Strangers

by Carla Banks

  She could just make out the shapes of the rumpled sheets, the indentation in the pillow where his head had been. She slid across the bed and put her face against it. It had to be her imagination, but it felt warm, as though the occupant had left the bed just the moment before. She closed her eyes.

  Roisin? Hey, babes…

  She was sitting bolt upright, her hand groping for the light switch. In the sudden brightness, the window was a black square of night. The room was empty. There was just her, sitting up in the rumpled bed.

  ‘Joe?’ she whispered.

  But there was only silence.

  39

  Damien left Roisin in the early morning. He tried not to think about her, her face warm and sleepy on the pillow as she roused herself to kiss him goodbye, but she lingered in his mind. For Roisin, it had been a break from the exhausting struggle out of the depths of grief and chaos; for him, a sweet and memorable interlude in the emptiness that seemed to be his life these days.

  He and Amy had always clashed against the emotional barriers they both hid behind. It was as if they could only make contact when those barriers were ablaze with their need, and afterwards they had to negotiate their way through the ashes.

  Roisin had no barriers, or maybe she hadn’t needed them. She had opened herself to him without any restraints, to his hands, his mouth, his tongue–to all of him. When he had left her, her face on the pillow was relaxed in sleep as if their night together had swept away the demons that were haunting her. He had woken her with a kiss to tell her he had to leave, and she had kissed him back, warmly. He had had to fight the impulse to stay.

  He took a taxi back to his flat. There was information he wanted to check. One thing he had forgotten until Roisin had talked about it was that Patel had completed almost two years of study at the University of London, in the School of Pharmacy, before he had been made to leave because of visa violations. This had been just two years before his death.

  And Massey’s connection with Haroun Patel was of longer standing than he had realized. Patel had been not just Massey’s friend but his protégé. He let his mind wander over the possibility that he had broached to Roisin, and that she had so emphatically dismissed. Something had been wrong at the hospital. The diagnosis of the infant’s serious condition had been delayed, and then the blood tests and the lab results had vanished with the child. Had Massey taken a terrible revenge for Patel’s death? But he had found Roisin’s dismissal of that idea convincing. He hadn’t much liked Massey, but he couldn’t see the man he had met, the man who had conducted that meticulous investigation into Haroun Patel’s death, engineering the murder of an innocent child.

  But he was now convinced that Majid’s child was dead.

  University colleges and schools were vast places, and tutors probably had little recollection of their students, two years down the line. But events had made Haroun memorable. He had been getting good grades when his course had been abruptly terminated, and the manner of his death could hardly have been missed by the people who had known him.

  Later that morning, he headed back towards King’s Cross. He walked away from the chaos of the station, down Gray’s Inn Road towards Brunswick Square where the School of Pharmacy was based. Barts Hospital was nearby.

  The School of Pharmacy edged on to an area of parkland where grass fought with mud in the damp ground. The trees were bare now, but in summer, the place would be leafy and attractive.

  He’d phoned beforehand, so when he gave his name at the reception desk it wasn’t long before a brisk-looking man in a white coat appeared and began shaking his hand with enthusiasm. He introduced himself as Paul Halloran. ‘It was a dreadful business,’ he said, without preamble. ‘I’m glad that people are starting to do something about it. Far too late, of course.’

  ‘How well did you know Haroun when he was a student?’

  ‘Oh, quite well. He was in my labs sessions. He wasn’t one of the brilliant ones. To be honest, most of those go for the courses that will lead to research. Haroun was bright, and he was a hard worker. That’s the big secret. Hard work will get you a lot further than genius. He was thinking of switching to a medical degree, if he could afford it.’

  ‘He knew one of the doctors at Barts, right?’

  Halloran looked taken aback. ‘Amazing you knowing that. Yes, one of the visiting lecturers–not someone I knew. He was the one who persuaded Haroun to switch to medicine–thought he had the ability. Haroun was keen, but there were cost implications. I was going to look into grants for him.’

  ‘It was a waste that he couldn’t finish.’

  Halloran made a sound of disgust. ‘It was a disgrace. They should just have given him a rap on the knuckles. All he was doing was working longer hours than his visa allowed. OK, he shouldn’t have done it, but plenty do. They need the money. Where’s the harm? And Haroun was in love, God help him.’

  ‘In love?’ Damien kept his voice casual, but suddenly he was alert. Haroun Patel came from a traditional family–his marriage arrangements would have been in the hands of his parents. He’d married not long after he’d returned to Pakistan. ‘He had a girlfriend? A local woman?’

  ‘No. She was a student who was over here from Europe to improve her English. But she wasn’t European. Her family were from Saudi Arabia, I think.’

  Saudi. Damien could see the glimmer of his quarry, far in the distance, as the light caught, just for a second, something that was supposed to be hidden. ‘Saudi Arabia?’

  Halloran cast him a quick look. ‘Yes. Her father whisked her off PDQ, once he knew what was going on. Next thing we heard, Haroun had lost his visa. There was some speculation afterwards. Dirty work at the crossroads and all that. But I’m afraid I can’t help you any more than that. I don’t know anything.’

