Shallow Be Thy Grave (27 page)

“We could just ring the bell,” said Jo.

“What if they don’t answer? What if he’s got them prisoner here?

“There’s a key in the lock,” said Jo, bending down to peer through the keyhole. “I can see it.”

“What if he’s about to kill them, now he knows we’re on to him.” Lily picked up a small rock from the edge of the flower-bed.

“Are you doing it?” said Jo.

“I’m doing it,” said Lily. “My sister might be in there.”

She tapped the glass pane in the door. It was only small, about 6 inches square. She tapped it again, harder and the sound of breaking glass filled the still night air. A small hole appeared in the pane. Lily bunched her hand into a fist and squeezed it through the gap between the jagged shards of glass. Her hands were tiny, and she twisted and turned and felt for the key. Her fingers brushed against it, she grabbed hold, pulled it out and handed it to Jo. She’d caught her knuckles on the jagged edges and blood appeared in swirls on the back of her hand.

Jo unlocked and opened the door and they both stepped into the dark dining room. Lily braced herself for the sound of a burglar alarm, but everything remained quiet. It was a big house, high ceilings and deep skirting boards. “Who do you think lives here?”

Jo shrugged and they tiptoed across to the door at the other side of the room. Lily inched it open slowly and Jo looked out into the corridor. It was quiet. They stepped into the hallway and Jo beckoned Lily to follow her, towards the front of the house. They saw the staircase, which led upstairs. Jo was just about to put a foot on the first step when Lily heard a voice behind them. It was a French voice. She had no idea what it was saying, but guessed it was something along the lines of ‘what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ She turned to see a small lady, about seventy years old, she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, wearing a pastel yellow skirt and trembling.

Lily felt dreadful but she couldn’t get this close and then stop to explain. “Run,” she shouted to Jo.

They both dashed up the stairs, Lily overtaking Jo halfway up. The landing at the top was enormous and there were at least six or seven doors off it but Lily spotted a sliver of light at the bottom of the second door on the right of the corridor. Lily ran to it, shoulder charged it, and catapulted into the room like she’d been fired from a gun. Jo was right behind her. The door wasn’t locked, or even properly closed and they both sailed through the air, almost falling onto a large double bed. Lily noticed the quality of the eiderdown, a gorgeous orange and bronze, silky kind of affair. She heard someone say something in French and for the first time in her life thought she’d understood a foreign language. “Mon Dieu!”

She turned to face the voice and saw Monsieur Billiet sitting on a stool, a kind of dressing table stool, in front of a chest of drawers. Next to him stood a young woman, wearing a tracksuit and with her hair tied up in a ponytail. She wasn't wearing any make up and Lily recognised her immediately from her photograph.

“Brigitte,” she said. “At last.”

Behind them they could hear the old lady shouting up the stairs, her voice drawing nearer.

“Have you broken into my mother’s house?” asked the Shadow Minister for Justice, his disbelief almost tangible. He stood up and moved across to the doorway.

“Where’s Fiona?” asked Lily.

“You are Lily?” asked Brigitte, her English heavily accented.

Lily nodded.

“Olivier was just explaining. I am sorry to be so careful. It must be very strange for you to wonder why he did not tell you where I am, but it is a long story. I have to be careful that my family don’t find out where I am.”

Lily’s patience was wearing thin.  She wasn’t interested in Brigitte’s domestic problems. “Where’s Fiona?”

“She is in Cannes.”

“Cannes?” said Jo. “What’s she doing there?”

“Where’s Cannes?” asked Lily.

“South of France,” said Brigitte.

“Are you sure?” asked Jo.

Brigitte looked surprised. “Of course I am sure. You don’t need to worry. She is quite safe.” Brigitte spoke with such confidence that Lily felt herself relax.

The little old lady burst into the bedroom. She waved a bony finger at Jo as she released a torrent of French words.  Lily had a sudden recall of fenetre – that meant window. She was almost chuffed with herself for her leaps in knowledge. If she could only forget about the incident with Stuart, and her brain was doing its best, then today was turning out fantastic. Fiona was in the South of France, Brigitte was safe and Lily was learning the lingo. 

