The Sea Detective (10 page)

Later that day she was put in the back of a van (it smelled of fish and the floor was slippery with fish scales). The journey was long, or so it seemed to her. All the way she thought of the hill, its ridged sides and the tree. How would she ever find Preeti again if she forgot them, forgot any detail of them?

When the van stopped she knew she was in a city. She heard the noise of traffic. The back doors were opened and the ropes around her legs were removed. Two men guided her inside, each one holding an arm. They took her down some stairs and along a corridor, their feet echoing. They’d passed through two doors – one at the top of the stairs and another to her room – before her hands were untied and the blindfold removed. (Each of the doors had been unlocked and locked behind them, she registered with panic.) Her room was a square box. The walls were covered with mirrors. The recessed lights in the ceiling cast a dull red glow (or, as she was to discover, whatever colour her clients preferred). The bathroom, en suite behind a mirrored door, was the same.

A man came to her that evening.

He became a regular, visiting her once a week. He had sex with her that first time but never again. After that he insisted on the same routine. He made her sit on his knee, him in yellow pyjamas with blue piping; her in a white cotton night dress which he brought. He brushed her long dark hair with his dead wife’s mother-of-pearl brush. It lasted half an hour, 24 brush strokes a minute; 720 strokes in 30 minutes; precisely. Eventually, she asked him if he would bring her pencils and paper to draw on while he brushed. Her request pleased him. His wife, he said, had liked to read when he’d groomed her hair.

Only one other man didn’t hurt her, didn’t have sex with her; didn’t touch her, not ever. He was most particular about it. What gave him a thrill was watching her dancing, naked. He brought music, always the same, a CD of The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss junior. She danced to it for every one of his dozens of visits while he masturbated. Afterwards he would watch her showering, drying herself and putting her clothes back on. Then she would stand in front of him, as he instructed, and he’d beg for her forgiveness, on his knees, pleading with her, rambling and incoherent. At first she didn’t understand what he wanted.

When she did, she bargained with him.

She would pardon him only if he helped her to improve her English. She’d had a good tutor in India who taught her to speak the language, but her lessons had been interrupted before she could write it with the fluency she desired. He agreed with alacrity and thereafter he became her tutor, teaching her grammar and bringing her newspapers to read and pens and notebooks for her to practise composition exercises. One time, he came straight from his office before going home. He had a laptop with him, for a presentation the following morning. As usual, when she’d showered and dressed he’d pleaded for forgiveness and she’d said, pointing to the computer, ‘Only if you will teach me?’

He brought the laptop for his next visit and every visit thereafter until she was proficient.

They were the only ones who didn’t hit her or spit on her, or take their pleasure by degrading her body in some other revolting way. The rest of them she detested.

Every day she watched for an opportunity to escape but none came until the change of cleaners. How many days, months, or years had that been? The surly Turkish maid was replaced by a squat, muscular Albanian man. Neither the Turkish woman nor the Albanian spoke any English but in every other way they were dissimilar. One contrast which Basanti noted was the bunch of keys at the Albanian’s belt. The Turkish woman had never been trusted with them. An unseen man had let her in and out of Basanti’s room and had waited in the corridor outside while she cleaned. Was the Albanian allowed keys because he was so much stronger than the Turkish woman, making Basanti’s escape less likely? Another dissimilarity which she noted was the way he looked at her: she knew the desire it expressed. She had resigned herself to men looking at her that way. But when he groped her that first time, she cried out in anguish because, like the Turkish woman before him, he was her only visitor who was not entitled to touch her. Had she lost even that small respite? But the second time he groped her she saw him lock the door first and the keys dangling there and she tolerated it, seeing an opportunity, planning her escape.

The next day, she asked the man who groomed her hair with the mother-of-pearl brush whether she could have two new pencils, sharpened. He brought them at his appointment the following week.

One pencil was placed with her few other possessions in a canvas carrier bag on the back of the door, in readiness for the moment.

The other pencil she drove into the Albanian’s neck with all the force of her pent-up hatred after she’d exposed herself to him and he’d taken the bait.

