Shallow Be Thy Grave (11 page)

Moments later the door buzzed open and the three of them stepped inside. A man was coming down the staircase, zipping up his fly. He was so pissed he couldn’t stand up straight. He grinned at them and Lily fought the urge to punch him in the teeth.

“Not surprised he has to pay for it,” Jo sneered.

“Come on,” said Greta. “It’s right at the top.”

The staircase grew narrower the higher they climbed until they got to the attic rooms. Greta tapped on the door with her fingertips and it opened. Behind the door stood a small, thin, blonde woman, her hair wavy and hanging round her shoulders. She wore no make-up, and Lily saw immediately that she had a black eye and a bust lip.

“Jesus, what the fuck happened?” asked Greta. She pushed open the door and forced her way into the room. “Who did this?”

“It’s nothing. It looks worse than it is.”

“Bollocks,” said Greta, tipping the woman’s head back towards the light, so she could examine the damage.  Lily could see how tiny her pupils were, even from a few feet away - her eyes looked weird, like a zombie. “Does Niko know?”

The woman stepped away, twisting her head out of Greta’s grasp. She almost stumbled and then led them backwards into the small bedsit room. “Leave it, Greta. Shit happens.” She had a foreign sounding accent that Lily couldn’t place. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 Greta looked like she wasn’t going to leave it. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, then seemed to change her mind. “These girls are looking for someone.”

“I’m all fed up with people looking for people.”

“So it was the guy, the guy looking for Anna? He did this to you?”

“Shut up.” The woman’s words were slurred and she looked like she was having difficulty holding her head up.

“Did he do this to you?”

“No.”

“I thought you said he was ok.”

“He was. It wasn’t him. I told you. It was just a client, pissed, got a bit over-excited. That’s all.”

“Fucking hell, Dee. What have I told you? You’ve got to take better care. Niko should-” Greta stopped abruptly and turned to Lily and Jo. “Ok, I’m going to leave you two here.” She ignored Lily’s look of alarm. “Listen, Dee. These guys are friends of mine. I want you to see if you can help them. I going to find Niko. He needs to get his shit together.”

“Just leave it,” said Dee. She crossed the room and picked up a bottle of vodka. “Have a drink.”

Greta spoke to Lily. “I don’t think she knows anything, but you can see whether you can get a description out of her. I’ve got to go.”

“Go?” said Lily, suddenly nervous about being left alone in this place. It was dark and impersonal, unlike Greta’s room. There were no pictures on the walls, no signs that anyone had ever tried to make it look attractive. It was cold, impersonal and it smelt of cheap perfume. “Go where?”

“You know, see a man about a dog,” she stroked Lily’s cheek. “Sorry for the slap.”

“Slaps,” said Lily, emphasising the plural.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

Dee gestured for Jo and Lily to sit down as Greta slipped out of the door they’d come through. Dee slumped into the armchair by the small gas fire. “Do you want a drink?”

She waved a bottle of vodka in the air. “I’m not working, so I thought I might as well make the most of it.”

She gestured towards a shelf and Jo fetched a couple of extra shot glasses. Dee poured vodka into all three. “English huh? Most of my clients are English. What is it about you Brits? Don’t you fuck in your country? Always want the kinky stuff too. I had a guy last week who wanted me to smack his bottom while he wet his pants.”

“We’re looking for my sister,” said Lily, anxious not to get too caught up in Dee’s working experiences. “We think she’s travelling with a woman called Brigitte. You might know her as Anna.”

Lily showed her the photograph they’d got from Grace. While Dee was looking at it, peering at it closely, like she had difficulty seeing, Lily cast a glance around the flat.  There was a small coffee table in the centre of the room with a piece of tinfoil on it, brown from burning. “Greta said a man was round asking questions about Bri-, Anna,”

“Don’t remember. Have you got a cigarette?”

Jo handed her a packet of Lucky Strikes.

“Was that the girl the man was looking for?” asked Lily. “The one on the left?”

“I can’t tell you anything.”

“Can you describe him?” asked Jo.

“He was a man. Listen, I don’t want any trouble. I just want to do my thing.”

“And I’m just trying to find my sister. She’s seventeen years old.”

“There’s a lot of missing girls in Amsterdam.”

“Listen,” said Jo. “Brigitte, Anna, the woman in the photograph, we think she’s been abused. We think the man that was looking for her might be part of that. Surely you want to help?”

