A young broad-shouldered man in a blue NHS shirt sat on a chair by Rasa’s side, his name on a badge: Kriss Jansons. ‘Hello,’ he said, standing. He grinned. ‘I think Rasa is feeling a little better.’
If she had been, seeing Cupidi had not helped. Petrauska sobbed out loud; said something in her own language. Looking back at the patient, the porter registered the expression of panic on her face, and asked her a question. The answer came back in a whisper.
Jansons looked at Cupidi, frowning. ‘She thinks you have come to arrest her.’
Cupidi held up her hands. ‘I just want to talk.’
The cleaner translated again. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK,’ he said, trying to calm her.
‘Are you Lithuanian too?’ Cupidi asked.
‘I am Latvian,’ he said. ‘The language is a little the same, but different.’ His accent was strong, but his English was clear. ‘Rasa said you were chasing her and her boyfriend. She is very, very frightened of you.’
‘Tell her she has no need to be. We weren’t chasing them. They just ran when they saw us. I just want to know what she was doing there.’
Jansons nodded and translated for Petrauska. She frowned at them, as if not believing what Cupidi was saying. ‘She was very upset, I think. Her boyfriend told her to run. Since then she has been looking for him, but she can’t find him anywhere. Last night she slept in a car park.’
‘What is the name of your boyfriend, Rasa?’
Kriss translated.
‘She says his name is Hamid.’
‘Hamid Fakroun?’
Rasa Petrauska nodded.
‘And he is the father of your child?’ she pointed at the woman’s belly. The swelling was not large for five months.
Again, the woman nodded. Her movements were swift and bird-like, her big eyes blinking nervously.
‘Well, that explains why she hasn’t seen him then. He’s in custody. He’s an illegal immigrant.’
When Jansons told her this, she began to weep.
‘What is she saying?’
‘She says they are going to be married. Before the baby.’
The nurse clucked her disapproval. ‘Mother of God,’ she said.
‘Can she tell us where she met him?’ asked Cupidi.
‘In a meat-packing plant,’ came back the answer. ‘She was working there in the spring.’
‘Which one?’
Jansons asked her. ‘She doesn’t know. She has been labouring in factories and on farms here. I think, from what she says, she has been paying this man money. It is hard to understand what she says. She is confused.’
‘Have you asked her why she didn’t come to hospital before now to check on her baby?’
‘Because Hamid was afraid they would find out he was an illegal immigrant. I don’t think he would permit her.’
‘Hamid would not allow her to come to hospital?’
‘Yes. That is what she said.’
Cupidi looked at her: young and scared. ‘Can she give me a list of all the farms she’s been working on?’
Jansons and Petrauska spoke for a little while, then he shook his head. ‘She does not know. They are just driven to the places. They work, then they are driven away again.’
‘She must know some names.’
Jansons looked at the woman sympathetically for a second, then turned and said, ‘I don’t think she is a very clever woman. She has speaking difficulties.’
‘Learning difficulties?’
‘Exactly.’
The nurse shook her head and said, ‘Oh Christ. What a story.’
‘Which agency does she work for?’
‘When she came here she worked with one agency, but after she met Hamid she worked for another one. She does not know the name. Hamid arranged it.’
‘What about the names of the people she worked for?’
After Jansons had translated, the pregnant woman shrugged. She had no idea.
‘What does she think is going to happen to her after the baby?’ asked Cupidi.
‘She will live with Hamid, she says. I told her she should go home. To her mother or father. But she is worried now, because she is pregnant. And by a black man too. She is like a child.’ Jansons smiled at Petrauska sadly and ran his hand over her hair. Petrauska looked back at him through damp eyes, grateful for his kindness.
‘I have heard of this,’ said Jansons, still looking at her. ‘They get a girl pregnant here because it means they can stay.’
‘That’s right,’ said Cupidi. ‘A father of a child born here could apply for leave to remain.’
‘Yep. We’ve had a few like this already this year,’ said the nurse quietly. ‘The fathers come in. All they want to see is the baby is out and then they bugger off. The mothers can be crying their heads off, they don’t care. They’ve got what they want. At least, we assume that’s what’s going on. Nothing we can do about it, ’cept look after the mums.’
‘Do you think it’s that cynical?’
