Songbirds(61)

‘Can I come in?’ she said.

‘Sure.’

She was wearing pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt. She had dark circles under her eyes. ‘I haven’t slept,’ she said.

I led her into the kitchen and put the coffee on the stove. She looked up at the wall clock.

‘My god, I didn’t realise it was that early.’

She seemed disoriented in the chair, trembling hands in her lap, shoulders sagging. She reminded me of a moth. Usually she was so put-together. This wasn’t a woman who cuddled or cried. She did not fall apart. Her name, Petra, means ‘stone’. I’d never really liked her, to be honest. She was the wall that stood between Nisha and me. Her, and the whole damn system.

The little bird hopped around on the windowsill, bobbing its head, looking at the world outside.

‘It wants to fly,’ she mumbled.

‘Yes. But it’s not quite ready yet. It won’t survive if I release it now.’ I placed the coffee in front of her and she took a few large gulps. ‘Watch it,’ I said, ‘it’s scorching,’ but she didn’t seem to hear.

‘I have some more information,’ she said.

I sat down opposite her. My heart beat fast but I tried to keep calm.

‘I was talking to Aliki last night. She said that on the night that Nisha went missing, she had put Aliki to bed and told her that she was going out to meet a man about birds.’

I straightened, heat creeping up my neck. ‘Who?’

‘Seraphim. According to Aliki, he was stealing birds out of the sky and Nisha wanted to make him stop.’

I felt sick.

‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘I’ve been up all night thinking, trying to work things out, but I’m missing all the pieces. If there is something you’re not telling me, Yiannis, I think now is the time to do it.’

She said my name with bitterness, as if she knew I was guilty of something. And I was. I could tell she knew by the way she had drawn her shoulders back now, challenging me. This was the Petra I knew.

‘Is there something I should know?’ she said.

I instinctively looked over to the spare room.

‘Look, I’m not messing about.’

‘Neither am I,’ I said.

‘What is this thing with Seraphim and the birds? I know you know something.’

I got up and asked her to follow me to the spare room. I unlocked the door and we went in. She looked around at the fridges, the lime sticks and the hunting gear.

‘Right.’ She opened the fridge closest to her, looked inside, turning her face away immediately, closing it. ‘So this is what you do.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘I got involved when I was made redundant. I got in and couldn’t get out.’

‘Nisha knew?’

‘Eventually, yes.’

‘She was trying to get you to stop?’

‘Yes.’ I felt a wave of guilt surge through me. So big that warm liquid came up to my throat, and I remembered again Nisha’s flesh and blood in the toilet.

‘And Seraphim?’

‘He’s above me. The middle man.’

‘How do they stop you from getting out?’

‘Usually arson. They come at night. That’s the first warning.’

‘And the second?’

I didn’t reply.

She nodded now and looked around the room, thinking.

‘So, Nisha went to talk to Seraphim. She wanted to help to free you. Could he have hurt her?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t sound too sure.’

I stood up and opened all the windows; my neck and face were on fire.

‘She went to speak to him, then she vanished. She went to speak to him, then she vanished. Do you understand that?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘We can’t go to the police.’

‘No.’

‘You need to find out what happened, Yiannis.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’

*

I called Seraphim and arranged to meet him that night. He told me he would be at Maria’s from 10 p.m.

‘Join me anytime you want,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there. I’m always there.’

In the meantime, I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t think about anything else. I was supposed to be putting the birds in their containers and sorting them for delivery, but I spent the whole day sitting on the bed where Nisha and I used to talk and make love, staring out of the window at the street below and trying to piece the story together: I asked her to marry me. She left holding the ring. She went to speak to Seraphim. She wanted to free me. She was not seen again.

That night, I walked passed the flyers of Nisha posted around the neighbourhood. Nobody had called Petra. I watched people walk by and Nisha’s smiling face looking out at them. They did not see her.

I found Seraphim sitting at a small round table near the bar. There was a young woman sitting with him, petite with large, brown eyes – like that of a child – hair as black as coal, leaning into him, smelling his neck.

‘Off you go,’ he said to her, when I arrived. She obeyed. I watched her as she walked over to another table where two old men sat smoking. One of them removed some food from his tooth with his finger. The other stubbed out his cigarette. Whose fag-yellow breath would she be inhaling tonight? I hated these men. I was not one of them, I was sure of that. Had Nisha become involved in sex work? Had she got herself trapped? Maybe she was desperate to make extra money, desperate to get out of here, to get back to Kumari. There was desperation everywhere in this place: it dripped from the windows in condensation, it made the tables wet.