Strangers

by Carla Banks

  She pushed it to shut it, but it seemed to be jammed. There was a stone stuck under it and she had to step out into the street to free it. A vehicle switched on its lights catching her and the baby in the dazzle. Then they went out, leaving her in darkness. She blinked the afterimages away, feeling the door start to swing free. She stepped back and heard the lock click shut behind her.

  When she got into her flat she dumped everything on the floor and lifted Adam out of the cot. He’d stopped crying. She sat on the settee, cradling him. His eyes were fixed on her face. The world must be an amazing place until familiarity turned its regular miracles into the commonplace. Roisin smiled at him and touched his nose with the tip of her finger. His eyes opened even wider and he kicked his legs.

  ‘Pretty cool, hey?’ Roisin said.

  He made an ah ah sound and kicked his legs again.

  They played like that for a while. She found he liked big, bright things that he could focus on and make an attempt to grasp with his hands. He seemed to like peek-a-boo games, and when she blew in the soft folds of his neck, it made him chuckle. She changed him, and put him back into the hooded sleeping suit. The night was cold, and she was suddenly aware of the chill draughts from the poorly fitting windows. He was becoming fretful and she had to walk up and down rocking him until he fell asleep.

  She could hear the wind starting to blow, rattling the windows and clattering the spilled rubbish around in the air well. But the flat felt secure against the stormy night, and the baby was a warm weight in her arms.

  For the first time since that night in Riyadh, she felt happy.

  Damien made himself go to the hotel bar and order something to eat. He sat in the fashionably minimalist expanse of polished floor, steel-topped tables, dim lighting, listening to the voices of the evening drinkers echoing round him, the sound perceptibly rising as the evening went on and more and more people piled in.

  The past few weeks were catching up with him. He felt as though he’d reached the end of his resources. Fatigue was like an ache inside him, and his arm felt heavy and cold–or hot? He couldn’t tell. He looked at his hand. The skin was white with a bluish tinge, except for his fingers which were swollen and painful.

  The wrong blood. He wondered what treatments had been given to Majid’s child before the error was spotted. Unnecessary drugs? Too much oxygen? More radical treatment? And what would the result have been? A hospital error that harmed–or proved fatal–to the child of a high-ranking police officer. The penalties would have been severe for all those implicated in the mistake. So severe that it was worth the risk of removing the child? Or the child’s body…

  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 looking down from the window. Yasmin. He wondered if she knew that her child was probably dead.

  The waitress put a plate in front of him. He couldn’t remember what he’d ordered; it looked like some kind of elaborate sandwich, garnished with an assortment of leaves. She fussed round him for a minute, offering him a choice of dressings, waving a pepper grinder at him, then hurried off. He had no appetite.

  Something was nagging at him. Damien shook his head to clear it. He felt hot, and his mind wouldn’t focus. Before…There had been something…Rai’s message. Rai had left that odd message that had been pushed out his mind by the news about the mistake at the hospital.

  He drank some water, grimacing at the slight bitterness of the lemon that was floating in the jug. He hadn’t asked, and Rai hadn’t said what it was that he had found. It was after eight. Rai would be asleep by now.

  But Damien needed to know. He had half a picture–any bits that were available might help to complete it. He took out his phone, but the noise in the bar was rising. He paid his bill, leaving the sandwich untouched on the table, and went into the lobby where it was quieter. He keyed in Rai’s number and waited as it rang.

  ‘Damien?’ Rai sounded bleary.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry to wake you. I…’

  ‘You are OK?’ Rai’s voice sharpened with sudden anxiety.

  ‘Yes, yes, I just needed to check…’

  ‘You do not sound OK,’ Rai said flatly.

  ‘I’m tired. I’ll be fine once I can get this sorted out and get some sleep. You left a message a few days ago, something about “revolver doors”, something you were going to check. What was it?’

  ‘I am not certain yet. I want to…’

  ‘Yes. But I need to know what it is.’

