Bridge 108

by Anne Charnock

With a hint of hesitation for effect, I myself opened up. I told him I’d abandoned my job in the city as a legal secretary, that I knew most of the law around citizenship and deportations. Told him I was sick of the job, that the long hours had wrecked my marriage, that I’d walked out of the office one Monday morning back in June and hadn’t gone back—either back to the office or even back home. He believed me.

  “You’re chipped?” he asked.

  I simply nodded. He sat quietly for a while, then dug inside his backpack, pulled out a flat tin, which caught the moonlight reflecting off the water surface in the canal. I expected the tin to hold his documents, so I was surprised when he lifted out a pair of scissors. He snipped the rough stitching along the strap of the backpack and teased out a folded piece of plastic, which he unfurled to reveal several slightly tattered certificates and a data pearl. The pearl, he said, might be dead after all the rough handling. I studied the paperwork under torchlight. After a couple of minutes of scrutiny, I announced, forcefully, “You’ll be fine, Caleb.” For Caleb is his name, not Leo. “You’re safe.” Melodramatic, maybe.

  We began practising his story. I gave him my best advice: “Stay as close as you can to the truth because you’re less likely to make a slip.”

  He repeated his story and I tested him, played the part of a police officer and then an immigration official. The police, I explained, would interview him and push him into the immigration process, but he needed to be careful because the immigration officers would try to trip him up. They’ll look for any inconsistencies with his earlier statements. One slip, any slip, and they’ll leverage that mistake and fast-track him to youth detention.

  For sure, he’d be in deep shit without his papers proving his age. I recorded each piece of his documentation. He asked why I was doing so. I fobbed him off, saying I’d make a few enquiries in a couple of months’ time, check how his case was progressing. At least the authorities would know someone was taking an interest, I said. The fact is, I know how immigration loses documents all the time, either accidentally or through maliciousness, if they take a dislike, if it suits their own ends in terms of meeting targets. I didn’t want Caleb to come a cropper. He’s a resilient kid living on his wits without a mother or father or an older sibling looking out for him. I can’t resist feeling a heap of sympathy towards him. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t.

  The rain fell as stair rods, which worked in my favour. I needed time to drill down to elicit descriptions of the traffickers, to winkle out Caleb’s stories about Skylark, Jaspar, Mr. Ben, Ma Lexie. They’re all prime examples of the agents of misery we’re trying to root out and the prime focus of my undercover work. We need to send a message to these lowlifes: the risks are too great, the penalties are harsh. Bizarrely, the kid was determined to leave Ma Lexie out of his tale. His loyalty was inexplicable, and I told him he could be making a grave mistake by erasing a key character.

  However, if Caleb won’t shop Ma Lexie, I’ll put her in the frame myself. She’s my target now. In legal terms, this Lexie woman had kidnapped a minor, held him hostage and forced him into slave work. She hit him “only one time,” he said. Some corrupt form of a mother substitute. And Caleb talks about her, and Skylark and all the others, as people he’s met along the way, as though he were a wandering knave in some medieval tale. The kid doesn’t appear to recognise the fact that he’s been trafficked.

  Wishing Caleb all the best, I give him a gentle push, watch him cross the street and slowly climb five sandstone steps to the police station entrance. The station stands higher and slightly back from the high street. The building itself is early Georgian. Window boxes with geraniums. A perfect drop-off on a sleepy Monday morning. The super-wealthy live in these market towns, so an unaccompanied child migrant will be a novelty. It still irritates me beyond measure that his parents thought they had a plan. What did their plan actually amount to? Start walking, hope for the best. He’s a good kid, speaks fairly passable English, so that’s a head start.

  I stay in position to check he doesn’t have second thoughts. No one enters or leaves the police station for fifteen minutes, so I move on. What I crave now is a week back home to shed not only the weeks of crud, but also my cover story. I’ll start researching and create a new cover. Invent my backstory—from vineyard worker to . . . what? Small-time trader? Someone who could approach Ma Lexie without raising suspicion. Or, I could enter the enclave with no further ado and carry out surveillance. I’ll work it out.

