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Chapter Forty-Nine

S
he was still breathing when D
ragoș
entered the room. A click as the door opened, a long pause during which she imagined him taking in the scene: her motionless body lying half-concealed beneath the dirty sheet, the hole in the window behind her exposing the snow-capped trees beyond, her arm outstretched, the blood pumping from her slashed veins, pooling across the floorboards towards the empty cot. She hoped, as her lifeblood left her, as her exit drew closer, that he would cry out, give her the satisfaction of hearing his pain when he realised how stupid he’d been, leaving her here unchained, trusting that her fear would keep her from doing anything stupid.

But there was no cry, no sound of pain. Instead, after the pause, the only sound was that of his footsteps coming closer as he rushed across the room, pausing to stare down at her before stooping to take her slashed wrist in both hands, a moment of hesitation before he reached for the sheet, pulling it away to expose her other arm, the hand in which she held the shard of glass.

With a scream that made birds rise from the trees outside, with all the hatred and fury that boiled in her veins, Alina drove the jagged spike of glass into his neck.

Dragoș collapsed onto his side, making a terrible choking sound that seemed to come not through his mouth but through this new hole. His arms spasmed as he tried to grab at the glass, to pull it out, but there was too much blood, the slippery liquid making it impossible for him to get a grip. Alina jumped to her feet as he thrashed about, the blood pumping from his body ten times faster than it had from hers. The cuts on her arms were superficial; she had taken care not to slice the major artery in her arm. She snatched up the sheet now and tore off another thick strip, wrapping it tightly around her forearm to stem any more blood flow. Her arm stung but this pain was nothing, nothing. As she tied the sheet she looked down at the monster, his legs kicking out as he tried to get onto his knees, slipping on his own blood and landing on his belly.

She ran to the open door and hurried barefoot down the stairs until she reached the hall in which the English couple had left her when they deserted her, abandoning her to her fate. She ran over to the front door, pulled it open. A blast of icy air hit her. She gazed down at herself. She was wearing only a grimy, bloodstained cotton gown. If she went outside like this she would die of exposure.

She looked around, and heard a thump from upstairs, a roar of pain. The monster was still alive. She needed to hurry. A cry stuck in her throat. Why hadn’t she finished him off? She froze for a moment. Clothes. She needed clothes and shoes. Anything woul
d do.

She didn’t want to go back up the stairs. Forcing herself to stay calm, she remembered the room where the monster had taken her that first night, before Daniel and Laura arrived. A door led off from the corner of the hallway and she ran over to it, her shadow bouncing behind her. The door was unlocked and led, as she remembered dimly, through the fog of the last three months, to a short stairway down to another room. She ran down these steps now, stumbling and jarring her ankle. She swore, then laughed, then swore again before entering the room.

It was dim and smelled of bad breath and rank meat. There were a dozen heavy crates stacked up along one wall. She lifted the lid of the top crate and was shocked to see her own clothes inside. Her jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket. Her underwear. Her boots were there too, the ones she’d left in the forest and on his front path; Daniel had carried one into the house with them, and the other the monster had wrenched off when she tried to kick him as he dragged her towards the house.

She took off the disgusting gown and got dressed. It felt strange, unreal, to wear proper clothes again after so long. The bra felt too big, the jeans loose on her hips. She wondered if there was a mirror nearby, but dreaded seeing her own reflection.
I bet I look like a dead woman
, she thought, and something about this made something in her brain pop, and she grinned.

She checked the back pocket of her jeans. Her passport was still there. She remembered that on the train, the border guards had come through and checked it; she’d slipped it into her pocket instead of putting it in her bag. This was all going better than expected.

She heard a bang from above.

The front door? Had she left it open? She looked around the room, opening more of the crates, searching for a weapon. In one crate she found a pile of paperwork. It looked like a list of transactions. She took a few sheets, folded them and shoved them into her pocket. In the other crate she found women’s clothes: twelve sets. In the cold room she suddenly became aware of their spirits, a dozen dead, and heard them whispering to her.

For us
.

She took the lid from another one of the crates. It was stout, made of three strips of wood running lengthways with a single, shorter strip holding them together. Dropping it to the floor, she put her boot across two of the strips and pulled at the third, the dead women urging her on. She grunted, felt blood ooze from her cut wrist, but the strip of wood broke free. She hefted it, and headed towards the stairs.

