Death & Back

by Rob Aspinall

  Then she spotted it. The staircase to the upper decks. High on adrenaline, she sprinted up it and ran for the next one. She saw it ahead, at the end of the corridor.

  She sensed freedom at last. All she had to do was make it up those stairs and out off the deck. She'd raise the alarm, gladly handing herself over to the authorities. They could do what they wanted with her—deport her for all she cared.

  But she had to make it out.

  As she flew towards the staircase, a figure appeared from a doorway to the right. There was no time to stop, swerve, or use the gun. He grabbed hold of her and snatched the weapon from her hand.

  "Where are you going, my dear?" He spoke in English. A gentle European voice. His grip firm but not fierce. A handsome man with long, greying hair, glasses and stubble. Dressed in a tailored, dark-blue suit, he stood out from the rest.

  Another man appeared in the doorway, again clothed as if working on the docks. He was shorter, with receding hair and dark skin. To Amira, he looked Moroccan or Algerian.

  "Who have we got here?" the suited man asked him.

  The other man consulted a clipboard. "She just got in," he said in a different accent. Definitely not English. "She's one of the cargo girls," he continued. "I'll have her straightened out."

  "No, no, no," the dapper man said. "There's no need for that.” He handed the smaller man the gun and smiled at Amira. "You look tired my dear. Come in and take a seat." He guided her through the doorway, into a small office. There was a desk and three visitor chairs to the immediate left. He sat her down on the middle chair. "My name's Pavel," he said. "What's yours?"

  Amira didn't speak.

  "Are you thirsty? Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee?"

  "Water," Amira found herself mumbling.

  "Coming right up," Pavel said, filling a clear plastic cup from a water cooler in the far corner.

  The smaller man dropped into a chair behind the desk, appearing as confused as Amira.

  Pavel handed over the cup of water to Amira. Her hand shook as she raised it to her lips.

  "Here," Pavel said, steadying her hand, helping her to drink.

  She finished the cup in one go, recovering her breath.

  "What do you want to do with her?" the man behind the desk asked. "We're a girl short as it is."

  Pavel took a seat next to Amira. He removed his glasses. He pulled a silk, navy handkerchief from a trouser pocket and rubbed the lenses. "We can get another," he said. "This one's special."

  "Yeah, she's pretty, but—"

  "No, she's beautiful," Pavel said, slipping on his glasses. "Under all this dirt . . . And she's got fight. Guts. I like that." Pavel toyed with a strand of Amira's hair. Amira flinched away. Pavel held up a hand in apology.

  “Fine,” the man behind the desk said, "I'll order a replacement. But we can't throw her out on the street. You want her sending back to the barracks?" He picked up the receiver on an office phone. "I can tell Sergei to turn around—"

  "No, no," Pavel said, his gaze fixed on Amira. "She's coming with me." Pavel stood from his chair. He held out a hand for Amira to take. He was polite, sophisticated. But he was one of them.

  "What about the other women?" Amira asked. "What happens to them?"

  "I would take them all if I could," Pavel said. "But it's Nabil's boat."

  Amira didn't believe him. Didn't trust him. Regardless, she took his hand.

  27

  I use the walk to the Old Ship to stretch my legs. By the time I get there, I'm back to my usual loping stride. I enter the pub at nine. The place is busy with the after-work crowd. And not the office kind. We're talking labourers in dusty boots and t-shirts. Middle-aged men with beer bellies in polo shirts. The odd woman caked in makeup and wearing clothes that used to fit 'em when they were younger. They used to be in fashion, too.

  I shoulder my way to the front of the bar, ignoring the funny looks I get on the way. The landlord is on duty again, wearing the same England shirt. He pours me a pint. I sup on the head.

  Wow that tastes good.

  Everything tastes good when you've come back from the dead. Even watered-down piss like this. I turn and look around the pub. I notice a bunch of guys in the far corner, gathered around a table. They stop talking and stare my way. They're in their forties and fifties, ugly as a hat full of arseholes.

