Thirteen in the Medina

by Flora McGowan

  Graham eased his reduced bulk out of his seat and gestured to Keith and I to accompany him as he strode after his quarry. As is my normal habit, I had stowed my rucksack under the seat in front and stuffed my jacket into the mesh pocket containing the safety card and in-flight magazine and as neither Keith nor I had any duty-free purchases stashed overhead we therefore had nothing to retrieve from the lockers and were able to speedily follow Graham as he forged full steam ahead.

  As we stepped off the aircraft I noted placed to one side a wheelchair folded and stacked against the wall in readiness for the young man as suggested by the stewardess; evidently he had declined to use it, and sure enough just in front of us, I spotted him leaning heavily on Carole’s arm for support. Then we were inside the terminus at Heathrow, and following the crowds through the interminably long corridors.

  I put on a sudden burst of speed, surprising both of my male companions, however at the earliest opportunity (which was not as early as in some other airports I have graced) I dashed into the nearest Ladies’ loo for the necessary relief after a small bottle of wine, a glass of orange juice, two cups of tea and approximately three hours and forty minutes on the plane.

  When I emerged from the cubicle I was startled to notice Carole at the sink washing her hands; in my haste I had not spotted her enter the facilities area in front of me. A little self-consciously I approached a neighbouring sink and our eyes met in the mirror above. I felt myself flushing guiltily, although I had not intentionally followed her into the toilets, and her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she stared back.

  ‘Managed to drag your boyfriend away from her then?’ she sneered.

  Hastily I averted my eyes as I dried my hands, determined not to be drawn into any squabbles at this critical time.

  Outside in the corridor I rejoined my companions and we continued to track the trio in front who moved at a rather peculiar pace. At various intervals along our way to immigration and passport control we merged with passengers from other incoming flights, at which times the younger man would lean on Carole for support as if in pain and distress, and Gordon would attempt to clear a passage through the masses, pointing out the unwell traveller who needed to get through the arrivals process as quickly as possible. During the spells in between, when the crowd thinned and fewer people were about, the man seemed able to walk unassisted; he only appeared to be ill when there were people around to take note.

  Hence our following “chase” was unlike those in crime busting dramas, no dashing about and leaping over barriers, but an erratic pursuit that involving a change of pace from normal to the odd spurt of speed, interspersed by the occasional dawdle.

  Once in the passport control area Gordon seemed to metamorphose into a completely different person. Gone was the henpecked, often distracted husband, and in its place strode a confident individual, instructing other passengers to make way for the invalid, who once more leaned on Carole for support, as Gordon masterfully steered them through the masses. I noted with some surprise, that once again he was walking without the aid of his stick as, although he carried it in his hand, he seemed perfectly capable of walking through the long corridors without having to rely on it for support, only using it to point out some poster of interest on the wall to his companions.

  Graham, in an equally peremptory manner, directed Keith and I to follow him and after flashing some sort of ID card at an official, who was manipulating the waiting queues by means of strip cords and bollards, he opened up a new queue for us at one side with direct access to the official in a passport hut.

  Once through passport control Graham urged us on towards the customs area. I had just enough time to look around the crowds queuing in an attempt to spot the rest of our group. I spied the tall figure of Phil, his hair flapping as he moved, and then Keith and Graham were off and I could only spare a thought for poor Karen, abandoned by her husband as he proceeded with his duty.

  We had cleared the passport area quicker than the trio we had up until now been following and this gave Graham an opportunity to speak to the official in the customs office. Then it was just a matter of waiting until they arrived.

  I asked Graham why the young man had declined the offer of the wheelchair – surely that would have opened up a passage through the crowds more easily than Gordon just shouting “make way, make way” or whatever words he was using to facilitate their movement.

  ‘The wheelchair might look more official true,’ he replied. ‘People would let a disabled person through more willingly than someone like Gordon merely commanding passage. But if he had accepted that assistance then the cabin crew might be obliged to go one step further and there could even be an ambulance waiting for him, with real medical personal, not just ones with a first aid certificate.’ And here he winked at me as if suggesting he did not really believe that Carole had any such qualification after all. ‘She did leave her previous accomplice to collapse alone in the street, remember.’

  As he stood bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet in anticipation I realised he was enjoying himself; the fortnight’s “holiday,” tracking his prey, his “illness” and the deprivations he had suffered had all been in preparation for this moment: capture.

  But I thought confused, if Graham was on the trail of smugglers what evidence did he have? We had been seated behind the young man and I did not remember anything being passed across to him; only fresh sick bags and they had clearly been empty; indeed, he had not seemed in any fit state to receive anything more.

  And then there they were: three travellers, all walking normally now that they had passed passport control; three people seemingly fit and well, striding towards the exit wheeling their cases behind them, now trying not to attract any attention but to slip out the exit unnoticed.

  Cases! I had a sudden thought that Keith and I, as well as Graham, had bypassed the luggage carousels. As if reading my mind Graham whispered to me, ‘Don’t worry about your bags; Karen is dealing with that.’