At the top of the staircase, she paused before the door. Was he there, on the other side, waiting for her? She turned the handle and pushed it open, holding the plank over her shoulder, ready to strike. He wasn’t there. She entered the room, looking left a
nd right.

And she saw him.

He was lying a short distance from the bottom of the central staircase, a trail of blood glistening behind him. He held his neck with one red hand. In the other hand, which trembled as he reached out towards her, he held his gun.

His face, despite everything, remained blank. She figured he would be able to get off one shot before she reached him. She walked towards him, remembering all the times he had raped
her, th
e way he had chained her to the bed, treated her like a dog, a sow, a slave. She recalled the pain and the loneliness and how it had felt when little Luka was taken away. When she was halfway across the hall, he squeezed the trigger with his last ounce of strength and dropped the gun, and it was as if the bullet passed straight through her—a miracle. She heard the voices of the other women rise into a chorus—
for us, for us
—as she reached him and raised the thick strip of wood.

After he was dead, after she’d smashed his skull and his face was no longer recognisable, a pulp of blood and bone, she dropped the plank and turned to see the bullet hole in the wall. It was no miracle. He was a bad shot. That was all.

Alina didn’t remember much about the next week, about her journey through the forest, about breaking into houses and stealing food and money, checking the internet in an empty café and finding out where she had to go. She barely recalled hitching rides with men who thought they might stand a chance with her until she gave them the look that made them go pale. The days when she hid and the nights when she travelled merged into one, and she began to see her life like a graphic novel in which she was a dark figure who drifted across the panels, no speech bubbles, crossing a series of borders: Ukraine, Poland, Germany, where she paid a truck driver to take her with him to France. He was small and silent and had yellow teeth like a rat. He told her she reminded him of his daughter, who had gone missing when she was nineteen, a dozen years ago. He had never given up hope, he said. One day, he was sure, he would receive a letter or a phone call, just to let him know she was OK. Alina listened, thinking the girl was probably dead, had most likely been murdered, probably by this man beside her, and as she thought this she felt another spirit join her band. So there were thirteen of them now, following her across Europe.

In France, the man with the rat’s teeth dropped her off and gave her a hundred euros which she spent on a ticket to Calais. There she boarded a ferry which crossed the English Channel on a freezing February night.

She stood on the deck and watched the dark coastline approaching. She was calm. The sea churned beneath the ferry and she decided that when this was over this would be a good place to en
d it.

After she’d cleaned up.

Another line of poetry came to her.
All angels are terrifying
. She smiled to herself.
Oh yes
, she thought.
And I am the most terrifying of all,
the Angel of Vengeance. I am Mirela
, she whispered, and around her the thirteen dead women whispered
Amen
back.

Part Six
London
November 2013

Chapter Fifty

I
t was fully dark by the time we pulled up outside Erin and Rob’s house. I was still reeling from what Edward had said.

Alina was alive. The shot we’d heard from inside the house hadn’t killed her. Did that mean the baby was alive too? And the women who’d been tied to the beds in the upstairs room, who
had
haunted my nightmares for months—what about them? I badly wanted to know, because I needed some good to cling to among the chaos, the revelations that had come thick and fast since I’d hired Edward. Chief among these was the shock of working out,
assuming
I was correct, that Camelia and her partner-in-crime were looking for drugs.

I explained my thinking in the car on the way to see Laura.

‘The dog, brought to sniff out drugs. All the questions about doing something illegal. It’s got to be drugs.’

Edward agreed it made sense. ‘So the person with Camelia on your video . . . Could it be Alina?’

I shook my head. ‘It was definitely a man. So I think . . . if Alina’s actually alive, and here, then it must be Ion. The guy in the video is the right height and build.’

‘And the three of them are in together.’ It felt as if the fog was clearing around me, our words cutting through it. But lots of questions remained. ‘Why wait so long to come for the drugs?’

‘Because Alina was trapped in that house?’ I still could hardly believe she was alive. ‘How did she get out?’

Edward swung the car hard around a corner. ‘We’ll be able to ask her soon.’ Darkness glinted in his eyes. ‘This Ion seems like the most likely candidate for firebombing my office. Trying to stop you from talking to me.’

‘It must have been him at Camden Lock, watching Laura. And I bet . . . I bet he pushed Jake off that bridge.’ Anger burst inside me and I thumped the dashboard. ‘That fucker. Him and Alina. We trusted them. There are still . . . still parts that don’t make sense.’

