Ali could not see his friend now. He clung to a barely buoyant cross-plank, paddling this way and that, searching among the few survivors. Ismael was wearing a red Ohio State Buckeyes shirt with yellow lettering. It should have been easy to spot him.
He lost track of time. His limbs grew tired. He knew he was a stronger swimmer than Ismael. Soon there were fewer heads in the water. Many of the passengers had already been made frail by hunger and thirst, and the sea began to swallow them. They slipped silently beneath the surface like players forfeiting a game. Soon there would be no one left. A vast shoal of silvered jellyfish caused some to scream and flounder. They did not realize that the best way to avoid being stung was to stay still.
As Ali sought his childhood friend, he saw figures flopping listlessly in the dark water like cormorants trapped in oil, and knew that he was looking at the dead. A wax-white face with draggled hair floated past, staring into the stars.
The moon rose higher. No boat came near. He floated close to a cluster of swimmers weakly thrashing and crying to Allah, and suddenly spotted Ismael’s sweatshirt.
Leaving the safety of the plank, he swam towards it. As he drew alongside, he realized that Ismael’s head was facing down in the water. Turning him over, he saw that his friend had blanched in death. There was a blackened spear of wood protruding from Ismael’s neck, blasted into him by the igniting boat.
Ali refused to release his brother. At that moment he wanted to join him; it was all that he deserved for failing to protect him. Even if he only lived for a few more minutes, it felt shameful that he had been spared.
He spotted the crumpled yellow raft in the distance, floating just behind the handful of oblivious survivors. Holding on tightly to Ismael’s sweatshirt, Ali towed him towards it. He caught the raft’s edge and felt for the canister. He needed to swim away and inflate it some distance from the wreck-site. This was not selfishness on his part but expediency; he knew that the tiny raft could quickly be overwhelmed by those who remained.
The starscape turned. The sea calmed. The moon disappeared behind clouds, forsaking them. Now that he could no longer hear crying, Ali inflated the little raft and clambered in, dragging Ismael’s corpse behind him. The little yellow dinghy finished plumping itself up, but was barely as long as Ali’s body. An old man spotted it and tried to swim near. Ali could not deny him the chance of survival and reached out a hand, but the old man had no strength left and suddenly raised his hands above his head, vanishing below the surface of the sea.
Ali took the chain with the silver crescent moon from Ismael’s neck and fastened it around his own. He kissed Ismael on the forehead, whispered a prayer and released him to the depths. He watched the spot where his friend sank, but despite all his efforts to stay awake, he lost consciousness.
The lights grew brighter as the patrol ship approached. He opened his eyes and saw something extraordinary: what appeared to be a bright orange plastic fence was floating above the water. Ali realized he was looking at the crew of an Italian naval vessel, lined along the deck railings in dayglo rescue jackets.
Of the 197 refugees on board the Libyan cargo boat, just seventeen were pulled from the ocean alive. Ali Bensaud was thankful that Ismael Rahman had been returned to the sea he loved so much. If he had kept the body of his friend on the raft he would have been forced to leave it in the care of the navy, and they would have refused to tell him what would happen to it, for the simple reason that they could not know.
Nobody knew what would happen to the survivors, let alone the fate of the dead.
3
RAGS & RICHES
‘Piston rings,’ said Fred Tamworth. ‘I might have known.’
‘You’re going back a long way,’ said Joan, his wife. ‘That was the old days. I thought there were some biscuits left.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Fred took his eyes away from the windscreen for a second and watched his wife rooting about on the floor beneath the passenger seat. She always seemed to have her head in something: a handbag, a shopping bag, a kitchen cupboard, a washing machine. Sometimes it seemed as if he didn’t see the top half of her body for days. ‘Cars still need pistons otherwise there’d be nothing to power the engine. It’s all very well having motherboards and heated wing mirrors but you wouldn’t get very far without internal combustion. Ginger nuts. There’s a packet of them by your right foot.’
