Say A Little Prayer (A James Palatine Novel Book 2)

by Giles O'Bryen

  I didn’t get to Talinic until six-twenty. It was dark. The sky spat rain on the windscreen. My nephew Sammy and friends, who usually congregate by the gas station smoking cigarettes and making obscene gestures at passing cars, weren’t there. I parked outside Grandmama’s house. She ran from the doorway and fell to her knees in front of me.

  ‘They took her away, the sons of whores! We didn’t know, my darling Anna, we would have stopped them, Piotr would have killed them first, we didn’t even know they were here, damn them to hell. . .’

  My husband’s younger brother Piotr came out and led her back to her chair by the stove. His son Sammy was seated at the table, hands held out in front of him. His eyes were red from crying, his face white. Piotr dusted off the seat of the chair opposite with his big hands, then looked at me, his face rippling with misery and shame.

  ‘They took her, Anna. They took Katarina.’

  ‘What do you mean? Where is Katya?’

  ‘Go on, Sammy.’

  ‘I made a rude sign at them,’ said Sammy. ‘I didn’t know. . .’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, standing up. ‘I must take Katya home now, I hate driving in the rain—’

  Piotr banged the table with the flat of his hand. ‘Sammy, speak!’

  ‘They were in this fancy pickup so I showed them my arse. They stopped and got out and we ran. They chased us down behind Grigor’s and we got to the river, then one of them caught me and hit me.’

  He raised his T-shirt. In the centre of his skinny boy’s stomach was a patch of bright red, dark at the centre.

  ‘But Katya wasn’t with you,’ I told him. ‘She never hangs out with you boys.’

  ‘She was by the river with Kezia and Silvio. They were making a bonfire. The men said are you from the village and Katya said no and they said why’re you here and she said what’s it got to do with you.’

  He looked at me, wretchedness gaping in his eyes.

  ‘Go on,’ said Piotr.

  ‘They said she shouldn’t be hanging out with effing Roma scum.’

  ‘Why didn’t you protect her, Sammy?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you all run away?’

  ‘I don’t know, Aunt Anna.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Then they took her.’

  ‘No, Sammy,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t say that. . . Don’t.’

  ‘They said where’re you from and Silvio said she’s from Pristina and they said OK we’re taking you home so you don’t have to be with these dirty Roma. One of them picked her up and she kicked and kicked so he dropped her and then two of them got her and she kicked some more and scratched one of them in the eye but they took her to their pickup and drove her away.’

  ‘No, not Katya. Please. . .’

  ‘It was a Toyota.’

  ‘We’ve got men out looking for them,’ said Piotr. ‘Grigor’s called his cousin in Drenas, in case they go that way.’

  ‘They can’t just take her away. . .’ I said, imploring them to save me, to undo everything that was said.

  ‘Maybe she’s back in Pristina, Aunt Anna,’ said Sammy. ‘Waiting for you.’

  Time stalls. I’m stuck forever in Grandmama’s kitchen, Sammy crying, Piotr bleak as stone. The past leans back through the life we had together. The future no longer exists.

  Piotr drives me home and all the way I pretend to think, Oh, Sammy’s probably right, she’ll be waiting when I get there. She’s rung Milo and Nina’s bell and they’ve buzzed her in and Nina’s made her hot chocolate and Milo’s put on a wildlife video. Right now, Katya’s sitting neatly at the table and answering their questions about school and what she wants for her birthday and whether she’d like another homemade sweetmeal biscuit. Piotr moves his mouth around the words he would like to speak but cannot. He’s a good man, but shy and proud. He will never forgive himself that he could not prevent it. It is unmanly. He would rather be dead. I feel his shame pulsing beside me. I’m concentrating on the moment when Nina pulls open her door and Katya skips up behind her and looks at me with her clear blue eyes and says, Hi, Mum, can we get a takeaway, since you’re so late?

  Of course, Katya my love, my dear sweet angel, we’ll have a takeaway. We’ll have a thousand million takeaways, our flat will be crammed with tinfoil cartons and uneaten portions of shredded cabbage, the aroma of spicy chicken wings will permanently scent the air.

