by Knight, Ali
‘There’s nothing here,’ she said to Mo and he nodded in agreement. They got back on their tiny boat and were on shore a little while later. She made tea for her and Mo and waited in the customs area for the few passengers to disembark from the Saracen. The public customs area was visible from the office where Georgie sat and was made up of lines of dirty, scratched plastic screens and a dividing rope that looped lazily through movable metal posts, designed to corral tired arrivals into a queue. Once checked by Georgie’s colleagues, they pushed through a set of double swing doors, each with a round window made of scratched Perspex. The place was sad and unkempt; the cruise ships docked further upriver now, and the operation here was strictly functional. She heard the roaring of a cleaner’s polishing machine getting to work on the lino. She let herself be amazed that they still had the budget as she caught a glimpse of a figure through the scratched Perspex window on the other side of the arrivals door.
‘Is that Christos?’ She put her cup down.
‘He’s here with Sylvie,’ said Mo.
Georgie stood and moved to be able to see him better. ‘Who’s he waiting for?’ She turned round, trying to find a passenger list. ‘Who’s on this ship?’ Mo handed her a list and she scanned the names. None of them meant anything to her.
‘It’s not illegal to meet someone off a ship, last time I looked,’ Preston said. He lifted his shoes up on to the table, a gesture designed to irritate her.
‘I want every passenger and their luggage searched.’ She came out of the office and barked a series of instructions at the duty officer perched on a swivel chair.
The Saracen manoeuvred alongside a quay and half an hour later a thin straggle of people began to disembark with their luggage. Georgie was peering at them through the glass in the office window. She could hear Preston making a personal phone call behind her, yakking about cinema times to someone. She left the office and stood next to the customs officer. A young man with a pockmarked face shivered in the line, his backpacking clothing insufficient for a trip to northern Europe. Jonas Wyman. A man was next, then a young woman in a big parka with a fur-lined hood carrying a large plastic bag and a cushion. The customs officer was looking at her passport, inputting information into the computer from Luciana Nascimento’s landing card.
The doors to the UK swung forward and back as people passed through them. Georgie occasionally caught glimpses of Christos as the doors moved.
The woman in the parka took it off and the female officer ran her hands discreetly up and down the young woman’s body. Luciana put her parka back on as the officer carefully examined the cushion. She handed it back to Luciana, who stuffed the cushion down into her coat and shivered, doing her zip all the way tightly up to her chin and lifting the hood. She picked up her bag and walked away to the doors into the UK.
They turned to a man next in the line.
Twenty seconds later Georgie heard a woman screaming. She ran towards the swing doors and slammed them open. Luciana was on the floor, Sylvie on top of her pulling her hair. Jonas was shouting for them to stop and Christos was trying to pull his lover off the woman.
Georgie and Mo tried to pull the warring women apart.
Luciana was spewing Portuguese at Sylvie, who had gone puce in the face. ‘This bitch assaulted me,’ Luciana said, struggling to get away from Georgie.
‘She just went mad, jumped on her for no reason,’ Jonas added.
‘Don’t you fucking dare speak to me like that,’ Sylvie spat at Luciana, bringing an ‘oh’ of shock from the gawping bystanders.
‘Enough,’ shouted Georgie. ‘Calm down, everyone.’
Her entreaty was mirrored by Christos, who was white in the face. ‘For God’s sake, Sylvie, have you lost your mind?’
‘First she posed as Isabella, looking pregnant. I thought it was her until she came right up to me. Then she whispered that Isabella has been harmed—’
‘What a lie! Who is this Isabella?’ Luciana screamed.
‘Who’s Isabella?’ asked Georgie.
‘She’s fine, I spoke to the captain two minutes ago.’ Christos was aghast.
Everyone started shouting again as two policemen hurried in from the building next door. The next thing Georgie knew, Sylvie had broken free of Mo’s hold and swung her handbag high and fast at Luciana’s head. Christos jumped forward to stop her and careered into Jonas, bringing both of them to the floor in an untidy jumble.
‘That’s it. Get this lot out of sight.’ Georgie had had enough of the gawping crowd. She dragged Sylvie towards an interview room and shouted at Mo to take Luciana to another. The policeman took Christos by the arm and marched him into the room behind Sylvie.
Now it was Christos’s turn to be livid. ‘You can’t keep me in here. It is critical I meet someone off this ship.’
‘They can wait,’ Georgie snapped. ‘There are seats out there.’
‘I need to phone the captain—’
‘Well, your girlfriend should have thought of that before she attacked a woman for saying something she didn’t like.’
They could hear Luciana’s shouts from the next interview room. Preston appeared, looking like he was enjoying it all just a little too much. ‘She wants to press charges.’
Sylvie sat mute, looking up at Preston with such hatred Georgie was almost scared. ‘Do you know that woman?’ Georgie asked her.
‘I’ve never met the bitch.’
Georgie sighed but it was Christos who started shouting at Sylvie. ‘Have you gone nuts? Isabella will have to wait now—’
‘Nobody says things like that to me—’
Christos stood up from his seat and turned to go.
‘Where are you going?’ the policeman asked.
