At Risk (9 page)

All were identically dressed in used blue mechanics’ overalls. In a warehouse near the Bremerhaven docks they had been stripped of the rancid garments in which they had travelled from their various countries of origin, permitted to shave and shower, and fitted out with second-hand jeans, sweaters and windcheaters from the city’s charity shops. They were also handed the overalls, and by the time the twenty-one of them were gathered around the bonfire of their old clothing they looked, to the casual eye, like a team of guest workers. Before embarking on the sea crossing they had been given bread rolls, coffee, and individual servings of hot mutton stew in foil cartons—a meal which, over the course of the eighteen months that the Caravan had been up and running, had proved acceptable to the bulk of its clients.

The Caravan had been set up to provide what its organisers described as “Grade 1 covert trans-shipment” of economic migrants from Asia to Northern Europe and the United Kingdom. The passage was not luxurious, but a concerted attempt had been made to provide a humane and functional service. For twenty thousand US dollars, customers were promised safe travel, appropriate EU documentation (including passports), and twenty-four hours of hostel accommodation on arrival.

This was in marked contrast to previous people-smuggling endeavours. In the past, in return for hefty cash sums at the point of departure, migrants had been delivered filthy, traumatised and half starved to motorway lay-bys on the UK’s south coast, and abandoned without currency or documents to fend for themselves. Many had died en route, usually of suffocation in sealed containers or trucks.

The organisers of the Caravan, however, knew that in an age of split-second communications their long-term interests were best served by a reputation for efficiency. Hence the overalls, whose grim purpose became clear the moment the
Susanne Hanke
cleared the port of Bremerhaven. The cutter’s draught was shallow, perhaps a metre and a half, and while the vessel was equal in terms of stability to anything the North Sea might throw at it, it pitched and rolled like a pig in bad weather. And the weather, from the moment the
Susanne Hanke
made open sea, was very bad, blowing an unremitting December gale. On top of this the Caterpillar power plant, pushing out a steady 375 horse-power, swiftly filled the converted fish-hold with the queasy stink of diesel.

Neither of these factors worried the
Susanne Hanke
’s bearded German master or his two-man crew, as they held a steady westwards course in the heated wheelhouse. But they had a disastrous effect on the passengers. Cheerfully exchanged cigarettes and optimistic bursts of Hindi film song swiftly gave way to retching and misery. The men tried to remain seated on their benches, but the motion of the boat alternately pitched them backwards against the bulwarks or forwards into the ice-cold bilge at their feet. The overalls were soon streaked with bile and vomit—and, in a couple of cases, blood from cracked noses. Above their heads the men’s suitcases and haversacks swung crazily in the netting carrier.

And the weather, as the hours passed, had got steadily worse. The seas, although invisible to the men crouched beneath the foredeck, were mountainous. The men clutched each other as the hull reared and fell, but were thrown, hour after hour, around the steel-ribbed hold. Their bodies battered and bruised, their feet frozen, their throats raw from heaving, they had given up any pretence of dignity.

Faraj Mansoor concentrated on survival. The cold he could deal with; he was a mountain man. With the exception of the Somali, who was groaning tearfully to his left, they could all deal with the cold. But this nausea was something else, and he worried that it would weaken him beyond the point where he could defend himself.

The migrants hadn’t been prepared for the rigours of the four-hundred-mile voyage. The crossing of Iran in the stifling heat of the container had been uncomfortable, but from Turkey onwards—through Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Hungary—their progress had been relatively painless. There had been fearful moments, but the Caravan drivers knew which were the most porous borders, and which the easiest-bribed border guards.

Most, but not all, of the border crossings had been effected at night. At Esztergom, in northwest Hungary, they had found a deserted playing field and an old football and enjoyed a kick-around and a smoke before trooping back into the truck for the Morava river crossing into the Slovak Republic. The final crossing, into Germany, had taken place at Liberec, fifty miles north of Prague, and a day later they were stretching their legs in Bremerhaven. There, they had dossed down amongst the warehouse’s disused lathes and workbenches. The photographer had come, and twelve hours later they had received their passports, and in the case of Faraj, his UK driving licence. Along with his other documents, this was now zipped into the inside pocket of the windcheater which he was wearing beneath the filthy overalls.

