by Mike Shevdon
One of the two young men spoke. "You're the only one who's gonna get hurt. If I were you, I would leave while you still can."
"What is this? What's going on? Ahmed, who is that man?" The voice came from the doorway to the kitchen at the back of the café. It should have been Arabic-sounding, but the accent was pure Ravensby. I peeked past the big guy to see who spoke. The headscarf and the long dress did not look out of place, but the face was too pale for the Lebanon. Besides, I recognised her from the photo.
"Hello, Karen," I said.
EIGHT
Karen Hopkins bustled forward. "What are you doing? Ahmed? Who is this man?"
"He's just leaving," said Ahmed, meeting my eyes and nodding towards the door.
"How do you know my name?" she asked.
"I saw your mother this morning," I told her. "I was looking for Zaina, but now I've found you."
"Well, as you can see, I'm not lost. What do you want?"
"Look," I said, "I don't want any trouble. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes."
The young man looked angrily at me. He shook his head. "He was asking about you, poking his nose in."
"And so you threatened him." She walked up to him and straightened his clothes, her distaste for violence plain.
"I didn't threaten anyone. I just wanted him to leave us alone."
"Us"? This was an interesting development.
She turned to the men standing in the narrow aisle. "Please, sit. You're not helping."
They looked at Ahmed and he nodded. They slowly sat down again, watching me all the while as if I might suddenly sprout horns. I tried to look as relaxed and unthreatening as possible.
"I won't keep you long," I said. "I just wanted to ask you a few questions."
"Did my mother put you up to this?"
"No, but I did talk to her. She wants you to call her."
"She said that? Really?"
"She said you'd only have to pick up the phone. You could even reverse the charge."
"Right. That sounds more like her."
"Don't you want to talk with her? You could just let her know you're OK. She's bound to be worried about you."
"She said that as well, did she?" She watched my expression. "I thought not."
I was missing something here. I looked at her again. The headscarf and the long skirt were almost ethnic dress, not so much a fashion statement as a cultural statement.
"I'm sorry, I was only asking about Zaina and your boyfriend here got heavy with me."
"He's not my boyfriend."
Her voice was like her mother's but she had picked up some of his accent. "Whatever you say."
"He's my husband."
It suddenly came into focus. "Of course, you're Zaina. Greg Makepeace told me, 'If you find Zaina, you'll find Karen.'" I mentally kicked myself for being so dim.
"Mum's vicar?" she said. "He came to the café one day. We talked for a while. He brought me some things from home, personal things. What's he got to do with this?"
"So your mother knows you're here too?" I said.
"Who are you?" Ahmed said. "Why is this any of your business?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm called Neal Dawson. I'm looking into the disappearance of a number of young women from Ravensby. I thought Karen was one of them."
"Do I look like I'm missing?" she asked.
"No, I guess not."
"Then you can cross me off your list." She guided her husband gently towards the counter, turning her back to me.
"Does your father know where you are?"
"I do not discuss my personal affairs in public like a soap opera." She moved towards the door into the back of the café.
"Your sister?"
She stopped and turned back.
"Why can't you let it alone?" she said.
"I have my reasons."
She looked up at her husband and he looked back at me. Then she came forward again and pointed at the table next to the window, away from the other customers. "Sit there." She instructed.
I moved slowly past the men who had stood to help Ahmed. They watched me with cold disapproval. Karen spoke with Ahmed behind the counter in low tones until he turned away and picked up his cloth, sulkily continuing to clean out the counter. Then she disappeared into the back for a moment, reappearing with a white cotton apron tied around her waist to serve the men who sat near the counter with hot tea and sweet sticky pastries. When she had spoken to them for a moment she came and placed a glass cup with steaming liquid with a spoon in it on my table.
"Mint tea," she said. "It makes you look more like a customer and less like a bouncer."
I thanked her and she turned back to the older gentleman. She addressed him in a mixture of English and what must have been Arabic. After talking with him for a moment she went back behind the counter, removed the apron and brought her own mint tea to sit opposite me.
"It's normally busier than this," she said, sliding into the seat.
"That must be good for business," I replied.
"We get by." She glanced towards her husband.
"Was that Arabic you were speaking?"
"I'm not very fluent," she said modestly, "but our customers appreciate the attempt."
"It must be hard for someone with your background."
"I need to learn it anyway, in order to study the Qur'an."
"Is that what you're studying at college?"
"No. I converted. It's part of the faith to understand the words of the prophet."
"To Islam?"
"No, Buddhist. Of course to Islam. I converted so that we could get married."
I looked over at the man behind the counter. He was trying to talk to one of the young men and watch us at the same time.
