Now Forbes decides to speak to me again.
“Have you ever been here before, DC Barba?”
“No.”
“Harwich is a freight and passenger port. It handles cruise ships, ferries, bulk carriers and roll-on, roll-off vessels. Thousands of vehicles pass through here every day from Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and the Hook of Holland.”
“Why am I here?”
He motions ahead of us. The car slows. In the middle of the customs area a Scene of Crime tent has been erected. Police cars are circled like wagons around it.
Arc lights inside the tent throw shadows against the fabric walls, revealing the outline of a truck and people moving inside, silhouetted like puppets in a Kabuki theater.
Forbes is out of the car, walking across the tarmac. The ticking of the cooling engine sounds like a clock. At that moment a side flap of the tent is pushed open. A SOCO emerges wearing overalls and white rubber gloves that peel off his hands like a second skin.
I recognize him. George Noonan, a forensic pathologist. They call him “the Albino” because of his pale skin and snow-white hair. Dressed in white overalls, white gloves and a white hat, he looks like a fancy-dress spermatozoon.
He spends a few minutes talking to Forbes. I’m too far away to hear what they say.
Forbes turns toward me, summoning me forward. His face is set hard like the wedge of an ax.
The tent flap opens. Plastic sheets cover the ground, weighed down with silver boxes of forensic equipment and cameras. A truck is parked at the center, with its twin rear doors open. Inside there are wooden pallets holding boxes of oranges. Some of these have been shifted to one side to form a narrow aisle just wide enough for a person to squeeze through to the far end of the lorry.
A camera flash illuminates a cavity within the pallets. At first I think there might be mannequins inside it, broken models or clay figurines. Then the truth reaches me. Bodies, I count five of them, are piled beneath a closed air vent. There are three men, a woman and a child. Their mouths are open. Breathless. Lifeless.
They appear to be Eastern European dressed in cheap mismatched clothes. An arm reaches up as if suspended by a wire. The lone woman has her hair pulled back. A tortoiseshell hair clip has come loose and dangles on her cheek from a strand of hair. The child in her arms is wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and clutching a doll.
The flashgun pops again. I see the faces frozen in place, trapped in that moment when their oxygen ran out and their dreams turned to dust on dry tongues. It is a scene to haunt me, a scene that changes everything. And although I can’t picture the world they came from, which seems impossibly strange and remote, their deaths are somehow unbearably close.
“They died in the past twelve hours,” says Noonan.
Automatically, I transfer this into personal time. What was I doing? Traveling to West Sussex. Talking to Julian Shawcroft at the adoption center.
Noonan is holding several bloody fingernails collected in a plastic bag. I feel my stomach lurch.
“If you’re going to puke, Detective Constable, you can get the hell away from my crime scene,” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
Forbes looks at Noonan. “Tell her how they died.”
“They suffocated,” he replies wearily.
“Explain it to us.”
The request is for my benefit. Forbes wants me to hear this and to smell the sweet stench of oranges and feces. Noonan obliges.
“It begins with a rising panic as one fights for each breath, sucking it in, wanting more. The next stage is quiescence. Resignation. And then unconsciousness. The convulsions and incontinence are involuntary, the death throes. Nobody knows what comes first—oxygen deprivation or carbon dioxide poisoning.”
Taking hold of my elbow, Forbes leads me out of the truck. A makeshift morgue has been set up to take the bodies. One of them is already on a gurney, lying faceup, covered in a white sheet. Forbes runs his fingers over the cloth.
“Someone inside the truck had a mobile,” he explains. “When they began to suffocate they tried to call someone and reached an emergency number. The operator thought it was a hoax because the caller couldn’t give a location.”
I look toward the massive roll-on, roll-off ferry with its open stern doors.
“Why am I here?”
He flicks his wrist and the sheet curls back. A teenage boy with fleshy limbs and dark hair lies on the slab. His head is almost perfectly round and pink except for the blueness around his lips and the overlapping folds of flesh beneath his chin.