Bracing himself in his seat, Faraj rode out the
Susanne Hanke
’s rise and fall. Was it his imagination, or were those hellish peaks and troughs finally beginning to subside? He pressed the Indiglo light button on his watch. It was a little past 2 a.m., UK time. In the watch’s tiny glow he could see the pale, fearful faces of his fellow travellers, huddled like ghosts. To rally them, he suggested prayers.

At 2:30 a.m., Ray Gunter finally saw it. The light that the
Susanne Hanke
was showing was too muted to register to the naked eye, but through the image-intensifiers it showed up as a clear green bloom near the horizon.

“Gotcha,” he muttered, flipping the butt of his cigarette to the shingle. His hands were frozen but tension, as always, kept the cold at bay.

“We on?” asked Kieran Mitchell.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Together they pushed the boats into the water, felt the spray at their faces and the icy water at their calves. As the more experienced seaman, Gunter took the lead vessel. Cracking a lightstick so that it glowed a fluorescent blue, he placed it in a holder on the stern; it was essential that the two boats did not get separated.

Yards apart, the two men began to row through the choppy offshore swell, correcting against the hard eastern blow. Both of them were wearing heavyweight waterproofs and lifejackets. A hundred yards out they shipped their oars and pull-started the Evinrude outboards. These burbled into life, their sound carried away on the wind. Locking into Gunter’s wake, his eyes fixed on the lightstick, Mitchell followed the other man out to sea.

Ten minutes later they were alongside the
Susanne Hanke.
Clutching their meagre baggage items, and divested of the fouled overalls (which would be washed in preparation for the next consignment of illegals), the passengers exited the hold one by one, and were helped down a ladder to the boats. This was a slow and dangerous process to undertake in near darkness and high seas, but half an hour later all twenty-one of them were seated with their baggage stowed at their feet. All except one, that is. One of them, a courteous but determined figure, insisted on carrying his heavy rucksack on his back. And if you go over the side, mate, thought Mitchell, it’s your bloody lookout.

Kieran Mitchell knew only one word of Urdu—
khamosh,
which means “silence.” In the event, though, he had no need of it. The cargo, as usual, looked cowed, fearful and properly respectful. As a self-styled patriot Mitchell had no time for raghead illegals, and would have been much happier sending the whole bloody lot of them home. As a businessman, however—and a businessman in the full-time employ of Melvin Eastman—his hands were tied.

The return journey to shore was the part Mitchell dreaded. The old wooden fishing boats could only just manage a complement of twelve, and sat terrifyingly low in the water. Superior seamanship kept Gunter’s people more or less dry, but Mitchell’s were not so lucky. Waves broke almost continuously over their bows, drenching them. In the end it was a shivering and bedraggled group which helped him drag the boat up the beach and—as every consignment did—fell to its collective knees on the wet shingle to give thanks for its safe arrival. All except one, that is. All except the man with the black rucksack, who just stood there, looking around him.

Once the boats were in place Gunter and Mitchell removed their lifejackets and waterproofs. As Gunter unlocked a small wooden shed at the beach’s edge and hung the gear inside, Mitchell lined the men up and led them in single file away from the sea.

The shingle gave way to a turf path, which in turn led up to an open ironwork gate, which Mitchell closed behind them. They marched upwards, and the shapes of trees appeared against the faint illumination of the false dawn. These gave way to formal hedges and the flat plane of a lawn before the path led them to the left. A high wall appeared in front of them, and a door. Gunter opened this with a key, and Mitchell pulled it shut behind the last man. They were now in a narrow side road bordered by the wall on one side and by trees on the other. Some fifty yards up the road, hard against the trees, was the dim outline of an articulated truck.

Unpadlocking the back entrance of the truck, Mitchell led the migrants inside. When they were all in position at the front of the container, Mitchell pulled an alloy barrier across which, draped as it was with ropes and sacking, effectively formed a false front to the container. Beyond it, the migrants were crammed into an area approximately three feet deep, with a ventilation fan in the ceiling. The arrangement was not foolproof, but to the casual observer—a policeman with a torch, for example, looking in from the back—the artic was empty.

Mitchell drove, and Gunter took the passenger seat next to him. To begin with, for a good five minutes, they crept along an uneven country lane without showing any lights. Once in sight of the main road, however, Mitchell turned on the headlights and accelerated.

