Chapter Five
Dr
Olivia Matthews was running late. That was fine with Sasha: the
waiting room was the best part of his visits here. It was so
peaceful. Heavy wisteria blossoms shifted in the breeze outside the
open window. The carpets were plain but thick, the colours neutral.
Everything costly, designed to soothe... Fragrant coffee was
waiting on the hob, freely offered along with a pile of fresh
croissants and Danish pastries.
No
wonder Sasha felt as if he spent his time here in a kind of dream.
The existence of such places would have been beyond his imagination
if he had never met Laurie. He remembered the mobile clinic set up
in the mahala by the few brave souls willing to come and doctor the
rabble there. Sasha had been there because he’d drunk polluted
water and was racked with enteritis. A baby had died in its
mother’s arms while he’d waited. She’d wept, but not with shock.
Only a dull resignation.
Yes, it
was peaceful here. Sasha could work. He spread his papers out on
the polished-oak table. His mobile flashed—a text from Laurie, also
running late; apologetic and amusingly misspelled. Apparently his
Tub had stopped at South Ken for no bloody goddamned reason at all.
Sasha texted him back, sympathetic to the vagaries of Tub
behaviour, telling him not to rush, and have a wash while he was at
it.
Very funny. Sasha, can’t we get a car?
No. It’s London. We don’t need one.
Ah, reason not the need!
King Lear doesn’t need a car either. Shut up. I’m trying to
work.
The case
was a tough one. Sasha scanned the file, thoughtfully tapping the
end of his beautiful Faber pen—a birthday gift from Laurie—against
the desk. Yosiri Cuza ran a grocery store in South Norwood. He was
kindly, well liked, respected by his neighbours. He worked all the
hours God sent. He was also illegal, having come in with a batch of
Bucharest refugees, and for some reason—ignorance, maybe, or fear
of rocking the boat—had failed to finalise his registration.
Someone had reported him, and he, Mrs Cuza and their three small
children were scheduled for deportation next month. The conflict
he’d fled from was over. Cuza would probably not be killed for his
political views upon his return: only marginalised, kept from any
chance of finding work, driven deeper and deeper into poverty until
his voice was silenced.
It was
his own fault. All he’d had to do was fill out the paperwork. Sasha
respected the laws of his country of adoption, and he couldn’t help
everyone. He turned the pages of the file. He looked at the
photographs of Yosiri Cuza and his wife upon their arrival, up
against a wall in an interview room at Heathrow. Blank-faced with
trauma, the flash bouncing off untold depths in their eyes. Not a
word of English, the report noted, and no interpreter available for
their dialect. They’d slipped away somewhere between the airport
and the detention centre. The system had lost sight of them after
that.
Yes,
Sasha respected UK law. He couldn’t do otherwise, having thrived by
its mercy, found work and a home beneath its wing. A British
Interpol agent, John Kucharski, had been instrumental in getting
him legal, finding him the training he needed for this job he loved
so much. The UK authorities were sometimes incompetent, sometimes
cruel, always desperately overloaded. Just occasionally they were
graced by men like Kucharski, who shone such a light that Sasha had
vowed to take his example of the system at its best and work
accordingly.
To do
his best to rectify mistakes. He tapped the pen again, then ran its
tip down the list of witness names. Here were the good citizens
who’d decided to inform on Mr Cuza for the benefit of the
community. Unimpeachable characters all of them, not even
requesting anonymity. One name rang the faintest bell, a delicate
Roma wind-chime, in Sasha’s head. He sat back, letting details of
the dozens of cases he’d dealt with in the past year scroll through
his mind. He had a good retentive memory, helping to make up for
his years of missed education. Pearson, Colin Pearson... A solid
English name. Nothing to attract notice, except that—yes—it had
cropped up in three other deportation trials. Very keen and
observant, Mr Pearson. He belonged to the UK Independent Party.
Nothing wrong with that, except that Sasha’s network of traveller
friends had told him to look out for them. That their right-wing
members often cropped up at BNP rallies, heart-shaped Union Jacks
held high. Banners informing anyone who’d glance their way that
Britain was full up...
Distasteful, but not enough. Sasha frowned. There was more.
Kucharski had been very open with him. He’d made sure that none of
the thugs who’d raided the Birchwood Romani camp had been able to
hide behind Sir William Fitzroy’s police-commission shield.
Kucharski had shown Sasha names, partly to forward his own
investigation, partly to help Sasha understand why and how Mama
Luna had died.
