Borrowed Light

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘I was, yes – not in Gaza but at El Arish.’

  ‘So you know all this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry.’ She studied him a moment. ‘It must have been horrible. I know it’s affected Gabrielle. So many kids in the hospital there.’

  Faraday nodded. Horrible didn’t do his memories justice. He still wanted to know about Leila. All he’d seen was a bundle of bandages in the ICU at El Arish. How badly had she been injured?

  ‘Badly, I’m afraid. Normally we can cope with a 30 per cent burn but the phosphorus got into her system. It affects the liver and kidneys. Just that can be enough to kill you.’

  ‘And Leila?’

  ‘The doctors in Egypt did a remarkable job. We call it debridement. You pick bits out of the wounds. With phosphorus you have to be especially careful because it catches fire in contact with air and burns all over again. To be honest, I don’t know how that little girl survived.’

  ‘But you say she’s getting better?’

  ‘Definitely. She was burned on the chest and the back, as you probably know. The torso burns are deep, full thickness, but they’re responding well. The real problem is her hands.’

  She flexed her own hands as if grabbing at her upper body, trying to tear off her T-shirt.

  ‘To be honest, Mr Faraday, they’re pretty bad.’

  ‘So what can you do?’

  ‘We’ve done grafts, of course, and we’ve pinned a couple of fingers where there was tendon damage. Her problem will be what we call contractures. The fingers stiffen up like this –’ her hands were claws ‘– so she’ll need lots of physio to keep the fingers mobile. But all that’s to come. For now it’s enough just to keep her stable. This is no picnic, Mr Faraday. The pain can be intense, but children are very adaptable. They need to reach out to someone, as you might imagine.’

  ‘Of course.’ Faraday nodded.

  The sister was looking at the flowers. She had something else she wanted to say.

  ‘Gabrielle …’ She gestured Faraday into the spare seat. ‘It’s not my place to ask, but I get the impression you two are close. Would that be right?’

  ‘Yes. I like to think so.’

  ‘Then maybe I ought to have just a tiny word in your ear.’

  ‘Of course. Go ahead.’

  ‘There’s a translator here, did you know that? Her name’s Riham. She and Gabrielle are doing a wonderful job with the little girl. To be honest, I’m not sure how we’d cope without them, especially Riham. The language would be a huge problem without her.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Riham stays overnight. She and Leila have become very tight. It’s obvious in a way, isn’t it? Same culture, same language. Maybe Riham even looks like the little girl’s mother. I’ve no idea.’

  Faraday nodded. He knew exactly where this was going.

  ‘And Gabrielle?’

  ‘Gabrielle is …’ she frowned ‘… passionate about the little girl. She wants to do everything for her. Everything. As you might imagine, that can sometimes be a problem.’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘For Riham. And most of all for Gabrielle.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she wants the little girl, needs her. It happens more often than you might think. People bond with children like these, especially women. With Riham it’s different. She’s less emotional. I gather she’s had children of her own.’

  And Gabrielle hasn’t, Faraday thought. It was true. Every word this woman was saying made total sense. Gabrielle had always been passionate about more or less anything she regarded as important, and just now nothing would be more important than Leila. Not just a child hauled back from near-certain death, but a victim of the grossest injustice.

  ‘You’re telling me she’s jealous.’ His voice was flat. It was a statement of the obvious.

  ‘Yes.’ The sister nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. She wants little Leila for herself. She wants to keep her, adopt her, whatever it takes. And as far as I can make out, that will never happen. Not a child from Gaza. Not someone who can go back and live there.’

  ‘Can or should?’

  ‘That’s not my decision, Mr Faraday. I’m just –’ the smile again ‘– marking your card.’

  ‘But what do you think? What’s your opinion?’

  ‘I don’t have one. We make these children whole again. We love them, treasure them. Leila is no different. Sometimes it’s the adults who have the problems, not the children. And maybe that’s true in this case.’

