‘So, Simona, are you happy to be going home in time for Christmas?’ the PC asked chirpily.
The translator repeated the question in Romanian.
Simona shrugged. She didn’t know much about Christmas, other than that there were lots of people around with money in their bags and wallets, making it a good time to steal. She felt lost and confused. Shunted from place to place, room to room. She did not know where she was and did not want to be here any more. She just looked forward to seeing Romeo again.
She looked down at the ground, not knowing what to reply, and it still hurt to talk. It was from the breathing tube, they had told her, and it would get better soon.
She didn’t understand why they had put the breathing tube down her, nor why she was being sent back now. The translator told her that bad people had planned to kill her and take her insides away. But she did not know if she believed her. Perhaps it was just an excuse to send her back to Romania.
‘You’ll be fine!’ the PC said, giving her a final hug at the foot of the gangway. ‘Ian Tilling has arranged for someone to meet you at Bucharest Airport and take you to his hostel – he has a place for you there.’
The translator repeated the assurance.
‘Will Romeo be there?’ she asked.
‘Romeo is waiting for you.’
Simona climbed the steps forlornly, unsure whether to believe them.
Two stewardesses greeted her cheerily at the top, checked her boarding card, and led her to her seat, then helped to buckle her in. She stared in glum silence at the rear of the seat in front of her for most of the flight, clutching the passport document she had been told to present at the other end, and left her tray of food untouched. She just thought about Romeo constantly. Maybe he would be there. Maybe, when she saw him, things would be OK again.
Maybe they could find a new dream.
124
This had always been Roy Grace’s favourite walk, underneath the chalk cliffs, east from Rottingdean. As a child it was almost a Sunday ritual with his parents, and recently, at least on those Sundays when he didn’t have to work, it was becoming a ritual for himself and Cleo.
He loved the sense of drama, particularly on rough days, like this afternoon, when there was a blustery wind and the tide was high, and occasionally the sea surged right up the beach and sent spray and pebbles crashing over the low stone wall. And the signs that warned of the danger of falling rocks added to that drama. He loved the smells here too, the salty tang and the seaweed and the occasional whiff of rotting fish that would be gone in an instant. And the sight of cargo ships and tankers out on the horizon, and sometimes yachts, closer in.
Today was the last Sunday before Christmas and he knew he should be feeling free, and looking forward to some time off with the woman he loved. But inside he felt as churned up as the roiling, spuming, grey Channel water to his right.
They were both wrapped up warmly. Cleo had her arm comfortably looped through his and he wondered, suddenly, if they would still be doing this walk as wrinkly old people in fifty years’ time.
Humphrey trotted along on his extended lead, holding a large piece of driftwood proudly in his mouth, like a trophy. A small brown dog bounded towards them, yipping, its owner some distance away yelling its name. Cleo broke free for a moment and knelt to stroke it. But it backed away nervously when Humphrey dropped the driftwood and growled. Hushing him, she took a step towards it and it bounded back again. They both laughed. Then, recognizing its name, it suddenly raced away.
‘So, Great Detective, how do you feel?’ she asked, placing her arm back through his.
‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. He watched Humphrey struggling to pick up the wood again.
‘Tell me?’
‘Was it the Duke of Wellington who said that the only thing worse than losing a battle is winning one?’
She nodded.
‘That’s how I feel.’
‘Something I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How were all those medical people kept silent for so long?’
‘A surgeon in Romania earns 4000 euros a year. Other medical staff even less. That’s how. They were all making a fortune at Wiston Grange, so they were happy as hell.’
‘And tucked safely away in the countryside.’
‘Most of them not able to speak English. So no gossiping with the locals. It was a smart set-up. Ship them in, let them all make a bundle, then ship them out again. They’re members of the EU, so no cross-border work restrictions, no questions asked.’
‘And Sir Roger Sirius?’
‘Big money. And he had his own moral justification.’
They walked on in silence for a while.
‘Tell me something, Grace – if that had been our child – that girl, Caitlin. What would you have done?’ With her free arm she patted her belly. ‘If it were to happen to this little person, sometime in the future?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘In the same circumstances, if our only option was to try to buy a liver to save our child, what would you have done – do?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m a policeman. My duty is to enforce the law.’
‘That’s what scares me about you sometimes.’
‘Scares you?’
‘Uh huh. I think I would take a bullet for my child. And I think I would be capable of killing for my child. Isn’t that what being a parent means?’
‘You think I was wrong, doing what I did?’
‘No, I suppose not. But I can understand why the mother did what she did.’
Grace nodded. ‘In one of the philosophy books you gave me, I read something Aristotle said: The gods have no greater torment than for a mother to outlive her child.’
‘Yes. Exactly. So how do you think that woman feels now?’
‘Is a Romanian street kid’s life less valuable than a middle-class Brighton kid’s? Cleo, darling, I’m not God, I don’t play God, I’m a copper.’
‘Do you ever wonder if sometimes you are too much a copper?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Enforcing the law at any cost? Hiding behind the human cost? Are you so constricted by your policeman’s view of the world that you can’t see outside it?’
‘We saved the life of that Romanian kid. That matters a lot to me.’
‘Kind of, job done, move on to the next?’
He shook his head. ‘No, never. That’s not how I work – or feel – ever.’
She held him tighter. ‘You’re a good man really, aren’t you.’
He smiled wistfully. ‘In a shitty world.’
She stopped and stared at him, smiling that smile that he truly would die for. ‘You make it a little less shitty.’
‘I wish.’
EPILOGUE
Lynn stood in Caitlin’s room, which had remained untouched for almost two and a half years. Now, amid all the mess of her daughter’s things, there was a stack of cardboard boxes from the removals firm.
What the hell did she keep and what did she throw away? There wasn’t much space in the tiny flat she was moving into.
With tears rolling down her cheeks, she stared around at the impenetrable tangle of clothes, soft toys, CDs, DVDs, shoes, make-up containers, the pink stool, the mobile of blue perspex butterflies, shopping bags and the dartboard with the purple boa hanging from it.
The tears were for Caitlin, not for this place. She wasn’t sorry to be leaving. Caitlin had been right all along, in her way. It had been their house but not their home.
She walked through into her bedroom. The bed was piled high with the contents of her wardrobe and cupboards. On the very top was her blue coat, still in the plastic zipper where she had sealed it after her first ‘date’ with Reg Okuma. Although it was her favourite coat, she had felt it was sullied, and had never worn it again. But Reg Okuma was all in the past now. Denarii had been good to her after Caitlin died, and had promoted her to manager. That had enabled her to write off his debt and adjust his credit rating on the computer system. No one had been any the wiser.