When the Dead Speak

by Sheila Bugler

  ‘We don’t do anything. I don’t give a damn what the papers say, and neither should you. Within a week it will have blown over and everyone will have moved on to the next big story. I’ve worked so hard to put all that behind me. I hope you can find a way to leave it too. You’ve got a good thing going with Dee. That’s what you should be focusing on now. This obsession of yours, it’s not healthy. Let it go. It’s the right thing to do, believe me.’

  Seven

  Eliza had finally returned Dee’s calls. They’d agreed to meet that afternoon at Seasons, Dee’s favourite place in the Harbour. The Harbour – Sovereign Harbour to give it its full name – was a fifteen-minute walk from Dee’s house. She walked fast, bundled up in her winter coat, but she was windswept and freezing by the time she arrived.

  Eliza wasn’t there yet, so Dee ordered coffees for both of them and took a seat by the window. The waitress had just set the coffees on the table when Dee saw Eliza hurrying along the path.

  ‘It is so cold,’ Eliza said, keeping her denim jacket wrapped around her as she sat down opposite Dee.

  ‘You’re underdressed,’ Dee said. ‘You need a thick coat and a scarf for this weather.’

  ‘Coats cost money.’ Eliza shivered. ‘Thank you for the coffee, by the way.’

  She wrapped her hands around the mug and held it against her. Dee wondered how she could offer to buy the girl a winter coat without offending her.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Dee said.

  Eliza smiled. ‘This weather is your fault?’

  ‘Not for the weather,’ Dee said. ‘For the other day, when you came to my house.’

  ‘You already apologised for that,’ Eliza said. ‘It’s okay, really. I know you didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I’m just so worried, Dee. The longer Joana is missing, the more worried I become. Each morning I wake up and it’s with me. The feeling that something really bad has happened to her. You know, I spoke to her grandmother the other day. She hasn’t heard anything. Not since Joana disappeared.’

  ‘How is Jakub doing?’ Dee asked, referring to Joana’s four-year-old son.

  ‘He’s missing his mom,’ Eliza said. ‘He’s used to hearing from her five or six times a week. She phoned or Skyped with him whenever she could. This is how I know she’s in trouble. She loves her boy. The only reason she would stop calling him is if she wasn’t able to. So, Dee. What did you want to see me about?’

  ‘I went back to the hotel,’ Dee said. ‘And you’re right. I think Lauren and Joana might have known each other. Apparently Lauren was a regular at the Anchor. You know the pub?’

  ‘I know it. Although I’ve never been. I don’t like pubs. But Joana, she loves them.’ Eliza smiled. ‘She’s a real extrovert, you know? Always out and about, meeting people and making new friends. So this proves I’m right, doesn’t it? If Lauren knew Joana, then maybe someone killed her because she knew what happened to her.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ Dee said. ‘And unless we can prove they knew each other, I don’t think there’s much point speaking to the police. They won’t be interested.’

  ‘They don’t care,’ Eliza said. ‘They are doing nothing, and they will continue to do nothing, because she is Polish and what do they care about someone like us?’

  ‘It’s not that they don’t care,’ Dee said. ‘But with no evidence of any wrongdoing, there’s very little they can do. Joana’s an adult. You can’t blame the police for assuming she’s simply moved on. And you told me yourself, you had a row a few days before she disappeared.’

  ‘We were best friends,’ Eliza said. ‘No row in the world would make her leave like that.’

  ‘Have you been following the news stories about Lauren’s murder?’ Dee asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Eliza frowned. ‘But I haven’t seen anything about Joana. Why?’

  ‘You know Lauren’s body was laid out to replicate another murder?’ Dee said.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Isn’t it more likely,’ Dee said, ‘that Lauren’s murder had something to do with the earlier murder?’

  Eliza shook her head. ‘Of course not. Mary’s murder happened a long time ago. Whoever killed her is most likely dead.’

  ‘Is dead, according to the papers,’ Dee said.

