Cut Adrift

by Chris Simms

  At dawn, the old Chinese man told us he was getting help. He stood up, but I was too weak to reach out. He stepped from the raft and was gone.

  Our numbers are now only six. Ali said to use the pallets from the ends of the raft to make a higher area in the middle. The man with the throat scars agreed.

  Jon felt his upper body jolt. Throat scars. His mind jumped back to the previous night when he’d been studying Yashin’s mugshot in minute detail. The image was slightly grainy and Carmel’s flat had been dimly lit, but, thinking about it now, he thought he could remember something wrong with the man’s skin, just above the top of his turtleneck. No, Jon said to himself, surely not. Can't be the same man.

  ‘You all right?’ Rick asked. ‘Not left something in my flat?’

  ‘No,’ Jon replied, relaxing his shoulders and joining the slow-moving traffic on Whitworth Street. ‘Carry on.’

  Rick turned back to the paper.

  Clothes and some plastic bags have been laid across, so little water passes through. At last, after four days, we can lie down without getting wet.

  Hunger has woken us all. Cruel and sharp, it never tires. After our noodles, Ali and I lay down and talked of how Abu Nawas Street was before the Americans came. Strolling along beside the river, choosing a restaurant to sit and eat muskof. The smell of the fish as it roasted slowly beside the coals. Amba, the spicy mango sauce, and sweet, smoky tea, flavoured by the pot being left on the glowing coals. Such memories!

  Ali spoke of bache, the lamb flavoured by dried lemon pieces. I spoke of sipping yoghurt, mixed with water, salt and ice. He answered with watermelon, cool from the fridge and I begged him to stop.

  At sunset, a family of dolphins surrounded us, chasing under our raft, leaping from the sea. They are the masters here and we are nothing. When they left, I cried. Who will save us?

  Jon glanced at Rick. ‘What does the next letter say?’

  Rick gave a wry grin. ‘I thought you weren’t interested.’

  ‘Come on, stop fucking about.’

  ‘OK, OK – ready?’

  The crewman has just seen a boat!

  When he shouted, I did not believe it was real. Then others saw it too.

  It is the life boat that was washed overboard. Excitement passed through us like electricity. Everyone had suddenly the strength to wave and shout.

  They saw us and paddled closer. After some time we could hear their voices. Four men, all from the crew. The man with the throat scars shouted back to them. I recognised the language – now I know he is Russian. I decided to keep it secret that I understood his words.

  Unable to quite believe what he was hearing, Jon looked at Rick again.

  His partner glanced up. ‘What?’

  Needing more time to absorb the implications of what he suspected, Jon said, ‘This woman is sharp. I like her – keeping quiet that she speaks Russian. Good move.’

  Rick nodded, then continued to read.

  The men in the boat were happy to see him, but they looked at us like we are dogs. It is strange no one from the containers is with them.

  When the life boat was close, the man with throat scars swam across. His friends pulled him in and I was afraid they would leave us. They talked for a long time, but I could not hear what of. Then they paddled next to us.

  Using English, the man with throat scars explained the lifeboat has no food, but two large bottles of water. They have a compass in the handle of a knife. A thing no more in size than an old dinar, but it can save us all. They will tie our raft to the boat, then use their oars and our plastic sheets to make a sail and steer us east. They say we will find ships in that direction.

  The man with the throat scars said he will keep the drum with the food safe in the boat. I had not the strength to argue. Later, when they passed over our rations, we could not wake the old woman to eat.

  For the first time, I told Ali about my life in Baghdad. I described our garden and the rose bushes my mother so loved. I told him of my job as an interpreter. How, since I was a little girl, I liked other languages. How Daddy used to get me English and Russian newspapers. How I improved until I became a gold student. How proud of myself I was to do the job.

  When the Americans came, the Russian oil company I worked for had to leave. Like many, I thought at first the Americans had come to help us. I worked for the Exxon Mobil Corporation, helping their people assess how our oilfields might be developed. Then I was offered a higher-paid job, working for the CPA. So much money to be spent on reconstruction! But the office was run most poorly. Files everywhere, Americans leaving for their country, new ones taking over their jobs.