  ‘What is it, Anna, what has happened?’ says Nina when she opens the door.

  ‘I don’t suppose Katya dropped by, did she?’

  ‘Oh, Anna, no. Has she gone missing? Please God she has not. When did you last see her? You must tell me if there’s anything I can do. Milo still has contacts, you know?’

  There is no circumstance so dire as to be beyond the influence of Milo’s contacts, Nina believes, and their willingness to be called upon is never in doubt. Milo worked in government, though in what capacity is unclear, and he retired ten years ago. Whenever Nina mentions his contacts, Milo looks anxious.

  ‘I’ll say a little prayer,’ says Nina.

  ‘Thank you, I’m sure she’ll turn up soon.’

  I’m sure she’ll turn up soon. I’ll say this many times and no one will contradict me. No one will say, I’m not so sure, Anna, you might have lost her forever. The little lie protects me from pity and solicitude. Already I can do a quick smile with my mouth and cheeks that is completely dissociated from what’s inside me.

  We live in a three-room apartment near the centre of town, which we are lucky to have. After a day at the university delivering ill-attended lectures, holding less-than-animated seminars and researching the migration of warlike tribes in north-eastern Turkey, I usually go to Katya’s school to collect her. My sweet-natured, composed and rather serious twelve-year-old girl stands at the gates, waiting for me. For a treat, we might take her friends Magda and Sofia to the zoo, followed by an ice cream at the Yankee Doodle Dandy Diner – Where sprinkles come free!

  ‘What do you want to do?’ asks Piotr.

  The apartment is cold. Blackness presses against the windows. The fridge buzzes. Her not being here makes everything seem separated out. They picked on her because she looks different from Kezia and Silvio and the others, I realise. Outsiders are vulnerable. The Ottoman rulers understood that, that’s why they kept their inner circle close.

  ‘Do you know how to get in touch with Franz?’

  ‘No. . . I can try.’

  I see in Piotr a trace of his-brother-my-husband’s default preference for not being responsible, and it makes me feel weak and alone.

  ‘Last I heard he was in Izmir.’

  Turkey. That figures. Scamming the pensions off jolly German widows. Fucking them, probably. How I loved that man, that filthy Roma with his big smile and soft eyes, his brown skin that smelled of cedars and sunlight.

  ‘Find him, Piotr. You must. I’ll make a list.’

  I compose the list in my head, but all it comes to is this:

  1. Hug my Katya’s little body and feel her try to squirm away and not let her.

  2. Buy my little Katya a takeaway and sit next to her on the sofa and watch TV.

  3. After she has gone to bed, go in to turn her light out, lean down to kiss her warm cheek, feel the slightness of her arms around my neck.

  I inhale deeply and the breath shudders in my throat. A moan I didn’t mean to make, a sob I expected to suppress. Piotr takes me in his arms and I drown.

  The list. Focus. How long since they came and took my life away? Just three hours, a little more. Hours such as once stole past unnoticed now divide themselves into minutes and linger on. Even seconds last longer than they should. I make Piotr call everyone he knows. Roma clans are terribly well connected, though only with each other. The calls take a long time because there is always business to discuss. Discussing business is important – more so than actually doing it, which is time-consuming and presents the Roma male with too many opportunities for a demeaning failure. At least there is a family to
call. Who do I have? A mother who died of breast cancer. A father who went to California to sell real estate to Yugoslav expatriates, married a Guatemalan sweatshop ‘entrepreneur’, and now lives in San Diego, where he spends his wife’s ill-gotten wealth on lavishly upholstered sailing boats. Some aunts and uncles who disapprove of me. A slew of cousins who don’t even know I exist.

  The list.

  Call the police. Visit the police.

  ‘Piotr, get Sammy to write everything down. You know, how many men, what they looked like, the pickup. Anything he can think of.’

  ‘He can’t write. Never was much good at school. Lazy.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I scream at him. ‘Get him to tell someone who can write.’

