by William Shaw
All the way there, the woman remained silent. She walked with small paces but was surprisingly fast.
‘You’re paying, you realise,’ called Cupidi after them.
It was only a short walk from the flats to the high street. ‘Do you know who the man was who died in the fire?’ the woman asked Ferriter as she strode ahead.
‘A suspect,’ she said. ‘We think he may have killed a woman.’
‘He killed a woman? So why did you save him?’
The restaurant was next to a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Cupidi held open the glass door. ‘It’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?’ Ferriter said.
On a weekday evening like this, the place was completely empty and overlit. They could hear tinny pop music playing on a radio somewhere in the kitchen.
While Ferriter was asking for a table, the young woman pursed her lips, then said to Cupidi, ‘I think she is a good woman.’
‘So-so,’ said Cupidi.
‘She is very sad about the man dying. The man she tried to save.’
‘Yes. She is.’
The woman nodded.
‘You’re hungry?’
‘How much can I order?’
‘Pick what you like. The good woman is paying.’
‘I don’t eat much.’
‘I do,’ said Cupidi. ‘Go on.’
The waiter tried to seat them near the window, as any restaurant would on a quiet day to show they had customers.
‘No,’ said Cupidi. ‘That one.’ She pointed to the table closest to the small bar at the back of the room. She imagined their guest might appreciate a little discretion.
They sat, Cupidi and Ferriter facing the front of the restaurant, the woman opposite them. Cupidi took out her photograph again. ‘So we’re attempting to find out the identity of this man. He had no papers on him, but we think he may have been working somewhere in the area. All I want to do is try and figure out a little about where a man like him would have lived or worked, that’s all.’
‘Why do you ask me? I don’t know him.’ The woman gave a small shrug, looking past Cupidi at the bar behind them. ‘I don’t know many people.’
‘Tell me about where you work.’
‘I don’t work.’ The young woman tugged her scarf back down around her shoulders. Her black hair was held back in a band. She shook her head slightly. ‘I’m not allowed. I don’t know anything about people who do.’
‘So you are a refugee? An asylum seeker?’
The woman laughed out loud for the first time. It was a surprisingly big laugh, from someone so petite. ‘Yes. I seek asylum.’
Cupidi nodded. ‘But you’ve been refused asylum?’
‘I thought you wanted information about the dead man,’ the young woman said, narrowing her eyes, quiet again.
‘OK. I’m not asking about you. I apologise.’
A cheery-faced waiter in a buttoned-up jacket came and arranged cutlery on the table.
‘Has the vegetable chilli got cashews in it?’ asked Ferriter. ‘I can’t eat them.’
Cupidi watched their guest; she seemed to have no problem reading English. ‘This man,’ she said. ‘The one who was killed. He had no documents on him. I’m trying to learn how people who don’t have the right paperwork live. How they get by.’
The young woman chose a lamb curry and a Fanta, but carried on scanning the columns. ‘I am not like him. I have documents. Can I have pickle also?’ The woman looked up from the menu. ‘I have plenty of documents.’ There was darkness in her voice. ‘You want to see them?’
‘But not the right ones?’ guessed Cupidi.
‘Of course not.’
‘But you’re a registered asylum seeker. So you’re not allowed to work.’
‘That’s right.’ The can of drink arrived. ‘Unlike this man,’ she nodded at the waiter. ‘I am not allowed.’
‘But you do.’
‘No. I am not allowed. Instead I have to beg. I have handouts from kind people. It is all I can do.’
‘I promise this is confidential. As I said, I’m just trying to understand.’
‘I cannot help you. I am not allowed to work,’ the woman repeated cautiously, taking a sip straight from the can, then laying her hand flat on the table. ‘It is illegal.’
Cupidi reached her hand over the table and laid it on the young woman’s bandaged hand. She flinched at the contact. ‘Trust me. Please,’ said Cupidi. ‘The dead man worked,’ Cupidi said. ‘I could tell from his hands. You fell off a ladder, you said?’