Edward swung around another corner. We were close to our destination now. ‘My guess is that Camelia was their contact in London who was going to retrieve the drugs when you got back. I think they must have taken your passports so you would have to fly home straight away to get new ones, bringing the drugs with you. But then something went wrong: you and Laura got kicked off the train, along with Alina . . . Unless the whole thing with the house was part of the set-up—but I can’t for the life of me work out how that could be the case.

‘Also, I can’t figure out this whole thing with Alina and Laura,’ Edward continued. ‘She showed herself to Laura, made contact with her. Do you think Laura knows that Alina is real? Or does she really think she’s a ghost?’

The question irritated me and I felt a surge of protectiveness towards Laura. ‘She definitely thinks Alina is a ghost. Listen, Laura is not stupid. But she’s been through an awful lot . . . She’s extremely vulnerable.’

Edward nodded. ‘We need to talk to them, but my guess is that Alina was following Laura, spying on her, trying to find out if
she
had the drugs, and Laura saw her. And, believing Alina was dead, and having a track record when it comes to this sort of thing—’

I finished the sentence. ‘Laura assumes that she’s being visited by Alina’s spirit.’

I prayed that Alina was still at the house. Then, finally, we would get all the answers.

We turned into the road where Erin and Rob lived.

‘Oh shit,’ Edward said.

I looked up, following his gaze as we pulled up to the kerb.

There was a police car parked outside Erin and Rob’s house. My mouth went dry. What now?

I tore off my seat belt and jumped out of the car, ran towards the house and began banging on the door. Rob opened it almost immediately, a look of hope on his face that vanished when he saw me. He held a photo of baby Oscar in his hand. Behind him, in the hallway, Erin stood with two uniformed police officers. She was crying.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened?’

Rob swallowed before he spoke. ‘It’s Oscar,’ he said. ‘We can’t . . . we can’t find him.’

Chapter Fifty-One

I
tried to imagine what Erin and Rob must be feeling. I couldn’t. Panic, terror, desperation. They were only words. The look on Erin’s face told the whole story.

She came over to the door. She held a small pink comforter, with the head of a teddy bear, which she gripped so hard her knuckles were white. She had dark circles around her eyes, as did Rob, and her hair stuck up at a hundred different angles. She wore a loose top with what I realised were milk stains on the front.

‘Has she been in touch with you?’ she demanded. ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘You mean Laura?’

‘Yes!’ She spat the name through clenched teeth. ‘Who else? She’s taken my baby. That . . . bitch has stolen my fucking baby.’

One of the police officers, a black woman with a round, kind face, stepped forward, laying a hand on Erin’s shoulder. ‘We don’t know that Miss Mackenzie has done anything criminal.’

Erin turned on her, the comforter trembling in her hand. ‘Nothing criminal? She was meant to be watching Oscar while Rob and I grabbed an hour’s sleep. I knew we shouldn’t have done it, should have taken him into bed with us.’ Her voice cracked. ‘But I’m so tired. So, so tired. I thought it would be OK for an hour.’

Rob tried to put an arm around his wife but she shrugged it off.

‘What was I thinking, trusting that crazy bitch with my baby? She tried to kill herself last week. She talks to ghosts. She’s insane.’

‘Ghosts?’ the policewoman said, confused.

‘Yes, she—’

‘Alina’s not a ghost.’

Everyone turned to look at Edward, who had appeared in the doorway. He introduced himself.

‘I think you’d better come in,’ said the policewoman. ‘I’m PC Elaine Davies.’ She also introduced the male police officer, who nodded at us as Edward shuffled into the hallway and closed the front door behind him. An expensive-looking black pram sat beneath the coats that hung on the wall. Rob glanced at it then looked away like it stung his eyes.

‘You’re Laura Mackenzie’s boyfriend, is that right?’ Davies asked me, leading Edward and me out of the crowded hallway into the living room, while the other cop took the two stricken parents into the kitchen. I heard him say something about putting the kettle on in a falsely bright voice. The living room was messy, with muslin squares screwed up on the floor, teddy bears and cuddly rabbits lying around, DVDs spilling out of box sets. The room had a musty, sweet smell, a faint trace of baby poo.

‘Yes. Well, ex-boyfriend. We came here to see her . . .’ I trailed off. ‘What happened?’