Olivier Billiet put his hands gently on his mother’s shoulders and steered her from the room. She was still complaining as he shut the door behind them. Lily could hear him leading her back down the stairs.

“You’ve spoken to her?” Jo asked Brigitte. “I mean, since she got there?”

“Well, no.” Brigitte sighed heavily. “We, we had a falling out. Fiona is very cross with me.”

“Because?”

Brigitte glanced out of the window, like she was checking they hadn’t been followed. Lily thought how terrible it must be to live like that, always watching your back. “We were both supposed to go there together.”

 “I thought you were supposed to be going to Amsterdam?” said Lily.

“No. This is only our cover story. So that no one will find us. We are both going to Cannes.”

“Only you changed your mind,” said Jo.

“When I tell Fiona, she goes freaking crazy. I tell her I will come soon, when I have sorted out a few things. But she wouldn’t listen. She said I let her down. She said some terrible things to me.”

“So she went on her own?”

Brigitte nodded. “I said she could wait a couple of weeks, I would go with her. But she wanted to get out of Paris. She gave up her job. She had nothing to do for the summer, until University.”

 “When did you last hear from her?” asked Jo. “I mean actually speak to her.”

“I moved in here on, it was last Thursday, I do not know the date.”

“The 3rd of May,” said Jo in a resigned tone.

“That’s right,” said Brigitte, smiling broadly. “The 3rd of May. On the Saturday, the fifth, we were supposed to go to Cannes. We’d already booked the tickets.”

“And then you told her you didn’t want to go,” said Lily. “After she’d already given up her job.”

“It’s not a case of wanting. It’s about doing what is best. What is the safest thing to do. I find out that my family know I’m in Paris. A friend of mine, he get a letter for me.”

“Bruno?”

“You know Bruno?” Brigitte looked shocked.

“We’ve been trying to find you for the last four days.”

“This letter say my family know I am in Paris. It is getting too dangerous. We already thinking about going travelling, so we tell everyone we’re going to Amsterdam.”

“It worked,” said Jo. “We went to Amsterdam looking for you.”

 “But when I tell Olivier I cannot ever come back to Paris, he persuade me that the best thing I can do is to get legal status to stay in this country. Then my family cannot threaten me.”

“So, what was Fiona going to do?” asked Lily.

“She freak out, but she go to Cannes. I am quite certain.”

“No one’s seen her or heard from her since Thursday night,” said Jo.

“You need to speak to Fiona’s friend, Grace. She will for sure have heard from her.”

Lily’s small flame of optimism extinguished. Brigitte knew less than they did. “We’ve spoken to her. She hasn’t heard a thing.”

Brigitte looked confused. “That is weird. Have you tried her parents?”

“No one’s heard from her.”

Brigitte stuck out her bottom lip. “Maybe she wait until she find a job.”

 “What time did you leave her? On the Thursday?”

“It was late. About 10pm. Look, I’m sorry, but I cannot be responsible for Fiona all of the time. It was not only my idea. She wanted to get away from Paris and, everything.”

“You mean Monsieur Beaumont?” asked Jo.

“You know about this?”

“He wants her back,” said Jo.

“He wants whatever it is he can’t have.”

Lily was nearing hysteria. “You’re supposed to be her best friend and you don’t even know where she is.”

“I only know her six months.”

“You’re her best friend. You’ve completely let her down, just so that you can be with your boyfriend.” Lily put all the bile she could muster into the word ‘boyfriend’.

As if he knew his name was being taken in vain, Olivier Billiet stepped back into the room. Brigitte’s nostrils flared. “And you are supposed to be her sister, but you never write her a letter.”

“Alright,” said Jo. “So what’s the problem with your family?”

“This is my private business.”

“It’s our business now. No one has seen Fiona since you left her in your flat. Maybe your family found out where you were, and Fiona was there alone, when they showed up. We have a right to know what we’re dealing with.”

“They are after me. Not Fiona.”

“I talked to Bruno. They broke into his flat, stole a picture of you.”

Brigitte flinched. “Oh my God. When did this happen?” She glanced across to Olivier, who crossed the room to put his arm around her. Brigitte shook him off and lit a cigarette. Lily noticed her hands were shaking. “When was this?”

“What if they broke into your flat and Fiona disturbed them?”

