Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows

Drinking deeply from her pint of beer, George started to arrange the condiments in a perfectly straight line along the middle of the table. Separating her and Sophie with a barrier of salt, pepper, vinegar and ketchup. ‘There’s often stories in the media about blond children allegedly being abducted by the Roma. Usually when northern Europeans are on holiday in countries like Turkey and Greece.’

Chewing slowly, thoroughly, perhaps thoughtfully, on her veggie-burger, Sophie nodded and flicked her long hair over her shoulder. ‘Stories like that always engender mass hysteria in the press – especially in the tabloids. White Europeans are up in arms whenever they get wind of some kind of abuse of a blond child by an underclass of minority ethnic people like ‘gypsies’. And the Roma have always been vilified as child-abductors. It goes back donkey’s years, like the myth of Jews baking their Passover bread with Christian children’s blood.’

‘Racist propaganda, then?’ George asked, pulling her e-cigarette out of her rucksack.

‘But the point is, the Roma informally adopt children from families that can’t bring their own kids up. Happens a lot. I think in the case of the ‘Blonde Angel’ back in 2013, for example, the mother was Bulgarian and just couldn’t look after her daughter. Lack of paperwork implicates the adoptive parents though, and the media jumps onto a witch hunt.’

George thought about how the case Van den Bergen had been working on had been given the moniker of Operation Roma by Kamphuis or Hasselblad or one of those odious bastards above him, and wondered about the prejudices behind the name in light of what Sophie was saying. Missing person equals gypsies, if the bigots were to be believed. Hadn’t Hasselblad pointed the finger at Romani travellers, amongst other easily maligned groups? She had thought the Roma referred to the Italian capital of Rome – a suspected destination of the missing, at one point, and the frequently used European hub of trans-national trafficking networks. Only now did she make the link. How the hell did I miss that?

‘You’ve got a point.’ She rubbed her finger along her full bottom lip. Chapped and rough from the cold. ‘Roma kids from South Eastern Europe are by far the largest ethnic group preyed on by traffickers,’ George said, thinking about what she had read about beggars and child prostitutes in Italy, the Russian Federation and Turkey. ‘So, the truth is actually a world away from media representation.’

Sophie seemed momentarily to be assessing George. Peering at her intently over her beer glass. She looked suddenly thoughtful again. ‘Yep. Of the kids trafficked out of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, Roma kids constitute about seventy per cent. They’re disproportionately poor. Maybe someone trusted in the family or village offers to get a child work elsewhere. What the fuck have they got in their little villages at home? Domestic abuse, maybe. Poverty, certainly. Sod all in the way of education or prospects. So they often go willingly. Unwittingly. Factor in corrupt border patrol and police, and you’ve got movement of children over borders into brothels, sweatshops, begging on the streets.’

George drained her beer glass, feeling suddenly lightheaded in the over-heated warmth of the pub, with a full stomach. Sophie was twirling some of that long, unkempt hair coquettishly around her finger. Her chipped nail varnish made George feel itchy. Inadvertently, she found herself checking her phone for texts from Van den Bergen, as though those would save her from the keen-eyed appraisal of the inexpertly groomed Dr Bartek. Nothing. She found herself looking up at the décolletage of her colleague.

‘So, studying human trafficking in Europe…’ Sophie said, licking her fingers now that her plate was clean ‘… is not all stats. There’s a social anthropology aspect to it to. Poverty, ethnicity … Do you fancy a fuck?’

George burst out laughing, and felt the heat suffuse her cheeks with embarrassment though she had not been easily embarrassed in years. ‘I only came out to supervise my Sociology finalist!’

‘So?!’ Sophie reached out, stroked her hand, and started to play footsie with her under the table, which, in snow boots, felt more like a football tackle than flirtation.

The sight of ketchup under Sophie’s fingernails made George pull her hand away. She pressed her lips together and smiled awkwardly, looking everywhere but at this five-foot tall propositioner with mesmerising eyes. ‘I’m in a relationship. Sort of.’

‘Sort of?’

‘On and off.’

‘Well, then?’

George had agreed to coffee. That was all.

The walk back to her place, up the steep incline of Castle Hill and along the Huntingdon Road, took place in anticipatory silence. But the noise in her head was unbearable. She’s going to expect more from me. I haven’t slept with a woman in years. I wasn’t looking for this. I don’t even fancy her. I love Van den Bergen. But he’s an arsehole and treats me like an afterthought.

‘You okay?’ Sophie asked, as they stood on the front doorstep to George’s shared house.

‘It’s a bit messy,’ George said. ‘The communal area, I mean. But my room’s a clean space, so you’ll have to take your shoes off before you go in. I’m a bit funny about …’

Key in the lock. The flickering light on the wall of the living room said the other housemates were watching TV. George bypassed them and led Sophie up the narrow Victorian stairs to her room.

The door was open. The lock bust. Splintered wood on the architrave.

‘Shitting Nora!’

Key still uselessly in hand, George walked in and surveyed the mayhem. The room had been ransacked, top to bottom. Bedclothes on the floor. Contents of drawers strewn all over. Pot plant spattered mess across the carpet. Typing chair upended. Desk drawers flung hither and thither. She ran over to her desk. A space where the laptop had been.

‘Fuck!’ she shouted, staring at Sophie with desperate eyes. ‘My research is gone!’

‘For Christ’s sake! When will it bloody rain and wash this crap away?’ Van den Bergen shouted, trying to manoeuvre his car into one of the only spaces at the allotment complex that had been shovelled clear of snow over the past few weeks. Not shovelled well enough though. There had been another downfall overnight, covering the icy rectangle with virgin snow that creaked in complaint when compressed. Now, compacted beneath the tyres of his rear wheel drive E-Class Mercedes, the snow caused him to skid back and forth, back and forth, as if in some kind of retribution for being sullied.

‘Fuck this!’ he growled, slapping the steering wheel in frustration. He realised the car was at an awkward angle but had had enough and clicked the brake button on. He turned the engine off and stepped outside into -22°C. Perhaps it was lunacy coming here in this weather. But he needed to get away from the station. Here, at the otherwise empty Sloterdijkermeer allotment complex, he could sit in his wooden cabin in a state of suspended animation. Pretend just for an hour – or, as long as he could bear in these ridiculous Arctic temperatures before hypothermia set in – that everything was alright. That life was normal. That he still had a measure of control over his own destiny.

Carrying the portable heater in one gloved hand, his Thermos flask and an Albert Heijn supermarket bag containing a fat file in the other, he trudged through the malign winter wonderland. More than two feet deep. It was heavy work. He eyed with suspicion the icicles that hung everywhere from sheds and cabins; he noted the sheer volume of snow that now sat on top of every roof, threatening to slide off at any moment and engulf a hapless victim below.