The woman tugged her hand away from Cupidi and stood, angrily, scraping the legs of her chair along the floor. The waiter looked round anxiously, startled by the noise.
Cupidi said, ‘I’m not saying you work. I totally accept that. But if you did, what would you do?’
The woman said nothing. She turned and strode to the bathroom at the back of the small restaurant.
After a couple of seconds, Ferriter leaned forward and whispered, ‘Nice one. She’s probably just skipped out of the back now.’
‘Whatever she says, she’s working illegally. We need to find out what the local network of illegal workers is around here. If she comes back and talks to us, she comes back. If she doesn’t, and doesn’t want to talk to us, we can’t do anything about it. She can only help us if she wants to help us.’
‘No need to be so nasty, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘What happened to “They work for bloody nothing, these immigrants”?’
Ferriter made a face. Cupidi took a sip from her coffee. It was horrible.
‘Think I should go to the ladies and see if she’s still in there?’ Ferriter asked.
After a minute, a young couple appeared to pick up a takeaway, standing at the door arm in arm. They were drunk and loud.
The waiter smiled at them benignly while they waited. Their refugee still hadn’t reappeared by the time the two had gone, laughing into the night with a plastic bag full of food.
‘I’ll have hers if she’s not coming back,’ said Cupidi.
But just then the door to the bathroom opened and the young woman came back, sat down and looked Cupidi in the eye. ‘I want to tell you something.’
‘OK.’
‘Just listen, please.’
‘Fine.’
‘My family are from the Western Sahara. Have you heard of it?’
Cupidi said, ‘Maybe. I think so.’
Ferriter said, ‘The capital city is Laayoune.’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘Pub quiz,’ she said.
‘I have never been there,’ the young woman said. ‘I have never been to my country. They say the Moroccans stole it from us,’ she said, still looking Cupidi in the eye. ‘I grew up in a refugee camp in Algeria.’
She took a toothpick from a plastic container in the middle of the table and rolled it slowly backwards and forwards. ‘There was no life for us there. So I came here eight years ago. Two years travelling with my cousin.’
The woman’s sentences were short and flat, one following the other automatically, as if she had had to explain herself like this many times.
‘I applied for asylum, but I was refused. When I was nineteen I had some trouble with the police. I was arrested.’ She broke the toothpick in two. ‘They said I was stealing. I took some clothes, that’s all. From someone. Not from a shop. It was a misunderstanding. It’s not important. But now the police know who I am. Sometimes they detain me and try to send me home. It’s the same with my friend in the apartment. That’s why he is nervous. They wanted to remove me, but I have no home. There are many of us like this. Sometimes I am detained. Sometimes they let me go. The immigration judge ruled that because I am a Sahrawi, I have nowhere to go home to. So now they cannot deport me. I have no country. I have no state. But they will not let me live in this state. I have no passport. I am not allowed to live. I am nothing. That is my story. That is all.’
‘You have no status?’
‘Yes. Limb
oland. That’s what the lawyers call it.’ She turned to Ferriter. ‘Have you heard of that place too?’
Ferriter shook her head.
‘I live in the capital city of Limboland,’ she said with a small smile. ‘There are many people like me. No right to remain, but nowhere to go.’
‘That’s awful. I’m sorry,’ said Ferriter.
‘What for?’ the woman asked, unsmiling.
‘Your situation.’
The woman looked away.
The food arrived. When the waiter put down the plates, the young woman looked at him, then said, ‘Why is it fair that this man can work? He can have a life, but I cannot?’
‘It’s not,’ said Ferriter.
Cupidi had ordered a prawn starter. It was disappointingly small. She picked up her fork. ‘I can’t make things fairer for you.’
‘Everyone says the same thing,’ the woman said.
Cupidi looked at her. ‘I just want to find out who killed a man. That’s what I can do.’