  Faraday got to his feet and extended a hand in thanks. In five short minutes this woman had shed a great deal of light on the last month of his life. No wonder Gabrielle had retreated to a place where no one could reach her. No wonder she was so obsessed, so strange, so utterly changed. She’d set out on a journey she could never complete. And maybe, deep down, she knew it.

  ‘So where do I find them?’ he said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2009. 16.05

  Winter had fixed to meet Tommy Peters in the upstairs bar on Waterloo station. He wanted somewhere busy, public and within walking distance of the train home. He hadn’t the slightest intention of staying in London for a minute longer than he absolutely had to.

  He bought himself a tomato juice and found what passed for a quiet corner. From here he could see the station below. The rush hour had yet to begin in earnest but already there was a sizeable crowd beneath the bank of monitors on the concourse.

  Peters was ten minutes late. Winter spotted him as he came up the last flight of stairs to the bar. He had his hands thrust into a brown leather jacket, and as he got closer, scanning the tables left and right, Winter realised how much he’d changed. The bullet head was still shaved, and Winter remembered the glint of gold around his neck, but the bulk that went with the air of quiet menace had gone. This was someone thinner, pale, visibly anxious. Maybe he’s ill, Winter thought. Maybe he’s got something really painful like bowel cancer. Maybe, fingers crossed, he’s on the way out.

  Winter gave him a wave, pushed the spare chair towards him with his foot. Peters didn’t ask for a drink and Winter didn’t offer.

  ‘Great place to meet.’ Peters sat down.

  ‘Mackenzie sends his best. He’s sorry he can’t make it.’

  ‘Yeah? So why didn’t he try?’

  ‘He’s Mr Busy just now.’ Winter spared him the details. ‘Whatever you’re after, I’ll take it straight back to him. Mackenzie’s good with decisions. He doesn’t fanny around. He won’t keep you waiting.’

  ‘Keep me waiting for what?’

  ‘A decision.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Whatever you’ve got in mind, Tommy.’ He paused. ‘Times are hard, yeah?’

  Peters was finding it hard to look Winter in the face. His eyes kept wandering off. They seemed to have a life of their own. He was sweating too, which was strange when the weather people were forecasting snow.

  ‘This is about you as well as him,’ he said at last.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Peters gestured Winter closer. His breath smelled like an ashtray. Monkswell Farm, Winter thought. Maybe Bazza had been right all along.

  Peters was talking about Spain, the time they’d all flown down in the charter jet from Southampton. The immigration people still had the flight details logged in their system, including the passenger list.

  ‘And that’s a problem?’

  ‘Yeah. For sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You remember Brett West?’

  ‘Like yesterday.’

  ‘And that girl of his?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Both bodies went to a guy I know in Malaga. I’d worked with him before, trusted him like a brother. He had loads of contacts in the construction business. The deal we had would put West and his lady in the foundations of a multi-storey car park up the coast.’

  ‘And what happened?’
r />   ‘West was fine. No problema. Job done.’

  ‘And the lady?’

  ‘Fuck knows. Maybe my guy got it wrong, maybe he didn’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter. A bunch of gypsies found her in a landfill site in Extremadura.’

  Winter nodded, didn’t say anything. His grasp of geography had never been brilliant but he thought Extremadura was a long way from Malaga. As for the girl, her upturned face pleading for mercy was another image that Winter would never forget. Her name had been Renate. Because she’d just watched her boyfriend shot to death, Peters had killed her too.

  ‘They traced her in the end – name, details, the lot. This was a while back. When they had the chance they made a start on putting the story together. Where she’d been, who she’d hooked up with. Turned out she was an artist.’

  Winter nodded again. She’d just opened a tiny gallery in Malaga, just a shop really. She’d been talking about it seconds before Peters had turned up to blow Westie away. Great timing.

  ‘Have they linked her to Westie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They started looking hard at passenger lists into Malaga, commercial flights to begin with. This is still a while ago. Then someone had a bright idea about business charters.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I’ve got a contact. Sort of mate. Happens to be a cop.’