The A2 from Dover was still misted with the remains of a thick grey sea-fret, but at least the traffic was light. Fred kept his speed down, partly because the more time they spent on the road, the less they’d have left to spend with Joan’s sister in Crawley. In the rear of their Fiat Panda were four crates of decent plonk from the Calais hypermarket that Fred insisted they needed for Christmas in case anyone popped round, not that anyone had ever shown the slightest inclination to do so except Alfie from the office, who had no friends because his only topics of conversation were geography, Christianity and the installation of boilers.
‘It has to be the gaskets,’ said Fred emphatically. ‘This thing’s been feeling underpowered ever since we came off the ferry.’
Joan found the ginger nuts, put them in the glove box and patted her hair back in place. ‘I think it’s time we traded this in for something with a bit more oomph,’ she said, possibly considering the same for her husband.
‘Don’t move my mirror,’ warned Fred. There was a lay-by approaching. He flicked on the indicator.
‘Now what’s wrong?’
‘I’m just going to take a quick look, all right?’ He pulled over and turned off the engine, fumbling for the bonnet catch.
Joan sighed and sat back with her Mail on Sunday. That new Bond girl said she was playing the role as an empowered feminist, so why was she being photographed in a thong? An articulated lorry hurtled past, rocking the car. Under the bonnet, Fred swore.
‘What’s wrong?’ Joan called.
‘Nothing, I’ve cut myself, that’s all.’
‘There are plasters in the first-aid box.’ Joan folded away the paper, knowing that he would never bother with them, and wearily clambered from the vehicle. The booze runs were never much fun, and constituted Fred’s sole idea of a day out. There was a time when they’d at least have managed a National Trust house, if only to stock up on marmalade. Just once she would like to go somewhere with a bit of culture, Bruges or Amsterdam, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
She went around to the rear of the vehicle and released the hatch door, allowing it to rise. She didn’t remember putting their tartan travel rug over the wine boxes. Why would he have done that?
As she pulled away the blanket she saw that the wine boxes had disappeared. In their space a young man was folded up, Arabic-looking with wide brown eyes, dressed in a ragged, filthy sweatshirt and torn shorts. Before she could utter a single word he slid out and ran past her, swinging a blue nylon bag on to his shoulder, vaulting the low fence beside the lay-by, leaving a trail through the wet grass, heading for the safety of the woods beyond. Joan stood staring after him in wonder. Moments later the sea-fret had closed about the young man in a disappearing act that was worthy of a master magician.
The gates of Buckingham Palace gleamed in spring sunshine. Pressed against the railings peering in were tourists from every corner of the globe. To the guards posted on the other side, it must have been like looking at a cage full of badly dressed monkeys.
The young man studied the tourists and broke them down into groups. The ones in spotless white trainers were Americans; Ali had seen their coach parked around the corner. They were watchful and harder to fool. The very orderly line of sightseers mostly dressed in black were Japanese. All of them wore high-quality cameras around their necks, so they were no good. The third party looked the most promising because their coach was from County Durham, which he knew was in North Yorkshire. He had memorized all of the counties and their main cities by now, although some of the pronunciation still defeated him.
One couple seemed ideal. T
hey looked well off but weren’t rich enough to be suspicious.
Ali had lightened his hair and wore dark Northern European clothes that made him less likely to stand out. Tourists never seemed to understand that blending in meant wearing neutral colours, not loud patterned shirts. He straightened his collar, rubbed his second-hand shoes on the back of his jeans and stood closer to listen.
‘Well, it’s not working,’ the woman next to him was saying as she jabbed away at her phone, trying to take a picture of her husband standing at the railings.
‘It can’t be that bloody difficult,’ he said. ‘I’ve shown you how to do it a hundred times, Margery. Have you opened the right application? It’s got a picture of a camera – it couldn’t be any plainer.’
Ali stepped in. ‘You want me to take a picture with you both in the shot?’ he offered in impeccably precise English.
‘No thank you,’ said the man.
‘Yes please,’ said the lady at the same time. She happily surrendered her phone and scuttled over to her husband’s side.