  In the meantime, the police will interview Caleb, pass their notes to immigration’s first-contact team. It’s a slow process but at some point investigations will begin. If Caleb sticks to his story, the police will identify two individuals for investigation: the kid’s first trafficker, Skylark—based on his thin description of a young woman and her leather jacket with a feathered collar—and Jaspar at the Enclave W3 Materials Recycling Facility.

  As for the vineyards along the Welsh border—all part of Caleb’s story—the police will learn subsequently of immigration’s ongoing covert surveillance. As an undercover immigration agent, I check which farms are employing illegal itinerants, which labour agencies are supplying them, and then I cherry-pick individual lines of enquiry. Caleb formed an individual line of enquiry. Ma Lexie is the next.

  We’ll stop these farms from using labour-intensive methods—which inevitably attract illegals—and force them to recognise that the risk of prosecution is high. We won’t brook any claim of ignorance; they’re as guilty as their agents in the eyes of the law.

  Caleb did ask, somewhat sheepishly, if he should include me in his story. “Leave me out,” I said. It’s what he expected me to say.

  My name is not Jerome. And though it’s true that I once worked in the legal world, I was no mere legal secretary. No, I am Jake Devereux, a corporate lawyer, a one-time top fee earner. I extricated myself from that rarefied shitstorm of a job exactly twenty-six months ago. I’ve no regrets on that count. This life suits me.

  I call a cab. Destination: Rollstone Estate. Pebble Town to most people.

  Back in the day, still married, both Beth and I working all hours, we paired the stress of high-octane work with the adrenaline rush of splashing out on major purchases, the trappings of success, the prizes. How else did we justify our professional choices, the lack of a social life, being too tired for sex? She said Sunday mornings ought to be sacrosanct, but we often slept until midday, and we religiously pounded the treadmills on Sunday afternoons. Though, what’s the point in looking taut, going to all that effort, spending acres of time and money on bespoke training regimes, if there’s no payback in terms of shags per week?

  Another major time sink: our never-ending search for a character house that required no renovation work whatsoever, one that suited two corporate lawyers with no time to choose so much as a paint colour. We gave up this endeavour and employed a house scout. That’s how we came to live in an architectural gem, our pebble house, on the much-lauded Rollstone Estate.

  The scout knew how to push our buttons, for sure, by selling a concept and an aesthetic completely at odds with our tight, cubic work environment. A 3D-printed pebble house embodies curves—a fairy-tale home we simply couldn’t resist—emulating the look of straw-bale construction both inside and out.

  Whenever I sprawl out on the sofa, I like to imagine a forester wielding a chainsaw, shaping bales with skilled sweeps, creating the living room’s rounded window reveals. I see, in my mind’s eye, this imaginary forester slapping lime mortar against the straw, smoothing out the final surface to form an organic-textured home. Beth and I loved our printed home—our haven—although we didn’t on any weekday see our haven during daylight hours. And, as it transpired, this mutual love wasn’t enough to keep us together.

  I walk from the taxi park through the lush grounds of Rollstone Estate. The scattering of houses appears refreshingly haphazard. I detect an echo of a childhood adventure—piles of stones marking the route through an imaginary jungle. And I f
eel energised by the contrast between the smooth pebble houses and the compact stands of trees. Have any other residents noticed that all the trees planted by the estate office have compound leaves? Some attached pinnately, others palmately. It’s a conscious decision, I’m sure.

  Last year, by chance, I came across images of an ancient Portuguese village, Monsanto, famous for the giant granitic boulders that perch over its houses and pigsties. Struck me as oddly similar to our estate. I arranged a surprise holiday. Beth loved the place, until we were forced to return home early. Her job took the blame, but I shouldn’t have blustered. It could easily have been my job that pulled us away.

  We split the furniture between us. Beth lives on the far side of the estate. Neither of us could bear to leave the area, so we snapped up the first available house, paid well over the odds to secure it, and Beth gave me first choice, stay or move. After all, the split was essentially her decision. I stayed, and I still need to replace some of the furniture she took.

