Songbirds(72)

Tony was silent now, letting his words sink in. He held his cigarette with his elbow on the table, looking from me to Yiannis and back again.

Yiannis inhaled deeply and his breath came out in fragments. I did not turn to look at him. I couldn’t. Any hope I might have had drained out of me: the disappearances wove together now in a complicated web. It had become so much bigger; something dark and wrong clawing at the edges of the booth.

Tony threw his cigarette butt in the ashtray and lit another. The flick of the lighter was loud, the flame cracked into existence, the smoke travelled around us.

Yiannis suddenly stood up, brought his hand up to his face, brought his palm down over his eyes and mouth.

‘Are you OK, Yiannis?’ I said.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just don’t understand.’

‘Clearly,’ Tony said, ‘they must be connected. It’s too much of a coincidence. There has to be one person or a group of people behind this. It’s transpired that one of the women was going out on a date. I have no information about the person she was intending to meet –I’m working on that – but she let one of her friends know before leaving home. This confirms, more so, that the police are wrong. These women did not just decide to run away to the occupied territory in the north. I’m going to go back to the station tomorrow with all the facts I have here before me.’ He placed his hand on the notebook. ‘And I’m not going to leave until they agree to take this seriously.’

Yiannis was still standing, his head bowed as if he was praying. Without saying anything, he sat down again and placed his hands on his knees, as before, except this time the anguish was evident on his face.

‘Do I have your permission to share the information that you’ve given me about Nisha?’ Tony now asked.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Do you have anything that you could add?’

There was a pause. Then Yiannis spoke, his voice gaining strength as he did so: ‘We now know,’ he said, ‘that Nisha was heading out to meet a colleague of mine. His name is Seraphim Ioannou. He and I are involved in an illegal network involving poaching. Songbirds, specifically. Nisha had found out and had arranged to meet him. Apparently, she never turned up for the appointment.’

Tony’s eyes turned to slits. He opened the notebook and asked Yiannis to repeat the name. ‘Do you have proof that she was going to meet him?’

‘Yes, Seraphim has confirmed it to me.’

Tony nodded and scribbled down a few more notes. Then he closed the pad, leaned back in his chair, looking now for the first time through the glass at his restaurant that had begun to fill up, considerably.

*

We drove back in complete silence. The sun vanished into the sea as the afternoon turned late. Aliki would be home from school by now. Mrs Hadjikyriacou was collecting her and probably keeping her company with her stories, while Ruba made them something warm and fragrant for supper.

Yiannis stared at the rain ahead beating down on the windscreen and only spoke when I turned into Nicosia.

‘Do you mind if I turn the heating off ?’ he said

‘No, of course not.’

I flicked my eyes towards him and noticed that his neck and face were red. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking but no words escaped my lips.





It has been raining so much that the lake has overflowed. The tunnel of the mineshaft has started filling with water.

The rain has washed away the ants and the maggots from the hare, and the mice have run for shelter. Along its hind legs there are tufts of rain-drenched fur, but mostly the skin has been stripped away. The rain falls onto its open wounds, it falls into the open space where its eye once was, into the open space where its heart once was. A part of the ribcage is visible, like a new moon.

The rain continues to fall into the red water of the lake, it pounds down upon the yellow stone, it slides down the rusty skeleton of the gallows frame and into its deep mineshaft. There, on the surface of that dark water, is the white shimmer of material – drenched linen – wrapped around something unknown. Only a tiny bit is visible, like a small, white mountain rising out of darkness, like the tip of a glowing iceberg.

In the guest house, the man and the woman lie side by side on the double bed: she is on her side, facing the window where the rain streams down; he is reading the news on his phone. Its light illuminates his face. He is young still.

The woman reaches for the brochure on the bedside table and flicks through it.

Let’s go to the red lake tomorrow, she says.

The red lake? he asks, distracted.

Yes, I told you about it. There was a copper mine there once. There is a red lake there now, as red as Mars, and people say it is very strange and beautiful and otherworldly. We can see the gallows frame too. What do you say?

Yes, the man says. Sounds wonderful.





24

Yiannis

S

ERAPHIM PICKED ME UP IN the early hours of Friday morning, while it was still pitch-black out. The streets glistened from the past few days of rain. I had all the gear ready and was waiting for him out front, as usual.

Without a hello: ‘Did you complete the deliveries?’

‘Yes,’ I said, getting into the passenger seat and clicking in my belt, after I had put all the stuff in the back of the van.

‘When?’