by Rob Aspinall
There's a long, crackled pause. The sound of a buzzer. The heavy clunk of the gate unlocking. The whir of a motor as it slides to the right. It reveals a long, wide stretch of concrete. It leads up to a three-storey brick building with white window frames. The building is rundown. A bank of overgrown grass in front.
No sign of any armed guards.
I pull up to the right in front of the grass bank. I keep the engine running and wait.
A fire exit door opens and out steps a man in a dark-blue body warmer and grey sweats. He has an automatic rifle strapped over a shoulder. He walks down a path to the car and appears on the driver's side. He raps his knuckles on the glass.
I wind down the window a few inches. "Mr Prince will be a minute."
The guard's eyes are bloodshot. His face the colour of ash. Drawn and unshaven. Like he's been up for three nights straight and deprived of sunlight. His nostrils bright red. Either he’s got a cold, or a habit.
"Out," the guard says.
"Alright," I say, opening the driver door. I step out and stretch. Breathe in the country air.
The guard isn't the biggest of guys but he's grizzled and mean-looking. I don't like the sign of grey in a man's beard. It means he's experienced. Means I've gotta be careful.
"Turn around," he says. "Hands on the car."
I yawn and turn. "Okay mate, take it easy."
The guard shoves me in the back. I place both hands on the cool, smooth paintwork of the Rolls.
"You carrying?" the guard asks.
"Who isn't?" I say. "Inside the jacket, left and right."
I feel the weight of both guns removed from the holsters. Hear him detach the clips and slip the guns back in, light and harmless.
I turn my head and see him slide the clips in the front pockets of his body warmer. He has a small black radio attached to his collar. He talks foreign into it.
He taps me on the shoulder. "Get your boss out."
I take my hands off the roof and knock on the rear window. "Mr Prince?" I wait, turn and smile. The guard is behind me, but keeping his distance. He doesn't look impressed. I knock again on the glass. "Mr Prince . . . They're ready for you." I wait another few seconds. Turn to the guard. "Sorry about this." I open the passenger door and duck my head inside. "Look Mr Prince, he's insisting that I—Okay, Mr Prince."
"What's happening?" the guard asks, trying to get a look in.
Unfortunately for him, my fat arse takes up the entire door frame. I pull a backup weapon from the rear pocket of the driver seat.
"Sorry pal," I say, spinning fast. I get the drop on the guard. The barrel of my pistol to his forehead. I take his rifle and slide it off his shoulder.
A voice on the radio says something. Don't understand a word, but sounds like a question. A status check.
"Tell him everything's fine," I whisper. "In English . . . And be convincing."
"All clear," the guard says. "Prince wants to look at—"
"Um, land drainage," I say.
"Land drainage," the guard says.
"Copy," the voice on the radio says.
"Cheers mate," I say to the guard. I strike him in the side of the temple with the butt of his own weapon. He goes down. I hook his rifle over my shoulder and tuck my backup in the waist of my jeans. I lock the Rolls and drag the guard backwards up the path, in through the side door of the main building. I leave the guy slumped in a dark corner, retrieve my clips and walk through a set of wooden doors with small windows.
I continue down a set of dark and dank corridors. Nothing but the echo of my boots. And an annoying dripping sound.
Further along, I hear a faint murmur. A cough. I stick my head around a door and see a dark room full of single cots covered with military issue blankets. A couple with squirming bodies underneath. The room stinks of stale sweat.
I move on, to another set of doors. I hear a voice on the other side. The same language the guard was talking. I push the door open a crack. See a big, burly guy with shaved black hair, jabbering on the phone by a stairwell. He's smoking. Pacing. Laughing like a girl. He walks towards the door, turns and strolls the other way. I push the door open slow and creep up behind him.
He must feel a presence, because he half turns. It's too late for him. I grab a hand full of rough stubbled face. Another of his fat, clammy neck. I twist the neck. Hear it snap.
