Czytaj książkę: «Strangers»

PART ONE

1

Haroun is dead.

The desert kingdom has taken him away from me.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, April 2004

The message had come through earlier that morning:

It’s today.

Joe Massey left his apartment in the northern suburbs and drove south towards the old city. The roads were busy. The traffic careered past him with blithe disregard for the law or for safety. Saudis lived with a different sense of their own mortality. The sky was almost white, and the sun glanced back from the surface of the road, stabbing into his eyes. He could feel the headache starting behind his temples.

He slowed as he approached the junction, ignoring the chorus of car horns that greeted his manoeuvre. He pulled in to the car park behind the al-Masmak fort, a relic of old Arabia standing in the centre of the modern city that had sprung from the desert only decades before. His car slid neatly into the last remaining gap between two SUVs. The city was thronging with weekend shoppers, with visitors–and today, with sightseers.

He pushed open his door, and the sun hit him with a force that made him reel. It burned into his uncovered face, trying to peel the flesh away from his cheekbones, to burn through his upper lip.

He checked his watch. It was half past eleven. He could feel the sweat starting on his scalp and the itch between his shoulder blades that told him he had been seen, he was observed. The coffee he had drunk earlier tasted sour in his mouth.

As he left the car park, the narrow streets beckoned him, the dark heart of the city; the souk, where the fragrance of spices filled the air and the brilliance of fabric and rugs and brass glowed in the shadowy recesses of the stalls.

He had walked through those narrow streets often enough. But not today. Today the crowds were heading in another direction. He could feel their suppressed excitement like a charge of electricity through him. Voices called, people jostled past him. The smell of meat cooking caught his throat and made him want to gag. In the intense heat, he felt cold and dizzy, and he made himself pause and wait until the darkness at the edge of his vision subsided.

Then it was noon and the call to prayer sounded from the minarets. The shops closed and the streets emptied. He sat quietly, waiting. The crowds would be back, soon enough. Once the people began to return to the street, he stood up and started walking. He didn’t need directions. They were all going to the same place.

Progress was easy now. He just had to relax and let the crowd carry him. Once, when he was a child, he had gone swimming off the Cornish coast. The current had taken him. One moment he was floating in the cool sea, rocked by the ebb and flow, next he was being drawn out, away from the beach, away from the shore, away from his family and safety. He’d tried to swim against it, then he had stopped fighting. The current had carried him round the bay and then released him into the gentle waters near another beach where he had waded ashore, unhurt. He closed his eyes, and let his memories of the sea overtake him.

When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived at his destination. The last time he had been here, it had been evening. The spacious, blue-tiled square had been full of people who had gathered to meet, to talk and to drink tea. Children had raced across the open space, expending their energies in shouts and screams.

Now, it was empty. He could see the police standing on the corners, see their eyes searching the crowd as they positioned themselves, their batons swinging casually. He had dressed to blend in, wearing the ghutra, the ubiquitous red-and-white chequered scarf, and a thobe, the long white robe that served as a practical defence against the sun. Today, he had covered his eyes with dark glasses to conceal their tell-tale blue.

The air smelled of sweat and spices, and the staccato jab of Arabic attacked his ears. His mind escaped to another childhood memory, to the fair that came to the town every year with its crowds, the laughter, the shouts of the stallholders, the tinny music that meant freedom and summer. The smell of hotdogs and onions.

And now he could smell death. He had a sudden picture of Haroun sitting across the table from him as they talked over coffee, his dark eyes bright with laughter. Joseph! Haroun’s voice spoke in his ear. Haroun was the only person who had ever called him by his full name. It is good to see you.

It’s good to see you, too…But the voices in his head faltered and faded. Joseph…

The crowd pressed forward and he went with it until he found himself in the shadow of a palm tree which gave him some relief from the sun. The empty square opened up in front of him. His eyes were drawn to the stones, blue-grey in the hard light, with intricate, interlaid patterns. There was no mark, no stain.

The hands on his watch barely seemed to move, and yet he had a sense of time running past him, faster and faster, as if there was some way he could stop it, as if someone was saying, Now! Do it now! Now! But it was too late. It had always been too late. He could feel his heart beating fast, the breath catching in his throat. Haroun!

Then the police were there, pushing the crowd back, back. Just for a second, he wanted to let himself go with them, to be carried to the back where the deadly stones would be hidden. Be careful! he had warned Haroun, but his warning had been half-laughing, a warning against the minor carelessnesses with which Haroun met the vagaries of life. Joseph, you worry! Don’t worry!

And now this was the last thing he could do.

He held his ground until there was nothing between him and the waiting square but the line of armed police. The crowd closed in behind him, and the possibility of choice was gone. He saw that a tarpaulin had been laid out on the ground, less than twenty yards away from him. In the heat, a wave of cold washed over him and once again the blackness threatened at the edge of his vision.

And then two vans approached the square. One was unmarked. The other, incongruously, was an ambulance. They drew up outside the mosque. Armed men climbed out. They turned and stood by as the doors were held open, and a man was led out. He was blindfolded and shackled, and he stumbled as he stepped down on to the ground. His head lifted towards the vast emptiness of the sky above him as if he were straining to have one last sight of it.

