Dead on Arrival

by Patricia Hall

  “Are you married?” Ahmed said suddenly as Rochester dropped away behind them and they turned onto a narrow, twisting lane, its surface rutted by heavy traffic.

  “No, I’m not,” Laura answered automatically. “Why?”

  “Then marry me,” Ahmed said, with another flashing smile.

  “You’re joking,” Laura said, so astonished that she almost ran the car into the ditch.

  “No,” Ahmed said solemnly. “If you marry me I can stay in this country and look after my mother and my sister. When we are ready to go to Canada, I will divorce you.” Laura laughed although she suspected the boy was in earnest.

  “It’s not as easy as that in this country,” she said, not unkindly. “Neither getting married nor divorced is as easy as that.”

  “If you really wanted to help us…” Ahmed began and suddenly Laura realised just how serious he was.

  “I’m already breaking the law driving you around like this instead of turning you over to the police,” she said. “I can’t do any more than I’m doing, Ahmed.” He turned away and gazed out of the window for a moment in silence, his shoulders slumped in what looked like despair and Laura found herself more moved by Ahmed’s plight than she cared to admit. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. He turned back to his scruffy notes without meeting her eyes.

  “Turn left,” he said suddenly as they approached an unmade track leading between pock-marked fields. A dilapidated sign informed them that the site beyond, where seagulls were circling in raucous quarrelsome spirals, belonged to Stainer Reclamation PLC and was strictly private.

  Laura halted the car just inside the open entrance gates and got out, stretching stiff limbs wearily. It was five thirty in the afternoon and she had been driving for almost four hours. She walked slowly along the track but as far as she could see work at the site had finished for the day. Several large bull-dozers and dumper trucks were parked next to a corrugated iron structure which was where she guessed Ahmed must have hidden when he had slipped out of the container truck unseen.

  He came up behind her and she was aware that he was shivering, although the day was warm and windless, the sun a diffuse glare above thin cloud. The dump ahead of them filled the nostrils with a sweet decaying smell.

  “Is this the place?”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “This is the place.”

  “We must call the police,” she said.

  “Take me back to London first,” he said. “I can’t talk to them.” Laura sighed. She knew by now that there was no way that she was going to be able to change Ahmed’s mind on that point.

  “Was there anything special about the lorry - a name?”

  “No name,” he said. “Brown paint.” Just like a thousand other containers, Laura thought hoplessly. “But some numbers and letters. I wrote them down,” Ahmed said consulting his scrap of paper again. “Here, see.”

  Laura copied his rough scrawl into her notebook carefully. Even without a name it might provide some sort of identification, she thought.

  “Show me exactly where you think it happened,” she said, gazing helplessly around the acres of land filled in by garbage. She gritted her teeth as she forced herself follow him around the shed towards the top of the huge chute of multi-coloured stinking rubbish which fell away onto scrubby marshy land some fifty feet below them. In the distance she could see a line of small white pleasure boats scudding across the estuary where the water sparkled innocently in the hazy sunlight. How, she wondered, could such a nightmare be happening. And how could they find anything in this desolation? But she underestimated Ahmed’s precision. Gingerly she followed him to the ridge from which the garbage cascaded and he pointed downwards.

  “I think it was here,” he said. “It’s difficult to tell. But the truck was parked there.” He pointed to a spot close to the corrugated shed. “And they didn’t take them far before they threw them over the edge. Fifty metres maybe.”

  As they walked across the soggy, unstable crust of the dump the seagulls rose up around them squawking in protest at their intrusion. There was nothing visible except crumpled black plastic bags spilling out nameless cargoes of cans and packaging and bottles, soiled nappies and rotting vegetables. “Look,” Ahmed said suddenly and pointed to a spot where something limp and brown lay between crumpled newspapers. It took Laura several moments to realise that what he had seen was a human hand. For a moment she thought she would faint and she reached out to steady herself with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Enough,” she said. “I believe you. Now we must fetch the police.”