I crush the phone under my boot as I step over his body. I push through the next door and come to a large, empty canteen. Dirty plates fill the tables, with leftover slop and flies buzzing around the place. Christ, this place is awful. Someone needs to open a bloody window.
I move on to the far end of the ground floor. I'm starting to wonder if Prince shafted me with the wrong information. But the presence of armed guards means there must be something here worth looking into.
And here comes another one. A fat lump with a short, black semi-mohawk.
As he exits a set of large oak doors at the end of the corridor, there's a brief murmur of activity behind him. He coughs as he strolls, weapon over shoulder. Scratching his crotch. Dredging up a ball of phlegm and spitting it sideways onto the floor.
I wait inside a doorway. As he passes by, I slam him in the head with the rifle. He staggers against the wall. I hit him again and he's out. I pull him by the loose waist of his baggy blue jeans. I leave him inside a room: an old office with a desk and two chairs and an army recruiting poster on the wall.
I close the door on the guy and head to the place he just came from at the end of the corridor. There's a sign saying Gym Hall.
The doors to the Gym Hall have chunky brass handles. I pull one open a foot. Raise my weapon. Slip through the gap, finger on trigger. I'm faced by a large hall with high windows and basketball hoops at either end. Weak shafts of dusty daylight break in from above. Power cables snake across the gym floor. Table lights extend from the sockets. The lights stand on long wooden tables arranged in four rows in the centre of the hall.
The room is a hive of quiet activity. A dozen or more people from all parts of the world. They're stripped to their underwear with noses and mouths covered by white masks. Hair tucked up in clear plastic shower caps. Most of them are men, with a few women thrown in.
I scan the gym left to right. No one seems to have noticed me slip inside. I sidestep along the near wall, counting scumbags.
I see two of 'em.
One sits at a desk, glued to a laptop in the far left corner. The other stares at an iPad in the far right.
What's the point of this little setup, you might ask?
From the bulk packs of aspirin, lidocaine, phenacetin and baking soda stacked towards the near wall, I'd say they're cutting up kilo bags of coke. I also see they've got laxatives and worming tablets ready to go.
In my experience of these places, they'll cut the coke with just about anything they can get their hands on.
They've got the workers making up small plastic pouches of the stuff. They open the coke. Divide it up. Mix it with a blend of stimulants and painkillers. Bulk it with sodas and powders. Then weigh it and syphon it off into these pouches.
That’s how you know the fine white powder is shitty quality.
And I'm willing to bet those workers are slave labour.
As I lurk in the shadows, planning my next move, I notice a third guard I didn't see before. He walks between rows, inspecting the work. He hasn't seen me yet. I could put him down right now. Then the other two. But there are people in the way. Automatic rifles and a room full of panicking bodies don't tend to mix well. I slide the strap to the back of my shoulder and reach inside my jacket. I pull out a handgun and aim it at the guard walking the rows.
He's a string bean with long ginger hair and a face like a rat. He stands over a short Arabic man and knocks a steel weighing scale over. "You're using too much!" he shouts in his face. He brings his rifle up to the man's head. Digs it in his skull. The other workers keep cutting. No one daring to look up. The Arabic shakes and holds his head. The
guard yells some more.
It draws the attention of the other two guards. The one with the iPad spots me. He shouts and points my way, snatching his rifle off a table.
I glance at the other two guards. Their eyes on me. Somehow, I don't think they'll give a crap about cutting those workers to ribbons in the crossfire.
But it's either shoot first, or die.
47
I shoot first.
Into the air.
The workers cry out in fear. They duck low to their tables. Before the lanky, ginger guard can take aim, I level my pistol and put a bullet between his eyes.
More screams as his body hits the deck. I'm moving low and fast across the gym hall. The whole place lighting up with machine gun fire. I dive behind the stacks of pills and powders.
I stay low as bullets puncture each pack, spitting out small white clouds of dust. I hold my fire a few seconds, letting the clouds rise and thicken into one. I can't see the guards, but they can't see me, either.
