool tables which had seen better days. Behind these was the entrance to the Student Union office which, improbably, had a dart-board right next to it.
Inside, there was a small waiting area and two rows of chairs facing across from one another. A black girl who looked to be about fourteen was sitting on one of the chairs whilst a female guard stood behind her.
“Stand up,” the woman said as we entered.
The girl raised her head with weary resignation before doing as she was asked.
“Kosi!” Kinsella sounded shocked.
The girl looked at him for a moment, trying to assess him and then her eyes lit up. She ran over to Kinsella and wrapped her arms around him.
“Mr Niall, Mr Niall. I knew you’d come for me.”
Kinsella managed to look both genuinely touched and acutely em
barrassed. The latter effect was heightened by the fact that the girl had her face crushed against his stomach and was refusing to let go. Kinsella didn’t appear to know how to handle such a genuine outpouring of emotion. In the end he reached down and stroked Kosi’s tightly braided hair. I couldn’t help notice a ‘C’ shaped scar running along one side of her scalp
“Oh, Mr Niall.”
“You two know one another then?” Valeria said.
“This is the girl he wrote about?” I said. “The one from the book.”
I still hadn’t read all of Kinsella’s book. Melissa Stahl had told me about her.
Kinsella had managed to ease the girl away from him. Then he draped an arm over her shoulder, still managing to look incredibly uncomfortable.
“I was working in Kenya,” he said concentrating on getting the details right. “Kosi’s parents were members of a local church and they invited a Witch Hunter to come and speak to them.”
Kosi pushed herself away from him, suddenly animated. “My father asked the man if he had seen any witches in their village and the man said: “Why, of course, there’s one standing right next to you.” And he pointed straight at me. There was nothing I could say to deny it. Everyone turned against me in that moment. Even my parents”
Kinsella reached up, cradling the back of her head with one hand. “It’s fine, we don’t need to go over it all again.”
The girl ignored him turning to each one of us in turn.
“They cast me out of my house. I had to live in an old goat shed at the far end of the village. They pretended to ignore me at first but then one of the goats stopped giving milk and that was the end for me.”
Kinsella said, “I’d heard reports that a child had been attacked and left for dead in one of the villages and that a group from Medecin sans Frontieres had found her. She’d been set upon with a machete.”
“My brother and my uncle came for me,” Kosi recounted the events as if they had happened to someone else. “They locked me in with the goats at night and then, one time, I heard my brother’s voice outside, then my uncle’s. I thought they’d come to help me escape.” Then she said, with genuine hurt. “But they hadn’t.”
Kinsella’s face pulled tight. “They’d almost severed her right arm. The doctors did a remarkable job saving it.”
“Then Mr Niall brought me to this country. To Birmingham Children’s Hospital.” She pronounced each syllable with such well-practised ease that it sounded quite lyrical.
“She was in there for six months,” Kinsella said. “And then - when it was time to go back -we set her up with a foster family in Nairobi.”
Kosi gave him a stern look. “The first family - the doctor’s family – they were hopeless. They didn’t know what to do with a child. They treated me like a little bird, frightened to say anything for fear of upsetting me. The second family was much better. They had two boys. They thought that they were tougher than me. But I showed them.”
Kinsella held her at arm’s length and gave her a searching look. “So what happened? How did you end up here?”
Kosi shrugged, matter of fact. “I was walking home from school one day when one of the gangs picked me up. It happens all the time to girls like me. They wanted to make me into a working girl but then they saw my scars and changed their mind. They said I would frighten the men away. Then Miss Melissa came along and they sold me to her.”
Kinsella rubbed her back. “Kosi, I am so sorry. You have to understand that I had no idea about any of this.”
He hugged her to him whilst staring at me over the top of her head. I was starting to feel guilty about doubting his motives.
*
I sat with Valeria and Millie in the little student union office. The female guard had disappeared and Kosi had insisted on showing Kinsella her room. He was completely different around her, more like an indulgent older brother than anything. Kosi was both thrilled and slightly over-awed to be in his company and whenever he asked her a difficult question about her past she would just swat it away and smile. It was quite heartening seeing the pair of them together.
“I’ve never seen that side to him,” Valeria said. “He’s like some big, lolloping teenager with her around.”
“I thought it was lovely,” I said. “Reminds me why we’re here.”
Valeria was leafing through Kosi’s file. “She really has had an awfully shitty time of it.”
“And are you telling me you didn’t know?” I said.
Valeria stared at the file in her hand. “Know what?”
“That the pair of them knew each another. You set this up.”