"Jealous type, is he?"
"Jealous? Ahmed? Don't be daft." The way she said Ahmed was soft, like a sigh.
"He hasn't taken his eyes off you since you sat down."
"He thinks you're going to steal me away, take me back to my family." She looked up. "Are you?"
Her eyes were grey, at odds with the Muslim dress and Arab café, but they held my gaze, waiting for an answer.
"No. I'm not here to take you back."
"Did Mum hire you?"
"Hire me?"
"You're a private detective, aren't you? That's what people like you do, isn't it? Dig around in other people's business."
It was my turn to laugh. "A detective, me?"
"What then? You're not church and you're not a copper either. They've been and gone. The police won't interfere now that I'm eighteen and the vicar only came to check up on me for Mum. You're not a fisherman and you move like a fighter. Ex-military? Private security?" It was her turn to watch me.
"I have done some security work," I admitted. I liked this girl. She had spirit and intelligence. She knew what she wanted and it sounded as if she was working hard to get it. The contrast between her and the soft resignation of her mother was stark.
"I saw your mother this morning."
"What did she say?"
"Very little. I asked her whether she'd given up hope and she told me she hadn't."
Karen looked back towards the counter.
"She said if you wanted to come back then all you had to do was pick up the phone."
She stirred the mint tea slowly. "Was my sister there?"
"Shelley? Yes."
"She should be at school. What was she doing at home?"
"She said she was ill."
Karen looked up from her tea.
"She didn't look ill," I said. "She looked like she'd blagged a day off."
"She should be at school," she repeated. "But maybe my parents think education is not such a good thing any more, when you can have ideas, friends of your own, people from outside." She looked again at Ahmed. "What did my dad say?"
"Your dad wasn't there."
"Did he call Ahmed a wog again?"
"He wasn't there, Karen. I only met your mother."
; "Pity."
"I didn't come to persuade you to come back either. Only to find out what happened to you."
"Did Mum ask you to do this?"
"No. Your mum said that if you meant to come home then you'd find a way."
"Then who?"
"I came on my own. Greg Makepeace told me where I might find you."
"The vicar? What for? What does he get out of this?"
"He wants me to leave it alone, to stop looking for missing girls. I think you were meant to persuade me to let sleeping dogs lie."
"That still doesn't give me a reason."
"Sorry?"
"You still haven't told me why you came looking for me. If it wasn't for anyone else then why?"
"I'm writing a story, if I can find enough material. It might sell to the Sundays, or a magazine."
"A journalist?"
"Perhaps – when I'm not doing private security."
She looked again at Ahmed. "It's not much of a story. I met my husband at college. Everyone else wanted to get in my knickers but Ahmed saw me as a person. We talked and spent time together, we got to know each other. We were friends long before anything else. Last year his father died, suddenly. An aneurysm, they said, leaving him and his mum to run the café. I started helping out and we got to know each other better."
"You helped in the café, and he asked you to marry him?"
"You make it sound mercenary. It wasn't. He told me that if he could, he would ask me to marry him, but that it could never be. He had the café, his mother, his religion. There were too many barriers. I didn't hesitate. I said yes, even though he hadn't asked. We had to wait until I was eighteen and I'd converted, but the answer was always yes." She hadn't taken her eyes off him the whole time. I didn't need to ask whether she loved him.
"And your family don't approve."
"You're joking, aren't you? Little brown grandchildren?"
"You're pregnant?"
"No. We'll wait a while; not too long, but a little." She smiled wistfully. "So that's my story. Not exactly Anna Karenina, is it?"
"It might make part of a larger piece, if I can get your parents' view."
"I wish you luck. They won't even talk to me. My father won't have my name spoken in the house." She retied the knot on her headscarf. "It doesn't matter now. I have a new name, Zaina, and a new life. Ahmed said it means beauty. Will you change the names for your story?"
"I can if you want me to. I thought you didn't care what your parents think."
"Ravensby's a small place. Everyone knows everyone else. I don't see why I should be a source of amusement for them."
"I thought you were proud to be where you are? Shouldn't they be allowed to know that there is happiness in the outside world, beyond the harbour and the call centre?"
"As in Christianity, pride is a sin for Muslims. And I don't want to be held up as an example for anyone else. I love my husband, but I still miss my family. Even my dad."
"Do you want me to carry a message to them?"
She stared at her tea for a long time. Then she lifted her eyes to mine. "No."
I drank down the remaining tea and stood, collecting my umbrella from beside the chair.
"Sure?"
"Too much has been said already."
"As you wish. Thanks for the tea. Please give my apologies to your husband. I didn't intend to provoke him."
