by Ruth Dugdall
There were only two other customers. In the far corner by the fireplace, a man in his twenties was reclining against the wall, his long legs stretched out on the chair in front, arms limp and head low. He poked the brim of his baseball cap higher so he could see me. His face was narrow, feline, and his bony scalp was shaved and tattooed, though I couldn’t make out the pattern. The other customer had her back to me, neat and straight, and her hair was as red as a blood orange. She was reading a book propped against the sauce bottle in front of her.
‘Can I help you?’
The woman behind the counter crossed her arms over her firm bosom, unsmiling. The man was watching from under the brim of his cap.
‘Er . . . yes, please.’
On hearing my voice, the redhead turned, her face lighting up when she saw me. I was equally glad to see her, familiar as she was when everything else had become strange and frightening.
‘Hi, Monica.’
‘Hey, Sam! So, you come for cake after all? Come, sit.’
She called to the woman in a quick, lyrical voice, in what I assumed was Polish, pausing to check with me. ‘Tea, you like? Or Panda coke?’
‘Water. Please.’
‘Vater, okay.’ She resumed her instructions to the woman, who stepped back into the second room, which was a makeshift kitchen. On the shelf was a drum of teabags, a steaming cob of bread, and green sausages, hung from a string, cold and cured. Also, stacks of plastic tubs, the kind used for ice cream, which were filled with a lumpy brown soup. The woman busied herself, and despite her bulk she moved nimbly, reaching mugs and opening the tap on the silver urn.
My plastic chair had a snapped back, so I sat at an awkward angle, rocking on the uneven brick floor. The whirring air conditioning droned on like the world’s battery was out of control. A drip of condensation dropped from the ceiling, blooming on the table like a rose.
‘Nice to see you, Sam,’ said Monica, pushing aside the book she had been reading, titled An Actor Prepares. ‘This make my head hurt.’
The headscarfed woman bustled back with tea for Monica, four chocolate squares on a saucer and a glass of water for me. As she bent over, I caught the scent of soap powder, and thought of Mum.
I sipped, but the water was warm and made me feel slightly sick. The chocolate was filled with marshmallow so sweet my mouth felt sore. Monica glugged from her mug of brown liquid, topping up from a bottle labelled Poema di caffe, leaving a smear of pink lipstick behind. She looked longingly at the squares of chocolate.
‘You no like the Ptasie Mleczko, Sammy?’
‘It’s too sweet.’
Without needing further invitation, she grabbed one and sucked it into her mouth, her eyes narrowing with pleasure as she chewed, taking her time. I waited until she dotted a fleck of chocolate from her lips.
‘So. We talk, yes? You tell me why you go to that place. I help you.’
‘Which place?’
Monica stroked the bottle; her nails were square and strong. Practical. But veneered with a glowing orange paint, newly done.
‘Andre’s flat. Is no good for you there, not when you are going to be famous photographer.’
‘Well, Andy’s a photographer too.’
‘Ha!’ She scowled. ‘He think so. He makes promises of money that never comes, false promises to girls who need to make a new life.’
‘Did Andy bring you from Poland?’
She laughed, a dismissive snort that told me what an idiot I was. ‘I’m not Polish. I’m from Czech Republic.’
‘Oh,’ I said, thinking about a map of the world in my head, but unable to think where this was exactly. ‘Czechoslovakia.’
‘No!’ she snapped. ‘Is not that for many year. Is now Czech Republic.’
I’d offended her in some way that I couldn’t fathom, and our conversation was clearly getting me no further in my quest for a gun. I reached into my rucksack and brought out the picture I’d taken of her when we met at the police station. A peace offering.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘I promised you a copy.’
The photo had come out well; Dad’s improvements had made her look fun and glossy and very pretty. Monica squealed with delight. ‘Ah! Just like a model, yes? I like this for my portfolio.’