The gunfire drops off, the echoes die down.
I crouch and turn on the balls of my feet. I listen to the guards calling out to each other in their own language.
It gives me a fix on their position. Both still in their corners.
It's do or die time. I count to three, rush out of the cloud and straighten up. I shoot twice and catch the guard with the iPad once in the head. I see the blood spray from his skull.
I whirl around and fire, almost blind through the cloud.
There's a brief burst of return fire. A flash, a bang, but as I advance out of the cloud, I see the remaining guard is down. I pad myself up and down for bullet holes, surprised to be alive.
The workers are silent, hunkering under the tables. I do a lap of the gym, checking on iPad guy first. Yep, he's dead. Can't do much with half your brain missing.
The ginger one is a goner too. A pool of blood forming around his body. I hurry to the table with the laptop on it. The guard twitches. He bleeds from the chest, his weapon smoking on the lacquered wooden flooring, out of his reach.
I take a seat behind the laptop. The guy bleeding out by my feet is more than hired muscle. He was doing numbers work—a spreadsheet full of figures.
Shipments, supplies and cashflow.
I don't understand any of the shit, but I guess it'll make for good evidence. I minimise the spreadsheet and nose around the desktop for more dirt.
I keep an eye on the gym entrance. If there are any goons left in the building, they've got to have heard the gunfight.
I click on a database file that says Labour. A long list of potted profiles opens up. I scroll down the list: mugshots of people against a white wall. A number and location next to each face: Woodington or Silvertown.
I look for Amira. She isn't there.
I get up and walk over to the workers. They're removing their masks, rising to their feet. Unsure who I am or what I want.
"Does anyone remember me?" I ask. "From the truck?"
They look at each other. Shit, I bet most of them don't speak English.
I scan their faces. Worried. Haunted. Exhausted. I recognise one of them. Two, maybe, but I can't be sure.
A man steps forward. "I remember."
"Do you know what happened to Amira?" I ask.
"They took her," he says.
"Where to?”
"Another place."
"What other place?"
"They take some of the women. They don't come back."
I hear the guard I hit in the chest groaning. Faint, but alive. I march over to him. He's conscious, reaching for that rifle. I step on his hand. He cries out. I kneel down and take a closer look at his chest. The wound isn't fatal. Looks as if it passed through and missed anything vital.
I put my gun to his head. "Where else are you keeping people?"
He coughs, but doesn't talk.
I cock the pistol. "Where?"
"No English," he says.
I jab a thumb in his bullet wound. It's hot and "minging" as Cassie would put it.
The guy screams in pain, especially when I turn my thumb. His eyes do the talking, moving towards the laptop. She's gotta be on there. I return to the computer. Click on a few files.
Out of the corner of an eye, I see the guy's hand going for the rifle again. I continue to click through, but aim my gun behind me. I shoot him in the heart.
I don't have to look round to see he's dead. I click on another file. A second list of people. I scroll down. I fly past her and stop dead. I scroll back up. There she is. Amira. Number 7564. Silvertown.
The laptop has the internet, so I hop onto Google. Type in the name of the place. As I do, the gym doors open. Another goon bursts in, dressed in boxers and a t-shirt. He hesitates, trying to make sense of the mess. I snatch my handgun off the desk and drop him.
The workers jump at the sound. The goon collapses, his body trapped between the doors.
I realise I've got to get us out of here. I shut the laptop and rip out the connections. I holster my handgun and pull the rifle over my shoulder, the laptop under one arm. I pick the nearest dead guard's rifle from the floor and approach the workers.
"Anyone know how to fire one of these?"
The man who remembers me nods," I was a soldier."
"What's your name?" I say.
"Malik."
"Well here you go, Malik." I toss him the rifle. "Follow me."
Malik and the rest follow on, still a little suspicious of me. But who can blame 'em?