Forbes hasn’t moved. He’s watching me from behind his rectangular glasses.
I drag my eyes away. With a birdlike quickness he grips my arm. “This is all he was wearing—a pair of trousers and a shirt. No labels. Normally, clothes like this tell us nothing. They’re cheap and mass produced.” His fingers are digging into me. “These clothes are different. There was something sewn into the lining. A name and address. Do you know whose name? Whose address?”
I shake my head.
“Yours.”
I try not to react but that in itself is a reaction.
“Can you explain that?” he asks.
“No.”
“Not even a vague notion.”
My mind is racing through the possibilities. My mother used to put labels on my clothes because she didn’t want me losing things. My name, not my address.
“You see how it looks,” he says, clicking his tongue again. “You have been implicated in a people-trafficking investigation and potentially a murder investigation. We think his name is Hassan Khan. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“The lorry is Dutch registered. The driver is listed on the passenger manifest as Arjan Molenaar.”
Again I shake my head.
Numbness rather than shock seeps through me. It feels like someone has walked up and hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray and the noise is still ringing in my ears.
“Why weren’t they found sooner?”
“Do you know how many lorries pass through Harwich every day? More than ten thousand. If Customs searched every one of them there’d be ships queued back to Rotterdam.”
Noonan joins us, leaning over the body and talking as though the teenager were a patient and not a corpse.
“All right young fellow, please try to be candid. If you open up to the process in good faith we’ll find out more about you. Now let’s take a look.”
He peers closer, almost putting his lips on the boy’s cheek. “There is evidence of petechial hemorrhages, pinpoint, less than one millimeter on the eyelids, lips, ears, face and neck, consistent with lack of oxygen to the tissue…”
He holds up an arm, examining the skin.
“The scarring indicates an old thermal injury to the left forearm and hand. Something very intense, perhaps a blast.”
I notice dozens of smaller scars on his chest. Noonan takes an interest, using a ruler to measure them.
“Very unusual.”
“What are they?”
“Knife wounds.”
“He was stabbed?”
“Someone sliced him up.” He flicks an imaginary knife through the air. “None of the wounds is particularly deep. The blade threatened no organs or major blood vessels. Excellent control.”
The pathologist sounds impressed—like one surgeon admiring the work of another.
He sees something else. Lifting the boy’s right arm, he turns it outward, displaying the wrist. A small tattooed butterfly hovers halfway between the palm and elbow. Noonan takes a measurement and speaks into a digital recorder.
Forbes has shown me enough.
“I wish to go home now,” I say.
“I still have questions.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
The question disappoints him. “I can provide you with someone if you wish.”
I know I should be more concerned but the desire for knowledge overrides my natural caution
. It’s not about being invincible or believing my innocence will protect me. I’ve seen too many miscarriages of justice to be so optimistic.
The terminal has a café for freight drivers. Forbes takes a table and orders coffee and a bottle of water.
For the next hour he dissects my personal life, my friends and associates. Over and over I make the same point. I have no idea how my name and address were sewn into the clothes of Hassan Khan.
“Is it my color?” I ask him eventually.
His countenance falls. “Why do people always do that? Play the race card. Whenever someone from a minority background is questioned I can guarantee it’s coming. This has nothing to do with your color or your religion or where you were born. Your name and address were sewn into a dead kid’s clothes. An illegal. That’s what makes you a person of interest.”
I wish I could take the question back.
He takes out a half packet of cigarettes and counts them, rationing himself. “Have you any idea how big it is—people trafficking?” He puts the packet away, clicking his tongue as though admonishing himself.
“More than 400,000 people were trafficked into Western Europe last year. The Italian Mafia, the Russians, the Albanians, the Japanese Yakuza, the Chinese Snakeheads—they’re all involved. And beneath the big syndicates are thousands of smaller freelance gangs that operate with nothing more than a couple of mobile phones, a speed boat and a transit van. They corrupt border guards, politicians, police and customs officers. They are bottom-feeding scum who prey on human misery. I hate them. I really do.”
