Berzan nodded in approval and Meryem asked to be excused. After the meal Berzan invited Farood onto the balcony. He looked down on the spots of light in the harbour. Across the Bosporus, Europe glowed more brightly.
‘My boat is down there. Tell me, are you afraid of water? Course you are. Maybe that will help you stay afloat. I want to show you something. Sit down.’
Berzan left the balcony and returned with a sealed glass jar, full to the brim with greyish brown fragments and clumps. He placed it on Farood’s lap. ‘Have a look. Open it if you want.’
Farood held it up to the outside light. At first he thought the jar contained figs, but then he saw, looking out at him, pressed against the inside, was an ear. Turning the jar, he recognised the contents as fingers, thumbs and other unidentified portions of human flesh floating in an overcast liquid.
‘Pieces of people who wouldn’t pay me, so I made them leave something behind. I’d let them choose what part of them I was going to cut off.’ Berzan sniffed; he was about to broach a more delicate moment. ‘Back then, you and that other kid, you were too young, too fast, eh? What was the name of that Turkmen?’
Farood could only shrug, his mouth agape.
‘I know who you are. My memory’s not so good these days, but I remember your eye. I asked my Afghan and he made a call. You came from a cave. Maybe that’s why you didn’t mind the cellar so much.’
‘He was called Misha. My name is Farood.’
Berzan sighed. ‘There’s too many names for me in this work. You’re prepared to take risks, aren’t you? Maybe you like to do that. Tomorrow we’re going on a boat journey. Yes, it will be risky – but that’s why I chose you.’
Berzan showed Farood to his room.
Sleep came easy to him until his phone shuddered in his pocket. It was Atherton. ‘What yer saying, Roodie?’
‘Alright, Michael. What’s happening?’
‘Vinnie’s back. Delivery went alright, I’ve got some money for yer. Vinnie’s only going to make one more run, he reckons. Reckons the money’s to be made here. Farming them out to factories. What are they saying over there?’
‘Nothing much. There was a meeting of all the agents. I knew some of them from when I was a kid. It felt funny, yer know.’
‘Sounds like a right laugh,’ replied Atherton. ‘When you coming back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know? Need you back here. Those Syrians are fucking cheeky. The doctor won’t work anywhere.’
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow.’
Farood switched off his phone. Atherton was sound, he was strong, but he lived in a different world. He knew he wouldn’t be returning to Rotterdam, to Atherton and Vinnie. He had helped him escape from the jail – but then he had broken him out of the prison van. And besides, Atherton was only interested in him because he knew about agents and migrants and Vinnie didn’t. Vinnie was clueless. He had repaid them and was free to go, to work for Berzan – his former torturer. Berzan could no longer hurt him, though; he would take what he could from Berzan in return for the pain he had caused him. And then, he would cause Berzan some pain of his own.
*
The boat was a single-deck, two-berth affair named Paloma; the cabin was cluttered with fishing tackle, lifejackets and blankets.
‘We need to clear this out – this is where we sleep. I’m going to buy some fuel and some food.’
‘How far are we going?’
‘A day or so. To Dikili. She doesn’t move too fast, but she’s sturdy.’
Farood looked out across the velvet blue of the Bosporus to where it was rolling, churning. The day his brother had handed over the money to the Afghan, he made it clear that water wasn’t to be part of the journey. Stories of migrant drownings regularly made their way as far back to Baghlan province and such tales kept boys and men at home through the starving winters. It was the reason he had walked knee deep in snow for two days into Bulgaria from Turkey then spent a week hiding in a forest, waiting for his turn to cross the Greek border. He had lived outside in the mountains for months at a time with his father, and when other migrants sat down, he had remained standing. When they lay down and gave up, he sat down for a few minutes. He could endure more than most, but the world of the sea scared him.
They sailed south to where the Bosporus met the Sea of Marmara and the currents clashed. Up to then Farood had positioned himself at the stern, and with increasing confidence for a short while, he stood at the fore of the vessel. When the land to their left gave way to nothing but the chaos of water, he confined himself to the cabin, lying down on a berth.
Berzan looked over his shoulder from the wheel. ‘You don’t look at home. Bad memories of the boat to Greece?’
‘I walked. Through Bulgaria.’ Farood’s voice was weakening.
‘I know the way, know the agents. I have land crossings, sea crossings, just along the coast, no risk. I don’t need the Bulgarians. I have my own people, so I cut them out.’
‘Where will we take these people?’
‘We’ll take the Syrians to Lesbos. Thirty at a time, maybe more.’
Farood swung his feet down, stared out ahead for a moment before running to the side of the boat to vomit.
Berzan gave him some water before telling him to take the wheel. ‘Best place for seasickness. Hold the wheel, look to the horizon. See how far the coast is from us now? Keep it like that. I’m going to catch some fish. Eat fish?’
He fished off the stern and was frying sea bass within the hour. They anchored whilst they ate; a seagull steadied itself on the cabin roof.
‘What happens when it gets dark?’ asked Farood.
‘You can’t see. Sleep if you want, but we keep going.’