The young woman tasted her food. ‘It’s good,’ she said.
‘Now. About this man,’ Cupidi said.
‘You think he was a man with no papers?’
‘It’s one line of enquiry,’ said Ferriter, toying with the food on her plate.
‘As I said, from the roughness of his hands, it looks like he worked.’ Cupidi glanced again at the young woman’s hands.
The woman chewed for a while, picked up the can of drink and washed the food down. She looked at them both. ‘So… there are places where people who don’t have documents live. There are always agencies who take workers who don’t have good papers. They are not supposed to, but they do. The more your laws insist on this document and that one, the worse the money gets for the people who haven’t any. But there are always, always jobs. They pay less, but what can people do? They take the job or they have to steal. Or starve.’
‘Where are these places?’
She lifted a napkin and touched her lips with it. ‘I cannot help you. I do not know them.’
‘Do they have offices? How will people find them?’
She ate quickly, pausing to talk. ‘No offices. They work with real companies who have offices, but they are just people. Somebody tells someone else. You know how it works.’
‘Illegal gangmasters,’ said Ferriter.
‘Call them what you like,’ said the woman. ‘Some of them are legal but they don’t obey the law. Some of them… Just because you make them illegal doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’
‘Like failed asylum seekers,’ said Cupidi.
The woman nodded and wiped her mouth again. Her plate was already half empty. Cupidi realised Ferriter had hardly touched hers. ‘You call them illegal gangmasters. So what? They are illegal. They just hide better.’
‘So where would we find these people? Especially North Africans.’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’ asked Cupidi.
‘I don’t know them. Now I have to go. I am tired.’
‘From all that not working,’ said Cupidi.
‘Do not judge me, please,’ said the woman.
‘I’m sorry. I just say stuff. Bad habit of mine. Pay no attention.’
‘But you haven’t finished,’ said Ferriter. ‘You could have some pudding if you like.’
‘I must sleep.’
‘We’ll walk you back’ said Cupidi.
‘No, please.’ The woman shook her head. Taking her scarf, she laid it across the top of her head.
‘Will you be able to get into the flat?’ asked Ferriter.
‘If you are not with me, of course.’
Cupidi stood, too. Reaching into her handbag she pulled out her wallet. ‘Will you ask your friends? If you think of anything, or hear any one…’ She produced a card and held it out towards the young woman.
‘If I find something, can you help me? Maybe you can ask them to let me be a citizen?’
Cupidi looked at her. ‘It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid.’
The woman smiled, leaving Cupidi holding the card. ‘No. You cannot help me. I cannot help you. This is what happens. Nobody can help anyone else. Thank you for the food.’
She held out her hand to shake. Ferriter took it.
When the door closed behind her, Cupidi put the card back in her handbag. ‘Poor girl,’ she said.
‘We can’t just let her go like that.’
‘What are we supposed to do?’
‘Go after her. Say we’ll help her. Jesus. What a shit fucking life.’
‘An hour ago, wasn’t I listening to you saying that migrants were taking all the jobs?’
‘She can’t help it, can she? Didn’t you hear? There must be something we can bloody do.’
‘Do you know what it even entails, trying to help someone in her situation?’
Ferriter looked stung.
‘You really think they’re going to treat her differently from every other failed asylum seeker just because we ask them to?’
Ferriter said, ‘Yeah. But we didn’t even try.’ And then she was pushing past and out of the door. Cupidi went to the window to see where she had gone.
‘Wait,’ Ferriter shouted. Cupidi could see Ferriter running, catching up with the woman just outside the estate agent, several doors down. Ferriter was in darkness, but the woman was lit from the shop window. Something Ferriter said made the woman smile at her.
She watched as Ferriter pulled out a card. This time the young woman took it, then turned and walked away.
‘What did you say?’ asked Cupidi, when Ferriter was back in the restaurant.
‘I just told her I’d try to help her. That’s all.’
