‘Where?’
‘It’s this shithole in Transylvania. He told me that he’d seen her, that she went to Bucharest. But I might as well have been searching for a virgin on—’ He named the housing estate where he and Camelia had grown up.
‘Fuck.’ She sighed, then switched into a tone of voice he knew well. The sweet, seductive Camelia. ‘Can I ask you a favour? Can you lend me some money?’
He roared with laughter. ‘I’m skint, Camelia. I have no money. An eviction notice came yesterday. I’m going to have to get a job. Luckily I know a lot of dealers but . . .’
She cut him off. ‘I’ve got some money issues myself,’ she said. ‘You know I owe a lot of money to the guys who helped get me over here? I’ve been paying them off by working at the club. Now they’re saying they want their money back faster. They want me to go on the game.’
‘Right.’
‘To become a prostitute, Ion.’
‘That’s . . . bad?’
‘Fuck you,’ she spat. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. He waited while she gathered herself. ‘So. Have you found any evidence that Alina sold the stuff? Or that she’s been trying to sell it?’
‘No. None.’
‘Shit. Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps the English couple did bring it back here after all.’
‘But you said . . .’
‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘I know what I said. I thought that was the most likely explanation . . . Hello, are you still there?’
‘Yes. I’m just wondering. If Alina didn’t take the stuff, what’s happened to her? Where is she?’
‘I don’t fucking know. But I bet our English friends do. I thought you’d be able to find Alina, that she’d leave a trail like some kind of punk slug. But now . . . the Brits are all we have. Our last chance of getting that money. Do you agree?’
Ion nodded.
‘Well?’
‘Sorry, I was nodding yes.’
She made an exasperated sound. ‘I’m desperate, Ion. If I can’t get my hands on some cash quickly I’m going to have to run.’ Now she began to cry, a sound Ion couldn’t bear. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
‘Come on, calm down.’
‘You’ve got the keys to their place, haven’t you? Send them to me. When they’re out, I’ll go in, take a look around. Even if I don’t find the stuff they must have loads of things I could sell. The guy looks like the type who’d have a top-of-the-range computer. She’s probably got jewellery. There might be cash lying around. Please, Ion.’
He agreed to call her back then looked around the room, at the filthy carpet, the crappy furniture, the eviction notice lying face-down on the side table. He thought about how he was going to have to start selling drugs for some jerk who would treat him like a slave. But could he scrape together the fare to England? Maybe if he went by train. It would take a lot longer, but if he sold his Xbox, the remainder of the weed, went to visit his aunt and helped himself to some of her jewellery . . .
He cursed the idea that he’d wasted the past three months. But Camelia was right. The Brits must know something. He went online and searched English news reports. There was nothing about a British pair returning from Europe and handing in a haul of cocaine, and he was sure that would have made the news. He knew they hadn’t been arrested at customs. That meant there was still a chance they had the cocaine or, if they’d sold it, the money. It was better than sitting around here doing nothing. And at the end of it, there was a chance he’d be rich.
He’d always wanted to see England too.
‘Hold off,’ he said, when he called Camelia. ‘I’m coming over. Your knight in shining armour.’
Chapter Forty-Eight
Today was the day she was going to do it. Put an end to it. She giggled at the thought of his face when he came into the room and found her lying in a puddle of her own blood. What would he do? Would he cry? The notion made her giggle again, the laughter bubbling through her like water surging through an unblocked pipe. For months, laughter had seemed like something she would never experience again—like beer and pizza and soft sheets and shopping and bus rides and hair dye and friends and beaches and TV and books and music and cuddles and happiness. But now, now she’d started, she couldn’t stop. Blood, blood, glorious blood, she sang to herself, changing the words to an English song she’d heard when she was a little girl, and she stroked the veins on her wrists and wondered it if would hurt and whether she’d care. And as suddenly as it started, the giggling stopped.
She had lost count of how long she’d been here. After the old man came and took Luka away (little Luka—she couldn’t remember what he smelled like anymore; could barely recall what he looked like), she’d stopped counting sunsets. All the days, the long-short days, blurred and warped and ran together like a painting in the rain. All she knew was that it had got colder and colder in the room, that even with all the blankets wrapped around her she still shivered. She was sure Christmas had come and gone. It was a new year now.
She spent every day lying on the bed, fantasising about revenge. The cop, Constantin—she would push him from a great height onto spiked railings; they would pierce his arsehole, disembowel him while she shook with laughter. Laura and Daniel, for their pathetic attempts to save her—she would make him watch while she slit Laura’s throat and bathed in her blood, and then she would cut off his cock and make him eat it before hammering a nine-inch nail into his puny chest. The old man, whom she hadn’t seen for ages—he had a very special punishment awaiting him. She whiled away the hours daydreaming about sulphuric acid and knives and vinegar and ropes and hammers and pliers. Sometimes, she became aware that she was speaking her fantasies aloud—and that the monster was listening, excited by what he heard, pulling off his clothes. Those were the worst times.
