‘How old is your daughter?’
‘Six. Seven, seven. In July. She’s just a little girl.’
‘You are British?’
‘Australian,’ he said.
‘You have no papers, no money, no ID?’
He swallowed. ‘Billie. Billie’s got the bag, hasn’t she?’
‘What is your name?’
‘Jesus!’
The policeman leant in and murmured in Dutch.
‘He says there is a bag and passports.’
‘I want to go now,’ he croaked.
She backed away subtly.
‘You are depressed, yes?’
‘Oh yes,’ he admitted. ‘You could say that.’ They’ll take her away, he thought. These people will take her away if you don’t straighten up. But he saw the quack’s eyes on the straining veins in his arms, following them like a map of his hopeless travels. She was wondering if he would burst. He was interested himself. Was this when it would happen, when he’d burst like a watermelon under a car wheel, go off in a curtain of stale juice?
‘I just want my daughter.’
‘She is safe,’ she crooned. ‘She is safe.’
He got up, unfolded himself, licked his lips. She watched him cross the cell and come back.
‘Can… can you tell me your name, please?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’
The floor was gritty and suddenly unbearable. The idea of Jennifer was simply a joke, just the notion of her. He was just a raw hole. There was nothing in him, he knew now, nothing to make an explosion, no mad fit of energy to bust him out of here. There just wasn’t any juice left.
‘You are from Australia.’
‘Yes.’
She whistled. ‘Such a long way.’
‘Yes,’ he murmured, feeling it.
‘How… how long have you been in Holland?’
He tried to think, to find his way back through all those streets and lights and bars but he couldn’t see where they began.
‘I know,’ he stammered. ‘I know that.’
‘You are restless.’
‘Scared,’ he breathed.
The uniform opened the door and spoke to the doctor. Scully stopped and watched.
‘Coffee?’
‘What time is it?’
‘Two.’
‘Please. Don’t take her.’
‘Be calm.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He began to weep and stopped.
‘You can cry.’
‘Today,’ he said. ‘We came to Amsterdam today.’
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Lie down.’ Her hands were warm and kind. He felt the plink of his eyelids against his face. She knelt beside him on the vinyl mattress, her downy upper lip quivering into a smile. She looked rag-arsed with fatigue.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘about Australia. The animals with pockets. I want to know.’
Fifty-one
AFTER ALL THE QUESTIONS, Billie sat with her mug of milky tea and ate the cake. It was dry and crumbly. People came and went. The police station smelt of disinfectant. The lights made her squint. She was tired. She thought about Dominique, everything she knew about her. Dominique was pretty. Kind of pretty. She had small hands and her apartment was full of sad photos. She was nice, Dominique, but she watched you. Carefully, like she didn’t know what made you work, like she just didn’t get kids. She looked at Scully sometimes. Billie saw her. He didn’t know how she looked at him. Like he was a cake or something. Maybe she loved him. Billie didn’t care. No one loved him like she did. That was a fact.
Dominique had a mole on her arm. Her shoes went kind of outwards when she walked. The floor of her apartment was all checked with wood. Sometimes, driving trucks across it Billie would look up and see the big poster on the living room wall. A dark face. White words, ATELIER CINQ, PHOTOGRAPHIES. And Dominique’s name. LATOUR.
That was it. That was her name.
Billie put down the mug and the rest of the cake and went to the desk. The phone book was there like a brick. Two policemen told jokes by the window.
AMSTERDAM SCHIPOL
TELEFOONGIDS
PTT TELECOM
She opened it, saying the alphabet in her head. Telefoonnummers. Alarmnummers. Phones rang at desks everywhere. A siren wound up right outside. Dominique had bad breath, that was the other thing.
latour, d herengr. 6 627 9191
The page sounded like rain as it tore softly down the spine. She folded it neatly down into a parcel and put it into her pack.
‘You want more cake, Billie?’ called one of the cops, the one with all the questions before.
She shook her head. He turned away to finish his joke. Billie shifted the pack with the heel of her boot. On the strap was the number Scully had written that day on the road. The postman. Two numbers, she had. She lay down across the bench and went to sleep with sirens all around. In her dream she had wings, silver wings.
Fifty-two
SCULLY WOKE and Van Loon was taking his pulse again. She had fresh clothes on and smelled of soap.
‘All that boose,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was a lot.’
‘You are strong.’
He shrugged, tried to muster some confidence. ‘I feel better.’
‘Good.’
‘Am I crazy?’
‘Not so much. Sad, maybe.’
‘You look sad yourself,’ he said, surprising himself.
‘No,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Crazy to have this job.’
‘Is Billie still here?’
She nodded. ‘She is like you?’
‘What will the charges be?’
‘No charges. Keep away from the dildos.’
‘Yes,’ he said meekly. ‘You too.’
• • •
THEY LED HIM UP THROUGH the tunnels into the fresher air. Amidst the snarls of desks and glass partitions he signed forms with his hands shaking. A meek daylight tinted the windows. He saw Billie standing by the glass. She waved minutely, face compressed. He felt a kind of remorse he had not felt before, a sense of humiliation that flattened even his relief. They could have taken her. He would have deserved it. He dropped his head a moment, unable to look. The cops seemed relieved to see the back of him. He watched her shaking their hands. A new shift straggled in. He stepped out to meet her.
Fifty-three
FROM THE BIG HIPPED LINE of mountains a mist comes rolling and turning in the frozen light of morning, the sky grinding silent against the earth like the dead against the living. The stones of farm walls creak. Ice holds the grass stiff; the hoofprints of cattle are dead with it. At the head of the valley the lichened crosses lean into the sod and the lanes and boreens meander after their own shadow. In the sheds the slurry steams and the milk comes hot and ringing. Fields hummock and slant all the way to the bare and overreaching oak, it’s a lake of frozen, stippled mud. Above it, the sunless monolith of the castle is ruled by the weft of birds. Rooks launch from the sills of a hundred slots and windows, across ash wood and lane. They settle on the smokeless chimney of the bothy on the ridge, cranking their heads warily. A sculpture of frozen tyremarks is set in the mud before the house. A vapour rises from it, from every surface, every thing. The day hesitates a moment. Nothing moves. Then, from the north, from someplace else, a wind springs up and day comes.
Fifty-four
A SILKY DRIZZLE WAFTED DOWN through the shadows of busted empty warehouses and ships’ masts in the morning light. Billie and Scully picked their way round ochre puddles and crippled bikes with the salty stink of the sea blowing in their numb faces. On the scabby embankment above the wharf were ragged deck chairs and rusted barbeque grills and weeds. Sticking up out of the dirt was a silver slipper. The whole dock looked like a war had been there. Piles of sodden clothes, mattresses, a clock, bent sunglasses, books lying open like fallen birds, a flat soccer ball with a pool of frozen rainwater melting in its cavity. From huge smashed windows hung twisted banners and stained bedclothes. A dog pressed against a wall, wary, and some scruffy boats lay on the water like more rubbish.