The Dead Line

by Holly Watt

  Miranda stood up. Beside Casey, Miranda was blonde and confident. A few years older than Casey, in her mid-thirties. She had a slow smile, and a knowing laugh. Chic, Cressida admitted once, crossly. Really elegant

  Hessa and Casey watched as Miranda walked out of the little room, towards the newsdesk.

  ‘Ross,’ they heard her saying to the news editor. ‘I need someone to go the branch of this shop, Rhapso, the one just off Bishopsgate, and turn it upside down . . .’

  ‘Fine’ – the quick Scottish accent.

  Hessa and Casey smiled at each other.

  Miranda walked back into the office.

  ‘So where was that skirt made then?’

  ‘It doesn’t say on the label,’ said Hessa. ‘But probably Bangladesh, especially given that this is their diffusion line. Loads of the high street clothes come from there anyway. And Bangladesh would tie in with the Rohingya.’

  ‘And even with Rhapso’s premium brand,’ said Casey thoughtfully. ‘They’re just as likely to make the clothes in Bangladesh, fly them to Italy, stitch on a couple of buttons and stick on a “Made in Italy” label.’

  ‘You ever been?’ Miranda was looking at Hessa.

  ‘A few times. When I was younger.’

  Hessa had grown up just off Brick Lane, by the mosque that had been a synagogue and a church before that. All her life in a neat little flat, too small for her family now. Inside it was a quiet home, despite the graffiti on the door and the street noise outside. Sometimes, to escape her family’s questions, she wandered the beautiful Huguenot streets nearby, peering in through the wide windows where the silk weavers once worked

  But Casey knew that Hessa’s mother had been born in Sylhet, up near the Indian border. And that her mother told stories of tea gardens in the mist rolling for miles, green on green. But Hessa had shied away from those old stories, and fought her way to the Post instead.

  ‘That skirt was most probably made in Chittagong, in fact,’ Hessa went on. ‘That’s where a lot of the big garment factories are. The whole industry began there, really. From nothing.’

  Miranda turned to Casey.

  ‘You went out there last year. To the Rohingya camps.’

  ‘Yes. Down in the south, next to the border with Myanmar.’

  Casey didn’t want to think about those camps.

  The yellow dust, that was what she remembered. Yellow dust, and two little girls laughing.

  They were prancing, giggling, in the strip of sunlight between two grey-patched tents.

  So tightly packed, the tents in those camps. Miles of them, just a shoulder width apart, and far too low for anyone to stand up. Row after row, so it looked as if the whole hillside wore a carapace of canvas. Each tiny space, for a whole family.

  And in the middle of it all, two little girls twirling.

  All the rest was hell.

  Those creaking bamboo bridges, over slow trickles of shit. A water pump, spitting brown drops over a crying toddler. A little boy with a badly burned face, trying so hard to smile.

  One day, Casey had watched a puppy scramble down one of the narrow paths. There were only paths in these camps, not roads. The puppy snuffled, here and there.

  And Casey realised: he was trying to find a place to die.

  One place of stillness, that was all. To lay down his head and give up. And she glanced around, and saw the camp children watching too. Because there was nothing else to watch, not today.

  Bored faces, and yellow dust, and a desperate, dying puppy.

  And everywhere, the signs, handwritten: ‘Don’t go outside at night, not on your own.’

  In the cartoon red letters: ‘You will never be asked for favours, not for food. Not ever.’

  And, underlined, again and again: ‘Never be on your own.’ ‘Never be alone.’

  ‘Could it happen there?’ Miranda was asking. ‘In Bangladesh. This sort of farm.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Casey. Then: ‘Maybe.’

  Because there had been rumours, all over the camps.

  A child disappeared in the night. They want the eyes, went the whisper. And the girls, so young, watched for every minute of every day.

  There were stories about Kunming, too, not far over the border, in China. The transplant capital of the world, Kunming, a city where no one asked questions. Not the doctors, and certainly not the patients. Not when your kidneys are shutting down, a bit worse every day, and every other fragment of hope is gone.

  ‘The area around Cox’s Bazar has always been known for trafficking,’ said Hessa baldly. ‘For decades. The girls get moved on everywhere from that region. To India, mainly. But all across Asia, too. Europe, even, some of them.’