  I had so much more to say, but Ali did not have the strength to stay awake.

  ‘The CPA,’ Rick murmured. ‘That’s the interim government, isn’t it? The thing the Americans set up to run the country after Saddam Hussein was ousted.’

  ‘Maybe they can work out who she is, then,’ Jon answered.

  ‘How many translators can there be?’

  Rick shrugged. ‘All I know is their identities are kept very secret – for their own protection. They don’t even use their real names when doing their work. Anyway,’ he licked his lips,

  ‘things are looking up. Letter eleven?’

  Jon couldn’t stop his mind from reeling. ‘Go for it.’

  Last night there was no wind. There were stars and I could see the sleeping faces of Ali, Parviz and Jîno. Sounds were so clear I could hear the whispers of the crewmen. They were talking about the ship and why it left us. They spoke of what is hidden below its deck in a container. What I heard made me so angry for how our country has been ruined.

  ‘She knows what was on board the ship,’ Rick said, letting out a low whistle before continuing with the letter.

  The four from the life boat wanted to throw off the line and leave us. Only the man with scars – their leader – stopped this. I dare not tell the others what I heard.

  The stars are different here. In the summer, we would sleep on the flat roof of our house. The jasmine from our garden would fill the air, and if a breeze came, the palm tree would whisper gently.

  Ali woke and we began talking of how things were when the Americans first came. We were so full of hope. But things did not get better. Everything ground down to nothing. Soon, only bad people were free to drive at night. Because I worked for the Americans, I was a traitor, a spy, deserving of being killed. No one could know my real job. My husband, Younis, would drive me in his taxi to the Green Zone, I hiding under a blanket on the floor. Near the first security check, I would leave the car and walk. Then, in the evening, he would be there to pick me up. It wasn’t life, never knowing if someone will knock the door in the night and enter your house. To sleep I had to start taking pills. In the mornings there would be the dead bodies on the streets, men with their hands tied behind their backs. Children walking round them on their way to school, the American soldiers just driving past.

  Ali told me about Al Sarafia, Baghdad’s most beautiful bridge. The Americans said it was a terrorist truck bomb which collapsed it. But how was it destroyed in two different places and why did so many people hear their helicopters nearby before the explosion? Ali said their missiles destroyed that bridge. But why? His cousin is an engineer. His firm calculated it could rebuild the bridge for six million dinars. But the firm which the CPA gave the contract to charged three times that amount.

  When the sky grew light, we found the old Uighur woman was dead. Jîno was given her food, but he is so thin, I fear he also will not live much longer.

  Just to roll her body into the water made Ali and Parviz’s breathing heavy. We all are now so weak. Parviz says very little.

  The food grows smaller. Three mouthfuls of water, two sweets and a square of dry noodles. Parviz is sure the crew are cheating us. He stares at their boat, but the crew are lying down, out of the sun. We still wait for wind.

  Jon took a right on to Fairfield Street, spotting a single working girl in the
shadows of the railway bridge at the back of Piccadilly station. He couldn’t help glance about for Braithwaite’s Saab, even as Rick started speaking again.

  ‘Letter twelve. Another of the ones that turned up the other day. Want to hear it again?’

  Jon nodded, his sense of certainty gaining strength.

  Afternoon. The sea just broke into activity. Tiny fish, fleeing from a dark shadow below. Many leaped onto our raft in panic and we fell on them, squeezing our cheeks full. More we wrapped in clothes. I saw Ali chasing one with his fingers, many tails sticking from his lips. I pointed at this and we laughed together at our luck.

  Once we had eaten, Ali and I lay back down and talked of food once more. It’s all we can think about. Ali described tashreab – the rich, tomato sauce poured over two pieces of flat bread. I spoke of sha’ar benat – how the soft, pink lumps would melt in my mouth.

  Ali told me they have this too in Great Britain. It is called candy floss. I am so desperate to make a new life there, to not be afraid all the time. I know they read Arabian Nights to their children. At Christmas they even have plays about Aladdin.