I wanted that for her too, proper modelling on a catwalk somewhere, far from here. She smiled at me happily, her head angled with surprise at my kindness.
‘Thank you, Sam.’
‘So, what about Andy?’ I asked, sad that the question would wipe the smile from her lips, but seizing the chance anyway to find out more.
‘He is someone who says he can help me, but afterwards I always think he is the one who has been helped most. A cat who always lands on his feet, you know?’ She leaned forward and twitched her nose, her fingers making paws as she placed them on the table, making me smile. ‘What is he to you?’
I thought of the porn film I’d watched, the way he’d unzipped Jena’s dress.
‘He’s nothing to me.’
Monica considered me frankly.
‘I envy you, strange girl. You have choices. Me, I am still learning how to be in this town, and the best thing is that I can go to school. You do not have to struggle like me, a foreigner in this place, never getting even Saturday job because people don’t like that I am different, but I need money to help my family stay here.’ She flicked her hair over her shoulder defiantly. ‘You are from here. Clever, with your camera, click click.’ She tapped the picture of her, smiling at her image. ‘So, you will be okay.’
‘So will you, Monica. You’re clever too, studying A levels at college, like I’m going to. We both have choices.’
She ate another sweet, thoughtfully dabbing chocolate flakes from her lip with her finger. ‘Maybe the same as you, and I am clever in another way too. I think you need a clever friend like me, yes?’
‘Is it that obvious?’ I looked down so my hair covered my face and said quietly, ‘That I need your help?’
‘I know this when I first saw you, at the police station. With your mother, yes? I see it then.’ Monica looked concerned. She sipped her drink again, leaving foamy milk on her upper lip that did nothing to detract from her Slavic beauty. She was right, she could be an actress. Her eyes were a film reel of emotion.
‘So, we are both clever. And you are sad girl, so I am kind. See?’ She snapped her fingers together as if it was explanation enough.
The man in the hat looked up again, his eyes fixed directly on me. He scratched under his cap, revealing more of the tattoo, which I could now see was the markings of a leopard. He replaced his hat, and appeared to settle back to his slumber, his eyes half-open, but I sensed he was listening to every word.
Monica tapped her hand against her empty mug, her jaw working on possible words. I felt the table with the tips of my fingers, where the wood veneer had been peeled back, revealing smooth plastic.
‘I do need your help, Monica. You may be the only person who can get me what I need.’
It was time, it seemed, to tell the truth.
‘My sister was hurt. Badly. On 25 April.’
‘Yes, I know from the papers, and the news.’ Monica’s eyes were wet. ‘I am sorry for this, Sam.’
‘The thing is, Monica,’ I said, haltingly, re-directing my sorry tale, ‘the police still haven’t found her attacker.’
At the word ‘police’ the tattooed man fully opened an eye, and Monica made a guttural sound in her throat like she needed to spit.
I leaned forward, mindful of the woman in the headscarf drying up a plate, watching us.
‘But I think I know who did it, and I think I could get a confession. If I had a gun.’
‘No.’ Monica moved back, away from me and my request.
I reached for her hand, trapping it in my grip. ‘It’s just for show. I won’t even load it.’
‘Ha! You think?’
‘I mean it, Monica. I can’t make an adult confess to something like that without help. That’s all it�
��ll be for. You’re an actress; you use props all the time.’
‘Sure, props I use! I get you a plastic one from the drama room.’
I lowered my voice further.
‘The gun has to be real. I have money.’
She released her hand, still leaning away. ‘I not help with this. Is no good.’
She wanted me gone, then, and so did the woman. But the man, alert in his slumber, had been listening with ears pricked.
Outside, in the midday heat, I leaned on the crumbling wall for its support. I put my forehead to the red brickwork, rocking my head, tempted to pull back and bang my head hard, damage my brain, so I could be the one with no memory. I pressed my nose into a dusty crack and was thinking of how useless I was, when I felt a hand press my shoulder. I jerked round, and saw it was the man from the café, his baseball cap low over his eyes, which glinted in the sun.
