Last Room

by Reah, Danuta

He switched on his laptop and looked up the Manchester offices of Merchant Matheson. The address Ania had given him was right. The offices were out at Salford Quays. He could call in the morning but he didn’t want to talk to Sarah Ludlow on the phone. He wanted to be able to see the expression on her face when they met again without warning. He wanted to know if he would see guilt.

  Chapter 49

  Dariusz’ arrest left him with a sense of anxiety and claustrophobia. He didn’t know if he was being watched or if his calls were being observed. His flat felt like a stage, a stage that was illuminated by a single bright light. What he saw as walls was simply darkness from which eyes watched him as the spotlight sought him out.

  He lived in a high-tech world, and now he was deprived of his resources. His phone numbers were stored in his phone. Until he got it back from the police, he couldn’t contact Gillen easily. Gillen may well have tried to call him, but Dariusz had no way of knowing. He’d tried calling Król, asking for his phone at least to be returned, but there had been no response. He got the impression that Król was taking the opportunity of making his life as difficult as possible while he had the opportunity.

  He still hadn’t been able to look at the files from the Haynes case, the videos and images Strąk had tried to send him, the ones that had got corrupted when he first downloaded them. They were lost now with the rest of his data. They’d been on his pen drive, and though he’d tried searching the ground around his flat, there was no sign of it. He’d have to contact Strąk and get him to resend them, but he couldn’t do it from his own systems, even if the police didn’t have his laptop. His e-mail was almost certainly under surveillance, as was he.

  He needed to get out of the flat and get to some public facilities, an internet café, a public phone. There were people he needed to contact before his pariah status spread and no one would talk to him or help him.

  Król probably had someone watching his flat. He put on a dark jacket and stuffed a baseball cap and a lightweight backpack into the pockets. He went down to his car, not attempting to conceal what he was doing. There was no point. As he drove away, he saw a car pulling out into the traffic behind him.

  He made no attempt to shake them off, just kept sufficiently ahead of them to give himself a bit of breathing space. He drove into the city centre and parked illegally at the back of the university, in the car park where, such a short time ago, Ania had died. He got out, went straight into the building through the back entrance. By the time he stepped out into the cold through the front entrance he was in his shirt sleeves, carrying a small backpack and wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Anyone looking for him would be looking for a bareheaded man in a dark jacket. He was now wearing a red shirt and a cap. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it might make him hard to spot if someone were scanning the crowd from the steps of the university building.

  The first place he went to was Al. Piłsudskiego, just off Piotrkowska where he could lose himself in the crowds of the Galeria Łódzka. He made his way through the shopping centre to the electronics store where he bought a new phone, a pay-as-you-go. He checked the street as he left the Galeria, then headed straight for the cinema complex close by where the café offered internet access.

  He bought some coffee and found a quiet table where he could work unobserved. He needed a new e-mail account, one the police didn’t know about. Will Gillen had a Hushmail address. Gillen should know about e-mail security. If it was good enough for Gillen, it would do for him. He logged on to the site and found he could set up a free account which didn’t need an alternative e-mail address to verify it. The police would need a court order to access it, a Canadian court order. That was good. That was excellent.

  He got Strąk’s e-mail address from the paper’s website and mailed a high priority request for Strąk to contact him. Strąk called almost immediately. ‘What’s going on? You’ve got that story for me?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m working on it. I’ve got some problems.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been hearing whispers about you.’

  ‘About dodgy stuff on my computer?’

  ‘Yeah. Was it the stuff I sent you? I warned you it was…’

  ‘No. It was something else. It just… turned up.’

  There was silence as Strąk absorbed this. ‘Then you’ve got a serious problem. There’s a well-organised police leak on the go as well.’

  ‘Shit!’ He felt a weary anger. The fact that the police were resorting to this meant they didn’t have enough to charge him, which was good news of a kind, but it also meant that the story would spread and be impossible to suppress. Now, no matter what happened there would always be people who believed what was being said about him.

  ‘So, talk to me, friend. What’s been happening? What have you done to get up their noses so comprehensively?’

  The ready way that Strąk dismissed the rumours lifted a weight from Dariusz’ shoulders. After Krysia’s reaction, he had been worried that everyone, given the nature of the accusations against him, would back away. ‘I don’t know. Not exactly. I’m trying to find out. It’s got to be – look, we’re talking business here, aren’t we? This has to be off the record for now.’

  ‘OK. For now. I’ll be mightily pissed if someone else gets it first.’

  ‘If I can give it to you, I will. It may not be my story to break. It’s about Ania, that’s where it starts.’

  ‘I thought it must be. What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to send those files again.’ He spoke over Strąk’s interruption. ‘I know. But they must have got damaged last time when they were sent. I didn’t get the complete file.’

  ‘I sent it to you.’

  ‘I know, but it didn’t come through. Not all of it. Right now, I need that stuff.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because whatever happened to Ania happened because of that case. I have to know why.’

  ‘My contact’s going to want to know why I need it again.’

