by Ann Turner
He took a tiny silver box from his pocket and butted his cigarette into it emphatically, then lit another cigarette.
‘So, I do not like this. There are true refugees, as I’m sure you are aware, children included, whose lives are at stake for religious and political reasons. People who must flee their country. We have more and more of these asylum seekers, an overwhelming number. More than at any time since the Second World War.’
I thought of my mother, and the boatloads of refugees desperately crossing the Mediterranean to Italy in leaking vessels. The photo of the two small girls, drowned, face down in the shallows . . .
‘The economic refugees clog the already overloaded system,’ continued Fabio. ‘They should not come. But when children are sent by their parents and villages it is wrong and I try to help. Some we repatriate here. Italy is kind to children. And although every child should be reunited with their family, maybe sometimes this is not so good, if their parents have let their young ones go in this way to be exploited as child labour.’ He tapped cigarette ash into his silver box with a staccato movement.
‘Your boy in the ice. He may have been picked up from here and taken to Antarctica, or they may have picked him up elsewhere. But we think they drop the boys back in Venice. If they’ve been doing unspeakable things, where better to lose the children when they grow too old?’
I flushed with fury and concern.
‘Here in Venice,’ continued Fabio, ‘they can join the throng of refugees disappearing into the shadows. They have the chance of work, exploitative as that will be. You’d be surprised how many of these refugee children make good. They become engineers, doctors even. Some would say the end justifies the means. But not me. And if children have been abused, we must do whatever we can for them.’ He leaned forward, his amber eyes bright.
‘Georgia and I together filled in the jigsaw of the pale boys. And this morning, I have word. A shipload of boys, unearthly white, has set off from Turkey, earlier than we first thought. We’d been told it would be tomorrow, but now we think it will be tonight that your boy will arrive. I’ve left a message for Georgia about this.’
A surge of maternal instinct rose through me.
‘Will you come with me to the dock?’ he asked.
I nodded, overwhelmed, trying to imagine how I would feel seeing the boy again.
‘The most important thing is that you identify him, otherwise it will be just another boatload of refugees among the flood of asylum seekers. We will have detectives and immigration officials with us, and we will stop this paedophile ring that takes children to South Safety Island. With your help, we can prosecute. This is a human rights violation. This is my specialty and the reason I get up in the morning. Often it is hard to have any impact at all. But tonight, it is perhaps possible.’
Fabio finished his cigarette, squashed it into the silver box, and stood stiffly.
‘I will come for you at eleven o’clock. I trust Georgia will be back by then. Now, I must go, I have an appointment at the university.’
After he left, I looked around the room for any notes, or a phone, or computer. I couldn’t find anything. Surely Georgia would have brought her computer? Although maybe not. She could have just had her phone, and she would be carrying that on her.
I tried again to call her but was sent straight to messagebank.
I caught the lift down to my room and took a shower to wash off the cloying smoke. Anticipation built that I would be meeting the boy tonight, but I was feeling increasingly uneasy about Georgia. I phoned the Italian police and was transferred from person to person. One woman acknowledged that Georgia had been reported missing; no one could find anyone who was working with her.
I looked up Professor Fabio Natuzzi online, and there he was, smiling out – a law professor at Venice University, a specialist in human rights, just like he’d said. He’d written many papers on child refugees, including reports for the United Nations.
I phoned Kate but she didn’t answer. I cursed – I really needed to talk things through. I asked her to call, and then I left further messages for Georgia and David.