  Rai stopped arguing. ‘I look at who leaves the country that day.’

  Damien waited. The police had already done this. There can’t have been a name on those flight schedules that rang any alarm bells.

  ‘I look at flights, but I also talk to the drivers,’ Rai said. ‘And that night–the night of the bomb–one driver takes someone we know from Riyadh to Bahrain, someone who leaves the country by road across the causeway.’

  The King Fahd causeway that linked Bahrain with the town of al-Khobar in the east of the Kingdom, a five-hour drive from Riyadh. Someone we know. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘This is why I want to check it. It has to be mistake, because this person has already left the Kingdom.’

  ‘Who, Rai?’

  ‘It is Amy Seymour.’

  46

  The storm caught Damien as soon as he stepped out of the hotel. The rain was bouncing up from the cobbles and the wind seized him as he moved away from the shelter of the bridge. He gritted his teeth and braced himself against it as he ran to the car park. His raincoat, a heavy riding mac that he’d bought in anticipation of the British weather, barely protected him. By the time he was behind the wheel, his hair was dripping and the bottoms of his trousers flapped wetly against his legs.

  He put the car into gear and then hesitated. He remembered that day in Paris when Nazarian had found him. Was he leading the people Amy was afraid of straight to her? But she was making no effort to conceal her location. She’d been strolling about openly, making no attempt to hide. Besides, she had questions to answer. He had to talk to her. Now.

  He kept his eyes on the road as he drove, watching the mirror, watching the cars around him. The traffic was light. The storm had kept a lot of people indoors. The road was wet and the water splashed up under his wheels. The light from the street lamps wavered and shattered. His headlights picked out the pillars of a flyover, blocks of flats looming darkly out of the night, and gone.

  The Byker Wall presented a blank face to the city, a wall in reality, not just in name. Its massive presence was ominous and forbidding. He didn’t want to risk his car in the estate so he left it outside a nearby supermarket. He crossed the wide road where heavy lorries threw the spray in great sheets as they ran their cargoes through the night, and went in through the wide entrance.

  And the world around him was transformed. The noise of the traffic was silenced by the wall. He was in a wide basin where the flats tiered up around him. Lights illuminated paths and walkways, and he could see the shapes of trees, and the shadows of creepers tumbling from balconies. He had a feeling that in daylight, there would be bright colours. It was almost as if he’d left the dark city and stepped into a Mediterranean hill village, except the cutting edge of the wind and the sharp needles of the rain were there to disabuse him.

  And there were other reminders that destroyed the fleeting illusion. Litter blew around on the ground. Discarded fast-food containers were tangled in the creepers. There was graffiti on the fences, and jagged gaps where the timber had been pulled away.

  He followed the path through the estate, looking at the numbers. The housing consisted of apartment blocks, maisonettes and houses. Amy’s flat was in one of the blocks, on the first floor, not far from the entry point he’d used. He found the door to the stairwell, noting as he went in that the security locks had been recently vandalized–he could see the fresh marks on the metal. The door swung open.

  The steps were bare and functio
nal. Here, the lights had all gone and he had to feel his way up in the darkness, his hand on the gritty brick of the walls. When he reached the first level, he found that the lights were also out along the walkway. The clouds must be thinning, because there was a glimmer of moonlight through the slatted timbers of the roof.

  He became aware of the stillness around him. Music was playing from somewhere close by, a dull thump of bass that sounded insistently. Dogs barked in the distance and voices shouted, but here, there was no sign of life apart from the music that beat out almost below the threshold of hearing. As he moved along the walkway, he passed the front doors that were firmly shut, windows with the curtains pulled across and no glimmer of light showing, as though the inhabitants had decided to hide themselves away from the night.

  Like animals who knew there was a predator abroad.

  The music drew him on.

  Amy’s flat was at the far end of the walkway. He was moving carefully now, stepping quietly, his senses alert. The door of her flat was a dark shadow, closed like all the others. He reached out and pushed it gently.

