The Dead Line

by Holly Watt

  ‘What does it mean?’ Tillie’s brown eyes were worried. Behind her, the newsroom was unfurling. Ross was bawling at the education correspondent, some missed story about university access. The newish editor of the Post, who regarded the investigations team with deep suspicion, was arriving in the office. Flunkies trailed him, seagulls following a tractor.

  Archie, the Post’s avuncular political editor, was leaning against the newsdesk. ‘How shall I quote you on this?’ he was saying. ‘Are you “sources close to”? Or “good friend of”?’

  Those odd friendships, based only on favours.

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ Casey said reassuringly, her pulse leaping. ‘Thank you though, Tillie.’

  Casey walked towards the beige of the investigations room. Past the Business desk, past Sport and past the rows of news reporters’ desks. Tillie was half-following her, hesitating, and then quickstepping to catch up.

  ‘The shop assistants hated me. I unfolded so many things. I tried to put them back right, but they must still have been so annoyed with me,’ Tillie faltered. ‘I’d love to work with you on any project . . .’

  They were just outside the investigations room now.

  ‘Thanks, Tillie,’ Casey said. ‘I’ll check with Ross. Maybe you can go to another branch today.’

  ‘Great!’ said Tillie. ‘Brilliant. Amazing.’

  Casey smiled at the enthusiasm as she unlocked the office. Miranda and Hessa arrived minutes later.

  ‘Right.’ Casey didn’t waste time on hello. ‘Surrogacy. It’s a business.’

  Casey had her notes from the night before in front of her. Her first call had been to the Post’s health editor, a quick-tongued blonde who had three-year-old twins, and no time for Ross’s moods.

  ‘I’m right up against it,’ Heather had bawled down the phone. ‘But, yes, international surrogacy is a whole can of worms.’

  Heather had sprinted Casey round the industry at high speed, as she spooned Calpol into one of her children.

  Back around 2004, Heather said, the whole industry got started in India. Well, we outsource everything else, don’t we? Who do you speak to when you call up your bank to scream about a lost credit card? You might as well do the same with kids, I suppose. Maybe. Anyway. So surrogacy in India became a massive business: 25,000 children a year was a low-end estimate, which made it an industry worth billions. Well, you can’t put a price on hope, can you? But gradually, the Indian government went off the idea. A few big stories about problems. Kids not being handed over by the surrogates. Dodgy parents, all that. Cold feet about the whole thing. Gradually, India brought in more rules, more regulations. They banned gay couples, who are a big part of the market. So the industry moved over to Thailand, and Nepal too. Then those countries changed the law. The industry moved to Cambodia, which was especially popular with the Chinese. That got shut down too. Then on to Laos. Ukraine’s a big market too. It’s meant to be more regulated, these days. But is it? Fuck knows.

  You should talk to Alicia Dalgleish, Heather went on. You know, the chair of the Foreign Affairs select committee. She’s very hot on it all. Believes in a woman’s right to do whatever she wants with her body. And that sort of makes sense too, if you think about it. But who knows really?

  ‘Thanks so much, Heather.’ Casey had rung off, before digging back into her research again.

  Now Casey spun her laptop round towards Hessa and Miranda. A website smiled back, swirly pink writing over a pretty couple on a beach, strolling hand in hand with a toddler.

  No problems: your journey. No hassles: your dream. Come as a couple, leave as a family.

  Hessa and Miranda studied the computer.

  ‘This was an old website I found in Thailand.’ Casey clicked around the photographs.

  ‘What’s an IP?’ asked Miranda.

  ‘An intended parent,’ said Casey. ‘At that place, they threw in bonus sex selection too.’

  ‘Some of these families use surrogates because of serious health problems, you know,’ said Hessa. ‘Ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, hysterectomies. I read about it at home last night.’

  Miranda looked at Hessa thoughtfully. ‘And now the industry has migrated to Bangladesh?’ She turned back to Casey.

