by Tony Parsons
I looked closer at the display of Paul Warboys.
In one black-and-white photograph the legendary villain, not yet thirty years old, was posing in a boxing ring with a spindly little boy, perhaps five years old, who was wearing shorts, vest and a pair of Lonsdale boxing gloves that were larger than his head. The man and the boy both had their fists raised as if they were about to start fighting.
Paul Warboys’ face was split in a broad smile.
But the small boy looked terrified and on the verge of tears.
Paul’s laughing henchmen, all busted noses and Ben Sherman shirts, chortled in the background, their heavy arms leaning on the ropes of the boxing ring.
‘Who’s the child?’ I asked.
John studied the photograph.
‘Now that is Paul’s son – Barry Warboys. Steve’s old man. Barry is the one and only Warboys who went straight. The one who made a packet in business. He started this chain of care homes – Golden Years. And apparently he’s nothing like his father. Or his son.’
We stared at the photograph together in silence.
Half a century gone, and the boy’s face still radiated terror.
‘A boxing ring’s not a good place to be small or scared,’ I said.
Sergeant John Caine nodded.
‘It’s tough enough if you’re an adult,’ he said.
The police can hold you for up to twenty-four hours before we either have to charge you with a crime or release you.
So after letting the lorry driver stew for a night and a day, DCI Pat Whitestone and I took the lift down to the custody suite of West End Central. The lift doors opened and a female uniformed officer was waiting for us.
‘Ma’am,’ she said, slipping a set of keys from her belt and opening up holding cell D.
Lee Hill was lying half-awake on a blue, easy-to-clean mattress that was not quite as large as a camp bed and built close to the floor to avoid drunks falling off and cracking their drunken skulls wide open. The holding cell itself was a beige-tiled cube, clean but airless, with a toilet in one corner and a frosted-glass window high on one wall to let in natural light. In terms of holding cells, this was one of the nicer ones.
‘Lee Hill? I’m DCI Whitestone and I am arresting you for facilitating the entry of illegal immigrants.’
The lorry driver jumped up from his easy-to-clean mattress, his jaw open with shock.
‘But I thought we had a deal,’ he said to me.
I shrugged.
‘My SIO here doesn’t want a deal,’ I said.
Whitestone looked at Hill like he was something she had almost stepped in.
‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court,’ she said.
‘Wait, wait,’ he said, desperately looking at me.
‘Anything you do say may be given in evidence,’ Whitestone continued. ‘Do you understand?’
He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand anything. What is this? Some kind of good-cop-bad-cop routine?’
He took a shaky step towards Whitestone.
‘Nice and calm now,’ murmured the uniformed officer, narrowing her eyes, and he came no closer.
‘I was going to be your grass,’ he said to me.
‘Criminal Informant,’ I said. ‘You were going to be my CI. That was the initial plan. “Grass” sounds derogatory. And when you are smuggling people into the country, you don’t get to look down on anyone. But I spoke to my Senior Investigating Officer, DCI Whitestone here, and she’s not interested.’
‘Because you told DC Wolfe that you never saw the individual we’re looking for,’ Whitestone told Hill. ‘And – as I understand it – you don’t sound remotely optimistic about ever seeing him again.’ She showed him her empty hands. ‘So what good are you to me, Mr Hill?’
‘But I was going to work for you!’ he protested.
‘What do they hand out for trafficking these days, Max?’ Whitestone asked. ‘Fourteen years?’
‘I wasn’t trafficking anyone,’ Hill protested. ‘You think those people were coming to this country against their will? You think anyone had to hold a gun to their hijabs? It’s their wildest dream to get here!’
‘Spare us the subtle distinction between trafficking and smuggling,’ Whitestone said. ‘If your passengers hadn’t been spooked by all those blue lights on the motorway, you would have collected money for importing people who have no right to be here.’
Lee Hill looked from me to Whitestone and back again.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘DCI Whitestone doesn’t think you’ll deliver the goods.’
‘If we don’t lock you up, all you’re ever going to deliver is another lorryload of illegal migrants,’ Whitestone said. She nodded to the uniformed officer and took a step towards the holding cell door.
‘Show me the photo again!’ Hill said. ‘Please.’
I laughed.
‘Why? So you can tell me – oh, yeah, now I remember – I saw him munching a croque-monsieur in Dunkirk last week?’
‘No lies,’ Whitestone said, so quietly that Hill looked at her and could not look away. ‘If you are our CI, then you never tell us a lie or I will cheerfully watch you buried alive.’
‘No lies,’ Hill agreed.
I took out my phone and called up the photograph of Hana and Nenad Novak. I put my thumb and index finger on the screen and slid them apart so that their smiling young faces disappeared and all that remained was the enlarged image of the scar-faced man in the background.
‘I never saw him,’ Hill said. ‘But I bet I can find him.’
He sounded far more convinced than when I had first showed him the image.
‘Listen – it’s not a big world once you get to the French ports,’ he said. ‘The world – that world – narrows right down by the time you get that close to England. Those refugee camps – they’re not cities. They’re villages. Reeking, stinking villages. You can’t hide in a village.’
‘So how does it work?’ Whitestone said quietly.