‘Haroun.’ In his mind he heard the familiar laugh and he felt his arms move in involuntary expectation of an exuberant embrace. But the blindfold meant that he would never look into that dark gaze again.

It was no more than a whisper, but the shackled man stiffened, and his head turned, blindly searching the crowd. Then he was forced to his knees, facing the holy city, facing Mecca. A man read out loud from a sheet of paper–the charges against the condemned man. Another man, dark-skinned and powerful, stepped forward. He carried a long, flat sword. He stood behind the kneeling man. Everything froze between one second and the next.

Then time seemed to jump as the bowed man jerked upright and the sword swung round on the indrawn breath of the crowd. The blood was a red fountain from the neck and poured from the severed head on to the tarpaulin.

Allah Akbar! The roar from the crowd. God’s will is done.

His stomach contracted. His legs could barely hold his weight. The square seemed to darken in front of him, and the edges of his vision faded to blackness. He couldn’t pass out. Not here. Not now. He let his shoulders slump, breathed slowly and deeply until his head began to clear.

He knew, even though he had only seen the weapon and not the hand that wielded it, that he had just witnessed a murder.

2

London, April 2004

Tuesday was a bad day. It started out quite promisingly, but after that it was downhill all the way. When Roisin’s alarm clock went off at six thirty, the sky was leaden and heavy with clouds. By the time she had showered, the first spatters of rain were already hitting the window.

She went through to the kitchen and tipped some muesli into a bowl. The cramped kitchen still contained the original fittings from when the flat was built in the early sixties, a fact that would probably add enormous value when the taste for retro cycled through a few more years. The pots of herbs she kept on the window sill contrasted with the red of the formica tops to make it look like an old-fashioned Italian restaurant, and her eclectic collection of pans, the bottles of oil and the usual half-full bottle of red wine added to the effect. She didn’t much like the flat–a box in an ex-council block–but the kitchen always felt warm and homey.

A year before, she had been in Warsaw. She and her then partner, Michel, had been about to open their own language school. They planned to teach English and Spanish through the year, and offer summer schools to students from all over the world.

Roisin had provided the start-up costs, sinking her savings and a small legacy from her father into the venture. Michel was to provide the financial backing for the first year of running the business until they had got themselves established in what was a competitive market. But the whole enterprise had gone sour.

She made herself stop thinking about it–there was no point in wasting energy in futile anger. She dumped her bowl into the sink and ran some water over it. She blasted her hair with the drier, which turned it into a blonde tangle. She swore and attacked it with the comb then pulled on her jogging gear and hurried down the stairs of the apartment block, wanting to get out before the rain began in earnest, before traffic really got going and tainted the air with fumes and noise. She knocked on the door of the ground-floor flat directly below hers.

There was a flurry of barks, and she heard grumbling as someone shuffled to answer her knock. A warm fug drifted out, a mix of dust, mildew and unwashed dog. George, the old man who lived in the flat, observed her without obvious enthusiasm.

‘Rosie,’ he said. He yawned and scratched his chest. ‘Thought I heard you banging about up there. Suppose you want a cuppa, now you’ve got me up?’ His dog, Shadow, scratched at the wall behind him and tried to push his muzzle past the old man’s legs, whimpering with excitement. ‘Geddown,’ he said.

‘I’ll make it.’ George’s tea was a bright orange brew that he sweetened with condensed milk. She went into his kitchen before his ‘I can do that, thank you, missy,’ could stop her.

The kitchen was small–a mirror image of hers–and spartanly neat. A loaf of Mother’s Pride was on the worktop next to a carton of margarine, a bag of sugar and a tin of milk. She filled the blackened gas kettle–he refused to have anything to do with the brand new electric one his niece had bought him–and lit the hob. Then she waited interminable minutes for the kettle to boil and made them both tea.

He spooned in enough sugar to make her teeth ache and retired to his chair. Shadow laid a pleading chin on his knee. ‘Geddown,’ he said again, carefully tipping some of his drink into the empty dog dish by his chair. Shadow’s plump sleekness contrasted with his master’s thin frame. George, who was in his eighties, looked more frail now than when she had first met him six months ago when she had knocked on his door to sort out a mail mix-up caused by the postman’s inability to tell the difference between 13 and 31.

‘I’m going for a run. I thought I’d borrow Shadow, if that’s OK.’

He surveyed the day outside the heavily netted window. ‘Running in this? You daft or what?’ He shrugged. ‘He may as well make himself useful.’ Shadow’s tail thumped on the ground. She and George kept up the pretence that he was doing her a favour by letting her take the dog when she went running. His knees were arthritic and their walks were sedate affairs. She waited as he finished his drink, listening as he gave her his take on the day. He probably wouldn’t talk to another person before she came back from work and dropped in to say hello. Then she clipped on the dog’s lead and left.

With the excited mongrel dragging her along, she went past the rows of front doors and stepped out into the chaos that was King’s Cross. The rain had stopped for the moment, but its fall had left the air smelling fresh, even in this polluted corner of the city. The traffic was starting to build up, people were heading towards the bus stops and the stations, and she could hear the rumble of heavy machinery and the shouts of the workmen from the building site. She walked down St Pancras Road, restraining Shadow until she reached the canal, then she let the eager dog off the lead and followed him down the steps on to the tow path.

