Shallow Be Thy Grave (12 page)

There was a pause. “That’s true,” said Lily, excitement growing in her voice. “They lied to Grace, not to David.”

“Mmm, maybe,” said Jo. “But you’re much more likely to lie to your dad than your mate.”

“But it’s worked,” said Lily. “If you think about it, it didn’t take us very long to find out they were in Amsterdam. One of the women at the playgroup said as much. They must have known word would spread.”

“And so whoever it is chasing them, gets the wrong scent, goes to Amsterdam,” said Jo. “Hey, they could even have meant them to ask for Frank, knowing Greta would see it as a call for help. Perhaps they thought she’d sort out the bloke, like she almost sorted us.”

“What?” said Stuart, his eyes widening with concern.

“Don’t ask,” said Jo.

“Fi’s got no reason to lie to her parents,” said Lily, hope daring to rise inside her. “They’re hardly going to tell any bad guys where they are.”

“Exactly,” said Stuart.

“But wherever they are, they’re still hiding,” said Lily, the spark of hope extinguishing as quickly as it had appeared. “Doesn’t exactly help us.”

“We’ll find them,” said Stuart. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Lily envied him his optimism. She couldn’t help feeling it was misplaced. She wished she could shake off her growing sense of unease, but it followed her, clung to her clothes like smoke. She tried to smile. “Hope you’re right.”

“She can’t have completely disappeared,” said Stuart. The three of them were sitting round the table in the kitchen, drinking tea. Stuart had taken his jacket and scarf off and Lily liked watching the way the veins in his forearms moved each time he picked up his mug. Jo was rolling a spliff out of the Imperial Leather grass.

“The weird thing is, she left her diary,” said Lily. “I found it under the mattress.”

Stuart’s face immediately lost some of its optimism. He stuck his bottom lip out. “That is weird,” he said. “She used to bring it to Lancaster when she came to visit me at Uni, she was so paranoid someone would read it.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “Have you read it?”

“No,” said Jo at exactly the same moment as Lily said, “Yes.”

A frown crossed Stuart’s face, knitting his eyebrows together so that they looked like one long dark caterpillar perched above his eyes. “So, what does it say? Where is it?” asked Stuart, like the thought had just occurred to him. “It must say something about what they were planning.”

Lily and Jo glanced at each other. Jo spoke first, “It’s a long story.”

He waited for one of them to start talking. The two women stared at each other. Jo sighed and gave Stuart a quick run down of their first night at the flat, and the appearance of Bruno, if that’s what his name was.

“That’s bad,” said Stuart, when Jo had finished talking. “That’s really bad.”

“Don’t tell Fiona,” Lily blurted before she could stop herself. She cursed herself mentally for sounding a) selfish and b) like a twelve year old.

Stuart didn’t seem to notice. “Who do you think he was?”

“A, er, friend of Brigitte’s,” said Lily staring hard at Jo.

“We should go to the police. That’s theft, for starters.”

“We can’t,” said Jo.

“Why not?”

“Because we think he’s her pimp.”

“What?”

“Brigitte’s a prostitute.”

 Stuart’s eyes bulged, his face a picture of alarm. “She’s a prostitute?” He used the same tone he might have used if he’d said, ‘she’s an axe murderer?’

Jo pulled a face at him. “Lots of women are forced through economic necessity to sell sex. It doesn’t make her a bad person.”

“And possibly an illegal immigrant,” said Lily. “If that doesn’t get the Daily Mail going…”

“If we get the police involved, and they find them, she’ll get deported,” said Jo. “And if she gets deported back to her family, well, we could be destroying her life.”

Lily felt sorry for Stuart, struggling to take in all this information.

“Who said Brigitte’s a prostitute?”

“Monsieur Beaumont said Brigitte’s a prostitute.” Lily looked at Jo. “We don’t know it for a fact.”

“She was working as a prostitute in Amsterdam,” said Jo.

“That doesn’t mean she still is,” said Lily. “Greta said she’d left Amsterdam because she met someone who could get her a better job.”

“Whatever,” said Jo. She paused and lit the spliff, winced slightly and then exhaled. “All I’m saying is, Fiona won’t thank us if we get the police investigating their affairs, if her best mate is a prostitute or an illegal immigrant.”

“How can she be a prostitute?” asked Stuart. “What would Fiona be doing while she was … offering her services?”