  ‘Well that proves it, then. There is no connection.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Dee asked.

  ‘Because it’s obvious,’ Eliza said. ‘Lauren’s killer made it look like Mary’s murder to distract people. That’s all this is, Dee. It’s a distraction.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Dee conceded. ‘I’ve spoken with quite a few people at the hotel now. No one remembers seeing her that night. Do you think it’s possible she never made it as far as the Aldrington?’

  ‘Where else could she have gone?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dee admitted. ‘But I think it’s worth looking into, don’t you?’

  ‘I guess.’ Eliza took a sip of her coffee. ‘But why would she lie to me? She was so excited, convinced that this time it would be different. This man, whoever he was, he was really into her apparently. He was going to help her find a proper job and she wouldn’t have to work as a cleaner any more. I knew it was bullshit but she wouldn’t listen to me. She wanted to believe it so badly.’

  Eliza’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away before she continued.

  ‘It makes me so angry. This bastard, he told her exactly what she wanted to hear just so she’d meet him and let him have sex with her. It was all a lie.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Dee said.

  Eliza smiled. ‘Always with the sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s men with power who think they can use that power to get a pretty girl to have sex with them. It’s disgusting.’

  Dee agreed. She felt a rush of anger, thinking about the way certain men preyed on young women like Joana, whose desire for work and money made them vulnerable.

  ‘All she wanted was a better life for her son,’ Eliza said. ‘And so what if she liked rich men? Who can blame her for that? Normally, she was so careful. I mean, she liked to date men who had money, but she never took their lies seriously. This time, she seemed to really believe what he told her.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea who he was?’

  ‘I wish so many times I’d asked her more about him,’ Eliza said. ‘But I was angry, so I didn’t ask the questions I should have.’

  ‘I can’t help thinking it’s strange,’ Dee said, choosing her words carefully. ‘If I was living in a foreign country and I was going to meet some guy in a bar, I’d make pretty sure my friend knew exactly who he was and where I’d be.’

  ‘Not if you knew the friend would disapprove,’ Eliza said.

  ‘And you disapproved because you thought the man was lying to her?’

  ‘Not just that,’ Eliza said. ‘I didn’t like what she was doing. Letting men pay her to have sex with her. She was worth more than that.’

  ‘So when you told me before that Joana liked to date rich men,’ Dee said. ‘You didn’t mean just dating, did you?’

  ‘I thought you’d judge her if I told you everything. I’m sorry. I should have told you before.’

  ‘You should have told the police, too,’ Dee said. ‘This is important information. If Joana was… well, if she was being paid for sex, she was potentially putting herself in a lot of danger.’

  ‘You think it will make any difference if I tell the police?’ Eliza said.

  ‘I’d hope so.’ Dee tried to think through the implications of what she now knew about Joana. ‘If she was meeting men, who set these meetings up for her? Was she working alone or with someone else?’

  ‘You mean like a pimp?’ Eliza scowled. ‘It wasn’t like that. They were dates. The men she went out with, she met them in clubs or bars or on the beach. All the usual places people meet. She’s not a prostitute, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘What would you call it then?’ Dee asked.

  ‘A young girl having a bit of f
un,’ Eliza said.

  ‘So why did you get angry with her?’

  Eliza’s shoulders slumped.

  ‘I was worried she wasn’t being careful enough,’ she said. ‘Some of the men she went out with, she knew nothing about them. I kept telling her it wasn’t safe. And I was right, wasn’t I?’

  Dee reached across the table, took hold of one of Eliza’s hands and squeezed it.

  ‘I’m glad you told me,’ she said.

  ‘You think it will help?’ Eliza asked.

  ‘I hope so,’ Dee said.

  * * *

  After leaving Eliza, Dee walked through the marina towards the beach and the path back to her house. She hadn’t gone far when Ed called her.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘How’s Norfolk?’

