by Rob Aspinall
I'm trying to keep the speed reasonable so I don't draw attention from any arsehole traffic cops. They have a nasty habit of hiding in cars behind bushes with their speed guns.
The last thing I need is them asking me who I am, or what I'm carrying.
But I need to make time, too.
As I slow down for a queue at a roundabout, I grab the map off the dash and open it out against the steering wheel. I run a finger along the A-roads to London, seeing if there's a faster way back to the city. If I don't get there on time, I don't get paid. That was the deal, Randall said. And a cushy number like this once a week . . . I'll soon be out of that bedsit.
So yeah, it's not legal what I'm doing. But the only bloke I'm hurting is Giorgio Armani. Even Cassie wouldn't have a problem with that.
I find myself a quicker route. It'll save me twenty minutes. Which means I can afford to stop the truck in a lay-by. I climb out to take a piss. Stretch my legs. An hour and twenty still to drive. It's not even nine-thirty yet. Plenty of time. I wander into the long grass by the side of the road. I piss in the field, looking out across an open stretch of wild grass ruffling in the wind.
As I'm shaking the old chap off, I think I hear something behind me. I zip up and turn to face the truck.
Thought I heard a knocking sound.
I listen hard. With cars flying past at sixty and seventy, it's not easy. I bend over and look underneath the truck. I move over to the cab. The engine's still running. Could it be coming from there?
Don't tell me the bloody thing's got a problem.
I listen some more.
Nah, just hearing things. Must be the lack of sleep. That wafer-thin sofa bed is killing me. I walk around the front of the cab and climb back into the driver's seat, pull on my belt, release the brakes and indicate. I wait for a clear stretch of road and ease back onto the dual carriageway.
I bring the truck up to a steady fifty and eject the CD in the stereo. One eye on the road, the other on my bag, as I rummage inside for the other disc.
Then I hear it again. That bumping, banging sound. Kind of muffled. Not from the engine. Almost like it's behind my seat, from inside the trailer. I wonder if it's a loose box or pallet, knocking against the inside trailer wall.
Yeah, probably a loose pallet.
I ignore it for a while. Turn up the next song.
But it bugs the shit out of me.
The sound isn't random enough. It's in a pattern. One minute it's quick, the next it's slow. Always in a sequence, like someone trying different knocks on a door.
I decide to pull over at the next lay-by. Five minutes down the road, I find something even better. An empty stretch of concrete signposted as a sleepover for truck drivers.
I pull off the road and spin the wagon around so it’s facing the carriageway.
I turn off the engine and reach across the cabin. Pop the glove box and rummage inside. Nothing but old dockets and manifests.
Damn, I was hoping to find a key for that padlock.
I jump down out of the truck and walk around to the back of the trailer. I take out the burner phone Randall gave me with his number pre-programmed in. Something heavy bumps against the inside of the trailer doors. I dial Randall's number. He answers as if I woke him up. A heavy night on the booze and blackjack tables, knowing him.
"Uh, hello?"
"Chris?"
"Breaker?"
"Are you sure it's fake merch in the back of this truck?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I'm not transporting a bloody gorilla or crocodile or something."
"Huh?"
"Fake handbags don't tend to bang on trailer doors, Chris."
"Listen, Charlie. Where are you?"
"Not sure. A truck stop somewhere. I can find out."
"Never mind," he says. "We'll have you on GPS. Hold on a second."
I hear Randall in the background. He tells a girlfriend to leave the room. He seems to be having a conversation with someone else on another phone.
I don't hear what he says, but he comes back on the line. "Okay, someone's gonna come and take a look. They're not too far from you."
"Someone? Like who?"
"Someone with a key. They'll be thirty minutes, tops."
"What about the delivery?" I ask, checking my watch. "I'm gonna be late."
"Don't worry about that," Randall says. "I'll see you get paid. Just sit tight."
"Alright, but why don't I take a look now? It's padlocked, but I can open it up easy."
"Charlie, I'm just the middleman. It's not my truck. Sit tight, yeah?"
"Alright then," I say.
Randall hangs up on me. I slip the burner inside a trouser pocket. More bumps from behind the trailer door. I stretch my legs out. Check my watch. Lean against the side of the truck. Climb back inside the cabin.
Sod it.
I reach behind the seats. Open the lid on a black toolbox and pull out a tyre iron.
I jump down again and return to the rear of the trailer. I wedge the tyre iron in the padlock and force it to pop out. I slide the bolts open on the trailer doors.
I know Randall said not to. But what's the worst that could be in there, right?
Unless they have got a wild animal in there. A tiger. A bear. You never know with eBay.
I open the doors real slow. The left one, then the right.
Oh, it’s not a tiger or a bear.
It's something far, far worse.
14
The smell hits me first. Stale air and bodies. Out of the gloom blink a dozen pairs of eyes. I fold both doors all the way open to let in the light. I look up and see 'em sitting either side of the trailer floor. Shivering and huddling over. There's a tiny body lying prone in the centre of the dusty wood panel floor. It's a child under a coat.
