by Lin Anderson
In this job we’re fucked, and everyone around us is fucked too.
Even as he breathed his hesitation, the door began to open, forcing him to act. McNab dropped the glass fragment and grabbed for the gun instead. The sudden movement next to his head roused Brodie, and like a dog he barked into action.
In moments there were three of them in the room and McNab was outnumbered. He fired wildly and his shot met the roof and embedded itself there, but the noise and reverberation were enough to make both his opponents fall silent, and still.
Brodie, a groggy, spaced-out look on his face, was trying to work out what had just happened. The male who’d entered now thought better of the move and promptly exited, suggesting he wasn’t armed, and didn’t feel like taking a bullet.
The likelihood, McNab knew, was that he would return and soon, with backup.
McNab ordered Brodie to his feet. With the gun pointed at him, Brodie decided to do as commanded, although the continuing violent motion of the ship quickly drained any colour sleep had returned to his face.
It seemed both pathetic and ironic seeing a hardman like Brodie reduced to a wreck by something as simple as seasickness. It almost made McNab’s own struggle with it bearable.
‘Turn round,’ McNab said. ‘And face the door.’
‘Fuck off!’ Brodie made a sound in his throat that suggested he was about to puke, causing McNab to take a quick sidestep, at which Brodie laughed.
‘You won’t kill me, pig.’
‘But I might blow your balls off,’ McNab offered. ‘Stop you fucking kids.’
‘Like your pal, Davey, you mean?’ Brodie sneered.
‘Bad answer.’
Brodie’s eyes widened as McNab swung the gun to point directly at his crotch. Then it was Brodie’s turn to do a sidestep. But not quick enough. As McNab’s knee met Brodie’s balls, the gun butt met his head. Brodie didn’t know which to cradle first.
As he crumpled, moaning, McNab repeated both moves, this time with his feet.
‘That’s for Mary, and that’s for Amena.’
Minutes later he’d tied an unconscious Brodie’s hands and feet together. Looking down on the punk, he almost wished he wasn’t a police officer, because then he would have finished the bastard off.
McNab rose and spat his distaste on the inert body.
Now all he had to do was find a radio and send out a message.
And he knew who his contact would be.
McNab expected the guy he’d shot at in the room to rouse the troops and quickly, and yet it didn’t appear that he had. He realized why at the next corner. Turning it, gun at the ready, he was met by the same guy, who now stood in the middle of the corridor, hands held up.
‘Is your name Michael?’ he said. ‘Amena sent me to look for you.’
It was like some sort of weird nightmare that he used to have when on a drinking spree. Fixate on an idea prior to falling asleep, then try to follow it through in your dream.
‘Amena’s here on the boat. She’s with Isla,’ the young man told him.
McNab thought he might be hallucinating, verbally at least, which meant he was hearing what he wanted to hear, while other words were being spoken, like you’re fucked, arsehole.
‘Amena?’ he finally managed.
‘My name’s Tarik,’ the young guy told him. ‘There are eight of us on this boat, and one of them is Amena Tamar.’
His words were like a firework display in McNab’s head, complete with the bangs at Hogmanay. Something he hadn’t experienced this particular New Year.
The young guy was watching him, and eyeing up the gun at the same time.
McNab kept the gun pointed at him. ‘If you’re lying …’
‘I’m not lying. Come with me.’
She was huddled amongst the others, yet McNab’s eyes were drawn to her straight away. The facial bruising had faded and she looked younger now than in the Delta Club and the hospital, as though, in the interim, she’d become a child again.
Seeing his entry, she stood up, wonder on her face. ‘Michael?’
Her voice speared him like an emotional knife.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ McNab said, in an attempted jocular fashion. ‘And here you are.’
‘They know we’re all here together,’ Tarik said. ‘But they don’t care. They know we can’t get off the boat. And there’s the storm.’
‘Where are they taking you?’
‘Rumour is there’s a ship.’ Tarik glanced at the others. ‘Things happen there.’
McNab felt Isla’s touch on his arm and interpreted the silent message that he shouldn’t ask what those things were.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now we get that message out.’
The wind was abating, the difference audible. Shouting, necessary before to rise above the rattling of the boat and the crash of the sea, was no longer required. The tug too, as though in relief at the end of a fight, was springing forward.
‘They’ll come to check on us soon,’ Tarik told McNab.
‘Which means we go now,’ McNab responded.
Isla had remained silent as they discussed their plan, before informing them that they might be wrong on the subject of shortwave frequency radio.
‘If the tug’s only working the North Sea and not over long distances,’ she said, ‘it’ll probably have MF on board and possibly VHF on the bridge. Maybe also multiple satellite comms.’
‘I don’t care what fucking comms it has, will we be able to use them?’ McNab said.
‘There’s normally a guide posted next to the set,’ Isla told him. ‘For dummies,’ she added, with a smile.
‘Which of course you’re not?’ McNab said.
‘Neither are you, if you’ve used a police radio.’
79
Olsen steadied himself as the Solstice took the brunt of the next wave. According to the forecasts before they’d left Sola, the wind should pass its peak soon. That wouldn’t mean an immediate improvement in the state of the sea, or the size of the swell. It did mean, however, that the SAR helicopter could take off, and would be expected to, since they’d claimed their sojourn here had been caused by the weather.