“Don’t tell me you believe in justice.”

She poured them all another shot.

“If he did this to you,” said Jo, “he’ll do it to other women.”

“Don’t bring me down. This is my week off.”

“You get holidays?” the question was out of Lily’s mouth before she could help herself.

Dee grinned at her. At least, Lily thought it was an attempt at a grin. It came across more like a grimace as Lily noticed the brown nicotine stains on Dee’s front teeth. “I can’t work when I look like this can I?”

“Can’t you tell us anything about him?” asked Jo. “What language did he speak?”

“He was a looker. The first one.” She downed another shot and Lily looked at Jo with frustration. They weren’t going to get anything out of her in this state.

“The first one? There was more than one?”

“My mum always said watch out for the good looking ones. They shouldn’t need to pay for it. Stupid bitch.”

“There was more than one man?”

Dee stood up. She lurched as her body got used to being upright. “Fuck off. Both of you. Go on.” She stood over both of them as Jo downed her vodka. Lily stood up too.

“Forget it,” said Lily as she turned for the door. “You obviously don’t care.”

“I told you I don’t know anything,” Dee shouted at them. “My face is all I have. So piss off and leave me alone.

There wasn’t a train back to Paris until 6am so Jo and Lily passed the time in a café close to the station. Lily kept one eye on the clock above the bar, counting down the minutes. She couldn’t wait to get back to Paris. Amsterdam frightened her, had made her aware of too many awful things that might have happened to her sister.

“What have you done with the drugs?” whispered Lily as they found their seats on the train. They’d bought a ‘teenth of the strongest grass Lily had ever smoked in the last café.

“Best you don’t know,” said Jo, as she stumbled over her own bag and nearly fell to the floor. She bent over double with laughter.

“Jo.” Lily gave her a push. “You’ll get us arrested.”

“Relax, they’re not on me.” Jo collapsed into a seat and sprawled out. “Strip search me if you like.”

“That’s not funny.” Lily sat down next to her. The only other person in the carriage – a young man – was wearing headphones. Lily spoke in a hushed voice. “I feel so sorry for Greta. And Dee - all those women. Imagine the type of bloke they have to have sex with.”

“No thanks,” said Jo. “It’s bad enough thinking about the type of bloke I have to have sex with.” She collapsed with laughter again.

Lily ignored her and pressed her face against the cool glass of the window. “Poor Brigitte too,” she said, mainly to herself. “Doesn’t sound like she’s had much of a life either.”

As they climbed the steps out of Pigalle station, Lily felt her heart sink, the enormity of the task ahead of them finally hitting. They’d been here two days and they were no closer to knowing where Fiona was. In fact, Lily felt like her sister was slipping further away. They trudged across the open square.

“We need to go through their stuff,” said Jo. “I mean everything. They’re now officially missing. There must be a clue somewhere.”

As they turned the corner into Rue Pigalle, Lily noticed a familiar figure sitting on the doorstep to Brigitte’s flat. She didn’t let herself believe until they got close. Then it was everything she could do to stop herself running towards him with her arms outstretched. “Stuart.”

He was dressed in his trademark blue jeans but wearing a red scarf around his neck, not a scarf like you’d wear on a cold day in Britain. More like a scarf you’d see on someone on the back of the camel. “What the… I mean,” said Lily.

He half-smiled at her confusion as he rose to his feet. When he spoke, his words came out too quickly, “I couldn’t take any more sitting around waiting to hear what’s happened. I got the first flight out this morning. I was worried I’d miss you.” There was a pause, where they both grinned at each other like idiots. Lily tried to persuade herself that seeing a friendly face, after all this time in strange city, was bound to make her grin. “So,” said Stuart, seemingly content to stand on the doorstep. “What’s happening?”

Jo unlocked the door. “A wild bleeding goose chase is what’s happening. Still, suppose at least we can cross Amsterdam off the list. We know where they aren’t.”

Stuart looked puzzled and followed Jo inside the spacious stairwell. “Amsterdam?”

“How long do you think it will take us to eliminate the rest of Western Europe?” Jo examined the wire cages that were behind the door. “Here we are - their mail box.”

She fished out the letters that were inside. At first glance it looked like junk mail and pizza menus, but then Jo extracted a white envelope from the pile. “Brigitte Chance.”

“Who?” asked Lily.

“That’s her surname.”