‘There’s a lorry park in Saint-Omer,’ Hill said. ‘It’s a long way from the migrant camp at Dunkirk – thirty miles or so inland. The clients have already paid the carriers in advance by the time they arrive at the lorry park. They pay by money transfer, Western Union or the like. Once the cash has been collected this side, the clients get the green light to travel. And once everybody’s boarded, it’s forty minutes to the ferry and on to the UK.’
‘Loving these euphemisms,’ Whitestone said. ‘You never go to the camps for your clients?’
‘Too dangerous,’ he said. ‘Too many knives. Too many headcases that have just walked all the way from a war zone. Too many child soldiers. Too many mad blokes with full beards and empty eyes.’
‘Tell us about your employers,’ I said. ‘Tell us about Imagine.’
‘Never worked for them before. I told you. Bunch of nutters. Idealists. Anarchists. They want national borders down and the Third World moving into the Home Counties for the good of humanity. Don’t hold your breath, far as I’m concerned. But there are all sorts down there. You’ve got your radicals like Imagine who want people to come in for political reasons. You’ve got your pimps, your returning Jihadis, your career gangsters. You’ve got people who just want to bring dear old granny in from Kabul or Damascus or Aleppo so she can enjoy the December of her years in Birmingham or Luton or Leeds. You’ve got economic migrants and you’ve even got some poor bastards who just want to avoid having their families blown to bits. Takes all sorts, eh?’
‘So the pick-up point is always at this lorry park in Saint-Omer?’ I said.
‘The pick-up can be anywhere,’ he said. ‘The pick-up can be when you’re lining up to get on the ferry. But that might not be a voluntary pick-up, if you know what I mean. A driver might not even know about it. The lorry park at Saint-Omer is the place where you are least likely to get a knife in your ribs and wher
e you are most likely to get paid for your troubles. You know why I got into this game? Because I once made it to the Watford Gap with a bunch of hairy-armed Afghans who were tucked up behind a load of German washing machines without my knowledge or consent. So I figured – if the great unwashed are going to hitch a ride, then why shouldn’t I get paid for it?’
‘Fourteen years’ hard time,’ I said. ‘How about that for a good reason?’
He looked wistful.
‘If it hadn’t been for those Essex boy racers losing control of their Ford Escorts, you would never have nicked me. You think I was the only lorry on that motorway last night with the Third World in the back?’
Whitestone shook her head, her face clouding.
Chinatown, I thought. She’s remembering Chinatown.
‘I don’t think we can trust Mr Hill.’
She was not trying to scare him. She truly meant it. This was always the trouble with Criminal Informants. By their very nature, they were duplicitous, two-faced liars. That’s exactly who you were relying on for information.
And sometimes it is just not worth the effort.
Whitestone nodded to the uniformed officer and turned away. The key rattled in the lock.
‘Wait.’
Hill still had my phone in his hand.
‘I’ll find him for you,’ he said. ‘I’ll look in the lorry park at Saint-Omer. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll even look in the camps and risk a knife in my neck for the trouble. And I’ll look for his ugly mug in the bar on the ferry.’ He stared at the image on my phone. ‘And I’ll find him.’
Whitestone thought about it.
Then she nodded.
‘You get seven days,’ she said.
‘And then what happens?’ he said.
‘Nothing good, Mr Hill.’
I held out my hand for my phone.
‘Got a name?’ he said. ‘Nationality?’
‘All we have is that one photo,’ I said. ‘We know he does the Balkan run. We know he has brought at least one cargo through Dunkirk. And we know he does this.’
I snapped my fingers twice.
Click-click.
‘Then you don’t know very much, do you?’ Hill said, handing me my phone.
‘There was a woman who survived,’ I said. ‘She was in the cab with the driver. We found twelve bodies but thirteen passports.’
‘I’m not expected to find her, am I? A woman in the cab with the driver! She’s going to be long gone.’
Whitestone stared at him in silence.
‘Where was your drop-off last night?’ she said.
‘A car park,’ Hill said. ‘If you’re doing a planned run, it’s always done in car parks. Over there and over here, pick-up and drop-off. It’s all car parks. Car parks make the smuggling world go round.’
‘And where was last night’s car park?’ I said.
‘Behind some gaff on the motorway,’ he said. ‘Nice and quiet car park, same as always.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘All I had was a postcode tapped into Google Maps.’
‘What was the postcode for last night?’
He told us and I tapped it into my phone.
Google Maps honed in on planet Earth, Europe, England, Essex, the roads and streets all as delicate as veins.
I stared at the result for a moment and then showed DCI Whitestone.
‘The car park of the Champagne Room,’ I said.
12
So Billy and I went back to the Champagne Room and this time we sat in the BMW X5 and looked beyond the red neon lips and the yellow neon champagne flute and the squat ugly building, and we stared into that dark expanse of car park that stretched on forever behind the club.
And now I saw that dark space for what it was – a bazaar.
Figures in the far shadows leaned into car windows. Hands slapped together as cash transactions were done. There were still men – and they were all men – emerging from cars and cabs and heading for the Champagne Room, in groups and alone. But there were many more little piggies who had simply come to market. And they were doing a roaring trade in the car park of the Champagne Room.
