‘He’s called Seraphim.’
I tried not to react. I chose my words carefully. ‘Did she go to speak to him?’ I said, as gently as I could.
‘Yes. When we came back from the mountains. When she tucked me into bed, she told me that she was going out to talk to the bad man about the birds and that I should be a good girl and stay in bed. You know, because sometimes I need to wee and I knock on her door because it’s too scary at night for me to go to the toilet all on my own.’
I didn’t know that, but I nodded.
‘I think we should go back now,’ she said. ‘The waves are getting bigger. We can come again another night.’
I nodded.
‘Would you like to come up here again?’ she said.
Once more I nodded, but I found that I couldn’t speak.
The man with the army boots is walking out of the water, wet to his ribcage. He is completely dressed in black, with a windbreaker that has an orange trim around the lapel. Guided by the light of the moon, he bends down to pick up his phone, which he has left on the yellow rock by the side of the lake, and makes his way up the crater until he comes across the decomposing hare. He flashes the light of his phone over the corpse. A beetle climbs out of the empty eye socket.
The man walks away from the lake, picking up a black rucksack that he’s left beneath a wild thyme bush; he catches the smell as he bends, and he pauses for a moment and inhales the scent with closed and distant eyes. Perhaps he is trying to replace the smell of death, which is clinging to his nostrils. With the rucksack over his shoulder, he walks a few yards to his car. He does not turn on the headlights as he drives away.
20
Yiannis
E
ARLY IN THE MORNING, THERE was a knock at the door. I jumped out of bed thinking it was Nisha, but Petra was standing there, looking pale as the moon.
‘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.’