by Mark Eklid
His intuition told him it could not be. That was what he wanted to believe but was that wish clouding his judgement? He would be more certain of that when they met. He felt sure of that.
Their approach to resolving the issue would depend on whether or not Andreas was behind the smuggling operation, so he decided to leave that until the morning, but he was not in the slightest bit comfortable with the concept of turning the foul contraband and the driver over to the mercy of Sarah, Jason and their heavies. He could not trust them. God knows what they might do to the driver and whoever else was in their way. They would have to get the police involved. He could see no other way to escape this situation safely and safety – primarily his and Janet’s – was uppermost in his concerns.
Graham hated the thought that he might be leaving Janet vulnerable to danger more than he was scared for himself. In a petrifying flash of speculative foreboding, a vision of how his wife might not be able to cope if he was suddenly ripped from her life came into his mind and he attempted to shake it from his consciousness before it could consume him. That was too much to contemplate.
Maybe they should run away. Go. Now. Get as far away from Andreas and Johnson’s and Sarah and drug smuggling as they could and start again. They would have to change their names, for sure, but if they worked with the police to uncover Sarah and her vile trade that might be possible.
But if they took that course Graham knew he would be throwing Andreas to the wolves and he could not do that. If Andreas was innocent, they could be committing a crime more appalling than importing the drugs. Even if he was guilty, the retribution of Sarah’s thugs was not a fate he deserved. If he was guilty, he should face lawful punishment but that was it.
Whether he liked it or not, Graham was involved now and he could not run away from his responsibilities. He had to see it through. Do the right thing.
There was one more thing he resolved he should do.
If the worst came to the worst, he had to set in place an insurance policy. He went to the cupboard where they kept their stationery and took out a notepad.
Graham wrote on it everything that had happened to him that evening, everything he could think of that might act as a clue to lead the authorities to Sarah and Jason and the rest, in case everything went horribly wrong. He included all the detail of the allegations against Andreas and his thoughts on the legitimacy of them. It would be wrong not to.
Then he wrote a separate note to Janet. He told her how much he loved her and explained why he felt he had to put himself in the way of danger and how he hated to deceive her and to leave her. As he wrote it, he became the junior infantry officer about to lead his men over the top into the face of an uncertain fate. Such historical letters left him humbled whenever he had the privilege to read them in the course of his research and now he felt a connection with them in a way he never imagined he could.
They were the hardest words he ever wrote.
He folded the letters into an envelope and sealed it before writing Janet’s name on the front. It was important she should read it first.
With his heart now heavy as lead, he took the envelope and placed it, hidden but easily found, in the drawer where they kept their important documents.
When this was all over – when – he would retrieve it and he would destroy it.
23
The door was already open. He was expected.
‘Here he is and he is...’ Andreas checked his watch theatrically. ‘...two minutes early. Very impressive timekeeping. This is why I employed you.’
He rose and stretched out his arm to shake Graham’s hand.
‘Come in. Would you like a coffee?’
Graham took the hand but could muster only a thin, tense smile to go with it. He could have been in much earlier. Sleep had proved impossible.
‘No, I’m fine thanks.’
They both sat down.
‘So how was our friend Bentley? Full of contrition, I hope.’
Andreas was in one of his ebullient moods. It was a pity to drag him down but there really was no choice.
‘Andreas, I have something incredibly important to ask you and I need you to be completely honest with me. Whatever your answer to my questions, it has to be the truth.’
The joviality drained from his face. Andreas sat back and his brow knitted.
‘What lies has he been telling you?’
Graham grew suddenly impatient. The spat with Bentley was utterly trivial and had no place in a discussion of such gravity.
‘This has nothing to do with Bentley. He had nothing to do with the fires. Forget about him. We have much more serious issues to address here.’
The curtness shook Andreas. He was silenced.
‘When I was going back to my car after seeing Bentley last night I was snatched.’
‘Snatched? What do you mean snatched?’
‘Abducted, seized, kidnapped. Three men in a four-by-four were waiting for me. They gagged me, put a bag over my head and drove me somewhere. I don’t know where they took me but it was about 25 minutes, half an hour from where they grabbed me and I was bundled into an office, tied up and, basically, interrogated. They were part of a drug gang, Andreas, and they said there is a rival drug supply coming into the country on our trucks and they wanted to stop it. They were the ones behind the fires. The fires were their way of telling us that they knew our trucks were being used to smuggle in these drugs and that we should take steps to bring that to an end.’
‘Drugs? Fuck!’
Andreas shot to his feet. His hands covered the look of complete incredulity which had steadily taken over his expression as Graham gave his outline explanation of the previous evening’s events.
‘I mean – fuck!’
He practically shouted the word. His hands parted in front of his face and he peered at Graham intensely.
‘Did they say who was doing this smuggling?’
If Andreas was the mastermind, he was doing a fine job of disguising his guilt.
‘They said Yates was the driver.’
‘Yates! I fucking knew it! I fucking knew he was up to no good - but this? Drugs? On my trucks!’
‘Andreas, that’s not all.’
