Last Room

by Reah, Danuta

  Caffeine Nights Publishing

  THE LAST ROOM

  Danuta Reah

  Fiction aimed at the heart

  and the head...

  Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2014

  Copyright © Danuta Reah 2014

  Danuta Reah has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.

  CONDITIONS OF SALE

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Published in Great Britain by Caffeine Nights Publishing

  www.caffeine-nights.com

  www.caffeinenightsbooks.com

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-907565-75-5

  Cover design by

  Mark (Wills) Williams

  Everything else by

  Default, Luck and Accident

  You are walking in the forest.

  With bare, naked feet,

  You are treading the fragrant moss along the line of sun.

  The forest is full of secrets, rustles…

  …It is the strange wildwood of love.

  Grażyna Chrostowska (Ravensbrück, 8th March, 1942)

  Acknowledgements

  With thanks to the Forensic Linguistics staff at the University of Łódź, and Aston University, but with particular thanks to Malcolm Coulthard and Krzysztof Kredens. I would also like to thank my agent, Teresa Chris for her invaluable support and belief, and my husband, Ken, for all the coffee, but mostly for just being there.

  For Alex and Nadine

  Chapter 1

  Danané, Côte d’Ivoire, 2005

  They were young men, dressed in a tattered array of battle fatigues, the leader lolling in the only chair, the others sprawled on the floor, enjoying the show. Their guns, polished, cared for, ready to kill, were propped across their knees. They were smoking and laughing.

  Heat filled the air. The day was still, and since the soldiers came, even the barking dogs were silent. There was just the hum of the flies, drawn by the scent of blood.

  They had stripped her naked.

  Her legs were shaking. Her face was wet with the tears she didn’t know she had cried. Her father’s body lay in the corner of the room. They’d shot his face off when he tried to protect her.

  She mustn’t look at the cupboard. She mustn’t think about the cupboard. Let them see her weakness. Let them see a pregnant woman, helpless and undefended. Don’t let them see the secret.

  One of the men on the floor prodded her belly lightly with the muzzle of his gun. The front sight dug into her. ‘She’s making a girl.’

  There was laughter, shouts of agreement and dissent. They wrangled, waiting for the leader to decide.

  His eyes were fixed, slightly glazed from the drugs they had all been smoking. He touched the tip of his knife blade to her stomach and moved it lightly across. She watched the trickle of blood follow it before she felt the sting. He spat on the floor. His teeth were discoloured.

  ‘A girl?’ He grinned loosely as he looked at the men. ‘Do we need another girl? Shall I get it out?’

  Their shouts that she and her child were dirty rebels, that it would take more than two of them to handle real men began to fade as darkness bloomed at the edge of her vision. She couldn’t faint. She had to stay alert. She had two children to protect. Her baby was quiet inside her, maybe sleeping, maybe already dead. She was going to die. Her baby was going to die.

  His fist drove into her belly.

  She was on the ground, trying to protect the child inside her with her arms. She mustn’t look at the cupboard. She mustn’t think about the cupboard, but her gaze shot across in an involuntary glance. The cupboard was wood and painted white, a rough piece of furniture her father had made. It stood in the corner of the room with a plastic bowl on top. She had been pouring water into it when the soldiers came. Her daughter’s small hands had been holding the jug.

  And now she saw that the cupboard door was open just a crack, and the light, the light, oh no she could see the light reflecting from a child’s eyes.

  ‘No.’ It was the first time she had spoken. She had screamed and she had cried, but she hadn’t spoken. The leader’s mouth stretched in a wide grin. ‘Yes.’

  She knew what they would do. She couldn’t stop them. Now, she had to survive. Her baby had to survive. And her daughter. If they found Sagal...

  If they find Sagal, if they do to Sagal what they are doing to her, then her soul will die. She will pour lamp oil over herself and her unborn child, over the house where her murdered father lies, and she will hold a taper to it and burn them all. Her only prayer will be that these creatures that used to be men will burn with her. She will take her own soul to hell, happily, if she can take their souls with her.

  The men wait their turn, watching and laughing.

  The drone of the flies is loud in the still, hot air.

  Chapter 2

  BBC news, UK, 2007

  Q: And the detention of children, minister. How do you respond to criticisms of government policy?

  A: Let’s be clear, nobody wants to see children detained. No one does, and certainly not me. But we do have an immigration system and we do have rules. When someone tries to break these rules – when they don’t have a legal right to stay in this country for example, and they refuse to leave, then we have a duty to use all the resources we can to make sure they go.

  ***

  Dungavel detention and removal centre, 2007

  Nadifa woke up. Every night, her dreams took her back. Two years lay between now and the day the soldiers came. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

  She lay on the hard mattress, listening to the familiar sounds: feet moving down the long corridors, the jangle of keys, the slight echo of the voices, the wheeze in the breathing of the two-year-old child beside her.