  ‘He’s Spanish?’

  ‘Of course he’s fucking Spanish. And yes, he’s highly placed, and yes, I bung him. And yes, I trust what he delivers.’

  This was beginning to make sense. Last summer Winter had flown down to Vigo to pull Mackenzie’s daughter out of a hole she’d dug for herself. At the airport he’d been smuggled past immigration by a guy called Riquelme because his name was on a police stop list. At the time it had shaken him. Now he knew why.

  ‘So where are we now?’

  ‘The spic policía are putting an extradition case together. My contact says it’s still stoppable.’

  ‘For a price.’

  ‘Of course. Nothing comes cheap.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A quarter of a million. Doesn’t Mackenzie ever fucking listen?’

  Winter wanted to know who was in the frame. Peters said everyone on the charter flight. Winter tried to remember who else had been there. Peters saved him the trouble.

  ‘There were five of us. The other two were mates of Mackenzie’s, came along for the ride.’

  Winter had them now. They’d both been Pompey scrappers from the old 6.57 days. One of them was called Tosh. The other drank nothing but Bacardi and Coke. Maybe they’d think twice about one of Bazza’s jollies next time.

  ‘My boss will need some kind of collateral,’ Winter said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Proof this guy of yours exists. That the dosh, whatever we settle on, will do the trick.’

  ‘Settle on? How does that work?’

  ‘Life’s a negotiation, Tommy. This is Bazza talking, not me. You come up with that kind of price, he’ll laugh in your face. Two hundred and fifty K? I tell you now, my friend, you’re off your head.’

  ‘Fine.’ Peters stood up. The denim shirt was missing a button above the waistband. Definitely hard times.

  Winter told him to sit down again. Peters didn’t move.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of attitude for a fat bastard,’ he said.

  ‘I’m asking you to sit down, Tommy. You want me to say please? Will that make it easier?’

  Peters settled in the seat again. The bar was beginning to fill up.

  ‘There’s something else we need to discuss …’ Winter began ‘… since you’re here.’

  Peters nodded, said nothing.

  ‘Mackenzie thinks you’ve already been at it.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘At a stash of bugle he’s salted away.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘He thinks you’ve got the hump. He thinks you’ve tootled down south and helped yourself. In fact he’s convinced. So convinced he asked me to pop up and ask for it back.’ Winter smiled. ‘Politely, of course.’

  ‘You’re off your head.’ Peters was staring at him.

  ‘Bazza, Tommy. Not me. If all this is fairyland, it’s down to Bazza.’

  ‘But you’re telling me he’s serious?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘He thinks I’ve robbed him?’

  ‘That’s exactly what he thinks. He tells me you knew about the toot already. Why? Because he told you himself. Biggest fucking mistake the man ever made. His words, Tommy, not mine.’

  ‘This is insane.’ Peters checked round. He was really angry. ‘I kill people for a living, mate. Straightforward contract. Honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. I wouldn’t touch bugle. Never. Not his. Not any other bastard’s. Drugs are more trouble than they’re worth. So do us a favour, yeah? Just tell him that. And just make sure he fucking understands.’

  He sat back, outraged. Winter was eyeing the bar. A Stella would be nice, he thought.

  Peters was on his feet again. He’d said his piece: 250K meant 250K. He’d talk to his Spanish contact about getting some kind of guarantee but he wasn’t promising anything. The minute Mackenzie came up with the dosh, he’d get this thing moving.

  Winter asked about the time frame. Was there any kind of deadline?

  ‘Didn’t I mention it?’ Peters was staring down at him. ‘The key meet’s at the end of the month. After that, even 250K won’t make a difference.’

  Faraday sat in the hospital coffee shop. Out in the corridor, visitors were browsing the League of Friends bookshop.

  Gabrielle picked at the wrap he’d just bought her, chicken tikka in a nest of lettuce. Her cappuccino was untouched.

  ‘Well, chéri?’

