by Karen Moore
“Over time, I got the impression that something else was going on. I overheard strange whispered conversations between Luciano and his father and brother that made no sense, and furtive meetings and phone calls were still taking place at all hours. Then one day Luciano left his laptop on at home and I sneaked a look at his files. I was shocked; they made reference to goods being ‘imported’ and exorbitant amounts of money changing hands. Nothing explicit, but the dealings clearly had nothing to do with the wine business.”
“Did you ever discuss it with Luciano? There might have been a reasonable explanation.”
“I was too scared. There was so much in the media by that time about the refugee situation and the ruthlessness of the people behind the trafficking. So, I copied all the files with the intention of going through them to find out the truth. Before I got the chance, I came home one day to find an envelope on the doormat with three silver bullets inside – one, I imagine, intended for each of us. There was no clue as to who’d sent it and where the threat was coming from. It was the final straw: I just freaked out and knew I had to get Eva out of there straight away to keep her safe. Nothing else mattered.”
Rhys flinched and shook his head in disbelief. “My God, I’d no idea that things were this bad.”
“Ceri was the only person I felt I could trust, and she was the one who helped me escape. The rest you know.”
“So, what will you do now?” he asked softly
Hanna shrugged and sighed deeply, feeling relieved to have confided in Rhys, almost as if she’d shaken off an invisible burden. He seemed stunned by what he’d heard, the shock clearly etched on his face.
“It’s impossible to know what to do for the best. I feel a moral responsibility to report the whole business to the authorities, but that would only jeopardise our safety. But even if I do nothing, there’s still a real danger that we’ll be tracked down anyway sooner or later, wherever we are. I blame myself for being so naïve and not seeing the signs, but I could never have imagined a situation like this.” A single tear trickled down her cheek, and she brushed it away quickly.
Rhys moved closer and slipped a comforting arm across her shoulders. “I really don’t know what to say or how to advise you. Something like this is completely out of my league.”
Hanna wondered fleetingly whether she’d done the right thing in telling Rhys what had happened. A bit late for second thoughts, she reflected.
“I shouldn’t have told you. It’ll be a burden to you as well now.”
“No, you did the right thing. It’s better for me to know what I’ve let myself in for.”
Hanna looked at him quizzically.
“Sorry, just trying to lighten the situation a bit in my own clumsy way,” said Rhys with a wry smile. Maybe we should sleep on it and talk some more in the morning.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s late and I really should be going, but I don’t want to leave you both on your own. Maybe I could stay on the sofa bed tonight?”
Hanna felt relieved at his suggestion. “I’d really appreciate that. Telling you has brought it all back and made it more vivid, if that’s possible. I’d feel better knowing that there’s someone else around tonight, if you don’t mind.”
“Long as I get a decent breakfast before I get off to work in the morning, I’m all yours!”
“No problem, that’d be a small price to pay,” said Hanna, with a faint smile. “Let me find you a spare duvet. I’m sure I’ve seen one somewhere.”
“Allow me. I know exactly where it is,” said Rhys, going straight to the cupboard under the stairs. “By the way, there’s a friend of the family, a lawyer, who’s had some experience of human rights cases. He might be able to help.”
“Okay, let me think about it. Thanks for listening and for all your support. I guess I need it right now,” said Hanna. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Sleep well, see you in the morning.”
“You, too,” Rhys said.
She could feel his eyes follow her as she turned and disappeared into the bedroom, with almost a pang of regret.
Hanna woke to a clattering of crockery coming from the kitchen. She realised with a start that it was late and she must have overslept. She heard Eva giggle at something Rhys had said, although she couldn’t make out the words. Her head was thumping; sleep had eluded her long into the night, her mind churning after sharing the events of the past few months with Rhys. When sleep eventually came, it had been deep and dreamless but still left her feeling drained.
It was Friday, the day she’d agreed to go into the office and take Eva to nursery, if the stormy conditions had abated. She peered through the curtains; the sky was murky and a thin drizzle was falling. No excuse for not going in, and it would do Eva the world of good to be with other kids again after being cooped up in the cottage for so long.
Wrapping herself in a warm dressing gown, Hanna went into the kitchen to find Eva sitting cross-legged on the floor, still in her pyjamas, playing with Cosmo. “Morning, munchkin,” she said, ruffling Eva’s hair. Rhys grinned and thrust a mug of steaming coffee into her hands.
“Thanks. Sorry I overslept. Took me ages to get off, then when I did…”
“Don’t worry, I’ve only just got up myself. It was Eva who woke me, chatting to the cat in Italian.”
“I thought you had to be at work early?”
“I did, but I’ve called in to let them know I’ll be late. I’ve got some errands to run on the way in, anyway.
Hanna took a sip of her coffee. “Come on, Eva, it’s nursery today. Let’s get you washed and dressed.”
“Think about what I said about the lawyer last night. It might be useful to get some professional advice. Put you in a better position.”
“I will, and thanks again for all your help. I’ve been trying to push things to the back of my mind, but I need to make a decision sooner or later. There’s no easy solution. I just feel so torn.”