His eyes are locked on mine. His tongue is making that sound again. I suddenly realize what he reminds me of: the roadrunner. Wile E. Coyote was always trying to catch that arrogant, beeping bird, coming up with ridiculous booby traps and snares. Just once I wanted the coyote to win. I wanted the hundred-pound barbell or the bundle of dynamite or the slingshot to work, so he could ring that scrawny bird’s neck.
As if on cue there is a beep beep from Forbes’s pager. He makes a phone call on the far side of the cafeteria. Something must have been said during the call because his demeanor changes.
“I’m sorry for keeping you so long, DC Barba.”
“So I can leave?”
“Yes, of course, but it’s very late. Accommodation has been arranged in town. The pub looks quite nice. I can have you driven back to London in the morning.”
He tugs nervously at the cuffs of his jacket, as though worried the sleeves might be shrinking. I wonder who called. Sikh girls don’t have friends in high places.
The pub is quaint and rustic, although I’ve never been exactly sure what “rustic” means. The restaurant annex has low ceilings with fishing nets strung from the beams and a harpoon bolted above the bar.
Forbes invites me to dinner. “I’m a detective inspector but you don’t have to consider it an order,” he says, trying to be charming.
I can smell the kitchen. My stomach rumbles. Perhaps I can find out more about Hassan Khan.
Shrugging off his gray jacket, Forbes stretches his legs beneath the table and makes a fuss over ordering and tasting the wine.
“This is very good,” he comments, holding his glass up to the light. “Are you sure you won’t have some?” Without waiting for me to answer he pours himself another glass.
I have been calling him Mr. Forbes or sir. He says I should call him Robert. I don’t give him permission but he calls me Alisha anyway. He asks if I’m married.
“You know that already.”
“Yes, of course.”
He has pale Nordic eyes and his bottom teeth are crooked but he has a pleasant smile and an easy laugh. The clicking sound seems to go away when he relaxes. Perhaps it’s a nervous thing, like a stutter.
“So what about your family?” he asks. “When did they come to Britain?”
I tell him about my grandfather who was born in a small village in Gujarat and joined the British Army at fourteen where he became a kitchen hand and then a chef. After the war a major in the Royal Artillery brought him back to England to cook for his family. My grandfather traveled on a steamer that took three weeks to get from Bombay to England. He came alone. That was in 1947.
He earned three pounds a week, but still managed to save enough for my grandmother to join him. They were the first Indians in Hertfordshire but they later moved to London.
My only memory of my grandparents is a story they told me about their first winter in England. They had never seen snow and said it looked like a scene from a Russian fairy tale.
I don’t always understand irony, but my grandfather spent his entire life trying to become white only to be crushed by an overturned coal truck on Richmond Hill that painted him as black as soot.
Forbes has finished a second bottle of wine and grown melancholy.
“I have to use the bathroom,” he says.
I watch him weave between tables, leading with his left shoulder and then his right. On his way back he orders a brandy. He talks about growing up in Milton Keynes, a planned town that didn’t exist before the 1960s. Now he lives in London. He doesn’t mention a wife but I know there’s one at home.
I want to talk to him about the illegals before he gets too drunk. “Have you managed to trace the truck?” I ask.
“Shipping containers have codes. They can be tracked anywhere in the world.”
“Where did it come from?”
“The truck left a factory on the outskirts of Amsterdam early yesterday. The locks are supposed to be tamperproof.”
“How did you know Hassan Khan’s name?”
“He had papers. We found a cloth bag tied around his waist. According to the Dutch police, he arrived in Holland nineteen months ago from Afghanistan. He and a group of asylum seekers were living above a Chinese restaurant in Amsterdam.”
“What else was in the bag?”
Forbes lowers his eyes. “Drawings and photographs. I could show them to you…” He pauses. “We could go to my room.”
“Alternatively, you could bring the bag downstairs,” I suggest.
