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I thought he had the wrong child until I saw Agnesa in the back seat of the police car.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’ I whispered.
She took my hand, squeezing my fingers until they hurt.
Mama came to the door of the cottage when she heard the car pull up. Her hand went to her mouth, and she screamed so quietly that I thought only dogs could hear it because all across the village they began barking.
An older police officer waited until we were all seated on a sofa, side by side, Mama in the middle. He did not have a cruel face. He did not have a kind face either.
‘Mrs Osmani. I regret to inform you that your husband, Daniel Osmani, has been injured in an accident at the Kabazi slaughterhouse.’
‘What sort of accident?’ asked Agnesa.
‘A knife wound. Inadvertent. It is a dangerous job working with knives.’
‘Where is he?’ asked Mama.
‘Can we see him?’ I asked.
The policeman looked at us with no expression. ‘He was taken to hospital, but he passed away. His body can be picked up from Adjensi Funeral Home.’
With that, the police officer seemed to run out of things to tell us. English people would say he was ‘lost for words’. In Albania we said his mouth was as empty as his head.
He stood up. The young officer followed suit.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ said the older one, clicking his heels together.
‘I am also sorry,’ said his colleague.
After they had gone, Mama stayed sitting on the sofa. Agnesa made her a cup of tea. Nobody spoke. I went to the bedroom and looked at Papa’s things – his pipe and pyjamas and the book he had been reading, which had a bookmark between the pages, that I had made him at school, and which left tinsel on his pillow.
I crawled into his closet, among his winter clothes, and put my hands in the pockets, pressing my cheek against the wool, smelling his smell.
Later that evening, they brought Papa’s body home and put it in the kitchen on the table. Mama, Mrs Hasani, Mrs Dushka and Aunt Polina used warm water to wash him down, rubbing a sponge along his arms and over his hands and between his fingers. They dressed him in his best shirt and his brown suit and his polished shoes. They combed his hair and put rouge on his lips.
Later, I lay in bed beside Agnesa.
‘It is my fault,’ she said.
‘It was an accident.’
‘No. They killed him.’
‘Who?’
‘Who do you think?’
I put my arms around her. I pictured the baby growing inside her and wondered if it could hear my voice or feel my hand against her stomach.
29
Cyrus
The incident room reeks of coffee, fried food and something intangible that comes from late nights, poor pay and relationships under pressure. It is a different atmosphere than yesterday. More focused and urgent. Carlson and his team have twenty-four hours to either charge Angus Radford and Kenna Downing or release them.
Meanwhile, local police across the north of England are checking pop-up brothels and talking to sex workers and migrant groups and informants, hoping that someone will lead them to the missing women. With Arben’s help, a police sketch artist has drawn an image of Jeta that will be released to the media, along with a photograph of the other woman, Norsin Samaan, nineteen, from Aleppo in Syria.
Arben is seated at a desk in front of a computer screen, taking part in the modern equivalent of an identity parade. He is looking at mugshots and images of men who match a general description of the men in custody, to see if he positively identifies Radford or Downing.