  ‘I think she’s lovely. I think she’s gorgeous. And I think she’s very brave.’

  ‘Vraiment?’

  ‘Truly.’

  His hand closed on hers. The tiny squeeze brought colour to her cheeks. She leaned across the table, beckoning him closer, kissed him on the mouth. A soldier at the next table, embarrassed, bent to his mobile.

  ‘And you think …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alors … you think I’m crazy? Bringing her all this way? Only sometimes that’s what I think. I go home, back to that place down the road, and I lie there and wonder whether I was … you know … dans le vrai.’

  Dans le vrai meant in the right. Faraday reached for both hands this time. He’d spent the best part of an hour beside Leila’s bed, watching the little girl playing with Riham, amazed by how tiny she was. Riham was an older woman, late forties, early fifties. Her hair was beginning to grey and there was a hint of sternness when she talked to anyone but the child, but with Leila she was soft and playful, talking her patiently through a book of animal pictures, making the right noises for the lion and the elephant, then adding little asides, fragments of Arabic that occasionally drew a smile from the child.

  Leila herself, to Faraday’s surprise, looked almost untouched by what she had been through. Her face had been spared the phosphorus. Hide the bandaged hands and the dressings around her tiny torso, and except for her size she might have been any five-year-old. No wonder Gabrielle wanted to hang on to her.

  ‘I’m sure you were in the right,’ he said. ‘I talked to the sister earlier. If you’d done nothing, she thinks Leila might not have made it.’

  ‘Ah oui? What else did she say?’

  ‘She told me about the treatment. About what they’ve done for Leila. She thinks you and Riham are wonderful.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Il fallait le faire. C’est tout.’

  You just had to do it. That’s all.

  Faraday smiled, told her he was proud of her, of what she’d achieved, of the care and attention she’d conjured up for this tiny scrap of a girl. But how come Leila was so small?

  ‘In Gaza there is no food, chéri. In Gaza there is no an
ything. Gaza is a prison. Everyone suffers. No one has enough to eat.’

  Faraday knew where this was leading. Leila, in Gabrielle’s view, belonged anywhere but home. He changed the subject. Told her about the stuff he’d brought over. How long was she planning to stay in Salisbury? How long before they could be back together again in the Bargemaster’s House?

  ‘You miss me, chéri?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very much?’

  ‘Lots.’

  ‘Then I hope you have patience.’ Her smile was warm at last.

  ‘So you’re staying here a while? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Oui.’ The smile had gone. ‘Je dois. I have to.’

  Later, once the child had gone to sleep, Faraday suggested they went out for a meal together. Gabrielle lingered beside the bed, the back of her hand against Leila’s cheek, while Faraday watched Riham prepare her evening meal. She kept her food in a special fridge in a room across the corridor, and she spooned hummus onto rounds of toast, adding slices of tomato on top. Faraday had already asked her whether she wanted to join them for supper, but she’d shaken her head with a ghost of a smile and said no. She had a Walkman to keep her amused, and plenty of books, and the nurses let her watch television if she was in the mood. Every day, she said, was the same, but she was happy to devote herself entirely to the child. After more than a week in the same room, Gabrielle admitted she knew virtually nothing about her.

  Faraday had taken advice on where to eat. The sister in charge of the unit recommended a pub in a nearby village: good food, no hassle with parking and a choice of real ales. Gabrielle appeared not to mind where they went. She hung on Faraday’s arm as they crossed the car park. She was clearly extremely pleased to see him.

  The pub turned out to be an excellent choice. Friday night was obviously popular but they managed to find a table in the corner. Gabrielle liked the low oak-beamed ceiling and the lack of TV or canned music, and when she discovered her favourite, coq au vin, on the menu, Faraday decided to celebrate with a bottle of decent Burgundy.

  Gabrielle wanted to know who was driving.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But you’ve had beer already. You want me to drink the whole bottle?’

  Faraday shook his head. The guest house where she was staying was a few miles down the road. He had no intention of driving any further.