Nowhere Girl (16 page)

Even though I worked when we were in Heidelberg I never took you into the hospital, where I could have shown you children who were dying, who were being eaten away by cancer. I thought about it, but Achim stopped me. He said it would ruin your innocence, but what would be wrong with that? I would prefer you to be wiser, and kinder. We all have to lose our innocence at some point
.

Achim persuaded me that what you needed was security and stability. It was what I always strived to give you, everything those poor children lacked
.

Oh Ellie, I am ready for you to come home
.

I am ready to talk to you, honestly this time. To try again to be a better mother if only you will be a better daughter
.

But I fear that when you do come home, I won’t be there. And outside of the house will be a police car
.

What will happen to you then?

Cate woke to see that the storm had passed, but the sky was still dark and ominous. The sun was half-hidden behind a cloud, as if unsure whether to bother trying to warm the world today. Despite this, she felt invigorated, and all because she had read Olivier’s phone message. She wondered about calling Eva at the school, but decided against raising the woman’s hopes when the text could mean anything or nothing and besides, Eva would be teaching.

It had started raining again by the time she pulled up at Bridget’s house, all the blinds were down but one; in the downstairs lounge a figure was standing at the window. It was Bridget, looking out into the road. Their Land Rover was parked in the drive, so Cate guessed that Achim was also in the house, but she simply couldn’t face knocking on the door and seeing Bridget’s face raise then fall.

“Run and get Gaynor, love,” she said, holding General back by his collar from pouncing out as Amelia opened the door.

Amelia didn’t need to wait long at the door as Gaynor was ready, her rucksack on her back, and both girls sprinted to the car to avoid getting wet, looking every bit like normal kids on a regular day. But when Gaynor was buckling herself in, Cate couldn’t help herself from asking, “Any news, Gaynor?”

“No,” Gaynor said, forcing Cate to say that she was sure there would be some soon. The young girl gave a tiny smile of hope then buried her face in General’s fur.

Back at the flat, Cate succumbed to the power of the Internet. If Olivier wasn’t willing to talk, she would do her own detective work. She started by googling
kidnapping in Luxembourg
, and up popped the information given by the Ministry of Education, the advice that no child should attend school unaccompanied. The report said:

These steps come after police reported two attempted kidnappings in Steinfort and Kleinbettingen and three attempted kidnappings in the Arlon area in Belgium in recent weeks.

Last week, an 11-year-old girl was approached by a man in Esch-sur-Alzette, prompting a police investigation.

No mention of Ellie Scheen. Also, frustratingly, the report answered none of her questions, such as why did the kidnapping fail? Just how serious were the attempts and did the victim have to struggle? Or was it enough that they refused to get in the car? Also, what was the kidnapper saying to try to get the victim into the car, and in what language, did they use a threat or coercion? Were all the potential victims the same age and gender…? Cate realised she was approaching this like a probation officer, wanting more case information than a journalist here would receive. Olivier would know the answers to her many questions, he would have direct access to all of this information, but he wouldn’t talk.

Okay, then. If he won’t tell me, I’ll just have to find out for myself
.

She typed
Beauty Asiatique
and it came up straight away, with a simple website and a map. Without thinking too hard about what she was doing, Cate called to General, “Come on, boy. Walkies.”

Once she had the postcode her sat nav did the rest, directing her there in perfect Received Pronunciation that irritated Cate only slightly less than the alternative Irish brogue.

She found herself in three-lane traffic, her windscreen wipers doing the best they could as she slowly navigated the area around the train station. Through the rain-splattered windows was a part of Luxembourg she hadn’t yet witnessed: run down properties, boarded-up buildings next to occupied flats, sad curtains hung limply at dirty windows, a child’s mangled scooter leaned against a graffitied wall. She stopped at a red light and looked to the car park next to her, empty but for a couple of abandoned shopping trolleys and a white van. In the front seat was a man in his fifties, and beside him a too-pretty girl of about sixteen. They seemed to be arguing and then the girl leaned forward and kissed him, full on the lips. This was not the Luxembourg of the tourist books, nor even the place she now thought of as home. It was an even farther cry from the ice-cream sweetness and gloss of Ellie’s home.