‘A lot of buying and selling out here,’ Billy said beside me, splashes of red and yellow neon on his face.
On the far side of the car park a cellophane package caught the moonlight for a moment as it was exchanged for a fistful of notes.
‘But all I see are drugs,’ I said. ‘This was meant to be Lee Hill’s drop-off spot for his cargo. But I don’t see any evidence of people smuggling.’
We watched the figures trading in the darkness. Eyes on faces hidden by beanies and hooded tops checked us out, in suspicion and anticipation.
‘We can’t park up here forever,’ I said.
‘Could all this go on without the nod from Steve Warboys?’ Billy said.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Most club owners are happy to keep dealing out of the house. But it’s harder to swallow that lorryloads of Afghans are being dropped off here without Steve Warboys noticing.’
‘So are we going to have another word with him?’
‘I’m going to have another word with him. You’re going to stay in the car.’
I saw Billy’s disappointment. It was so easy to hurt his feelings. He was such a gentle soul. And although I wasn’t completely confident that he could survive another night in the Champagne Room without losing his trousers, the truth is that I was glad to have Billy Greene with me. He needed the air miles and I needed a colleague who made me look less obviously like a cop. Some ops work better with a man and a woman, and some work better with two men. Strip joints especially.
‘I need you to watch the car park for me,’ I said, smiling to take some of the sting out of it. ‘And besides – you’re too popular with the ladies.’ Then I got deadly serious. I remembered the sight of Steve Warboys wielding his cricket bat and I suspected that he was stupid enough to raise it to a cop. ‘If I’m not out in ten minutes, call it in and come and get me.’
I headed for the entrance, overtaking a group of City boys who were already reeling from some Liverpool Street pub.
Mahmud X was on the door. Standing on the far side of the little velvet rope, guarding the Champagne Room’s ridiculous patch of red carpet.
He held up his massive hands to block my path. I felt my blood rising at the realisation that he was actually going to try to stop me coming in. Who did these Essex hoods think they were?
They had held me back once. They were not going to do it again.
‘Don’t,’ I warned him.
But he did.
Even though I had specifically told him not to.
The big doorman stepped forward over the little velvet rope to stop me and I remembered something about him now from when he was heavyweight prospect Peter Chivers, slowly moving around the heavy bag at Fred’s gym.
He always kept his guard way too low, those great beefy paws held down by his hips. And that’s perfectly fine if you can dance like Muhammad Ali. But it is not so good if you are a great big lump who moves in slow motion.
So I punched him in the heart.
Just one punch that started down in my shoes and rose up in a sliver of a second through my pivoting body – legs, hips, shoulders, arms – and ended with my knuckles slamming hard into his sternum, me having to reach up and aim almost diagonally because of his freakish height, the shock of impact running back up my arm as my fist connected with the bone and cartilage directly in front of his ticker.
It is a punch that doesn’t always work.
The punch to the heart needs precision and a little bit of luck. It can very easily go wrong if you slip off a pavement or your target turns away or someone unfortunately comes at you from behind and hits you across the back of the noggin with a lager bottle.
But this punch was perfect.
Mahmud X reeled backwards, eyes wide with terror as his heart hammered in his chest from the shock of the blow, his hands grabbing at the front of his cheap tuxedo as he f
ell backwards over the velvet rope as if he was a falling redwood.
He came to rest on his butt, his mouth lolling open. He could not quite work out what had happened to him. But he suspected he might be dying.
I bent down beside him.
‘I told you to leave it, Peter,’ I said.
‘Orders,’ he gasped. ‘To keep you out.’
‘Breathe deep,’ I said. ‘You’ll be all right.’
I patted him on the back of his Crombie and went inside, standing stock-still for a moment as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and my ears attuned to the noise. I saw men in suits and ties and women in nightwear and heels. No sign of Steve Warboys.
But Bianca appeared out of the darkness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
‘I was going to lie about you,’ she reminded me. ‘I was going to say that you had a Southend shoeshine when you did not have a Southend shoeshine.’
I laughed.
‘Don’t worry about it. You were just doing your job.’
She seemed stunned that I wasn’t angry with her. She was a woman who was accustomed to men becoming angry with her.
‘You need to get out of this place, Bianca,’ I said. ‘This is a bad place. These are bad people. I don’t know quite how bad. But if anything happens – if you see anything – if you’re ever in trouble – then you call me.’
I slipped her my card. She gasped as if it was a bouquet of roses, clutching it to her small breasts.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her eyes half-closed.
Then Steve Warboys was there, incandescent with rage at the sight of me.
‘We picked up a lorry driver,’ I told him.
‘And what’s that got to do with me?’
‘A fat man with a West Country accent,’ I said. ‘Lee Hill. I thought you might know him. We pulled him not far from here. He had a lorry full of Afghan migrants. That ring any bells?’
He was struggling to keep his temper.
‘What am I meant to do with a lorryload of unwashed Afghans?’ Steve Warboys demanded. ‘Stick them in a thong and shove them up a fireman’s pole?’
‘This lorry driver was meant to drop them off in your car park,’ I said.