Valeria thought about denying it and then conceded. “Okay, so I did a little research. I knew that he’d helped find her find a foster family but not all that other stuff…”
She took out a black and white photograph which showed Kosi in hospital, her arm in a solid white cast.
“To think that her own family did this,” she rifled through a few more photographs. “Honestly, I don’t know how she managed to survive all this.”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” Millie moved over to look at the photos and then, just as quickly, moved away again obviously upset. “It’s just wrong.”
“And that’s just one of their stories,” I said. “There are forty eight others just like her.”
Valeria said, “They’re not all quite so terrible.”
“They’re all damaged in some way,” I said. “If not physically, then emotionally. That’s why Stahl picked them. She needed them to put their trust in her.”
Valeria stood up, took off her jacket. “Have either of you seen Stahl since it happened?”
“Kinsella’s taking us over there this afternoon,” Millie explained. “Didn’t you know?”
It was obvious from Valeria’s expression that she didn’t.
“The Secure Unit?” Valeria hung her jacket over the back of her chair. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
I sat forward, drawing my hands through my hair. “It’s been hanging over me for days. I’m dreading it.”
“You don’t have to go in there, you know.”
“Oh, yes I do. I have to look her in the eye. I have to know if she still poses a threat.”
Valeria tipped her chair backwards, “The neurological team don’t think so. They’ve been monitoring her since she arrived. According to them she’s more of a danger to herself than anyone else. I saw her when she was first admitted. She’s a tortured soul, she really is.”
“So what’s the problem then?”
“It’s not her I’m worried about; it’s the other one.”
“Anathema?” Millie said.
“That’s the one,” Valeria said. “I don’t know what it is about her but she’s up to something.”
Millie shot me a look. Whenever I had nightmares about what happened –and that still tended to happen at least once or twice a week – it was Anathema’s name I shouted out in the night. For some reason, she was the one I was most frightened of. I reasoned that seeing her securely behind bars might go some way to banishing the nightmares.
Valeria was the first to break the silence.
“The girls should be starting in the gym now if you’d like to come and meet them.”
*
I’d expected a modern fitness centre but Valeria took us over to a very old-fashioned gym, the sort you see in some schools: with wall-bars and a heavily varnished floor. They even had climbing ropes. I could see why the place had been closed down. If you were paying exorbitant tuition fees you’d expect state-of-the-art facilities.
We met and chatted to some of the girls. Valeria introduced us. Not all of them viewed our visit with the same positive approach Kosi had. Some of the women were outwardly hostile, gathering in groups to talk about us. I had to remind myself that a lot of these women had been active supporters of Stahl’s work. We met one very pleasant woman from French Guyana who was extremely keen to engage with us. She was thrilled when s
he discovered that we worked in The Bear Garden and would have kept us answering questions all afternoon if we’d not made our excuses and moved on. Another woman from Kazakhstan with white blonde hair appeared very confident and spoke openly about the cliques which had developed within the group. She asked a number of questions about their detention which neither Millie nor I could answer. It was a little bit shaming not having anything positive to contribute. After a while, Valeria came over to rescue us.
I wanted to get into some of the bigger groups and talk to them about their experiences but they didn’t appear keen to talk. There was a large group of African witches who were passing a netball between themselves but, when I tried to talk to one of them an older woman made some comment and the group quickly broke up leaving me standing on my own. I watched as they moved off in different directions before re-forming on the far side of the room.
“So you’re in charge of this lot,” I said.
Valeria nodded. “It’s not been easy. Security’s been a nightmare.”
“How do you make yourself understood?” Millie asked. “I mean, I don’t recognise half the languages I’ve heard.”
“It’s not as difficult as you might think. I speak a little French and German. One member of my team is Spanish and that seems to cover most of it. I’m not even sure how many different languages we’re dealing with. A lot! But let’s just say: when they want to understand you they can.”
“What about those two?” I indicated two Asiatic girls who stood apart from the main groups.
“North Korean – if you can believe that. They do struggle at times.”
“Any Russian speakers?” I was always eager to practice.
“Over there,” she pointed me in the direction of a young woman with short blonde hair and a man’s leather jacket. “Her name’s Irina. I think you two might have some stuff in common.”
Irina was actually quite sweet and was the first one to actually thank us for coming to visit. Her biggest concern was boredom. There wasn’t an awful lot for them to do other than participate in group sports. She started talking about the events at the Tower and how frightened she’d been when everything had started to fall apart. I’d half expected her to blame me for what had happened but that didn’t seem to be the case. There was very little that she could recall that I didn’t agree with, which came as something of a relief as I’d begun to doubt my own recollection of events.
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