‘Just press the button at the bottom of the screen,’ said the husband briskly.
Ali attempted to take several photographs and allowed the couple to notice his frown of frustration. He fiddled with the phone, looking increasingly puzzled. ‘I used to have one of these but there’s something wrong with the display on this one,’ he said.
‘I told you,’ said the wife, feeling vindicated. ‘It’s not always me.’
It was important to act before the husband came forward. ‘Why don’t I take a picture and send it to you?’ he offered, holding up a much larger and fancier phone than the one they had. ‘This is twelve meg and takes better shots in soft light than cameras with twice the amount of pixels. The quality should be very good.’
A flicker of suspicion crossed the husband’s face but disappeared when Ali said, ‘That’s perfect – say London!’ and took the shot. ‘Just one more to be sure.’
The couple stepped forward to see the photograph, and loved what they saw. Ali had framed the picture professionally. Those years spent hanging around Ismael’s father’s camera shop were paying off. ‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ said the wife. ‘My husband couldn’t do that. He hasn’t got the eye for it.’
‘What’s your email address? I’ll send it to you right now,’ he said cheerfully.
Before her husband could stop her, his wife told him their address. ‘That’s all one word,’ she added unnecessarily.
He tapped it in and pressed SEND. ‘There you are,’ he said, gallantly waiting until they heard it ping in their inbox.
‘Thank you, you’re very kind,’ said the lady.
‘You’re welcome, and enjoy the rest of your stay,’ he told them both, sauntering away and pretending to take his own photographs. His scanner had transferred their personal, bank and credit card details, their contacts, email addresses and some pretty obvious clues about their passcodes. He could get anything else he needed from their daughter’s social network profiles. As soon as he was out of sight he would collate everything and send the information to a third party. Ali would get a small cash cut at the end of the week. Maybe the couple would remain unaware that the information about their lives was changing hands for money, and maybe he’d get a chance to skim a little off for himself; it made no difference as they had no way of tracing him. He managed to cull the details of over fifty tourists a day, so the law of averages put him into profit.
Taking small amounts hurt nobody, and if he got enough of them he would be rich. There were a dozen other ways to get your hands on money using identity theft, but most required going through a hacker who would take the largest cut. What he needed was a bespoke system of his own. If he could just build that, he would be on his way to proving that even a poor refugee with nothing but the rags on his back and fast learning skills could become a rich man in London.
He stayed clear of the ubiquitous CCTV cameras dotted around the tourist areas, knowing that the police had software that could check the crowds for recurring faces. The trick was to think like the security forces and stay one step ahead. He knew exactly what he was doing. London was too rich and confident. Its people could afford to lose a little. Hell, half of them probably never even noticed anything was missing. If he decided they were deserving, there would be plenty of time to give something back when he was as wealthy as they were.
Ali changed his name whenever he felt it necessary. Eventually he knew he would have to settle on a single permanent identity. He would get enough money together to buy a dead man’s passport, and live under that name for the rest of his life. But for now he was young and free, so his personality fluctuated according to his needs. There were so many ways of getting money in this city if you just looked around for opportunities. Nobody here seemed hungry. They were all in such a hurry, and rushing distracted them from what was important. He did not believe in hurting people. He would not take a penny from the desperate or disadvantaged. He would never do what had been done to him and his family in Tripoli. He would always remember Ismael and what their desperate flight had cost him.
Ali was not a bad man, but he could not afford to be an entirely good one either.
4
TIME & TIDE
Suddenly she was no longer frightened.
Not now that it was real and the end was here. She had thought about how she might die so many times before. She had first cut her arms when she was twelve, just to see if she could sense a movement towards something eternal and unknowable. At first it had the desired effect; the pressure on her disappeared as her parents turned upon each other instead. So she did it again, but each time she cut herself the effect lessened until they finally lost patience with her. ‘You don’t want to kill yourself at all,’ her mother said accusingly, ‘you’re just after attention.’
