Could it be… Burim?
50
Orla wasn’t quite sure what she had expected Burim to look like, but it wasn’t this person in front of her, sat on the tailgate of a flatbed truck, shivering under the flag of Albania wrapped over his black puffa jacket, the ripped jeans he was wearing wholly inappropriate for the French winter. She had imagined him taller, broader, with maybe a predatory look in his eye. But this boy – this young man – was all of five foot seven, with a buzz cut and a slit razored into his eyebrow. But she could also see what had attracted Erin. He was very good-looking, with the kind of lips women tried to replicate with overlining and his eyes were light brown, not quite amber, not quite hazelnut.
‘Here, drink this,’ Orla said, handing him a plastic beaker of something Jacques had given her before he left to continue looking for Erin once it was established that Burim did not know where she was.
‘What is this?’ Burim asked, looking at the offering as if it might be poison.
‘It’s coffee, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Please, you’re cold. Just drink it.’
‘There is no alcohol?’
‘No.’
He took the cup then, drinking it down as if he hadn’t had anything for hours. He probably hadn’t.
‘Listen, Burim, I know I asked you this already but do you know where Erin is?’ Orla asked.
‘No,’ he said, his voice laced with concern. ‘I tell you before. We made a place on the map, halfway from where she stay and the airport. But, when I get there she is not there and I cannot contact her. I call her forty-eight times until my battery dies.’
‘OK,’ Orla said. ‘So you walked all the way from Grenoble to here?’
‘For some of the time I run.’
Was he for real? She knew how far that was. It was a crazy decision to make. A decision you would only make if you were utterly stupid or… in love. She swallowed.
Burim handed back the cup. ‘We need to go now.’ He jumped down from the back of the truck.
‘You can’t go,’ Orla said. ‘You’ve been out in this weather for hours and?—’
‘I am not sitting when Erin is out in cold. Why is she not where she say? Why is her phone not work?’
‘I don’t know,’ Orla said. ‘But maybe her battery has died too.’
‘We need to find her.’
She definitely didn’t disagree about that, but Jacques had told her to stay here until the team had thoroughly searched their quadrant.
‘Burim, is there anything else Erin said about meeting you that might help us know whereabouts she’s gone?’
He was pacing now, that nicked eyebrow raised like it was helping his brain deliberate. ‘She say that Saint-Chambéry is a safe place. That everyone is welcome. That there is a nice ladywho likes Tarantino and has a shop that makes hot milkshakes. She says that it is quiet but that sometimes quiet is nice.’
Orla swallowed. Erin had told Burim all this about the little village she assumed would not have enough going on for her always-in-need-of-entertainment sister.
‘She said there was no place to make her nails nice.’
OK, that sounded more like Erin.
‘I said I did not care about her nails.’ And then Burim growled and it took Orla aback. ‘Where is she? Do you think she is with someone else? Because if she is with someone else I will have to fight him.’
Suddenly Orla’s phone erupted into life from the pocket of her jeans.Jacques.
As Burim began swinging punches in the air like he was practising for some kind of duel, Albanian flag still around him like he was actually about to enter a boxing ring, Orla pulled out her phone and answered.