  I move around the pub. I tap a few blokes on the shoulder and ask 'em if Randall's been in. They shake their heads and say no. That means they're not part of his outfit. If they were, they'd act dumb and pretend they didn't know him.

  I save the table of mean-looking dickheads until last.

  "What the fuck do you want?" a thickset man with cropped ginger hair asks me.

  "You seen Chris Randall?" I ask. "Expecting him in tonight?"

  A bloke with a pock face and an uneven black goatee levels me in the eye. "Don't know who you're talking about mate, but you'd better stop talking. Kapeesh?"

  "Easy Captain Sparrow," I say, "Only asking."

  "Well don't," the ginger one says.

  I sink the last quarter of my pint. I dump the glass on their table and back away, glancing over a shoulder in case I'm done from behind.

  I leave the warmth of the pub for the dark, chilly London streets. A light fog hanging in the air, softening the glare of oncoming headlights.

  I head back to the bedsit. Around halfway home, where the streets are residential and empty, I notice a tail behind me. On foot. Hanging back, but definitely following me. A car too. Driving slow around the area. Cruising by me three separate times.

  There's a couple more pubs on the way home. Even rougher than the Old Ship. There's also a couple of takeaway joints, a corner shop and a tiny chippy with wire mesh over the windows.

  I stop inside and order fish, chips and mushy peas, plus a pot of ketchup and a can of coke. I come out of the chippy and leave the housing estates for the tower blocks. The same bloke is still on my tail. The mystery car parked up across the street.

  There's a smell of burning in the air. I notice a car on fire in the distance. Shrieks and shouts in the fog. As I reach the entrance to my tower block, I stop and turn. My tail has disappeared. No sign of the car either.

  The gang who hang around the base of the apartments are out for the night, causing bother somewhere else. I head up to my bedsit. Check over my shoulder again as I wrestle my way in through the front door. I lock the door behind me. I take a fork off the drainer and slip out of my jacket. I drop onto the sofa, turn on the TV and open out the bundle of chip paper on a tiny wooden coffee table. I fizz open the coke, dump the ketchup on the chips and dig in.

  You can't beat fish and chips. Even the bad ones are good. And the local chippy isn't bad. I'm not long into the chips when I hear the sound of feet outside the front door. I see the lock turning. Hear whatever tool they're using to open it, jiggling around.

  I turn up the TV and get up from the sofa. I tiptoe over to the door. Stand on the inside of it, back to the wall. Canned laughter blares out of the TV. One of those crappy panel shows.

  I watch as the handle on the latch turns slow. The door pushes open a crack. The cold air creeps in. The door creaks, It opens a peep more . . . a peep more.

  I stand behind it in the shadows, gripping the fork.

  28

  Two men burst inside. Tight formation. The ginger and the goatee from the pub. I boot the door right back in their faces. The ginger one takes the brunt of the hit, his nose exploding with blood. I grab the other guy by the arm. I throw him across the room, ripping his gun from his hand in the process.

  I eject the clip and toss the pistol aside. The ginger bloke staggers around, trying to get a fix on me. Gun in one hand, broken nose in the other.

  I move in fast. Twist his shooting arm. Stab the inside of his wrist with the fork. He yells and lets the gun go. There are lots of nerves in the wrist, you see. Motor functions that control the hand. I pull out the fork and throw an elbow. It connects hard and he drops t
o the deck.

  The one with the goatee comes back at me. He has a backup piece inside his leather jacket. Before he can get the safety off, I grab him by the hair. I yank his neck to one side and drive the fork into his head a centimetre behind the ear.

  He screams. I twist the fork in deeper. He drops to the floor, whimpering. I shut the front door and apply the latch.

  The guy with the fork in his neck holds the handle, but doesn't dare pull it out. His ginger-haired pal sits with his back against the wall.

  I gather their weapons and spill them onto the coffee table. I turn the TV low, pick up a gun and slam in the loose clip. I hold it on the two intruders.

  "Don't worry," I say to the guy with the fork in his head. "I'll use my fingers."