He was stilled, mid-rant. There was more?
‘They said they believed you were the man behind the operation. They said you knew all about it and that you are planning to import an even bigger shipment next time. They also said they think I was brought here to somehow help with the smuggling and that if this next shipment gets through and is distributed, they will hold you and me responsible and they will come after us. Andreas, these people are not fucking about.’
Andreas turned to face the window. His hands were on top of his head now. Graham watched him closely.
‘But this is preposterous,’ he said at last. ‘How can they think...? I would never... This is unreal. Just unreal.’
Graham allowed him to let the thoughts swirl around his consciousness for a few moments more before deciding it was time to put the question.
‘Tell me truthfully, Andreas. Is it you? Did you know about this?’
Andreas spun to face his accuser. There was hurt and desperation in his eyes.
‘No!’ he yelled. ‘No, no, no, no, no! You cannot... Drugs? I could never deal in drugs! It is an appalling trade, full of suffering and misery and... No! I swear to you, I know nothing.’
‘You must tell me the truth, Andreas. If you lie to me and we don’t nip this in the bud now, these people will hurt us and they might even kill us. If you aren’t telling the truth, you are putting both our lives at risk.’
‘I swear! I swear! I know nothing! I would never do this. I would never put you in danger. I swear on my life. I swear on the lives of my mama and pappa.’
He was imploring Graham to believe him with every fibre of his soul, tears filling his eyes. Graham stared into those eyes and could not believe they were the eyes of a liar. He could not believe Andreas was the mastermind.
‘I believe you,’ he said, simply.
The relief of that reassurance made Andreas’s shoulders and head sag. He leaned forward and rested his flat palms on the desk.
‘But we have to find out who is behind this. Yates was not working alone. He was just the driver. Somebody in this organisation was making the connections, providing the capital and sorting the distribution and they’re the ones planning to bring in the next, bigger shipment. We haven’t got much time.’
Andreas raised his head.
‘When did they say it was coming into the country?’
‘Today.’
Andreas slumped again.
‘Fuck!’
The enormity of their task hit him but Graham had had the head start of thinking time. He had thought of nothing else in the last 12 hours or so.
‘We can work this out. We just have to approach it step by step and fill in the details. We start with what we know and what we know is that Yates used to be the driver who brought the drugs into the country.’
‘Yates! Of course!’ Andreas snapped back into focus. ‘The unexplained stop-offs were all at the end of regular scheduled continental runs. It must have been the drugs he was dropping off. They must have been on the two missing pallets we discovered the last time before I sacked him.’
He jumped into his seat and stirred the computer into action by moving the mouse.
‘It’s all here on Trams. Come and have a look.’
Graham stood and walked to the other side of the desk to look over Andreas’s shoulder. The transport management system was familiar to him now but he wanted to see how Yates’s deceit had been uncovered.
‘If I search for the records of Yates’s trips we see that he did the same continental short run every four weeks, Wednesday to Friday, and see here.’ He pointed to the time map which is part of the record of every journey the company organised for each of its drivers.
‘This tells us when he drove off the ferry at Hull and we track him here – A63, M62 and then here, look. Just after he comes off the M62 at junction 35 for the M18 he pulls on to an old industrial estate. He did it here, look, and this time and this time – basically every time he did the run going back to February. He turns off the ignition for between 45 minutes to an hour each time and then he sets off again to complete the journey back to the depot.’
Andreas glanced towards Graham eagerly. There was a definite pattern to it. There could be no doubt about that.
‘Lots of drivers use this industrial estate when they need to take their breaks because it’s relatively quiet and they can get their heads down for a bit, if they want to, but there’s no reason for Yates to stop. He’s been on a ferry for 10 hours. He isn’t due a break. Why doesn’t he just want to drive home as soon as he can? It makes no sense. That was why Rebecca became suspicious.’
Graham could see that.
‘So when was his last run?’
Andreas scrolled up the page.
‘Here we go. He set out July the 17th and got back on the 19th.’
‘Four weeks ago. I was told the next shipment is in today, which fits the pattern, so who did we send to do Yates’s run?’
Andreas clicked back to another page.
‘Oli Turnbull. The new guy. It’s his first job for us.’
‘And we’ve no other continentals arriving back today?’
They both checked.
‘No,’ Andreas confirmed.
‘That’s got to be it. Turnbull has to be bringing in the new shipment. When is the ferry due in?’
Andreas clicked for details of the particular trip.
‘He’s waiting to board at Rotterdam now. It sails at 8am, which means he’s in at Hull at around six this evening and that means he should be back in Sheffield by around 9.30. If he makes the stop at Thorne, like Yates used to, he’ll be there around 7.30 to eight and we could be there waiting for him.’
‘Yeah, but we don’t know they’ll use the same meeting place. If it was you and you thought we might be on to you, wouldn’t you want to arrange a different rendezvous point?’
Andreas considered this.
‘You could be right. We’ll have to track him and see where he leads us. I’ve got Trams on my laptop, so we could post ourselves somewhere along the route close enough to drive to wherever he pulls in so we can intercept him.’
