Baghlan Boy

by Michael Crowley

He went across to the low-rise glass-walled building where a receptionist with a flawless complexion phoned through to the warehouse.

  Vinnie got back to the van ahead of the forklift and climbed in. ‘It’s only me. Here he comes, here he comes now. No noise.’

  More long, narrow boxes advanced towards him then halted, jerked up a notch and advanced another stride.

  ‘I got them from here, mate,’ shouted Vinnie to the driver.

  They were all heavily scented by their contents: tulips, daffodils, bouquets, lilies and wreathes. Between each load Vinnie chatted away cheerily to his passengers. He got his paperwork signed off and headed for the ferry.

  It was a snug passenger ferry and aside from the odd caravan, his plain white delivery vehicle was the biggest thing shuffling towards the lip of the boat. He surveyed the queue, clocking the security team. They were a lethargic couple in high-vis jackets, one with a lollipop wand, the other with a scatty dog. When it came to his turn, he grinned down at them, hesitating whilst they looked over the formality of his paperwork.

  ‘Pull over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pull over. Open the back.’

  Vinnie wrenched his steering wheel, jumped down from the seat, playing irritated, playing ‘we’ve done this a thousand times’ with his submissive arms.

  ‘Open the back.’

  He shrugged; the dog wagged its tail. He would put his ingenuity and professionalism to his test. He would not be rattled. He hoisted up the back. ‘Look in my lorry all you like,’ he shouted. ‘Have yer dog sniff around and wave your magic wand, there’s no asylum seekers in here.’

  The spaniel was lifted onto boxes and a torch was shone from his cabin through the hatch.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  They drifted off to a Land Rover three vehicles behind.

  Vinnie rejoined the queue and nudged his way onto the fume-filled car deck, bumper to bumper with holiday-makers and weekend stoners. He poked his head through the hatch, looking like a man in the stocks.

  ‘We passed the test. Told you, didn’t I? I’m leaving for a bit now, but when I get back, you can all get out and take a stretch.’

  Vinnie had an illicit fag on deck before heading for the restaurant. He was very partial to Dutch food; even the spuds had meat mashed up in them. He went for the ‘flying chicken wings’ and sat down to scrutinise his newspaper and the other passengers, wondering if border control had plainclothed people mingling on the decks. It’s what he would do if he were running the show. Things were certainly getting heavy with the old migrants. It was kicking off bit by bit in the Middle East; people were rolling up their blankets and their pipes and joining queues everywhere. Supply-wise, it was a good time to get into the business. Demand-wise too. He was going to get a good price for the five down below from a cabbage farm in Lincolnshire, but things were getting jittery at departure and arrival. Dover was a write-off these days, which was a shame – the country needed these people because the English worker was no longer a grafter. He’d gone soft, unlike the row under cardboard below deck. Lean and hungry. As Vinnie had promised the farm manager, ‘they’d work all day on two slices of fresh air’.

  He had another roll-up and went back to his lorry. He put on a Chris Rea CD to mask the voices then went to the back. He was about to climb in but did a double take because the security officer from Rotterdam was edging herself between vehicles.

  She smiled, waved at him, and made her way over. ‘You have a lorry full of flowers, no? I could smell it as soon as you opened up on the quay. I can smell it from here. Nice to drive with, no?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a lovely drive alright. Makes me dream of beautiful women.’

  He watched her go on her way, poking her torch at car windows. He pulled up the back of the lorry and switched on his own. He kneeled down at the end of the row, whispering, ‘Can you hear me? Oi, can any of you hear me?’

  The flaps on the box nearest him were being pushed up. He pulled back the gaffer; fingers emerged, then a wrist. Vinnie dragged the Afghan up by the collar – he spat out a polystyrene pellet. ‘Are you okay, fella?’

  The Afghan stared into nowhere, slowly gulping what air there was, his face waxen. ‘I need some water.’

  Vinnie fetched a bottle from the glove compartment. The security woman, a few aisles ahead, had asked someone to open a boot. Vinnie turned up the Chris Rea.

  When he got back to the Afghan he was sitting up, legs still under the cardboard, the rest of him frozen.