He noted that there were no neighbouring lights, which meant the ship was staying in open water, well away from both rigs and other vessels. Which could be for one of two reasons. For safety’s sake, since a collision between boat and rig was a distinct possibility in seas as high as these. Or it might be that, whatever the Solstice crew had planned for the next few hours – such as a delivery – they preferred it go unobserved.
Up to this point, Olsen had succeeded in moving through the ship without being challenged, mainly because he’d acquired a crew jacket. But that couldn’t last much longer. Nothing he had viewed so far he’d deemed suspicious, although there were a number of areas he’d not yet investigated, in particular the lower decks.
If, as he suspected, the Solstice was being used not only for the storage and transport of the children, but possibly also for the filming and transmission of material involving them, then that’s where the centre of operations was likely to be located.
The discovery of the children’s bodies on Norway’s border with Russia had started him on a path that had eventually led to the middle of the North Sea. The initial trickle of unaccompanied minors into Europe had become a flood as the conflicts in Northern Africa and the Middle East had developed. Both as easy prey and a highly sought-after commodity, they offered an international business opportunity, which appeared to have an ever-expanding customer base.
According to recent statistics, there simply wouldn’t be enough jails to incarcerate all the men who, the police believed, were regularly viewing child pornography online. The dossier of images collected by the Norwegian team had indicated just how widespread and international that business had become, and how much money could be made from it.
It had been Marita who’d drawn Olsen’s attention to the added possibility that the children were being harvested for more th
an just sexual abuse and exploitation. A journalist herself, she’d been writing a piece on the transportation of refugees into Europe, and she’d got a lead. One of the traffickers she’d spoken to had discovered he had a conscience, revealing that some of those he’d trafficked had been sold on for their organs, with young people being the most profitable shipment.
And a ship such as the Solstice was equipped to retrieve and supply such a commodity.
Olsen emerged from his hiding place, knowing there was a decision to be made. Nothing he’d seen as yet had given him the green light to seize the Solstice and bring her into harbour, with all the furore and fallout that would instigate. So, he could seek out Harald and Rhona to check whether they’d found anything at the hospital which would warrant him commandeering the ship. Or he could take his search onto the lower decks, before the wind dropped.
Now deep in the bowels of the ship, Olsen halted, hearing the ringing sound of following footsteps on the metal walkway. Glancing round, he established that there was nowhere here to hide, so if he were challenged by a crew member, he’d have to brazen it out.
From his foray up to now, he’d established that the crew were mostly foreign, with a strong preference for using Arabic, so he assumed they might well have been recruited on the Solstice’s not infrequent visits to Sousse in Tunisia, where Marita’s whistle-blower had hailed from.
His own knowledge of that language was limited, although he’d been working on it with Mohammad during their chess matches – hence his ability to talk to the woman in Glasgow. Still, he could recognize the language of anger when he heard it. The two men were disagreeing about something, one of them obviously dismissing the other’s arguments. Olsen decided to take his fate into his own hands, and ask what it was about.
Stepping out in front of them he demanded, in Norwegian, to know where they were going.
The effect of this was for them to stop in surprise, then regard him with some consternation. When no response came, Olsen repeated his question, but in Arabic.
This resulted in a torrent of a reply, mainly from the older of the two, next to nothing of which Olsen could understand, apart from one expression which he thought might mean ‘emergency’. Standing aside, he waved them on, then followed.
Down a further flight of metal steps, Olsen caught the strong scent of diesel, and a glimpse of an area of large metal containers which he presumed housed the goods the RAS vessel would deliver offshore. The two men peeled off here, taking a stepladder down into the hold.
Olsen followed.
At the foot was a further walkway, leading to a container. As he approached, Olsen caught the smell of human. Not an everyday scent, but something primeval, tormented and terrible. Olsen almost ground to a halt, but knowing that in itself would arouse suspicion, he walked on … and into hell.
In the dim interior light sat or lay the humans whose scent had so distressed him. All were chained together, and by their young eyes, either desperate or else resigned to their fate. Olsen was reminded of drawn images of the interiors of slave ships that had horrified him as a child. Ships that had ploughed between the old world and the new, two centuries ago.
Nothing really changes, he thought. Humans were a commodity then, and are again now.
Aware his distress must be evident on his face, he mustered himself and said briskly in Arabic, ‘Where are you taking them?’
His question had perplexed the older man, as though he expected Olsen to already know the answer. Olsen registered suspicion in his eyes, before he responded dismissively in Arabic.
As the two men began to lead the group out, Olsen’s brain attempted to translate their gaoler’s response. He’d heard the expression before, but when, and in what context?
Then it came.
It had been a day last summer. He’d persuaded a nervous Mohammad to go on a boat trip to Flor & Fjære, the garden island near Stavanger. During the journey, his friend had revealed how he’d escaped Syria. He’d chosen, he explained, to take his family overland, rather than subject them to a possible death at sea.
I didn’t want them to become food for the fishes.
