Suddenly Des spotted one or two lorry-drivers starting to return to their lorries, signalling that the ferry was approaching the port of Dover, whereupon he instructed Marius and Ana Maria and their children to return from the driver’s cab where they had been sitting chatting to Des, to their hiding-place in the refrigerated container; fortunately, he told them, they would not need to be there long, because the distance from Dover to Des’s freight company offices was only a little over twenty miles.
‘What must we do when we leave you?’ asked Ana Maria anxiously.
‘I will drop you before I drive into our lorry compound,’ Des replied, ‘and when I have finished all the paperwork, I will get in my car and come and take you to the railway station, where you will be able to catch a train to London.’
‘We have no money,’ said Marius. ‘So how will we buy tickets?’
‘I will give you enough money for the tickets,’ Des reassured him.
‘You are very kind,’ said Ana Maria. ‘Thank you!’
Des closed the back doors of the container, then seated himself once more in the driving-seat, all fingers firmly crossed, for he was well aware of the risk he was taking. As the lorries started to roll off the ferry he continued to think about his illegal passengers, and said to himself, ‘It may be against the law, but if it is, the law is an ass. How could anybody know two such nice young people as Ana Maria and Marius and not see they are ordinary, genuine, loving parents, and with such delightful kids too! How can little children like that be classed as criminals? I don’t care if I have broken the law – it would be cruel to have done nothing!’
As he drove off the ferry, Des showed his passport as required, along with the various shipping and customs documents, and breathed a silent sigh of relief as he was waved through, and began the final leg of his trip. A few miles short of his home depot he pulled into a lay-by where a number of other long-distance trucks were also parked. He immediately went to the back of his truck, opened the rear doors and let out his passengers, then drove off again, assuring Marius and Ana Maria that he would be returning in his own car to take them to the station in not more than an hour’s time.
Not more than ten minutes later, a police car swung into the lay-by and pulled up a few feet from where Marius and his family were sitting waiting for Des’s return. Two police officers alighted, approached them and asked to see their papers. Since they had none, and since the two policemen did not possess even Des’s linguistic skills, the Romanian family were ordered to get into the police car, and taken back to the immigration offices at Dover for interrogation, which was carried out with the help of a Romanian interpreter.
In the meantime, Des had returned to the lorry depot, had checked in and had a little chat with one or two of the transport firm’s employees, then, his working day over, went as quickly as he could to pick up his car and drive back to the lay-by where he had dropped off his illegal passengers. When he got there, however, he found no trace of them. He looked high and low, but there was still no sign of them. He went into the café to look for them, then out again to the car park, and eventually had to conclude that they must have decided to make their own way. Perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, a breakdown in communication, which, after all, would have been eminently possible. At last he gave up searching for them, returned to his car and drove home, where he knew that Thelma would be waiting for him with a meal ready to be be put on the table, as there always was.
Even so, Des was extremely worried about his new acquaintances. His preliminary thoughts concerned how much they would have been delighted with the meal Thelma had prepared, but gradually they turned to a worry that they might have been picked up by the police and interrogated, and possibly deported right away. Of course Des believed in his heart of hearts, as many British people do, that the British police would act responsibly and respectfully, and would not subject them to the sort of treatment that they might have met if they had been arrested by the French police, the Russian police, or the Egyptian police, or any other police force in the world. Of course he was well aware, as everyone is, that on occasions even the British police mistreat their captives; but surely their hearts would melt, just as his had melted after he had been speaking to Marius and Ana Maria for just a matter of minutes. But still he worried…
In fact, unbeknown to Des, the policemen who actually took the Romanian family into custody did treat them with respect and courtesy, allowing them to consult a lawyer, while, at the same time, letting them know that, although the family would not be split up, the most likely outcome for the whole family would still be deportation.
The lawyer who came to see them was a young man who, obviously, had not met them before, so Marius made a point of stressing to him that he too was a lawyer. This turned out to be a crucial factor, for, when the family finally appeared before a magistrate, their counsel said to him that, in speaking to Marius, he had learned that the latter was as able a lawyer as he was, and the magistrate took the unusual step of allowing him to conduct his own defence.
Marius grasped this opportunity with both hands, and told the court at length about the brutality of the Romanian regime at that time, how outspoken he himself had been, and what sort of treatment would be meted out to him by the Securitate if he were to be deported and forcibly repatriated.
As a result, admittedly after a number of seemingly endless hearings, Marius and his family were allowed to stay in Britain for six months, a period which might be extended, if they all proved amenable and well behaved.
Naturally Des knew nothing about this, and he worried endlessly about what might have befallen them: had they been deported to Romania? Were they in prison, even the children? Were they even still alive?
In the meantime Des was still driving, undertaking on average two continental trips a week, and every time he was seated in that cab, he thought about Marius, Ana Maria, and their little children.
