Cooper had nineteen minutes until departure. The port was twenty minutes away.
- Chapter 32 -
“You,” Keaton shouted to a young officer stood next to a panda car. “Port of Tyne. South side. Let’s go.” She jumped in the back of the car, leaving the passenger seat for Cooper. The officer looked dumbfounded as his car was commandeered. “You deaf?” Keaton yelled. “Now. Lights on. Sirens on.”
Doing as he was bid, the car sped into action. It was a twenty-minute drive to the river and through the tunnel to the south side of the Tyne. Cooper hoped they could blast their way through in under fifteen if the good people of Tyneside shifted their cars out of the way. She radioed the Tyne Tunnel and gave them a heads up. The roads were still busy and once in the tunnel they wouldn’t be able to overtake or weave their way through. “Hold the barriers until we’re clear,” she requested.
“There’s going to be some pissed off commuters,” the officer at the wheel murmured as cars switched lanes ahead, making way for their approach.
“Well, they’ll have a pissed off me if they don’t do as I ask.”
Cooper called Tennessee, told him to secure the unit at Jarrow and to meet her at the docks pronto.
The world around them darkened like a solar eclipse as they sped into the tunnel. Panels that lined the walls whizzed past in pulses until a circle of light appeared in the distance and they emerged onto clear motorway. Collectively their eyes narrowed to slits as they blinked away the bright sunlight.
“Time?” she asked.
Keaton glanced at her watch. “We have seven minutes.”
“We should be there in under three.” The officer lowered his visor and leant forward as he drove.
“Make it two.” Cooper didn’t want to take any chances.
Her radio crackled. “Cooper, Cooper, this is Daniel, over.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m onsite. The ship’s still docked. It’s the Libra. Must have at least five hundred containers on it. I can see units arriving from South Shields. Awaiting instructions.”
“Can you see the coast guard?”
“The RIB’s approaching, the boat’s not far behind.”
“Wait for the units, then board the ship. Detain all crew members. One of them will know something. Make sure to get the cargo manifest.”
“Roger.”
Cooper and Keaton held their breath. Even though Tennessee had told her the ship was still in port and the coast guard were moving up the Tyne, she still had an awful feeling she would pull up to an empty port and be too late. The squad car ripped around the last bend, its tyres screeching against the road, and coming to a rest next to cars from South Shields police station. The ship was there. Looming against a Newcastle backdrop, the Libra, with a dark red hull, was laden with multicoloured shipping containers stacked four high. They reminded Cooper of a giant Jenga set or Lego pieces for the gods. A van pulled up next to them and a man led three excitable spaniels from the rear. Sniffer dogs, tails wagging and mouths panting, keen to do their job and please their master.
“Let’s go.” Cooper jumped from the car and directed the dog handler to search for humans. Alive humans, hopefully. She picked up pace and ran towards the Libra, all the time scanning her surroundings and taking in the scene. Towards the mouth of the river an orange boat labeled Port of Tyne Authority was descending on the Libra. Two smaller RIBs, most likely coast guard, had positioned themselves to the stern. Arching her neck upwards, Cooper spotted Tennessee on deck. He escorted two men towards the gangway where they were met by uniformed officers. He raised his hand to Cooper and beckoned her on board.
The gangway was steep. Cooper held the rail and half ran, half pulled herself up.
“Ma’am,” he paused, “Coop. We’ve already rounded up most of the crew. Half of them don’t speak English, or claim they don’t speak English. The rest are saying they don’t know anything about any women or girls being transported.”
“That might be true.” Not everyone on the Libra needed to know what it was bring used for but it was someone’s job to check the manifest against the actual cargo and that person was the captain. “Where’s the skipper?”
“On the bridge having a tantrum.”
Cooper looked upstream towards the famous bridges of the Tyne.
“He means where the helm and all that is,” explained Keaton. “Like in Star Trek.”