  It swung open and the heavy beat poured out into the night.

  He hesitated on the threshold. He wanted to call for help, but he didn’t know who might answer, or what secrets Amy was hiding. He stepped inside and pulled the door shut. There was no key, but there was a bolt. It wasn’t damaged. He pulled it across. He didn’t want anyone coming into the flat behind him.

  He moved along the corridor, registering the doors and the layout. Room to his right, door open, check, empty. Room to his left, in, check, out. At the end of the corridor was the main living room. He could see the bulk of furniture against the faint light that came from the window. The music was louder.

  He pressed the light switch, and the window became a black square. If anyone was watching in the night, they now knew he was here. He crossed the room and turned off the CD player that stood on a low table.

  Silence.

  He took in the room in one moment of perception: a closed door at the far side of the room, a settee, an armchair, a TV. A book lay open on the floor. There was a coffee table in the window. The drawers on the small sideboard were half open, and papers were scattered across its surface.

  As his ears adjusted, he became aware of an electronic sound that glided between two notes, persistent and penetrating. The phone had been left off the hook. He picked up the handset and hung up, then out of curiosity checked the last caller. The number was familiar. He ran it through his mind and came up with a name.

  Roisin. Roisin had called Amy earlier that evening.

  He crossed the room to the sideboard. He wanted to check through the papers that had been scattered there. There were two framed photographs that he glanced at, then looked at again as what he had seen clamoured for his attention. He picked them up.

  The first one he looked at was of two girls–the older one was in the leggy, awkward stage of early adolescence. He recognized her at once as a young Amy. The other girl was a child, small, plump, with dark chestnut hair. Even given the difference in ages, there was an uncanny similarity between the faces. Amy’s sister, Jassy.

  He looked at the second photograph. It was hard to tell where it had been taken–against an anonymous background of a modern street. Amy, the Amy he knew, looked back at him. The young woman with her was unmistakably the child of the earlier photograph, now grown up. She was wearing a long coat and the hijab. He’d only seen this face unveiled once before, but he had never forgotten it, looking out from an upstairs window, staring at him for a long moment as their eyes met.

  Yasmin.

  Yasmin was Amy’s half-sister. Yasmin was Jassy, the sister Amy had lost and then found. That was what had haunted him about the face at the window. His subconscious had recognized the similarity that his conscious mind had missed. But Amy had left Riyadh for this woman, to be with her when she had her baby…He began to realize the significance of what Rai had told him.

  He had seen Amy at the airport, but he hadn’t seen her leave.

  Amy had been in Riyadh the night of the party.

  Arshak Nazarian was her stepfather.

  Oh, Jesus.

  And now, as a cold finger crept up his back, he became aware of the flat around him. It was freezing. Even with the door shut, there was no warmth building up. He touched the radiator. It was on. There was a faint smell–as if someone had been cooking and something had burned. And the silence wasn’t absolute. There was a sound almost below the threshold of hearing, a low roar like the sound of a central heating boiler.

  His eyes moved to the closed door at the far side of the room. The kitchen.

  Slowly, unwillingly, but irresistibly drawn, he went towards it and pushed it open.

  The sound immediately became louder. It was the noise of a kitchen fan, turned up to full blast. The window was wide open, the cold air pouring in. He could see water on the floor from the rain. His eye was drawn to the old-fashioned hob where a metal coil glowed, the dull red fading in places to a grey, ashy bloom. There were bits caught on the metal, charred black by the red hot iron. A pan lay on its side by the stove.

  He took another step into the room, his foot losing traction as he stepped on something that had been spilled on the floor. He put his hand against the wall to keep his balance. The smell was stronger here.

  And then he saw the figure crumpled on the floor. He could see the frill from a sleeve, the drape of a long skirt. And the blaze of red hair.

  Amy.

  ‘Amy!’ He was across the room and kneeling down beside her almost before he was aware of what he had seen. ‘Amy!’