He moved towards me.
‘You have money, you say?’
‘Three hundred pounds.’ I pressed my back to the wall, afraid. Was he going to mug me? My hands instinctively gripped my camera.
He leaned so close I could see where the inked leopard spots were bloody from the needle. He must have had the tattoo done recently.
‘I get you a gun,’ he said.
CHAPTER 35
31 January
Pearl’s family came to collect her things, her mother and father and a younger brother who was so like her I caught my breath when I saw him. They packed her clothes, her Sylvanian animals, her collection of hats into a box.
I longed to ask for one of the hats, as a keepsake, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to them. Ashamed, I stayed in my room with the door shut, occasionally wandering into the corridor, pretending to need the loo when really I wanted to see how they were coping with her death.
It’s wrecked me.
Wrecked all of us. Stacey and Joelle were quiet at breakfast. Fiona spoke about wanting to go home. Mina was even more invisible than usual. Pearl has shown us our own possibility; death feels closer. It lingers over us, waiting.
My bones are still sharp, my skin is furry with lanugo. Pearl is gone, but oblivion is here.
The past is here too, pressing against me.
Because Pearl’s death is making me think of Jena, and how I’ve let her down. Eighteen months, and I haven’t so much as sent a card or replied to any of her letters. She’s been turned away at reception, and I’ve refused calls, thinking that seeing me would only remind her of the bad things that happened, or what I represent. Rob too. I’ve refused to see anyone who loved me, feeling unworthy of their love, and unable to think about home.
Jena and Rob were innocent victims. And it’s them I’ve continued to hurt.
Clive is busy now. He has to explain to the authorities, to journalists, to the family, how a girl in his care has ended up on a mortuary slab. There will be an inquiry; the press will have a new story to report. I could have saved her, but I chose to keep quiet, and now it is too late.
Now there is no one to listen to the end of my tale, yet still it must finish, I have to reach the bitter end.
The Spiral car park was sunk into the ground, an underground helter-skelter in grey concrete, parking for 360 cars deep down beneath the world. The cheapest parking in town because the walkway down to the cars was a narrow corridor of graffiti.
A woman had been raped there on Valentine’s Day; it had made the local news, but only for a few days, and the main message was that single females in Ipswich should be more careful about where they went. No escape in a place like that.
No escape for me either. This story, pulling me down deeper. No choice but to sink before I can rise, but I can’t do it here, on the unit.
Clive won’t hear it now, what I did, but I need to face it. I need to be at Mum’s funeral.
By absconding, I’m sabotaging any chance of release, but I can’t stay.
It takes just ten minutes to pack my old sports bag with the few clothes I own, my toothbrush and the Black Magic box. It’s time for me to leave this place.
I know that Clive will do his best; his report will argue as strongly as he’s able that I still deserve my freedom, but I doubt anyone will listen. Pearl’s death will put his expertise, the very working of the unit, in question.
I wait until no one is around and make my way to the fence, since I know the gate will be locked. I’m wearing my warmest clothes – my swallow jumper and a padded jacket – but still the air nips, and my trainers are quickly sodden from the slushy grass. Climbing the fence isn’t easy; my cold fingers lace through the wire and I wish I wore gloves, and my feet are too large to get a grip within the gaps. I pull myself over, catching my jumper on the top, and land in a heap on the other side.
I’m cold and crazy, but I need to return to the scene of my crime. My head is already there.
He didn’t ask my name, and wouldn’t tell me his, so the tattooed man was simply The Leopard to me. After meeting him that Saturday in Spoons he told me to arrive at midnight, when the car park was long-since closed.
A boy wearing a hoodie met me, brandishing a baseball bat.
Up close, I could see he wasn’t a boy at all, but a slight man with smooth olive skin. I waited as he lifted the grille that barred the entrance, pulling it up to his thighs. He took a pen-sized torch from his back pocket and put it in my hand.
