by William Shaw
Cupidi walked up to her and handed her the torch. ‘Don’t go too far.’
The girl had found a small plank footbridge across the dyke and was walking northwards, into the stubbled field, into the darkness. ‘Tell me, David. What were you trying to do, coming back here?’
‘I miss you, that’s all. I wanted to be with you.’
‘Hello?’ Zoë’s voice came from the field. ‘I’m here. Where are you?’
‘Cathy knows about us, doesn’t she?’
‘Well, she does now,’ he said.
‘She knew before. The first time she looked at me in the beach house tonight, I could tell she knew.’
‘I swear. She never knew. I had kept it from her, I promise.’
But she did know, thought Cupidi. From the look on her face, she had known for some time. It had been her keeping that knowledge from him, not the other way around. ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ she said.
They watched the torch beam flickering in the distance.
‘But you made the first move. You got back in touch,’ he said. ‘It was you who called me.’
‘I was asking for your help with a case, that’s all.’
‘That’s not what it sounded like to me.’
‘You’re vain, David. You think it’s all about you. That’s all it was. A case I wanted you to help me with.’
‘Jesus. Where are we, anyway?’
‘Near a place called Fairfield,’ said Cupidi. Somewhere to the south-west was the church of St Thomas à Becket, marooned in the middle of marshland. Which meant that they were close to Salt Lane.
The torch was getting further and further away.
‘It didn’t really end, did it? You just went away.’
She looked at him unbelievingly. ‘Yes, it did. I went away. I protected you, David. I moved out of London for your reputation. It finished.’
‘But I still have feelings for you,’ said David.
Cupidi cupped her hands round her mouth: ‘Zoë? Are you OK?’
No answer, but they could still see the torch moving.
‘Do you think this girl – the one Zoë says she saw – is even real?’ David asked.
A brief hesitation before she answered, ‘Of course she is.’
‘Mum?’ came a shout.
‘Wait here,’ said Cupidi. She made her way across the plank bridge into the empty field, towards the torchlight.
‘She’s gone,’ said Zoë miserably. ‘She was there by the road, and then… she was pulling me over here. I said I’d get help, but I took too long and now she’s gone.’
Cupidi looked back at the silhouette of David. ‘What nationality do you think she was?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t understand what she was saying.’
‘What colour was her skin?’
‘I don’t know. It’s dark.’
‘Darker than yours?’
‘No. Yes. A bit.’
‘Asian.’
‘Maybe. She had black hair.’
It was three in the morning. She would have to be up early. The night was turning cold.
‘Do you think that’s where she came from?’
‘That direction… there. I think something awful had happened to her. You should have seen her, Mum. She was so frightened.’
She put her arms around her daughter. ‘What do you think was going on?’
‘I think someone had attacked her. She was doing this.’ Zoë pulled away from her and mimed a fist descending, like someone being beaten. Cupidi peered at it. Zoë brought her hand down again onto her shoulder.
The clenched fingers could have been wrapped around something. ‘Was that a knife she was miming?’
‘I suppose it could have been.’
‘Was she hurt?’
‘I didn’t see. It was dark. I didn’t have a phone or anything, neither did she.’
‘Did you see any blood? Or bruising?’
Zoë hesitated. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘You asked her where she was from?’
‘She was pointing over there.’ Zoë gestured to the north. ‘Oh. And I remember now. She was miming this kind of biting action.’ Zoë lifted her hand to her mouth and bit into air.
‘You think she was trying to tell you something?’
‘You never listen!’ Zoë screamed. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you. She was trying to tell me something really important. Only I couldn’t understand.’ And fresh tears shone down her face in the torchlight.
Cupidi put her arms around the girl. ‘Come on. We’ll drive around a bit more then.’
Zoë nodded glumly. She took a breath from between her crying and asked, ‘Are you sleeping with David again?’
‘Jesus, no. I’m not. I promise. He just turned up. It’s over between us.’
They walked back across the uneven ground, hand in hand. ‘He was calling you on the phone. Only, if I picked up he wouldn’t talk. It was him, wasn’t it? He’s a creep.’
‘No. He’s not. He’s just…’
‘Stupid,’ said Zoë, snot bubbling at her nose. She wiped it on her sleeve.
When they got to the car David asked Zoë, ‘Are you OK?’
She didn’t answer.
Cupidi said, ‘We’re going to drive around a little more… take a look. Zoë said there was a girl out here in trouble. We’re going to see if we can find her anywhere.’
‘Right.’
She set off towards the small hamlet of Snargate, but Zoë said, ‘She wasn’t pointing over here. She was pointing over there.’
‘How can you tell with these roads?’ said David.
Cupidi turned around, drove back down the lane until she found a right turn, heading more directly east. She was aware of the significance of the land she was driving through. Just to the south lay Salt Lane, and the ditch where they had found Hilary Keen.
‘She could be anywhere,’ said Cupidi.
‘Come on. That way. That’s the way she pointed.’
‘How can you tell? It’s dark.’
‘She pointed this way.’