Silence closed round her. She could smell the dankness of the water and the musty fragrance of leaves that had lain rotting since autumn as Shadow pushed through the undergrowth. He came bounding back with a stick in his mouth and deposited it at Roisin’s feet, shaking the wet off his coat. Then he cast his eye in the direction of the canal, and began gathering his muscles for the leap. She issued a sharp instruction. He gave her a sideways glance, as if trying to decide whether to obey her, but maybe he, too, thought the water looked uninviting, and he danced away up the tow path.

The grey coldness of the water reminded her suddenly of the Tyne as it ran through her home city of Newcastle. The river had been the backdrop to her teens. When she was seventeen, she and her best friend Amy, high on pills, had climbed through the metal girders of the Tyne Bridge so Roisin could take a photograph of the mist on the water. She couldn’t remember now why they had decided to do such a thing, but she could remember Amy gripping her arm and bracing herself against a stanchion as Roisin leant out over the dizzying drop so she could angle her camera to get the picture she wanted. The memory made her laugh and a man, passing the other way, gave her a worried sideways glance and quickened his pace.

Shadow was running ahead now, so she broke into a slow jog, letting her mind wander as the rhythm took over. The tow path in the early morning was like a club. The same joggers and dog walkers used it every day, and the London convention of avoiding eye contact and not acknowledging fellow human beings didn’t operate down here. She nodded ‘Good morning’ to familiar faces as she passed them, calling to Shadow as he got involved in the rituals of dog greeting that her father in an uncharacteristic moment of crudity had dubbed ‘ring-a-ring-a-arses’. She suppressed another laugh at the memory.

The tow path was wide and well paved here, overlooked by offices, expensive apartment blocks, and tall, red-brick buildings that rose an improbable height from the water. When she reached Camden Lock she stopped to catch her breath, leaning against the railings that surrounded it. There was a boat in, and she watched the boatman bracing himself against the foot grips to push the gates open. The water gushed in and his boat began its slow rise.

Another jogger was coming along the path towards her. As he came closer, she recognized him as a recently familiar face, a man who had joined the morning run a couple of weeks ago. He was tall with dark hair and an attractive smile. He had the tan of someone who had recently returned from a hot and sunny climate. She’d found herself wishing, once or twice, that their routes would coincide when they were going in the same direction.

She saw recognition on his face, and they exchanged smiles, then he was past her and moving away down the tow path with an easy lope that suggested he could run for miles yet. She watched him for a moment, then looked round for Shadow, who seemed to have vanished. She called sharply and he came bounding out from nowhere. As she watched in horror, he cannoned into the man’s legs, and they teetered together at the edge of the deep, icy water. Then the man was sprawling on the ground warding off the frightened dog who was barking in his face.

‘Christ!’ She ran up to him. Her heart was hammering with delayed shock. ‘I am so sorry. That was my fault. Shut up, Shadow. Are you OK?’ She clipped on the dog’s lead. Shadow barked again and bristled with hostility. ‘Shut up! Here, let me help you.’

He was trying to get to his feet, his face clenching suddenly in pain as he put his weight on his foot. He took the arm she proffered to help him get his balance and tried his leg a couple of times. ‘I think it’s just twisted,’ he said, after a moment. He looked pale under his tan, and she could see him trying to disguise the pain he was obviously feeling. ‘Shit,’ he said as he tried again. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t apologize. It was my dog that knocked you over. I should have checked where he was before I called him.’

‘Is he all right?’ He reached out a hand to Shadow. ‘Here. Good boy.’ Shadow barked mistrustfully then fell silent as the man ruffled his fur. ‘You didn’t mean it, did you?’ He balanced carefully, keeping the weight off his leg. He was looking down at her and as he smiled, she could see the laughter lines round his eyes. ‘I may as well take the opportunity to introduce myself. I’m Joe.’ He held out his hand.

‘Roisin,’ she said.

‘Rosheen. I like that. Where does it come from?’

‘It’s Irish.’ She didn’t want to go into the complexity of her background, so she said quickly, ‘I’ve seen you here before.’

He nodded. ‘I started work at the hospital a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to get acquainted, so it’s an ill wind, right, dog?’ He addressed this remark to Shadow, who hung back behind Roisin, observing the scene dubiously.

‘This is Shadow,’ Roisin said.

His smile broadened. ‘I kind of thought it might be. Shit!’ He stumbled again as he put more weight on his leg. ‘Sorry.’

‘You need to get that seen to. Come on, let me help you up to the road. We should be able to get a taxi.’

‘No need. If I can just get up here, I can make it to the tube at Camden Town.’

She didn’t think he would be able to manage even that short distance. ‘I’ll walk with you. Shouldn’t you go to A & E?’

‘And spend the morning waiting to be told I’ve twisted my ankle? I’ll get it checked out at work.’

But he accepted her help up the steps, resting his arm on her shoulder to keep his balance. Once they were at the top, he stopped, using the wall for support. ‘Look, I’ll be fine. You don’t need to hang around. You must have things to do.’

‘I feel responsible,’ she said.

‘Well, don’t. I should have been looking where I was going. Tell you what, let me buy you a drink later on, and I can give you an update. Give me your number.’