Jo clicked her fingers and then pointed at Stuart with her index finger. “You’re right. If Brigitte is a prostitute, she’s got another place. A sex pad.”

“Another place?” asked Stuart.

“She can’t be seeing to clients here, or she wouldn’t have let Fiona move in. And there’s no kinky sex gear. We’ve looked.”

Lily felt a surge of her old foe, hope. She hated these waves of emotions, but knew she had no choice but to surf. “Maybe,” she said, the words tumbling out before the thoughts were fully formed, “maybe they knew those men, the men in Amsterdam, Brigitte’s family, whoever they are… Maybe they knew they were coming looking for them, so they spread the rumour they’re leaving town, and then hide out in the other place. Jo, you’re a genius!” Lily exclaimed. “That makes total sense.”

They sat in silence for a moment, all trying to make sense of the new theory, test it for holes. Stuart spoke first.

 “Ok,” he said, stroking the back of his head like he was trying to give himself some comfort, reassurance. “That would make it easier, if they were still in Paris, I mean. Perhaps we should do a thorough search of the flat. If we can work out what they’ve taken with them, we might get some clue as to where they’re hiding.”

“How will we know?” said Lily “We’ve no idea what Brigitte has. I have no idea what Fiona had.  She’s been in Paris over a year. She could have a whole new wardrobe by now. The only thing I saw her take from England was her ginormous backpack.”

“Is that here?” asked Stuart.

Lily paused and thought for a moment. “Dunno.”

“I think we need to do a thorough search of the flat,” said Stuart again. “I saw her at Christmas, so I might be able to think of something.”

“You saw her at Christmas?” Lily tried to keep her sense of outrage out of her voice, but failed.

“Yes,” Stuart’s cheeks grew darker. “Didn’t she tell you? My parents were in Berlin. I called to see her on the way back. Just for a couple of days.”

Lily got up from the table. “She never let me visit. She said the Beaumonts didn’t like her to have visitors.”

“It was only a couple of days.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Did you meet Brigitte?” asked Jo.

“No. We were supposed to go out for a drink with her one night, but she cancelled.”

“I can’t believe she let you visit, but she wouldn’t let me,” said Lily, stalking round the kitchen table. From the window at the other side of the room, she could see the rooftops opposite. She watched a pigeon take off, swooping and diving, just because it could.

“What about her passport?” asked Stuart.

“What about it?”

“Is it here?”

Lily looked at Jo. Jo shrugged. Lily looked back at Stuart, embarrassed at their failure to think of things like this. “I haven’t seen it.”

“Ok,” Stuart pushed his empty coffee cup into the centre of the table, “let’s search this place properly.”

They divided the flat into three. Stuart took the hall, the broom cupboard and the bathroom. Jo took the kitchen, Lily the bedroom. She still felt uneasy about searching her sister’s belongings. It felt like an admission, an admission of a problem. That something might have happened to Fiona. She blocked the thought and turned her attention to the room.

There wasn’t really much to search - a few clothes in the chest of drawers next to the bed. Lily scooped them all up and laid them on the bed. Two T-shirts, one long-sleeved, the other short, a pair of three-quarter length jeans, frayed around the edges, a couple of pairs of pants and a jumper. A lightweight jumper, the kind you’d wear on a summer evening in England.

At the back of the bottom drawer she found a pair of socks balled up and when she pulled the drawers out completely, she discovered a pair of red crotchless knickers that had obviously got lost down the back.

The only other furniture in the room, apart from the beds, which she’d already searched, was the wardrobe. Inside it was the box. She lifted it out, banging her elbow on the door, and put it with the clothes on the bed. Then she got on her hands and knees and looked underneath. She could see a piece of paper. Lily flattened herself to the floor, and squeezed her hand into the gap. Luckily her wrists were skinny. She managed to slide the piece of paper out. It was written in a foreign language, looked like a passport form or a birth certificate. Something official. And she recognised one word at least. Brigitte. Brigitte Stolz. She put the paper on the bed with the rest of her treasures.

“How are you doing?” Stuart poked his head around the door. He saw the cardboard box on the bed. “There’s another one of those in the broom cupboard. Shall we take everything through to the kitchen?”

“Ok.” Lily piled the clothes on top of the box, stuffed the piece of paper in her back pocket, picked up the box and followed Stuart into the kitchen.