Cupidi tried to picture the area in her head and realised they must be heading north-east. Pretty much the direction Zoë had indicated earlier. It was so easy to get lost around here, but Zoë seemed to understand the landscape better than any of them. Whatever turns they took, she was consistently leading them in the same direction, northwards. Cupidi put the car into a low gear and drove up the small lane. All this area was new to her. The land was changing; there was a slight slope to the road now; they were at the edge of the marsh.
In half a mile, they came to a T-junction. ‘Where now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zoë said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She was rocking backwards and forwards in the seat, distressed.
They sat there for a minute, engine running.
‘Call it in again,’ said David. It’ll be light soon. The logical thing would be to organise a proper search in the morning.’
Cupidi wanted very much to believe the girl existed; but he was right. There was nothing useful they could do now. Most of all, Zoë needed a bath and to sleep.
A faint light was filling the horizon to the east.
‘I was thinking,’ Cupidi said. ‘Do you want me to call a doctor in the morning?’
‘Cross my heart, I saw her. I promise.’ She was about to start crying again.
‘I believe you. I do. Just… I don’t think you’re happy, that’s all.’
‘So what? Everybody doesn’t have to be happy, do they?’
‘No. It’s true, they don’t.’
She swung into the junction and began a U-turn. That’s when the headlights caught the sign: Sheepfold Orchard. Cherries. Apples. Plums.
Her daughter holding something to her mouth and taking a bite.
The girl had been miming eating fruit. She was real. She existed.
THIRTY-FOUR
It was light by the time she put her daughter to bed, hanging a blanket over
the window to try to darken the room.
David was still in the kitchen, making himself coffee. ‘A spare bed?’
‘My mother’s asleep in it.’ She hadn’t gone back to Arum Cottage last night; she was upstairs in the small bedroom.
‘What about the couch?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Right. Bad idea. I’ll go. Are there any hotels? Sorry. Seaside. Of course there are.’
Checking the clock, Cupidi realised there was barely any point going to bed now anyway. She would have to be at work in three hours.
‘What a gigantic cock-up,’ said David.
‘Use my laptop. Book yourself into a hotel. Call Cathy in the morning. I’m going to go up and change.’
‘I don’t suppose there are any jobs going here, are there?’
‘Fuck off, David,’ she said. ‘Go on. Or I’ll call the police on you.’
‘You’re joking, obviously.’
‘Try me.’
And by the time she had come back downstairs, dressed in her walking gear, he had gone. She took her mobile out of the rice for a second time. This time when she pressed the button the screen lit up.
That morning she tramped up to the firing ranges, trying to add together the pieces of what she knew in a way that made some sense. In so much of this job, you could never make things better, but you could stop them getting worse. You could, at least, make things right. That was what had always been important. For the first time since she had seen the dead woman emerging from the black water, she felt sure she was on the right path. There was still so much she didn’t understand, though.
Ahead, the swallows were already dipping in the warming air, but it would be autumn soon.
She walked fast, longing for vicious storms to come sweeping up the channel, for waves crunching into the stones, for the dangerous high tides that could sweep everything away.
By the time she arrived back she was covered in sweat. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, tapping at her laptop.
‘That man, he’s gone then?’
‘Don’t start, Mum.’
‘He’s an arse, that’s all I’m saying.’
Cupidi put her arms around her mother’s shoulders. ‘No one’s good enough for your daughter.’
‘At your age you should take what you can get, obviously,’ her mother said. ‘As long as it’s not him.’
Cupidi leaned forward and kissed her on the top of her head.
‘What was that for?’
‘You were thinking about your sister last night, weren’t you?’
Her mother nodded. She kissed her a second time.
‘I don’t think I ever realised what that had done to you,’ Cupidi said. ‘I always thought you were so hard.’
Her mother just sat, saying nothing.
The phone in Cupidi’s pocket started to buzz. She looked at the screen; a number she didn’t recognise. ‘Hello?’ she said, cautiously.
‘She didn’t come home last night,’ said a voice.
‘Jill?’
‘Yeah. Sorry. New phone.’
‘You were there all night?’
‘Pretty much,’ said the constable. ‘Do you think she’s scarpered? I’m worried about her.’
‘What are you doing? You’re supposed to be resting.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jill. ‘I’m going to come into work today. It’ll drive me nuts staying at home. Want me to pick you up?’
‘Can you drive?’
‘With a bit of swearing,’ she said.
Cupidi was going through her jackets, looking for her locker key, when her mother said, ‘Oh. Breaking news. You asked me about Greenham Common.’
Cupidi looked around.
‘Look.’ She was pointing to her laptop. ‘I just had an email from Elfie. She remembers Hilary Keen. She says she had a boyfriend called Daniel.’
‘Elfie?’ Her mum’s best friend; the hippie woman who lived in a huge, dark attic flat full of fake Tiffany lamps draped with scarves. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No. I have a number for him. Elfie was one of his old flames too, it turns out. This Daniel, he lives in Hertfordshire apparently. She says he’s a healer.’
‘For God’s sake.’
