Strangers

by Carla Banks

  Then suddenly, the colour had drained from Yasmin’s face. There had been a panic to get her things together, then she, Najia and Bakul had left. Later that week, she had gone into labour, and then her baby had been abducted.

  What had Yasmin seen that had upset her so much? Roisin sat for a while with her eyes shut, letting the scene reconstruct itself, but all she could see were the faces of the two women and the glitter of the coffee machine and the shelves behind the counter. There was nothing. She had been sitting with her back to whatever it was.

  She waited by her computer, willing Najia to reply instantly, but nothing came back. She wandered restlessly round the flat, then decided she may as well go out. She would drive herself mad waiting here. She looked out of the window. The winter had settled into a dull greyness, but at least it wasn’t raining.

  As she came out of her front door, she noticed with irritation that someone had discarded cigarette ends on the landing. The cleaning of the common areas was sketchy, to say the least, and a constant source of friction between the managing agents and the tenants. Roisin had never really got involved with it, but she did object to someone using her doorway as an ashtray.

  The street was crowded, and she was being jostled on the pavement, so she turned off and walked through the backstreets of Bloomsbury, past the green enclosures of the squares, gardens confined behind railings that struggled to thrive in the shadows of the tall buildings. She remembered the hard light of Riyadh, the etched shadows, Joe slipping the silver bangles round her wrist, Damien, a stranger then, urging them through the streets until she had taken a wrong turning and ended up in as-Sa’ah Square.

  Damien who had touched her life lightly, who had made love to her for one long night and had then gone. She heard his voice from the first day: After 9/11, a bad joke went round Riyadh that they used it to train the hijackers…She could see the gleaming towers above her. The Kingdom Centre, where she had gone that day to meet Yasmin and Najia. And they’d talked about Jesal–Jesal whom Najia no longer wanted her to search for. The person you ask about, it doesn’t matter. Shawwal. Jesal had disappeared in the month of Shawwal.

  Which was…she reached for her phone and began to key in Damien’s number, then decided that she didn’t want to disturb him. Instead, she turned back on to the main streets and walked briskly down to Charing Cross Road where the bookshops were. She went into Foyles and found the books on Arabic culture. She flicked through them until she found one with the Hegira calendar.

  Shawwal. That fell between November and December. When Yasmin had said last year she was referring to the Gregorian calendar. She and Damien had assumed what had happened to Haroun Patel had triggered Jesal’s disappearance, but in fact she had gone long before the drugs incident that had led to her brother’s arrest.

  What had Yasmin said about Jesal? That she had run away, and she had stolen some jewellery.

  The police had shown her a heavy ring engraved in Arabic that had been on a dead woman’s finger…

  It was coming back to her now. Yasmin had said: I tried to help her, but then she disappeared and…no one…seemed to know what had happened to her.

  Roisin felt the book drop from her hands and grabbed for it before it fell to the floor. She had always used her maiden name at the university–It was the one on all her teaching documents. And she, Yasmin and Najia hadn’t talked about their home lives, their families, their husbands. She could remember her own surprise when Damien had told her that Yasmin’s husband was a high-ranking police officer. And that day at the mall she had told Yasmin: I can ask a few discreet questions at the hospital. My husband, Joe, he’s a pathologist, he works there. I’m not sure if there’s…

  That was when Yasmin had dropped her cup, her face going white with shock. It hadn’t been because of something she had seen. What had caused the colour to drain out of her face was the realization that she had just confided her secret to Joe Massey’s wife.

  Did you know that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK?

  44

  After Amy had gone, Damien stayed by the fire in the hotel lounge. It was late afternoon, and the hotel was getting busier. He let the noise and bustle of the arrivals distract him from his thoughts as he sat staring into the fire. Amy’s story had left him with a feeling of weary disgust at the way she had been treated, and he was trying to lose the image of a vulnerable seventeen-year-old left to fend for herself on the streets of London.

