Peter Robinson - Many Rivers to Cross

‘And the people Keane works for?’

‘A different proposition altogether. I have my own plans for them.’

‘Isn’t this a dangerous game you’re playing?’

‘It’s not a game,’ said Zelda.

‘But you could get hurt.’

Zelda gave a harsh laugh. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘Killed, even.’

‘Well, that would be something new.’

‘When will it be over, this mission of yours?’

‘I don’t know.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve got a little list.’

‘You and Ko-Ko.’

They laughed, and Mati let it go. That was one of the things Zelda loved about her; like Raymond, she wasn’t judgemental. But unlike Raymond, Mati knew exactly where Zelda was coming from. And she knew her Gilbert and Sullivan.

‘For this revenge, you would risk everything? The life you have made for yourself with Raymond in Yorkshire? Your freedom?’

‘I don’t know, Mati. All I know is that I have to try. It may be the only way to stop the nightmares, the flashbacks, the despair, the numbness I feel sometimes.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it. How far have you got with your search for this man Keane?’

Zelda sighed. ‘Nowhere.’

‘How long has it been?’

‘Four months. The department has only called me in once a month so far this year, for two or three days each time. I’ve watched Hawkins closely, even followed him after work when I knew I could get away with it.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. He either met his wife for drinks, or he went straight to the tube. I didn’t follow him there. I recognised his wife from the photo of them he keeps on his bookshelf. I also met her once, very briefly, at his house.’ Zelda was a super-recogniser — she never forgot a face — which was one reason why she worked as a consultant helping to build a database for facial recognition of sex traffickers. The other reason was that she had seen a lot of them to remember.

Mati had not been trafficked, Zelda knew, but she carried the history of her country in the lines of her face, lines Zelda was trying to render on paper: the Tito years, the Balkan wars of the 90s, ethnic cleansing, mass murders and the war crimes trials that followed. Mati had been forced to watch as her daughter was gang-raped by soldiers after she had been raped by them herself. She had seen both her husband and her daughter shot and piled into a mass grave along with most of the population of the village where she lived. The only reason her sons had survived was because they had gone to visit her sister in Italy two days earlier. Mati said she had no idea why she had been allowed to survive. Perhaps the soldiers believed it would be more painful for her to live with what she had seen and what had been done to her. And perhaps they were right. Zelda thought there were times Mati wished she hadn’t survived.

‘So, what are your plans for the future?’ Mati asked.

‘I don’t really know,’ said Zelda. ‘Things just haven’t been the same in the UK since all that Brexit business started.’

‘America?’

‘Oh, no. Definitely not. Not while that dreadful man is in power. He reminds me of too many of my worst abusers.’

‘Where, then?’

‘I’ll probably go to live in France, if the worst comes to the worst. I have a French passport, after all.’

‘Ah, yes. Your mysterious Parisian benefactor.’

Zelda smiled. ‘If only you knew.’

‘But you would be able to stay if you wanted, wouldn’t you? In England? Isn’t there a form you can fill in, an application? Couldn’t you even apply for citizenship?’

‘I suppose so. But I’m not sure I want to stay in a country that doesn’t want people like me.’

‘Surely not all of them are like that?’

‘No. Of course not. Only fifty-two per cent. But apparently that’s all it takes. Still, I don’t think they can have all the foreigners kicked out of the country, no matter what the Leave voters believe. But Brexit has quite destroyed any faith I might have had in England and the English. I remember all those books I used to devour in the orphanage — the Brontës, Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter, John le Carré, Peter O’Donnell, Agatha Christie — and how it was always my dream to live there. But now it’s broken. England is broken. And I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to fix it. At least not in my lifetime. France would hardly be heaven on earth. After all, there’s Macron, but...’

‘And Raymond?’

Zelda smiled. ‘Raymond’s an artist. He loves the light in France. He’ll go with me. And the French love artists.’

‘Paris?’

‘No. I couldn’t. Not after... But perhaps we could discover some beautiful, hidden little corner of the countryside that hasn’t already been spoiled by foreigners like us. I’m sure I would be able to sneak back in and disappear.’

‘Good luck. And in the meantime?’

‘We’ll stay in Yorkshire. To be honest, we’re pretty isolated from the rest of the country up there. We have no close neighbours, and we’re a couple of miles from the nearest village. Not that there are any foreigners there. It is North Yorkshire, after all. And I’ll just carry on with my work, I suppose. Keep an eye on Hawkins. Look for any signs of this Phil Keane in photographs or in the street. Find out what he was doing in London with Petar Tadić.’

‘And the policeman?’

‘Alan Banks? We are friends. Raymond and I see him and Annie socially, too. They don’t press me for information every time we meet.’

‘He probably thinks you’ll tell him if you find out anything.’

‘Perhaps. Though sometimes...’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think he knows that I’m keeping something back. Just the way he looks at me.’

Mati leaned forward. ‘Be careful, Nelia. You should not need me to tell you that, but I do.’ It was rare that she called Zelda by her given name.

‘What do you think I should do, Mati?’

Mati picked up the bottle and poured them more wine. It was the local grape variety, Malvazija, and very good indeed. Zelda passed the cigarettes again. ‘I think you should have another glass of wine, then you should help me settle in the new girl.’

Mati ran a shelter for trafficked girls fortunate enough to have escaped the sex trade into which they had been forced. It was housed on the slope behind them in a rambling old mansion on an acre or two of land. Mati’s work was her life these days, and the shelter, a place of healing and safety, was always full. There were even some Yazidi women, and their stories never failed to break Zelda’s heart: how their husbands were thrown into pits and shot; how they were forced into marriages with abusive ISIS warriors. Mati’s two strapping sons, known affectionately as Ić and Ićić — ‘Son’ and ‘Son Son’ — both built like heavyweight fighters and armed to the teeth, took care of security. Once or twice various trafficking gangs had launched attacks to try to take their girls back, but Ić and Ićić had fought them off. In the end, the gangs had stopped bothering. The risk wasn’t worth their while; there were plenty more girls for the taking.

Zelda smiled. ‘And after that?’

‘After that, we’ll leave the boys in charge and go down to the village to sample the catch of the day at Martina’s. Then perhaps we’ll go dancing.’

Zelda picked up her pencil again and added a few more deft strokes before passing the sketch to Mati.

‘Do I really look like that?’ she said.

‘To me you do.’

‘I seem very severe... very haunted.’

Zelda said nothing.

‘And, seriously,’ Mati went on, ‘I think what you should do is follow your heart, but don’t let it rule your head when it senses danger. You have survived much, perhaps so much that you think you can handle anything that comes along, but, believe me, my dear Nelia, you cannot. There’s always something else. Something worse.’