by Julia Jones
“Maggi, stop! You’ll give Luke and Liam nightmares.”
“I hope we’ll all have nightmares. Everyone in the world should have nightmares. It’s every bit as foul as the old slave ships ...”
Her dark skin had lost its glow: her big eyes were full of pain. She went on describing the scene that she’d experienced so vividly.
“So we don’t know how long they were tossed about. Or how badly anyone was hurt. But then the motion stopped. Maybe there were crashes when the container hit that sand. A pounding as the waves kept pushing it further on. And maybe some of the water drained away as the tide fell outside. So maybe a tiny bit of hope came trickling back. Maybe they tried calling out. Being discovered would be better than being dead. But there wasn’t any answer because there wasn’t anyone to hear them. Then they started to feel that the water was creeping back in again ...”
“Maggi, that’s ENOUGH!”
She was sitting safely in the familiar white space of Kingfisher; she was clinging to Vexilla’s sturdy gunwale; she was with her sister and her closest friends, yet Maggi’s mind couldn’t leave its black and terrifying prison.
Donny remembered the airless cupboard where Zhang had imprisoned him. His head began throbbing. It was hard to breathe. He lurched to the opposite gunwale and chucked up. A moment later Luke joined him.
“So when they heard you,” Maggi hadn’t stopped, “if they heard you – dot dot dash dot, dot dot dash dot – they wouldn’t exactly have tapped back, would they? Anyone who was still alive in there would have screamed for help. They’d have screamed to you with every last gasp of their breath.”
They were round the promontory, almost to the beach.
“But no-one did,” said Anna.
“No,” said Maggi. “I don’t think they did ... It was probably just in my head.”
They beached the boats and scrambled out. The sisters hugged each other.
“Sorry, Mags, I don’t know how I could mind for a second about Spray. I wasn’t thinking.”
“There’s always a chance,” said Anna.
“What chance?”
“A chance that you didn’t hear anything because there wasn’t anyone there to hear. Bill could have made a mistake. Or we could. About that particular container.”
They took turns helping to pack up the camp and looking out seawards. Other boats came and joined the RIB: a police launch, a harbour authority launch, a tug, bringing a sort of floating pontoon which the harbour launch helped to fix alongside.
“I wish I had those binoculars,” muttered Anna. “No, I don’t! That’s the shark-boat. That’s Flint. Bad. Bad. Bad.”
“And there’s Snow Goose!”
“At last.”
“But they don’t know.”
“They don’t know anything.”
“Hasn’t anyone got a mobile that works? I can’t bear them not knowing.”
As Snow Goose came into distant view from behind the harbour breakwater, the watching children saw her heavy gaff mainsail swinging up and then out to catch the fair breeze and favouring tide as she set a leisurely course towards the Pye End buoy.
“They’ll be ages coming at that speed. There’s no wind this morning. I wish they’d put the engine on and hurry up.”
Everything was packed and ready for them to leave. Donny had told Skye about their discovery of the Mark on the container; about their fears for anyone who might have been hidden inside; about Xanthe’s heroic dash for help and about the loss of Spray. She had put her arms round Xanthe but Xanthe was controlled now. She couldn’t allow herself to respond. Skye stepped away.
She went back to amusing Vicky as usual: tried to get Liam and Luke involved but they were pale and distracted, obviously on the edge or tears. She offered to unpack and make tea but no one wanted anything.
“Maybe I should sail out to meet Mum and Dad,” suggested Maggi. She didn’t want to. None of them wanted to go near the container. They didn’t want to imagine what the rescue team had found which had made them summon so much additional help. There were more pontoons being towed into position now. With screens.
What would Gold Dragon do, Donny wondered? If she’d been here now with her brothers and sisters? If she been one of the oldest, not the youngest, and wanted to get a message to the parents. Send up a flare maybe? But they hadn’t got a flare and it might distract the real rescuers.
“Anyone got anything orange?” asked Xanthe. “Waving something orange is a sign of distress.”
Liam had been fidgeting about, as if he was practising a football routine with no ball. Now he dug in his sports bag for a replica Dutch football shirt, which he fixed to the end of a stick and waved. It was tiny.
Then Skye signed that she was going to light the unused fire they’d started building yesterday ... the day before ... half a lifetime ago?
“Won’t that make June and Joshua think we’re enjoying ourselves?”
“Depends ...”
She signed that Donny should fetch the tarpaulin from Vexilla, and that the rest of them should begin collecting the semi-sodden wrack and reed stalks which marked the highest limits of the tide.
“She wants us to send a smoke signal!”
It was unnecessary, possibly silly. It was playing. It wasn’t going to make any difference to whatever grim reality was happening out there, but it stopped them having to keep thinking about it. The smoke swelled and billowed under the tarpaulin; stung their eyes and made them cough, then surged up in clumps of dirty cotton wool when they pulled the cover momentarily aside. They tried long bursts and shorter puffs – three at a time – S.O.S.
Snow Goose stopped idling. Her sails came down; her engine went on. The Ribieros probably checked their VHF. They were dropping anchor off Stone Point in less than half an hour.