In the lobby, I gave Silvia my phone number and she promised to let me know as soon as Georgia came in. I needed air, and so I went out into the grey afternoon and walked, joining the throng of tourists heading for St Mark’s Square. As I moved under a high stone arch, the square stretched before me. At the far end, the golden cupolas of St Mark’s Cathedral glowed dimly in the light and the Doge’s Palace loomed white and mysterious – but in between stretched a vast sea of blue–green water. St Mark’s Square was a giant swimming pool. It was acqua alta, high tide. Snakes of raised duckboards had been laid across the square and people were trotting along on top, as if promenading on trestle tables. An orchestra still played, on its stage, outside the sumptuous Caffè Florian and, remarkably, the shops spread around the square on three sides under the grand stone arches were open, plying their glittering wares of gold and gems and luxurious fabrics. A group of men, tall, ebony-skinned, possibly illegal refugees, had set up a table selling cheap plastic overboots that looked like luminous green garbage bags. I bought a pair and put them on over my shoes, tying them above my knees.
I couldn’t keep still, thinking about Georgia. It was unlike her not to come back to the hotel last night. Perhaps she was staked out somewhere, gathering information on the boy’s arrival, and didn’t have time to call? She was a detective. If anyone could look after themselves it was her, but no matter how many times I told myself that, I still felt sick.
As I clambered up makeshift steps to the duckboards I held my phone, waiting for someone to return my calls. The sea slopped beneath me, a dull, dirty colour up close, brown through the green. There was a hush over the square.
Perhaps David was here with Georgia, and they were staked out together?
I kept walking, not really thinking about where I was going. I reached the other side and waded through water that splashed up my legs, then I went down an alley of shops winding towards Rialto. The tourists thinned out: I’d chosen an alley that wasn’t a main one. Sound hollowed, and I was suddenly alone.
The shops evaporated, replaced by blank-faced houses as the walkway became impossibly narrow, flooded by a canal that had spilled over in the high tide. The alley stopped in a dead-end, where water lapped, making a quiet hissing noise. I retraced my steps, but soon I became even more lost as I waded through polluted seawater looking for something familiar, or a sign back to St Mark’s Square or on to Rialto. But every intersection was just more houses with crumbling, blank walls. I tried to pull up a map on my phone, but it wouldn’t load.
I looked at the time – 4pm. It was growing darker by the minute on this dull day. Panic rose, my hands were clammy. I felt like I’d never find my way, trapped in a maze. I was in a run-down area. There was nobody on the street.
Just as I was about to phone Silvia at the hotel to ask for help, I saw a roughly-sketched arrow scrawled on a wall, announcing Rialto. I followed it, only to get to an intersection where there was no arrow, and three alleys shot off in different directions. I took a stab at the middle one. After five minutes I heard voices echoing and the sound of feet sloshing through water. Turning into another alley, I met up with a crowd of tourists. I tried to calm down as I followed them to the Rialto Bridge. Arching over the Grand Canal, the pale stone steps of the bridge rose up, tiny shops on both sides twinkling with lights. I went across, looking everywhere for Georgia, peering into jewellery stores packed with luminous silver and gold rings and necklaces, specialty shops selling handmade notepaper, other shops full of Murano glass decorated in gold leaf. Georgia was not inside them. But of course she wouldn’t be. She wouldn’t be shopping if she hadn’t come home last night. I turned back.
My feet were aching as I trailed more tourists up an alley with a sign pointing to St Mark’s Square. There was an unreality to the twilight as it clung to the old stone walls, turning colours sickly. A dead rat floated past.
/> The tourists were laughing, voices booming; I didn’t let them out of my sight. We went under an arch and St Mark’s Square, still submerged, stretched in front. I wanted to hug my unknowing guides. The snaking duckboards were far away from this entry, but I was happy to wade through the water to the exit I knew. I found the broad walkway that led towards my hotel. Bustling shops were lit up brightly. Beside a window filled with sleek leather gloves, I turned right into a tight alley, then right again. The hotel was at the end, a beacon of hope.
I hurried in, not stopping to take off my overboots. ‘Silvia, have you heard from Georgia?’
Silvia looked confused. ‘No, but I would have called you, of course.’
‘I was just hoping,’ I said, deflating.
‘This is very bad. The professor told me he reported it to the police. I’ll call them again.’
She spoke intensely down the phone, listened, and hung up. ‘Nothing. No sign of her.’