Olsen stood back, allowing the chained group to pass. Every nerve in his body urged him to intervene and stop them being marshalled to their probable death. But if he interceded now, his chance of preventing that might be over.
The older crew member had his suspicions, which he hadn’t yet acted on. The moment Olsen showed concern for the prisoners, or interfered with what were obviously the man’s orders, Olsen’s cover, however superficial, would be blown.
As the tail end of the sorry procession went by, the final pair of female eyes fastened briefly on Olsen. In that look was fear, despair and, worst of all, the question Why don’t you help us? That look changed everything.
‘Stop,’ Olsen shouted in Arabic. ‘I’ll take them up.’
The older guy had swung round at his command and Olsen knew by the look on his face that it wasn’t going to work. The younger guy picked up on the other’s rapidly fired order and came towards Olsen, a knife in his hand, the children cowering back against the guard rail as he pushed past.
Olsen had the fleeting thought that he may have put the children in even more imminent danger by his challenge. Some of them barely reached past the guard rail of the narrow walkway, and if they slipped below, they’d take the others with them, to free-fall to their death in the hold.
Olsen stepped back a little, making a space between the fight that was about to happen and the children. The older guy was watching, a gleam of anticipation in his eyes.
Olsen raised his hands and said in halting Arabic that he was a police officer and that they were about to be boarded by the Norwegian navy, then watched as the two men sought to understand his words. A flicker of concern crossed the younger one’s face, but the older guy wasn’t backing down. His command sent the younger one forward.
Olsen, rather than moving away from the brandished knife, now went towards his attacker. When the knife swung, Olsen turned swiftly side-on and, angling his forearm, tried to anticipate the moment to strike. He judged it well. There was a satisfying grunt of anguish as the solid bone of his elbow met the guy’s trachea. When the guy doubled over in an effort to breathe, Olsen grabbed the knife hand and bent it back until he heard the wrist bone snap.
But his next move wasn’t quick enough. The knife dropped free, and missed his catch to clang on the walkway and sail into the void that lay below. The young guy, nursing his wrist, was struggling to get back on his feet. Olsen had no desire to continue their fight. He was tempted to push the guy off the walkway, but did the next best thing. The scream when it came resounded off the metal walls, but the guy wasn’t walking anywhere, not on a knee shattered by an Alt-Berg heavy-duty police boot.
Olsen, free now of the fight, suddenly realized that the children had been mustered and were being quickly herded up the walkway by their other captor, who held a knife to the throat of the girl who’d silently begged Olsen’s help.
There was no doubting what would happen if he made any attempt to follow.
He waited impatiently as the clanging sound of their feet faded. Once he was certain they’d progressed a level, Olsen headed upwards, intent now on making his way across the ship and heading for the comms aboard the helicopter. As he attempted to run on the still-pitching ship, he questioned why the removal of the children from the hold had happened and came up with only one answer. Somehow they know that we’re onto them. Or at least they suspect it. And once the kids’ captor reached the upper levels, they would know it for certain.
Despite all the plans, the carefully kept secrets, the dedication, the determination, it might all come to nought. Olsen allowed himself a brief moment to consider failure before Marita’s voice resounded in his head. Hurry.
80
Tarik led the way, McNab and the gun following, Isla bringing up the rear. McNab had attempted to leave her behind, but she was having none of it, highlighting
the fact that she was the only one who’d been on the bridge of a boat, any boat.
By Tarik’s expression, he agreed with her, and to be truthful, McNab was impressed by Isla’s determination and resilience. Plus he didn’t want to reach his goal and not know what to do when he got there.
There had been no uproar since he’d whacked Brodie, so McNab was assuming he still lay tied up on the floor of his cabin.
As they staggered along, matching the rise and fall of the waves, McNab was conscious that although the swell continued, the strength and screech of the wind had definitely abated. He was initially pleased by that, until he remembered that the weather had succeeded in slowing down the tug’s progress towards the bigger ship.
And that gave more time for them to be rescued. If anyone had any idea where they were.
McNab’s thoughts were drawn to the others in this investigation. Had they figured out yet what had happened to him? Did they even care? It wasn’t the first time he’d done his own thing, and Rhona was well aware that he’d fallen off the wagon, otherwise Chrissy wouldn’t have shown up when she did. That in itself would suggest he was out of the picture.
But Chrissy would worry. Surely Chrissy would look for him?
But how the hell would she think to look on a boat in the middle of the North Sea? When I refused even to go to Aberdeen in the first place.
One person who might know where Brodie had taken him would be Davey. Since Davey had already given him up to Brodie, McNab couldn’t imagine he would even approach the police, let alone volunteer any information about his association with the drug baron.
Unless of course Ollie has defied me and handed over the laptop and mobile.
McNab found himself wishing, even praying, that that was exactly what Ollie had done.
Tarik had gone ahead to check if the coast was clear, instructing them to wait here. When McNab had reminded him that he was the one with the gun, Isla had informed him that since Tarik had been moving about the tug unobserved for some time, if anyone could get them safely to the bridge, it would be him.
Huddled together awaiting the boy’s return, Isla had revealed what she had planned.