Apart from wondering what had become of the Romanian family, Des hardly thought about what had happened; in particular, he was extremely relieved that there had apparently been no come-back, for at the back of his mind – and on occasions at the front of his mind – he had envisaged the possibility of a visit by the police, which might even have led to his dismissal from the haulage firm.
A couple of weeks after he had first met the young Romanians, he was driving back from yet another journey to Barcelona, with yet another load of Spanish tomatoes, and drove off the ferry at Dover, just as he had done a few weeks earlier; this time, however, he had no illegal passengers to worry about. He drove up to the passport control, and handed his passport to the official, who was quite young, and whom Des had not met before, but instead of the normal five-second formality, he was kept waiting for several minutes while the official examined his passport and checked some papers.
‘Would you mind driving over into that lay-by?’ the official asked. ‘We need to have a further word.’
‘Why?’ asked Des. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Just do as I say,’ the official instructed him curtly. ‘We need to have a look inside your truck.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Des. ‘You don’t normally bother.’
‘Just drive over there,’ the official repeated.
So Des did as he was told, thinking that this was just for show; the young official probably had a new supervisor, who, in a fit of keenness in the early days of a new job, was trying to make a mark with his new team.
But then a dozen men descended on the truck, and searched it from top to bottom. ‘What are you looking for?’ Des asked, but he received no answer.
After the search proved fruitless, the senior officer approached Des.
‘Mr Wilson,’ he began. ‘You don’t have any passengers today then?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I don’t carry passengers, I just carry freight.’
‘Except when you don’t.’
‘The only times I don’t carry freight are when I don’t ha
ve a load on the return trip,’ he said, ‘but that’s not likely to happen at this time of year.’
‘I’m not talking about carrying freight. I’m talking about carrying passengers.’
‘I don’t carry passengers.’
‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’
‘Then you’ve heard wrong,’ said Des.
‘Have I now! Do you never carry passengers then?’
‘No, never.’
‘I’ll ask again. Have you ever brought any passengers across the Channel on your lorry?’
‘No, never!’
‘Never?’
‘Never.’
‘And you never pick up hitchhikers?’
‘I have done. But only when I’m on a long journey and I feel like having a bit of company.’
‘Like a couple of weeks ago, you mean?’
‘I don’t know what you’re driving at…’
‘A young Romanian couple, with two or three kids, for instance?’
‘Oh, you mean Marius and Ana-Maria!’
The official’s eyes lit up. ‘Ah! You remember them then? Was she nice-looking, Ana Maria?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t think of her in that way. Yes, I suppose she was. What’s that got to do with anything?’
The official ignored Des’s question and continued, ‘How much did they pay you to bring them over from France?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Ah, you do admit that you brought them over from France?’
‘I might have done…’
‘For nothing? You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?’
‘They were a nice young family, a respectable family. He is a lawyer…’
‘And I suppose he sweet-talked himself into your lorry, did he?’
‘No, it wasn’t like that!’
‘What was it like then?’
‘They had had a rough time in Romania, and they had nothing, and they were nice people, very nice people, and they had absolutely nothing. I just felt sorry for them.’
‘You felt sorry enough to make you break the law?’
‘I didn’t break the law.’
‘Bringing illegal immigrants into Britain is a crime!’
‘I didn’t know they were illegal immigrants.’
‘Did they have passports?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not my job to check passports.’
‘No, it’s my job, and that of the men who work for me. So, when you drove through Passport Control, where were they? In the cab?’
‘No, they were in the truck, in the back.’
‘And why didn’t you put them in the cab?’
Des made no answer.
‘Because you knew they needed to hide when they went through Passport Control, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, all right, I suppose I did. But they were just decent, ordinary people, and I felt sorry for them. And I’d do the same tomorrow.’
‘Oh, would you now? I think I’ve heard enough. You can tell your story to the police now.’
‘The police?’
‘Yes, the police. The people whose job it is to keep our country safe from every Tom, Dick and Harry that wants to come here!’
With that, the official summoned a police officer who led Des away, and Des spent the next few hours being subjected to a further interrogation by the police, who eventually let him go, by which time it was nearly midnight, and Des slept in his cab in a lay-by just outside Dover.
At about two o’clock in the morning Des was awoken by the sound of his mobile ringing. He fumbled for it in his pocket, drew it out, noticed that the call was from a number with which he was unfamiliar, but he answered the call anyway.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Are you listening?’ said a woman’s voice, which again he did not recognise.
‘Yes,’ he replied, completely puzzled.
‘This is very important. I did not call the police. It was your family that called the police.’
‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’
But the caller had rung off.
The following morning Des drove the rest of the journey to Canterbury, parked his lorry and went into the office.