Once the police and the tug and the rest of the salvage team were in position – and the screens were up – the crew of the inshore rescue boat did exactly as they’d promised, and came to find the children.
It wasn’t good news. It was worse than their worst expectations. The rescuers were visibly delighted to discover that the children all had parents with them.
Lottie had arrived, even before June and Joshua. She’d run the whole distance from the Naze tower where she had parked her Toyota. She was gasping for breath, her eyes were streaming. It was a while before she could do more than hug people.
Bill had told her there was an emergency. He’d been watching from first light, using Anna’s binoculars. He hadn’t minded getting soaked, frozen and buffeted. He’d been worried about the children in the storm.
Bill had been the first person to report the stranded container – simply as a hazard to navigation. Later he’d watched Xanthe and Spray and that was when he’d realised there was something wrong. He’d used his mobile to call Lottie and to tell her she was needed. Then he’d wiped the phone and left it at the foot of the tower. He’d headed away in the camper van. She’d no idea where he was planning to go. He was desperate to avoid bringing more trouble on them.
“He’s put a marker out where he saw your boat go down,” Lottie told Xanthe. “He used a weighted can. There wasn’t much else he could do. Although Bill was born a fisherman he’s never learned to swim. He got right out along the breakwater, he said. He thought there was a goodish chance you’d find she’s been jammed against it. You’ll probably get her back.”
“What’s left of her,” said Xanthe, sadly. “It was kind of him to try. Anyway, what’s a dinghy?”
There had been a dozen travellers in the container ... but only one survivor.
“A young boy, miss,” said the crewman who’d listened to Maggi. “Not much older that yourself, I wouldn’t think. He was unconscious when they pulled him out. That scream you heard must be the last thing he did. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. A miracle, really.”
“Only one from all those people.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, there wouldn’t even have been one. We co
uldn’t help wondering what made you think of listening in the first place?”
They’d had no chance to talk properly to June and Joshua, or to ask Lottie what they should say. And they had promised Bill.
“I suppose we were mainly curious,” said Xanthe.
“I’d seen something on TV once,” offered Maggi.
“About the places people try and hide when they’re desperate,” Anna finished. “Like underneath trains and in the wheels of aeroplanes.”
The crewman shook his head. “It’s terrible,” he said. “Absolutely terrible. Those poor souls. I don’t mind telling you I’ll be glad when I get home to my family.”
Lottie took Vicky, Skye, Luke and Liam back to the vicarage in the car. She would have taken Anna and Donny as well but they asked to stay with Xanthe and Maggi for the moment when they had to pass the disaster site.
“We could go to the marina. Leave Snow Goose and the dinghies for another day. Get a taxi home. Wait until the container’s been removed.”
“It’s in our heads, Mum. Nothing’s ever going to remove it.”
“Then I’d prefer you all to stay in the cabin with me. Your father will manage the yacht.”
“I wonder if we’ll ever meet him.”
“Who?”
“The boy. The one they salvaged.”
“If he doesn’t get sent straight back.”
“To wherever he came from.”
“Why?” said Xanthe, “Why do people come? At least in your old slave ships they’d have been captured, Maggi. Those people probably paid. Paid more than if they’d been on a luxury cruise.”
“Paid Zhang!”
“Then he paid Flint and Toxic.”
“Then the people start paying all over again when they go to work for something like Pura-Lilly, which keeps back most of their money and makes them sleep in dumps. And their debts get so big they can’t ever escape.”
They shut up for a bit, and blew the froth off the mugs of hot chocolate that June had made for them, and felt how lucky they were to be together in Snow Goose’s cabin as she carried them smoothly homewards to her berth at the Royal Orwell & Ancient Yacht Club.
“All the same, I wonder where he did came from?” said Donny.
“And where his parents are,” added June. She’d made coffee for herself and Joshua and was sitting with the Allies again. “I have heard that even young children sometimes make these journeys alone. I can’t bear to imagine it. And how is this going to affect all of you? I can request counselling, you know.”
Xanthe, who’d relapsed into a moody silence and was letting her drink grow cold, sat up and glared at her loving parent. “Counselling! We don’t need counselling – we want REVENGE! I’ll finish my GCSEs. Give them my best shot. But I’m not doing anything else. Certainly not going dinghy-racing until we’ve scuppered Flint and Toxic. That’s not because I’ve lost Spray. Eleven people dead! And I don’t suppose that anyone’ll offer their families counselling. Or whoever took their money will be sending tasteful wreaths and offering compensation.”
“There will certainly be an Enquiry,” said her mother.
“Reporting in a few years time and recommending Safety Measures,” said Xanthe contemptuously. She began using her strong and mobile fingers to tick off the steps they needed to take. “One: we get Lottie to find Bill and persuade him that he’s got to tell everything he knows. Not all policemen are crooked, just because Flint is. Two: Anna’s lawyer will get him that witness protection thing. Then three: when we know Bill and the kids are safe we show someone the Mark. They’ll surely keep the container now. They might even have to designate it a grave or something. They’ll have to believe us.”
Then Donny managed to say the thing that had been worrying him for weeks.