  ‘Tell him you’re investigating Ania’s death.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me my job. OK. How do I get it to you?’

  ‘How soon can you get hold of it?’

  ‘Hour or so if my contact’s around.’

  ‘OK. Once you’ve got it, e-mail it to poorman30@hushmail.com.’

  ‘You got it. Listen, mate, you need some help?’

  ‘You’d be better keeping away from me until this is over. Get me this stuff, and you’ve given all the help you can. If you haven’t sent it in a couple of hours, will you e-mail that address and let me know?’

  Now all he could do was wait.

  Chapter 50

  Salford

  Salford Quays was like a toy town in pink brick, steel and glass. The water was deep blue like in a child’s painting. The dream-like quality – a child’s dream – was enhanced by the emptiness. This was a landscape that was yet to be peopled.

  Will had taken the train from Edinburgh the previous day. It had been evening by the time he arrived in Manchester. He’d gone straight to the airport to collect his car which had amassed huge parking charges, then driven back into the city to Ania’s flat.

  He was troubled by no memories as he walked up the stairs, saw no one waiting for him in the doorway. Inside, the flat was silent, with the musty smell of abandonment. He had hoped, as he opened the door, that she would be there to welcome him, to tell him he was doing the right thing, but the empty rooms were cold and anonymous now.

  The next morning, he called Merchant Matheson early, at eight thirty, and gave his name as Walter Gilman. ‘I need an urgent appointment with Ms Ludlow. Can she see me today?’

  ‘Ms Ludlow has a full schedule. Can you tell me what it’s concerning?’

  ‘It’s a matter relating to Derek Haynes.’

  ‘One moment. I’ll check with Ms Ludlow if she has any time.’

  Five minutes later, he had an appointment for ten thirty. He stowed his laptop in his bag with all the information he ha
d gleaned in Lódź loaded onto it. He packed the audio cassette still in its wrapping along with both of Ania’s letters. What he planned to do with all of this, he hadn’t yet decided.

  As his car pulled out of the car park, he felt a sense of something closing, something coming to a slow, inexorable end. He couldn’t see what the end would be, there were still things to do, but he knew that one way or another, it was nearly over.

  When he got to the Quays, he left the car in one of the public car parks and walked along the water to the block where Merchant Matheson had their offices. Despite the sun, it was cold. The light reflected off the water and off the glass of the buildings with a painful intensity. He felt a sharp pang of homesickness for the cliffs of St Abbs, the sharp calls of the sea birds and the restless surging of the sea.

  He crossed a brick-paved courtyard to the entrance of a building signposted as The Cotton Warehouse and went in. The receptionist directed him to a waiting area and he sat in one of the comfortable chairs, thumbing through the kinds of magazines such places seemed to keep: Country Life, Vogue, New Statesman and a few professional journals.

  ‘Mr Gilman?’ For a telling moment, he didn’t react, then looked up to see a young woman smiling at him from a doorway across the lobby. ‘Miss Ludlow will see you now.’

  He picked up his bag and followed her along a carpeted hallway to an office door. She opened it for him and let him precede her. ‘Mr Gilman,’ she said.

  Sarah Ludlow stood up from behind her desk. She was smaller than in his memory, more formal and restrained. She was wearing a dark jacket and her hair was pulled severely back from her face. She wore glasses with a heavy black frame. ‘Mr Gilman,’ she said as she rose to greet him, then her smile of professional interest froze.

  ‘Do you want coffee?’ the secretary said behind him.

  Without moving his gaze from Sarah’s face, he said, ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Her paralysis broke. ‘Thank you, Alice. Give us a few minutes please.’ She waited until the secretary had withdrawn then said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d agree to see me and I need to talk to you.’

  She regained her composure. ‘I was very sorry to hear about your daughter, but I think this conversation would be better at another time and another…’

  ‘I would have thought you’d have expected me sooner rather than later.’

  ‘You can’t ambush me like this.’

  He shrugged. He just had.

  ‘Why should I expect you at all? Listen, Will…’

  ‘You came to St Abbs looking for her, didn’t you?’

  He mouth tightened, then she made a gesture of resignation and pointed at a chair. ‘You’d better sit down.’ She pressed an intercom button and said, ‘Alice? We’ll have the coffee now.’ It buzzed a distorted reply. ‘Yes, fine. Just bring the coffee in. Thank you.’

  They sat in silence until the secretary brought in a tray with china cups and a coffee pot. ‘Thank you,’ Sarah said again. ‘No calls for half an hour please.’

  As the door closed, Will said, ‘Is that code for “Call security and get him thrown out.”?’

  Her mouth twitched in a reluctant smile. ‘If it was, I wouldn’t tell you.’ She looked at him, her gaze steady. ‘Yes, I came to St Abbs to look for Ania.’

  ‘And you found me instead.’

  She held a lump of sugar above the coffee in her cup, letting the liquid rise up through the grains before she dropped it in. ‘I didn’t know who you were when I met you at the hotel.’