  “One moment,” Ahmed said and before she could stop him he had gone, jumping like a goat from mound to mound of rubbish to where the buried body lay and scrabbling around amongst the stinking debris. She turned away, unable to watch and within a minute he was back beside her holding out his hand on which lay a ring of intricately twined gold.

  “Oh, God, Ahmed, why?” Laura said faintly. The boy looked away, evidently hurt.

  “I remember the ring,” he said. “It belonged to a Pakistani boy. It is unusual. Someone will recognise it and be able to tell who it belonged to.” Laura swallowed hard and forced herself to take the ring from Ahmed’s palm.

  “Maybe, you’re right,” she said, without conviction. It was more likely, she thought, that whoever had been dumped here like so many sacks of garbage would go down amongst the unidentified, nameless victims of an inhuman trade from which Ahmed had been lucky to excape with his life. “I’m sorry. But now we must go back.”

  They walked slowly back to the Peugeot and she drove with the windows open to dispel the smell which clung to their clothes, the enormity of what Ahmed had shown her weighing her down like a millstone threatening to drag her down into the depths of the tip herself.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Laura closed the door of her flat behind her and stood with her back against it, trying to control the trembling of her limbs. She had been driving continuously for almost ten hours without a break and was exhausted, her clothes crushed and sticky and her hair hanging in sweaty strands around a face pale and shrivelled with tiredness. Convulsively she stripped off her T shirt and jeans which still carried the odour of decay they had picked up at the land-fill site in Kent, and which had sickened her for the whole journey north. She stood under the shower turned up as hot as she could bear, scrubbing every inch of her body with obsessional care. The small cut she had acquired so painfully at Tom Massey’s gig stung under her assault and underscored just how close to the edge she had been for the last couple of days. Finally satisfied that no trace of the day could remain, she wrapped herself in a towel and went into the living room, poured herself a large vodka and tonic, took a mouthful, sank into a chair and closed her eyes.

  She needed to think but her brain was sluggish. She knew that the decisions she had taken that day had put her outside the law, but she was not sure how far outside or what she should do about it. The grave, pleading eyes of Ahmed Barre haunted her and she had spent hours, as she had driven doggedly north from London with the Somali boy at her side, trying to reconcile her determination not to lead him into danger and yet find a way to expose the tragedy of which he was apparently the sole survivor.

  Her first instinct was to write everything she knew for the Sunday Extra. But she was afraid that if she committed herself to even that short delay the bodies at the tip might never be found. She wondered if she could do a deal with the police which would allow her to break the story but she knew that after what had happened in London the only policeman she was prepared to trust was Michael Thackeray. And there was the rub.

  Initially, when she and Ahmed had fled from the tip, gagging and overwhelmed by what they had found, she had planned to deliver Ahmed back to his mother and sister. She hoped maybe that they could add his asylum claim to theirs and come to some arrangement with the immigration authorities which would allow them to stay together. As the sole witness to an appalling crime she could not see how he could now be depo
rted until it had been resolved.

  But when they had ground their way back through the stifling heat and traffic to the Barre family’s flat they found it abandoned, the door and windows nailed up and signs of smoke on the concrete outside. Ahmed had stood by the car, trembling in silent panic, clearly unable to function without her help. With a sense of foreboding she had driven on to Sally Neill’s flat but there was no answer to the doorbell there either and Laura was getting into the car again, unsure where to turn next, when she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. She spun round to find Tom Massey standing behind her, his tie hanging loose, his jacket slung over one shoulder, a brief-case in his hand, and an unfriendly look on his face.

  “You frightened me,” Laura said, as Tom’s dark eyes raked over the car and its passenger. “I was looking for Sally.”

  “She’s not coming straight home tonight,” Tom said angrily. “She’s gone down to Deadman’s Quay. Inspector Wesley’s come over all heavy and wants to talk to her about this and that. I dare say you’ll crop up in the conversation.”