‘OK. I’d like that. But it’d better be me buying.’ She indicated the subdued dog.

‘Poor old lad.’ He reached down and tugged Shadow’s ear. He waited as she scribbled her number down, then glanced at the paper and put it in his pocket. ‘I’ll call you tonight,’ he said. She watched him as he hobbled away down the road towards the tube station, then she turned back to the canal. If she didn’t get a move on, she was going to be late.

That was the good bit.

When she got into the college where she taught English to overseas students, she was greeted by the news that one of her colleagues was off sick and she had to pick up two of his classes, groups of engineering students who combined a poor grasp of English with an insistence that they knew exactly how they should be taught, and who tested Roisin’s not very enduring patience for the next five hours. It was a comedown for someone who had come close–very close–to owning her own language school.

But those plans had come to grief in the bitter war that Michel was fighting with his ex-wife. Their joint venture had somehow become entangled in the proceedings, and they had had no option but to sell, and sell at a loss. Michel had taken half of the money that was left. That was the law–the business assets were in their joint names. The fact that this had been Roisin’s money, and that very little of his money had yet been committed, was irrelevant. She had trusted him, and he had let her down.

So now she was in London with a mortgage that she could barely afford on a run-down flat in the middle of a building site, keeping her head above water with part-time contracts, and trying to decide what to do next. Teaching English to disruptive young engineers hadn’t been part of her life plan, but just at the moment she had no choice.

She left work in a bad temper and with a headache that wasn’t improved by long delays on the Northern Line. When she finally got home, she realized she’d missed the date for paying off her credit card and would incur a hefty interest payment.

And, of course, the canal-side man didn’t phone.

3

Roisin wasn’t surprised when the man she’d met on the tow path didn’t call her. Nor was she surprised when she didn’t see him the next time she went running with Shadow. She was no expert, but it had looked to her like a more serious injury than a sprain and she assumed he was probably housebound and had had more time to think over the matter of her culpability.

She mentioned the episode to friends over a drink at the weekend. They were intrigued, and then disappointed when the story fizzled out into ‘And I never heard from him again.’ Roisin hadn’t been involved with anyone since the disastrous end of her relationship with Michel, and they thought it was time she tested the waters. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said when they began speculating about ways she could contact the elusive Joe, ‘I tripped him up and probably broke his leg. No wonder he doesn’t want to see me. I’m more likely to get a letter from his solicitor.’ When pressed, she was prepared to admit that she found him attractive.

Old George was just as bad, but for different reasons. ‘That bloke had the guts to call you yet?’ he asked her every time she went to collect Shadow or to join him for a cup of poisonous tea. She had told him about the episode when she returned the dog, and he’d made adverse comments about her lack of care and foresight. ‘Poor old lad,’ he’d said under his breath as he’d checked his dog anxiously for cuts and bruises. The man on the tow path was now ‘the man who kicked Shadow’ and who should have the courage to face the music. But the mysterious Joe seemed to have vanished.

She put it out of her mind. She was busy at work, but the job was only temporary, a stop-gap that she had taken without too much thought under the pressing necessity of earning some money. She had to start making decisions about what to do next. Her career path had been leading up to the moment when she had the funds, the expertise and the credibility to start her own business, and the way the rug had been pulled from underneath her had left her floundering. She had to decide whether to start again, to see if she could get some more money together and raise some more loans, go through the web of bureaucracy that all the permissions required, or if she should resign herself to the admitted security but endless frustration of working for other people in large, unyielding institutions.

Some of the options were attractive. The European universities were always eager for experienced language teachers and offered a whole field of academic work she’d barely explored. Beijing University was actively recruiting, as were universities in Korea and Japan. She’d never been to the Far East and was curious to travel there, but she had a life in Europe she wasn’t quite ready to give up. There was also the complication of her mother.

Roisin was adopted, and all her life she had been aware of her mother’s fear that one day she would walk away and declare an allegiance to a different past. Since her father’s death, this anxiety seemed to have grown and become a factor that Roisin had to weave into all her plans and considerations. ‘Why don’t you come back to Newcastle, pet?’ had been the most recent theme. Roisin loved her mother and wanted to help her settle into a new life, but she wasn’t prepared to go back home and live with her.

So she didn’t really have time to brood about a phone call that had not been forthcoming.

Spring was late arriving. London pulled a grey blanket over its head and rained. The buildings seemed to grow darker and the streets were sodden and filthy. Her morning runs with Shadow became an ordeal rather than a pleasure–for her at least. For Shadow, there was no such thing as bad weather–there was just weather and it was all good.

She was back in her flat one Saturday morning, rubbing her hair dry and warming her frozen hands round a cup of coffee, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked the number. No one she knew. ‘Hello?’

‘Roisin? You probably don’t remember me. It’s Joe. Joe Massey. I tripped over your dog and nearly ended up in the canal.’

‘Of course I remember. How are you?’ She felt ridiculously pleased.

‘Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch before. I lost your number. I thought I must have dropped it when I was sorting out my money on the tube. I wasn’t concentrating too much that day. I thought I was going to have to wait until I was fit enough to get back on the tow path, but I just found it.’

‘That’s OK. How’s your ankle?’