When she ran for the door, not looking back, she expected his hand to grab her at every step. She snatched at her bag and turned the key, removing it from the lock. Her heart beat so fast it felt it would burst from her rib cage. The corridor was empty. She let out a plaintive cry of gratitude and locked the door behind her to muffle the Albanian’s screams and to prevent him chasing after her, if he still could. There were two doors on the same side of the corridor as hers. Were there other girls in them? Was Preeti here too? Had they been so close all this time? She stood and fumbled through the keys trying them in the lock of the first door, urging herself to hurry, the adrenalin coursing through her, warning her to run. ‘Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please,’ she repeated in her panic until the lock turned. A black woman, wearing an orange robe with black stitching, looked up from the bed where she was sitting.

‘Come with me; quick,’ Basanti said.

The woman blinked, looked about her slowly, bewildered, and back at Basanti. ‘Please, quick. Oh please.’ Basanti retreated towards the corridor, as if her backward momentum would help to drag the woman with her.

For an instant it had the desired effect. The woman made to stand before slumping again. She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘I can’t. They’ll kill my father and my sister.’

Basanti asked, ‘Is there anyone in the next room?’

The woman continued to shake her head, not answering.

Basanti left her door open and tried the keys in the lock of the neighbouring room. As she did so, she cried out, ‘Preeti, Preeti.’ When the last of the keys failed to turn the lock she knelt down at the keyhole. No light shone through. ‘Preeti,’ she called again. She listened for a response as long as she dared before turning and running to the door at the top of the stairs. She unlocked it and found she was emerging into a back lane, with rubbish bins and parked vans. She ran, dropping the keys, narrowing her eyes against the unaccustomed brightness of the light and breathing the fresh (to her) city air. Only then did she notice her shirt was undone, a spray of fresh blood across it, and her trousers were open at the top. She fastened them quickly and clutched at her canvas bag. She mustn’t lose it.

Apart from a change of clothes and a pencil, it contained the drawing which was closest to her memory of the hill and the tree, the one that was now propped up in her make-shift shelter on the railway embankment. On the grass beside it was her hair, cut with a piece of broken glass she’d found by the bins in the supermarket over the wall where she scavenged food and cardboard.

If she was to find Preeti, first she must find the hill and the tree where they’d lost their virginity, where they’d lost everything.

Rosie Provan called Cal late. When the phone rang he was leaning forward in his chair, a large street map of Edinburgh spread out on his table.

‘Yeah …’

‘Hi, it’s Rosie.’

Cal said nothing. His finger was following the route he’d take. He’d checked it again for the third time. None of the politicians on his list lived within 250 metres of it. He didn’t want to hand himself to Ryan, gift-wrapped.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No.’

‘The story’s running in the Daily Record tomorrow. I thought you’d want to know.’

Cal paid attention.

‘Front page, spread inside. You’re big news. They’ll all want a piece of you tomorrow, the other papers.’

‘Thank you, Rosie.’

The line went dead. Cal had cut the call.

What’s got into him? Rosie stared at her phone, eyes wide, her mouth a perfect, lip-glossed ‘O’. Rude bugger, even if he was kind of cute.

What had got into him was the sudden thought he didn’t have much time. Other reporters would soon find him. If he was going to put a plant on the doorstep of the First Minister’s official residence – it hadn’t been on the list that Ryan had, so it wasn’t covered by the court order – he’d have to do it now, before the media circus began.

He crossed the room and climbed the spiral stairs, ignoring a warning voice about this being reckless. Hadn’t he promised to plan it better next time? He reappeared holding a small plant in a plastic pot. The front door banged shut behind him.

It was 2.20am, more than two hours later, when he returned. The buzz of leaving a Dryas Octopetela on the doorstep of Bute House was fading but he felt good. Maybe it’d make Ryan’s life a bit more uncomfortable. Maybe the First Minister would pay more attention to the environment. Maybe neither would happen. What mattered was he’d sent a private signal – it’d take more than his flat being turned over or a court order to make him go away.

Cal set his alarm for 7.30 and flopped on his mattress before rolling over to sleep.