  She had given birth a few days after the attack, a month before her time. She had almost died. Her baby had almost died. They had tried to destroy her. They would have destroyed Sagal if they had found her. And if François, her husband, had been there when they came, they would have butchered him. It was François they had come for.

  Instead, they had survived. They had escaped. They had won.

  It didn’t feel like winning. When she held her new son in her arms, she waited for the flood of love she felt when Sagal was born. But as she looked into his dark eyes, she realised what the soldiers had done. They had stolen the child from her belly and left this creature in its place. This wasn’t the child she had carried all those months. This wasn’t the baby she and François had made. This was a changeling, a child she had to care for, but one she couldn’t love.

  Her eyes burned with tears she couldn’t shed.

  She heard footsteps outside her door.

  Beside her, the changeling child whimpered, and then began to wail. Instinctively, her hands moved to cover his ears. She could do this. She couldn’t love him, but she could protect him.

  In the corridor, do
ors opened and shut, voices shouted, and a child started screaming. She knew what was happening. The Congolese woman in the room three doors down was being taken away with her small boy. They would put handcuffs on the woman if she resisted. They would throw her into the van. They would put the terrified, hysterical child in their car. They would take them to the airport and force them onto a plane. Then mother and child would be gone.

  Like François.

  Like Sagal. Like her daughter she would never see again.

  The light flickered, filling the room with its flat brightness.

  It hummed, like the drone of flies.

  Chapter 3

  St Abbs, Scotland, 2007

  Will Gillen woke suddenly. The bedroom was starkly illuminated, then thunder shook the windows and the light vanished leaving a blue-white afterglow. Rain clattered against the glass. The lightning flashed again followed almost immediately by another explosion of thunder. The storm was overhead. He could hear the sound of the waves surging.

  But it wasn’t the storm that had woken him. His fingers groped for the phone and he was already half out of bed, his response automatic. ‘Yes?’ He checked his watch, noting the time of the call – 5 a.m.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Ania! What’s wrong?’

  ‘Don’t panic. I wanted to call you before you saw the papers.’

  ‘The… give me a minute, Ania, I was asleep.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry it’s so early, but we’ll be boarding soon and I wanted to talk to you before…’

  Boarding? He was getting out of bed as she spoke. ‘Just a second.’ He put the phone down and went to the basin. His face looked back at him in the mirror, unshaven with shadows under his eyes. His hair stood out in a wild tangle, showing the first strands of grey that were starting to weave through the black. He turned on the cold water, hard, and pushed his face under the tap, a trick he’d used often in the past to bring himself to quick alertness. He came back towelling his head. ‘OK. Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘The appeal. Derek Haynes’ appeal. It’s starting tomorrow.’

  Now it was beginning to make sense. ‘You think he might win?’

  ‘They’re challenging my evidence. It’s going to get nasty.’

  He sank down onto the edge of the bed. Ania’s work as a forensic linguist sometimes took her into court as an expert witness. It was bad luck that had brought the Derek Haynes investigation her way. ‘It was a nasty case full stop. You gave your opinion at the trial. If someone else disagrees, what’s the problem? It happens.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. Look Dad, I’ll have to be quick. They’ve called my flight.’

  ‘That’s OK – you can keep talking while you board.’

  ‘I’ll need a long wire. I’m using the phone booth.’

  ‘Quickly then. Where are you going?’

  ‘It’s just a trip to Łódź.’ Ania made regular trips as a visiting lecturer to the university in Poland’s second city. Now, as he listened to her voice against the background of a busy airport departure lounge, he could hear something that worried him. ‘Are you all right?’

  She knew what he meant. ‘I will be once I get there. Brown Jenkin’s on my back today.’

  Brown Jenkin was her shorthand for the recurrent depressions that had plagued her for years. His unease grew. ‘Look after yourself.’

  ‘I will. Look, you’ll get a letter, OK? I don’t want to take you unawares. You’re around for the next couple of days?’

  ‘Ania, what are you...?’

  A note of impatience slipped into her voice. ‘I haven’t got time, Dad. Just watch out for the letter, OK? I can’t explain now. I’m sorry to… I’d much rather… You’ll be around?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Good. They’ve almost finished boarding. I have to go. I’ll call you.’ The phone clicked off.

  He put the receiver slowly back in its cradle and sat on the bed frowning in puzzlement trying to work out some kind of explanation for the call he’d just received. Just watch out for the letter, OK… What kind of letter did she need to warn him about?

  He was too wide awake now to go back to sleep. He decided to make himself some coffee and start the day. He was taking his boat out for a day’s sailing and he had plenty he needed to do.

  The rain was battering the windows as he went into the kitchen. There was a scuffling noise under the bench and Keeper stretched her way out from her bed, yawning, her fronded tail waving a greeting. She thrust a welcoming nose into Will’s crotch, then followed him to the door. She looked out into the black rain and gave him a look of appeal, but when he didn’t relent, she vanished into the darkness returning five minutes later to shake the rain off her coat, spattering his trousers and slippers.