  I’m left here in an almost empty living space, rocking in my 1942 Hans Wegner, a museum piece. It occurs to me, in my haven, that I have three unoccupied bedrooms. The third bedroom is the only room on the top floor. I never go up there. I think of young Caleb, a nice kid. What would be so bad? Caleb or someone like him, living on the top floor, going to school, someone to come home to.

  Am I getting soft in my old age?

  I message Beth. Back home. Dinner?

  Half an hour later she replies. Sorry, Jake, got plans.

  Of course she does. I’ve heard as much.

  We try to keep things civil, Beth and I. She didn’t approve of my new job. She said she wouldn’t have a child with a guy who lives in two worlds.

  I laugh at myself as I step into the shower for the third time in twelve hours. Five weeks of vineyard camping reset my standards in personal hygiene. The things I do to fit in. Grime in every crease and crevice. My hair is long and knotted and my scalp’s itchy as hell. I can laugh about it because I enjoy my work. How many jobs would allow me to reinvent myself every few weeks?

  When I cast my mind back, I thought I’d hit the jackpot winning a senior associate position at Fen ’n’ Fletch, that is, Fender and Fletcher. Not simply because of the higher salary, but because I imagined I’d gain control over my workload. I was swiftly disabused of such optimism. The hours were as long, the pressures greater, with deadlines—some real, others fake—every half hour of the day. A tsunami of documents upon documents upon documents. Proofreading, marking, signing. Swamped by requests, I diverted tasks to junior associates who, in turn, diverted grunt work to interns. My first priority was simple: deal with any request from those senior partners who sat on the remuneration committee, deciding bonuses. All other tasks were juggled, delegated, ignored. Before I even reached the office, clients had filled my morning diary with conversation slots, which I couldn’t reject. They didn’t give a shit about any diary conflicts. Simple solution: I hauled junior associates into these conversations and gave them the job of actually listening, allowing me to read documents for my next meeting, answer new incoming messages while the client blathered. Later, the junior associates gave me a precis of the actual conversation.

  Trench warfare, basically.

  I rarely dealt face-to-face with my fellow partners or my clients. That was the worst aspect of the job. I had no idea when I chose my area of speciality that corporate law would be so lonesome. Sounded sexy, tailored for high-flyers. I observed my contemporaries working in other departments and comprehended after a couple of years—when the initial buzz connected with corporate law distorted into maddening tinnitus—that I’d taken the wrong path.

  It’s blindingly obvious, now. The best fit for me was employment law. It’s all about people. Meetings, up close and personal, with complainants or defendants, taking witness statements, attending hearings at tribunals. I’d be in my element. The drama of it all. Last-minute discussions with witnesses outside the tribunal, attempts to secure an eleventh-hour settlement. Real people, real-world problems, real human stories.

  Had I taken that path, I’d have kept the best cases. Whereas, in corporate, two departmental simulants—our genetic superiors, supposedly—took the highest value work and were constantly breathing down our necks. The nadir of my corporate law career: I’m pulled up in front of the senior director for productivity, and he lists the oversights, inaccuracies and missed deadlines in my previous three months’ work as logged by the HR simulant, Nadia. None of my oversights or omissions was significant. But I suppose if Nadia can measure something, she’s going to fucking measure it.

  Measure my dick!

  No, in employment cases, empathy skills are critical. As good as the latest simulants are—far fewer recalls than three or four years ago—they can’t cajole a nervous witness to take the stand, or persuade an aggrieved client to accept a deal. If I were in charge at Fen ’n’ Fletch, I’d keep all the simulants in the back room in support roles like Nadia’s; if Nadia developed a glitch we could simply ship her out, cancel the lease. No need to explain to clients about the sudden disappearance of a simulant.

  Midday on Thursday I cook myself a three-course lunch at home. This is the upside of undercover work; although I spend weeks on operations, I rack up time in lieu, and after the vineyard reconnaissance I’m content to spend time at home rather than chase off on holiday. What could be better than rediscovering my old self in beautiful, calm surroundings? I’m living the dream. I wish my old colleagues at Fen ’n’ Fletch could see me.