The monster climbed into her bed every two or three days, more frequently in the middle of the month. While he did his thing—it never took very long—she imagined them in Hell together. But he would be a condemned soul and she would be a fallen angel, one of Satan’s army, and they would spend an eternity of torture and suffering together.
Every day she hoped he would kill her so she could go to Hell and wait for him.
Sometimes when he was on top of her, she would look over his shoulder and watch a crack appear in the centre of the dim room, a tear in the fabric of the world, throbbing at the edges, and she would imagine herself stepping through it, escaping this world. In these visions, she didn’t go to Hell but back to her old life, the city, and she would run through the streets, dodging traffic, laughing, dazzled by the lights and drunk on lovely exhaust fumes. The monster couldn’t follow her there. Sometimes the crack appeared when he wasn’t around, during her daily forty-five minutes of freedom, but when she stepped towards it, it would seal, like it had been zipped shut, and vanish.
Her period had come again this morning. Dragoș hadn’t seen it yet. He came into her room, as always, at first light, with her breakfast on a tray. Water and porridge. He unfastened the clamps that held her ankles in place and left the room, allowing her forty-five minutes to exercise and wash. She knew he would inspect her when he came back, to see if she was pregnant. The blood disgusted him. She, as a woman, disgusted him. She could see it on his face. That must be why he never stayed to watch her when she washed or used the toilet—lucky, because her bladder would have exploded by now.
For a while after Luka was taken she had thought that maybe she could make him like her, feel some affection for her. Maybe she could persuade him to let her go. But when she talked to him it was as if she was speaking a foreign language; he didn’t react. She kept trying, telling him about herself, her family, trying to make herself more human, to create a bond. Until one morning as she was speaking he punched her in the mouth and split her lip. She didn’t talk to him again after that. She hadn’t spoken for weeks.
Alina was
hed and used the toilet in the corner of the room. How long did she have left before he came back and chained her up again? Not long. She needed to act now. She started giggling again when she pictured him finding her, but forced herself to stop. Blood, blood, glorious blood looped in her head and the crack hovered in the centre of the room, luring her with its fake promise. She ignored it. There was only one way out of here.
She crossed to the window and listened. The forest was still, the birds silent. The house was silent too. Usually around now she would hear a toilet flush somewhere in the house. The monster taking his morning dump.
The window was covered by three rough, vertical boards, each one nailed to the window frame at each corner. A sloppy job. The nails hadn’t been driven all the way in. For weeks now, during this forty-five minute period, Alina had been working on the middle board, alternately tugging at its edges and gripping the heads of the nails securing it and pulling on them, ignoring the pain in her fingertips. For days, none of the nails had shifted at all. But, like the sea eroding a pebble, she worked at it repeatedly until, one morning, the first nail moved a fraction. Encouraged, she redoubled her efforts until another budged, and then another, and then the last. She had to go slowly, working at loosening each nail’s hole so that it could not only be pulled out but pressed back into place with her aching thumbs so the monster wouldn’t notice anything. With all of the nails loosened, her leverage on the board increased, and increased yet again when she could get her fingers behind it and properly work at it.
And then, yesterday morning, the board and all its nails came free in her bloodied hands.
She had kissed it, a tear rolling down her cheek.
Now, it was time.
She pulled the nails out and tugged the board away from the window. Just as it had when she had first glimpsed it yesterday, the beauty of the scene beyond brought tears to her eyes. The snow-tinged trees, the clouds, the sky. She had thought she would never see the world again. It hurt her eyes and a line from a poem came to her, tumbling out of her subconscious. Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. She stood transfixed for a moment then heard a toilet flush in the bowels of the house and was startled into action.
She went to the bed and pulled the filthy sheet from the mattress. It was easy to tear a strip off; she wrapped it around her hand and went back to the condensation-streaked window. She raised her fist and punched the glass between the remaining boards as hard as possible.
The window shook but didn’t shatter.
Taking a deep breath, she tried again. This time the window broke, a crack snaking across its middle. Panting slightly, Alina pressed against the glass, both hands wrapped in the sheet now, until a section fell away, bouncing down the outside of the house. She caught her breath, certain he would hear, that he would come running and stop her. But the house was silent. With her fingers still inside the sheet, Alina tugged at the broken glass, pulling away a perfect shard.
With a final glance towards the door, and the empty cot, she counted to three, determined to do it before she lost courage. She couldn’t stay here any longer, not one more single day, and she closed her eyes as she sliced the glass across her arm and watched the blood as it flowed from her and dripped on the floor, watched it like it was somebody’s else’s arm, somebody else’s vein.
She crumpled to the ground.
Chapter Forty-Nine
She was still breathing when Dragoș 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 would 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.
br /> 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 and 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, the 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.