A young woman kneels next to the young kid. She's pretty and slim. Black hair tied into a loose ponytail. She looks Arabic to me. Most of 'em do, other than a few who look African.
They stare at me with tired eyes and drawn faces, breathing in the air like they've been suffocating.
Did they stow away on the truck? No, there'd be boxes and pallets in the back too. They're the only cargo I'm carrying.
"Anyone speak English?" I ask.
The young woman raises a hand. "Is this the UK?"
"Looks like it," I say. "Where have you come from?"
"Syria," she says. "And Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia."
"No, I mean, how did you get here?"
"We took a boat, from Ostend," a man says, from somewhere in the gloom.
"Where?"
"A port in Belgium," the young woman says.
"You crossed the channel?"
"Yes, in a small yacht, overnight. They paid out of our money."
"Who's they?"
"I don't know," she says, gesturing to the young kid. "Listen, the child is sick. And we can't breathe in here."
"I'm not surprised,” I say, "there's no ventilation."
Another guy from the back says something. He's irate.
The woman translates. "He wants to know if we can get out now."
"No," I say. The last thing I want is a bunch of migrants spilling out of my truck. You don't know who's watching. Police, passing motorists . . . “Stay in here,” I say.
"You can't leave us by the side of the road," the woman says.
"It won't be long," I say, holding out both hands. "Help is coming. I'll leave the doors open."
The woman continues to whinge. "The child, she needs help now."
"Is she yours?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "She doesn't have parents."
"Well where the hell are they?"
A woman sitting to the left of me speaks. She's in her forties and wrapped in a purple headscarf. She makes a movement with her hand like a missile landing. No translation needed.
I check my watch and glance around the side of the truck, getting anxious. Where are these pricks?
I take out my p
hone and walk away from the truck, keeping an eye on the people inside. I call Randall.
"Breaker?"
"Did you know?" I ask.
"Know what?"
"What the cargo was."
"No, I told you . . . Why, what did you do?"
"Opened it up, didn't I?"
"Why the fuck did you do that?"
"Never mind why I did it, it's a good job I did."
Randall goes quiet on me.
"Well, are you gonna ask me or what?"
"Listen, whatever it is, Charlie, I don't wanna know."
"Maybe you can guess instead," I say. "Your fake merch has come all the way from Syria. And I bet not one of them is called Giorgio Armani."
"You're not saying what I think you're saying—“
"You know exactly what I'm saying, Chris. What do I do with 'em?"
I can hear the cogs turning in Randall's head from here. "Look, the plan's the same. Sit tight until help arrives. They'll sort you out."
"Is that it?"
"What do you want me to say, Charlie? We've both been fed the same bullshit."
I realise it's as much of a shock for Randall as it is for me, so I cool my own jets. "Okay fine, I'll call you when I know something."
I end the conversation and return to the trailer.
The woman who speaks English is straight back on my case. "What about the girl?" she asks. "She needs a doctor."
"What's wrong with her?" I ask, stepping up into the trailer.
"I don't know," she says. "It looks serious."
It's gloomy inside the trailer, but as daylight spills in, I see the young girl's face. Pale and sweating cold.
I notice tiny salt crystals in her hair. "She fall in the Channel or something?"
“No, near Greece. A big wave hit us," the woman says. "The boat tipped over."
I whip off my bomber jacket. "Well why didn't you say so?" I fold up the jacket and raise the girl's head. Her hair is stiff and straggled. "I reckon she's got hypothermia."
"What's that?" she asks.
"It's urgent, that's what it is."
"I told you," she says.
As we're talking, I hear tyres over concrete. The double pip of a car horn. "Give her this as well," I say, tugging at the woman's red wool jumper. "Keep her as warm as you can."
The woman nods and removes her jumper. Underneath, she wears a salmon pink shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Plus a pair of mud-stained khaki trousers and battered silver trainers.
I turn and jump down from the trailer. The car is a metallic-blue Vauxhall saloon. It drives past the truck to my right. Parks up twenty feet away, the engine running. Like they're getting a look at me first.
After a long minute, driver and passenger climb out and I get a good look at them.
The pair of 'em are a front page special—bad news. War. Famine. Earthquakes. That kind of bad news. They're a couple of heavy-treading bruisers in black jeans and leather coats. One, a bald white guy with a gold chain and no chin. The other, a dark-skinned bloke with a low-rising mohawk. Not the people you send to have a conversation.
I back off a few feet. Put a hand on the left hand door. I close it.
My human cargo starts to protest. Especially when I swing the other door shut.
"It's only for a minute," I say to the young woman.
As the two goons get close, I can tell they're carrying. Not exactly surprising, but not reassuring either. They stop short of me around the rear of the trailer. Shoulder to shoulder, like bouncers minding a door.
"So what's the situation?" I ask.
"You come with us," says the white guy in a Baltic accent.
"What about the truck?"
"Never mind about the truck," the darker one says in a cockney voice.
"There's a sick girl in there."
"So?" the white guy says.
"So she needs help, bowling ball."
They look at me with blank expressions.
"They've got no ventilation," I say.
The cockney shrugs.
"Don't you want me to drive it?" I ask. "I can at least finish the job."