‘I tore a ligament–it’s not too bad now. Look, I owe you a drink. I probably owe you dinner by now. Could we meet? I don’t suppose you’re free tonight?’

She was. She’d planned to spend the evening catching up with some of her outstanding work, but dinner with Joe Massey seemed a much more attractive option. They agreed to meet that evening.

Roisin dressed carefully for their date. Most of her clothes were things she’d bought for work and they all looked too sober and businesslike. In the end, she opted for trousers–hip-hugging with a wide belt–and a green top that heightened the colour of her eyes. Her hair was blessed with being naturally curly and–with a bit of help–naturally blonde. She put on boots that added a couple of inches to her height. She could remember helping Joe up the steps by Camden Lock, her head barely reaching his shoulder.

They’d agreed to meet in Camden Town–the scene of the crime. She wondered if he would look the way she remembered him, or if her eyes would pass over him, seeing only some stranger, but as she walked towards the station, she recognized him at once. He was standing under the canopy, reading a folded newspaper. He was wearing glasses, and his dark hair was damp from the fine drizzle that had been falling. When he glanced up and saw her, his smile lit up his face.

‘Roisin,’ he said. She could see the approval in his eyes as he studied her, and felt an answering warmth. He’d dressed up for the occasion as well, wearing a light mac over a suit that looked well cut to fit his tall, rangy frame.

He was still moving with a slight limp, and she suggested that they go to a café bar she knew that was fairly close to the station, but he shook his head, putting his hand lightly on her arm. ‘I booked us a table,’ he said, flagging down a taxi. He directed the driver to Holborn and a small bistro that welcomed them with the yellow glow of lights and the buzz of conversation.

Afterwards, she couldn’t remember much about the food that they’d eaten. What she could remember was that they’d talked. He came from Liverpool, he told her. He’d grown up there, but he couldn’t wait to get away. ‘It’s a good city now,’ he said, ‘but then…it was dying. I came south, to London, as soon as I could.’

She told him about her childhood in the North East, about the beauty and the wildness of the countryside, and the city where she had grown up. ‘I still like to go back. My mother’s there, and, I don’t know, there’s something…’

He was listening quietly, his eyes on her face. ‘It’s still home?’ he suggested.

She laughed. ‘I suppose it is.’

‘I don’t feel like that about Liverpool,’ he said.

She took the opportunity to turn the conversation round to him. ‘Does everyone call you Joe, or are you Joseph sometimes? I don’t know any…’ Her voice trailed away.

His face had changed, gone cold and distant. Then he seemed to remember where he was and gave a rather forced laugh. ‘No. I’ve only ever been Joe.’

He was a pathologist, he told her, with a research interest in foetal medicine and neo-natal development. ‘That’s when it all happens,’ he said. ‘In a way, the path of your life is mapped out for you in those few months. After that, it’s downhill all the way.’ He didn’t look too depressed about it. ‘It’s a bit like computer software. Leave a bug in there–most people have one or two–and it will probably kill you in the end.’

‘Like a predilection for tripping over dogs and falling in canals?’

‘Don’t knock it. Just because we haven’t found it yet…It could be there. But no, in that case the dog stops you from dying of what you’re programmed to die of.’ He was marking time while he decided what he wanted to do next. He’d spent the last year in the Gulf, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As he said that, the same, rather cold look flickered across his face.

‘Saudi Arabia,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’ She’d had a chance to work there a few years ago. The money had been excellent, but she’d decided she couldn’t face living under the restrictions the culture would impose on a single woman.

He hesitated, then said, ‘It’s not an easy place. They call it the magic kingdom. A whole modern world has just sprung up out of the desert, but the people haven’t changed. It’s like one of those optical illusions. You look and you see a modern country, and then you look again, and you’re in the Middle Ages, and what you thought you were looking at, it isn’t there any more. Which one is the real Saudi Arabia…?’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe we don’t have the equipment to see it. I have the option of going back, but…’ He picked up a piece of bread and didn’t finish the sentence.

‘You don’t want to stay here?’

He shook his head. ‘The NHS–it’s tied up in red tape and bureaucracy. I want something with a bit more of a challenge.’ He’d spent most of his working life overseas, and he planned to leave again as soon as he could. He’d applied for research posts in Canada and in Australia. ‘Those are places I want to be.’

‘That’s something I’ve got to decide,’ she said. ‘Where I want to be.’

He raised an eyebrow in query, so she went on. ‘I had plans to open a language school, but it went wrong. Money problems,’ she said, to forestall any questions. ‘So I need to decide–do I start again, or do I go and work for someone else? And where.’

‘You don’t want to stay in the UK either?’

She shook her head. She’d first started teaching English because it gave her an opportunity to travel. ‘Not really.’

‘So where?’

‘China. I’ve never been there and there are some interesting jobs in Beijing. Or Tokyo, maybe. I’m not sure if I fancy Japan. Patagonia.’

‘Patagonia?’

‘I just like the sound of it. Mountains and condors and more space than you know what to do with.’

They arranged to meet again. He wanted to see her the next day, but she put him off. She had bruises from her relationship with Michel that could still hurt. She wasn’t ready to go through that experience again. Joe wasn’t going to be around for long. She wasn’t going to be around for long. Whatever happened, their lives were going to cross only briefly. The parameters were already set. It would be crazy to get too involved.