“Of course. What an idiot.” She shook her head at herself. “What’s he saying?”
“That he has a schedule to keep. I told him he’s not going anywhere until the ship is searched and if we find anything untoward he’ll be coming to the station for a chat.”
“And the manifest?”
“Sealed in an evidence bag.”
The spaniels dragged their handler up the gangway, their leads tight, choking themselves and barking from the thrill of it. The handler unclasped their leads and watched as the dogs lowered their noses to the ground and sprinted away in three different directions.
“I’ll follow the one with the blue collar,” Keaton said.
“Good luck with that,” said the handler. The dogs were already out of sight. He held out his hand for each of them to shake. “Jared VanZant,” he said. “We’re best waiting here. They’ll bark if and when they find anything.”
Cooper didn’t know if she could stand waiting around. She’d rather be part of the search but she conceded that the ship was vast and her sense of smell was far inferior to those of the dogs. It would take her a week to open up every container.
“Where was she heading?” she asked Tennessee.
“Who?”
“The boat.” At least she wasn’t the only one caught out by nautical terminology.
“Ah. Cyprus.”
She opened a map on her phone and zoomed in on Cyprus. “I wonder why Cyprus?”
“It’s pretty central,” Keaton mused. “Transfer them to a smaller boat and then it’s just a short hop to north Africa, Syria, Turkey.”
“Syria?” Tennessee tapped his handheld against his leg nervously. “ISIS brides?”
“God knows. Poor girls,” Cooper said. She raised and lowered her shoulders, looking around for further evidence. “We won’t know until Sam starts talking.”
A crew member shuffled by, speaking in broken English to an officer who escorted him off the ship and in the direction of a waiting panda car.
“Did you hear that?” Tennessee cocked his head. “A bark?”
Like members of the same pack, Cooper and Keaton cocked their heads in the same direction.
“I hear it,” Cooper said. Her heart thumped and she turned to VanZant. “Which way?”
“Follow me.”
The three detectives took off after VanZant. Keaton radioed for assistance. They’d need bolt cutters, medics, and a few extra bodies in case the girls had a minder. Her heart thumped harder the further they ran. The Libra was a monumental labyrinth and her scale couldn’t be appreciated from the shore.
“This way.” VanZant spotted one of his dogs heading in the direction of the barking and they rounded a corner and came to a halt, almost falling over the other two dogs, which were sat perfectly to attention and barking at the doors to a rusty red shipping container.
“Where are those bolt cutters?” Cooper grumbled. She grabbed the heavy lock and felt the weight of the chain, dropping it again as a memory from the previous week came back to her. She froze in horror.
“Boss?” Keaton eyed her. “You don’t have to be here. Tennessee and I—”
“I’m okay. Thanks Paula, you too, Jack, but I’m all right. I just had a bit of a flash back.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Oh, here we go. Did someone order bolt cutters?” Keaton took the cutters and played with them for a moment snapping them shut a few times.
“You need quite a lot of strength,” the officer who had fetched the cutters said. “It’s not easy. Would you like me to—”
Cooper
placed a hand on his arm and shook her head as a way of quieting him. He’d clearly never met Paula Keaton.
“Three, two, one…” Keaton squeezed, her bulky arms flexing against the fabric of her jumper. She scrunched up her face and grunted like a weightlifter.
Click.
The dogs were rounded up and clipped back onto their leads as two officers pulled at the doors. The doors creaked on their hinges; it was an eardrum-piercing squeak that made Cooper shudder. Three torches illuminated dozens of cardboard boxes that were stacked neatly to the roof of the container. Cooper’s hope began to slip away. Were the dogs wrong? She hoped the girls weren’t already at sea on another boat.
Tennessee stepped forward and started to shift box after box. Keaton and the uniforms joined in, creating a new pile just outside the doors in the natural light.
“Hello?” Cooper called. “Is anyone there?”
No answer.
