by Mark Dawson
He reached up with his left hand, shuffling a little closer to reach the handle more easily, squeezed the handle and yanked the door open.
The second smuggler was watching a film on an old iPad. He was older than the man Milton had tossed overboard, but still young. He had his feet propped up against the dash, both hands laced behind his head and the iPad resting in his lap. He turned at the sound of the door opening, the sudden movement dislodging the iPad so that it fell onto the seat and then into the footwell. The man put his feet down and unclasped his hands so that he could start to reach for the glovebox, but there was no way that he would be able to get there before Milton jammed the pistol into his ribs.
“Shush,” Milton said, putting his finger to his lips. “Put your hands on the dashboard and spread your legs.”
The man hesitated, unsure of what to do.
“Now.”
Milton frisked him. In his inside pocket were a passport and a wallet that was thick with banknotes; he tossed them onto the seat. He patted the front pockets of his black jeans and took out a butterfly knife. The man had a Samsung phone in the opposite pocket and nothing else of note.
“Get into the other seat.”
Milton trained the gun on him as the smuggler shuffled across the seats. The man caught the hem of his trousers on the handbrake, jerking his leg until he could free it, and then raised his hands before his chest as he half-turned in the driver’s seat. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“About?”
“We’ll get to that.”
“And then?”
“Depends on what you tell me.”
Milton quietly closed the door and settled into the seat. The gun was still in his right hand, his elbow resting against his ribs, his arm held steady and his aim true. The smuggler looked down at the ugly pistol and then up again at Milton. He could see that he was uncertain, but not yet cowed; he would have liked to crack him across the scalp with the butt of the pistol, but that would have left a mark and Milton couldn’t be sure that he mightn’t still need him. An obvious wound would risk giving the game away.
“What’s your name?”
“Hamza.”
“Very good, Hamza. Next question: the girls in the back,” he said, giving a small nod of his head to indicate them. “Where are you taking them?”
“Italy.”
Milton switched the gun to his left hand, resting it in his lap. “And then?”
“I don’t know.”
Milton slapped the man in the face. He struck him with an open hand, not hard enough to leave a mark, and, when the man looked back again, his eyes burning with fresh anger, Milton cuffed him again.
“Try again, Hamza.”
“Or what? You will slap me?”
Milton shuffled closer, grabbed the man by the hair and dragged his head back. He pushed the muzzle of the gun into his mouth.
“No,” Milton said. “I’ll shoot you.”
Hamza’s eyes bulged fearfully.
“Aren’t you curious why your friend hasn’t come back?”
Hamza couldn’t speak with the gun in his mouth.
“He’s not coming back,” Milton said. “He’s dead. I threw him overboard. And unless you start doing what you’re told, I’ll kill you too.”
Hamza couldn’t swallow, and a trail of saliva ran out of the side of his mouth.
“Shall we try again?”
He nodded.
Milton withdrew the gun and aimed it at him again. “Good. So, like I said, I have some questions for you. Shall we start with that easy one? The girls. Where are you taking them?”
“France.”
“Go on.”
“There is a place where the immigrants go, where they try to get into Britain.”
“Outside Calais? The Jungle?”
“The Jungle, yes—the camp. There is a meeting there.”
“What happens?”
“They will be sold.”
“Who are you meeting?”
“A man from London. The Albanian. I do not know his name. He looks at the girls. Checks them out. Perhaps he sees one he likes. He buys her. Perhaps he does not. He pays me or he does not pay me, and I leave.”
“The girls?”
“Any girl he does not buy, she is free to go.”
“And if he does buy?”
“They go with him. That is not my concern.”
Milton tightened his grip around the butt of the pistol; Hamza noticed the increased tension.
“How do they get them out of the country?”
“They have a business. I do not know the word. It is for when you are dead.”
“An undertaker’s?”
“The boxes that bodies go into before they are put in the ground.”
“They put them in coffins?”
“Coffins, yes. I have not seen them. But that is what I have been told.”
Milton allowed that thought to sink in a little. It was morbid and unpleasant, but it was clever. Coffins? Surely immigration would wave a coffin through. Who would open a coffin?
“Why do you want to know this?” Hamza said fretfully.
Milton ignored him. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said instead, putting a little iron certainty in his voice and underlining it by reaching out until the gun’s muzzle was pressed up against the man’s temple. “We’re going to drive to Calais. You and me, our own little road trip. The girls in the back don’t need to come—we’ll let them out as soon as we get to Italy. You’re going to take me to meet the Albanian. If anything happens that means we don’t make it all the way there—and I mean anything, whether it’s your fault or just dumb luck—I’ll shoot you and then I’ll disappear. That clear enough for you?”
Hamza nodded.
Milton looked at his watch. “We’ve got another seven hours before we dock. Have you got a contact on the ferry? Someone who lets you stay with the vehicle?”