The sun rose over the Turkish coast, eventually revealing the Greek island of Lesbos to the west. By midday they were at Dikili, some seventy kilometres away from Lesbos. Farood tossed the rope onto the jetty, jumping after it. He looped the rope over an iron post and looked up at the white and terracotta houses and flats rising from the scrub hills. He was cured of seasickness and he felt ready to start work for Berzan.
Twenty-Seven
Humberside
Katz leaned towards the mirror to examine the lines around her eyes, the complexion that was flattening in tone. She took a step back from herself, smoothed down her grey jacket. Forty next month. What is the point of looking at yourself? By now you should be fulfilled; the mirror is telling you something you already know. Be resigned. She wondered if she was in the region of O’Grady’s sexual interest. If, indeed, such a locality existed. He was eight years younger than her and, she suspected, cossetting an OCD affliction. Much of what he said sounded pre-planned, his body language rehearsed. You could smell the spray starch off him. How tidy and ordered must his flat be, how disappointed, repulsed he would be by her shambolic house. She applied peach lip gloss. He would not be interested in sleeping with her, not even between his freshly pressed sheets. She didn’t really want to sleep with him. He was sufficiently feminine, but he was conceited. She imagined him walking into her bedroom and noticing the pile of dirty laundry next to the swollen laundry basket, having to listen to his religious convictions in the aftermath of it all. She just wanted him to want to sleep with her; or at least give the matter some consideration.
She hurried out of the staff toilets and into the main office with a pronounced sense of purpose. O’Grady glanced up from his screen, but she declined to look in his direction. Entering her own glass cage, she patted her lips with a tissue and signalled him in.
‘Morning, ma’am,’ he said crisply.
‘I stopped off at the path lab. The estimated time of death and entry to the water of the other two bodies matches the first. And they both have a Rotterdam connection.’
From the depths of her handbag she withdrew two plastic snap bags tha
t she tossed over to her sergeant. O’Grady held them up to the light as if they were antiquities.
‘A library ticket and a bus pass,’ she said.
‘Fingerprints?’ asked O’Grady.
‘Too long in the water, and I’m not sure people smugglers tend to borrow migrant’s library tickets, however…’
‘You never know.’
‘Say we assume the three bodies came from the same vehicle. What kind of vehicle are we looking for?’
‘How many people do you need to smuggle to make it worth your while?’
‘No idea, Gavin.’
He always savoured the rare occasions she used his Christian name. He continued, ‘They can’t have much money, can they, the immigrants? You’d need to maximise the return for such a risk, I’d say—’
‘It’s not Cluedo, Sergeant. Stick to what we know rather than our imaginations. An articulated lorry could not have got that close to the water.’
‘Or maybe they transferred the bodies.’
‘Three? Maybe more, into a Fiesta? Someone’s panicked. We’re looking for something between a people carrier and a container.’ She turned to her screen and began to ask questions of the internet instead.
He suddenly felt unwanted and, after a deferential delay, sought her attention. ‘Ma’am, have we definitely ruled out the immigrants being tossed from a boat?’
‘They were in boxes. Why put people in boxes if it’s a small boat? Why put them in boxes inside containers? Whoever moved them expected the boxes to be seen. The lifeboat man said he reckoned they went into the water from the north shore – that’s why they ended up at Spurn Point.’
Katz walked over to the laser jet and handed the sergeant a piece of paper that was a lorryload of work. She opened her door for him in case he was in any doubt it was time to get on with it.
‘There’s two ferries a day. Go a day either side of the estimated day of death, ask the ferry company for records of all vehicles of the sizes on there, coming this way. Then run the number plates against the traffic cams and PNC the owners. Let me know what you find.’
He took the instructions to his desk. He would find something; he would make sure of it. Not for the sake of the immigrants, but for her.
*
Not that far from the port of Rotterdam, Vincent and his nephew Michael Atherton were waiting pensively on two all-day Mediterranean breakfasts when it occurred to Vinnie that there was something he had taken as a given these past two months. A given which he should have questioned.
‘Can you smoke in this fuckin’ country?’
Atherton looked around the humid café and identified several suspects in black garb with shrapnel in their faces who were without roll-ups. ‘Not in here, you can’t.’
Vinnie shook his head in astonishment. ‘Takes the living piss. They’re selling drugs at corner shops and I can’t have a fag with my cup of tea?’
‘But that’s because weed isn’t as bad for yer.’
‘Don’t be starting that again.’
Vinnie and his nephew held widely contrasting views on drugs. Vinnie strongly disapproved of cannabis and the piss-boiling bores it attracted and spawned. Michael, he noticed, increasingly talked like one.
‘Thing is, Vinnie, cannabis, is completely natural. It’s hemp. It grows, yeah? I can’t see how a government can say to someone, “You can’t put that in your body.” And they understand that here.’
‘What they understand here is how to get a few quid out of hippies and hookers.’
The breakfasts arrived. Vinnie looked at the assortment of olives alongside his bacon and breathed in despondently; Michael rolled some falafel into a fried egg.