‘I need to be out there—’
‘Until I understand what’s happened here, you’ll have to wait.’ He pulled out his notebook.
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘So let’s get all the details and I’ll decide when you can go. The maximum sentence for assault is six months. I suggest you sit down.’
53
Isabella said goodbye to the captain and thanked him. He smiled a lot and said it had been a pleasure, apologising for the weather and the rough crossing as if it were within his command to change it. He helped her off the ship and a crew member carried her bag to customs. She showed her passport and landing card to a man with milky skin speckled with moles, and showed her booking for the private hospital.
Her bag was pulled up on to a table and carefully searched by a woman customs officer. She ran her hands up and down Isabella’s legs, across her back and between her breasts. She held her breath as the woman ran them across her swollen stomach. The officer asked her if she knew Christos Malamatos. Isabella gave the answer she had rehearsed with Christos: that she was a relative getting expert care in London. The customs officer put her bag down on the floor, and she wheeled it through the swing doors and into a new country.
The concourse was empty. She paused, drinking in the different signs, the different smell, the cold efficiency of the place. She became uncertain. She had expected Christos and Sylvie to meet her, they had insisted they would. Then a skinny man with bad skin hurried over.
‘Isabella da Silva? Please, I have a car waiting. The Malamatoses have been held up and sent me to get you. But you’ll see them soon. Very soon.’
It was good to be back on dry land, finally to feel the sickness drain away. She followed him out of the terminal.
54
It was early evening when the Wolf finally got off the ship and on to dry land. He used a phone box to dial the number for the mobile that he’d given to Jonas. Jonas picked up promptly.
‘Everything OK?’
‘Great, no problem at all.’ Jonas sounded excited, like it was proving a far easier way to make money than he had anticipated.
‘You in the hotel?’
‘Yup, got the room, making my way through the mini bar – cashew nuts and those Japanese spic
y things. We’re ordering in a takeaway. She’s found her land legs and is starving.’
‘Watch that door, remember.’
‘Will do. It was chaos at customs, just like you hoped. That blonde is one uptight woman. She really took Luciana to be Isabella for a few moments, and when Luciana said something provocative to her, she just thumped her right across the cheek. She fell down on the floor – madness. Officers came running from all directions.’
The Wolf smiled. Luciana fleetingly pretending to be Isabella, her provoking of Sylvie, had worked like a dream. ‘Is Luciana with you now, too?’
‘Yeah, she dropped the charges after a while and has just arrived.’
‘OK. No one goes out, no one comes in except me. I’ll be over in a while.’ Christos would work out soon enough what was going on. He would be hunting in earnest for his lost courier. But he reckoned he had a few hours at least before the final act.
He slung his bag over his shoulder and like he had done many times in his life before, walked into the dark of a London evening.
55
The day of the Halloween party dawned grey and cold. Kelly had slept little, but more than the guards, who had kept their vigil all night. She was eating toast when Medea came into the kitchen. ‘He wants to see you.’
‘Well I’m here, obviously.’
‘He’s at the office, he wants you to go to him.’
Kelly felt a hint of an opportunity. ‘What’s it about?’
‘I don’t know. These men are to take you.’
She said nothing and finished her breakfast. ‘I’ll take the kids with me and then we’re right by the Halloween party and can go there afterwards.’
Medea shook her head. ‘The kids stay with me. We can finish the masks here and bring them with us in the car to the party. We’ll meet you there.’
‘What time are you planning to get there?’
‘Three. You need to hurry, Christos wants to see you now.’
At least she would get out of the flat. ‘OK, we’ll meet at the play centre when the party starts.’ Kelly reached out and hugged her children, a hug so tight she wanted it to last for ever.
As she headed to the service lift she saw Florence’s and Yannis’s weak smiles as they stood in the corridor. She forced herself to act normally. ‘See you later.’ One of the guards entered the new code, and they both walked either side of her into the lift. The doors clanged shut like a cell’s and she felt the uncomfortable sensations of the lift plummeting to the ground.
When they reached the basement car park one man got in the passenger seat of her car, the other behind her. ‘What does Christos want to see me about?’
They didn’t answer and despite her best effort, her fingers shook with fear as she started the car.
It started to rain as she drove eastwards through the City and beyond, the cloud sinking on to the squat roofs of grey sixties buildings, obliterating satellite masts and TV dishes. They passed the streaked grey of cement underpasses, and Bangladeshi men hurrying past puddles, their backs bent against the rain and the wind. The wipers scraped off the dust thrown up by the lorries charging from red light to red light all the way to Essex.
She pulled into the car park by Malamatos Shipping and got out of the car. The men followed. Mary, the receptionist from Canvey Island who had manned this desk for as long as Kelly could remember and was already counting down the years until retirement took her off to Spain, looked up.
‘Kelly! How are you?’
The warmth of Mary’s smile was the only nice thing about the morning.
‘Things have been better, and they have been worse.’
Mary nodded, showing she understood. She took no notice of the men hanging round by the door, there were always people like that coming and going at Malamatos Shipping.
‘Where’s Christos?’