I tried Georgia’s phone, and when it went straight to messages I gave another plea to call, joining the ones I’d already left. My head throbbed. I texted David, sick of hearing his voice when I asked him to ring me.
‘Have you eaten?’ said Silvia. She clunked down a multilingual sign – Back in 5 minutes. ‘Prego, come.’ Upstairs in her tiny apartment, she put a hearty pasta in a microwave, zapped it and handed over the steaming bowl aromatic with basil and tomato. She picked up a stick of bread and pulled an open bottle of white wine from the fridge. ‘Here, take these to your room.’ I declined the wine, which was difficult because it might have helped to settle my nerves, but I needed to be alert for the boy’s arrival. Tonight I could save him.
• • •
At 10.30pm I sat waiting for Fabio in the empty lobby. Reception was closed, Silvia tucked away in her apartment. I was rugged up in a coat, scarf and gloves. I’d put my plastic overboots back over my shoes. As soon as the sun had set the temperature had plummeted and the night was icy – a dank, close cold, unlike the clear chill of Antarctica.
There was still no sign of Georgia, nor any word from David. I prayed that I would meet up with Georgia at the docks where the children were due to arrive. The more I thought of it, the more convinced I became. I was uneasy about going without hearing from her, but my overwhelming emotion was for the boy.
I jumped as my phone pinged with an email. For a moment I didn’t recognise the name – and then I remembered that Astrid Bredesen was the translator at Harvard.
I flipped up her message. She had found a reference in Ingerline’s diary to the tunnels. Strangely, her attention had been drawn to it by a small handwritten annotation in Spanish, scrawled in the margin: Read this. The entrance. My eyes flew over the translated extract, where Ingerline outlined the importance of the tunnels for storing alcohol and cigarettes. It appeared that in the later years of the whaling station, the Halvorsens had branched out to make money another way as the whaling stocks declined. They had traded in hard liquor and tobacco, and I suspected none of it was legal. The ships picked up the contraband on their way over, proving useful for ballast. Then, when the oil and other whale by-products were low because of a poor season, the ships had taken the alcohol and tobacco back to Norway, or sold it en route.
The tunnels were a tightly kept secret. At the bottom of the page, Ingerline mentioned an entrance: through a false door at the rear of the kitchen pantry in her house. The house where her portrait still kept watch. A shiver tore through me. I’d looked in all those cupboards. And Ingerline’s house was where I’d seen the man – and where the boy’s T-shirt had been found. Now I knew how they’d got there, and where they’d gone. From underground, they’d come up into the kitchen, and then retreated back down under the ice by the time we’d returned. Hope rose: if the boys from Chatham were destined for South Safety Island, replacing the boys who were coming to Venice, we would be able to find them.
‘You’re here. Good.’ Fabio walked in briskly. He saw my overboots. ‘You won’t need those.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Georgia?’
‘She’s still not back. Do you think she might already be at the docks?’
‘Yes,’ said Fabio, which gave me some comfort. ‘She knows the time and location from my message. There must be a reason she’s not here.’ He frowned. ‘Our police in Venice give very little away. Georgia could be acting under orders.’
‘Do you think it’s all right that I’m coming?’ I knew Georgia probably hadn’t meant me to actually be on the docks, but rather to identify the boy at the police station.
‘Of course. You must.’ Fabio was definite. And I wanted desperately to make sure the boy was safe when he arrived.
I took off my overboots and left them under the chair. Fabio crooked his arm through mine and we went out into the night, where heavy clouds scudded across a full moon, and a mist hung low, swirling over cobblestones. The tide had gone down; the footpaths were dry.
I tried to digest the news about the tunnels, dying to tell Georgia about the entrance. We finally had what we needed to crack open the ring. I wanted to phone and leave messages for both her and David, but Fabio was leading me through dark alleys and there was an urgency to the task at hand. As we went down a space between buildings so tight we had to walk in single file, I ran into Fabio’s heels when he stopped at a dead-end. A canal splashed in front, its water black and opaque beneath a thin veil of mist. My heart thundered, and for a terrible moment I wondered who this man was. He was a human rights lawyer, but I only had his word that he had been in contact with Georgia. What if he wasn’t? I’d been so preoccupied I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d just walked into a blind alley with a total stranger, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. My legs turned to jelly.