  “Damn,” Laura said. “I’m sorry I got you involved in all this.” Tom glanced into the car again.

  “I suppose this is your witness?” he said. “The police seem to think Sally knows where he is, for some reason. They seem quite keen to talk to you again, too.”

  “They can wait,” Laura had said shortly. “What I need to know is where Mrs. Barre is. I went over there and found the flat all locked up.” She did not intend to tell Tom just who her witness was. The fewer people who knew Ahmed’s identity, she thought, the better.

  “According to some of the kids at school there was trouble down on the estate earlier and some of the residents had to be moved out,” Tom said.

  “That figures,” Laura said. “There was a gang of skinheads roaming around there this morning. I don’t suppose anyone knows where the Barre’s have been taken, do they?” Tom shrugged.

  “I guess that’s the last thing they’ll want anyone to know,” he said. “Sally said she had your boy-friend on the phone last night - wanting to know where you were. D’you make a habit of disappearing like this?”

  “That’s another story,” Laura said shortly.

  “Pardon me,” Tom said. “But if you want my advice, which I don’t suppose you do, I’d get my ass back to loving boyfriend, because nobody around her seems to love you one little bit. And if that kid’s who I think he is, all the more reason to get lost. Fast. It’s not just the police who are looking for him.”

  “How do you know that?” Laura said sharply.

  “If you keep your ears open in a school like ours, you hear things,” Tom said. “And they’re not always things people want you to hear. I told you you’re not safe round here, and if you’re not, that boy isn’t either. Did the police offer you protection, as a witness?” Laura shook her head, feeling numb.

  “Nuff said,” Tom said. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I need to make sure there’s nothing there shouldn’t be in Sally’s flat before the cops take it into their heads to come smashing the door down. All in all, your little London jolly has caused a lot of hassle.”

  Laura had run a hand through hair sticky with sweat and admitted defeat. She had set off through the snailing evening traffic, doggedly following the signs to the north until she could at last pull away onto the M1 and put her foot down amongst the tail-gating late commuters.

  Not until the clock touched two and she had poured herself several more large V and Ts, did she reluctantly pick up the phone. Thackeray answered sleepily.

  “Can you come over? I’m back home? Please?” Laura said quietly. For a moment there was a silence at the other end which she feared might prove terminal. When Thackeray finally spoke Laura let her breath our in a low sigh of relief.

  “Give me half an hour,” he said and hung up.

  She had been standing by the window watching for his car and turned quickly when he let himself in with his key. She had swapped her towel for a bath-robe and with her hair still in a damp tangled mass she looked very young. For a moment they both hesitated before Laura crossed the room and flung herself into his arms. He buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair as he crushed her to him.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said at last. He had wondered why she had been standing at first with one hand to her cheek, but when he looked down he saw the bruises on her face and drew a sharp breath.

  “What happened?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady as he recalled what Mower had told him about her misadventures in London. She reached up again to touch the puffy flesh and scraped skin and shrugged.

  “I walked into a door,” she said far more lightly than she felt. “That’s the usual explanation, isn’t it? No, in fact I got mugged. Some kids. Fortunately some-one came to help so they didn’t get my bag.”

  “Laura,” Thackeray said helplessly.

  Laura hugged him again and mumbled something he could not catch into his shirt and then pulled away until he could see just how exhausted she looked. He knew there was something desperately wrong but he could not guess what. He had spent the journey across town with the gnawing fear that she might be about to end their relationship once and for all. But he realised now that whatever had reduced her to this state of incoherence, at least it was not anything he had done.

  “I need you to listen to something,” she said indistinctly, pulling him towards the hi-fi in the corner of the room. She put a used tape onto one deck and a new one onto the other.

  “I’ll copy it,” she said, switching on and flinging herself down on the sofa. He sat beside her, bolt upright, his hands between his knees, concentrating hard as Ahmed Barre began his story against the clattering background noise of a north London cafe. When the tape resolved itself into hissing silence he did not move while he tried to absorb what he had just heard. When he turned to Laura she was gazing at him with huge, stunned eyes.