  He still had no idea what was happening, or if there was any link between Amy’s disappearance and the events in Riyadh. Roisin had described Amy as ‘frightened’ when she’d called to say she was leaving, and everything he’d seen told him that she was still afraid.

  He went up to his room. The place depressed him–the pale walls and floors, the production-line bland art, the standard minimalism of the design. He was willing to bet that a thousand hotel rooms like this existed across the country and that he could move from one to the other, barely aware of the transition. He’d preferred the shabby, rundown interior of Roisin’s flat–it was a home where a person lived, a person with individual tastes and a life to lead. This place was dead.

  Amy had scribbled down her address before she left. She’d taken a flat on the Byker Wall, a temporary rental while she looked for somewhere to buy. ‘It’s central, and you can always get a flat in Byker,’ she said. ‘I had one there when I came out of care. It’s a nostalgia thing.’

  He’d achieved everything he’d come up north for. He’d hoped to find a route to track Amy down; instead, he’d found her. And though he still wasn’t convinced by her story, it was no longer up to him to pursue it. If she needed his help, she would ask him. And if she needed him…He would talk to her again, once.

  He felt weary beyond belief. His hand ached, sending hot wires of pain up his arm. He had a sudden longing to be back in his house in Riyadh, sitting in the spice-scented shadows of the upstairs room, watching the patterns from the blind moving across the floor.

  Outside, he heard the sound of the wind rising.

  By the time Roisin got back to the flat, it was already dark. Her mind was going over and over what she had just realized.

  Yasmin had known something about Joe, and whatever it was, it had terrified her. And then her baby had been taken. Now Yasmin was in trouble–excluded from work, separated from her friends, her e-mail contact apparently cut off. Why?

  Joe had been called into work that day, that last day. He’d talked about it in the car afterwards. They wanted me to review a death. A baby died a few days ago. He’d done a post mortem, and he’d said that the baby had died because it was premature. And then he’d said…there’s something I should…This fucking country. I don’t know what to do. Maybe Joe had known something about Yasmin…And Yasmin’s baby had been stolen, and still hadn’t been found.

  She looked at her computer, and saw that the new messages icon was showing. Najia. At last.

  But the e-mail wasn’t from Najia. It was from Souad:

  Roisin, I have information from Najia’s brother that he does not wish you to contact her. There has been enough trouble at the university from bad influences as you well know. I must ask you to make no further communication with any of the students.

  Roisin hit the reply button:

  I have no idea what you are talking about. If you don’t wish me to contact Najia again, you must give me your reasons.

  This time, the reply came within five minutes.

  If you contact Najia, you will only cause her trouble. There is talk. They are saying that Yasmin’s husband was not the father of her child.

  Damien was jerked out of a deep sleep by the sound of the phone. He sat up, reaching for the light switch. He was sitting in a chair in an anonymous room. Rain was battering against his window, and in the orange light of the street lamps, he could see the water running down the glass. The window rattled as the wind blew, and in the background, he could hear the low roar of a river running
full.

  For a dizzying moment he had no idea where he was. Then the ladder of memory lifted him out of his confusion and the events of the day came flooding back. The phone was still ringing. He checked his watch. It was only half past seven. He picked it up. ‘O’Neill.’

  ‘I have found something that is wrong.’

  For a moment, he couldn’t make sense of what the speaker on the other end of the line was saying. There was an echo, and the voice sounded distorted, then he realized it was Rai, calling from the Kingdom. ‘Rai! What? What’s wrong?’ He realized he hadn’t called Rai about the odd message he’d left–he’d shelved it. He hadn’t been thinking straight.

  ‘Wait.’ He put the phone down and went and splashed water on his face to wake himself up. Then he picked the phone up. ‘Sorry. I was asleep. Tell me. What is it?’ It had to be urgent for Rai to have called.