‘You know what?’ said Vinnie. ‘The sooner we leave this EU the better.’
‘You reckon?’
‘There’s people coming into the country and we don’t know who the fuck they are.’
Michael nodded as his uncle spoke.
‘The jail was full of them. And some of those Poles, they’d already done time in Poland. Bad shit. They don’t do no licence, they come straight over here, do the same shit.’ He paused, looked above him, nibbled at his forkful.
‘Thing is, though, Vinnie, we are bringing in a load of border-jumpers ourselves, aren’t we?’
Vinnie raised his voice down the aisle to enquire on the whereabouts of his extra toast; he didn’t lower it thereafter. ‘You know why we have to do what we do? Because the work I done, the work my people have always done – which is building that country of ours, the roads, the bridges, canals, the fucking houses – is now being done by the Eastern Europeans for half the money. An Englishman, an Irishman couldn’t live on it. Which is exactly what those fuckers in Brussels want. Everything done for a pittance by foreigners. Since I was being fucked over, I decided I might as well make a few bob bringing in the foreigners for them.’
Michael let it be known he understood.
With breakfast conquered, they headed back to the car.
Vinnie lit a cigarette. ‘Have you heard from Roodie?’ he asked.
‘The other day.’
‘So, what’s he saying? When’s he back?’
‘He didn’t say.’
Vinnie took a drag, exhaled through his nose. ‘He’s gone for good, Michael. I’m telling you – he’s gone, boy.’
Michael was suddenly gloomy at the notion that his friend, his best boy on the wing, had forsaken him. ‘No way. Roodie is sound.’
‘He’s an Afghan, Michael. I met someone who was out there, said half the Afghan Army was Taliban. Told me he must have shot fifty ragheads and they still kept coming. Whatever he said to you, he knew he was never going to stay with us.’
‘We could do with him at the hostel. They’re kicking off, yer know.’
‘That’s up to you now. I’m doing one last run and then I’m shutting up shop.’ Vinnie tossed his cigarette.
They drove out to an expansive supermarket to buy overdue food supplies for their tenants. At the hostel food had become as much a cause of conflict as any of the situations the people had fled from. People who worked came back to find the food they had bought from what little money Atherton doled out was gone. People who didn’t work, whose travelling money was long spent, stole from shops and from each other.
On that particular Friday afternoon, the Moroccan who worked at the flower depot for some euros in hand, came home to find the lamb casserole he had prepared the night before eaten by persons unknown. The dish lay poised on the draining board, the remains of a label with his name on, refusing to leave the scene. He marched around with the dish, demanding, ‘Who did this? Who ate the food that I worked for? I want to know!’ No one said a word until asked directly: ‘Was it you?’ Except the doctor, who maintained his silence, gathering up his daughter who had gravy stains on her romper suit.
Vinnie looked round at the new faces. ‘Where did all these come from?’
‘I dunno. Every time I put my head in here, someone else has rocked up.’
‘You need to put a lid on it.’
A man of six feet and more, wearing a black vest, black joggers and wiry body hair, stared out at Vinnie from the centre of the room. Vinnie’s return stare signalled to him, ‘You are in my house and this is more my country more than yours.’
Michael Atherton sidled up to his uncle. ‘They’re all asking when you’re taking them over.’
Vinnie left his eyes where they were, locked on Black Vest Man. ‘You choose, Michael, you know who’s been waiting the longest.’
Atherton pointed at the chosen passengers around the room. ‘That one, that one and… that one there… They’re all next. It’s up to you what you do about the doctor.’
‘Michael, son, everything I do is up to me.’
‘I know, just saying he has been here for a long time… but he’s got a wif
e and kid tagging along.’
Everyone could tell that transit arrangements were being made, and who was and wasn’t included. Two women sharing a bowl of noodles stood up and approached Vinnie, but he dismissed them. He was looking at the doctor, sat on a blanket under a window, writing something in a notebook. His wife and child were sleeping.
Vinnie squatted down beside them, whispered thickly to the doctor, ‘I need a word with you, in private.’
The doctor wrote one last word and closed his book.
‘What are you writing there?’
The doctor showed him a page of Arabic verse and Vinnie nodded, reassured by how unfathomable it looked. He led the doctor through to an empty room in the knock-through apartment.
‘I’ll be straight with you. I can take you, but I can’t take your wife and child.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why. You know how I take people. Everyone needs to be silent in the lorry. Not a peep on the ferry. Can’t do that with a child.’
Black Vest Man appeared in the doorway with an announcement. ‘I want to speak to you, boss, about my journey.’
Vinnie shrouded his annoyance under mock courtesy. ‘Yeah, well, I’m awfully sorry, but I’m with someone right now, as you can see, I’ll be with you in a minute, fella.’
‘I’ve been waiting for a week already.’
‘Then you can wait a little longer.’
They looked at one another full square in the eye and neither blinked. Black Vest Man retreated to the hall.
The doctor had made his decision. ‘I’ll go to the UK alone. Get asylum and then my family can join me.’
‘Sure? Be ready, we’re going tomorrow.’
Baghlan Boy Page 22