“Yes,” the man said. “We always use this crossing. There are three crewmen. They are paid not to bother us.”
Milton had guessed as much, but it was fortunate. There was an opening in the partition that divided the cab from the rest of the van; it was covered with a slat that could be pulled back.
Milton kept the gun trained on Hamza and pulled the slat back.
“Hello?” he said. “Can you hear me?”
There was no response.
“My name is John. I’m here to help you. Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” came a quiet voice in reply.
“Can you speak English?”
“A little.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Three.”
“Do you have food and water?”
“Yes,” the woman said.
“And you are okay?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause, and the sound of hushed conversation. Milton spared a quick glance into the rear. It was dark, but the light from the cab meant that he could see the dim shapes of people behind him.
“What is happening?” the woman asked.
“I need you to be patient,” Milton said. “We’re on a ferry, crossing to Italy. We have another seven hours to go. I need you to stay in the back until we land. As soon as we do, I’ll find somewhere safe for you to get out and you’ll be free to go. Is that okay?”
“What about the men who took us?”
“You don’t need to worry about them anymore. Okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“If you need anything, just knock.”
“I understand.”
Milton closed the slide.
Hamza eyed the pistol. “You will just let them go?”
“That’s right,” Milton said.
“You know who I work for?”
“Yes. I know all about Ali.”
“He will find out what you have done.”
“I’m sure he will.”
“And he will find you.”<
br />
“Perhaps I’ll find him first,” Milton said. “But you don’t need to worry about him. Think about yourself. You’ve got a little under seven hours to make sure you don’t give me a reason to get rid of you before we get off the ship. If I were you, I’d be a good boy and shut my mouth.”
Chapter Forty-Six
MILTON KEPT the gun on Hamza for the duration of the crossing. He sat sideways, his back resting against the door and his legs bent with his feet on the seat. He held the pistol down low and hidden behind his right leg so that it wouldn’t be obvious to any of the stewards should they decide to check the vehicles. But his caution was unnecessary; no one came to check. Hamza was no trouble, either. He was obviously frightened by him and sat quietly in the driver’s seat, occasionally glancing down at the gun, his hands alternating between his lap and the wheel, his fingers fretting.
Eventually, Hamza closed his eyes and slept. Milton did not. He waited and watched.
He thought about the women in the back. He wanted to go around to check on them, but he knew that he would either have to leave Hamza or take him out of the van at gunpoint, and he couldn’t safely do either of those things. He wanted to let the women out, but there was no telling what might happen if he did that. What if a member of the crew was suspicious? What if they were asked to show their papers? It could all unravel very quickly.
He tried to alleviate his disquiet by reminding himself that the three women would be free to go as soon as he could find somewhere safe for them to be left. He had checked the glovebox and found a reasonable number of euros in a clear plastic folder; he would divide the money among them so that they could buy tickets to wherever they wanted to go.
The deck started to become busier. Milton checked his watch: an hour to go.
Another ten minutes passed and then he heard the sound of a klaxon from above. The noise of the engine changed as the ferry started to slow.
The remainder of the hour passed and then he heard the sound of chains rattling as the bow door was lowered. Bright morning light flooded into the deck and, when Milton glanced into the wing mirrors, he could see buildings and vehicles on the dock. It was the port of Civitavecchia. Passengers returned to their cars and the vehicles nearest to the door began to disembark.
“You’re driving,” Milton told Hamza. “Nice and careful. Remember what I said. Any mistakes, and you get shot.”
Milton trained his gun on the smuggler as he slotted the van into the small queue of traffic waiting to drive off the ramp. The load operator disembarked the cars one by one, and soon it was their turn. They rattled over the ramp and rolled onto the dock, picking up speed as they aimed toward the facility’s exit gates.
“Drive,” Milton said.
Chapter Forty-Seven
CIVITAVECCHIA WAS on the western coast of the Italian mainland, in the central region of Lazio and eighty kilometres west-north-west of Rome.
Milton told Hamza to drive them north, reminding him that he was still very much at his mercy by prodding him in the ribs with the muzzle of the pistol.
They followed the E80 for half an hour until they approached the smaller town of Tarquinia. The terrain was flat and the grass in the fields on either side of the road was scrubby and sparse from the salt in the air and the battering that it received from the sun. They came to a bus stop and then to a food truck that was parked at the side of the road. Milton told Hamza to turn off. The food truck was advertised as ‘Mario’s Paninis,’ but the metal shutters were down and it was closed. Milton indicated a space away from the truck and the portable toilet beside it and waited until they came to a stop.
“Turn around,” Milton said.
“What?”
“Turn around and face the window.”
Hamza did as he was told.
“Put your hands together behind your back.”
The man paused, turning his head to look back in confusion. Milton reached across, took a handful of the man’s thick black hair, and banged his forehead against the glass.