I turned and nodded to Ahmed, who watched me to the door. She stood to clear the glass teacups and crossed back to the counter.
As I was closing the door, she called back to me, "Please?"
I put my head back around the door.
"Tell my sister I miss her." There was a pensive tension in her expression. I think she would have said more if she could.
I nodded and left.
As I walked back through the centre to the bus station, my mind circled around Karen and her family. I could see why Greg wanted me to leave this alone. If the disappearances were all this messy then they were better left as they were. I couldn't help feeling, though, that there was more to it, that Karen was only part of a larger picture. When Garvin had given me the mission and said it was up my street, he must have meant more than elopement, surely?
Having used the Ways twice already that day, I did not trust myself to use them again without becoming distracted and lost. Instead, the nearby bus station offered me a ride that would eventually carry me back to Ravensby. I would arrive late, but despite the interrupted sleep of the previous night I felt restless, not tired. A daughter I couldn't find, a pregnant girlfriend somewhere on the road, an enemy returned and a puzzle I couldn't fathom. I let my mind chew on all those as the bus rumbled over the Yorkshire wolds and down to the coast, the twilight creeping up the hillsides as shadows slid into the valleys. When it finally hissed to a stop in Ravensby, it was dark.
The pubs along the seafront spilled drinkers out on to the pavement. The wind died leaving the evening cool but not chilly. The chip shop was open so I bought cod fried in batter, fresh cooked, so I had to wait. I asked if the fish were locally caught. The answer was terse: not likely. Was there so little support for local industry?
I took my paper-wrapped parcel down to the bench at the end of the harbour wall where the green and red lights gleamed to guide returning boats and the scents of diesel and seaweed were replaced by salt and ozone. I watched the waves trying to undercut the steep bank on the other side of the harbour and ate until my fingers were greasy with chip fat and my lips gritty and sore with salt. I dropped the paper in the bin and walked slowly back along the harbour wall, counting the boats and noting that there were too many to moor at the wall. Some were tethered to others, in places three deep. Was this the consequence of fishing quotas: no reason to work the boats any more? Or did the call centre have its attractions compared to the waves, the weather and the dark?
The dock wall ran in a long seashell spiral, punctuated with iron rings every few yards. I followed it round, watching the lights reflect off the water. I had caught fish from such a harbour, years before, using a line weighted with lead, hooks hanging off the side, baited with bread. I thought Alex would be delighted to catch the wriggling slivers of silver, but she was only concerned that they be released unhurt. When one swallowed the hook and I had to kill it to get it loose, she cried and would not look at me for the rest of the day. I didn't catch any more.
At the end of the harbour the road kinked around the headland, leaving it without pavement and rising to look over the harbour at one side and a shingle beach at the other. Below, massive blocks of concrete tumbled out into the water at the promontory, breaking up the waves, but you could already see that the water was winning. Sooner or later the road would crumble into the sea.
The road curved around and followed the line of the hill above the beach, each house perched above the next to get a better view. The lights dwindled until there were only the pale ghosts of gulls riding the updraft from the cliff. A path dropped away from the road on to the beach and I crunched my way down, my boots sliding on stones until it levelled out into shingle, shifting with the sea.
The waves were luminous in the dark, rising sharply to foam on the shore then sift back into the swell. The breeze buffeted me, tugging at either end of the umbrella, twisting and testing my grip. Each wave was a rush, then a sigh. It had a rhythm of its own, irregular and slow, a leviathan snore.
My thoughts drifted to Blackbird and I was thinking that I would retrace my steps before the tide turned and cut me off from the road, when I encountered something strange. I would have noticed it earlier if I'd been concentrating, but the slow thrum of power beneath me echoed the crump and slide of the waves in a way that felt so natural, it was almost invisible. A Waypoint? There was nothing in my codex about a node on the beach.
I felt downwards beneath me, testing the power. Not a Way-point, but something else. I walked slowly up and down the shingle, using the feeling to follow the line. It tracked the line of a stream that ran from tumbled ro
cks below the cliff down to the sea, staining the shingle dark. I followed it upstream. As I came to the rocks I felt another sensation, a dark prickling across my skin, an urge to turn away. There was a warding. I pushed into it, curious now as to who would place a warding here, and why. What was there to protect?
The warding changed. I found myself looking up at the rock face, wondering how safe it was, imagining rocks crumbling, falling in an avalanche of tumbling stone and dust, crushing bones. Even more curious. The simple warding I had placed on my bag was for the zip to jam, but it was just that. If someone tried to force it, it would not change into something else since I was not there to drive it. There was no intelligence in it.