  ‘It was two years ago. Students who studied with him must still be here. Would any of them know?’

  ‘I’ll ask. Is there somewhere I can contact you?’

  Damien left his e-mail and his mobile number. He wasn’t sure how long he’d be staying in London. But the timing was clear in his mind. Two years ago, Nazarian had brought his daughter Yasmin home. Not long after that, she had married Majid. Just over a year later, the man who had been in an illicit flirtation in London with a Saudi girl had died at the instigation of the man Yasmin had married.

  40

  In the days that followed, Roisin found that something had changed. When she opened her eyes in the morning, she wasn’t escaping any more from the flickering light of the fire. The days no longer seemed like a void she had to fill to stop her mind from falling into it. She started walking by the river again, and even went jogging by the canal, shocked by the way her fitness had deteriorated.

  Joe’s absence was a sharp, deep pain, but it felt like a clean pain, as though a wound that had been infected was no longer festering and was beginning the long, hard process of healing. She missed him with an aching regret. He was the first thing she thought about when she woke up and the last thing before she fell asleep at night. She still felt the lurch of recognition when a tall, dark-haired man came into view, still watched with irrational hope until the familiar figure became a stranger who looked at her with puzzled unease. But the dreams had changed.

  Now, she dreamed about him, dreamed about their life together, dreamed about the life they would never have, and often woke up with the glad realization that he was still alive, only to face the bleak reality once more. But the flickering flames and the pale face glimmering in the night had gone to wherever it was that nightmares went.

  Damien phoned to tell her he would be away from London for a few days. ‘How are you?’ he said.

  ‘Surviving.’

  Someone had survived. She just wasn’t sure who it was.

  A week after Damien had left, Roisin was sitting at the small breakfast bar in her flat. She was drinking coffee and talking to Joe, a conversation that had started when she came back to London, and ran through her head in a constant flow.


  Do you mind? That he stayed? I love you.

  And I can’t be here.

  I know. And I’ve got to keep going. Somehow.

  She went through to the living room and turned on her computer, intending to do an internet search for teaching work overseas. Instead, she found herself typing in the URL of the King Saud University web site. She’d had no contact from the university, and had made no attempt to contact any of the people she had got to know. The thought of Yasmin, still without her baby, tugged at her.

  She explored the familiar pages, the photos of buildings she knew, the road her taxi used to follow to take her to the women’s college, the map of the campus, the names of the staff. She saw that Souad was about to have another book published on the problems of translation, and was due to speak at a conference in Dubai. But there was a name missing. Yasmin’s name was no longer on the list of staff in the English Language Department.

  She hesitated, then entered her password. She logged on to the discussion forum. Yasmin might have posted something there. And she wanted to know if Najia now had any contact with the university at all, or if she was condemned, like her mother, to become a woman whose life was confined to the home and the false freedom of the shopping malls under the watchful eyes of her guardians.

  The topics flashed up on to the screen: Help with essay writing; English idioms. The thread she’d started herself, Life in the UK, was still attracting visitors. She moved on to the Social interaction and discussion site. The topics seemed to range from the devout to the banal: Hey, it’s my birthday; I need the advise; Blessings on our great ruler. There was nothing posted by Red Rose, and the threads that had been there were gone. There was nothing to show that political discussion had ever occurred on the site.

  She scrolled through her address book until she found Yasmin’s home e-mail. She thought for a minute, then wrote: Dear Yasmin, I have been thinking about you a lot since I left the Kingdom. I heard the terrible news about your baby. I’m so very sorry. With much love, Roisin.

  She couldn’t ask about the missing girl, Jesal. Not now. She clicked send, then remembered that she still had Najia’s e-mail address as well. She could ask Najia. She wasn’t sure how private it would be, so she kept the content anodyne:

  Dear Najia, I hope you are well. I am back in the UK. I’m not sure what I am going to do next. I heard the news about Yasmin’s baby. If there’s anything I can do, let me know. Are you still concerned about the person we discussed that day at the mall? With much love, Roisin.

  Then she went back to the university site. For some reason, her log-on had expired. She tried to log on again. A message flashed up on the screen: Incorrect login and password. She tried again, in case she had mistyped it, but the response was the same.

  Her visit to the site had been observed, and in the brief time since she had left it, someone had revoked her password.

  The computer chimed to tell her that she had new mail. She looked in her inbox. Undeliverable. Her e-mail to Yasmin had been returned.

  The recipient’s name is not recognized.

  Damien was leaving for Newcastle later that day. Before he set off, he decided it was time to check in with Rai. He looked at his watch. It would be late morning in Riyadh. He keyed in the number and stood by the window watching the people walking past in the street as he waited.

  ‘Damien?’ Rai sounded anxious. ‘I expect to hear from you.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I’ve been busy. Is there any news?’