They walked back down the deserted shopping street. By the time they reached the police car, the woman was nowhere to be seen and the curtains to the flat above were closed.
TWENTY-TWO
She got in late.
‘There’s sausages in the oven.’
‘It’s OK. I’ve eaten.’
Her mother had never been much of a cook; Dad had always done most of it. Helen was sitting in front of the telly with a glass of wine and a paperback beside her.
Cupidi sniffed the air. ‘Have you been smoking?’ She wouldn’t mind one herself, but she was determined not to start again just because her mother was here. ‘Where’s Zoë?’
‘Asleep I think. She went up an hour ago.’
Cupidi went to look and saw no light showing from under her daughter’s door. Back downstairs she opened the fridge, looking for wine for herself, but there was only a dribble left in the bottle. She could open a warm one, but it didn’t appeal, so she closed the door again.
‘What was your day like?’ she called.
‘Exhausting,’ answered her mother, from the living room. ‘She took me for a walk around the bird reserve. She seems to know everyone there. And every bird. Is that normal?’
‘Not remotely.’
Cupidi joined her in the living room. ‘She didn’t touch her dinner. I was starving after all that tramping around.’
‘I’m glad you could be company for her, though.’
With the telly chattering away, Cupidi sat down next to her mother on the sofa and picked up the paperback that was lying next to her. It was the one she should have been reading for her book group. The meeting was tomorrow and she had barely started. Turning the pages, she searched for her bookmark; it was gone.
‘Not bad, that,’ her mother said. ‘I read it this afternoon after our walk.’
‘You finished it?’
A nod.
‘So. What was good about it? The book?’
‘The main character; she was good. And the way it dealt with genetics was very interesting.’
Cupidi struggled to remember anything about genetics in the few chapters she’d read.
‘Zoë took me down to the beach, too. Said she could see porpoises, but they could have been anything for all I could tell. She loves it here.’
<
br /> ‘We both do.’ Cupidi flicked through the novel trying to find the page she’d been reading. ‘But it’s not even remotely believable. The crime scene work is all wrong,’ said Cupidi.
‘You’re too serious,’ said her mother. ‘Like your father. He would have hated it.’
‘Yes,’ said Cupidi, smiling. ‘It’s true. He would have. Are you getting on OK with her?’
‘Fine. Why shouldn’t I? She’s strange, but she’s lovely.’
‘Just that her and me… I just feel there’s a distance growing between us. If I’m honest, it frightens me a little.’
‘Natural I suppose. Mother and daughter.’
‘Is it? It happened to us, didn’t it?’ Her mother’s eyes were glued to the TV. Cupidi wasn’t even sure she was listening properly. ‘You and me, Mum. We kind of drifted apart at the same age as Zoë is.’
Her mother nodded. ‘We did.’
‘I suppose the difference is, you went away. It was just me and Dad.’
‘I didn’t go away. I just had things to do.’
‘Sometimes you were away for months.’
Her mother turned the TV up a little, saying nothing. The conversation was over.
She remembered her mother being absent; turning up after months away, often late at night with women friends who smelt of woodsmoke and patchouli oil. They talked politics all the time. She and her father would sit upstairs in her bedroom listening to the chatter of their voices for a couple of days, then she would be gone again.
Cupidi tried to concentrate on her book. She’d struggled through a couple of pages when her mother spoke again. ‘That house down the lane. The little wooden one. Zoë showed me it.’
‘It belongs to a friend. We look after it for him. What about it?’
‘Do you think your friend would mind if I stayed in it?’
Cupidi looked up from the pages. ‘Why?’
‘Would he mind?’
‘What’s wrong with staying here?’
‘I was just asking,’ said her mother.
‘At the weekend I was thinking of going out and getting some new curtains for your room. You can choose them. We could put some photographs up. Make it how you’d like it. I’ll clear all of my stuff out.’
‘It seems a waste to leave that place empty,’ her mother said, staring at the TV again.