  Will turned on the radio and listened to the shipping forecast. Last night’s storm had passed, but the seas would be heavy. It would be a challenge to take the boat out on his own, and he found himself relishing the prospect. He needed to do something hard, something dangerous that required all his alertness and concentration.

  The forecast segued into the news. He turned up the volume so he could listen as he packed the car. The Haynes appeal was the third item. Less than a year ago, Derek Haynes, a detention centre officer, had been convicted of child murder. Eight-year-old Sagal Akindès, the daughter of a Côte d’Ivoire asylum seeker, had been abducted from the centre near Manchester where she, her mother and her infant brother were then held. Her remains had been found several weeks later, dumped in a drainage channel that carried run-off from a field into the River Irwell a few miles from the centre. Now Haynes was appealing against his conviction.

  The sky was just starting to lighten in the east as Will finished loading his Range Rover. Keeper, realising what was happening, held him up by dancing round the car in excitement instead of jumping into her place in the back.

  It was only a short drive to the harbour. When they arrived, the small car park was empty apart from the van that belonged to Jack, the car park attendant. Keeper, once liberated, raced down to the jetty where she leapt into the water and swam back to the small shingle beach. Jack, one of the many dive enthusiasts who haunted these shores, came over as Will started unloading. ‘Morning, Mr Gillen. Going out today?’

  ‘Morning, Jack. Yes, it’s about time. I haven’t had her out properly since November.’

  ‘It’s heavy after the storm.’

  ‘I’ll be looking out.’

  Keeper leapt into the water again. She was going to be frozen and sodden by the time he got her onto the boat. He called her sharply as she reached the beach and she came back, waiting until she was next to the two men before she shook herself.

  The air was cold and filled with the smell of the sea. He tried to recapture the anticipation he’d felt about the day’s sailing ahead of him but he couldn’t shake off his anxiety about Ania. Before he negotiated his way out of the harbour, he called her. She should have been on the ground in Łódź by now, but there was no reply. He remembered she had called him from a public phone. Maybe her mobile had been out of charge. He’d have to wait.

  Sailing always brought back memories of his children, twin girls, Louisa and

  Ania. They’d spent most of their summers here. Louisa had never been interested in sailing, and used to spend her time on the boat crouched in the shelter of the cabin, her nose in a book. Ania loved the sea. She’d become adept at crewing and one of his enduring images from her childhood was of her tying off a coil of rope, her small hands gripping the line, her orange life jacket a beacon in the sunlight as they pitched through the choppy waters towards the calm of St Abbs harbour.

  They had been peas-in-a-pod alike in appearance, so different in personality.

  But Louisa was dead.

  And Ania... Brown Jenkin’s on my back today.

  The Haynes case had been like a dark piece of the past coming to claim her. And it wasn’t over. It would never be over.

 
Chapter 4

  Gdynia, Poland 2007

  Dariusz Erland shifted impatiently in his chair. He was in the small apartment in the port city of Gdynia where he had grown up, listening to the sound of his father shuffling round in the kitchen. He had arrived half an hour ago and had been waiting for over fifteen minutes for the tea the old man had insisted on making. ‘I’ll do it,’ he called again, resisting the temptation to help himself to a cigarette from the packet lying open on the table. It was the third time he’d offered.

  ‘No, no, no.’

  Dariusz grinned to himself. His father was jealously proud of the domestic skills he’d developed after his wife’s death. Before that, Dariusz could barely remember him going into the kitchen. He could hear the low mutter of tea, cups, milk, sugar as the old man aided his failing memory through the process. After another five minutes, he came through carrying the tray carefully and set it down on the table. It contained a battered tea pot, a mug, a jug of milk, a sugar bowl and a plate of pastries.

  ‘I don’t need all this,’ Dariusz said, exasperated. ‘Just…’ He saw the light of pleased stubbornness in his father’s eyes and gave in. ‘Thanks.’ He poured some tea which must have been left standing in the pot to judge from its colour then looked at the old man carefully. He was wearing a shabby pair of trousers and a jacket that had long seen better days. The collar of his shirt was frayed. The clothes hung on his skinny frame. As he breathed, Dariusz could hear the wheezing in his chest. ‘You’re supposed to be resting.’

  His father dismissed this with a wave of the hand. He had always been an austere man. Life in Poland had been hard for his generation. He had spent the last years of his childhood under the Nazi occupation and most of his adult life under Soviet rule. He had worked in the shipyards and had been a leader in the unrest of the late 1970s and early 1980s, his activism landing him in prison more than once. He had been there in December 1970 when armed police opened fire on the morning shift coming into the Paris Commune Shipyard to start work. He still limped from where a police bullet had broken his leg. ‘I was lucky,’ he always said when he consented to discuss it. ‘Others – they died.’