  ‘I have to get out,’ he said, as if they might be his final words.

  Vinnie pushed the bottle into his hand. ‘And I’d like nothing more than for you to get out and come upstairs and have a chicken dinner, but you can’t, fella. There’s security everywhere, roaming around, and believe me, these people have eyes in the back of their heads. I need everyone to lie low a bit longer.’

  The Afghan raised his knees and tried to push down with his arms, but Vinnie rested his hands on his shoulders. ‘Shush now.’

  ‘Open the other boxes, let the others out for a bit.’

  ‘I will, I will. Have a drink, lie down. You’ll be fine.’

  The Afghan relented. The hours of claustrophobic inertia had exhausted him.

  Vinnie watched him sink away into his bed of polystyrene, then he gently tucked the thermal blanket round his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t close the box yet, please.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Vinnie rested the palm of his hand on the Afghan’s head. He waited with him until Chris Rea began to loop, then he closed the flaps of the box and taped it up again. He looked at the other four boxes and knew there’d be no getting them back in.

  ‘I’ll be back, back in a wee while. Have a sleep for now.’

  The ferry had begun to take up a persistent roll and passengers were popping antihistamines. Vinnie went to the bar for a couple of Jamesons, to take off the edge, telling the barman all about the curse of ‘border-jumpers crawling over his caravan’ back in Rotterdam. He engaged a lorry driver, who once had a knife to his throat in Calais. Vinnie shook his head in solidarity. ‘And who gets the fuckin’ blame, who has to take the fall when the bastards are found?’

  The lament of last orders sent him to his cabin. His cargo would take care of themselves. For now, he needed to give himself some attention.

  He woke late and tremulous. Most vehicles had already alighted by the time he made it to the lorry, which stood marooned and overtaken. A crew member, waving vehicles down the ramp, shouted some encouragement his way to which Vinnie would’ve normally offered a choice reply had his tongue not been glued to the roof of his mouth. He clanged onto the ramp then into the brightness of Immingham without a word to his passengers. They were home now. They were about to step out into a new life, all the long journey behind them. He headed north into Lincolnshire farmland, along level roads between thickening hedges before pulling into a pub car park.

  He drew back the hatch, no longer whispering. ‘We’re here, we’ve done it, guys.’

  He unloaded enough flowers to flood the back with light then pulled back the gaffer tape on the Afghan’s box. His face was as before, as it was the previous night when he had sealed the box. His mouth was open and so were his eyes. His forehead and cheeks were damp. Vinnie lowered his face to the man’s mouth. There was no breath, just the smell of human dirt. He opened another three but didn’t see the point in opening the last one. He was nearly three grand down. Vinnie had had bodies on his hands before, but never five. Disposing of previous bodies had involved car breakers, quarries or incinerators; once even a fishing trawler. The sea was only down the road, it would deal with the DNA issue, but it was busy with traffic. The flowers were for Hull, the migrants for a farm just south of the Humber. He went back to his driver’s seat and rolled a fag. He lowered the window, inhaling deeply. He could still smell the Afghan
. It would all have to be rethought, the whole operation. In the meantime, he would continue his schedule as if there were no border-jumpers to deliver. He headed for the river, for the majestic bridge, wrapped this day in fog.

  Arriving at the delivery depot, there was an argument because Vinnie hadn’t time to wait for ‘some gormless bastard with a forklift’ and set about leaving the flowers on the forecourt and the paperwork to the wind and hail. From there he found a Travelodge, took a shower and a meal and kept his eye on the lorry below. He stood in a towelling robe, sipping tea, knowing that any unease he felt with the situation was his foe. He concluded that it could only have been the ventilation. Taping the boxes was non-negotiable, but from now on, so was air. He was waiting for dusk and although he napped most days at this time, he avoided the uncertain pleasure, deciding instead to walk into town to buy a pair of wellingtons.