Friends, she told herself. They could be friends.

He called her a couple of days later with a suggestion that they explore the Bow Back Rivers that Saturday.

‘The what?’ she said.

‘I’ll show you.’

He was waiting for her when she came out of Bromley-by-Bow station. He smiled when he saw her, and took her hand. The traffic roared by, heading for the Blackwall Tunnel. ‘Half of Londoners don’t know this exists,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

She thought she knew this part of London–a derelict area of industrial wasteland tracked by busy roads that was best escaped from, not explored. She followed him away from the roads, down some steps and found herself in a wilderness where waterways tangled together through overgrown footpaths and abandoned locks and bridges. They walked for an hour along the waterways without touching the city.

The rivers were choked with weed and the muddy banks were littered with rubbish, but there were swans on the water, and a heron rose lazily from the river ahead of them. He told her the names of the rivers as they walked–Pudding Mill, Bow Creek, Three Mills, Channelsea. The day was misty and cold.

They left the silence of the old waterways and came out into the roar of the traffic. It started to rain, and he opened his umbrella, putting his arm round her to pull her into its shelter. He had the thin frame of a runner, and she was aware of the hardness of his arm through the sleeve of his coat as they walked together.

They fell into a pattern of seeing each other a couple of times a week, often just walking, discovering parts of the city they didn’t know, sometimes going for a drink. Their meetings were friendly and casual. She didn’t know who he saw or what he did when he didn’t see her. He didn’t talk about himself much.

On an unseasonably cold day about six weeks after their first meeting they found themselves on the South Bank. They’d been to Tate Modern to see the Edward Hopper exhibition, and afterwards they’d wandered aimlessly back along the path. Joe had been quiet for most of the afternoon and Roisin was happy just to walk beside him and watch the river.

The water was translucent green except where the light glinting off the eddies and flows turned it silver. A tour boat went past, lines of seats visible inside the cabin where people sheltered from the brisk wind that blew up the river. The seats on the upper deck were empty apart from a couple who hung over the rail, pointing out the sights of the river as the boat passed. Briefly the voice of the guide boomed across the water:…the Houses of Parliament, built in the…A woman on the top deck leaned out dangerously to take a photograph as the boat rocked on an eddy.

‘She’s going to fall,’ Roisin said.

She felt him stiffen beside her. ‘She’s dead if she does. In this water you’ve got maybe two minutes before the cold paralyses you.’ They watched as the woman righted herself and the boat dwindled into the shadows under Waterloo Bridge. His voice was sombre when he spoke again. ‘I used to get the river deaths when I worked here before–a lot of them ended up in our mortuary. It’s a terrible way to die.’

She took his hand. This was the first time he’d talked about the darker side of his work. ‘I don’t remember reading about deaths in the river.’

He was still watching the water, his thoughts somewhere else. ‘There are so many they hardly bother reporting it now.’

She thought about the dark waters closing above her, the cold eating into her until it drove all feeling away, knowing that her existence would be snuffed out and forgotten and when her body was pulled out of the river–if it ever was–no one would care. The sky was grey and the wind off the water had a cutting edge.

She was still holding his hand. He tucked it in his pocket, and they continued along the riverside. She had walked here last May, past the concrete maze of the South Bank, enjoying the early summer sun, watching the crowds sitting at the tables in front of the National Film Theatre. They were deserted now. The wind blew and an empty can rattled its way across the paving stones. Behind her, a boat sounded its horn.

She could feel the touch of Joe’s fingers on her hand, the gentle pressure of his thumb as he circled it in her palm. Gulls were flying overhead, their calls echoing in the chill air. They didn’t speak again as they walked up the steps at the end of the bridge and paused to watch the water again. ‘What do you want to do now?’ she said.

He leaned back against the parapet and drew her towards him. ‘You’re cold.’

‘Everything’s cold.’

He opened his coat and wrapped it round her. ‘Not this,’ he said. She could feel the wind buffeting her ears and blowing her hair around his face as he kissed her. His lips felt icy as they touched hers, and just for a moment, she thought about the dead lips of drowned women under the water.

It was time for a decision. She could step back and draw the line that would define the path of their relationship, but she didn’t want to. She could feel the warmth of him pressing close to her, feel the slight roughness of his skin against her face. She had been standing in the shallows for too long, had been too frightened of stepping into the current, of getting her life back again. As Joe kissed her, she could feel the current start to lift her, start to carry her away. ‘Joe?’ she said.

He looked down at her. His face was warm and intent. ‘Let’s go back to your flat,’ he said.

As they wended their way back through Bloomsbury, she reminded herself that he was leaving, that by the autumn he would probably be gone, but it didn’t matter any more. What mattered was now.

4

It was a summer Roisin would never forget. In her memory, the sun always shone and the sky was cloudless. The forbidding river glittered as it flowed through the city, and the concrete of the South Bank warmed in the mellow light. She and Joe spent their lunch times wandering along the riverside, their evenings exploring the lanes and byways of London, and their nights at Roisin’s flat. She barely saw her friends, spent as little time at work as she could get away with. After a few days, he moved his possessions in, and stayed. It was as if they knew that their time together was short, and they didn’t want to lose a moment of it.