  I’m clearing the dishes when I receive a report from external operations on the immigration sweep of Bowens’ vineyard. The appendices are my main interest: a list of undocumented workers detained following the raid, and an additional list of those workers with incomplete documentation. I recognise them all from the mug shots. But, who’d have guessed? Here’s Maria, who led the remonstrations following Eleanor’s collapse and consequent death. So Maria, supposedly local, has been flagged up for incomplete, that is, suspect documentation. I had assumed she’d lived in the area for decades, but I expect she won’t be around for much longer. Tough luck.

  I dictate a reply:

  “Point of information. I vacated the courtyard at the onset of the raid and took with me a young male illegal worker, Caleb Cordova, an unaccompanied minor in fact, who had worked at the vineyard under an alias. I judged that I could elicit specific intelligence from the boy—which the immigration service might fail to do—since I had nurtured a relationship. As soon as I had gathered this intelligence, I escorted him to the police station in Tarporley, having persuaded the boy to surrender himself and cooperate with the authorities. He is now in the system, and I have a new line of investigation in Enclave W3: the subject is an adult female, known to the boy as Ma Lexie, who illegally employed him in the textile trade, as slave labour, and whose involvement the boy is reluctant to reveal to the police or immigration.”

  The strawberry stain on the cutting board is the same shape as Australia. You need a fertile imagination in my line of work, and I have that in spades, according to my aptitude tests at immigration. I came across the job by accident when I opened a news story about migration from southern Europe. I expected to read an article about migratory birds, but it turned out to be an exposé on migratory people leaving the Mediterranean rim. At the time, I thought hard chips—you all enjoyed the good times. My eye was caught, at the bottom of the story, by an advertising prompt: Good with people? Ever thought of working in the immigration services? That’s where my journey began. I contacted the recruitment agency and insisted on proceeding with an application, despite the young recruiter’s incredulity: “But, you are vastly overqualified.”

  It’s brought me here. At home in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the week—never happened in my previous job. I’m lying on a bare maple floor staring at an antique Moroccan wall hanging, triangular motifs with a wild range of hues and hand-stitched, wavelike lines unifying the whole.
I track the waves, relax and dictate my full report on my undercover vineyard operation, followed by a formal complaint to our external operations manager because I’m a stickler for procedure. The raid on the vineyard occurred one whole hour before the agreed time for the operation, I point out. I’d even messaged my manager the night before to confirm the start time. What’s the point in me undertaking surveillance, I complain, if they ignore my intelligence? The courtyard dinner had only just started when the raid began. If the officers had held back, the pickers would be on their second or third glass of wine—the evening in full swing—and they’d be slower to react. I imagine some of the illegals escaped. Not only that, external ops must recognise that I was wrong-footed. I had my own game plan, to extricate Caleb, and I needed to grab him at the start of the raid.

  The shuttle pulls out of Manchester Southern Terminus towards Enclave W3. I’m heading for the Saturday market and aim to arrive at midday when the market is at its busiest. Until I started this job, I gave no thought to the enclaves. Occasionally glimpsed at a distance from a car, or from the air, they squat beyond the metropolitan centres and suburbs. Out there, literally. They didn’t even encroach on casual conversation. I regarded them—if I can conjure my former mindset—as new towns built on green fields in the open countryside. How fortunate for them. News channels rarely covered any goings-on in the enclaves, which only confirmed my assumption that these were dull dormitory towns that, of course, I had no reason to visit. They certainly didn’t figure in my mind as no-go areas. The fact is, I didn’t mix socially with anyone housed in those places. Overlaps in our worlds occurred when I pulled an all-nighter at Fen ’n’ Fletch. Office cleaners would appear after midnight, disappear soon after two o’clock, presumably heading home to one of the enclaves.

  A couple of my schoolmates, I can only assume, must live out in the enclaves somewhere. They were rejected for cognitive chipping. We all swore we’d keep in touch, but after a couple of years it became hard work even watching cricket matches together, not that they noticed. Their match analysis was so piss-poor. I decided I should move on. It felt kinder for the long run because I could see their trajectories.