‘As she said, Mr and Mrs Tranham asked Laura to keep an eye on Oscar so they could grab an hour’s sleep. Oscar was asleep in his cot in the nursery upstairs. Do you have children yourself, Mr . . . ?’

‘Sullivan. No, I don’t.’

‘I remember when my daughter was a newborn. All you think about is sleep. It becomes a kind of obsession. When she woke up, Mrs Tranham looked at the clock and saw that two hours had passed. She had asked Laura to wake her after an hour but assumed Laura was trying to be kind. She went into the nursery. Oscar wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. And neither was Miss Mackenzie.’

‘She’s probably just taken him out for a walk,’ I said, not really believing it.

‘She didn’t take the pram,’ Edward said, and PC Davies
nodded
.

‘That’s right. And Mrs Tranham has a baby sling too, but that’s hanging up in the nursery. As far as the Tranhams can tell, Laura hasn’t taken anything with her. The bag they use to transport nappies in is still here. Mrs Tranham says that they had just used the last nappy from the packet and the new one hasn’t been opened. And you saw the comforter. That was left in the cot.’

‘Have you tried ringing her?’

I didn’t blame PC Davies for the look she gave me. ‘It’s going straight to voicemail, immediately, like it’s off. So you’ve had no contact from her?’

Edward spoke as I shook my head. ‘I saw her a little earlier. That was at four-thirty. Two and a half hours ago.’

‘Where was she?’

‘Standing in the garden. She was talking to a young woman called Alina, a Romanian woman.’

Davies had her notepad out now. ‘Alina? Do you have a
surname
?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘And what’s her relationship to Miss Mackenzie?’

I looked to Edward for help. He shrugged. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘All right. Let’s come back to that. You said something . . . about a
ghost
?’

‘Yes. Laura has a history of imagining spirits. When she told Daniel that she’d seen Alina, he assumed that she was seeing another ghost. We believe Laura thought she was a ghost too. But she’s very much alive. I saw her.’

The policewoman looked at both of us in turn, trying to work out if we were winding her up.

‘So Laura Mackenzie has mental health issues?’

‘No! I mean, she has been . . . acting strangely recently. But she’s not crazy. And she would never harm a baby.’

‘Or allow it to be harmed?’ the policewoman asked.

‘She drove Erin to the hospital, was there at the birth. Erin’s her best friend. She would never allow anything to happen to her baby.’

Davies made more notes in her pad. I saw that she had written the words ‘mental health’ and wished I hadn’t said anything about ghosts.

‘So,’ the policewoman began. ‘This Alina was here at four-thirty as well?’

Edward nodded. ‘That’s right. In the garden.’

‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

To reach the garden we had to go through the kitchen. Rob was in there with the male PC, holding a mug of tea close to his lips, not drinking it. I could hear something buzzing from upstairs.

‘Erin had to go and express some milk,’ Rob explained. ‘She should be feeding Oscar right now.’

Davies made a sympathetic face. ‘We’re going to find him,
Mr Tranha
m. I promise you.’ He was clearly desperate to believe her. ‘We need to take a look in your garden.’

Rob unlocked the back door and led us outside. It was dark, but the police officers had torches which they switched on, the twin beams crossing halfway down the lawn.

‘We hardly come out here in the winter,’ Rob said, as if he was apologising for the overgrown lawn, the mulchy leaves that swamped the flower beds.

‘They were standing right here,’ Edward said, indicating a spot parallel to the side gate. ‘Laura was here, facing into the garden, while Alina was here, looking towards the house.’

‘Alina?’ asked Rob. ‘Who the hell’s that? When did you see them?’

‘Could you hear what they were talking about?’ Davies asked, addressing Edward but placing a hand on Rob’s arm.

‘No. Laura doesn’t know me so I thought it was better to fetch Daniel, to get him to talk to her, confront her with the truth that Alina is real.’

Davies tutted loudly then walked off across the lawn towards the end of the garden, sweeping her torch beam left and right. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Some evidence that Laura had brought Oscar out here?

Edward and I tried to follow her but she told us to stay back.

‘Who the hell is this Alina woman?’ Rob pressed us. ‘What is going on?’

When I assured him it was all too much to go into now, pleaded with him to be patient a few minutes longer, he surprised me by acquiescing. I think he’d reached overload for the moment. He slumped against the house, chewing his fingernails.

Near the back wall was a little copse of apple trees and a shed where the lawnmower and gardening tools were stored. We could see Davies’s torch flitting about in the darkness. There was a creak and a bang, which I assumed was the policewoman yanking the shed door open.