  I hardly had time to spare a thought for his long-suffering wife as a uniformed official stepped towards Carole and the young man, and asked them to accompany him into a side room. A second man had positioned himself blocking Gordon from making any escape. I almost did not recognise Carole when she spun around, her face twisted with malice as she darted a look of pure evil and hatred towards us.

  Then in a whip-like movement, she tugged the scarf from around her neck and with a single fluid action had draped it around my throat and was pulling it tight, whilst at the same time backing away from the men, dragging me along with her. I tried desperately to claw at the material as the hem dug deeper and deeper into my skin.

  Out the corner of my eye I noted Gordon hunched over, his arms flailing out in front of him, his walking stick slashing at the ankles of anyone who approached him, proving that he carried it not so much as a walking aid but as a potential weapon.

  I heard a dreadful gurgling noise, then realised that the sound emanated from me. The young man had tried to make a run for it but had been felled with a rugby tackle by a uniformed official. Two more officers managed to overcome Gordon by approaching him from the rear.

  But still Carole pulled on her scarf, twisting the ends so that it furrowed into my neck. My eyes watered and a mist appeared obscuring my view. People were shouting. Then all I could hear was the pounding of blood and a ringing in my ears. I tried to call out but nothing emerged; I was beginning to find it difficult to breath. I began to feel detached, like I was watching it all happening to someone else, that it was not me having the life being slowly squeezed out of her.

  I rolled my eyes painfully, desperately towards Keith in one final plea for assistance. I saw him frozen rigid to the spot, restrained by an official, a look of horror on his face. I closed my eyes. I did not want that expression to be my final memory of Keith; I wanted to remember my friend as the handsome smiling young man whom I had first met at our local bus station.

  Sometime later, I am not sure how lon
g, after the paramedics had finished poking and prodding and someone had given me an ice cube on which to suck to ease my sore throat I was allowed to “speak” to Graham and Keith. I had refused to go to hospital until I knew that my friends were okay. By way of mime I managed to beg a scrap of paper on which to scribble ‘What happened?’

  One of the younger officers, with a cheerful round face, gleefully informed me that Graham had rounded on Carole from behind using the plastic fork from our in-flight meal. He had snapped off the ends leaving three jagged edged prongs, which he had stabbed into her bony hand and then scored long grazes from wrist, up along her arm causing that woman to be distracted long enough to enable others to overpower her and thus gain my release.

  And so, with a blanket draped around my shoulders I shuffled along, back to the customs office where the others were gathered. When I entered the room Graham enveloped me in a giant bear hug that threatened to squeeze the life out of me again and he only stopped after he heard my pathetic coughing noises and patted me on the shoulder instead.

  Across the room I spied Keith nursing a cup of black coffee, or it might have been tea, the usual pick-me-up handed around in such circumstances. He raised his head and gave me a weak smile. I guessed he was still in shock, more so than I; whereas I had been the person bodily threatened, he had witnessed the event.

  After the suspects had been searched Graham took the proffered sachet, ripped it open and carefully tipped the contents onto a piece of paper. I stared at the coarse grains as he gently swirled them around using the latex gloved tip of his index finger. I have never had cause to take rehydration powders but to my eyes the substance before me did not look much like a powder that I would want to dissolve in water and then drink. The particles just did not seem right; a motley mixture of greys and browns. The substance really did not appear to be medicinal; quite the contrary, I thought if ingested a person might be rather ill – much like the traveller on the plane.

  ‘What is that stuff?’ I enquired in a raspy whisper. I noticed that Graham did not take a pinch and then rub it along his gums to test it like a TV detective. ‘Cocaine? Some other drug?’ I could not imagine anyone trying to snort it; I was sure the shards would cause a sneezing fit at the very least.

  Graham shook his head. ‘Carrie, I work for the Art and Antiquities department, remember,’ he chided with a glint in his eye. ‘Not the drug squad!’ Then he became serious. ‘Microfossils,’ he replied softly. For a moment my mind wandered and all I could think of was ground up bone; I remembered reading that pre-Raphaelite artists used a pigment known as “Mummy Brown” due to the fact that one of its components was ground mummy bones.

  Graham smiled and shook his head when I mentioned this. ‘No, fossils of tiny creatures fitting on the proverbial pinhead, organisms that may once have been plant or animal. These little beauties are the key that can quite literally unlock a great deal of money. Having been extracted from a core sample, once analysed, if they are proved to be the right species, they could point to the location of a very lucrative oil field, the details of which, or to be more precise, the map reference, was printed on the paper you knocked out of the jacket pocket.’ As he spoke he glanced down at his injured hand, the one that had tightly clasped the scrap of paper that Carole had tried her best to get hold of, flexing his fingers as if to check that they still worked.

  Graham produced a hand lens from his inside top pocket. Then, after donning a surgical face mask and giving similar masks to Keith and myself, explaining that one breath could blow the sample off the desk and a sneeze could scatter the delicate minute particles across the room, he bent over the fossils, the lens held up to his right eye.