  ‘Maybe. Who knows? Thailand cracked down after baby Gammy,’ Casey explained. ‘That was when an Australian couple hired a Thai woman to carry a child. Then they found out she was having twins, and one of them had Down’s. The surrogate claimed she was told to abort the Down’s baby, but wouldn’t, and she ended up keeping the Down’s baby and handing over the other one. Then the Thai surrogate found out that the Australian father had been done for child abuse, and things really went downhill. The IPs kept their child though.’

  Miranda tipped her chair back, sipping her coffee.

  ‘I rang Savannah too,’ Casey said.

  Savannah was an aid worker who had guided Casey around the Rohingya camps the year before, down in the south of Bangladesh. Red-haired and tough-eyed, she strode around the camps, her rage flickering about her. In Lambasia, one of the sprawling encampments, Savannah had pointed out a child with a horribly swollen throat. ‘Diphtheria,’ Savannah had shouted in her broad New Zealand accent, flinging her hands in the air. ‘We had beaten fucking diphtheria right the way around the world. It was basically gone, for Christ’s sake. Rammed into history, where it belonged. And now it’s back, for fuck’s sake. Who does this? Who does this to people?’

  ‘Does Savannah know anything about it?’ Miranda asked now.

  Casey hesitated.

  You know how fucking dark things are here, babe. You know what it’s like. But I’ll ask, course I will. I’ll talk to the women I know well. And I think they’ll tell me, if they know anything.

  ‘Savannah doesn’t know much,’ said Casey. ‘Not yet.’

  There was a light tap on the doorframe. It was Audrey, the Post’s legal affairs correspondent, with a tired smile on her face.

  ‘Casey,’ she said. ‘You were looking at the legalities around getting surrogate babies back to the UK?’

  ‘Yes.’ Miranda pulled out a chair for her. ‘It seems so complicated.’

  Audrey slumped into the chair. ‘Long day yesterday,’ she apologised. ‘Old Bailey for a murder, and then out to Woolwich for more of that grisly terror trial.’

  Audrey ran her hands over her neatly braided hair, visibly pulling herself together.

  ‘Right. The legalities of surrogacy are a nightmare.’ Audrey handed round copies of a Foreign Office document, reading aloud random sentences. ‘International surrogacy is a complex area . . . The process for getting your child back to the UK can be very long and complicated, and can take several months to complete. Strongly recommend specialist legal advice . . .’

  Audrey looked at Miranda. ‘Basically, it’s fiendishly complicated, takes ages and varies from country to country. You need to get the child a passport, and separately you need to get something called a parental order to transfer various legal rights from the surrogate to you. There are different rules depending on whether the surrogate is married or not, and whether the British father is actually genetically linked to the child or not.’

  ‘So, for example, if you use a surrogate in the US . . .?’

  ‘If a child is born to an US citizen, they get American citizenship. That means you can apply for a US passport and you can usually bring the baby back quite soon. Then you go through the other hoops back in England.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t everyone just go to the US?’

  ‘California is the centre of the industry,’ said Audrey. ‘It’s very expensive though.

  I’ve heard quotes of £50,000 just for the legal side, and that’s before you even start paying the surrogate or any of the medical costs. On top of that, British couples are meant to ensure that their international surrogacy agreement complies with UK law. Clearly, because of the big payments made to US surrogates, that isn’t the case. So it’s a grey area, and potentially vulnerable.�
�

  ‘And, say, the Ukraine?’

  ‘That depends. In most countries, the baby doesn’t get automatic citizenship. So a baby born to a surrogate doesn’t get Ukrainian citizenship. If the father is British, and the surrogate isn’t married, you have to apply for a British passport, which takes four or five months. But if not, it gets much more complicated. Anything to do with the Home Office is always a nightmare, anyway. It’s a Byzantine system.’

  Audrey sighed to herself. Casey remembered that Audrey’s parents had been part of the Windrush generation: dropped into a bureaucratic chaos after decades of happy life in London.

  ‘And commercial surrogacy is only legal in a very few countries?’ said Casey.