“Chance? I like it. Wish I was called something like that,” said Lily. “I hate Appleyard. Aunt Edie said my mum picked it out of the phone book, so my dad’d never be able to find us.”

“Why Appleyard?” asked Stuart.

“Dunno. Probably the first name she came to. I guess I’m lucky I’m not called Aardvark.”

“Why Amsterdam?” asked Stuart again as they climbed the stairs to Brigitte’s flat.

“That’s where Grace, one of her best mates, thought she was,” explained Lily. Jo let them into Brigitte’s flat and Lily closed and bolted the door behind her. “But she’s not. We’ve been and checked.”

“She’s disappeared off the face of the earth,” said Jo, disappearing into the kitchen, with the handful of mail.

“I thought an extra pair of… well, an extra body, might come in useful,” said Stuart, following her. He blushed. “I spoke to Ruth.”

Lily tried to run a hand through her hair, but gave up less than an inch in. She sat down at the kitchen table and reached for the tobacco tin. “What did she say?”

“Pretty much the same as David. They’re inter-railing. She last spoke to Fi on the Wednesday lunchtime, well lunchtime in San Francisco. It would have been evening in Paris, the night before Fi rang you. Fiona said they were going away for a couple of months and that she might not be in touch much - they’d be too skint to phone. Fiona asked her for some extra cash, but Ruth said she told her if she wanted to go travelling, she had to learn to stand on her own two feet.”

“That’s something,” said Jo, as she let her satchel fall to the floor. She shuffled the pile of letters in her hand, before opening one and dropping the rest on the table. “This is from the phone company, I think.” She passed it to Stuart. “We could try and check with her bank, see if she’s used a cash card anywhere.”

“Good idea,” said Stuart, “only I’m not sure they’d tell us. Oh, and Ruth thinks Fiona’s better off not knowing about the funeral, because she thinks David will only use the opportunity to guilt-trip Fi into staying in England. She said Fi’s got a place at the University of Paris, starting September. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” said Lily, pleased to be able to at last confess to some knowledge of her sister’s movements. “Grace said she’s well chuffed about it.”

Stuart was reading the letter Jo had given him. “Yeah, Ruth said the same.” He glanced up at Jo. “This is to confirm they’ve disconnected the phone. Final bill.”

“Maybe Ruth’s got a point,” said Jo. “I’d hate to think we were helping David in any way.”

“Fiona will want to know about her granddad,” said Stuart. “I know she would.”

“Well, the trouble is,” said Lily, unsure of how much bad news Stuart could handle, “they might be hiding.”

Stuart put the letter from the phone company on top of the rest of the junk mail. “Hiding from who?”

“Brigitte’s family,” said Jo. She didn’t seem to share Lily’s qualms about burdening Stuart with their depressing findings. “Grace thinks Brigitte’s a runaway. And there was a man, possibly two, looking for her in Amsterdam. Could have been her dad or someone,” said Jo.

“How do you know?” asked Stuart. “I mean, how do you know there was a man looking for her?”

“We met an old-” Jo began.

“Friend,” Lily interrupted, her voice unnaturally high. “Of Brigitte’s. Only she was called Anna then.”

 “Why would they want to hide from Brigitte’s family?”

“We can only assume-” said Jo.

“They’re not very nice,” said Lily, quickly finishing the end of Jo’s sentence.

Jo pulled a face at Lily before speaking to Stuart. “But the point is, they’re not in Amsterdam. We went to the café where they were supposed to be working, but no one’s heard of them.”

“Who said they were working in a café?”

“Fiona’s friend, Grace.”

Stuart nodded like he recognised the name, then frowned. “But why tell David and Ruth that they were going inter-railing if they were working in Amsterdam?” asked Stuart.

“Grace said maybe they didn’t want David to worry,” said Lily. “You know what he’s like.”

“Which makes sense,” said Jo. “Only they’re not in Amsterdam. Or at least, not at the place they told Grace they were going to be.” She fished two mugs from the sink and pulled a third down from the shelf. “Do you want tea?”

“Sounds like you’ve got it backwards to me,” said Stuart. “If they don’t want people to know where they are, then they tell everyone in Paris that they’re going to Amsterdam but really they’re heading south, inter-railing. That way if anyone does turn up in Paris looking for them, they’ll head to Amsterdam, i.e. in the opposite direction to where they’re actually going. Why else tell David and Ruth they’re inter-railing?”