  I return to my fish and chips. Both my attackers are in agony, bleeding in different ways. I offer them the paper. "Chip?" The pair of them shake their heads. "Suit yourselves," I say, stuffing a piece of battered fish in my mouth. I wolf it down and lick the grease off my fingers. "So, which one of you gentlemen knows where I can find Chris Randall?" I sip on my can of coke. They keep it zipped. "Sorry?" I say, holding a hand to my ear. "I didn't quite catch that."

  They refuse to talk. I get up and walk over to the one with the goatee. I turn the fork handle some more.

  He screams. "We don't fucking know!"

  "That's odd," I say. "Sounded like you said you don't know."

  I keep twisting.

  The guy sobs in pain. "We dunno, please. Please don't—"

  I let go of the handle. He doesn't know. I turn to interrogate the ginger guy with the busted up nose. He slips out of the door. Sneaky bastard undid the latch behind my back.

  He does a runner, so I return to the sofa and pick up a chip. The remaining guy sits on the floor, as if waiting for my command.

  "Go on then, fuck off," I say. "But whoever you're working for, tell 'em not to bother coming for me. I'm coming for them."

  The guy gets to his feet.

  "You can keep the fork, I'll keep the guns," I say. "Oh, and close the door behind you. There's a draught."

  The guy hurries out of the door. He pulls it closed. I polish off the rest of my chippy tea and relax with a brew on the sofa, satisfied with a good little start to my campaign. They took the bait like I thought. And now I've got myself some guns.

  29

  Eight in the morning. I head out first thing for a brew and a sausage butty. I find an internet café and take a seat at a terminal. The desks are cramped, the computers slow. But the place is clean and modern and they let you make your own brew. Which I like, 'cause most places put in too much milk or too little. Or they tickle it with the teabag and you end up drinking brown water.

  I tuck into the sausage butty and open the file Detective Clarke gave me. I look at what they've got. Not much after four to five years. It's like watching highlights from a nil-nil game of footie. Opportunities are few. Whoever they're after, they're no slouches. The bosses remain in the background. And they have a network of bent coppers to call on. Meaning they're always ready in advance when the police carry out a raid on any of their compounds. They move their workers around, too. Run a clean shop. Launder money through a spider's web of companies and off-shore accounts. I mean, you'd need to be that Wolf of Wall Street bloke to figure this stuff out. The likes of Clarke and Morales have no chance.

  And that's the problem with coppers these days. Budgets are tight. There's a mountain of red tape. Their foot-soldiers have mortgages, car payments, credit card bills and very flexible loyalties.

  Their targets are better funded, organised and equipped. Operating across continents, changing structures faster than the cops can keep up, with blue-chip operational security and boiler-rooms of hackers running counter-intel on Interpol. So this file . . . It may as well be full of dirty bog roll. I close the file and finish my sandwich. I click through to Google. One thing I do know for sure—if Randall is on their payroll, they're a serious outfit. That guy earns a solid crust. Double what I used to charge. The smugglers look as if they're using Ostend to Ramsgate to bypass Calais to Folkestone. Security isn't so tight in the smaller ports. They're also paying or intimidating locals with sailing boats. The journey's a bit longer, but what do the smugglers care? It's smart. It's random. And almost impossible for customs to pick up on. No wonder Clarke helped me escape from that hospital. I'm his only hope of getting anything done. I finish my brew. There's only one place to start here, and that's with the only thing I've got: that I wasn't the only body Randall's goons were trying to cover up in that pit.

  A little known fact about mortuaries: the staff are among the easiest to slip a few quid to.

  Probably 'cause no one comes sniffing around, sticking their beaks into their business.

  Over the years I've had many a coroner come to the wrong conclusion. Even had bodies 'lost' during the post-mortem. So it's no surprise the assistant in the Croydon Public Mortuary lets me spend a few minutes with the dead.

  He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. A pale young chap with a mess of ginger hair and a half-hearted attempt at wearing a tie. He ushers me into a cold, grey room with big white lockers along the back wall. In the middle of the room, there’s a body lying on a slab. Dark skin and long brown hair.