Tennessee could now see over the wall of boxes. “There is something there. At the back. I can’t make it out.”
Everyone picked up the pace. Moving boxes in a conveyer belt fashion, passing them back along a line of people. The boxes were heavy, easily five or six kilograms a pop. Finally, a doorway emerged and Cooper squeezed through and into the darkness. The gap in the boxes had allowed some light to enter but her body caused a shadow and she still needed the torch to make out her surroundings. Crates of bottled water were stacked in one corner with what looked like boxes of canned goods. Two buckets the size of dust bins were fastened to a wall with a shower curtain set up around them. There was a stench of vomit mixed with something sweet, and in the opposite corner, Cooper saw a mound of blankets. She approached, Tennessee close behind her, and pulled at the corner of a raggedy blanket. It slipped away, uncovering three girls, all pale in the torch light, lying on their sides and not moving a muscle.
- Chapter 33 -
“Hello? Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”
The first aid training Cooper was forced to take every three years kicked in and she knelt next to one of the girls. “Hello?” she tried again. “Can you open your eyes? Shit.” She lowered her head to the girl’s mouth, waiting for the sensation of breath on her cheek or the sight of her chest rising and falling. “Come on, come on, come on,” she pleaded. The thought of coming this far only for the girls not to have made it was almost too much for Cooper. Acting on the instincts of her training, she gently rolled the girl onto her back, ready to start chest compressions when she saw the slightest exhalation. The girl’s eyes flickered before snapping open.
Cooper felt a formidable sense of relief. “She’s alive. Heavily sedated I think, but alive.” The girl blinked at her. “It’s okay, we’re here to help. Paula, she looks terrified, poor thing.”
“This one too.” Keaton pulled a second girl to her feet. She was petrified, resisting Keaton’s help and backing herself further into the container.
“It’s all right. My name’s Paula.” She spoke in soft tones. “I’m with Northumbria Police. You’re safe now.”
The girl didn’t seem to understand.
“Police?” she tried again. Letting go of the girl’s hands and giving her some space. “We’ll need translators,” she called back to the awaiting officers. The first girl stood up from where she was crouched and hugged onto her fellow captive. They were shivering and unsteady on their feet.
Tennessee moved forward to help but they flinched, their eyes somehow widening further, pupils magnified with whatever cocktail their smugglers had given them for the start of the journey. “I’ll wait outside,” he said to Cooper. “I’ll move the male officers away too. We don’t want to overwhelm them.”
She nodded to him and turned back to the girls. “Macey?” she asked gently.
One girl shook her head and placed a hand on her chest. “Nina.” Her gaze dipped to the third girl, who was still curled in the blankets. “She is Macey.”
“Macey?” Cooper crouched down and gave her shoulder a gentle shake. She was cold to the touch and looked to be sleeping, perfectly still, eyelids closed, not even flickering. She was thinner than in the photos she’d seen and her cheekbones protruded through dry skin. “Macey? Come on, sweetheart. Wake up, you’re safe now. It’s over.” Cooper shook her harder, fear building inside her. No. She was too late. There was no change. Macey wouldn’t wake and Cooper realised the sweet scent was coming from Macey’s mouth.
“Medic!” Keaton called. “Medic. Now!” She turned to Cooper, “Have we lost her?”
* * *
Cooper held a shitty cup of vending machine coffee between her palms on Thursday afternoon. The erupting steam warmed her face and condensed on her chin. She sat down in a plastic chair and watched through one-way glass as two detectives from West Yorkshire Police interviewed Sam Sutherland. She had wanted the task - but quite rightly - Nixon had told her to sit this one out. She was too close to Sutherland, and though she didn’t want to say it out loud, she was still shaken up by her abduction. It was only right that impartial detectives be brought in from a different force. So far, they had achieved nothing much other than “no comments” and time was running out.