  Although there were thousands of eastern European girls in London already.

  ‘Would the Rohingya women be working in the garment factories?’ asked Miranda. ‘Is that how the message could have been packed into the skirt?’

  It was mostly the women who worked in the factories in Bangladesh. Hour after hour, piece after piece, on the pretty little dresses they would never ever wear.

  ‘I don’t know how many work in the factories,’ said Casey. ‘The Bangladeshi government doesn’t want the Rohingyas to assimilate with the locals. So the refugees are banned from learning Bengali, quite deliberately, to keep them isolated from the rest of the population. And then there are the checkpoints along the roads outside the camp. The camps aren’t fenced, but the refugees can’t move about the country freely either. Bangladesh won’t give them passports, of course.’

  Again, Casey felt that flare of anger. They had moved around for decades, the Rohingya. From Myanmar to Bangladesh, and back again. Never settling: always hunted.

  ‘So could they be in the factories?’ Miranda asked.

  ‘They might be,’ said Casey. ‘The men certainly get work outside the camps, although legally they aren’t supposed to. Day labourers. Salt farming. That sort of thing.’

  Back-breaking work, all of it.

  Dash appeared at the door.

  ‘Ross has packed Tillie off to Liverpool Street,’ he said, rumpling his dark hair as he spoke. ‘What’s going on?’

  Dash always raked at his hair when he was thinking. Ross managed the day-to-day of the newsroom. Dash – more cautiously, gaming out every step first – was in charge of strategy for the Post.

  Dash was quiet, compared with his news editor. Watchful, and instinctively secretive. He could be very funny, inconspicuously, and he had an uncanny ability to predict where a story might go next. He spent all day negotiating. ‘The Tories’ll give us a good interview with the pensions minister if . . .’

  When the newsroom was chasing the biggest stories – a bomb ripping apart a Tube station, a cabinet minister on the brink – it was Ross who dispatched reporters, screamed at recalcitrant subs, blitzed through copy. Dash, a few steps away, would assess, calculate, anticipate the next move.

  They worked well together, Dash averting his eyes from the worst of Ross’s temper, and sometimes exploiting it when a reporter slipped up.

  The structure meant Dash managed the investigations team, and their long-running inquiries. Or just kept out of their way, more often.

  Miranda explained, Hessa and Casey listening carefully.

  ‘They take the girls,’ Miranda finished crisply. ‘They take the girls to a baby factory.’

  ‘Haven’t I heard about that sort of thing?’ said Dash. ‘Don’t they do surrogacy stuff out in India?’

  Dash was glancing across at Casey. He worried about her, she knew, ever since that journey to the Sahara.

  ‘That sort of surrogacy has been banned in India.’ Casey ignored Dash’s concern. ‘And those women had a choice in the matter.’

  ‘Or as much of a choice,’ said Miranda, ‘as you have, when you have almost nothing.’

  ‘And children to feed,’ Hessa added.

  ‘But couldn’t it be straightforward surrogacy?’ asked Dash. ‘Bangladesh taking over where th
e Indians left off. I know they don’t allow it in the UK, paying for surrogacy. You only get expenses, don’t you? But it wouldn’t surprise me if someone found a way round the rules. People always do.’

  ‘We know surrogacy happens in countries all over the world,’ said Miranda evenly. ‘With variations in the rules. They pay a fortune in America.’

  ‘So it may be something like that,’ said Casey. ‘But from what we have seen in the embroidered notes I don’t think these women have any choice. At least in America, there are rules. A factory, this says. A baby factory.’

  Casey paused, fiddling with the skirt, crumpling the scarlet taffeta.

  Dash looked across at Casey. Next to her, Miranda shrugged at him.

  ‘Do you really,’ Dash asked, almost gentle, ‘want to get stuck into this now, Casey? You could do something else, for a while. Defence or politics, or something. You can come back to investigations in a bit.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Casey was staring past him at a faded print tacked quite incongruously to the wall. The Fighting Temeraire, a grand old warship off to be pulled apart in the sludge of Rotherhithe.