‘Absolutely,’ said the Latvian. ‘Completely, absolutely. These people like Rasa come here. They are country girls, they are not well educated, they don’t speak English, they don’t understand this country. They are easy to control.’
‘What a horror,’ said Cupidi.
Rasa Petrauska was looking from one to the other as they spoke, a concerned look on her big moon face, understanding none of it.
She found Ferriter sitting on an orange plastic chair in another corridor.
‘Did she say anything?’
‘Not in as many words,’ said Cupidi. ‘But quite a lot in other ways, yes.’
Cupidi explained; it was possible that she had been made pregnant by the man simply so that he could stay in the country.
‘That’s horrible,’ Ferriter said. ‘What vile rock have we just turned over?’
‘I know.’
She got into the car slowly, wincing as she swung her bad leg in. They drove back to Najiba’s flat and tried the bell again, but no one answered; no lights were on.
‘I’ll stay here,’ Ferriter said, a crutch under one arm.
‘No. I’m taking you home.’
‘You’d only be making a cripple walk twice as far as they need to. I’m coming straight back here.’
Cupidi stood a second, then nodded, and got into the car alone.
Afterwards, she drove back to the station, swapped cars and then drove back towards Dungeness. But instead of turning off towards Lydd, she carried on south, taking the turning towards Saddlers Wall.
She found the small house again easily, set back from the road, a NO HUNTING sign fixed into the ground by the gate, just as there had been in the field with the caravans. There was a single light on in the kitchen when she drove past it, but another appeared at the porch before she’d switched off the engine. Connie Reed was already at the front door, peering into the gloom.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You again.’
‘I brought back the clothes you lent me,’ she said, holding up a plastic shopping bag.
Reed peered into the bag and grunted. ‘How’s your friend?’
‘Angry,’ Cupidi said.
‘Not surprised.’ Reed stood in the doorway, lit from behind.
‘Can I come in?’ said Cupidi. ‘Just for a minute.’
The woman paused; frowned. ‘I suppose. Don’t normally have visitors, this time of day. Or at all, really.’ She gave a small laugh and stood back to let Cupidi enter the house. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’
Cupidi shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t stop long. We found the girl who had been staying in one of the caravans – the one whose ID we picked up. I just wanted to ask if you knew anything about her.’
The woman took the skirt out of the bag and looked at it. ‘I’m afraid not. I make a point of staying out of other people’s business. Unless they’ve set a dangerous dog on someone, obviously.’ She sat on a wooden kitchen chair in front of the range and pointed to another with a crocheted cushion on it.
Cupidi sat down too. ‘She was Lithuanian. Her name was Rasa Petrauska.’
‘Not really surprising. There’re an awful lot of Lithuanians around here. They do nearly all the farm work, you know.’
‘But you don’t recognise the name?’
Connie Reed shook her head.
‘She had a birthmark on her face.’
‘Possibly I saw her, yes, but I didn’t know her. Is that bad?’
‘No. But she was twenty-one and pregnant. It appears that the father was Hamid Fakroun, the gentleman who did this to my face.’ Cupidi pointed to the scab below her eye.
Reed looked down at the floor. ‘I apologise,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t let them stay on my field, this would never have happened. I’m not having them anywhere around here ever again, I promise.’
‘I don’t need an apology from you,’ said Cupidi. ‘They did this. Not you. You stepped in and saved my colleague from much worse. All I wanted to know is if you’d seen the woman here much.’
‘If it’s the one I think you’re talking about, I did, yes. She was around. Never really spoke to her. She seemed shy. I understand that. Same way myself.’ There was a saddle sitting on the kitchen table, with a cloth and and old toothbrush lying next to it. ‘You have to understand, I’m not the kind of person who goes out of my way for company.’
‘Did you at any point feel she was frightened?’
‘No. I mean, maybe. Not really. All I noticed was she seemed out of place, certainly. But so many people do, don’t they?’ She picked up a buckle and examined it. ‘Was she being mistreated?’
‘I’m not sure. She is five months pregnant, but hadn’t been for any hospital visits until yesterday. I’m trying to work out if there was something coercive about the relationship.’
She looked up. ‘Was there? Is that what she’s saying?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cupidi. ‘It’s a possibility.’