He runs his socked foot up my calf and gives me his bad little boy smile.
I want to say something disagreeable but can’t find the words. I’m never good at put-downs. Instead I smile politely and tell him to quit while he’s ahead.
He frowns. He doesn’t understand.
For the love of God, you’re not even attractive. Call your wife and wish her good night.
Forbes stumbles as he climbs the stairs. “I guess we hit the old vino pretty hard, eh?”
“One of us did.”
He fumbles in his pocket for his key and makes several unsuccessful attempts to find the keyhole. I take it from him. He collapses on the bed and rolls over, spread-eagled like a sacrifice to the demon god of drink.
I take off his shoes and hang his jacket over the chair. The calico bag is on the bedside table. As I leave I slide the security bar across the door frame so that the door doesn’t close completely.
Back in my room I call Ruiz and “New Boy” Dave. Dave wants to come and get me. I tell him to stay put. I’ll call him in the morning.
Fifteen minutes later I go back to Forbes’s room. The door is still ajar and he’s snoring. I cross the floor, listening for a change in his breathing. My fingers close around the calico bag. He doesn’t stir.
Suddenly, there’s another sound. A singsong ring tone.
I drop to the floor and crouch between the radiator and the curtain.
If Forbes turns on the lamp he’ll see me or he’ll notice that the bag is missing.
Rolling half out of bed, he reaches for his jacket, fumbling with his mobile.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, babe, I should have called. I got in late and I didn’t want to wake you or the kids…No, I’m fine, not drunk. Just a few glasses…No, I didn’t see the news tonight…That’s really great…Yeah…OK…I’ll call you in the morning…Go to sleep now…Love you too.”
He tosses the phone aside and s
tares at the ceiling. For a moment I think he’s falling back to sleep until he groans and rolls out of bed. The bathroom light blinks on. Behind him, my hiding place is neatly framed by the radiance. He drops his boxers and urinates.
Sliding out of the light, I cross the floor and ease the door shut behind me. Dizzy and trembling, I have broken one of Ruiz’s fundamental rules: when under stress always remember to breathe.
Back in my room, I tip the contents of the calico bag onto the bed. There is a pocketknife with one broken blade and the other intact, a small mirror, a medicine bottle full of sand, a charcoal drawing of two children and a battered circular biscuit tin.
Every object is significant. Why else would he carry them? These are the wordly possessions of a sixteen-year-old boy. They can’t possibly breathe life into his lungs or tell me his fears and desires. They aren’t enough. He deserves more.
The biscuit tin contains a tarnished military medal and a black-and-white photograph folded in half. It appears to show a group of workers standing in front of a factory with a corrugated-iron roof and wooden shutters on the windows. Packing crates are stacked against the wall, along with drums and pallets.
There are two lines of workers. Those in the front row are sitting on stools. At the center is a patriarch or the factory owner in a high-backed chair. Ramrod straight, he has a stern countenance and a far-off stare. One hand is on his knee. The other is missing and the sleeve of his coat is tied off at the elbow.
Beside him is another man, physically similar, perhaps his brother. He is wearing a small fez and has a neatly trimmed beard. He also is missing a hand and his left eye appears to be an empty socket. I glance along the two rows of workers, many of who are maimed or crippled or incomplete. There are people on crutches, others with skin like melted plastic. A boy in the front row is kneeling on a skateboard. No, not kneeling. What I first imagine are his knees, poking out from beneath short trousers, are the amputated stumps of his thighs.
None of the workers is smiling. They are olive-skinned men with blurred features and no amount of magnifying will make the image any clearer or the men appear any less stiff and glowering.
I put the photograph back in the tin and examine the rest of the curios and ornaments. The charcoal drawing is creased at the corners. The two children, a boy and a girl, are about six and eight. Her arm is around his shoulders. She has a high forehead and a straight part in her hair. He looks bored or restless, with a spark of light in his eyes from an open window. He wants to be outside.
The Night Ferry Page 13