The lights changed to green and Cate drove on, seeing how some of the houses had made a valiant effort with ornaments at the windows and cheerful floral displays on the steps. It didn’t faze Cate, in fact, it felt very familiar and in many ways she would have preferred to live somewhere like this. Sometimes broken things can feel more human. Cate parked on the opposite side of the street to Beauty Asiatique, which was wedged in the middle of a line of shops on rue de Strasbourg, a notorious street off the main road with an odd assortment of shops and businesses: a Chinese herbal dispensary and high-end Italian delicatessen were cheek-by-jowl with bars with curtained windows; alongside a brightly painted crèche was a narrow passageway littered with discarded beer cans and used syringes.

Though the sun was now making a weak promise from behind a ghostly cloud, the rain persisted, huge splodges hammering on her car roof. In theory she was parked where she could see the comings and goings at Beauty Asiatique, but the rain was obscuring her view. Beside her, on the passenger seat under General’s paws, was the free paper. It was in Luxembourgish, so she usually just flicked to the cinema listings, but today the front page drew her attention:
Fraen dei op den Dapp Gin
.

The picture showed a woman leaning into a car, and the backdrop was clearly the car park near the station that she had just passed. Cate could work out the gist of the article, explaining how prostitution was a growing problem, and the police were enacting a night curfew.

The car felt humid, so Cate cracked the window open just as a line of lightning snagged the sky, with a grumble of thunder following on its heels. The storm would soon be on top of her and she would see nothing if she remained in the car.

Beauty Asiatique had purple orchids in the window, and there were opened fans in rainbow colours taped to the glass. Alongside the lilies were plastic banks of nail varnishes in ruby colours, cherry and damson. Before she could give herself time to think twice, Cate pushed the door open, with General on a short lead at her side, and it sent a wind chime tingling in rapid chorus, announcing her arrival. Near the window were two tables, both set up for nail work, and at the furthest one a pretty girl with a ponytail of black hair was bent over a large brassy woman’s curled talons. The girl only looked about fifteen.

“And it’s so expensive here,” the customer was saying to her in an Australian accent. “How do people even eat out? I mean, it’s two hundred dollars just for a decent meal. And that’s not including wine.”

The girl kept politely nodding, but was otherwise fixated on the woman’s nails that she was painting deep purple, her shiny hair falling forward over her exquisitely shaped face, so tiny that the Australian seemed huge and vulgar across from her.

It didn’t look like a beauty parlour. Not that Cate’s experience of such things was extensive but, of the few salons she had graced, they shared a medical feel, were bright and clean and the walls tastefully decorated with silver mirrors and with posters showing clear-faced young women.

Beauty Asiatique had red painted walls and the air was scented with cooking spices. At the back of the room a bamboo curtain bloomed and out stepped an older woman, short but making up for it with girth, older and less submissive than the girl. She had the weary expression of a woman who had seen something of the world and no longer expected it to give her any hand-outs.

“
Bonjour, Madame. Je peux vous aider?
”

Cate thought hard then said, “
Je voudrais prendre un rendezvous, sil vous plait
.”

The woman pinched her lips upwards in what may have been a smile and said sympathetically, “Of course, Madame. For which service?”

The whiney Australian was still chattering, but her nails looked perfect. The older woman followed Cate’s glance.

“You would like a gel colour?”

“Yes, please.”

Cate was guided to the nail bar to choose a colour. “Please, wait here. Tina will be with you shortly.” Pulling General to sit by her side, Cate took the free seat facing the back of the Australian who was now regaling the young beautician with a monologue on her opinion of Luxembourg, thrilling at the closeness of Ikea but complaining about her Portuguese cleaner’s tardiness. General was more alert than usual, and despite Cate telling him to sit, he whined and tried to pull towards the bamboo curtain.

“Lay down, General. Or I’ll have to put you in the car.”