  ‘I have checked at the hospital, because I hear there is trouble. They make a mistake. They look at the results more closely, the missing baby, and they find that this blood, the blood of the baby who is so unexpectedly ill, comes from a different child altogether. Not Majid’s child, not Yasmin’s child. But from one who die the day before Majid’s child was taken.’

  It took Damien a moment to understand the implications of this. Somehow, in the hospital system, there had been a terrible mistake. The hospital had mixed up the blood samples and diagnosed a healthy child as gravely ill.

  Yasmin’s child had been healthy when he was born, then there had been a blood test and the child had been whisked away to the ITU for sick and premature babies. He could remember Majid’s face when they talked in the car park, his grief and his dawning suspicion that there was something wrong at the hospital. And Damien’s own visit and the technician’s puzzlement as he looked at the report.

  He wondered how long it had been before anyone had thought to check that the blood test that ruled Majid out as the father of the child also ruled out Yasmin as his mother. This wasn’t just a mistake, it was a mistake that could have proven fatal.

  Maybe it had. They would have treated Majid’s child for an illness he didn’t have, treatment that could have seriously damaged or killed him.

  And then the child had vanished.

  45

  Not the father of Yasmin’s child…

  Roisin stood at the window watching the light starting to fade. The last cars were leaving the building site, and the street was quiet. The white van was back in its niche by the disused gate. She decided it must belong to one of the residents in the flats. She wished it was spring. She wanted the light evenings back. And summer. Maybe by summer she would know what she wanted to do. Maybe by summer she would be able to see beyond the next few days. Not the father of Yasmin’s child…No wonder Yasmin had been so afraid–but she hadn’t been frightened for herself. She’d been afraid for a woman she barely knew, a runaway maid called Jesal.

  Roisin thought about the e-mail address that no longer worked, and wondered if Yasmin was still alive. She shook her head to clear the thoughts away and picked up the phone. She wanted to see if Damien had called while she had been out. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to talk to him about Yasmin, and tell him what Souad had said about Najia. There was no message, but one person had phoned. She checked the number–someone had called her from Newcastle.

  With a tug of anxiety about her mother, she called back and waited as a phone rang at the other end. She was just about to hang up, when a voice said. ‘Hello?’ It was low and cautious.

  ‘Hello. This is Roisin Massey. You called this number earlier.’

  There was silence, then the voice came back more clearly. ‘Roisin, it’s Amy.’

  For a moment, surprise took her voice away. ‘Amy! My God.’

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch before. And I’m so sorry about Joe.’

  ‘Yes.’ She felt her throat tighten and spoke quickly. ‘You’re in Newcastle! I told Damien that was where you’d be. Did he find you?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him today. And I’m coming to see you.’ Amy’s voice was fast and breathy, the same as it had been when she made that last call from Riyadh. ‘There’s a train that leaves in forty-five minutes–it gets in just after ten thirty. I was calling to make sure you were there.’

  ‘You’re coming to London tonight?’

  ‘Yes–is that OK? I can get a hotel room when I…’

  ‘You don’t need a hotel. You can stay here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘Roisin, I…OK. Thank you. I’ll call you when I get to King’s Cross.’

  After Amy had rung off, Roisin forced her mind on to practical things. She went and got some clean sheets, and made up the sofa bed in the tiny study. Then she went into the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. She knew she was using these domestic details to stop her from thinking about Amy’s impending visit. What had Damien said to bring her racing down to London with such urgency?

  Was it just concern about her welfare? She and Amy had been close friends in the past, but that had been a long time ago. Did she know more about Haroun Patel? Damien said she, like Joe, had been asking questions. Or was it something else? Roisin concentrated on slicing onions and putting them to soften in some warm oil.

  The phone rang, jerking her out of her reverie. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Roisin?’ It was a woman’s voice, and she sounded strained and shaky. A baby was howling in the background. ‘It’s Mari. From downstairs. I’ve fallen. I think my leg…’

  ‘Hang on. I’m on my way.’ Roisin grabbed her keys and ran down two flights of stairs and along the walkway to number 13. Unlucky for some. She rattled the handle, and heard the sound of someone moving on the other side. She could hear Adam’s howls reach screaming pitch, and Mari’s voice saying effortfully, ‘It’s all right. I’m coming…Oh shit. Jesus.’ And then the door opened and Mari, white faced, was standing there supporting herself against the doorframe.