I drag the fallen goon away from the doors and lead the group into the corridor.
I tell them to stay behind me. I motion to stick tight to the wall. We move in single file. We pass through the doors where I left the guy with his neck snapped, drawing immediate fire. It's coming from two guards on the stairs. I pull back behind the doors. The old solid oak sucks up a round of bullets. I push out again and return fire.
Our attackers look as if they've rolled out of bed. They scramble for cover. Malik joins me and we pin 'em down while the others run through the next set of doors. We follow after ‘em. Malik knows his stuff. How to shoot. How to move. We back up as we go, either side of the corridor. I signal to him—each of us hide inside a doorway. As soon as those guards appear through the doors, we spin out into the corridor and cut 'em down.
We catch up to the others, down the grass embankment and out onto the driveway of the barracks. The refugees blink into the daylight like they've never seen the sun. Even an April sun lost behind scattered clouds.
I throw the laptop on the passenger seat of the Rolls.
Now I've got ‘em out, I'm not sure what to do with 'em. I can't take 'em with me and they can't make it out of here on foot. Meanwhile, the guys running the operation here are bound to have called their bosses.
And who knows if there are more of those goons hanging around the place, waking up from shift naps?
There's only one thing I can think to do.
48
We wait inside the front gate to the barracks. A short distance from the main building.
If there were any more guards left alive in the building, they would have come running out of there by now.
Fire will do that to people. Even a small one like this.
It was easy to do. A can of turps and a cloth in a storage cupboard. The strike of a match.
It flames orange out of two ground floor windows. Toxic smoke spoiling the air.
I started it at the end furthest from the gym hall. I want that intact for when they get here.
And here they are.
The faint cry of sirens on the breeze. Louder and louder still.
I motion to the rest of our group to stay back out of the way. I take the spare rifle off Malik and jog out through the entrance. I head left, to where I parked the Rolls up by the side of the road.
I climb behind the wheel and bide my time. As a pair of fire engines charge in down the narrow country lane, I start the car. I let the trucks flash by into the barr
acks.
An ambulance is hot on their heels. I called it in separate to make sure they sent one out. Whichever got here first, it wouldn't have mattered. Just so long as they got here before more of those traffickers.
Whoever they've dispatched to deal with the uprising, they'll soon turn around when they see the emergency services.
The pigs won't be far behind either, so I pull into the road, through the canopy of trees and out onto the country lanes. I drive at speed until I've cleared the area. I stop in the entrance to a farmer's field. I pop the boot and walk around the back of the Rolls. I open the lid and find Eddie Prince alive.
White as a sheet, but alive. I help him out of the boot.
"Took your fucking time," Prince says, voice weakening by the minute.
"Silvertown," I say. "One of your places?"
"No, it's a docks down West Ham way. Why?"
"Ah, nothing. You’ve done your bit, Eddie."
"At fucking last," he says. We stand looking at each other. "Well come on then," Prince says. "Take me to hospital.”
I check my watch. "Yeah, you’ll have to make your own way there."
"My own way—?"
"I saw a bus stop a mile back. Should be one every hour or so, I reckon."
I hand him a fiver.
"You snivelling shit," he says. "I'm gonna die out here."
"Not if you get a wriggle on," I say, returning to the driver's door of the Rolls. Prince stands in disbelief. I clap my hands. "Go on. Chop, chop."
I jump inside, pull the door shut and apply the central locking. Prince pulls at the door handle to the back seats. He pounds the glass as I pull away. I see him going berserk in the rear view mirror. But he soon runs out of expletives. In the distance, he turns and staggers towards the bus stop.
At least I think there was a bus stop.
I pull out my phone. Call up Detective Clarke. "I want to meet," I say, glancing at the laptop on the passenger seat. "Got something else for you. Something big."
We meet somewhere different this time. The top level of a multi-storey. A view over the sloping, slate-grey rooftops of London. As usual, we're in the grottier end.