  Ali says they also keep pigeons, in cages on roofs, like at home. We smiled at memories of the birds, rising in the evenings over Baghdad, the whistles as the old men called them back.

  I miss the sounds of birds. The bulbul’s song. The Americans cut down all the trees, saying their enemies could hide in them. Their tanks tore up the pavements and knocked down all our traffic lights and street signs.

  The edges of where Ali was bitten have grown angry and the wound bulges out.

  Rick didn’t look up. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Just coming on to the Ashton Old Road. The nick’s one minute away.’

  ‘We’ve got time. Letter thirteen.’

  The fish have given strength to Parviz’s anger. As it grew dark, he grabbed the rope and tried to pull us to the life boat, demanding water. This was too hard, so he leaped into the sea and swam to the boat.

  He tried to climb in, but the crew members have cut open his arms and head with the knife. He is with us again, but the blood from his head will not stop. He is talking to his brother who we lost in the storm.

  Jon slowed, eyes on the rear-view mirror as he turned into Bell Crescent. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Well, he’s good as dead.’

  ‘Reckon so,’ Rick replied, scanning the rest of the page.

  They drove the last few hundred metres in silence. As Jon swung into the police station car park, Rick closed the newspaper. ‘The last part of the article was some kind of psychologist. He says she’s now writing the letters as a form of therapy. Trying to make sense of what’s happening to her by putting it into words.’

  Jon felt the curl of his lip as the words came out. ‘Some head doctor’s always on hand to offer their valued opinion.’

  Rick unclipped his seat belt. ‘They’re publishing the last six tomorrow. Says there are more revelations to come.’

  Jon turned the engine off. ‘Rick, don’t laugh when I say this: we’ve got a bunch of Russian-speaking crewmen. Who’ve been abandoned at sea.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rick replied, reaching for the car door.

  ‘The one who appears to be in charge has scars all over his throat.’

  Rick’s hand seemed stuck to the handle.

  Jon carried on. ‘Every photo we’ve got of our man, he’s wearing a turtleneck. But, I think you’ll find that if you look closely at the mugshot from the screening unit, there’s something wrong with his skin. Just above his collar.’

  ‘You’re saying our man – Yashin – is the crewman in these letters?’

  Jon pursed his lips for a moment. ‘Yes.’

  Rick turned his head to the building. ‘Let’s go in. I want to see the photo.’

  ‘I’ve got it here.’ Jon swivelled round, plucked his briefcase off the back seat and opened it up. ‘Shit! I’ve left the folder at Carmel’s.’

  They marched across the incident room, taking in the weary faces of the syndicate who’d been on cover that night.

  ‘Mind if we open a window?’ Jon announced. ‘It reeks in here.’

  ‘The smell of masculinity, son,’ one of the other detectives replied, stretching his arms out and yawning, belly straining against his trouser belt.

  ‘Alpha males,’ another added, standing up and scratching at the few wispy strands still clinging to his scalp. ‘Proper men.’ He bent forward to retrieve his jacket, letting out a loud fart as he did so.

  Jon surveyed the empty pizza boxes, sandwich wrappers and empty cans filling the bin in the corner. ‘Go and get some sleep, for fuck’s sake.’

  Rick had succeeded in opening the window nearest to their desk by the time Jon reached Buchanon’s office. ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Jon.’ Buchanon looked back down at the sheets of paper on his desk.

  ‘Any word from MI5?’

  ‘Not so far.’

  ‘Nothing? Not even an acknowledgement?’

  ‘An email received message came back. One of those auto-mated receipts.’

  Rude bastards, Jon thought. ‘We might have something more.’

  Buchanon’s eyes lifted. ‘You better not be still working that case.’

  ‘No – it was something from this morning’s paper, that’s all. A possible connection. We’re just double-checking it.’

  ‘OK. Bring it through if you’re on to something. Then I want progress on the cannabis farm murder.’

  ‘Sir.’ As Jon approached his desk, he could see Rick opening a folder. His colleague held a printed sheet closer to his face, staring intently at it.

  ‘Am I right?’ Jon called out.