“Well, I need to be off,” said Rhys, giving Hanna a peck on the cheek and swinging Eva in the air, much to her delight. Grabbing a piece of buttered toast in one hand and his car keys in the other, he made for the door. “I’ll give you a ring later. Have a good day, both of you, and mind how you go.”
Alerted by the jingle of the car keys, Bryn rose sleepily from his place in front of the dying embers of the fire and followed Rhys out to the car. Hanna waved them off from the window before starting to get ready for work.
The roads were quiet, which was just as well as they were still treacherous, slick with rain and scattered with debris brought down by the recent storms. Visibility was poor in the sparse daylight. Hanna drove slowly as she did her best to negotiate her way through, trying to concentrate through the torrent of kiddie-chatter from the back seat. She felt like a novice driver, after several days of not being behind the wheel.
Not long after they’d left the cottage, she noticed a pair of piercing headlights some way behind them, high off the ground as if coming from an off-road vehicle of some sort. They were distinctive, more like fog-lights. As she steered the Peugeot down the last stretch towards the main coastal road, the headlights disappeared for a while, but Hanna could have sworn that they were back a few minutes later. As the traffic got busier, it became difficult to differentiate between one vehicle and the next. My God, she thought, I’m being paranoid. Maybe I should speak to the lawyer as Rhys suggested. Better than trying to deal with it on my own.
It was getting lighter, the clouds thinning to reveal a pallid sunlight. A silly song from CBeebies came on the radio and Hanna started to sing along with Eva. Eva didn’t know all the words and used whatever came to mind, a curious mix of English, Italian, with the odd word of Welsh. The result sent both of them into a fit of giggles. Hanna started to relax.
It was only when she pulled up at the main traffic lights in Llangefni that Hanna thought she recognised the headlights of the 4x4 several cars back. Don’t be ridiculous, she admonished herself, it can’t be the same o
ne.
But somehow she couldn’t shake off the feeling, and when she drew up to drop Eva off at nursery, she got a fleeting glimpse of two dark-haired men as the high-sided vehicle passed by. One looked vaguely familiar, but it could just have been her imagination in overdrive. She spent the rest of the day on tenterhooks, worrying about Eva, even phoning the nursery three times to check everything was okay.
When Hanna finally arrived to pick Eva up, she found her sitting on the floor daubed in paint, giggling and chattering away in Italian with a dark-skinned, curly-headed little boy who she assumed was Ottavio.
“C’mon, Eva, time to go home now,” she said, grabbing the toddler by the hand.
Eva’s face fell. “But I was playing with Ottavio…”
“Not any more, you’re not,” said Hanna, whisking her away and popping her head round Dilys’s office to let her know they were going. In the hall on the way out, a dark man with an aquiline nose hurriedly brushed past her. At first, she thought it was Luciano and her heart leapt into her throat, her body trembling. But when she looked again, she realised that this man was shorter and stockier. He made straight for Eva’s playmate, calling him by name. Ottavio’s father, Hanna thought, hurrying Eva out of the nursery and back towards the car.
As soon as she got home, she called Rhys to tell him what had happened earlier. He sounded concerned, which made her all the more worried as if it hadn’t just been her imagination.
“Listen, I hope you don’t mind but I’ve spoken to Dafydd Williams, the lawyer friend, and he’s happy to come over in the next day or so and give you some advice if you want. It’ll give you a better idea of where you stand and what the options are. What do you reckon?”
Hanna was unsure, but she had to face up to the situation and make a decision one way or another. Nevertheless, she was loath to share the information with a total stranger, even one who’d be able to give her professional advice.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “It makes sense. Go ahead and arrange it.”
“Until then, stay at the cottage and keep off the roads. Anything suspicious, call me right away.”
Hanna felt an icy chill creep through her body at the thought that the cottage might no longer be the safe haven she’d hoped for.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sicily, Friday 31st October – Saturday 1st November, 2014
An exasperated voice trickled through the loudspeaker of the mobile phone: “Eh, signore, pazienza! Just stay where you are, we’ll be with you shortly. It’s a busy night, I’m afraid.”
Luciano continued to pace up and down the beach; it was the fourth time he’d called the carabinieri, each time getting a similar response, as if he’d called about something trivial. It was approaching 1am now, almost two hours since they’d made their gruesome discovery. And they were expected to stay there until the police put in an appearance.
They’d moved a little distance away so they couldn’t readily see the shape of the body in the moonlight, but it was no less distressing for Hanna. She couldn’t stop shivering, partly from the night air which had turned chilly under a clear sky, but mostly from shock. Luciano slipped off his jacket and wrapped it round her shoulders.
“Sorry, amore. We’re just going to have to hang on here. You heard what the police said on the phone. It shouldn’t be much longer now.”
“You’d think they’d take the death of a child seriously and make it a priority,” she muttered.
“I guess for them it’s just one more body out of all the migrants who are found dead on our shores and out to sea.” Luciano shrugged dismissively.