‘How awful would that be,’ said the woman. ‘If that kind of thing was going on in the field next to my house. I don’t really take sufficient interest in people, I suppose. I just find it so hard.’
‘You like living on your own, don’t you?’ She thought of her own mother, wanting independence.
‘It’s more that I don’t like living with people,’ said Connie Reed. ‘Why are you so interested in this girl?’
‘Because I think she’s in trouble.’
‘With girls like that, I tend to assume it’s their own silly fault. But that’s probably why you’re a better person than me,’ she said plainly, with no hint of either irony or self-deprecation.
‘Do you have any idea where any of the men worked? Were they on farms? Or building sites?’
‘If it was farms it wasn’t round here. It’s mainly arable and sheep on the marsh. A few cows, but not many. It’s not the farms around here that need labourers.’
‘What about Horse Bones Farm?’
‘Dairy,’ she said. ‘Oh. That’s where the body was found, wasn’t it?’
‘You heard about that.’
‘Cows. None of them would have worked there, I doubt. Nasty man, that farmer.’
‘Why?’
‘Always trying to block off his bridleways. Not legal, you know. Doesn’t like me riding through there. Silly really. Know why it’s called that?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Horse Bones Farm. The army retired their horses there after the Napoleonic Wars. Used to be hundreds of horses on that farm once, now he can’t bear a single horse crossing his land, silly arse.’
‘You know him?’
‘Only by reputation.’
‘Which is?’
She looked away. ‘I’m sure he’s perfectly nice. He’s just trying to run a farm, which is tough enough in this day and age.’
Cupidi stood.
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t been much use, have I?’
‘Maybe,’ said Cupidi. ‘You don’t like hunting, I see. Is there a lot of it around here?’
‘Some. Don’t like them coming on my land. Don’t like the cruelty to animals.’ The woman who had killed a dog with her bare hands.
Reed walked her to the door again, as if she needed to know that her visitor had gone before she could relax.
She reached Dungeness as the last of the day’s light disappeared. Once she reached the place where the sea road crossed over the small railway, she pulled over by one of the big new millionaire’s beach chalets, watching the red sky darken, trying to fix the day’s events in her head before she arrived home. The discovery that Hilary Keen had once been young and idealistic, going to prison for her beliefs. But more importantly, visible even in the pixellated video link, the fear in Hamid Fakroun’s eyes. The father of Rasa Petrauska’s child was a man so callous that he had almost certainly coerced a vulnerable woman into having his baby, but even he had looked afraid.
She was finally getting a sense of the malevolence that lay beneath the surface, but it remained obscure, hard to grasp. In neither case, the dead man’s nor Hilary Keen’s, did the evidence form any pattern she understood.
In the millionaire’s black house, a light came on. Someone was in. It looked like someone had hired it for a house party. There was an expensive-looking German SUV parked on the pebbles next to it, a red sports car of some kind and a classic 1960s Citroën.
People who lived here all year round here resented these new arrivals with their high-tech, architect-designed houses. The older shacks were ramshackle, bent and weathered. These new buildings were all clean lines and flat planes. Their unyielding neatness seemed like an affront to the wildness of the place.
She shivered. The days were already getting shorter. Soon she and Zoë would be starting their second winter here; in this place she liked that season even more than the summer. The tourists left. People ordered in firewood and hunkered down, waiting for the cold to come and for the birds to begin arriving.
Above the black silhouette of the Old Lighthouse, the sky was streaked pink and magenta.
She was about to move off again when someone raised the blind in the black house. A big square window was suddenly illuminated by clear orange light.
A woman was in the bedroom, looking out of the glass towards Cupidi’s car.
Cupidi froze for a second, then sank slowly down in her seat until her eyes could only just see over the dashboard.
She knew her.
The woman was Cathy Colquhoun; David’s wife. She was standing in a sparse white room, looking out over the shingle, straight towards her car.
Fumbling with the switch, Cupidi switched the lights onto full beam, making it impossible for Cathy to see into the car. The woman stood in the window, lit up. She was wearing a pale grey sweater and squinting out into the evening. Then she turned on her heels and walked to the door, switching off the light as she left the room.
‘Shit,’ said Cupidi. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
She was angry. This was her own special place; the place she had run away to. How dare he?