Refugee

Chapter Twenty-Six - Time's Glory.

“Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;
To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,
To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,
To dry the old oak's sap and cherish springs,
To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,
And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel;
To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water drops.”

The Rape of Lucrece  - William Shakespeare

The phone was ringing... Amelie learned over to pick it up. Bazyli said he would ring in the evening.

“So did you get everything you needed?”

“Yes,” she told him without elaborating.

He sensed things weren't quite right. “Yes, that's it? What’s the story?”

“I’m just starting something, but it’s complicated.”

“That's what people say when they don't want to tell you anything.” He paused, took a breath, she listened. Of course he was exactly right, she didn't want to tell him.

“Are you okay? You sound kinda odd?”

“It's been a long day, and emotional.”

“I understand,” he said sympathetically. “It's always like that, refugees equal harrowing stories.”

It was much, much, more than that. She was prepared for some terrible histories, but not something that concerned people she felt she knew. And absolutely not to hear that one of those kids whose story she already knew a great part of, was dead.

Dead, killed in some stupid incident that should never have happened.

“You still there?”

“Yes, sorry.” She had to pull herself together.

“Okay, so I'll pick you up at ten tomorrow, at the hotel, and we will go and see Ariana.”

“Bazyli.”

“Yes.”

“I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Can you find out who the police Captain was that was involved recently in a hit and run where a refugee, a Syrian boy called Amar, was killed?”

“He's dead?”

“You know about It?”

“Of course... everybody knows about it, but I thought the kid was in a coma in hospital.”