voluptuously built, raven hair falling past her shoulders to her middle back, lips a rich purply-red, eyeshadow a striking blue. She wore a slinky top, one size too small, tight jeans, high heels.
‘Irena has told me much about you.’
‘I’ll bet.’
Irena blushed again.
It was warm enough for them to be sitting at one of the pavement tables outside the cafe where Irena worked.
‘So,’ Kiley said, ‘you and Irena, you’re from the same part of Romania?’
Adina tossed her head. ‘No, not really. I am from Constanza. It is on the Black Sea coast. Irena came for one year to teach in our school.’
‘She taught you? Irena?’
‘Yes.’ Adina laughed. ‘She is much older than me. Did you not know?’
‘Not so much,’ Irena protested.
For a moment, Adina touched Kiley’s arm with her own. ‘I am only nineteen, what do you think?’
Kiley thought he would change the subject. He signalled to one of Irena’s colleagues and ordered coffee for himself, mineral water for Irena, for Adina Coke with ice and lemon.
‘So what are you doing in London?’ Kiley asked, once Adina had offered them both a cigarette and lit her own.
‘I am dancer.’
‘A dancer?’
‘Yes. Perhaps you do not believe?’
Kiley believed her, though he doubted it was Ballet Rambert. ‘Where do you dance?’
‘Club Maroc. It is on Finchley Road.’
‘I have seen her,’ Irena said. ‘Pole dance. It is remarkable.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘I study for three weeks,’ Adina said seriously.
‘Pole dancing?’
‘Of course. Table dancing also. I have diploma.’
Irena leaned forward, glass in both hands. ‘Adina thinks I should take lessons, go and work with her.’
‘Instead of this, of course. With me you can earn two hundred, two hundred fifty pounds one night. Here you are slave.’
‘At least,’ Irena said, ‘I keep on my clothes.’
Adina poked out her tongue.
Kiley saw her again two weeks later, unannounced in his outer office, her hair tied back in a pony tail and her makeup smeared. ‘Adina, what is it?’
She looked at him helplessly, suddenly awash with tears.
‘Come through here; come and sit down.’ Helping her first to the couch, he hurried to the bathroom he shared with the financial consultant upstairs.
‘Here. Drink this.’
She sipped from the glass of water, then set it aside. Dabbed at her eyes.
‘All right, now tell me; tell me what’s wrong.’
It was enough to set her off again, and Kiley pressed several clean tissues into her hands, sat back in the chair opposite and waited for her to become calm.
After several moments, she blew her nose and reached inside her bag for a cigarette; while she fumbled with her lighter, Kiley fetched the saucer that served as an ashtray and placed it near her feet. An ambulance siren, sudden and shrill, broke through the steady churn of traffic passing outside.
‘Coming to this country,’ she began falteringly, ‘it was not easy for me. I pay, I have to pay much money. A lot of money.’
‘How much?’
‘Five thousand pounds.’
‘You had that much?’
‘No, of course not. I pay it back now. That is why… why I work as I do. I pay, each week, as much as I can. And last night… last night the man who arrange for me to come here, he tell me I must give him more. Five thousand more. The same again. Or he will report me and I will be sent home.’ Ash spilled from the end of her cigarette and she brushed it across her jeans. ‘Since Ceausescu, there has been much change in my country. My parents say, yes, this is better, we can do, say what we like. Travel if we want. But what I see, there is no work. No money. Not for me. For Irena, maybe, she has qualifications, degree. She can work there if she wish. But me… you think I can dance in Bucharest, earn money, wear nice clothes, you think this?’
Kiley didn’t know what he thought. He got to his feet and didn’t know where to go. The light through the window was muted and pale, the sky a mottled grey.
‘What if you refuse to pay?’
Adina laughed: there was no pleasure in the sound.
‘One of the other girls did this. He cut her face. Oh, not himself. He told someone. Someone else.’ Lightly, she touched one hand against her cheek. ‘Either that or he will have me sent back home.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You know what will happen to me if I go back home? Where I will be? Standing beside the road from Bucharest to Sofia, waiting for some lorry driver to pull over and fuck me in his cab for the price of a meal and a pack of cigarettes.’
The room was suddenly airless and Kiley opened the window a crack and the sound of voices rolled in; early afternoon and people, some of them, were heading back to work after lunch. Others would be waiting for the first performance at the cinema up the street, going into the bookshop downstairs to browse and buy.
‘This man, the one who says you owe him money, does he have a name?’
‘Aldo. Aldo Fusco.’
‘You want me to talk to him?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, please, if you will.’
‘When are you meant to see him again?’
‘I don’t know. For certain, I mean. Sometimes he comes to the club, sometimes he sends message for me to meet him. Usually it is Soho, Berwick Street.’ She placed the emphasis on the first syllable, sounded the middle letter. ‘He has office above shop that sells jewellery.’
‘You meet him there, his office?’
Adina shook her head. ‘Coffee bar across the street.’
‘If he contacts you, phone me,’ Kiley said, giving her one of his cards. ‘Let me know. Meantime, I’ll do what I can.’
‘Thank you. Thank you.’ She caught his arm and kissed him hard, leaving what remained of her lipstick like a purple bruise beside his mouth.
There was little he could do but wait. Walking in and confronting Fusco direct, always assuming he could find him, would likely cause more trouble than it was worth. For Adina as well as for himself. So Kiley waited for the phone to ring, attended to other things. One morning, after meeting Kate for coffee in Maison Bertaux, he strolled up through Soho and located the shop in Berwick Street, costume jewellery in the window, the door leading to the upper floors firmly closed, several bells with no name attached. In a cafe a little way up the street, half a dozen men, leather-jacketed, dark-haired, sat around a table playing cards. When one of them chanced to look up and see Kiley through the glass, he held his stare till Kiley turned and walked away.
Two more days, three, then four. Irena came across from Cafe Pasta, concern clouding her eyes. ‘I went to the club looking for Adina and they told me she didn’t work there any more. That is all they would tell me. Her flat, the place she shared with two of the other girls, most of her clothes have gone too.’
‘The girls, did they have any idea where she went?’
‘No. All they knew, that man came to the club, the one she owed money to. The next thing she was packing her things into a bag, there was a car waiting downstairs.’
Irena sighed and closed her eyes and Kiley placed one hand on her shoulder and she lowered her head until it