‘I know. But you know Elfie. All ear candles and St John’s wort. Give me your notebook.’ Cupidi pulled out her police book from her handbag and her mother wrote the number in it. ‘Elfie says he’s expecting your call,’ she said.
In the farmyard, Ferriter got out of the car, opening the back door to pull out a crutch.
‘Finest plums in the world, round here,’ she said. ‘Ripen slowly, see, on account of the Kent climate? Not like Spanish plums. They don’t get a chance for the acidity to come out.’
‘That so?’
‘So,’ she said, hobbling as she closed the door, ‘You say Zoë saw a girl who was upset about something, and that’s why we’re here?’
The farm, which had seemed so quiet last night, was alive. A group of young men sat on the grass, drinking coffee from a flask.
‘Yes. I think her mother may have been a worker on one of the farms around here.’
‘That all?’
Cupidi was tired, couldn’t face the idea of explaining every-thing she had been through last night to her younger colleague.
A tractor drove into the yard pulling a trailer full of empty plastic boxes. Cupidi left the car and called over to the driver, ‘You in charge?’
The man stuck his head out of the cab and pointed to a low brick building with a wooden sign outside: Office.
Cupidi knocked on the door. A man in his forties in a light-blue shirt looked up. His blue eyes matched his shirt, and the pale eyebrows above them made them look bluer still.
‘Kent Police,’ she said.
He frowned, holding out his hand. ‘Anything I can help you with?’
‘I had a report of a teenage girl out on the marsh last night. She was distressed, apparently.’ Standing, the man looked suitably concerned, though puzzled. So she added, ‘She wasn’t an English speaker, either.’
‘And?’
‘Everyone on your farm speak English, do they?’
‘So you think she might have been from one of the families of our temporary workers?’
‘This is your farm?’
‘I’m just the manager. So you’ll want to ask them, I suppose?’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Of course. We’ll do it right away.’ He strode back out into the morning sunlight. ‘That your car? Jump in. We can drive up to the top fields. That’s where they’re working today.’ He opened a steel gate at the far end of the yard, waited for them to drive through, then closed it again behind them as Cupidi sat, engine idling.
‘Did you ever employ a woman called Rasa Petrauska?’ she asked, when he had got into the back of the car.
‘May have done, but I never know the names. The agencies take care of that. We subcontract to them. What nationality?’
‘Lithuanian.’
‘Yep. We have plenty of them.’
‘Are there many orchards around here?’
‘Not round here. We’re the only one. Most of the big orchards are further north, the far side of the Weald. Around here it’s arable and sheep, mostly. We’re pretty new. Still getting a hold. Tough business.’
So if the girl had signalled that she was a fruit-picker, she must have meant this farm, thought Cupidi.
‘What’s the youngest age of your workers?’
‘Eighteen, I suppose. You’d have to ask the gangmasters. Everything’s legit. We have all the paperwork from them.’
Could the girl Zoë had seen have been that old?
The car bumped up a concrete track, past neat rows of young apple trees, limbs weighted with fruit.
Leaning back, Ferriter asked, ‘Any North Africans ever work here?’
‘No, wouldn’t say so. A few Poles sometimes. Never any English. Can’t get them. Would love to employ local peop
le, but nobody turns up. Getting seasonal labour is a nightmare. Harder every year with all the new legislation. It’s killing us.’
‘Where do they all live when they’re here?’ asked Cupidi.
He waved his hand. ‘All around and about here. The agencies pick them up, bring them here. They rent houses.’
‘Which agencies?’
‘We use a few, obviously. It’s a struggle to get the numbers, this time of year. Fruit needs to get picked. Head between that row of trees there.’
Cupidi left the track and drove a little way up between the plum trees. Workers were tucked into the foliage. Some wore hats, some wore scarves or handkerchiefs tied loosely around their heads. They all had large buckets strapped to their chests supported by shoulder straps, into which they were placing the picked plums. Working steadily, they paid no attention to the approaching car.
‘Stop here.’
Further up the row, a tractor was parked with a line of trailers behind it, each loaded with plastic crates that were being slowly filled by the pickers.
‘Can I talk to them?’
‘You speak Lithuanian, Latvian and Polish?’
Cupidi was tired. She didn’t have any energy for humour. Instead she gave the man a glare.
‘Right. I’ll get one of the gangmasters to have a word.’
She sat on the hot car bonnet as butterflies and wasps circled the trees. The gangmaster was a muscular, fair-haired man in his thirties wearing a checked shirt, who smiled at Cupidi in a way that irritated her. When Cupidi explained what she wanted to know, he leaned inside the police car and blew the horn twice.
The work stopped. People turned.
He spoke briefly. When he had finished talking, the workers all just stared at him. A few shrugged, shook their heads. Then turned back to work.
‘Wait,’ said Cupidi. ‘Ask them again. She was a young girl or woman.’
The man smiled, spoke for a second time. This time, a couple of people answered out loud. Cupidi couldn’t see all their faces. Some were hidden by the heavy branches of the trees.
‘Ask them if anyone didn’t make it to work this morning.’
More people answered this time.