“Do you think,” he said, addressing himself mainly to June, “that if we have a go at them, they’ll try and get Great Aunt Ellen into more trouble when she comes home to England? For shooting the Tiger in the stomach with that flare?”
“I was there too,” she answered. “I saw him throw the knife. Who’s to say that didn’t make her miss her intended direction? It was a collision avoidance flare and he was on a collision course. All I am certain about is that obtaining justice in this case will not be as straightforward as my daughter believes. The survivor’s testimony may be all that’s needed to identify culprits and obtain convictions but I’m afraid, Xanthe, that you may be away from your dinghy racing for a long time yet.”
Harwich, Tuesday 29 May 2007
Min was lifted from the container and the paramedics gave him sedatives. Some people asked him questions but he couldn’t, at that moment, find the English words to answer.
He was so young, his silent distress so heart-rending, that it seemed kinder to help him to sleep. Then, when a uniformed Inspector and a charming and very senior lady from the Welfare Services arrived to take him to a secure and purpose-equipped location, the rescuers were reassured that he would be in safe, professional hands. The Inspector and the Welfare officer would transport him themselves. No time would be lost.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Donny Draws a Map
Snow Goose, RO&A, Monday 18 June 2007
“This witness protection thing isn’t as simple as I thought,” said Anna. “Either Bill can go back into prison and be held in a special unit where nobody knows his name. He’d get called Bloggs and be given a number. Or him and all of us have to go to a police safe house and be surrounded by panic buttons and alarm systems and never go out until everyone he accuses – that’s Flint and the Tiger, because we haven’t got anything real on Toxic (yet) – has been tried and sentenced. Could take ages. Then, after that, he’s still not safe because they probably have associates, so he has to be given a whole new identity. And so do all of us if we want to go on living with him.”
“Wow!” said Maggi. “I wonder how often they do all that?”
“Not very often. It’s really expensive because they have to wipe everything, birth certificate, driving licence, bank account. It’s not simply thinking up a new name and dishing out a passport. But at the moment it’s not even a possibility. Edward says that the police have got to be convinced that what Bill has to tell them is totally worthwhile – and that he’s in actual danger – before they offer anything at all.”
“And as he’s still too frightened to talk – even if we knew where to find him, which we don’t – it’s all hopeless.”
“Let’s forget about Bill,” said Xanthe.
She’d taken her last GCSE that morning but she wouldn’t even go sailing for pleasure. The remains of Spray had been collected and were awaiting an insurance assessment; Kingfisher sat on her trailer in the dinghy park: Vexilla grew weed on her mooring. Lively Lady was, presumably, dangling from davits in Oostende.
It wasn’t that Xanthe had banned the rest of them from sailing: they just didn’t like to go when she was so obstinately denying herself. Donny knew she was missing it at least as much as he was: he’d seen her checking the breeze.
They were sitting in Snow Goose’s cabin, not on deck. It was too hard not to look out across the wide river, and long to see the evening sunlight slanting low into your sails, and feel the tug of the wind on the sheets, and the lift and lightness as your dinghy came to life.
“The kids wouldn’t like to hear you say that about Bill,” Anna told Xanthe. “They’re longing for him to be the shining knight who gallops up and sorts everything. They’re missing him far more than they ever seemed to do when he was inside.”
“We wouldn’t mind our dad shining a bit more gallantly either. He keeps going off to look at other hospitals, checking out their neuro-surgery departments.”
“And how they manage their cleaning contracts. He goes on and on about accountability.”
“Then, when he is at home, he and Mum are still having rows.”
“That must be awful,” said Anna.
“It is,” said Maggi. “They’ve never been lik
e this before. We have to keep being diplomatic.”
“Sloshing oil on troubled waters. No time at all for sisterly bickering. When we finally get Zhang, Flint and Toxic in Execution Dock, I’m suing for restitution of my teenage rights. I haven’t thrown a proper strop for weeks.”
“Feels more like ‘if’ than ‘when’.”
For all Xanthe’s energy and Maggi’s intuition and Anna’s brains and money, they hadn’t made any progress. All Donny could offer was an uneasy feeling that they were missing something. He was sure that there was something – or someone – really obvious and important that they’d forgotten.
“That’s why I wanted us to come here,” Xanthe explained. “Remind ourselves how we felt that day when we were lurking down below, too sick to get up on deck as we passed the container. Or even to go spit at Flint.”
“You think we need reminding?” Anna had at least been talking to her lawyer.
“It’s probably just me. I caught myself checking last weekend’s results on the RYA website. You know those two girls from Norfolk?” she said to Maggi, “The twins no-one can tell apart? They’ve overtaken us in the rankings now.”
“So?”
“So ... nothing. And the Harbour Authority has decided to move the container. Some people suggested that it should be left there – as a sort of memorial. That idea’s been turned down, so they’re towing it back into Felixstowe and, when the police have finished with it, it’ll be scrapped.”
“Convenient for anyone who mightn’t want anyone else to look too closely at it later on. If Bill ever decides to talk.”
“There must be other workers who know what’s going on. And the officials who helped Flint harass Strong Winds and looked the other way when the Tiger came back.”