But a sleek boat came swishing along and Fabio helped me down into it. ‘We go to Porto Marghera,’ he said. ‘On the other side of the lagoon, on the mainland. To the container depot.’
As we motored away, the elderly driver, silver-haired with a sailor’s weatherworn face, said nothing. Inside the small cabin, Fabio lit a cigarette. I pulled out my phone and texted Georgia and David, saying I was on my way to the docks.
The mist thickened to fog as we sped up and headed out across the lagoon. The water was choppy, the boat slapped over waves. The temperature plummeted further.
The mainland came into sight like an impressionist painting through the fog, and we slipped up the coast past several huge container ports, their lights blazing, seeping into the ghostly air.
Finally, we stopped at a wharf piled high with towering multi-coloured steel containers, and three men ran down to meet us. We climbed a steep ladder up to the dock and the boat took off. I tensed as I realised I was even more isolated here in this vast industrial wasteland. Anything could happen. I prayed I was right to trust Fabio. What if there wasn’t a shipload of boys coming at all?
We hurried along through the swirling mist. One of the men, an overweight giant, grabbed my arm and propelled me faster, pinching my flesh. Who were they? They didn’t look like detectives or immigration officials. They looked like thugs. Where were the police? And where was Georgia?
The giant pulled me past containers stacked high. Ahead, there were loud mechanical clanks. In the fog I could just make out a monster crane lifting containers onto a ship.
We moved quickly, heading to a dark area at the end of the dock. There was nothing there. Panic set in. I wanted to run. I’d been an idiot coming on my own. I must still be toasty from Antarctica, not thinking straight. Should I flee onto the ship that was being loaded? The giant held me tight. I tried to calm down, but couldn’t. Had Georgia been lured here by Fabio last night, before she vanished?
The moon appeared, full and bright through the clouds, as a blustery gust momentarily parted the fog. A boat was puttering slowly towards the dock.
Fabio reached out and pulled me into black shadows. The giant flanked my other side. If there weren’t boys on the boat, it could be me heading out to sea. I tried
to keep my fear under control, preparing to sprint for my life if the boat was empty.
A man called quietly, and the giant and another man ran down and caught thick ropes that were tossed up. They tied them tightly to the dock as the boat bobbed in the water.
And then they came, one by one, through the fog. Young teenage boys, dark-haired, their faces as pale as ghosts. One, two, three. And then two more. I ran over with Fabio as they clambered up a ladder. ‘Hola, hola,’ they mumbled. ‘A dónde vamos?’ Where are we going, they were asking. In Spanish.
I replied rapidly in Spanish, and the boys blinked. I told them they were in Venice and we were going to look after them; all the time I was looking over their shoulders, for the boy who looked like Hamish. But he didn’t come.
‘Is there another?’ I asked in Spanish. ‘Another dark-haired boy, thin-faced, brown-eyed?’ They each shook their head. They all fitted that description, but my Hamish wasn’t there. Claws of pain slashed through my stomach.
We spoke in Spanish. Fabio watched us, and I noticed he was discreetly filming everything on his phone. ‘Where are you from?’ I asked the boys.
‘Mexico,’ one replied.
‘Guatemala,’ said another, ‘but I came through Mexico.’
‘Me too,’ croaked a tiny boy who looked about ten.
‘After that?’ I said.
‘They took us somewhere. A big house. Down below, in a basement. And then we went to sea. Then we flew. Far away. Vamoose. To the ice.’ The boy worked his hands this way and that, illustrating the length of his journey.
‘Under the ice?’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm, and they nodded.
‘Are there boys still there?’ I demanded. ‘A boy about twelve, thin and dark?’