  ‘Windy,’ he said. ‘But good to see Nessa and the kids. Forgot how fond I am of the little buggers. How have you been?’

  Dee stopped walking and leaned against the railing that separated the path from the water, gazing over the collection of luxury yachts moored here. Sovereign Harbour was a vast development on the east side of town, half a mile from Dee’s house. The marina consisted of four separate harbours, a retail park and a dizzying number of houses and apartment blocks. It had transformed the landscape of Dee’s childhood and, for a long time, she’d hated it. Recently, partly thanks to Ed, her feelings had changed. They came here a lot, eating in one of the restaurants or wandering along the paths looking at the yachts and imagining what it would be like to own one of them.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d been planning to visit them today,’ she said.

  ‘It was a bit of an impulsive thing,’ he said. ‘I woke up this morning and suddenly realised I missed them. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  It was true. He could visit his sister whenever he wanted. But not telling her his real reasons for doing so, that was a different matter.

  ‘How about you?’ he said. ‘What have you been up to?’

  She wanted to ask him what the hell was going on, why he hadn’t bothered to tell her he’d been taken off the investigation. But it wasn’t a conversation to have over the phone. So instead, she told him about the meeting she’d just had with Eliza.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked, when she’d finished.

  ‘I think that’s your story,’ Ed said. ‘Young girls coming to the UK to make some money, ending up having to work as prostitutes.’

  ‘The way Eliza tells it,’ Dee said, dragging her mind back from daydreams to the conversation, ‘it was Joana’s choice. She didn’t have to do it.’

  ‘If these girls were protected by UK employment law,’ Ed said, ‘they wouldn’t have to take crappy jobs that didn’t pay them properly. The situation for Eastern European workers in this country is appalling. I’m surprised more journalists aren’t writing about it.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Dee said. ‘But if I focus on that, how’s it going to get me any closer to finding out what happened to Joana?’

  ‘You said she was meeting men in hotel bars,’ Ed said. ‘Start there. Visit the hotels along the seafront – just the high-end places. Don’t bother with the budget ones. Show Joana’s photo around and see if anyone recognises her.’

  ‘I’ve already done that at the Aldrington,’ Dee said. ‘With zero success.’

  ‘You only have Eliza’s word that’s where she was going that night. Joana could have lied about where she was really going.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Dee’s mind raced ahead, the story already coming together. Young women forced to sell their bodies for sex, and nobody giving a damn about it. Because the young men and women who came to this country in their thousands to do the shitty jobs that British people didn’t want to do were invisible. They had no workers’ rights, no rights to anything.

  They carried on speaking, talking about inconsequential things and making plans for what they’d do when Ed came back from Norfolk. It was good to hear his voice, and she should have felt happy. But the conversation didn’t feel right. There was so much he wasn’t telling her. And Dee didn’t like that one little bit.

  From the diary of Emma Reed

  14 April 1960

  He is dead. There. I’ve said, so it must be real. Although it feels anything but. He is dead. Three words. One for each day that has passed since I lost him. I cannot live in a world like this. How is any mother meant to endure such pain?

  They killed him.

  Three more words.

  They killed my son. Those sick and evil men. I say men because a killing like this isn’t the work of women. Although as sure as summer turns to autumn, women also played their part in Graham’s death. The whispering and the gossiping and the half-truths that are passed around in the grocer’s and the butcher’s and inside the houses where women gather to drink tea and chatter, chatter, chatter because they don’t work and they are bored, bored, bored so they spend their idle hours troublemaking through the stories they tell each other.

  I hate all of them.

  How can I continue living in this town, knowing what was done to my son and knowing justice will never be served? Because they think it has already been served, don’t they? Those stupid, evil men and women who have destroyed my life for no reason other than ignorance.