“How do you know it’s a migrant?”
“Well, it’s more than likely, given the current situation.”
Hanna felt her chest tighten and the bile begin to rise in her throat. She’d seen the constant stream of news reports about people fleeing from the shores of North Africa in makeshift boats to escape war and atrocities in their own countries. She couldn’t begin to imagine how the refugees might feel. Many of them never even managed to reach Sicily, dying or drowning en route. But experiencing it first-hand and in such shocking circumstances was horrifying. Did human life really have so little value? The gulf between these refugees desperate to escape their homelands and the comfortable lives of the islanders seemed enormous. She felt guilty that she hadn’t made more of an effort to help out in some way.
“I guess we should all be doing our bit to help them. After all, it’s not their fault. Any family would resort to desperate measures faced with a similar situation, anything to get away to safety.”
Luciano pulled a face, seemingly unmoved. “That might be the case for the minority, but if you watch the news reports, you’ll see that most of them are young single men who’ve heard they can make a better life for themselves in Europe without too much effort. They want to come here for economic reasons, not political ones. Many of them are criminals, and probably more than a handful are terrorists who come here to commit atrocities in Europe.”
“That seems a bit harsh. You don’t know that for sure.” Hanna was horrified; she couldn’t remember Luciano ever expressing such sentiments before. “What about the men who’ve been persecuted and tortured in their native countries, and the women and children caught up in conflict?”
“And just how do you differentiate between those in need and those with an excuse? Either way, they’re coming to Europe to sponge off our people. It needs tackling, if you ask me. Charity begins at home.”
Luciano’s apparent lack of concern left Hanna dumbfounded. It wasn’t an issue that they’d discussed in the past. In fact, they rarely disagreed on anything. Before she could respond, the distant wail of a police siren floated towards them on the night air, quickly intensifying in volume as the police car drew nearer.
“About time, too,” said Luciano. “A few questions and we should be out of here.”
Hanna couldn’t bring herself to say anything; she was too taken aback by his reaction to the plight of the refugees.
The siren built to a deafening crescendo as a police car screeched to a halt on the gravel road that ran parallel to the beach. Two uniformed carabinieri got out and made their way towards them, moving slowly across the sand.
“Buona sera, signori. Sorry for the delay. I take it that you are the people who’ve found the body of a child on this beach? Can you show us where it is?” It was the older officer who spoke while the younger stayed several steps behind him, a bored expression on his face.
“Yes, I’ll take you there,” said Luciano. “Hanna, do you want to stay here with the officer?” She nodded. The young policeman forced a smile and Luciano led the older officer over to the body. Hanna could hear them talking but couldn’t make out the words. It wasn’t long before they were back.
“You’ll both need to come down to the station, I’m afraid, and answer some questions so we can file a report. We’ll try not to keep you too long,” the older officer said, ushering them to the waiting police car.
The next few hours passed in a blur, most of it spent waiting for someone to take their statement. At that hour, the police station was quiet; a sole officer manned the front desk, and the duo who’d brought them in had been called out again straight away. Eventually, the desk sergeant called for assistance but only after a heated exchange with Luciano in dialect that Hanna could barely decipher. A stern uniformed official appeared within minutes and steered them into a back office.
Hanna shuffled uncomfortably in her seat as the police officer confronted them with a string of questions. He recorded their words on a computer, typing laboriously with two fingers and showing little interest in the answers. For him, it seemed to be just a routine matter, but for Hanna it was a major tragedy. She was shocked at the way the people around her were dealing with this. After all, it was a dead child they’d discovered on the beach, not some washed-up animal which would have been bad enough. She began to wonder if she was overreacting, judging by the behaviour of others
. Luciano continued to be dismissive and seemed more interested in not missing the award ceremony later that day.
By the time they’d completed the formalities and got a taxi back to the villa, it was starting to get light. Through the picture windows, Hanna was taken aback by the spectacular views of sunrise over the bay, in stark contrast to the horrors of the night before. Luciano made straight for the drinks cabinet and poured out a generous measure of brandy.
“Here, drink this,” he said, handing the glass to Hanna. “It’ll help calm your nerves. Then I think we should try and get some sleep if we’re going to be in any fit state for tonight.”
“Thanks, I certainly need something. It’s been a hell of a night.” Hanna flopped onto the sofa and took a gulp of the amber liquid, appreciating its warming effect. She felt exhausted and in no mood for the awards ceremony but didn’t want to let Luciano down. The awards were important, not just for him but for the family business.
“D’you think the police will be back in touch to let us know if there’s any news?”
“I doubt it,” said Luciano, taking a seat next to her. “They’ll only contact us if they need any more details. They won’t update us on any investigation. Not that there’ll be much of one.”
“Why not? Surely a dead child is a matter of concern?” Hanna could feel her cheeks flushing with anger.
“One more dead child is just collateral damage in their eyes, given the situation as a whole. The police won’t waste much time in investigating one death when they’ve got so many on their hands.”