  The place reeks of strong, sickening chemicals. The lad's white lab-style coat dotted with faded yellow stains.

  The sight of the woman is horrific. A large hole cut in her chest. The ribcage pulled apart and the heart missing.

  "This is your body," the assistant says.

  "Was she beaten up or something?" I ask, walking around the slab, staring at the black and blue marks on her arms and legs.

  "The bruises are post-procedural. I guess from handling during transit." The young lad gawps at me funny. "You look almost as bad as them. What happened?"

  I ignore the question. Keep circling the slab. "Any idea who she is?"

  "Police found her naked, wrapped in plastic in a concrete pit," the lad says. "But odds-on she's here illegally."

  "Why'd you say that?"

  "See the cuts?" he asks, tracing a gloved finger around the hole in the woman's chest. "Precision work. A surgeon's tools . . . She’s not the first we've had in like this. Two months ago, we had a young girl missing her eyes."

  I shake my head.

  "I know," the lad says. "Of course, most times they take a kidney. Stitch them back up and send them on their way. If it's not done right, some of them bleed internally.” The assistant looks at the body through sad eyes. "Either way, all roads lead to Rome.”

  "Do many of 'em arrive in plastic sheets?" I ask.

  "They come in all kinds of ways, but this one was the first to be covered in concrete . . . Pretty good place to bury a body . . . And to think, me and my girlfriend were thinking of buying off-plan there."

  "The same building site?"

  "Yeah, supposed to be new apartments going up there. A big glass tower according to the brochure."

  "What happened?"

  "Oh, planning permission or something. I won't be moving in there now, anyway. Not with—" He motions to the body.

  "Yeah, don't blame you," I say.

  "What's your interest in all this?" the lad says. "If you don't mind me asking."

  "I do mind you asking," I say, slipping him a second twenty. "And I wasn't here."

  30

  I find another internet café not too far from the mortuary. A quick search brings up Taylor Williams. The company has a glossy website with a list of current projects. I notice there’s one down the road. It says the place is an office block under construction. I decide to check it out. A tube ride sees me standing outside the place inside twenty minutes. I look up at the bones of the structure. All metal beams and concrete floors.

  Workers in yellow vests and hats swarm the site. I notice a couple coming out of a doorway in the black hoardings that extend around the site.

  I nip through it, zipping up my jacket. There'
s an open-air cloak room with spare hats and vests on hooks.

  I take a vest and hat. I pick up a clipboard left on a chair.

  I walk across the site, to where a scrawny labourer with yellow teeth stands smoking.

  "You know what time we knock off here?" I ask him.

  "Half four," he says. "You new?"

  "Started today."

  "Thought I hadn't seen you. What happened to your face, mate?"

  "Got jumped outside a boozer."

  “Savage bastards.”

  "So is it all free migrant labour here, or what?"

  "Nah mate. It's all unionised. They've gotta do it proper to get these contracts."

  "Oh, right."

  The guy laughs. "Don't look so gutted."

  "No, surprised, that's all."

  "Yeah," he says, "they're fucking invading, aren't they?"

  I yawn and look around me. "So, is there anything else on offer here, other than work?" The labourer gives me the blanks. I lean in and talk quiet. "You know, like puff or muff? Anything like that?”

  He laughs. "I wish, mate. Just work here. Speaking of which."

  He tosses his cig and shuffles off into the ground floor of the building. I decide it's a dead end and turn back across the yard in front of the structure. There's a truck pulling in through a main gate, delivering steel girders. As I walk across the front of the cab, I can't help but notice a flash of orange in the windscreen of the cab. The same as the wagon Randall hired me to drive.

  It triggers a memory. Something I didn't notice at the time, on account of me wrestling the driver out of the door. But my brain took it in—it's the same bright orange M. The same damn thing.

  I wait for the driver to climb down out of the cab. A fat bastard, he pulls up his jeans and waves at a guy across the yard.

  "Here pal," I say. "That air freshener in your windscreen. Where'd you get it?"

  "Huh?" he says, glancing into the cab. "Oh, that? You can't buy one. They're company issue."