‘Mr Tranham,’ she called a moment later.

Rob walked past us towards her voice and Edward and I 
followed
. When we reached the shed, Davies said, ‘When was the last time you looked in here?’

‘I don’t know. I think I cleared it out just before Christmas.’

‘Do you recognise these items?’

She shone the torch into the dark interior of the shed. I peered in, standing just behind Rob. There was a sleeping bag stretched out on the floor, and crisp packets and chocolate wrappers were scattered around it, along with several empty water bottles.

Rob’s mouth dropped open. ‘No. Well, the sleeping bag is ours, but it’s usually hanging there, wrapped in its bag, next to the other one.’ He pointed. ‘The rubbish . . . that definitely wasn’t here before. Oh my God.’

‘Looks like someone’s been living in your shed.’

‘Alina,’ I said. I guessed that she usually put the sleeping bag away during the day and took away the rubbish.

Davies rubbed her chin. ‘This kind of thing happens quite a lot. We often get calls from people saying they’ve found a homeless person squatting in their shed.’

‘Won’t anyone tell me who the fuck Alina is?’ asked Rob, looking at me, his fists clenching and unclenching like he was going to grab hold of me. ‘Is that who’s taken Oscar?’

‘In a moment, Mr Tranham,’ Davies said. ‘Come on, let’s go back to the house. Mr Sullivan, I need a full description of this Alina.’

She took her radio out and called in as we walked back towards the house, relaying my description of the Romanian woman we had left for dead in that house.

When we reached the kitchen, Erin had reappeared. She held a bottle of breast milk. Rob took it from her gently and put it in the fridge while Erin stared into space, seemingly lost. Capable, calm Erin was paralysed. She stared at her phone, as if it would give her the answer she so desperately needed. Where was her baby?

‘There’s another person we need to tell you about,’ Edward said. ‘Alina’s boyfriend. His name is Ion. There’s a third party too, called Camelia.’

Edward went on to tell the police officers about how he believed it was Ion who had thrown a Molotov cocktail into his office. He told them the bare, essential facts about everything else too. How Laura and I had met Alina and Ion. How we believed the
Romanians
had come looking for us, and why. I was glad he didn’t mention the house in the forest because as he talked Davies looked more and more like a woman who was paddling out of her depth, while Erin and Rob stared at us incredulously. Davies scribbled notes in her pad.

I explained about the break-ins, the dog attack, how I’d reported most of it to the police already. I was going to mention Jake too but could see that this could be a distraction.

‘The important thing,’ I said, ‘is that they think Laura is either holding or knows the whereabouts of the drugs they planted in our luggage. I bet they’ve got Laura and Oscar locked up somewhere now, and that they’re threatening to harm the baby if Laura doesn’t tell them what they want to know.’

‘Harm the baby?’ Erin shrieked at me and I flushed with shame.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean . . .’ Rob was looking at me like he wanted to kill me. Like it was me who had taken his baby. ‘They haven’t done anything violent so far.’

‘Apart from set a dog on you and chuck a fucking Molotov cocktail into this guy’s office!’ Rob’s face was purple with anger, a vein throbbing in his forehead.

‘Mate, calm down.’

‘Don’t fucking call me mate!’

‘I’m certain Oscar will be fine,’ I said, turning to Erin. She sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands, sobbing.

Rob pointed a finger at me. ‘This is your fault, you and Laura. We knew something freaky had happened to you in Romania and now we know what. You got mixed up with drug dealers. And you brought them here. You put my family in danger.’ His face twisted in fury as he jabbed his finger into my chest. ‘Why didn’t you warn us? If anything happens . . .’

There was nothing I could say. No way I could defend myself.

Davies stepped between us. ‘This isn’t helping. Mr Tranham, I need you to stay calm.’

Rob tried to get round Davies, to get to me, and the male police officer grabbed hold of Rob’s arm, holding him back.

‘Come on, sir.’

Rob shot me a look of contempt. ‘Where are they? These drug dealers? If you don’t help us find them, if anything happens to Oscar, I’m going to kill you.’ And he started to cry, his chest heaving as Erin pulled him towards her and they embraced.

I stared at them, trying to imagine their pain, knowing that this was worse than anything I’d been through. And in that moment I vowed to help them. I was going to find Laura and Oscar. I was going to end this.