  Rai’s voice sounded grim. ‘There is news. After you go, I look at everything, you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ This was Damien’s own method of dealing with intractable problems: go back to the beginning. He listened as Rai went over it again. Joe Massey had not arrived at the meeting to which he had been summoned, but he must have made it to the hospital. His jacket had been found in the laboratory where he customarily worked. Massey must have arrived at the hospital and gone to the lab to collect his notes for the meeting. Or maybe he’d never had any intention of attending that meeting. Maybe there was something in those notes that had to be kept secret. Whatever had happened, they had vanished. Then…

  Massey had been seen leaving the hospital. The security camera had picked him up in the car park. And then one of the traffic cameras had filmed his car travelling west out of the city, and there had been a passenger travelling with him. Whoever that person had been, he had not come forward. So far, nothing Rai had told him was ‘news’–certainly not the kind of news that Rai’s dark tone had intimated. He waited.

  ‘But now there is something else. The missing reports–they find one on Joe Massey’s desk. And he was doing some work on it they don’t understand. But what the report tells them–the blood group. Your friend Majid, he cannot be the father of that child.’

  Damien felt everything freeze inside him. Cannot be the father…Jesus Christ! He thought about Majid’s phone call the night the baby was born, and about the way happiness could burn away to ashes. And Yasmin…In the Kingdom, adultery was considered a serious crime, on a par with murder. ‘Where’s Yasmin? Where’s Majid’s wife?’

  Rai’s voice was sombre. ‘No one has seen her.’

  Nazarian. His influence might protect her for a while. But Majid was not a political man, he was a man of convictions. If he thought that his wife had committed adultery, and then had planned to pass off another man’s child as his…He wouldn’t wait for the courts, and no court in the country would convict him for that. Why wasn’t Nazarian there to protect his daughter?

  He rested his head against the cool of the glass. Majid was his friend. And yet Majid would do this thing–he had no doubts about that. He thought about the face he had seen in the window that day. That face had haunted him from the moment he had first glimpsed her at the window.

  Yasmin.

  He wondered if she had known even then that she was going to die.

  41

  The main road into Newcastle swept over the river on a high iron bridge. Damien almost missed his turning, a small road that took him down to the level of the river, across a low swing bridge that stood in the shadow of the Victorian behemoths that carried the road and the railway.

  He had booked into a small hotel on the riverside. It was on a narrow cobbled street, one of a row of buildings that had probably been offices and warehouses once, old with warped timbers and small, low-ceilinged rooms, converted now into bars and restaurants.

  This was the city where Amy had grown up. She’d talked about it to him, not so very long ago. Sometimes I can’t wait to go home. But the trouble is I don’t know where home is any more…The place I dream about? It doesn’t exist, not now.

  If she wanted to get away, this was where she would come. Roisin had talked with a wistful nostalgia about the days that she and Amy had spent here together, and even allowing for the large quantity of red wine she had drunk that evening, there had been the ring of authenticity to her story. Damien thought that maybe Amy had been happy here. He wasn’t sure she had been happy anywhere else.

  He checked in to his hotel, then walked along the quayside to look at the restoration of one of the glories of industrial England.

  As he came out of the shelter of the bridge, the wind battered him. High above, sea birds screamed. The river flowed past, glittering in the winter light. The heavy stone stanchions of the iron bridge loomed over him. Down the river, he could see the new bridge, a thread of steel arcing across the water to the far side where a square, four-towered building stood. It was bleak and beautiful.

  But he wouldn’t locate Amy here. He left the river, and walked up a steep hill into the city centre. The road wound round under the high arches of one of the bridges, unexpected passageways and flights of steps leading away, a city of narrow alleyways and dark passages, the forbidding northern version of the old cities of the Gulf.

  He was here to track down Amy’s sister, the elusive Jassy–Jesamine for short. The recollection made him smile
. He had a feeling that, wherever Jassy was, Amy would be close by, but in order to find her, he needed to know her name. His first port of call was the Register Office. He could have done this by phone, but he only had one starting point: Amy’s name and her date of birth. Anything else would depend on what he found. It was quicker to come here himself than to play the game of telephone to-and-fro that would use up the little time he had.

  He’d known her by her married name, Seymour, but she’d been born Amy Fenwick–something else he had found out from Roisin. He knew her birthday, so it was easy enough to get a copy of her birth certificate.

  The information didn’t get him much further. Amy’s mother was Marguerite Fenwick, née Johnson. Her father was Martin Fenwick. It wasn’t hard to track down the marriage certificate. Marguerite Johnson had married Martin Fenwick when she was eighteen and he was twenty. They’d married three months before the birth of their daughter.

  The marriage had ended when Amy was still a small child. As for Marguerite’s second marriage, he had no time for a painstaking trawl through the records based on what little information he had. But he did know that Amy had been ten when Jesamine was born, which gave him a twelve-month period in which to look for Jesamine’s birth records.

  He waited until one of the clerks was free, then went and gave her the details he had. ‘I’m trying to find a distant relative,’ he said. ‘Family history.’

  The woman smiled her comprehension. Tracing family history had become a popular hobby for large numbers of people; it was as if a realization had dawned that everyone’s family went back ultimately to one absolute root, and people were trying, in an insecure world, to anchor themselves as closely as they could to that one sure point.

  ‘I don’t have much information,’ he said. ‘She was born in 1981. Her mother was called Marguerite. I don’t have the father’s surname. Her given name is Jesamine. Any chance of finding her in the records?’