"Nah it's alright, leave it," the cockney says.
"Listen mate," I say, "you can't just leave 'em here."
"They already pay," the foreign guy says.
The cockney nods towards the car. "Come on."
I look at the truck. At the two men. "What if I say no?"
"We're not asking," says the cockney.
The foreign one pulls the left lapel of his jacket open. Shows me a piece holstered against his ribs.
"Alright, after you," I say. "I still get paid though, right?"
"You'll get what's due," the cockney says, leading the way.
Of course they're not gonna pay me. They're gonna drive me somewhere quiet and shoot me in the skull. They'll leave the truck and move on. It's not like anyone's gonna miss me, or a trailer full of dead migrants.
We reach the car. Baldy opens a door for me. I get in the back, behind the driver seat. He squeezes his frame behind the wheel and starts the engine. The cockney gets in across from me on the backseat.
Baldy puts the car in reverse.
The cockney sneers at me. "Where's that accent from?"
"Manchester."
He laughs to himself. "Northern twat."
See, this is the problem with the youth of today. They're overconfident.
They don't know what they don't know.
And they don't know that they don't know it.
For starters, they've already shown me where they holster their weapons. And they let me pick my own spot on the backseat.
Oh dear, oh dear.
15
As Baldy backs up the car, I make my move.
I double over and yank a lever to the bottom right of the seat in front.
I pull the seat all the way back so the driver's almost lying down. I reach around front and beat his hand to the gun in his jacket.
As the cockney goes for his own weapon, I twist the holster and pull the trigger.
A bullet punches a hole through the driver's leather jacket. It hits the cockney in the left shoulder. He rocks back in his seat, but still goes for his gun. I swing the point of my left hand into his throat.
Baldy wrestles me for the pistol. It drops to the floor. I yank his seatbelt away from the door pillar and wrap it fast around his throat.
The cockney finally pulls out his weapon. I smack it out of his hand and it gets lost in the footwell.
The car keeps reversing, heading towards the trees and bushes behind the truck stop.
I pull the belt tighter to speed up the choke on the driver. I feel a cracking pain in my left cheek. The cockney slamming a ring-fingered fist in my face. I duck away from the next punch and twist in my seat with my legs in the air.
I drive my right boot into the cockney's face. I press my left boot against his windpipe and force his head back against the rear passenger window.
I put the other boot against his forehead. I push as hard as I can. He tries to force my legs off, but I've got 'em locked at the knee.
As I pull down hard on the seatbelt with my right hand, I hear Baldy choke out. I draw back my right boot and drive it hard into the cockney's jaw.
There's a deep crack. His neck breaking as his head twists in a way it wasn't designed to.
I let go of the belt and reach under the driver's seat.
I snatch Baldy's gun from the holster and push the seat forward.
I jack open the passenger door and roll out backwards onto the concrete. I tumble a couple of times as the car drifts into the bushes. It rolls right in there, disappearing from sight.
Getting to my feet, I dust myself down. I check the chamber of the gun. It's empty, but the clip is almost full.
I turn my attention to the truck. I jog over and open the trailer doors. The people in the back are still cowering, shoved up away from the sound of gunfire.
The young woman kneels ne
xt to the girl, stroking her hair.
I hop up inside the trailer. "You," I say to her, "get out."
She looks at the weapon in my hand. Wide-eyed and worried.
I tuck the gun away in the back of my jeans. "Here," I say, scooping up the sick girl. "It's warmer in the front. Follow me."
I jump down with the girl. Nothing but a quaking bundle in my arms. Her eyes half-closed in pain. I walk around to the passenger side and open the door. I climb in with the girl and lay her down on a small cot behind the seats.
There's a thin white mattress and a navy blanket on top, plus a small pillow perfect for the girl's head.
The young woman climbs in the cab behind me. She tucks the girl in as I back my way out and return to the trailer. I jump up and take out the gun.
The people in the trailer shrink away in fear.
"Hands over ears," I say, demonstrating the action.
They clap their hands against the sides of their heads. I angle the barrel towards the ceiling. I let off three rounds into the roof of the trailer. Three evenly-spaced holes let in a supply of fresh air and daylight. Better in the roof than the side of the truck. No one will see the bullet holes.
"Sit tight," I say. "Won't be long now."
They look at me like I'm talking gibberish. I shrug and jump out of the trailer. I swing the doors shut and fasten them up. Just in time, too. Another truck pulls over into the stop. A big articulated lorry with a blue cab and a long orange trailer. The driver honks his horn as he pulls past me. I give him a wave and climb behind the wheel. The little girl is tucked in tight. The young woman in the passenger seat.
"How's she doing?" I ask.
"I don't think she has long," the woman says.
I grab the map off the dash and run a finger over the roads. I look for the nearest major town.
Guildford.
I tap the point on the map. "Here, we'll find a hospital."
I slide the map on the dash and start the engine. I pull the truck out of the stop and we hit the road.
16
I overtake a silver people carrier driving at the speed of cold sludge. The truck's giving me no more than seventy, but at least we're making time as we roll downhill. The woman returns to her seat after tending to the girl.