To Catch a Rabbit (16 page)

‘Lizzie? Can you get over to my nan’s place, 12 Clement Grove? I’ve got someone I think you should meet.’

Maureen looked at the woman on the doorstep. She looked at her grandson, and waited for an explanation.

‘Nan, this is Arieta, she needs our help. This is Maureen, my grandmother.’

‘I see. Well you better come in.’ Behind the girl’s back, Maureen raised one plucked eyebrow at him.

She offered the girl a cup of tea and the three of them sat at the kitchen table. Silence. This felt wrong, really wrong. Bringing work home and not just flipchart paper and a bit of Blu-Tack.

‘Someone’s coming to talk to you Arieta. Someone who can help.’

‘From church?’

Sean rubbed a spot on the vinyl tablecloth.

‘What’s she on about?’ Maureen sat back in her chair and looked from the girl to Sean, as if she was watching a tennis match. Sean cleared his throat.

‘Wait there, don’t go anywhere, okay? I just need to get something from upstairs.’

When he came down with the flipchart paper, they hadn’t moved. He wondered if they’d said anything at all or just sat listening to rush of the gas boiler.

‘I need to explain something.’ He paused, positioning himself between Arieta and the door in case she ran. ‘I don’t go to church, I’m sorry that wasn’t true. I work for the police, but I’m just a PCSO. Do you know what that is?’ She sat still, looking at him, her back straight. He spread the chart out across the table. ‘I work in the community, keep an eye on things and, well, there’s been a few things going on round here that you might be able to help with.’

The strange, dead image of Su-Mai lay at the centre. Arieta held the handle of her mug tight, but her face gave nothing away.

‘You knew Flora of course.’ He touched the newspaper cutting lightly, watching her for any sign of emotion. ‘But did you know this girl? Su-Mai isn’t her real name, but we don’t know what it is. Maybe you can help?’

He should have waited for Lizzie. She would have known how to do this properly. Arieta hadn’t taken her coat off. She sat with her suitcase by her side, her eyes darting to the back door.

‘And this girl,’ Maureen tapped the picture of Taneesha McManus, ‘was a pretty little thing. I remember her when she was tiny. Her mum went off the rails too. I knew her nana, nice woman, she used to do my hair.’

The doorbell rang into the silence and all three of them flinched. As Sean got up, he saw Maureen lay her hand on Arieta’s.

‘It’ll be all right, love. My Sean will make sure you won’t come to any harm.’

Arieta met her eyes. Her spine softened and she released her grip on the mug.

The bolts to the front door were stiff; everyone else came round the back at his nan’s. When he finally got it open, Lizzie stood on the doorstep in the same smart coat he’d seen her wearing at the football ground. She seemed to have grown three inches and he caught a glimpse of some pricey looking black fabric poking out from under her coat.

‘Sorry, were you...?’

‘Out? Yup. Charity dinner at the racecourse. Don’t worry it was very dull. I had to get a lift from Guy because I didn’t have the car and even if I had, I’m over the limit. Sean, whatever you’ve got for me, I’m definitely not on duty.’ Over her shoulder he could see a silver Audi TT parked at the kerb. ‘It’s okay. He’ll wait. He’s very good like that.’

‘Is he? Where did you find one ready house-trained?’

‘Don’t be mean. You’ve met Guy haven’t you? He was at Doncaster Rovers with me, on firework night. He’s their marketing manager. Friend of my dad’s.’

He didn’t want to hear about her chauffeur, or her date, or whoever he was. She seemed to have forgotten that on firework night he’d been on duty and not exactly one of her party.

‘Come on in.’

She stepped into the hall and he saw her glance quickly around, taking in the purple and green walls that Nan had asked him to paint the way she’d seen them on a makeover show. The laminate floor he’d laid last summer looked cheap and ragged already, especially where he hadn’t lined it up flush under the skirting. Her heels struck it like lead shot on plastic as she made her way towards the kitchen.

‘Wait.’ He needed to fill her in on Arieta’s story.

She listened, glancing every now and then at the framed poster of Elvis, which had pride of place in the hall. He guessed they had proper artists on the walls at her house.

‘Okay,’ she said, when he’d told her what he knew, ‘let’s talk to her, but we’ll have to get someone else involved if she tells us anything material. You know that.’

Maureen offered to take Lizzie’s coat but she decided to keep it on. When she undid it, he could see the beads and sequins of a strapless evening dress.

It didn’t go well. Maureen watched the proceedings, her lips tight. He could tell that Lizzie’s accent got her back up, while Arieta’s response to most of Lizzie’s questions was a shrug. It was only when she was asked again about Su-Mai that Arieta paused, looking at the picture.