  ‘You travelled hundreds of miles on the off-chance of seeing my daughter, and you ”just happen” to bump into me in the local pub? You can do better than that.’

  She didn’t look up. ‘What do you want me to say? It’s the truth.’

  He turned his head away in exasperation.

  ‘I didn’t travel all that way to see Ania. I was in Scotland for another reason when the news about the Haynes appeal first broke.’

  ‘Convenient.’

  ‘It was, or it could have been. I tried calling Ania at work but they told me she’d gone away. I knew she came to St Abbs sometimes – she told me it was where she came when she needed to get away from things – her bolt hole. It seemed a good bet that was where she’d be so I drove back that way. When I saw the cottage, it was obvious someone was staying there. I thought it was her. I tried phoning but I got the answering service so I went to the hotel.’

  ‘And the next day? It was a coincidence that you came to my house and asked questions about her?’

  ‘It wasn’t until then that it dawned on me who you were. I didn’t realise anyone else lived there. Ania described it as a holiday cottage.’

  ‘It was until recently.’ He didn’t want to talk about that. ‘You didn’t say anything.’

  ‘I could hardly discuss Ania’s business with you. That was private.’

  ‘She was your client?’ That was one possibility that hadn’t crossed his mind.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you got the information you needed and left?’

  ‘More or less. I might have stayed but I could see you had things on your mind.’

  It could have happened like that. He had no way of proving or disproving what she said. He had every reason not to trust her. ‘And your business with Ania? She died the day after you came looking for her.’

  This time she met his gaze. ‘I know. If I could have contacted her, maybe…’ She waited.

  He didn’t give anything away. He wasn’t going to tell her what he had found out in Poland. He wanted to see how much she knew. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I met her during Haynes’ first trial. I heard her give evidence and I talked to her afterwards.’

  The picture from the newspapers – the shadowy figure of Sarah standing between the pillars behind Ania. ‘You were at the trial? Why? Were you part of Haynes’ team?’

  ‘God no. My client is a different person altogether. I was there for Nadifa Akindès, for Sagal’s mother.’

  ***

  ...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.

  ***

  Manchester Crown Court Trial of Derek Haynes.

  The barrister made a careful display of letting his disbelief show. ‘It’s a perfectly simple question, Ms Akindès. Did you or did you not offer to have sex with my client?’

  ‘No.’ The dead sound in Nadifa’s voice wasn’t helping her. Sarah Ludlow tried to catch her eye, but Nadifa’s gaze was fixed on her hands. The barrister studied her with a detached curiosity.

  ‘Your children were just commodities to you, correct? Useful for getting you into the country, useful for allowing you to stay.’

  ‘No.’

  He looked across at the jury. ‘We’ve already heard evidence that you refer to your son as ”the changeling.“ Is this correct?’

  Nadifa shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I... Because...’

  ‘Do you or do you not call your infant son a changeling?’

  ‘Because...’

  ‘Yes or no, Ms Akindès.’

  ‘...yes.’

  ‘What did you call your daughter, Ms Akindès? The goods?’

  The cross-examination had been brutal. As the mother of the murdered child, she was entitled to the jury’s sympathy but the barrister had been working very hard to destroy her credibility, and he was succeeding. He’d already forced her into the admission that she’d gone into hiding after her husband had been arrested for his Jihadist connectio
ns, and that when she was destitute she’d sometimes spent the night with a man in order to have a roof over her and her children’s heads, and that she had accepted money the next day. She said she had done it to protect her children, but the barrister – who was good, Sarah couldn’t deny that he was good – was making mincemeat of that claim.

  He returned to the issue of prostitution. ‘I see. You had perfectly good accommodation until your husband decided to repay the British state by working with people who planned to overthrow it. When the authorities quite justifiably decided he had to go, they tried to put you in a secure place where you and your children would be safe. Instead, you chose to reject this. By your own admission, you picked men up on the street, you had sex with them and they gave you money.’

  He looked at the jury. ‘Allow me to read to you the definition of a prostitute in the Oxford English Dictionary. In this country a prostitute is: a woman who engages in promiscuous sexual intercourse for payment. I think we can all agree that what you have just described to us fits this definition.’ He waited for the slight shuffle from the jury that indicated agreement. He’d won them over. ‘Now…’

  He moved on to establish that despite her denials, Nadifa had tried the same thing, or something similar with Haynes, rather than the prosecution interpretation of events, that Haynes had gone out of his way to befriend the family. Sarah waited for the prosecution to intervene, but they were probably happy enough for a sexual link to be confirmed between Haynes and the dead child’s mother.

  ‘I thought he could help us.’

  Sarah wanted to drag Nadifa out of the witness box and hide her in some safe place where they couldn’t reach her. Nadifa, who had somehow escaped from the hell that had been Côte d’Ivoire during the civil war years, who had survived all that had been done to her, Nadifa who was facing the prospect of a forced return to a country that had swallowed up the rest of her family without trace, who had used her angry energy and courage in every way she could to protect her daughter, was finally being destroyed. By watching out for the danger ahead, she had missed the danger at hand.