  In the silence, they could all hear one of the reporters, walking past the investigations office. ‘Got sent on a bloody doorstep in sodding Shropshire yesterday.’ Casey could hear that it was Eric, one of the junior reporters. ‘And the bugger pulled a fucking gun on me. I rang the newsdesk, and Ross just said, “Give him an hour to calm down and knock again.” God, I hate him. And then I got marooned in twatting Newport for hours. Drink?’

  Casey and Miranda tried to suppress their grins.

  ‘Why would anyone bother snatching refugee girls?’ Dash asked. ‘There must be thousands of very poor women in Bangladesh. Surely whoever is behind this could pay them a pittance. Wouldn’t this just create an unnecessary risk?’

  Hessa managed to keep her face expressionless. ‘It might be partly because of the perception of the Rohingya in Bangladesh,’ she said lightly. ‘They’ve been denied everything – education, basic human rights, homes – for decades. In the last few years, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been trafficked into slavery. Certain Bengalis would find it odd, the idea of negotiating with them.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dash shrugged. ‘Easier to snatch than to pay.’

  Hessa stared at him. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘OK,’ said Dash, after a pause. ‘Spend some time working on it if you want. But you haven’t got much to go on, you know.’

  Dash’s mobile rang. It rang every few minutes, all day, all night. He ignored it.

  Casey glanced across at him. ‘We’d have to find the clients in the West,’ she said slowly. ‘Find out who is coordinating it all. And where they are.’

  Her eyes were hazy now, the calculations almost blurring her sight.

  ‘And none of that,’ said Dash, ‘will be easy.’

  He stepped out of the room, leaving a silence behind him.

  ‘He’s worried about you, you know,’ Miranda said to Casey.

  ‘I know,’ Casey shrugged. ‘I know. But I am fine.’

  They sat in the small office for hours.

  ‘Right,’ Miranda began. ‘Let’s work out how we would do it.’

  One of the old reporters at the Sunday Times had explained that trick to Miranda after the fourth bottle. Put yourself in their head. Work out what you would do, and then flip it.

  And he – half crook himself – had tracked down rogue after rogue.

  ‘Where would you find the clients in the first place?’ Miranda asked ‘In London?’

  ‘Wimpole Street?’ said Casey. ‘Harley Street?’

  Patients flew from all around the world to those elegant Georgian roads cutting through the heart of Marylebone. Where Elizabeth Barrett searched for a cure, and only ever found love.

  Rhinoplasty and ophthalmology, dermatology and podiatry. There was no part of the body that couldn’t be tweaked, so carefully, with a soothing smile. Hundreds of doctors worked along those streets, most expensively.

  Most discreetly, too, behind their little brass nameplates.

  ‘But where would we start?’ said Casey. ‘There must be dozens of places that offer fertility treatment on Harley Street alone. How could we guess the right one?’

  ‘You’d probably have to go through all sorts of hurdles first too,’ Miranda thought aloud. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you’d be offered on your first appointment, surely? Unless, maybe, if we asked the right questions . . .’

  ‘We could ask about surrogacy,’ suggested Casey. ‘And just see where that led.’

  ‘Or perhaps someone in India is referring clients on to Bangladesh?’ suggested Hessa. ‘After the surrogacy programmes got shut down in India?’

  ‘Because we’re not even sure if the scheme only operates in London,’ said Miranda, drawing doodles. ‘Whoever put that message in the skirt might be sending others to Germany, Australia, wherever.’

  Casey turned back to her computer again. The afternoon had worn away. Miranda glanced at her watch, and looked up, worried. ‘Tom will go spare if I’m late again.’

  Miranda and Tom lived together, just, in a pretty house in Queen’s Park. In a three-wishes life that Miranda never wanted.

  ‘Don’t stay on too late, Casey,’ said Miranda.

  She knew Casey would stay for hours.

  ‘I won’t,’ Casey lied. ‘You go too, Hessa.’

  Hessa and Miranda left Casey there, in the glow of the investigations room, head bent over her notepad, as she raced through all the possibilities.

  The start of an investigation: Casey had been here before. Within just a few years of joining the Post, she had been all over the world.

  Beijing. Nairobi. Lisbon. Los Angeles.