  Rick sat down. ‘You are. The tips of thin lines. Fuck me.’

  Jon took the photo and examined it. ‘It’s like he had some sort of bodged operation.’

  ‘More like someone tried sharpening a scalpel on his throat. We’d better let Buchanon know.’

  Jon scowled. ‘You know, the arrogant tossers down in London haven’t even thanked us for letting them know about Yashin’s movements. Now they’re getting this given to them on a plate, too.’ He bunched a fist and brushed his knuckles back and forth across his lips. ‘They won’t even tell us his real name.’

  Rick sighed. ‘What can we do? Nothing. Get over it, mate.’

  ‘We could speak to the captain of the fishing trawler who picked them up. I’d like to know if there was any sign of the raft with the asylum seekers in. That letter said it was linked to the lifeboat by a rope.’

  ‘Don’t forget the Express is publishing the final six letters tomorrow. They could well tell us a lot more.’

  ‘Good point. You get on to their news desk, switchboard, whatever. Explain we really need to know what the next letters say. I’ll ring Marlow at the screening unit in Liverpool and see if he’s got the details of the fishing trawler.’

  Rick nodded towards Buchanon’s office. ‘What about the murder we’re meant to be working on?’ he whispered.

  Jon waved a hand. ‘We can start on that in a bit.’

  ‘Holly! Breakfast is ready.’ Alice placed the plastic bowl on the kitchen table. The stubby tip of a Weetabix protruded from the milk like a submarine surfacing. She stood with hands on hips, one ear cocked towards the doorway. The sounds of the television continued. ‘Holly! Come through now or there’ll be no more telly for the rest of the day.’

  A couple of seconds later, her daughter appeared in the corridor, one shoulder pressed against the wall as she toyed with the remote control. ‘I don’t want any.’

  Oh no, Alice thought. She’s going to start playing up. Since the incident out on the road, Holly had almost stopped eating. Alice couldn’t help glancing at the kitchen window. Yet another set of sheets was hanging out to dry in the back yard. And I haven’t even mentioned that her birthday trip to the Lake District is probably off. ‘I’ll put some honey on.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’


  ‘There’s no ice cream when we go to the park, then.’ The comment caused her chin to lift.

  ‘Come on,’ Alice encouraged. ‘I’ll bet you’ll be hungry once you start eating.’

  Holly pushed herself clear of the wall, but stayed where she was, one toe pointing in at the other.

  ‘Come on, Holly,’ Alice urged. ‘You make me sad when you don’t eat.’

  Her daughter edged forward reluctantly. Once she got to the table, Alice smoothed a hand over the little girl’s blonde hair.

  ‘You know, if you want to talk to Mummy about anything, I’ll always want to listen.’

  Holly climbed onto her chair. She opened her mouth, but seemed to change her mind about speaking.

  ‘What, sweetie? Did you want to say something?’

  ‘Why didn’t Daddy tuck me in?’

  Alice felt her stomach lurch. ‘When?’

  ‘When I woke up. You were outside shouting. I was crying but he drove away. Why did he drive away?’

  ‘Sometimes grown-ups get cross. Your daddy and I were having an argument.’

  ‘Is he cross with me?’

  Alice bent down to caress her daughter’s cheek. ‘No, sweetie, of course not. Daddy isn’t cross with you.’

  ‘But why did he drive away?’

  ‘Well, it was for the best.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It was better he didn’t come in. We were both very cross. That’s why we were arguing. But we’re not cross with you, OK? We love you.’

  Holly stared down at her cereal in silence.

  Alice felt sick. How do I explain to her what’s going on? Her mobile started to ring and she straightened up. ‘No one is cross with you.’ She picked her handset off the shelf above the radiator. The word anonymous filled the screen.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello. Alice Spicer?’

  That Russian accent. Alice felt her heartbeat pick up. ‘Is that Yulia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks for calling.’ She stared at the wall, eyebrows raised hopefully.

  ‘I have some information for you, but not a clear answer.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘There was a referral to your hospital on the twenty-second. The patient arrived in Accident and Emergency and was assessed by the duty psychiatrist, but we had no beds.’