The three young women they’d rescued from the Libra had been transferred to South Tyneside District Hospital. Nina, an Estonian, was being treated for dehydration and malnutrition. The other girl, although physically well, was in a state of shock and the doctors did not want to let her leave without a family member or close friend. Unfortunately, she was too shaken to speak to the doctors or the translators, so they were yet to establish her name or nationality. Macey Gallagher was in a diabetic coma due to advanced levels of ketoacidosis. The Gallagher family had been at the hospital in time for their arrival and had fallen apart at the sight of their daughter being so ill and unresponsive. The hospital chaplain had comforted the family overnight. He stayed up to pray with Iris Gallagher throughout the evening and into the early hours. The doctors were confident that Macey would emerge from her coma but as they didn’t know how long she’d been in that condition, they feared she was at risk of severe brain damage.
“Says here you have a daughter. Caroline? Right?”
Sutherland nodded at DI Eloise Wan. She had thick eyebrows and blue-black hair pulled into a long braid. Next to her, DS Darren Thompson was silver-haired and round-bellied. He could have been Sutherland’s twin.
“Thirteen-years-old. That’s a difficult age.” Wan sat back in her chair and folded slender arms over her chest. “When I was Caroline’s age, I found out my father was a criminal.” She paused as Sutherland raised his head to look at her. “He was an assistant manager in a care home. It wasn’t glamorous but it was good honest work. He and his team looked after the elderly, kept them safe, fed and warm. He wasn’t a doctor or an engineer, something my grandmother would be impressed by, but I was proud of him. Then he disappeared one day. Prison. I was too young to be told why, but I overheard my brother talking to my mother when they thought I was sleeping. He had three of the carers stealing money from the residents. Quite a small fortune they acquired over the years.” She sighed, just short of dramatically. “Anyway, I never forgave him. Never once visited him in prison. Do you think Caroline will forgive you?”
Sutherland wiped a hand over his face and gasped for air. She’d got him. Well played, thought Cooper. He shuffled his chair backwards and couldn’t quite work out what to do with his hands.
“Do you think Caroline will visit you behind bars?”
“You don’t understand,” he sobbed. “I did it for Caroline.”
Cooper moved closer to the glass. Finally, he was talking.
“So you could pay for private school? Buy her pretty things so she’d love you?”
“No!” he snapped.
If his outburst had shocked Wan, she didn’t show it. She didn’t so much as blink.
“You don’t understand.” Sutherland rose to his feet and walked around in a small circle.
“Sit down,” ordered Tho
mpson, but he was quickly overridden by Wan who didn’t want her interviewee to stop talking now he had started.
“It’s okay, Sam. If you’d rather stand, that’s fine by me. What don’t I understand?”
“It was Caroline or those girls. If I didn’t help take them, they’d take Caroline.” He looked to the ceiling, and noticing he was staring straight into the bubble-covered CCTV camera, looked away again. “When they approached me, they had photos of Caroline taken through her bedroom window. Photos of her walking to school, at the beach, at her fucking swimming club.”
Wan poured a glass of water and slid it over the table to Sutherland who took it and downed it in one.
“Then they showed me the auction.” He gagged and asked for more water.
“What auction?”
“She was for sale on the dark web.”
Tears formed in his eyes and one by one they burst from his lash line and snaked down his face. Beyond the glass, Cooper’s eyes had done the same.
“Some Saudi bastard had bid three hundred grand for her. I was furious. Blind with rage. I grabbed the little Russian shithead, head-butted him and punched him in the gob but they outnumbered me. They had weapons. I… I…”
Wan didn’t push. She gave him time to gather himself.
“They knew everything about Caroline. Sue too. I became desperate. I bargained, I begged, I said I’d do whatever they wanted so long as they didn’t touch them. He - the leader - said, Good. We need a driver. Work for us for three years and Caroline will be considered off-limits.”
“Who’s they?”
He shook his head furiously. “I don’t know. Russians? Romanians? I… I don’t know.”
Rock, Paper, Scissors Page 21