  ‘Yes,’ said Audrey. ‘It started up in several places around the world, but then each of those countries quickly realises that there is a reason why there is a lot of regulation around surrogacy. I can’t see any record of legal surrogacy in Bangladesh. It never really got started there. Certainly, if someone found a way to fast-track the other routes, they could make a chunky profit from it.’

  ‘What if they had someone out there who could provide them with Bangladeshi birth certificates?’ asked Casey. ‘If it had just the intended parents’ names on it, rather than the actual birth mother, might it be much easier to get the British passport?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Audrey. ‘And that may be easier to achieve in Bangladesh. I don’t know.’

  ‘If they did that,’ Casey was thinking aloud, ‘it might be quite straightforward for someone to issue the passport from the High Commission.’

  Audrey stood up, giving them a glint of a smile.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘I must get going.’ She disappeared. There was a momentary hush.

  ‘OK,’ said Miranda. ‘Then what’s the approach?’

  4

  ‘Passports,’ said Casey firmly. ‘If the babies are being born illegally in Bangladesh, the organisers of this scheme must be finding a way of getting them back into this country. A baby’s no use unless you can bring it back to the UK for the IPs. And as Audrey says, that process usually takes months, and there are a lot of legal hoops. To make any sense of operating in Bangladesh, there may well be someone manipulating the system in Bangladesh somehow, possibly with the emergency passports.’

  Miranda was playing with her scarf.

  ‘The High Commission in Dhaka,’ Miranda agreed. ‘There must be someone there who at least has some idea about how the parents are getting British passports. Or are issuing the passports themselves. It would be very hard to traffic a newborn into the UK without a passport, even using a private jet. Then there would have to be a legitimate doctor in the UK who can sign off all the standard documentation.’

  ‘Whoever is organising the passports would probably have the names of everyone who has ever been out there,’ Hessa followed. ‘And they might know who is coordinating the whole thing.’

  ‘So I rang Luke,’ said Casey. ‘In Delhi, last night.’

  Currently the Post’s India correspondent, Luke Armitage had had to leave London for Delhi quite abruptly after a misunderstanding over the Home Secretary’s phone bill during the last general election. Following that eruption, Dash had decided Luke should spend a bit of time as the Post’s Delhi correspondent.

  Out of sight, out of mind, just for a year or so. You’ll like Delhi, Luke.

  I bloody won’t.

  Get on the sodding plane, Armitage.

  Luke and Casey got on well.

  ‘I need a list of anyone dodgy in the Dhaka High Commission,’ Casey had said to Luke the night before. ‘Someone who could get people passports, when they’re not supposed to.’

  Bangladesh, part of the old Commonwealth, had a High Commission, not an embassy.

  ‘Passports are a nightmare when you’re travelling with babies,’ Heather had agreed. ‘Haven’t taken my husband’s name, have I? And the kids have his surname. I had to show a border guard my flaming C-section scar to get the twins past one joker when I was travelling on my own. Tell you what, they let me through pretty quick when I started taking my top off. Sodding patriarchy.’

  They were tough, border controls, with an eye out for a trafficked child all the way around the world. They still got through, of course.

  ‘When’ – Luke rarely wasted words – ‘did this passport lark get started?’

  ‘Let’s say some time in the last five years,’ said Casey. ‘They may not be there any more.’

  Diplomatic staff moved on to a new posting every few years, skimming around the globe, oh so politely.

  ‘It would probably have to be someone quite senior,’ Luke thought aloud. ‘Without many people checking above.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Casey. ‘It takes months to get passports in normal surrogacy cases.’

  ‘For cash or blackmail?’

  ‘Could be either.’

  ‘You’ – there was amusement in Luke’s voice – ‘don’t ask for much.’

  ‘I know,’ said Casey. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Any time.’

  This morning, Casey had arrived in the office to an encrypted email from Luke. Call me when you get in. Doesn’t matter what time.

  Luke had answered the phone immediately.

  ‘I trod carefully, I promise,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a mate who has a good line into the Dhaka High Commission. He won’t say a word to anyone, I guarantee it.’