‘Go,’ he hissed. ‘And be careful.’
I ducked under the grille and into the total darkness beyond, gazing into a black hole so dark I wasn’t sure where ahead was, fumbling with the switch on the torch. Behind me the metal gate shuddered down. I was on my own.
The tiny disc of light from the torch was like a firefly darting around a cave. All I could make out was the space, the vastness of the place with no cars, no people. Not at this level anyway. I could hear my breathing, and I hummed to stop my teeth chattering.
Overhead, cars rumbled on the ring road, people going home from night shifts, men looking for company, police cars doing the circuit.
I shuffled deeper into the car park, gingerly finding a way into my underground nightmare, expecting something to pounce from the shadows at any second. The slope was steepening, my feet careening downhill, torchlight catching letters as I passed: B, C, onwards, deeper, D, E, F. Two-foot-high fluorescent letters were my only guide. The deeper I went, the lower the ceiling, darkness closing in around me.
How much farther? There was no one to ask. My palms were sweaty, and my heart moved inside my chest, trying to escape, but my feet continued, blindly, stupidly, in a downward fall.
Voices.
I stopped and listened. A man’s voice, then a woman’s voice, quick and lively, that I recognised as Monica’s.
I reached The Spiral’s seabed, the ceiling so low I could jump and touch it, the ground wet and puddling. The end was marked by a breeze-block wall, and parked next to it was a white van, TOP KLASS CAR CLEANING emblazoned on the side, along with a list of prices, too small to read. Through the dimness, I could make out the outline of a couple sat in the front; the windows were down, so I could hear them, their voices rapid and foreign but unmistakably arguing.
I hesitated, my torch careening light across the ground, the darkness cloaking me in chill. Shaking, I stopped when the voices in the van fell silent. The driver’s door opened, and he stepped out, the sleepy leopard from Spoons. His silhouette was lit by the car’s light, a clean outline in the semi-dark.
‘Come here, where I can see you.’
I moved closer.
He looked younger than I’d taken him for in the café, barely in his twenties; smooth-headed, but with a moustache and a stubbly chin. Eyes glinting. He pulled me towards him, hands running down the sides of my T-shirt and around my waist. I struggled back, thinking of the woman who’d been raped here.
‘I frisk you or you go home. Which?’
I submitted as he checked and found nothing on me but my house key and the torch. I gave him the roll of money, £3
00 saved from birthdays and Christmases, and never intended for purchases like this.
From the other side of the van came the sound of high heels on concrete, then Monica appeared, hugging me and pulling back to touch my cheek.
‘I don’t want to help with this, Sam. You should go home.’
The man was still scrutinising me, and I was glad she was there, even though she wouldn’t stop preaching.
‘This gun will not help, Sammy. You will see, but too late.’
‘It’s not what you think. I can’t let . . . It’s just so . . .’ The sentence cracked into pieces as my brain stumbled with doubts that knocked and jarred against each other.
Monica’s hand moved to my arm, where she stroked my raised flesh. ‘Shaking like a kitten,’ she assessed. ‘Go home, little one. This mess up all your big plans to be a photographer. You promised to make me famous, yes?’
I wasn’t certain I could make Sonia confess, but without a gun I had no chance.
‘I can’t go home, Monica. Not until I have what I came for.’
The man took a bundle from inside his jacket, wrapped in a baby blanket. He unfolded the blanket and there, shining in the light of my torch, was a gun. Beautiful and dangerous. He held it between his fingers, its black flanks glittering with his sweat, and lifted it close to my face.
The Leopard gave me the full benefit of a grin. ‘You like?’
Its beauty shocked me. I was afraid to touch it.
‘Was my daddy’s gun. He was in secret police, and this pistol never let him down. Many, many times she save his life. My daddy, he give me this gun, and she has travelled a long way.’