‘There was Chinese girl. It could be her. She went a little before.’

‘Before?’ Lizzie said. ‘Before what?’

‘Before I am offered new job and I leave Miss Estelle. Couple of weeks before maybe.’

‘Was she a heroin addict too, like Flora?’

Again the shrug. Then nothing. Her shoulders sank and she stared into the empty mug. Lizzie shifted in her seat and he could hear the rustling of whatever stiff material her skirt was made of. She took a business card out of her little beaded handbag.

‘Here’s my number. If you think of anything, call me.’

The card lay on the table while Arieta carried on staring into her mug. He saw Lizzie to the door.

‘Sorry if that was a bit if a waste of time,’ he said.

‘These things happen. Guy understands.’

‘Yeah. I’m sure he knows you wouldn’t be seen dead in this neighbourhood unless it was a work matter.’ He tried to sound offhand, like it could be a joke, but it didn’t come out like that.

‘What’s up? You seem touchy.’

‘No, I’m not.’ It came out too fast and even to his own ears, he sounded like a five year-old answering back.

‘Whatever you say.’

She went to open the door but it had stuck in the frame. He leant forward to pull it free. Her skirt brushed his knee and he wanted to cry out. Their faces were close enough to touch noses and she was looking hard at him, like she was reading his thoughts. He saw the moment in her eyes when she understood and pulled away as the door opened.

‘We’re just friends, Sean.’

‘You and Guy?’ Pointless, but worth a try.

‘You and me. Aren’t we?’

‘Of course.’

When she’d gone, he wanted to smash his head against the door. He settled for giving it a hard kick.

‘Sean? Everything all right?’

‘Door’s sticking, just making sure it’s properly shut.’

He went upstairs to the bathroom and washed his face. He lifted his head and looked in the shaving mirror. She was so out of his league. Why had he ever imagined anything else? He could hear the Audi revving up and the sound of its engine trailing away down the street.

He came back downstairs. Maureen was sitting on the sofa in the front room holding Arieta’s hand and telling her again not to worry, everything would be all right. He stood in the doorway and was just about to say something, when the girl turned to Maureen and started to cry, speaking quickly between blowing her nose and wiping her running mascara. He stepped back and listened at the open door.

She was talking about how she’d fled her alcoholic father to marry the man in Birmingham. She’d met him on the Internet. After six months he’d become possessive and violent, so she ran away. She got to the railway station and jumped on a train. When the guard finally asked for her ticket, she was just outside Doncaster. She got thrown off and sat on a bench for what seemed like hours, until the young girl with the pram offered her a cigarette. She went with the girl, who said she knew someone who could give her a job with a room above the business: a massage parlour.

‘Not nice job. First massage with extras. Then upstairs. Not nice but it pays. Soon I don’t care.’

When she hesitated, Sean could hear his nan quietly encouraging her to go on. She never sounded shocked. Arieta was telling her how Flora was already working at the massage parlour. Although she’d come from Kosovo ten years before, she still spoke Albanian.

‘Refugee girl. Very sad story. Fighting with foster parents, then running away.’

Her friend was getting more and more dependent on heroin and couldn’t earn enough to keep herself going. Arieta stayed clean.

‘You won’t believe, but I never do drugs, only a little bit drink. You have to do something, to get through the day.’

She had worked for both of them, trying to put a bit by all the time. The madam was nasty, she said, and took too much of the girls’ money. She ripped them off when they needed to score.

‘Always there was something we had to pay, rent for bed, cleaning cost, percentage.’

She thought Flora was going to die, so she got them both out of Miss Estelle’s place. She found Flora the flat and paid the first month’s rent for her with what she’d saved. Her friend promised her she was going to get clean and Arieta believed her. She took another ‘situation’ as she put it, but it went wrong, very wrong. She went back to her friend Flora but the other girl was still using, a few days later she was dead. Sean heard her blow her nose and try to say something else, but she was sobbing too hard to speak.

This was all hearsay. But if they
could
check it out, find the massage parlour, maybe find someone else willing to talk and if he could persuade Arieta to stay with them a little longer, maybe she would learn to trust him and then he might find out more. Maureen was speaking now. Sean backed away into the kitchen as he heard her getting to her feet. She went upstairs and came down with sheets and blankets.

‘Fix us a hot water bottle will you, love?’ She put her head round the kitchen door. ‘She’s exhausted, poor thing. You and me, we’ll have a talk about this in the morning.’

‘Nothing, Ben. Careful, you’ll drop it!’