  Seven o’clock and he was heading back over the bridge, taking it steady. On the other side, he took a steep left and made for the hamlet of Barrow Haven, past the fisheries, the sailing club. He began to run out of road on the riverside; the water had turned its back on him and was lost to the darkness. He was pushing through the floodplain and considered blundering through a hedge and driving through fields when a farm track presented itself. Beyond it the sky lay pinned down by lights on the opposite shore. Dipping his lights, he strolled his lorry until there was grass under the wheels and he could smell the river above the Afghan. He turned the vehicle and opened the gaping back to face the water, silent under the wind. One by one he slid his boxes onto the pebbles and heaved them out into the water. At the end he paused before he returned to the lorry, as if to say something, but the words did not come.

  Twenty-Four

  Rotterdam

  Farood was at the wheel of the transit van in the food factory car park. The migrant workers were always the last to leave, and the most tired. Half of them would immediately lie down in the back of the van and sleep. Some openly talked about ‘never going back’, which Farood decreed wasn’t allowed. He described the work he had done in Iran: how people lay down and died in ditches that were filled in with concrete and wooden posts.

  ‘You are lucky. You don’t know how lucky you are.’

  But every day they asked him, ‘When are we going to the UK?’

  He didn’t know.

  Vinnie had been gone for two weeks now – he’d said it would be two days and they had heard nothing. Atherton had two theories – either he was on a bender with his long-term on-and-off girlfriend, ‘the lush of his life’; or he had gone to Corfu with the cash to get a tan. ‘It’s what I would do.’ In his uncle’s absence, Atherton had taken to calling the shots. He had Farood ferrying migrants back and forth from work as well as doing the shopping for Vinnie’s apartment. Atherton had also put himself in charge of Mustapha and Mustapha’s apartment.

  ‘You better get this place sorted out, mate. It’s a fucking pigsty. People coming here from some shithole of a country to lie on the floor. Today, right, when the others get back, we’re gonna get some proper mattresses, you’re gonna get some food and clean up. And you ain’t in charge of the rent no more. We’re gonna be having a meeting here to tell everyone how it’s all gonna be run. You hear me, Musty?’

  When he wasn’t giving orders, he went to look for work for those that had no work. When Farood returned, Atherton was in a shouting match with the Moroccan who’d quit sandwich-making at the factory.

  ‘You want us to work for almost nothing? Where do you think we are? This is not a prison. Where is the driver gone? Why isn’t he back here? We know your game – you’re keeping us here to make us work.’

  With each reply, Atherton raised the volume. ‘You’re joking, mate, we want rid. Can’t fucking wait. Sick of looking at the lot of you. And I’ll tell you something else, point that finger at me again and I’ll break it off and shove it up your arse.’

  Farood observed casually, clutching the van keys, stroking his evolving beard. His coolness touched Atherton, who retreated to the kitchen. Farood glared at the Moroccan until he turned his back and rejoined his card game. Then he smiled at Atherton, giving him the go-ahead to protest.

  ‘Tell me this, Roodie, why am I walking round this flat all day with a binliner whilst they’re sat on their arses?’

  ‘I agree, they need to be working, otherwise they’re just costing us money.’

  ‘Exactly,’ confirmed Atherton.

  ‘What’s Mustapha doing about it?’

  Atherton slammed the draining board. ‘I’ll tell you what he’s doing. He’s sitting on his arse, smoking. And the money the others bring in ain’t enough.’

  There was a slow thud up the stairs, out of which came a double mattress with Mustapha beneath it. ‘I got two others out there, I need a hand.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ replied Atherton.

  Farood and Atherton headed down town for an all-day brunch in a café of oak floors and yellow lights. Atherton put both feet on the low brass rail and was leaning over the bar at the fridges, a habit amongst Brits that the barman found maddening.

  ‘I’ll have one of those Belgium beers, the one with the red label. Roodie, what you having?’

  ‘Tomato juice.’

  They sat beneath the glow of a televised football match.

  Atherton shook his head at a missed penalty. ‘I’m sick of them North Africans. They lie around all day waiting to be fed.’ He ordered a meatloaf and reset his eyes to the TV. ‘I spoke to Ginger Bollocks at the sandwich factory and he don’t like ’em.’