“I still don’t think-”

“It’s not about what you think,” said Lily. “We need to know. Fiona’s been missing for nearly ten days.”

Brigitte turned to the politician. “Would you be kind and make us all a drink? I think we need something strong. Ask your mother, I think she has some Schnapps downstairs.”

She waited until Olivier had left the room. “When did they break into Bruno’s flat?”

“I think he said Sunday,” said Jo.

Brigitte muttered something to herself in another language. Lily looked across to Jo.

“I will tell you the story,” said Brigitte. “But this is my secret story. You can’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you. You promise?”

Lily and Jo agreed.

Brigitte paused, like she was about to announce something huge, something terrible. “I am not French.”

“We know that.”

“I was born in a town called Hennigsdorf, this is part of the former East Germany. Do you know of Potsdam? It is near there. My father, and my uncle, they belong to a Pädophilen-Ring? Do you know what this is?”

Lily looked at Jo. The translation wasn’t hard to guess.

“My mother, she killed herself, when I was four. She tried to kill me too, only I survived. They say my mother was sick, in the head. But I think she was trying to protect us both.”

Interesting way of looking at it, thought Lily. She dreaded what was coming.

“From this time on, every Saturday night I was taken by my father and my uncle to a hall and raped, often by several men in one night. There were other children there too. One of them was my neighbour. We never spoke of what happened. One day she disappear. I never see her again. Her family remain in the street, but the girl is gone.”

“The men, they used to take photographs of us. When I was twelve, I ran away. My uncle and his two sons they find me. They beat me so bad I think I am dead. They take me back to my father. From then on I don’t go to school. I spend my life locked in my bedroom. He feed me like a dog. A bowl of food pushed into my room every night. And still, every Saturday night, the same thing.”

“Then, when I was thirteen years old, one night, he forget to lock my door. I wait ‘til he goes to bed and I run. I live down on the streets for a while, but then I find a soldier, who is kind to me. I tell him my story. He take me in the boot of his car to the West. There, I am safe. This is 1984. I think I am free. I work in a few places in Germany, in Amsterdam. I come to France. I meet Bruno. He looks after me. I think I am safe forever. Then,” she paused, knowing she had their full attention.

“Then, the wall comes down. 9
th
November 1989. The whole world is celebrating, except for me. Because I know from this minute, that a clock has started ticking and one day my father and my uncle will come for me.”

Lily collapsed into a sitting position on the floor as her worst fears were confirmed. Jo took two cigarettes, lit them both and passed one to Lily before perching herself on the edge of the double bed. “So what happened?”

“At first it is ok. I have a different name. I think, even though they can leave, they don’t know where I am. Then about a month ago, maybe more, I get this letter from my friend in Hennigsdorf.”

“What friend?”

“Odette.”

“She knows your address?”

“She is the only person who knows, but I trust her completely. She writes to me at Bruno’s house. She tells me that my father and my uncle have left Hennigsdorf. I think they are coming to find me.”

“Why don’t you go to the police? Have them all arrested?”

“It’s not so simple. You don’t know what it’s like. There are many men who do not want me to tell the police what I know.  I think they will kill me before they let me testify against them. I don’t want to do this. I only want to be free.”

“But if you don’t stand up to them, they’ll carry on,” said Jo. “They could be abusing other children.”

“Always there is this,” Brigitte almost shouted, her cheeks flushed. “It is not my responsibility. My responsibility is to myself. To survive, to grow - to become a full person. It is not the responsibility of the victim to stop what these people do. It is the responsibility of the men. Or the police.”

“So what happened then? After you got the letter,” asked Lily.

“I realise I cannot stay in Paris. So, Fiona and me, we decide to leave. She has her own reasons too for wanting to go. We decide to go South, for the sun, but we tell everyone the story that we are going to Amsterdam.  Then two days before we leave, Olivier, he convince me, that I cannot always live life looking over my shoulder. He say if I get legal status, then I can fight. I can make a statement, leave it with lawyers, and I can come to a deal with these men. They leave me alone, or I tell the world everything. If anything happens to me, then this statement will go to all the world. But first I have to get legal status, because no one believe a word about the illegal immigrant, ex prostitute. They will deport me faster than a jet fighter.”