  ‘OK, OK. I’m sorry, Anna.’

  He’s never seen me lose my temper. Hardly anyone has. In the faculty at the University of Pristina I am better known for my mildness and passivity than for my work on the early years of the Ottoman Empire.

  The list.

  Call the police. Visit the police.

  Call or write to everyone I know.

  Say a little prayer.

  13

  In the morning, Piotr drives me to the police station on Yevgeny Street.

  ‘What will they do with her, Piotr?’

  ‘Shit, Anna, I don’t know. Maybe you’ll get a ransom demand.’

  ‘When? When will I get a ransom demand?’

  ‘They might wait until the police’ve lost interest and the family are desperate. A week. Maybe two.’

  ‘I’m already desperate,’ I say. ‘The police have already lost interest,’ I continue, remembering the cruel labour of my phone call to the duty sergeant the previous night. ‘I only got an appointment this morning because I said I was connected with the KVM.’

  ‘KVM?’

  ‘Kosovo Verification Mission. Here to make sure the Serbs do what they’re told.’

  ‘Waste of space.’

  ‘How will I pay the ransom? You’ll help me, won’t you?’

  ‘We’ll get the money. Don’t worry about that.’

  He draws back his shoulders and sits upright in his seat. He’s made a promise, and he will keep it. He begins to drive a bit less like the car is towing a trailer precariously loaded with several tons of straw. Piotr is OK. He’s going to help me. My eyes fill with tears. It happens so fast that when I look down to find a tissue in my bag, a stream of salty water drops into the compartment where I keep my keys.

  We arrive opposite the police station. ‘Be strong,’ he says. ‘Don’t let them wriggle out of it. There are still laws in this fucking country.’

  ‘Not for us there aren’t. There is only one law: leave while you can.’

  He asks me if I want him to come in, but I say no. I want him back home, waiting by the phone for when Katarina rings to say she is fine, really, the men in the pickup dropped her off at the bus station and then she took the wrong bus but by total good luck she ended up near Sofia’s house! So she went and stayed the night there and she did try to call me, really and truly she did, but her phone’s battery was dead and Sofia’s mum has been disconnected for not paying her bill.

  I sit on a bench just inside the entrance to the police station, between a door that does not close properly and a man hunched defensively over his knees. All I can see of his face is a bloodshot eye beneath a swollen eyebrow that resembles a large, hairy caterpillar. The duty sergeant keeps insisting that there is no chance of Inspector Jankovic being able to see me today.

  ‘I have an appointment. The police here keep their appointments, I’m sure.’ My voice is both ice cold and shaky, because fury and despair have not yet worked out which is in charge.

  ‘Lost your daughter, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she is how old?’

  ‘Just twelve.’

  He gives me a world-weary look. Why did I say Just twelve instead of Twelve? It sounded as if I was trying to make a point.

  ‘You’ve checked with her boyfriend’s family?’

  ‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend.’

  Another look.

  After an hour and a half, my neighbour lies down on the tiled floor, ignoring the smears of mud and whatever.

  ‘He’s waiting for an ambulance,’ says the sergeant.

  Eventually, Inspector Jankovic arrives, takes a quick look at me over the counter, says, ‘One minute, please,’ and disappears. Not one but forty-six minutes pass. He returns and takes me to an interview room painted pale cream and furnished with a single red plastic chair. Through a small oblong window high in the wall opposite I can see a small oblong of perfectly grey sky.

  ‘I’ll stand.’

  He disappears again, returns carrying a pad of lined yellow paper and dragging a second red plastic chair. The feet of the chair scrape and bump across the floor. I look down and see splashes of some dark substance dried into the concrete.

  ‘Missing person, yeah?’

  He is sweating. The skin around his jaw is glabrous and unnaturally thick. I don’t want this man to find my daughter, I think suddenly. His fingers are sausagey and stained with tobacco.

  ‘My daughter. Katarina.’