‘That should work,’ Graham nodded.
‘There’s a service station on the M18...’ Andreas called up the map on another page on his computer. ‘...here,’ he pointed. ‘That’s a quarter of an hour from the industrial estate. If he doesn’t stop there, we can jump in the car and follow his next move.’
The plan was forming. The two men were caught in its conception, ready to spin further thoughts off each other.
‘Right, that’s good, but don’t forget we want to catch the main man here as well. Let’s work out who it might be. What do we know about Turnbull?’
Andreas eased back in his chair.
‘Very little. Rebecca interviewed him and checked out his references. She offered him the job and said he was experienced, available straight away and very keen. She had no qualms about assigning him this continental. I think she favours the sink or swim approach to finding out about new drivers.’
He smiled and Graham followed suit. Rebecca was not one to wrap a newcomer in cotton wool.
‘How did he come to us?’
Andreas thought for a moment.
‘It was Ken Arnold. Ken did the introduction and said his son-in-law knew him. Rebecca suggested the interview and Ken set it up.’
Graham recalled hearing the story just after Yates was sacked.
‘That’s right, I remember now.’
Andreas snatched up his phone and went to his directory.
‘I’ll call Ken. He must be able to tell us about Turnbull.’
He pulled a face and hung up.
‘Straight to answerphone.’
‘Is Ken in this morning?’
They shrugged at each other and Andreas rose. There was one way to find out.
Janet had decided she might as well come in with Graham for his early start and was already getting on with her day’s duties. She hadn’t expected a visit so soon from her husband, let alone Andreas too, and greeted them warmly.
Andreas was straight to the point.
‘Good morning to you too, Janet. Is Ken with us today?’
‘I’m sorry, Andreas, but he isn’t. He told me he was taking a leave day today. Is there anything I can help you with?’
‘Not really. Did he say where he might be?’
She shook her head. ‘Not to me. Is it urgent? Have you phoned him?’
‘Straight to answerphone,’ said Graham. ‘He must have it turned off.’
‘What about his other phone?’ Janet asked.
Both men looked perplexed.
‘What other phone?’
‘He’s got two,’ she explained. ‘He keeps the other in his case. I presumed it must be his personal one and the other was for work.’
‘In his case?’ said Andreas.
‘Yes.’ Janet’s cheeks reddened slightly, like she feared she might have said something wrong or stupid.
‘You remember that night I was a bit snappy on the drive home, Graham, and I told you Ken had interrupted our meeting to take a call and when he came back he told me something had come up and left and I had to sit there twiddling my thumbs with a big pile of work waiting to be done? Well, the phone that rang was his other phone. The one in his case.’
‘Have you got that number?’ asked Graham.
She checked the desk diary, where she had dutifully recorded all the essential numbers for her new role.
‘I’ve only got this one.’ She turned the diary to them and Andreas checked the number with the one on his phone.
‘That’s the one I’ve got. I had no idea he possessed another phone. Why would anybody want to carry two phones? There are no restrictions on personal use for
the ones we issue to management.’
Graham was thinking.
‘Maybe he’s just spending a day at home and doesn’t want to be bothered by work, so he’s turned his phone off. Do you know where he lives, Andreas?’
He shook his head.
‘I’ve known Ken for a long time but only through work. The only times I’ve seen him outside work has been at functions – Christmas and so forth.’
‘Could you pull his address from the records for us please, Janet, and see if there’s a home number in there as well.’
‘Sure.’ She looked puzzled. She clearly could not see the need for all this urgency.
She found the address in the computer records and wrote it down.
‘There’s a number there as well,’ she said, handing it to her husband. ‘What’s this about? Is Ken in trouble?’
Andreas attempted a reassuring smile.
‘It’s something we need to talk to him about. Nothing to worry about.’
Graham knew that would not be enough to placate Janet.
‘I’ll tell you all about it later, love. It’s all OK. Thanks for this.’
He held up the Post-it note and the two men left.
They remained silent until they were out of earshot.
‘What do you think?’ asked Graham.
He knew they were both thinking the same thing.
‘Ken’s been with us for a long time, I can’t believe...’
The sentence tailed off into nowhere. Graham finished it for him.
‘And yet it all fits, doesn’t it? Ken knows the business inside out and would know how to stay well below the radar. Ken was very quick to come forward and suggest Turnbull as a replacement more or less as soon as Yates was sacked - and you can understand his urgency if he’s got another shipment he needs picking up days later. He’s nowhere to be seen on the day the shipment is due in and then there’s this business with a second phone. I didn’t tell you this but I was confronted by Yates a few days after he was sacked. He told me he knew things that could bring the company down and put people in jail. He had to be referring to someone high up. That was the day Ken had his call on his second phone and left Janet suddenly because I remember telling her about Yates and what he said on the way home and she didn’t want to talk about it because she was in a bad mood after Ken let her down. What if that call Ken took was from his accomplice, Yates? What if he had to leave in a hurry because Yates was threatening to expose him? That’s what Yates suggested he was prepared to do.’
