They sign to each other.
“Zala.”
“Where is she from?”
“Afghanistan.”
I take the photograph from my pocket. Sister Vogel takes it from me. The reaction is immediate. Zala shakes her head adamantly. Fearfully. She won’t look at the image again.
Sister Vogel tries to calm her down. Her voice is soft. Her hands softer. Zala continues to shake her head, without ever lifting her gaze from the floor.
“Ask her if she knows Samira.”
Sister Vogel tries to sign but Zala is backing away.
“I need to know where Samira is.”
The nun shakes her head, scolding me. “We don’t frighten people away from here.”
Zala is already at the door. She can’t run with the soup weighing her down. As I move to follow her, Sister Vogel grabs my arm. “Please, leave her alone.”
I look at her imploringly. “I can’t.”
Zala is on the street. She looks back over her shoulder. Her cheeks are shining under the streetlamps. She’s crying. Hair has escaped from beneath her hijab. She cannot spare a hand to brush it away from her face.
The DI isn’t answering his mobile. His battery must be dead. Dropping back, I stay behind Zala as she leads me away from the convent. The streets and canals are no longer familiar. They are lined with aging, psoriatic houses, subdivided into bedsits, flats and maisonettes. Doorbell pushers form neat lines.
We pass a small row of shops that are shuttered and locked. At the next corner Zala crosses the road and enters a gate. It belongs to a large, rundown apartment block at the heart of a T junction. The shrubs outside are like puffs of green against the darkness of the bricks. There are bars on the downstairs windows and shutters on the upper floors. Lights burn behind them.
I walk past the gate and check there are no other entrances. I wish Ruiz were here. What would he do? Knock on the door? Introduce himself? No, he’d wait and watch. He’d see who was coming and going. Study the rhythm of the place.
I look at my watch. It has just gone eight. Where is he? With luck, he’ll get my text message with the address.
The wind has picked up. Leaves dance with scraps of paper at my feet. Hidden in a doorway, I’m protected by the shadows.
I don’t have the patience for stakeouts. Ruiz is good at them. He can block everything out and stay focused, without ever daydreaming or getting distracted. When I stare at the same scene for too long it becomes burned into my subconscious, playing over and over on a loop until I don’t register the changes. That’s why police surveillance teams are rotated every few hours. Fresh eyes.
A car pulls up. Double-parks. A man enters the building. Five minutes later he emerges with three women. Neatly groomed. Dressed to kill. Ruiz would say it smells like sex.
Two different men stop outside to smoke. They sit on the steps with their legs splayed, comfortable. A young boy creeps up behind one of them and covers his eyes playfully. Father and son wrestle happily until the youngster is sent back inside. They look like immigrants. It’s the sort of place Samira would go, seeking safety in numbers.
I can’t stay here all night. And I can’t afford to leave and risk losing my link to her. It’s almost nine. Where the hell is Ruiz?
The men on the steps look up as I approach.
“Samira Khan?”
One of them tosses his head, indicating upstairs. I step around them. The door is open. The foyer smells of cooking spices and a thousand extinguished cigarettes.
Three children are playing at the base of the stairs. One of them grabs hold of my leg and tries to hide behind me before dashing off again. I climb to the first landing. Empty gas bottles have collected against the walls beside bags of rubbish. A baby cries. Children argue. Canned laughter escapes through thin walls.
Two teenage girls are sitting outside a flat, heads together, swapping secrets.
“I’m looking for Samira.”
One of them points upstairs.
I climb higher, moving from landing to landing, aware of the crumbling plaster and buckling linoleum. Laundry hangs over banisters and somewhere a toilet has overflowed.
I reach the top landing. A bathroom door is open at the far end of the corridor. Zala appears in the space. A bucket of water tilts her shoulders. In the dimness of the corridor I notice another open door. She wants to reach it before I do. The bucket falls. Water spills at her feet.
Against all my training I rush into a strange room. A dark-haired girl sits on a high-backed sofa. She is young. Familiar. Even dressed in a baggy jumper and peasant skirt she is obviously pregnant. Her shoulders pull forward as if embarrassed by her breasts.
Zala pushes past me, putting her body between us. Samira is standing now, resting a hand on the deaf girl’s shoulder. Her eyes travel over me, as though putting me in context.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
In textbook English: “You must leave here. It is not safe.”
“My name is Alisha Barba.”
Her eyes bloom. She knows my name.
“Please leave. Go now.”
“Tell me how you know me?”
She doesn’t answer. Her right hand moves to her distended abdomen. She caresses it gently and sways slightly from side to side as if rocking her passenger to sleep. The motion seems to take the fight out of her.
She signs for Zala to lock the door and pushes her toward the kitchen where speckled linoleum is worn smooth on the floor and a shelf holds jars of spices and a sack of rice. The soup canisters are washed and drying beside the sink.
I glance around the rest of the apartment. The room is large and square. Cracks edge across the high ceiling and leaking water has blistered the plaster. Mattresses are propped against the wall, with blankets neatly folded along the top. A wardrobe has a metal hanger holding the doors shut.
There is a suitcase, a wooden trunk, and on the top a photograph in a frame. It shows a family in a formal pose. The mother is seated holding a baby. The father is standing behind them, a hand on his wife’s shoulder. At her feet is a small girl—Samira—holding the hem of her mother’s dress.
I turn back to her. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Please go.”
I glance at the swell of her pregnancy. “When are you due?”
“Soon.”
“What are you going to do with the baby?”
She holds up two fingers. For a moment I think she’s signing something to Zala but this has nothing to do with deafness. The message is for me. Two babies! Twins.
“A boy and a girl,” she says, clasping her hands together, beseeching me. “Please go. You cannot be here.”
Hair prickles on the nape of my neck. Why is she so terrified?
“Tell me about the babies, Samira. Are you going to keep them?”
She shakes her head.
“Who is the father?”
“Allah the Redeemer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am a virgin.”
“You’re pregnant, Samira. You understand how that happens.”
She confronts my skepticism defiantly. “I have never lain down with a man. I