  See this! The front page of today’s Recorder:

  LOCAL GIRL’S KILLER FOUND DEAD

  It’s a lie, but they don’t care. Lies sell newspapers. ‘Found dead’ is a euphemism. They chased him through the streets, and they cornered him by the stone wall that surrounds Manor Gardens. They attacked him with cricket bats and metal bars and beat his head and body and face until there was nothing left to identify him except the shoes on his feet and the navy blue trousers I’d bought him last month.

  I thought I understood the pain of loss. Those of us who lived through the war are accustomed to losing loved ones. But there is nothing on this earth that can prepare a mother for losing a child. There is a rage building inside me. An anger so deep and terrifying I don’t know what to do with it. I need to get out of this house. I need to walk up onto the downs and scream until my throat is raw and my face and body burn from it. I want to lift a cricket bat and swing it high in the air and bring it down on the bodies of those men who hurt my baby.

  Women are called the weaker sex. It’s only men who truly believe this. Every woman who has ever given birth, who has endured the messy, dirty, violent business of forcing a child from her body, knows that she has a strength that men could never imagine.

  He is dead. I have to live a different sort of life now. Until three days ago, we were a family of four. A square. Now, we have to learn to be a triangle. I don’t know how we’ll do that. But I know this. I will not rest until I find the people who took him from me. I want them to pay for what they did. I want to look them in the eye and tell them they made a mistake. They killed my son to punish him for a crime he didn’t commit. I want them to know this truth, and then I want to kill them with my own hands and watch them as they die.

  Eight

  The bar at the Aldrington Hotel bore no resemblance to the shabby room where Dee had wasted too many hours as a teenager. Like the rest of the hotel, it had been restored to its original Victorian glory. Packed full of atmosphere and original features, with a curved mahogany bar in the centre, stained-glass windows and plush red seating, the room was a delight.

  ‘Wow.’ Ella stopped in the doorway and took her time looking around the room. ‘Tom is so bringing me here for my birthday. Why on earth haven’t we been here before?’

  ‘It’s too expensive. Come on. Let’s grab some drinks and find somewhere to sit down.’

  They were halfway across the room when they were intercepted by one of the most beautiful men Dee had ever seen in her life.

  ‘Please, ladies.’ He graced them with a smile that turned Dee’s knees to water. ‘Take a seat and one of our team will be with you right away to take your order. In this bar, it’s table s
ervice only.’

  ‘He is divine,’ Ella whispered as they sat down at a table by the window.

  ‘He’s certainly easy on the eye, isn’t he? Here.’ Dee picked up the cocktail menu and handed it to Ella. ‘Choose something lovely to drink. My treat.’

  Another, equally beautiful, man took their drinks orders. Minutes later, the drinks were delivered to the table alongside a bill that made the air disappear from Dee’s lungs when she read it.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said as the man was about to leave. She fished Joana’s photo out of her bag and showed it to him.

  ‘Do you recognise this girl?’

  The smile slid off the man’s face.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a simple question, Lewis,’ Dee said, reading the man’s name from the silver badge on his waistcoat. ‘Have you ever seen this girl before?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ Lewis said.

  ‘Me,’ Dee said.

  ‘Are you the police or something?’ Lewis asked.

  ‘A concerned friend,’ Dee said. ‘This girl’s been missing for five weeks. The last time she was seen she was on her way here to this hotel.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ Lewis nodded. ‘Well then, I’m sorry. No. I don’t know who she is.’

  ‘Any chance you could take this photo and show it to some of your colleagues?’ Dee shoved the photo into his hand before he had a chance to refuse. ‘My phone number and email address are on the back. If anyone recognises her, tell them to get in touch.’

  ‘Sure.’ Lewis nodded and moved away before Dee could ask him anything else.

  ‘You think he’ll do anything with the photo?’ she asked Ella.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Ella frowned. ‘He looked scared, didn’t he? Like he couldn’t wait to get away from you.’

  ‘Why?’ Dee wondered.

  ‘Maybe the staff have been warned not to speak to any journalists,’ Ella said.

  Maybe, Dee thought. Or maybe Lewis was lying.