She took the bag upstairs while Reg went for a smoke. He didn’t argue about being sent out into the garden. She sat on the spare bed and poked her fingers in and out of the crevices of the candlewick bedspread.

‘Happy bloody Christmas,’ she said to herself.

She came down to find Reg looking at the cards on the mantelpiece. He picked up each one and checked the writing.

‘Just wondered if you’d heard from him.’ He dropped one, like a small boy caught snooping. A Victorian family fell to the floor.

‘Don’t you think I’d have told you?’

‘Of course.’ He rubbed at the papery skin that hung loose around his jaw-line. ‘I’m sorry.’

Charlie’s card was hidden towards the back. She had thought twice about putting it out with the others, but then decided it would look more suspicious if Max came across a card tucked out of sight in a drawer. This way it could be explained as a card from a friend at work or the children’s school. ‘C’ could be easily be a Cathy or a Claire.

Christmas Day played out in slow motion. At ten o’clock, Max opened a bottle of Champagne. By eleven, Karen was peeling sprouts with heavy arms and legs like dead tree trunks. From the living room the whine of something battery-operated started and stopped, started and stopped. And stopped. She counted the seconds of silence until Ben’s wail cut through the air.

‘You’ve broken it! Mummeeeee! Sophie’s broken it!’

‘Shall I try and have a word?’ Reg put down the tea towel he was holding and went towards the hall. He turned in the doorway. ‘Takes me right back to you and your brother at …’

But the words didn’t come. He cleared his throat and shook his head.

‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll sort it. Is Max in there?’

‘Upstairs on the computer. Mind if I pop out to stretch my legs? Need a bit of fresh air. I’ll just walk round the block. Back in a tick.’

She found him later in the park, hunched on a bench watching a squirrel on the edge of a litter bin. The squirrel saw her coming, and glared at her fiercely, as if she was the thief.

‘Come on, Dad.’

‘Just wish we knew,’ he said quietly. ‘Even if… even if he is dead. It would be easier knowing.’ He got up slowly, taking her hand to steady himself. ‘You get used to the idea that you’re there to protect your children, Karen. Then you have to get used to the idea that you can’t.’

When she opened the front door, they were greeted by the smell of burning and Max flapping a tea towel around the kitchen.

‘Shit! I kept watching them. Then I forgot. Sprouts. Little buggers have burnt to the bottom of the pan.’

‘For God’s sake Max, can’t you even cook a simple vegetable?’

He turned then, a wooden spoon in his hand, his bald skull red. He didn’t need to be told how to cook, it wasn’t his fault if he’d had to go and sort the children out because they were fighting again. And where had she been? Her father didn’t need fussing over like a half-wit.

‘If you hadn’t been messing around on the computer, then you would have noticed the sprouts.’

‘Pull yourself together Karen. You and I both know what’s going on here.’

‘Do we?’

In the silence, turkey fat spat against the insides of the hot oven.

‘You’ve got to let it go,’ Max’s voice softened.

‘What? What do I have to let go?’

‘This business with Phil. This is your family, me, the children. We need you here. You can’t do it all, something has to give.’ He put the wooden spoon down. Wiping his hands on his blue and white apron, he hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure whether to hug her. ‘You don’t need to work too, you know, we’re doing all right. If you need more time for your Dad, well that’s okay, but perhaps you shouldn’t try to cram work in too. That’s all I’m trying to say.’

Karen held her breath. Part of her wanted to give in, give up. He turned away and ran the water into the sink to wash his hands. He seemed to have forgotten the impulse to hold her. Perhaps she’d imagined it. He dried his hands on the towel and folded it neatly over the radiator.

When the meal was finally on the table, Max did most of the talking. He did most of the drinking too. He filled every silence with attempts to draw Reg into conversation, including telling him about the Ptarmigan Project, a vast out-of-town shopping mall he was designing. According to Max it would regenerate a community blighted by high unemployment.

‘What was there before?’ Reg asked, a dry shred of turkey halfway to his mouth. Karen watched. It was like the beginning of a car crash, the moment when one notices that the light is red, that the car is still moving, that the road is not entirely clear. Max saw nothing.

‘Load of old factories. Terrible mess really.’

‘Factories eh? Where people worked. Mmm... Skilled labour.’ He chewed slowly. ‘What do those working men and women do in the new shopping centre? Window shop? Shelf stack?’

While Max launched further into his sales pitch, Karen watched her father’s jaw tighten. Her husband finally remembered to whom he was talking, and just before the moment of impact, steered drunkenly in another direction. They were saved from further disaster by Max’s phone.