  Roisin caught her as she collapsed and eased her back down to the floor. One foot was still encased in a high-heeled sandal–presumably the cause of her fall. Her ankle was swollen and misshapen and her breath came in sharp gasps. She was shivering. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’

  Mari shook her head. ‘I can’t go to hospital. I can’t leave…’ Her normally pale face was bleached of colour. Roisin ran through to the main room and saw the screaming baby in a cot. OK, Adam was safe. She found the phone and called an ambulance, giving them the information as quickly and concisely as she could.

  She went into the bedroom and pulled the cover off the bed. Then she went back to Mari. She put the cover over her, holding it away from her injured ankle, then pulled off her own sweater and rolled it up into a makeshift pillow. Mari’s foot was swelling rapidly so she unbuckled the strap of the shoe, eliciting a groan and a barrage of swearing from Mari, but she didn’t attempt to do anything else. She didn’t have first-aid training.

  ‘Adam’s fine,’ she said. ‘He’s just had a fright.’

  ‘See to…’ The tears were streaming down Mari’s face. ‘I can’t go to hospital. I don’t want the social…’ Roisin didn’t know anything about Mari’s background, but she had the same brittle independence that Roisin could remember in Amy at that age. Was Mari another refugee from care, aware of the hovering system that might take her baby away from her?

  ‘Adam’s fine,’ she said firmly. I’ll see to him in a minute. Don’t worry. ‘I’ll take care of him for now. Is there someone…?’

  ‘No one. There’s no one. You’re not to…’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Roisin said again. Her mind was working fast. If Mari’s leg was broken, it would need setting. She would probably need a general anaesthetic which would mean at least an overnight stay in hospital. OK. Roisin didn’t have anything better to do. ‘I can take care of him.’

  The ambulance was there in less than twenty minutes, but it felt like for ever. Mari’s eyes were beginning
to look glazed. Roisin, worried she was going into shock, sat with her, talking about anything that came into her mind, about the way Mari had decorated the flat, the poor state of the staircases and walkways in the block…anything to stop Mari drifting into unconsciousness. She watched as the paramedics strapped the injured girl into a chair and carried her out of the flat.

  The baby’s howls had barely abated, and Roisin found herself alone in the sparsely furnished rooms in sole charge of a baby who was less than two months old. Adam had had a bad fright and he wasn’t easy to soothe. She jogged him gently in her arms, and sang to him. She found a feeding bottle and gave him some milk, and gradually his crying quietened to hiccups and then silence.

  She had to decide what to do. Adam would be happier in familiar surroundings, but Roisin had things she needed to do, and Amy would be arriving in just over an hour. She hunted round the flat. It was very different from the days of shabby clutter when George lived here. There was little furniture, but the space was filled with baby equipment–a chair, a padded playpen, stuffed toys, baby clothes hanging over drying racks and over the radiators, a huge teddy bear that must have dwarfed Mari, never mind Adam.

  Working one-handed, she found a bag and packed it up with nappies, baby milk and some toys. She looked at the pushchair, which was as beautifully upholstered and sprung as a top-line car, but decided not to use it. She could remember its weight. It would be a nightmare to drag it up the steps. There was a detachable carry-cot–that would do.

  She pocketed Mari’s keys and slung the bag across her shoulder. Adam was well wrapped up in a hooded sleeping suit, but it was freezing outside. She wrapped him in a blanket and tucked him into the carry-cot, then, almost impossibly burdened, she set off along the walkway. She noticed that the security door wasn’t properly shut. The ambulance men must have forgotten to close it. She couldn’t leave it like that–not round King’s Cross.