When she came home in the evenings, she’d pause for a moment with her key in the lock, wondering if he would be there, if the door would open to a waft of warmth and the smell of coffee brewing. ‘Joe?’ she’d call.

‘Hey, babes.’ He would come out of the small box room that masqueraded as a second bedroom, now converted into a makeshift office, and scoop her off the floor to kiss her. They would go out to eat, or take Shadow for a walk along the tow path, or spend the evening in the flat. They lived quietly in their own personal bubble that was completely absorbing, but so fragile and impermanent.

They never talked about the future, because very soon they would have to go their separate ways. She knew she had a decision to make, and kept putting it off. Each week, she looked at the jobs available all over the world for someone with her skills, and each week, she found a reason to reject every one.

Joe worked long, irregular hours and sometimes vanished for days if he was sent out of town. She got used to hearing his key in the lock in the small hours, feeling the mattress give as he slipped into the bed beside her.

It was after one such return towards the end of the summer when she woke suddenly. The display on the radio told her it was almost four. She could tell by Joe’s rigid stillness beside her that he was awake as well. ‘Joe?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’

He didn’t reply. He just rolled over towards her, and pressed his face between her breasts. She could feel him shaking. ‘Joe?’ she said again.

‘A bad dream,’ he said. ‘Go back to sleep, sweetheart. It was just a bad dream.’

London, September 2004

The water gleamed in the moonlight, black and impenetrable where it surged between the standing stones of Tower Bridge, translucent brown where it washed against the banks. The office and apartment blocks were dark and silent.

The river was old here, close to the end of its journey to the sea. Now it carried the filth and detritus of the city, away from the slow meander through the fields of Wiltshire, past the bridges of Oxford and the gentle lawns of Henley.

The tide had turned. The river was in ebb, receding from the banks, leaving a waste of mud and shingle behind. Narrow steps led down to the river’s edge where water washed against wooden piles. The moon was setting, and the first light of a grey dawn was gleaming through the clouds. The light caught the water, turning it to opaque steel, reflecting off the frameworks of glass that towered above the old city. The air carried the bite of frost.

The body of the woman had caught against the mooring and had been left on the bank as the water retreated. She was still wearing the remains of a black dress, sodden and skimpy. Her feet were bare. Her long hair lay in wet, dark lines across a face that the river had battered beyond recognition, the features almost gone.

She had been young. The men from the Marine Support Unit, the river police, could tell that much as they lifted the body, already pronounced dead by a doctor called from his bed in the small hours, short-tempered and abrupt. They had been expecting to find this body since the week before, when a witness had reported seeing a young woman jump from the riverside walk into the icy water.

Suicide, accident, foul play–bodies dragged from the Thames had different stories to tell. Some of them had families–grieving, frantic, knowing their loved ones had been lost. Others had no one, or no one who wanted to claim them. Drunks, the homeless, addicts, asylum seekers, the desperate with nowhere else to run. Some were old, some were, like this girl, young, and some were no more than children.

A clawed, blackened hand slipped from the body bag and hit the ground with a thud. Through the mud, a gleam of metal was visible from the ring on her finger. One of the men gently tipped some of the river water over it to clean away the dirt. It was etched with a distinctive pattern.

Maybe this girl would have a name.

Coroner’s Court, London, September 2004 Post-Mortem Report, Dead Body 13 Body found in river, 7 September, at Stoners Quay

The coroner’s court of East London is all too familiar with river deaths. The curve in the river around the Isle of Dogs means that bodies are often left aground there as the water retreats with the tide.

Dead Body 13 was the stark designation of the thirteenth body to be taken from the river in a year that was shaping up to be much as standard. The few people attending the inquest stood as the coroner entered. The court had little to do in this case. No one had been able to establish an identity for the dead woman, or trace the origins of the unusual ring she had been wearing on the middle finger of her right hand. The ring bore an inscription in Arabic, lines from a poem or other literary text: take what is here now, let go of a promise. The drumbeat is best from far away.

Her origins were in the Indian subcontinent. Whether she was a recent arrival, or a runaway from home, it was impossible to tell. No one had claimed her and no one seemed to be looking for her.

She had drowned. She had been alive when she went into the water–the presence of algae in her liver and kidneys confirmed that, and a witness had seen her fall. He was a man called Joe Massey who had been on the river walk near St Paul’s. He gave his account, telling the court that he’d spent the evening in a bar and was on his way home when he had seen a woman standing on the wall looking down at the water. There had been a strong wind blowing and her balance had been precarious. He had called out a warning to her, but she hadn’t heard, or hadn’t listened. He couldn’t say if she had deliberately jumped, or if she had fallen, but she had seemed heedless of the risk she was taking.

Someone or something had hurt her before she died. There was evidence of half-healed but extensive bruising on her back and legs, and at some time in her past her wrist had been broken and had healed poorly. But none of this had contributed to her death. Whether or not it had driven her to the dark waters of the Thames, no one could say. The damage that the river had done to her body had blackened her skin and obliterated her features. To the uninitiated eye, she looked as though she had been burned. Her body was battered and broken by tides, currents and river traffic.