“Force nine out there earlier,” he said. “Bet they’ve been spewing their guts all the way.”

“They did look a bit buggered,” admitted Gunter, reaching into his pocket for his lighter and his cigarettes. He usually went home to bed at this stage of the game, but this morning he was taking a ride off Mitchell as far as King’s Lynn, where his sister Kayleigh had a council flat. He’d rather have driven there in his own car, but that silly-bugger Munday woman had ploughed into the back of it with her four-wheel drive. The Toyota was in Brancaster, getting a new tailgate, lights and exhaust system. The old exhaust was just knackered, nothing to do with the shunt, but the garage had been more than happy to quote for a new system and charge it to the insurance. Least said, soonest mended.

Twenty minutes later the artic pulled into the lorry park of a transport café on the A148 outside Fakenham. This was where, according to instructions, the “special” was to be let out.

As the lorry’s hydraulics gassily exhaled, Gunter took a heavy fourteen-inch Maglite torch from the passenger-side locker and jumped down from the cab. Unlocking the rear doors he clambered inside, switched on the torch and opened the forward compartment a crack.

The man with the rucksack presented himself. He was of medium height, lightly built, with unruly black hair and a studious half-smile. The rucksack, expensive-looking but unbranded, hung heavily from his narrow shoulders. Victim written all over him, thought Gunter. No wonder these Pakis get pushed around. And yet somewhere he’d found twenty grand for his transit. His dad’s life savings, that’d be, and probably half a dozen aunties chipping in too. And all so that the poor sod could spend his life shovelling curry or flogging newspapers in some dingy city like Bradford. Unbelievable. As he relocked the false wall, Gunter glanced at the young Asian—at the worn jeans, the cheap windcheater, and the narrow, fatigued features. Not for the first time in his life he gave sincere thanks that he’d been born white, and beneath the flag of St. George.

He watched as the special lowered himself to the ground, searched the unprepossessing nightscape, and hitched the heavy rucksack higher up his back. What did he have in there that had to be so carefully guarded? Gunter wondered. Something valuable, that was for sure. Maybe even gold—he wouldn’t be the first illegal to carry in a slab of the shiny stuff.

Following Mansoor to the ground, Gunter locked up the truck. From the open cab window, up the front, came the drift of Mitchell’s cigarette smoke.

Mansoor held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said.

“Pleasure,” said Gunter brusquely. His large callused hand dwarfed Mansoor’s.

The Afghan nodded, his half-smile still in place. Rucksack on back, he began to walk the fifty-odd yards to the white-painted toilet block.

Gunter came to a snap decision, and when the door of the block had opened and closed, he followed in Mansoor’s footsteps. Extinguishing the Maglite, he reversed it in his hand so that he was holding it by the knurled grip. Stepping into the toilet block he saw that one of the stalls was occupied, but that otherwise the place was empty. Genuflecting, he saw the base of Mansoor’s rucksack through the gap beneath the door. It was shaking slightly, as if its contents were being repacked. I was right, Gunter thought, the sneaky bastard
has
got something in there. Shaking his head at the perfidy of Asians in general, he crossed to the urinal to wait.

When Mansoor stepped out of the stall a couple of minutes later with the rucksack hoisted over one shoulder, Gunter rushed him, swinging the big Maglite like a steel-jacketed nightstick. The improvised weapon smashed into Mansoor’s upper arm, sending him staggering, and the rucksack sliding to the floor.

Gasping with pain, and furious with himself for having allowed fatigue to override caution, Mansoor made a desperate grab for the rucksack with his good arm, but the fisherman got there first, clubbing at Mansoor’s head with the Maglite so that the Afghan had to throw himself backwards to avoid having his jaw or skull shattered.

Skidding the rucksack out of reach, Gunter kicked Mansoor hard in the guts and crotch. As his victim writhed and clawed for breath, he grabbed for his spoils. The rucksack’s weight, however, slowed him down. The couple of seconds’ hesitation as he swung it over his shoulder was long enough for Mansoor to reach agonisedly inside his windcheater. He would have shouted if he could have—attracted Gunter’s attention to the silenced weapon, made the stupid English lout drop the rucksack before it was too late—but there wasn’t the breath in his body. And he couldn’t lose sight of the rucksack; that would be the end of everything.