Colin
Pearson—not unimpeachable at all. A bigot with a history of violent
attacks upon immigrants. The legal aspects of deportation didn’t
fall within Sasha’s remit, but he knew Cuza’s lawyer. A quiet chat
over coffee was all it would take.
The
wisteria shadows shifted hypnotically over the file, making the
words drift and dance. Sasha had been free of nightmares for the
three nights since Saturday, but he’d slept badly. He yawned.
Olivia popped out of her office to say sorry for making him wait,
an apologetic cuckoo from a clock. Once more Sasha gestured to her
not to worry. Laurie texted again. His tub was stuck at Earl’s
Court now. If they had a car, Laurie pointed out, they could run
down to Rye at the weekends, or Brighton or the New
Forest.
Sasha
sat back and let the shadows caress him. No need to tell Laurie
about Pearson. Laurie would listen to Sasha on the subject of his
work for as long as he wanted to talk, lost in admiration for
anyone who had a proper job. But Mama Luna’s death weighed on
Laurie as if Sir William’s actions had been his own, and this was
only a coincidence. A useful one which might bring Pearson’s
motivations into question, and make the prosecution look twice at
their other witnesses as well...
This was
good. Sasha felt as if he could rest now: the case had been
bothering him. He closed his eyes.
When he
opened them, he was on the floor. His upturned coffee cup was
halfway across the room. A long streak of coffee stained the pale
carpet, stark as blood. His lungs were filling and emptying like
ash-clogged bellows and he was making noises, alien moans or sobs
that seemed to come from the pit of his gut. He stopped them with
an effort. His paperwork was scattered all around him.
Laurie
was there. Dr Matthews too—one of them on each side of him, both
looking distraught. Laurie was on his knees, the waiting-room door
open as if he’d just arrived in a whirlwind and skidded to a halt.
Poor Olivia was leaning over him, breaking her no-contact rules to
pat him gingerly on the head.
Laurie
had no rules. Sasha scrabbled backward and was caught. He twisted
round, burying his face in the dear familiar dark. There was a dead
baby, flaring fires, an old woman dying in his arms. He retched in
silent horror and fought not to vomit on Laurie’s beautiful
shirt.
Laurie
held him tight. “God almighty, Olivia. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was late. I was just finishing up with my last
appointment and I heard a crash. Is this what his nightmares look
like?”
“Yes, sometimes. But he’s never had one during the day like
this before.”
The
fires died. Sasha became fully aware of the two kind, innocent,
well-intentioned people he was scaring so badly for no good reason.
He lifted his head. “Laurie. Dr Matthews... I’m so
sorry.”
Laurie
stroked his face. “Don’t be daft.”
“Weren’t you at South Ken? Stuck in a Tub?”
Olivia
frowned. “Oh, dear. Is he often confused afterwards?”
“No, no. That was just me—I spelled a text to him wrong. That
was twenty minutes ago, love. I came as fast as I could, and I
heard you yelling from halfway down the corridor, and... there you
were.”
Here I am. In sunlight, surrounded by wealth and by
friends. Mortified, Sasha got up, Laurie
steadying him. “Sorry,” he said again. “God, what a mess. The
carpet...”
“Don’t worry about that.” Olivia was gathering up Sasha’s
papers, tucking them back into his satchel. “Now I can ask for a
new one. At least you managed to miss most of your files. Come on
into my office now.”
You could get the carpet cleaned,
Sasha reflected dazedly, following her. Two hundred square feet,
thick-piled, it would sort out the floors of five Romani traveller
vans at least. Now it would end up in the landfill skip on a dump
site whose beady-eyed CCTV cams forbade even that much benign
pilfering. Olivia was a nice woman—liberal, concerned for the poor.
It was just that she lived in a world—Sasha’s world too now—where
such thoughts need never occur.
***
“So, Sasha—do you think it likely that, when you have these
dreams, your mind is attempting to redress the balance between the
poverty in which you used to live and your relatively comfortable
circumstances now?”
Sasha
hid a smile. Olivia was a good shrink—perfect, he imagined, for
Marielle Fitzroy—and she’d certainly nailed some of his waking
thoughts. “Perhaps.”
“Well, that’s not uncommon. Do you think we might ascribe it to
a kind of survivor syndrome, a conviction of inherent unworthiness,
despite your work with the Guidance Council and everything else you
do to assist new immigrants now?”
Sasha
met and held her sincere grey eyes. She led very well from the
rear. Never told him what to think, but offered him good solid
reasons for thinking as she did. Laurie liked her too. As usual,
he’d asked Sasha if he’d prefer to go in on his own, and Sasha as
usual had asked him to stay. He kept well in the background, but