“Now, Hamza. Don’t make me ask you again.”
The smuggler did as he was told.
Milton laid the pistol on the seat and took the butterfly knife that he had confiscated from Hamza in the ferry. He flicked his wrist and fanned the knife, the blade emerging from the grooves in the handles. They called them balisongs in the Philippines, and Milton had been on the wrong end of one while he was on an assignment in Manila; he had a scar on his wrist to remind him of it. There was a roll of gaffer tape in the glovebox and he lashed a good length of it around Hamza’s wrists, severing it with the knife. He arranged the smuggler so that he was facing forward, pinning his arms behind him.
“It is painful,” Hamza complained. “My arms—”
“Tough shit,” Milton said. “Wait there.”
He flicked his wrist again to close the blade, put it and the pistol into his pocket, opened the door and stepped out. It was a bright morning, clear and fresh, and he took a welcome lungful of air. He felt that he was making progress. It had been two weeks since he had met Samir. Perhaps he would be able to bring the matter to a head.
He went around to the back of the van and opened the doors. Light flooded onto the faces of three women. They blinked in the sudden brightness and then, when their vision cleared and they saw him, they shuffled away into the back of the van. Milton looked: he saw empty food wrappers, empty plastic bottles and piled blankets. The women had been cared for, to a point, but he knew that was only because they were merchandise, and that they would fetch the best price only if they arrived at their destination in good health. The pitiful sight of an empty banana skin discarded at the door next to a bucket that had obviously been used as a toilet filled him with a new jolt of fury.
“It’s okay,” he said, stripping the anger from his voice. “I’m John.”
The women stayed where they were.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m sorry you’ve had to stay in here, but it’s safe now. You can come out.”
They stayed where they were.
“You’re free to go.”
It was obvious that the women were frightened. There was good reason for that: they had taken a dangerous voyage to a country they didn’t know; they had been hauled away from their friends and family and put in the back of a van and driven away. They had been in the van for the better part of the day and now, after all of that, here he was telling them that they were free to go? Suspicion was natural. Fear was natural.
“Which one of you was I speaking to?”
One of the women, the one on the right of the van and nearest to him, very timidly raised her hand.
“Thank you. I know you’re scared. But the men who took you from the boat can’t hurt you anymore.”
The woman in the middle stared at him. Milton recognised her: it was the girl who had been seated near him on the top deck of the smugglers’ boat. She spoke in Arabic to the woman who spoke English. “She says you were on the boat.”
“I was.”
“You are working with them? With the smugglers?”
“No. I want to help you.”
The woman in the middle stared at him and said something else in Arabic.
“She says why should we believe you?”
“I understand that. I wouldn’t trust me if I was in your shoes, either. But I promise: no tricks. You can leave. We’re in Italy. I have money for you, too. You can go wherever you like. Here.”
He kept enough of the smuggler’s money to pay for fuel and sundries and left the rest just inside the compartment. He stepped away from the door and went around to the side. He didn’t have to wait long. The woman who spoke English was the first to get down. The second and third women followed immediately afterwards. The three of them stayed close together, as if it might be safer that way. The first woman had the money; the other two were each carrying large bottles of water.
“Where are we?” she said.
“Tarquinia. Rome is just ove
r an hour to the south. There’s a bus stop five minutes down the road. You’ve got more than enough money to go wherever you want. Just be careful.”
She glanced around Milton to the front of the Sprinter, as if trying to look inside. “The men who took us?”
“They aren’t interested in you anymore. They won’t try to stop you. They won’t come after you, either. Really, I promise—you’re safe. You should go.”
Milton could only do so much to persuade them, but he hoped that it was enough. The three of them stood out gathered here like this. Their darker skin made it obvious that they didn’t belong there. Cars were passing on both sides of the road, and it would have been a simple enough thing for a passing police patrol to spot them and come back for a second look. Milton would have preferred to offer more assistance, but he could not. He was here for Nadia, he reminded himself, and he needed to get going.
The women conversed in quick, hushed Arabic before the one who spoke English turned back to Milton and held up the money. “Thank you,” she said.
Milton nodded. They turned away from the van and set off to the south, heading in the direction of the bus stop that Milton had seen a mile before the food truck.
Milton waited until they were five hundred yards away and then, after checking that the road was quiet in both directions, he opened the driver’s door. Hamza turned to look, but was unable to prevent Milton from slipping his hands beneath his shoulders and hauling him out onto the dusty verge. Milton dragged him around to the back of the Sprinter and bundled him into the compartment.
“Where are we going?”
“I told you. Calais.”
“That’s a day’s drive.”
“Fifteen hours. Sixteen with a couple of stops.”
“You want me to be back here for sixteen hours?”
Milton laughed. “Are you serious? You’re complaining?” Milton levelled the pistol at his head. “Put your legs together.”