‘Oh, Des,’ said one of the secretaries who worked there, ‘Mr Jarvis wants to see you.’
‘Oh, okay,’ said Des. ‘I just want to give my wife a ring first. Is it anything important?’
‘He said he wants to see you straight away,’ said the secretary, so Des went straight in to see the General Manager, without phoning Thelma.
Ten minutes later Des emerged from the General Manager’s office; he no longer had a job. He had been fired.
When Des arrived home Thelma was waiting for him at the door. ‘You’re late,’ she said, ‘I was expecting you last night. Did you have a puncture or something?’
‘No. It was red tape at Dover.’
Thelma looked at her husband. ‘Have you been crying?’ she asked.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ he replied, not very convincingly, rubbing his eyes with a handkerchief.
‘You have!’ Thelma said, almost triumphantly. ‘What’s the matter? Have you had an accident?’ Her mind had suddenly switched back twenty or thirty years, when Des had accidentally killed a little boy because he did not know that the boy had been playing at the rear of the vehicle; it was the last time Thelma had seen Des’s eyes full of tears.
‘No, not an accident,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the sack!’
‘The sack? They can’t give you the sack! You’ve been there over thirty years!’
‘It makes no difference how long you’ve been there! If you break the law, that’s it!’
‘Break the law? You’ve never broken the law!’
‘I have now! Or they think I have, which comes to the same thing…’
‘Are you going to fight it?’
‘No, there’s no point.’ And he went on to tell her about the police interrogation.
‘And this is all because you took pity on that poor Romanian family you told me about?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, I would have done the same, and I didn’t even meet them!’
‘So you’d have been out of a job too!’ he said. ‘A pretty mess we’d have been in then with both of us out of work! I’m sorry, love!’ And he burst into tears again.
‘Sorry? What about?’ was her answer. ‘I’m very proud of you actually, taking pity on that little family! How can they punish little children like that! They didn’t ask to be born in a nasty country!’
‘I know,’ said Des, ‘but what am I going to do now? I’ll never get another job!’
‘We’ll manage,’ said Thelma. ‘I rather like being married to a man who has principles, especially if he puts them into practice!’
Three or four days previously, just after Des had set off on the outward leg of what was to become his final journey at the wheel of a big lorry, Sally, one of the secretaries in the haulage firm’s offices, had telephoned the police.
In fact she had spent just over two weeks mulling over whether to act upon the information she had been given: she had discovered that Des had given a lift to some illegal immigrants, her informant having been one of the other drivers.
Sally had not been working for the firm for many months, but her boyfriend was something of a political animal, and was possessed of some extreme right-wing views, as was the driver who had informed her of Des’s transgression. She did not know Des very well, but, when she learnt that he had had some Romanians in his lorry, she had discussed it with her boyfriend, who eventually persuaded her that he was a danger to British society, and therefore deserved to be taught a lesson.
After she had made her phone call to the police, however, she had been stricken with a little remorse, but not enough for her to recant and withdraw her accusation. That evening she had been talking in the pub to a friend named Lilian, and told her that she had been the cause of Des’s dismissal.
‘What are you go
ing to about it then?’ said her friend.
‘I don’t know, Lil,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want anybody to know that I’ve snitched on him, even if he has done wrong.’
‘How would anybody know?’
‘I’m afraid that the driver will guess that it was me, because I’m the Manager’s secretary…’
‘And what if he did?’
‘I wouldn’t want anybody to think badly of me, Lil. I was just thinking… Would you do something for me?’
‘It depends what it is.’
‘I thought if you telephoned him…’
‘Who?’
‘The driver. And I thought if you pretended to be me…’
‘But I don’t even work at your place.’
‘So much the better!’
‘And my voice doesn’t sound anything like yours…’
‘That doesn’t matter. There’s no need to say who’s calling. It’s just a matter of making it clear that whoever called the police it wasn’t somebody from work, it was… oh, I don’t know, somebody from his own family…’
The conversation continued for several minutes, and eventually a form of words had been formulated, and Lil had agreed to make the call to Des that night.
It was not until after Des had broken the news to Thelma that he been dismissed from his job that he also related to her the story of the phone call he had received in the lay-by at dead of night, although it had been preying on his mind for some considerable time, particularly the part of the message which specified that it was a member of his family who had called the police, for that could only have been Thelma. Des and Thelma had no children, neither of them had brothers or sisters, and it was quite a long time since their parents had died; nor had either of them had any uncles, aunts or cousins, a lack which Des had often regretted in the past, especially at Christmas and on special occasions such as birthdays.
When Des did mention it to his wife, Thelma denied vehemently that she had been in touch with the police herself, a denial which Des accepted readily, for he himself considered the likelihood of her shopping him to the police as a possibility so remote that it was not even worth thinking about.
At Dead of Night Page 9