  Already there is a hollowness in the sound that means her. It appals me to see him writing it down on his yellow pad, in this room where people come to have their tragedies recorded and filed away. He takes down my contact details. He doesn’t trouble to check the number he has written down because he knows he will never use it. As soon as he’s rid of me, he’ll go upstairs to his office, tear the sheet off, scrunch it up and toss it at a bin marked Crimes committed by Serbs against Albanians. The bin is already full of scrunched-up yellow paper. If he should miss, he won’t even bother to get out of his chair and pick it up.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘About eleven-thirty yesterday morning. I took her to her grandmother’s for the day.’

  I give him the address and he looks up from his writing, a smug expression on his face.

  ‘Talinic – Roma village, yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You left your daughter in a Roma village and now she’s gone.’ It’s all he can do to stop himself grinning.

  ‘I left Katarina with her grandmother – it’s OK to leave children with their grandmothers, don’t you think?’ The shakiness is gaining ascendance over the iciness.

  ‘Depends on the gran.’

  ‘She was playing with her cousins and got abducted by an armed gang in a pickup,’ I say, desperately trying to stay calm. ‘I don’t see what the ethnic make-up of the village has got to do with it.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. Her grandmother is your husband’s mother? So where is he, your husband?’

  ‘I don’t know. He left me ten years ago.’

  A decade it may be, but still I feel the shame creep over me. The stupid bitch married a Roma man and guess what? He ran away!

  He clears his throat. ‘Might be worth checking with him, yeah?’

  ‘Sir, his brother is getting in touch with Katarina’s father right now. In the meantime, there are witnesses who saw her being driven away in a Toyota pickup. You have to go to Talinic and talk to them.’

  ‘Witnesses? The kids she was playing with?’

  ‘And some older boys.’

  ‘All members of your ex-husband’s family, yeah?’

  He has stopped taking notes. What happened has already been settled: an estranged Roma dad arranged the abduction of his daughter; mum has been sold some ridiculous story about a gang of militia carting her away in a pickup; now she wants us to sort it out. Typical. He’s closing the case in his mind. You make a complete dog mess of your private life, he’s thinking, then blame the Serbs.

  ‘They’re a very tight-knit community, these Roma.’

  ‘Spare me the platitudes,’ I say angrily. ‘She’s a twelve-year-old girl and at least half a dozen witnesses say she was abducted. Doesn’t matter what your prejudices tell you, does it, be
cause you still have to investigate. Isn’t that one of the benefits of being part of the greater Serbia? The anarchy’s not supposed to start until after you’ve left, remember?’

  ‘I wouldn’t take that tone in here.’

  He looks me up and down, slowly. I’ve crossed the line – and given him licence to do the same. Even in that stuffy room, I feel the heat off him, the hormones rousing themselves as he examines my breasts and legs. I’ve made it personal, alluded to matters of politics and ethnicity – so now I’m not just a member of the public reporting her daughter missing, but a Kosovar woman of fuckable age who’s making trouble. Why don’t I kick and scratch, like Katya did when the men carried her away?

  ‘Kids get handed round Roma families like second-hand cars.’

  ‘Do they? So that’s it? I have to find her myself?’

  ‘Start with Gran and go from there.’

  ‘She’s twelve years old—’

  ‘I can’t file a missing person report until she’s been gone for twenty-four hours. Call me at six, if she hasn’t turned up.’

  ‘You’re not even going to Talinic?’

  ‘Talk to Gran, yeah?’

  14

  Piotr sleeps in Katya’s room. He’s like a decent version of his brother-my-husband, sober and steadfast where Franz is flashy and sly. But the decency is lugubrious, oppressive even. It offers nothing, yet demands to be taken seriously. It is horrible to see him emerging from Katya’s room – as if my lissom daughter has metamorphosed overnight into a slouching, black-haired giant. He hasn’t seen me watching him. He stands in the corridor in a Bosch logo T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, prodding at something with his big bare foot. After a moment he scratches the back of his head and bends down to pick the something up. It’s a biro top. He twirls it in his fingers, then looks up and sees me and drops it. His awkwardness seems like a wholly unnecessary side-effect of Katya’s being taken away from me, and again I feel angry with him.