  Casey didn’t ask, didn’t need to know.

  ‘Anyway, my pal said they had a changeover of high commissioners, just a few months ago,’ Luke went on. ‘Sir William Cavendish, the old high commissioner, was a peach, by all accounts. Much loved by all. He’s retired to a Greek island, or something. The newly arrived ambo is most correct. Very much believes in dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, and everything else by the book.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like your mate likes him.’

  ‘You guess right. But my buddy also reckons the new high commissioner is clean. Too saintly for words. Dull as ditchwater, were his precise words.’

  ‘How about the deputies?’

  ‘That’s what my mate suggested. He says the new high commissioner is running things on such a tight rein that it would be hard to get anything past him. But he said all sorts of alarm bells were ringing about the last deputy out there. Gabriel Bantham.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘You know how low-profile they are, the Foreign Office lot. You never hear about them until they’re right at the top of the tree. But apparently Bantham had been flagged up quietly as being a bit too sharp for his own good.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Nothing too dodgy,’ Luke said. ‘Getting swept off for very ritzy weekends by a company that wanted an introduction to, say, a Foreign Office minister. A lifestyle that was just a bit too grand for a Foreign Office salary.’

  Casey felt her interest flare, a shiver in her spine.

  ‘Might be family money?’

  ‘Not, apparently.’

  ‘He get caught?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Luke. ‘My mate reckons the old high commissioner, Sir William, didn’t want to drop him in it. Cavendish just wanted a quiet life, towards the end of his career. So Bantham’s next move was a step sideways to Washington. That’s where he is now.’

  The huge British embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, thought Casey. A long way from the backwaters of Dhaka.

  ‘Could there have been anyone else organising passports through the Dhaka outpost?’

  ‘It’s not a big mission, the Bangladeshi operation,’ said Luke. ‘Not exactly a focus for the Foreign Office, is it, Dhaka? But I don’t think you could hand out several passports in a row without one of the main officials knowing.’

  ‘And your friend hadn’t heard of passports being doled out?’

  ‘I didn’t get that specific. Do you want me to go back to him?’

  ‘No,’ said Casey slowly. ‘Not yet. But he’s sure Bantham is the guy?’

&nb
sp; ‘He said that he would put his house on it.’

  ‘OK,’ said Casey thoughtfully.

  Now she summarised the conversation quickly.

  ‘Right,’ Miranda decided. ‘It looks like you and Hessa are going to DC.’

  5

  Casey waited until Hessa was out of the room.

  ‘You’re not coming to DC?’

  ‘You can do it without me, Casey. Take Hessa.’

  Why? Casey didn’t need to ask.

  Two weeks earlier, Miranda had found messages on her husband’s mobile.

  What sort of an idiot thinks about cheating on an investigative journalist? Miranda had spat in their little office the next day, trying to laugh. Casey had put an awkward arm around her shoulders, not knowing what to say.

  ‘There’s nothing too incriminating on his phone,’ Miranda had said. ‘Nothing conclusive. I don’t even know if anything has happened.’

  Not yet.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘He met her at work.’ Tom was a corporate lawyer. In-house now: better hours, less stress. ‘Some girl in business development. Whatever the fuck that is.’

  ‘Do you want me to find out about her?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’

  And it was so unlike Miranda, that uncertainty.

  Tom and Miranda had met at university. Back when everything was possible. They laughed their way into marriage, soon after, too early. And realised, too late, that their dreams were so very different.

  They had moved to a pretty house in Queen’s Park, all the same. With patterned tiles cold underfoot in the hallway, and roses round the door. Surrounded by prams, and smiles, and school fetes.

  This is what I want, he whispered.

  I know, she said. I know.

  And he’d waited, a kind man, as she fled to Nigeria and Russia, Libya and Iraq.

  When will you be home? he would ask, calling from a back garden just right for a Wendy house. Again and again, until the pretty house became a prison.

  I wish your dreams were enough.