“Ok,” said Stuart. “Let’s start with what isn’t here. There’s no toothbrushes, or toothpaste in the bathroom.”

“I’d better write this down,” said Jo.

“No shampoo.”

“No milk in the fridge,” said Jo. “In fact there wasn’t anything in the fridge. It had been cleaned out.”

“What about clothes?”

“There’s one change of clothes in the drawers. Oh and these,” said Lily, plucking the red crotch-less pants from the box and firing them at Jo like a catapult. “I fear they may confirm our worst thoughts.”

Jo sniffed the knickers.

“No one would wear them for fun, would they?” Lily’s cheeks flushed. “I mean, they’re hardly practical.”

“You sound like your Aunt Edie,” said Jo.

“Don’t look at me,” said Stuart. “I definitely wouldn’t wear them for fun.”

“Would you have sex with…” Jo started to ask Stuart but then caught the look on Lily’s face. “Never mind.”

“There’s no cash, no purse, no bank cards,” said Stuart.

“No travel cards,” said Jo.

“No passports,” said Lily. “Unless they’re in here.” She began unstacking the contents of the box and putting them on the table. Letters, books, a file from the University of Paris.

“What else do you use every day?”

“Fags, Rizla, lighter,” said Jo.

“Fiona doesn’t smoke.”

“Someone does. There’s ashtrays,” said Lily

 “Any Tampax?” asked Jo.

“Yes,” said Stuart. “The bathroom cabinet’s empty, but I found an unopened box of Tampax, mouthwash and half a packet of disposable ladies’ razors hidden behind the sink. They could have just forgotten them. They’re too big to go in the cabinet.”

“There’s two more diaries,” said Lily. She’d reached the bottom of the box. She leaned in and extracted two A5 hard-backed books. She placed them on the table next to Jo’s notebook.

“They might be useful,” said Jo.

“What’s the date in them?” asked Stuart.

Jo used her pen to flick open the front cover of the blue one. “This one starts March ‘90. ‘I have been living in France for the last two weeks. There’s so much to tell you, I hardly know where to start.’ Here’s hoping it contains more information than what she had for breakfast.”

Jo noticed Lily glaring at her. “Sorry, but it’s true.” She opened the front cover of the second book. “And Volume 2 starts September 18
th
and ends... 22
nd
January 1991, that’s nearly four months ago.”

Lily turned to Stuart. Her eyes were asking him the same question her conscience was currently asking of herself. Did she have the guts to read Fiona’s diary? She was sure neither of them would be presented particularly well. “Well, as much as I’m against reading anyone’s diary, I think we have to in this situation,” said Stuart.

Jo was already a couple of pages into the first one. She looked up, aware that Stuart and Lily were both staring at her. “Duh. I mean, I know what you mean, but you’re right. We have to read them.”

Lily went to sit on the settee, exhausted by the search. “Oh, and I found this.” She pulled the piece of paper out of her back pocket. “It was on the floor, under the wardrobe.”

Stuart crossed the room to take it from her and Lily couldn’t help the feeling that he was trying to avoid the diaries too.

“I think it’s a birth certificate,” said Lily.

“Brigitte Stolz,” Stuart read. “I thought she was called Chance. Do you think she’s changed her name? This is good - we might find out where she’s from. Although, hang on a minute,” his voice dropped in volume and he seemed to be talking to himself. “Todesfallanzeige, I’m pretty sure it’s not a birth certificate.”

“What is it then?” asked Jo.

“I’m not sure. It’s German. I’d have to check.”

“There’s a German dictionary here,” said Lily. She knelt up and found the dictionary where she’d left it on the bookshelf. “It’s German to French though, I think.” She chucked the pocket-sized book across the room to him and he caught it in his left hand. Jo’s tobacco tin was lying on the arm of the sofa. Lily started to build a spliff. The flat fell silent, Jo engrossed in Fiona’s diary.

“I was right,” said Stuart after a few minutes. “This isn’t a birth certificate.”

“What is it then?” asked Jo.

“It’s kind of the opposite. It’s a death certificate.”

“So, what?” said Lily, licking the Rizla papers together. She pulled a face. “Brigitte’s dead?”

“Not our Brigitte. This Brigitte died in 1970 when she was only four months old.”

“I know what that’s about,” said Jo, excitement in her voice. “I’ve read about it.”