  “Where is this boy now?” Thackeray asked. Laura hesitated for no more than a second but Thackeray knew her well enough to know that she was not going to tell him the truth.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “And if you did you wouldn’t tell me? You don’t have to answer that,” he added quickly.

  “If, and I mean if, I could take you to see him, what would you do?”

  “If he’s in this country illegally, you know what I would have to do….”

  “He’s the brother of the boy I saw killed,” Laura said fiercely. “He has a mother and a sister who need him. It would be outrageous to lock him up.”

  “It would be up to the immigration authorities,” Thackeray said. Laura sighed.

  “Never let it be said that Michael Thackeray bent a rule,” she said. They sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment before Laura shrugged.

  “So you’ll have to make do with me for the moment,” she said. “Ahmed took me to where the bodies from the container had been dumped. There wasn’t a lot to see, just a dead hand in a mountain of rubbish. But I can tell you where it is.”

  “Are you sure he was telling you the truth?” Thackeray asked. Laura gave him a long chilly look.

  “I’m not a fool,” she said. “I’m sure. I saw the hand.” She swallowed hard and turned away to rewind the two tapes. She handed one to Thackeray and picked up a road atlas which had been lying on the coffee table, open at a map which showed the Thames estuary.

  “There’s your evidence,” she said, nodding at the tape. “And I’ve marked on the map exactly where the bodies are.”

  “Laura..,” he began but he could see that she was at the end of her tether. “You should get some sleep,” he said. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

  She shrugged wearily and let him guide her into the bedroom. Her legs felt like jelly and she could hardly keep her gritty eye-lids apart. She slipped out of her bath-robe and slid naked beneath the quilt causing Thackeray a moment of desire so intense that he thought she must have felt the heat. But her eyes had already closed
and he watched as she sank almost immediately into sleep, her damp hair spread out on the pillow around her like a halo of copper filaments lit by some inner sun.

  He stood gazing at her for a moment before turning out the light and closing the bedroom door behind him and leaning against it for a moment.

  “Laura, Laura,” he murmured. “You are killing me.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had bodies on our hands,” said Ray Roberts, the senior immigration officer for West Yorkshire. A short, trim man with slicked back grey hair and a pepper and salt military moustache, he did not mince words. “Container lorries, secret compartments underneath trucks, the wheel-arches of bloody jumbo jets, for God’s sake. You find people suffocated, frozen, mashed up…. But twenty of them? Jesus. Is this woman reliable? Can we believe her?”

  “Yes,” Michael Thackeray said, wincing slightly. “If she says she saw a human hand, she saw a human hand.”

  “But that’s all? I don’t want to send my lads rooting around a rubbish tip unless we’re sure there’s something worth rooting for. This isn’t some fairy-tale she’s hoping to sell to the Globe, is it? Journalists aren’t known for their reliability.”

  “She’s reliable,” Thackeray said mildly. “Anyway, you’ve heard the tape. What more do you want?”

  “Well, I’ll want to talk to the lad this Ackroyd woman says she’s interviewed too,” Roberts said sharply. “You know as well as I do that an unsourced tape is no bloody good in court. I need witnesses. Never mind bloody reporters protecting their informants.” Roberts was brusque and seemed irritated to find himself at Bradfield police headquarters, as if there were more important things he could be doing.

  “She says she doesn’t know where he is,” Thackeray said.

  “Yes, well we’ll see about that,” Roberts said ominously. “But she can wait a bit. First I’ve got to get the Kent police organised. And quietly. I don’t want this all over the tabloids. We’ve known for some time that there’s a flourishing trade in bodies between Belgium and the UK. What we really need to do is to pin down the carriers. This might just give us the lead we’ve been looking for. Whoever was waiting for this consignment to arrive - friends and families, whoever - may be willing to talk when they find their loved ones have been dumped with the garbage. That’s our only hope, really.”