At seven his entry phone buzzed; a long, loud blast. Cal grabbed at his alarm clock and, realising his mistake, stumbled from his mattress to the door. He was in jeans and a tee shirt; yesterday’s clothes. ‘Hi’

‘Cal McGill?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was only half awake.

‘My name’s Tom Baillie, Mr McGill. I’m from the Evening News. It’s about this story in the Record.’

Cal ran his fingers through his hair until the heel of his left hand was pressed hard against his forehead. ‘Listen; do me a favour, Tom. Come back later will you?’

‘I’m on a deadline.’ Tom left it hanging.

‘Well, I’m not doing it now.’

‘What time?’

‘Eight thirty, nine would be good. If there’s anyone else there tell them too.’ Cal dropped the receiver and lurched stiffly towards the bathroom. He showered, shaved, squirted his wound with antiseptic spray – the rim of torn flesh was less livid than the day before – and rummaged in his trunk for clean clothes. He put on black jeans and a tee shirt and left the flat, taking the service stairs to the rear entrance. He crossed the lane and followed the path down the embankment to the pavement below. The Pakistani owner of the newsagent and general store across the street was putting out his display of fruit and vegetables. Cal bought two copies of the Daily Record, a litre carton of milk, some cereal and two filled ham rolls which were put behind the counter for the old beggar who collected them daily. ‘How is he?’ Cal asked.

‘Same as ever, always complaining,’ the shop owner replied. ‘Says he’ll buy you a drink when he has any money …’

‘Won’t be able to wait that long …’

Cal returned to his flat by the same route. He had coffee, made toast and boiled eggs, read the newspaper, scribbled some notes and ignored the entry phone which buzzed sporadically. When it went again, just before 8.30, he pressed the lock release. ‘Come on up.’

The security guards at Bute House, on the north side of Charlotte Square, were relieving their end-of-shift boredom by itemising the differences between protecting Downing Street and the First Minister’s residence in Edinburgh. The Downing Street list sounded like the index of a counter terror manual: car bomb barricades, metal security gates, luggage scanners, and armed police.

‘And what do we have here apart from you and me?’ said the tall, beaky looking guard. ‘A couple of locks, a sturdy front door, a camera and a drunk who bangs on it at midnight asking the First Minister out for a dram …’

His colleague, a big bellied man in his fifties, every button straining to keep him decent, joined in, ‘… and a hoodie who dumps a house plant on the doorstep at 2.30 in the morning.’

The two of them laughed.

‘Stole it from someone’s greenhouse I bet,’ said Beaky, patting his head, checking that the wisps of silvery hair which stretched across his otherwise bald crown were in their rightful place. ‘Mind you, I’d rather have it this way.’

Big Belly nodded. They were killing time, waiting for the shift change, hoping their replacements would come before the First Minister’s 8.30 breakfast meeting. Something about renewables and energy policy.

Beaky began to sort through the morning’s newspapers separating them into different piles (one for the First Minister, one for the First Minister’s wife, one for his special adviser, one for the Cabinet Room) and Big Belly glanced at the monitor on his desk. ‘Here we go.’

Alasdair Gordon, the Environment Minister, was getting out of his car accompanied by his assistant. Big Belly crossed the small security room off the hall and opened the heavy front door, its brasses shining.

‘Good morning Mr Gordon.’

‘Morning, morning …’ Gordon was brisk, businesslike.

‘The First Minister’s expecting you.’

‘In the Cabinet Room …?’

‘Yes, Mr Gordon.’

Big Belly stood back to let the two men pass. He closed the door and returned to the security room but before he could sit at his desk Beaky beckoned to him. He was reading a newspaper front page, The Record, about an eco-warrior who left plants in politicians’ gardens. There was a small picture of the plant with a Latin sounding name.

‘That’s it,’ Beaky said. ‘That’s the plant.’

Beaky and Big Belly looked at each other but before they could speak again the minister popped his head round the door. ‘Forgot to say … My PA will be bringing some papers. Can you have them sent up to me?’

‘Yes of course Mr Gordon.’

Big Belly moved to his left, attempting to insert his substantial frame between the minister and the plant which was on the windowsill. But the minister was already looking at it with a suspicious expression. ‘Where did you get that?’