Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows

At the far end of the garden was a small weeping birch that cascaded right to the ground, providing the kids with a curtain of green, behind which they could safely hide from view.

Smiling tentatively, Piet crept forward. Preparing to sweep the whippy branches aside to reveal his collaborating toddlers. Grabbed the branches. Hope fading as he realised he could not hear any delighted, anticipatory giggling. Looked for the sandaled feet, mucky knees and brightly coloured shorts in vain. Lifted the canopy suddenly.

‘Gotcha!’

The void by the tree trunk was empty.

In a dizzying vortex of panic, Piet stepped backwards. Tripped on Lucy’s Sesamstraat tricycle, Big Bird staring goggle-eyed into the abyss as he was now.

‘Josh! Lucy!’ he shouted at the top of his voice.

Hands shaking. His breath started to come short. Where was his inhaler? Inside. Maybe they had gone inside.

‘Lucy! Josh! Where are you?’

Found his Ventolin on the worktop. Inhaled sharply. Eyes scanning the kitchen. Back into the garden now. Screaming at the top of his lungs. Frightened tears starting to leak from his eyes.

‘Joshua! Lucy! Where are you?’

He fell to his knees as the bottom dropped out of his world. The garden was empty. His children were gone.

‘Fucking idiots,’ George muttered under her breath. She was eyeing the beefy rugger-buggers in the crowded college bar who had hoisted two blow-up sex dolls aloft and were bashing them together, ‘like lesboes’. Then, pretending to hump them, doggy style. Pints all round, boys, to celebrate Rupes’ birthday. Empty glasses bearing testament to two hours’ solid drinking.

Looking at Charlotte, the mousy third-year student she was supervising on the side, George felt suddenly protective. ‘Let’s call it a night, shall we?’

Charlotte fingered a twee enamel flower brooch on her jumper nervously. Nodded. She hooked her dark blonde hair behind her ears. Left her diet coke half drunk. ‘I always find it too rowdy in here,’ she said, barely audible above the raucous laughter and bawdy jokes. ‘But thanks for the drink anyway. I’m glad you thought the essay was okay.’

‘The essay was great, but this was a bad idea. I’m sorry. Next time, we’ll have the supervision at my house, right?’

As she pulled on her coat, one of the boys locked eyes with George. Clearly failed to recognize her as a Fellow. He humped the blow-up sex doll towards her, shouting, ‘Fancy a ride, darling? I’ve got plenty of love to give when I’ve finished with this bitch.’

Deftly, George detached the enamel brooch from Charlotte’s jumper. Nice long, sharp pin, she noticed with satisfaction. Took long strides to meet the leering idiot. Popped the first sex doll. Swung to her left and popped the second.

‘Oh, you total cow!’ one of the boys shouted.

‘See, boys?’ George said. All eyes on her. Stunned silence meant she had their attention. ‘An unwanted prick’s not much fun, is it?’

Before the pack could round on her, she ushered Charlotte to the door. She only barely registered the fact that a man, too old to be a student, was sitting in an alcove. A man who didn’t fit with these surrounds. The wafting stench of more than stale alcohol. Watching her. Someone she didn’t recognise. Or did she? It was a shadow of a thought and George didn’t have time to form it fully before she was through the door; warm air supplanted by cold, a testosterone-fuelled demi-riot supplanted by silence.

Outside in that frozen cloudless night, the drop in temperature punched the air from her lungs. She struggled to catch her breath as she watched Charlotte scurry off towards Cripps block in safety.

George was preoccupied and unprepared, when a figure wearing too many clothes bundled into her.

‘Watch where you’re going!’ she said, wondering if one of the boys from the bar had come to start something with her. But the figure was too small, she realised.

‘George!’ A woman’s voice. Rich rolling R. She pulled back her hood enough to show her face clearly in the moonlight. Dark hair gathered in a low widow’s peak above her brow. Feather earrings just peeping out, though the colours were not visible in this half-light. ‘I was looking for you.’

‘Sophie!’ George said. Chuckling with relief at the sight of the Social Anthropology Fellow.

‘Fancy coming for a pint and we can chew over our collaboration some more? The Bun Shop does a good burger if you’ve not already eaten. My treat.’

George assessed her options. Back to her college house full of untidy idiot undergraduates, where she could never find peace enough to work? Beggars, it turned out, really couldn’t be choosers. Or off to the pub for a second stab at sociability with women roughly her own age? Her empty stomach growled long and low. It had already decided on her brain’s behalf.

‘Perfect!’

As the two women trudged arm-in-arm towards the Porter’s Lodge, George was unaware of the man following some twenty paces behind.

That he had got past the Porters and into the college was a miracle. No. Not a miracle. Merely a feat of bluff and self-confidence. Walk like you belong there. Head held high. His time on the streets had taught him this was the best way to move around unnoticed. The moment you started acting like you didn’t belong was the moment people took you for an interloper.

Still, his heart was thudding as he followed McKenzie and her friend through the labyrinthine medieval sprawl towards the lodge. Seeing the towers loom large, covered in the claustrophobic white blanket that swallowed sound like the walls of a confessional box, he felt sick. But in the middle of the snow-bound courtyard, where the gritted paths intersected, the women suddenly took a sharp left. They entered a different courtyard on the other side of the chapel. Wider spaces here. The snow glittered like homeless man’s diamonds in the moonlight. It looked like they were going through some more discreet exit. Except, downside was, he was exposed here. If they turned around, they would realise, perhaps, that they were being followed.

Get to McKenzie , the email had said. Get her laptop and the USB stick that has her database on it – by any means necessary. The names are all on there.

Any means necessary. Yes. He was a committed soldier and this was war. It was his job to obey orders. He removed his glove for thirty seconds – just long enough to reach down through the tear in his pocket into the space between the lining and outer of his coat. Touched the tools hidden along the inner seam. Screwdriver. Hammer. Chisel. Tonight he would not use ice and snow. Tonight, he needed something a little more robust.

George looked into Sophie’s startling green eyes. Looked away after a couple of uncomfortable beats. Felt instinctively like there was more than just friendly curiosity at play in her new colleague’s exacting gaze. Some kind of chemistry shit going on. She hadn’t experienced that with a woman since Tonya …

‘I’m going to be honest with you,’ George said. ‘I don’t see how your study into the Roma has any bearing on my trafficking research. I’m all about qualitative and quantitative. Interview transcriptions from victims and perps. Stats. You’re presumably coming at it from a cultural heritage angle.’ She took a large bite out of her burger. Eyes on the clientele in the pub, feeling like she was being observed. Back to Sophie. Perhaps observed only by her.

All hands flapping and smiles, Sophie’s intense expression was suddenly transformed. ‘You couldn’t be wronger there, my love,’ she said in that rolling West Country accent. George wasn’t sure about the ‘my love’. ‘The reason Sally wanted us to work together was that the Roma – my speciality – are at the centre of many a child abduction scandal.’