Songbirds(71)

23

Petra

‘S

O, WHEN DID IT ALL begin?’ I said. ‘You and Nisha? If you don’t mind me asking . . . ?’

Yiannis and I had set off for Limassol. I had the radio on low. It was raining hard, so we drove with the heat on, windows up. We were passing an orchard of orange trees and then a farm. I opened the window a crack and breathed in the cold air; the smell of earth and manure rushed in.

‘Two years ago,’ Yiannis said.

‘When you first moved in?’

‘Yes. Well, that was when we started talking. It took some time after that, to get to know each other.’

I thought he might say more but he was staring into the distance, at a village on a hillside.

‘How did you keep it a secret for so long?’

‘She would come and see me a few nights a week. She’d speak to Kumari at 5 a.m., always on Sundays and Tuesdays, sometimes other nights too, and then leave mine just before 6 a.m. so that she could get back to her room before you woke up.’

I kept my eyes on the road but I could see in my peripheral vision that he was looking at me now, perhaps waiting for my reaction.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘I wish Nisha had told me.’

He didn’t respond to this. I mean, what could he say? I would never have accepted it then. I was too greedy, I needed Nisha for myself – and for Aliki.

I never would have considered her right to her own life.

I was embarrassed and ashamed, because I had been so self-absorbed all these years, and I hadn’t noticed. I wondered – would I have been different if Stephanos had still been alive? Would he have kept me in check? My world had become so narrow it hardly even included our daughter. I had missed so much of Aliki’s life, and it was right in front of me. What had she been showing me that I couldn’t see? What had she been saying all these years that I couldn’t hear?

And then there were the birds. Yiannis bringing thousands of songbirds back to his apartment, selling them on the black market, being involved in what I knew to be a highly criminal organisation. Ahead, the sea was agitated by the rain. We were nearly there.

*

Tony was sitting in his glass booth. The atmosphere at the Blue Tiger was different today, perhaps because it was a weekday. There was a Cypriot man behind the counter making sandwiches. A few customers were dotted about at various tables and there was no music blasting from the back hall, no one walking around with trays of food and drink. It was as if the other Blue Tiger had been something I had seen in a dream. But then I spotted Devna, coming out of the kitchen area towards us. This time she had on bright red lipstick. She was wearing a different pair of dark blue jeans with a pink and white checked shirt that revealed a soft cleavage.

‘Madam,’ she said. ‘And sir.’ She nodded at Yiannis. ‘Very nice to see you here again, madam. Mr Tony will be ready in only five minutes. I will bring you both a drink?’

Yiannis shook his head. He looked yellow. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

I asked for a black coffee with no sugar.

Devna went off to fetch the drink while Yiannis and I stood there awkwardly, until Tony lifted his arm and waved us in.

Yiannis shook his hand and introduced himself, simply with his first name. He looked like he was there to close a business deal, with his crisp white shirt and grey twill trousers. He was even more handsome now next to Tony, whose white hair was wild and uncombed, while large sweat marks drenched the material under his armpits. A cigarette smoked on its own in the ashtray.

He shook my hand too and we all sat down. Tony eyed Yiannis and picked up his cigarette, taking a long drag of the stub, a long stem of ash falling to the floor by his feet. He stamped on it as if it might cause a fire and said, ‘So, Yiannis, right? What brings you here today?’

‘Nisha and I are close friends.’

Tony raised his eyebrows. At that moment Devna came in with a tray of coffee and biscuits. She had made one for Yiannis too, and he took it out of courtesy. Tony turned the fan on and the smoky air circulated in the booth.

‘Is that a new pair of jeans, Devna?’ he said, and Devna smiled at him with bright red lips. She placed the plate of biscuits on some paperwork on the desk, winked at me and left.

‘They never learn, these girls,’ he said to us now. ‘Her employer is a middle-aged widower who treats her like a princess. He’s bought her a car, he buys her new clothes every week, he’s now given her a credit card with unlimited funds. So, tell me, why do you think that is?’ He smiled, revealing yellow teeth, but his eyes were attentive and sharp and he fixed his gaze on Yiannis, who shifted in his seat and took a sip of coffee. ‘Anyway, I trust that you are both here because you care about Nisha. I have some rather troubling news.’

Yiannis placed his coffee on the desk and sat upright. I saw that he was gripping his knees with his hands.

‘Since you came to see me, Petra, two more people visited me. One was a Romanian maid, who works on the outskirts of Nicosia. She came here to tell me about a childhood friend of hers, Cristina Maier, also Romanian, who has disappeared with her daughter, Daria, who is five years old. The young girl lived here with her mother. As a Romanian citizen she was able to do so. It turns out that mother and child went missing two months ago. The friend has tried everything to raise the alarm, but her employers and police are not interested. The second is again a woman from Romania, Ana-Maria Lupei with her daughter, Andreea. They were reported missing last Wednesday, exactly a week ago, this time from another town near Nicosia, and again she had her young daughter with her. Her employer, an old veteran, came here with his son to speak to me just yesterday. Apparently, she had popped out one evening to meet a friend. She took her daughter with her – and they didn’t return. The old man was beside himself with worry. He is very fond of them both. He went to the police and found the encounter futile.’ Tony shrugged. ‘In both cases, the women disappeared without warning; in both cases, friend and employer insist that it was out of character, that they left without belongings or passports, and in both cases the police were not interested in pursuing an investigation. The only difference here, however – and what is even more disturbing – is that these two women have disappeared not on their own, but with their daughters.’