  Kandahar: just another army base. Dusty rows of tents, sprawling to the horizon. Ugly prefab blocks, fading into the sky. The quickstep of the military, at every turn. The strangeness of English snacks and American candy, out in a dusty desert. McDonald’s and Starbucks and Burger King. The Afghans, who belonged here, looking as if they were wrong here. And beyond the fence, that unknown enemy. They didn’t know, then, that he would never really fade.

  Delhi. São Paulo. Madrid. Singapore.

  The Promenade des Anglais: that familiar stretch of beauty, torn apart. The blue of the Mediterranean, sparkling to the horizon, and the patches of blood, black in the sun. The families, searching. That’s the worst part, really. Because the families don’t give up. Not when the phones – out beyond the police tape – stop ringing, one by one. Not when they’re told, kindly meant: there is no hope. It’s when they see the bodies. That’s when they break.

  Montreal. Jakarta. Geneva. Dar es Salaam.

  Minsk. Rome. Shanghai. Amman. A meat thermometer, plunged into flesh, the red digital flicker viewed coolly through heatproof glass.

  Interlaced with boredom, of course. The coroner’s court in Surrey, just round the corner from Woking station, for some pointless, careless, thoughtless death.

  Three days outside a redbrick house in Hertfordshire, hoping to talk to a murderer’s wife. Who didn’t want to talk to anyone, not ever again.

  And the endless nights in hotel rooms, all designed to look just the same.

  When Miranda had joined the Post, Casey knew at once: this.

  It suited her, this job. Dissolving into roles, day after day. A flick of eyeshadow, and a touch of lipstick: then she drew the eye. Other days, she was nothing; forgettable and forgotten.

  And an answer, at last, to the question: Who am I today?

  Casey bent over her notes, biting into a stolen apple because it was all she could find to eat in the newsroom. Years ago, she remembered some distant aunt warning her, Don’t eat the seeds or they’ll grow in your head. She imagined the rustling leaves, the rosy apples, filling her brain like a story. And her head drifted down to the desk.

  ‘Casey.’ It was the night editor, shaking her arm. ‘Time for you to go home. Have this.’

 
Blearily, Casey looked up. Cory was smiling down at her, a horrible coffee from the machine in his hand. Behind him, the newsdesk was a pool of light in a dark room.

  If a big story broke after hours, it was Cory’s job was to assess the importance of the story. He decided who should be kicked out of bed: the reporter, or the specialist, or the head of news.

  A dead MP meant the political editor got the call. If a plane crashed, the transport correspondent was jerked awake. ‘But only if it’s filled with Brits,’ the transport correspondent had bawled once. ‘If it’s thirty-five Indonesians into the South China Sea, leave me to fucking sleep.’

  For the biggest stories, Cory called the editor himself. No one wanted to be the editor who got a call at 2 a.m. to say that Princess Diana had been in a car crash in Paris, and shouted, ‘So what?’ and crashed the phone down. That episode had taken years to live down.

  ‘Sorry, Cory,’ said Casey. ‘Must have drifted off.’

  The night editor pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Passports,’ Casey said.

  ‘What?’ Cory looked at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘They would need passports, to get the babies back.’ Casey was speaking almost to herself.

  Cory stared at her, and almost laughed. ‘Go home, Casey.’

  ‘I will.’ She was scribbling herself a note, on her keyboard for the next morning. ‘I will, now.’

  3

  The first daffodils were bobbing in the park as Casey walked towards the office, the snowdrops shy beneath the trees. There was a shimmer of frost on the grass, fading as the sun crept over the skyline.

  ‘Casey.’ Tillie leaped up as she walked into the newsroom.

  ‘Hello,’ Casey started.

  ‘I went all over that Rhapso near Liverpool Street last night.’ Tillie’s voice was breathless, as if she had been rehearsing the words. ‘And finally, just as they were chucking us all out at ten . . . Anyway, here.’

  It was the same white silk, the words embroidered in the same pale blue thread. Casey stroked it flat.

  They take the babies for the English women.

  Well, at least that meant it was happening in London. Probably. Someone must have smuggled them into a whole consignment of clothes, destined for London, or who knew where?