Whilst seeming to be studying the colour options of nail varnishes, Cate assessed her surroundings and wondered why it had featured in Olivier’s phone. She picked up a leaflet from a pile on the window ledge. It was advertising a swimming pool in Saarburg and there was a picture of water cascading into several circular pools. She folded it and put it in her bag, thinking Amelia might like to go, then turned her attention back to the salon.

When Cate was in training her practice teacher had said once that everyone who worked with crime, be they probation or police, got a thrill from it. “We’re closer to the criminals than to other civilians,” he’d said. “We prefer a life with crime because it’s more interesting.”

At the time, young and earnest, she had disagreed. “I want to do this job because I’d prefer a world without crime,” she’d insisted. “Not for any sort of kick.”

But now she wasn’t so sure. She could have taken a different path in Luxembourg, and remained oblivious to the darker side of life going on around her, but instead she was delving into her lover’s secrets, sniffing out crime like a well-trained spaniel. After all, she wasn’t really that interested in having buffed nails.

Finally, the Australian woman paid, peeling off five euro notes with the pads of her fingers, keeping her nails up so as not to mark the gleaming surface. The young girl held the door for the customer, and when she was gone came over to where Cate waited. Cate saw now that the girl really was young, she seemed little more than a child and she revised her earlier guess to fourteen. The beautician, though surely she’d had little training, at her age, smiled shyly, her head bowed submissively, and then she took the seat opposite and reaching for Cate’s hand before she had even engaged eye contact. The girl’s small hand was damp with nerves, and Cate allowed her to dip her nails into a bowl of warm water, not wishing to make the girl more anxious than she already was.

“You choose colour, Madame?” the girl asked, and Cate selected a neutral shade, thinking that Amelia would have told her off for being so pedestrian. It was a simple pink, barely a shade above the natural colour of her nails.

As the girl worked, Cate wondered what she was doing and how this was helping Ellie. She wasn’t a detective, she should just have her nails done and go home. Olivier was taking them out for dinner, to a restaurant over the border in Belgium, and that was all she should be thinking about.

Her mobile sprung to life, beeping out a jocular ringtone until she silenced it by accepting the call. It was Eva.

“Where are you?” she demanded, and Cate could picture Eva’s pretty but serious face as she spoke.

“Having my nails done.”

There was a pause and then Eva said, “Well, you need to come here now, things have escalated.”

“What’s happened? Has Ellie come home?”

There was a pause. “No.”

Cate felt dread creep up her spine. “Is she…?”

Eva cut her off. “Bridget has just called me, she’s in a terrible state. She’s just left the police station. They just told her they no longer think Ellie has run away.”

“Well, that’s good,” Cate said, aware that Tina appeared to be listening to her call. “They are finally taking it seriously.”

“They’re taking it seriously alright,” said Eva. “They interviewed Bridget in a police cell, for god’s sake. They think she’s responsible, Cate. They’ve let her go home, but I just know they’re investigating her. It’s easier for them, to blame the family. It means the sickness is domestic, an isolated case. It’s not the whole city that is diseased.”

“One thing the
Belges
have got totally right, is their beer.”

Cate watched Olivier sip at his Orval in its matching glass, wondering if he was going to tell her that he had interviewed Bridget. Wondering also why he had suggested this drive out for tea, to Bastogne. It was a summer evening, warm and light now the rain had stopped, but forty minutes still seemed a long way to drive on a school night.

The beer was dark as chocolate with a creamy head and she took a sip too, then pushed it back to him. It looked nicer than it tasted. “Wow, that’s strong.”

Olivier grinned. “Exactly.”

“I don’t like this much,” Amelia said, picking apart her
croque madame
, opening up the toast and scraping off the thick ham slices, then nibbling on what was basically cheese on toast, leaving the rest untouched.

“We’ll order you some frites,” Olivier told her. “You’ll like those, another thing the Belges have got down to perfection.”

They had the window table and directly across the road from the bistro was a nail bar. Cate noticed it was similar to Beauty Asiatique in its red colour scheme, also the same purple orchids along the upper window. Olivier kept glancing across at it, and Cate had a feeling they were not simply here for the Belgian specialities.