  Farood tapped the table for attention. ‘You know what I found out today? Our people are paid half what the Dutch workers are paid. One of the Dutch guys told me.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. We’re having the piss taken out of us all ways. The Dutch, the fucking Africans, and where’s Vinnie, eh?’

  *

  Vinnie was in Manchester doing sit-ups in his caravan, warming up for a bare-knuckle fight – a fight for his kingdom. Someone else wanted their initials on the asphalt at the site entrance; they wanted Vinnie’s gone. During his absence a new family had been allowed on, even though all newcomers had to be run past Vinnie. Vinnie’s first and last rule was ‘no newcomers’. But Sammy had rented out a caravan, not to travellers, not even to New Age soap-dodgers, but to settled people: homeless tykes that other landlords wouldn’t entertain. It was happening at sites across the country: people from the other side of the barrier were pleading to rent caravans to escape the confinement of hostels and bedsits. This could never be allowed. They were people not bred from the same stock – no matter their name, no matter what they claimed. Sammy had asked before and Sammy had been told; now, whilst Vinnie was working in Rotterdam, he had played his hand, so Vinnie had called Sammy out, to publicly put him back in his box.

  Fights or bouts were regular events on the site, mainly for gambling. Men fought from age sixteen onwards. That was sport, this was kingship; there would be more of a crowd. Fights were not without rules; there was a referee who said little but was generally respected. The appointed place was between the garages, inside a shifting ring of barracking men. Compared to Vinnie, Sammy was flabby, fleshy and pale. Sure, he was heavy and he could dish it out but Vinnie knew, having looked into his eyes, he couldn’t take it.

  They were waiting for Vinnie. Sammy was in matching grey vest and joggers, stomping the damp ground, breathing like a horse, punching the wind. The referee was a man testing the seams of a black tracksuit, chewing vigorously. There was a crowd of around twenty men and boys and women at caravan windows. Vinnie strolled over to the ring in his Lonsdale shorts, no vest, no socks.

  The referee held out an arm between the two. ‘You know the rules. If it’s one-way traffic I’ll put a stop to it.’

  The referee lifted his arm; Sammy began to prance clockwise. He shuffled and stooped, slowly, predictably, rotating his fi
sts as if he were turning a handle. He flexed his shoulders repeatedly while Vinnie was without motion. His hands were on his hips. Older men in the crowd shouted their allegiance. ‘He’s yours, Sammy, lay into him, boy.’ Sammy rushed in with a jab that burst his opponent’s lip, then he hopped back jubilantly. Blood rolled off Vinnie’s chin, but still his arms hung loose. The chorus in the crowd raised its voice: ‘Lay the fucker out, Sammy.’ They bunched and circled with Sammy: ‘Again… again.’ The referee commanded Vinnie, ‘Fight!’ But he didn’t. He stood as a sentry whilst Sammy ducked his head against the blows that never came his way. Vinnie’s eyes beseeched him to come again. When he did Vinnie swayed his head back but still the blow made contact with the cut. A small boy at the back asked, ‘Why don’t you fight, yer cunt? Fight, yer fuckin’ coward.’

  The referee got nose to nose with Vinnie. ‘Start throwing punches or I’ll end this.’

  And so, he gave the referee a sweet left which sent him toppling into Sammy’s boys. He then advanced on Sammy like a fencer. Long, even strides, knees bent. Two double jabs and an uppercut, and he was able to stamp on Sammy’s head half a dozen times. Not in the rules, but with an unconscious referee he felt obliged.

  ‘None of you bastards dare question my authority. I’m the boyo who calls the shots, because I takes the chances, I don’t back down. I do what has to be done. To look after my people. The rest of you are gutless.’

  He looked down on Sammy and spat on him.

  ‘You can give it out, but you can’t take it.’

  Vinnie put on his crown.

  *

  Michael Atherton had gone to see Ginger Bollocks, to collect his resident’s weekly wage and to insist on a pay rise. In the way the world of business makes its magic, the ‘border-jumpers’ were turned into ‘residents’, Mustapha’s apartment into ‘the hostel’, the process of carting people in boxes into Immingham was now ‘a shipment’. The Dutchman counted out the barely credible-looking Euros. Atherton declined to pick them up.