She wondered what they would say if they could see her now.
She tried to raise herself a little, but her head hurt too much. She felt the wet sand against her knees, her forearms.
Feeling strangely disconnected, she turned to face the night sky and was surprised to find it was cleared of clouds. Diamond stars sparkled down, but the rippling black water cast aside their reflections. Over on the Queen’s Walk, the tumorous stump of City Hall was colonnaded by piercing shafts of light and surrounded by glass towers angled as sharply as knives, as if to warn Londoners that they would be cut if they came too close. From this distance the penthouses looked more like part of a penitentiary. She viewed everything with a distant disregard. The night and the river and the strange burning pain in her head had drained away all sensation. Clear thought was impossible. What could she remember?
Lowering her head to the cold stones, she wondered if it would take her a long time to die. The back of her head stung when she rested it. Her left wrist was sore, and the cold wet sand made her skin bristle. Now that this little life was over, she could distance herself from futile human emotions and accept what had happened. When Death comes to the door, her father had once told her in his typically fatalistic way, it’s important to have your bags packed and ready. Nobody should be caught unawares at such a time.
Instead of thinking about what lay beyond, she tried to focus her blurred thoughts. She concentrated on her senses.
Touch: the rough edge of the concrete, the chill grit of the sand, something by her right foot, a stick of driftwood perhaps, some tide-smoothed pebbles.
Sight: the ancient embanked wall with its worn green steps, the dank stanchions of the pier, a few saturnine trees, the glimmering river and the pale mother moon, controlling everything.
Smell: brackish, stale and damp but not unpleasant, like mildew, moss or mud, or dead wet foliage.
Sound: the gentle flopping of the tide, ker-lep, ker-lep, rhythmic and calming, the clock of the river ticking away her life.
Taste: the water, brackish but too cold to be completely unpleasant, a touch of brine from the distant sea, a strangely lifeless flavour which was yet alive
. Wasn’t it always moving?
A sudden flood surged about her head, sending a fresh bolt of fire through it, and now she came fully awake and began to panic. Her hair was caught on something in the sand and she could not turn her face. The next little wave was enough to wash into her mouth and make her choke.
She tried to lift her left wrist but the chain tore a strip of pain around her flesh. The more she struggled the worse everything became. The moon pulled at the night, bringing another little wave just as she was breathing in, and this time she swallowed and retched.
It was the fault of the moon. The sun was male because he was larger and angrier, worshipped by all men. He gave violent life to everything he touched. The moon was female because she was smaller and calmer, and moved in cycles that shifted the oceans of the world, something even the sun could not do. At night she was accompanied by her children, the stars.
She much preferred to die at night, in the reflected light of the Earth’s only natural satellite. The moon is so strong and kind that it won’t kill me, she thought, I will become a part of the tide, and I’ll flow back in, renewed. She opened her mouth to accept the rising waters, the cold blackness, the flowing eternal dark.
Just past Sugar Quay on the north bank of the Thames there were, until very recently, some overhanging plane trees and, on one corner, a flight of stone steps leading down to the ragged shoreline.
This access to the river is still known as the Queen’s Stairs, and stands in front of the Tower of London. Carved into the nearby wall are dates and initials: ‘ST D. E. AD 1819’, a boundary marker representing St Dunstan-in-the-East. The church had been destroyed in the Blitz, and its overgrown ruins had lain undisturbed for years.
Once the Thames had been slow and wide, and many of the buildings had water gates that gave direct access to the river. Now, the remnants of St Dunstan’s were cut off from the river by a thunderous arterial road, and beyond was only a windswept plaza of grey stone, the rear of another corpse-grey office block, a steel-ribbed castle of finance guarded by impassive wardens in headsets. Near the gleaming brushed-chrome embankment railing stood a sign that summed up the city’s new attitude, a pictogram of a pedestrian with a diagonal red bar passing through it. Humans were not wanted here, just drones for the hive who would climb over the bodies of their fallen predecessors to continue making money.
Strange Tide Page 3