  Her hand, curled up against her body, had been burned almost to the bone. The flesh was blistered, red and oozing in places, blackened in others, clenched by the burning into a claw. ‘Amy. Jesus…’He brushed the hair back from her face and swallowed the bubble of nausea that rose in his throat. Her face was a battered, contused mass, her visible eye swollen shut, her lip torn and crusted with dried blood.

  He could see Amy standing by the shutters in his house in Riyadh, could see the line of her jaw, the fine, delicate skin gleaming as the light and shadows moved across her. ‘It’s Damien. It’s OK, love. I’m here now.’ He was barely aware of what he was saying as he let his hand touch her shoulder, gently, but firmly enough that she would feel it. As he spoke, he was keying the number of the emergency services into his phone. ‘Ambulance. Fast.’

  He looked at her, his mind trying to fight its way through the priorities that were clamouring for his attention. Her arm was cold, and the flesh had that same dusky tinge that he saw on his hand, the tinge that said that the blood wasn’t flowing properly.

  He couldn’t find her pulse. That didn’t mean anything–it must be so faint with shock that he couldn’t detect it. He held his hand over the mess that was her mouth. Nothing. Her airway must be blocked. CPR. CPR would keep her alive until help got here. He knew how to do that. Two breaths and thirty chest compressions, two breaths and thirty chest compressions.

  Clear fluid seeped from her hand. There was a smell in the air that drew him back to summer evenings, to people calling to each other, laughter, music, the fragrance of cooking…

  …and the hiss of raw flesh as it was pressed down over the red hot coals.

  Amy.

  He needed to clear her airway first. She might be able to breathe on her own. Compressions and breaths, compressions and breaths. CPR saved lives. He moved her carefully on to her back and kept the optimistic litany running in his head as the ache of what had happened to her twisted in his stomach and gripped at his throat. But as he moved her, he saw what hadn’t been clear before, the angle at which her head was twisted, the impossible angle that told him everything he needed to know.

  Amy’s neck was broken. She was dead.

  47

  Roisin had settled Adam to sleep. She tried to get on with what she had been doing, but kept stopping to check on him. It must be like this bringing a
new baby home for the first time, the sudden awareness that she was the sole carer for this child, overwhelmed by his vulnerability and fragility. She realized that all the jokes about new parents hanging over their babies’ cribs to see if the child was still breathing were simply true.

  She could hear the faint snuffle of his breath. His face was serene and his tiny fists were close to his face. She resisted the temptation to pick him up again. It wouldn’t be fair to disturb him just to satisfy a need in her that was deep and growing.

  You know that baby we were talking about…? Want to go for it? Do you fancy having a little Aussie?

  I’m sorry, sweetheart.

  She and Joe should be in Newcastle now. She should be showing him all the places she wanted him to see, spending their days exploring the city, enjoying the elegant lines of Grey Street sweeping up towards the monument where she and Amy used to meet on Saturdays, crossing the Millennium Bridge to Gateshead, driving along the coast where the castles of old Northumbria lined the shore.

  And they should be waiting for the first signs of their baby.

  Maudlin, useless, pointless. None of that was going to happen.

  She checked the time. It was almost eleven. Amy’s train must be delayed. She’d meant to call Damien, to bring him up to date with the things she had found, tell him about Yasmin, but it was too late now.

  She looked at the pile of post that had arrived that morning. She’d dumped it on the table without looking at it. She flicked through it–a credit-card offer, a charity. Junk mail…

  The letter, Roisin.

  The letter?

  And suddenly she remembered the letter that Mari had given her. She’d forgotten about it–distracted by everything that was happening. She hunted through her things, trying to remember what she’d been wearing that day. She’d been carrying her large bag, the one she used when she went shopping. And the letter was there, shoved to the bottom. It was hardly surprising that the postman had made a mistake–it was a mess. The envelope had been reused, the original address had been hastily scribbled out and the new one scrawled in. It was addressed to Joe.