The coroner gave the only verdict he could: an open one. ‘It is not possible to say if this unfortunate young woman committed suicide, or if she fell into the water by accident.’ Police enquiries as to her identity were ongoing.

Joe Massey attended the inquest as the only witness to the girl’s last moments. Later, he went back to the riverside to the place where she had fallen in. He stood for a while, watching the water, then he swore, not quite under his breath. Two women walking along the path towards him stopped as they heard the obscenity, then walked quickly back the way they had come.

It was the end of September before the summer came to its inevitable end. Roisin was at work when Joe called her and suggested that they meet. He had seemed preoccupied for the past week and he was quiet as they followed their familiar route to the riverside. She could feel the slight tension in him. They walked past the bridge and the café tables outside the film theatre, crowded and cluttered with empty glasses, wrappers, and discarded food that the pigeons fought over.

They leaned against the parapet and watched the boats go by. The air was cooler, and she could feel the first touch of autumn. Summer was coming to an end. She looked across the water to the iron stanchions of the bridge. She could remember that grey day when they’d first walked along the river together.

After a moment, he spoke. ‘I got a letter this morning. From McMaster…’

The Canadian university where he hoped to join a research team. This was it. Their timeless summer was over. She opened her eyes wide and stared across the river. She couldn’t trust her voice. It was a moment before she could take in what he was saying.

‘…wanted someone with more experience in the field.’ He was watching the river as he spoke. ‘If this had happened three months ago, I’d have been gutted. Now–it’s almost a relief.’ He looked at her. ‘I just need to decide what to do next.’

‘You aren’t leaving…’ Roisin blinked fast to clear her vision that had blurred and distorted and felt the tears spill out and run down her face.

‘I’ll go, if you feel that badly about it,’ he said.

She tried to laugh, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I just…I’m sorry you didn’t get it.’

‘Don’t be. I’m not. I’ve had some more news. They want me to go back to the Gulf. They’ve been putting the pressure on for weeks and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. The offer’s too good to turn down. Roisin, I’ll go, but only if you’ll come with me.’

‘Come with you?’

‘To Riyadh. I’ve been looking into it. You could work–they need qualified women to teach English at the university. They’ve been short staffed for months. With all the troubles, they’ve been losing more people than they can recruit. I’m in a strong position. I can dictate some terms. Oh, hell. We can sort this out later. Roisin, I love you. Will you marry me?’

It was as simple as that. He produced a bottle of champagne from his bag and they sat on the parapet watching the river flow by, drinking champagne out of the bottle–he’d forgotten to bring glasses–planning their lives together.

Not everyone was as pleased with the news as Joe and Roisin were. Her friends were cautious in their response. They barely knew Joe, and the word ‘rebound’, unspoken, hung over the congratulations.

Her mother was more frank. ‘Saudi Arabia? Rosie–that’s so far away.’

The anxiety in her voice pricked Roisin’s conscience. Maggie Gardner had greeted her plans to go to Warsaw with a resigned acceptance, but Saudi was an alien environment in her mother’s eyes, a veiled and dangerous place where Westerners could be–were–shot on the streets. ‘It’s only for a year,’ Roisin said.

‘And married. Rosie, you hardly know him.’

‘I’ve known him for three months.’ It didn’t sound long–it felt like longer. ‘I knew Michel for two years and it turned out I didn’t know him at all.’

She heard her mother sigh. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ she said, in a tone that suggested she thought the opposite.

Old George was the worst. ‘Him?’ Joe was still ‘the man who kicked Shadow’. George had never warmed to him. When she told him she was leaving, moving to the other side of the world, he said, ‘What you want to go out there for?’ Then he turned away so that she wouldn’t see his face, and shuffled back into his flat, Shadow looking back at her as the front door closed.

The day before the wedding, while Joe was at work, she took out her photograph album, her collection of pictures that marked, for her, the major events of her life. There was a dim, unfocused picture of two strangers holding a toddler–her birth parents, unknown to her and long gone. There was her mother and father holding her up to the camera on the day the adoption became official. There were photographs of schoolfriends, youthful sporting triumphs, photos that marked private moments that meant something only to her. ‘Why have you got a photo of that dreadful boy?’ her mother had asked once when they looked at the album together. Because he was the first man I ever had sex with was what Roisin hadn’t said.

And there were photos of her and Amy, one taken in the red-eye darkness of a rave, both of them high as kites on E’s or some similar chemical, and another, more sober, of the two of them sitting on the steps outside college, smoking.

Amy. Her best friend through a large part of her adolescence. They had had an instant affinity that may have come from the fact that they both had disjunctures in their past. Amy’s parents had died when she was thirteen, and she had grown up in care. Like Roisin, she had lost a sister in the events that had taken away their families, and they had found something in each other that came close to filling that–in Roisin’s case–almost subliminal gap.

And then Amy had gone, years ago now. Roisin sighed and closed the book.

Snapshots.

A wedding: a bright gold autumn morning, Joe, looking at her in the pale green dress she had bought for the day, smiling that private smile he gave her when they were together in a crowd.

Her mother, half proud, half anxious as she watched the daughter she had had to fight so hard for say the words that were going to take her away: I do solemnly declare…