Mary leaned across the desk towards Kelly. ‘He’s been here all night. He’s so upset and taking it very badly. He prides himself on the safety record of his ships, as you know. I never met the man who went over’ – Mary made a sideways movement with her shoulders as if she were helping to dispatch him over the railings herself – ‘but terrible business, terrible.’
Kelly nodded, scanning the office floor to the right of Mary, a mishmash of room dividers and white plasterboard corridors, caught somewhere between modern and traditional and failing at both. She could see the closed door to Christos’s office in the corner.
‘Excuse me.’ Mary broke off to take a call. ‘Malamatos Shipping, how can I help?’
Kelly pointed towards the office but Mary held up her hand like a stop sign till she’d finished directing the call. ‘He’s temporarily decamped downstairs.’
‘Downstairs? I didn’t know there were offices down there.’
Mary lowered her voice as if what she was about to say was scandalous. ‘They needed more space, I think. I’ll tell him you’re here.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Kelly’s arrived.’ She nodded. ‘I’ll bring her right down.’ She got up and came round the front of the desk. ‘Follow me.’ She led Kelly through a double fire door by some stairs.
‘I can take it from here,’ Kelly suggested.
‘You can’t miss it anyway. The stairs only lead one way.’ Mary smiled as Kelly’s heart sank.
56
Kelly paused halfway down, trying to orient herself in the building. She walked to the lower level, pushed open a fire door and entered an underground chamber where heating ducts competed with wiring for space on the ceiling. Bare bulbs dangled intermittently, but the light barely penetrated into the furthest corners. The floor was dark tile and the whole place echoed. In the middle of the space were four large movable screens, creating temporary office walls. Kelly could see the wheels of several office chairs poking out from the bottom, long cords from electricity extension leads snaking away across the floor. A filing cabinet had obviously been hurriedly dragged in to help, the scrape marks still visible on the floor.
‘Hello?’ She called out uncertainly, her voice echoing in the dark. No one answered. She hesitantly crossed the floor towards the screens and stepped between them. Christos was sitting at one of four desks in front of a computer screen. He was unshaven, his usually pristine shirt rumpled, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Husband and wife stared at each other over the confetti of disordered files.
‘Where were you the night before last?’
She ignored him. ‘You shot a gun off near our kids.’
‘That’s not what I asked. Where were you?’
Kelly stared down at him, the intense stare challenging her. The mouth that turned down at the corners when he was stressed. A cruel mouth on a cruel man. She sensed danger stalking her from every dark corner. ‘There was no light or heating in the flat so I went for a walk and something to eat. Where have you been all this time?’
‘Here.’
‘You frightened the kids, really frightened them. You were firing a gun in the house.’
This affected him more than she thought it would. He slumped back in his chair, raked a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry. It was the stress of the moment. I really shouldn’t have done that.’
Kelly looked at her husband. She had expected him to be angry, to cover his wrongdoing with bluster and excuses, but he looked beaten, shattered. The ebb and flow of behaviour in marriage soon solidifies, how someone will react becomes set in stone, but here Christos was acting entirely at odds with what she would have expected. Fear began to crawl up her spine. Something was seriously wrong.
For the first time, Kelly took a look at the walls around her. It was like the command centre of a police investigation. The temporary partitions were pinned with blown-up photocopies of passport photos – mostly male but including some Far Eastern-looking women. Some of the faces were crossed through with heavy black marker; angry, strong strokes that in some cases had almost ripped the paper. There were lists of names with no accompanying photos but large question marks, ship sailing times
, phone numbers and illegible scribbles.
‘What stress?’ Her voice came out as small and quiet.
She heard him get out of his chair and come round the desk as she stared at the walls. She felt his breath on her neck.
‘I don’t believe my man fell off the Saracen. I think he was pushed.’
She wheeled around to face him again, her heart beginning to beat faster. ‘Why was he pushed? What was he doing on the ship?’
Christos was staring at the photos and names on the wall beyond them. His mouth was curling again. ‘One of these people has taken something I want.’ He spat out the words.
‘What have they taken?’
He ignored her question. ‘Take a look, Kelly, recognise anyone on this wall? Any names, any faces?’ He was staring at her, studying her every move.
She turned back to the wall and methodically began to work through the photos and then the list of names, reading even those that had been scratched through with black marker.
‘Very carefully, Kelly, don’t make a mistake.’
Her eyes swivelled towards him. His face was inches from hers, his gaze never leaving her face.
Halfway down a list of names her eyes snagged on a name, but only for a second. She followed a thick black line that led from his name to a big question mark further across the board.
‘Do you think I would know someone on here?’
‘All these people work for me or were travelling on the Saracen.’
She swallowed carefully. ‘But I don’t know your employees, or the passengers.’
‘Neither do I. When your company reaches a certain size, you cannot know everyone. It makes you vulnerable. My enemies burrow in, Kelly, like termites, plotting to undo me.’
‘Why have some names not got pictures?’
‘Employment records don’t always include photos.’
She looked up and saw him staring at her again. She forced herself to breathe out slowly and turned back to the board. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for. What is supposed to be significant?’ He was examining her face, searching for something in it. ‘This is connected to the customs investigation, isn’t it?’
