Screams in the Dark by Anna Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

them up? Why?’
    ‘You’re the detective, Don. All I know is that this guy was terrified and I believe that something happened to his pal. I don’t think it was this vigilante mob, but it could have been, and I want to find out. I want to findEmir. I feel for the guy. I think something has happened to him. I’m going to ask around here – some of the other refugees – see if they know him or have seen him.’
    ‘Okay, Rosie. Give me a shout when you’re free and we’ll have a chat.’ He hung up.
    Rosie went along the corridor and knocked at the door where the two refugees had gone in. No answer. She knocked again, louder, and listened for any activity inside. Eventually she heard bolts being slid on the door and the key turning. The door opened only a few inches and the face of the older woman in the lift peered through silently.
    ‘Hello,’ Rosie said. ‘Sorry. I’m looking for Emir’ – she pointed towards his flat – ‘The man who lives there? I’m his friend. I’ve tried to phone him, but no answer. Have you seen him?’
    The woman shook her head.
    Rosie looked at her. ‘Please. Could you open the door for a moment? I’d like to talk to you. I promise I won’t harm anybody. I’m Emir’s friend.’
    Rosie heard footsteps in the hall and a man’s voice, then the door opened a little more when he removed the chain. The man’s expression was flat and his unshaven pale face looked grubby and pock-marked. He was smoking a roll-up cigarette.
    ‘What you want with us?’ He looked frightened.
    ‘Nothing,’ Rosie put her hands up, apologetically. ‘Sorry. I’m trying to find Emir, from the flat next to here. I need to talk to him. Have you seen him?’
    He shrugged. ‘We not know this boy. Not his name. But we not see him for …’ he shook his head, ‘some days.’
    Rosie watched the man and woman and as she looked past them she could see a toddler coming up the hall.
    ‘Can you tell me, did this boy live in the house by himself or with someone?’
    The man nodded. ‘Another boy. But I not see him for few days. We don’t know them. Just hello is all. They are from Kosovo. Only came last month. Not say much. We think they are brothers, but they say friends.’
    ‘Okay,’ Rosie said. ‘Thanks for your help. Have you not seen any of them all weekend?’
    The man shook his head.’No. I see one boy on Saturday morning. He go out in the morning, but I never see him after that.’
    Rosie’s head swam with alarming possibilities. What if they’d been watching him come into the station to meet her? Surely they wouldn’t snatch someone from the street in broad daylight, whoever they were … She should have driven him home. Perhaps Don was right and Emir must have done a runner, she consoled herself.
    *
    It was after ten in the evening by the time Rosie arrived at The Blue Note, and there was already a decent enough crowd from what she could see as she walked into the dimly lit basement bar. The jazz club, downstairs from Enzo’s Italian restaurant in Bath Street, was more for the purists than the boozed-up punters looking for a bit of late-night live music. The burst velvet sofas and old tablecloths gave it a kind of tatty, shabby-chic look that told you people who pitched up here didn’t come for theclassy decor. The Blue Note was the in place to go if you knew your jazz. It wouldn’t have been a usual haunt of Rosie’s, mostly because it was trad jazz. To her uneducated musical palate, that involved nervous breakdown-inducing continuous guitar plucking accompanied by a guy rattling a snare drum with brush drumsticks she’d have used to paint the skirting. TJ had laughed at her narrow view, but convinced her she had much to learn by bringing her on nights when the jazz was more akin to what she’d seen in the movie, The Cotton Club . And now, there was TJ, up there with his sax, playing a solo number under the spotlight, behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.
    Rosie didn’t think he