  After studying the sample for a few seconds he handed the lens to me and I gazed through it at the fossilized remains of countless tiny creatures, their shells recognisable to experts, however some seemed similar in outline to the specimens we had seen in the fossil workshop; there were round blobby ones, ones that looked like miniature seashells, pointed shells and even some comprised of coils similar to the much larger ammonites. After I had examined them I passed the lens to Keith, who gasped in wonder and I was thankful for the protective masks we wore otherwise, as Graham had warned, his evidence would have been scattered to the far reaches of the room.

  Graham carefully tipped the ancient remains back into the packet. ‘Of course,’ he added with a wry smile, ‘even the right species in the wrong proportions could spell financial disaster for someone who has sunk all his money into backing the wrong location. You see, not all of my work involves tracking smugglers of great hulking beasts like a Tyrannosaurus rex, and you would be amazed at the ways that people try to hide those monsters!’

  Later as Graham grabbed a cup of coffee while we waited for Karen to appear with our cases Keith asked what had made him suspect Carole and Gordon.

  ‘Basically, they never mixed with the rest of us,’ he replied. ‘I know on holiday some people do like to keep themselves to themselves, but in such a small group they just stuck out as being different, they did not act like normal tourists in the same way as the rest of the group.’ Although as he uttered this he cleared his throat as if to excuse his claim to be a “normal tourist.” ‘Which led me to ask myself what were they doing here.’

  I asked him why the man had continued with his “faked” illness once he had disembarked off the plane.

  ‘The three of them needed to get through the arrivals process and leave the airport as quickly as possible,’ he explained. ‘It may have attracted some attention but what if he had not continued to act the invalid and had suddenly appeared fit and well before they were through passport control? A fellow traveller might have raised some suspicion and alerted an official.’

  Graham further explained that while pilots and cabin crew have their bags checked and go through some forms of body checks often involving the removal of shoes and belts, the examinations are to look for weapons and sharp objects that could possibly fall into the wrong, i.e. terrorist, hands. In fact, he added before 2010 their bags were too large to be screened and so they used to be passed as “baggage handlers.” Whilst they have their toiletries checked the same as any passengers, the security measures are mainly to ensure that the staff are exactly who they say they are, and not imposters.

  ‘After all,’ he added, ‘if a pilot wants to crash a plane he – or she – is the one in charge of all that explosive fuel.’

  ‘So that is why you asked Carrie and I to be vigilant on the plane,’ Keith surmised. ‘Whereas a tourist’s bag might be checked for illicit souvenirs, cabin crew can carry smuggled artefacts onto the aircraft as no-one is checking for those types of items.’

  Graham nodded. ‘Although sometimes it might just be paperwork, documents or instructions that can be passed from one person to another, from the airline employee to the tourist - but this is a link in the ring that we needed to break. Plus, I needed your help in the airport once we landed. With three of them to follow it made sense to gather three of us together, and as I mentioned,’ he added still with that twinkle in his eye, ‘Enzo had given Carrie the all clear, and I extended that to you as well, although I knew I was taking a risk as you could, just could have been the replacement “victim” set to suffer on the flight home. So, three of us could tail the three of them if by any chance they had separated. Also you, my dear -’ he said turning to me; a term that normally gets my back up but it seemed inoffensive when Graham uttered it ‘- you were able to follow Carole into the ladies’ toilets; if I had had to tail her in there I think eyebrows would have been raised!’

  I smiled at his little joke and it hit me then how tense I still was after all the excitement of chases and arrests and worries whether “they” were out to get me – whoever “they” were.

  ‘And I am very grateful,’ Graham took my hand and gave it a squeeze, all smiles now vanished as he became serious once more. ‘Very, grateful; I could not have done this without you. However, I must confess,’ he
began and he had the grace to look embarrassed, ‘the real reason I asked you and Keith to help me keep tabs on Carole and Gordon was so that I could keep an eye on you two! I was supposed to keep you safe and out of harm’s way. And I failed miserably. I am so sorry, Carrie.’

  Suddenly the smile of triumph slid from his face and Graham shuffled his feet a little awkwardly. I tried to reassure him that I was fine, no lasting damage, but the words came out sounding raspy so I gave up and hugged him instead.

  Having missed our taxi home, and after Carole and Gordon had been led away and I had been examined and poked and prodded again by a doctor in a nearby hospital A&E who declared me fit enough to travel, Graham organised a car to take Keith and I home later that night, or possibly it was very early in the morning.

  We did the journey in reverse order so I got dropped off first, and I left Keith asleep on the back seat of the car, in the same manner as he left me sleeping over the previous two weeks.

  I did not even wake him to say goodbye.

  Epilogue – Home Again

  Carole’s smuggling ring uses the ammonite as their symbol and when I had mentioned owning an ammonite necklace she was unsure whether I was claiming to be one of them and trying to make contact. She admitted attempting to push me into the path of the horses, claiming not to have intended any serious injury but had hoped that a twisted or sprained ankle might have got me out of the way until she could have ascertained my identity and determined if I was indeed any threat to her.

  I never did find my hair scrunchy. I have no idea if I simply lost it or if the intruder in my room had taken it but it seemed such a silly thing to ask Carole or Gordon.

  And (so far) I still have not owned up to Keith that it was in fact I, and not Nancy, who tied the pink ribbon on the end of his beard.