Britta shook her head without looking her in the eye. ‘I’ve used this brand before. It’s fine.’
Ellen held out the packaging to show her. ‘It’s very professional. See the logo, the text? Perfect. It’s even embossed, right?’
Britta put out her hand and ran a finger over the lettering.
‘It might be from a genuine producer. But run off at night, on the cheap, using fake ingredients.’ Ellen angled the hologram so it just caught the light. ‘Getting the hologram right is the hardest part. That’s why they have them. See? It looks all right at first glance. But move it in the light and it’s sort of lifeless. Look. No depth to the image.’
Britta drew back. ‘I don’t know.’
They sat in silence. Ellen put the packet on the table between them and reached for her coffee. Britta stared at it, her face troubled.
‘If you’re right,’ she said at last, ‘what’s in them?’
Ellen shrugged. ‘Could be anything. Starch. Potato. Maybe a trace of the real drugs to fool tests.’ She thought of Syma, that fragile little girl. Of Layla’s mother. She wondered how much more to tell Britta. When she spoke again, her voice was gentle. ‘Britta, sometimes they’re actually harmful. Toxic.’
Britta lifted her hand to her throat and grasped her cross. She closed her eyes and ran it up and down on its chain. She didn’t speak for a minute. Finally she said, as if to herself, ‘How could anyone do that?’
Outside, there were thuds and a distant mechanical whirr as the lifts moved. The noise carried through the stillness.
‘Maybe it’s just that packet,’ Britta said.
Ellen didn’t answer. She lifted her cup and sipped her coffee and tried to think calmly. She thought about the layers of tablets she rummaged through when she found the stolen supplies. She was sure they were the same fakes.
‘I tried to order from my own supplier in Europe.’ Britta’s mouth was a hard line. She could barely get the words out. ‘They made me cancel it. Told me I had to take the Chinese ones.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ellen looked up. ‘Who told you?’
‘Khan’s people. They insisted. They’d be shipped here faster, they said. I didn’t think—’
‘Khan’s people?’ Ellen felt suddenly sick. The mug slipped in her fingers and a tide of coffee slopped inside it. She set it back on the table.
‘We have to use their supplier for everything.’ Britta shrugged. ‘It’s their money. Anyway, I’ve used this brand before. It’s always reliable.’
Ellen pressed the soft pads of her fingers against the smooth sides of the mug. It was warm and comforting. Her breath was tight in her throat.
‘But, Ellen, that doesn’t mean . . .’ Britta had turned to her. She looked upset.
‘It could be Khan’s supplier,’ Ellen said. ‘Or further down the chain. Someone in China.’
Britta picked up the packet and turned it over in her hands. Her face was contorted. ‘I gave antibiotics. They just didn’t respond. I never thought . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do they cost?’ Ellen pushed back her chair and started pacing back and forth. ‘Antibiotics like these?’
‘It depends on the quantity. My last order for medicines ran to tens of thousands of dollars. But it wasn’t only antibiotics.’
Ellen nodded. ‘Maybe it’s all fake. Who knows? Maybe we’ve just noticed the antibiotics because they’ve caused deaths.’
Britta shifted in her seat and looked doubtful. ‘Everything, all the stock . . .?’
‘I don’t know.’ Ellen paced to the door and back. Her head was buzzing. She thought about Khan. He was a very astute businessman, his record showed that. He understood Pakistan well. He came a lot, always had. He knew how things worked here. She put her hand to her head, struggling to think it through.
He’d be keen to cut costs. He was a man who made sure he got value for money, whatever the deal. But surely he was also sharp enough to check out his suppliers and make sure he used a decent one. Everyone in Pakistan knew safeguards were poor. The market was flooded with all sorts of fake goods, including medicines. The place had ‘buyer beware’ written all over it. She started to pace back towards the table, thinking about Khan and his business sense. Britta was bent over her coffee, her face miserable.
Ellen stopped abruptly. The needles. Her heart missed a beat. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, her legs weak. All the fuss he’d made about the needles when he needed that tetanus injection. He’d refused to let the doctor use any from China in case they were recycled. He’d insisted on her European supply precisely because he knew there was a risk. She tried to steady her breathing. Khan knew.
She reached out and put her hand on Britta’s arm. They were so close, she could speak in a whisper. ‘What if Khan does know about this? If he knows full well.’
‘But why?’ Britta looked alarmed. ‘He’s giving us these drugs for free. He’s not selling them.’
‘He’s still saving money. He wants to make a big show of giving, to further his career. This way he does it on the cheap.’
Britta frowned.
Ellen carried on, the words tumbling out. ‘This way, he can still lobby for a peerage. He can show charitable works. But not spend too much doing it.’
Britta didn’t answer. She drew up her legs and sat with her arms locked around her knees.
‘What do you know about his company setup, about how he pays for the drugs?’
Britta lifted her head. ‘A little. I know where to send the bill when I place orders.’
Ellen reached across and tapped Britta’s laptop. ‘Could you do some digging?’
Britta stared at her. ‘Digging?’
‘Please. Check through whatever you can in the accounts. You understand these things. There might be something.’
Britta switched on her laptop. Her movements, as she uncurled and sat up straight at the table, were slow and reluctant. The laptop whirred and slowly booted up. ‘If he did know . . .’ she turned over an idea, ‘. . . he must claim a tax advantage for charity, for everything he spends, right?’
Ellen nodded. ‘I bet he does.’
Britta turned to look at her. Her eyes were troubled. For the first time, she looked fully awake. ‘If he had falsified receipts, he could declare the full amount to the tax people, the amount he should be paying if he bought real drugs. Then he pays a fraction of that for fake ones. Pockets the difference.’
Ellen thought about John’s article and the huge profits he’d quoted for Khan’s company. If this were really how he did business, his company must be riddled with fraud.
‘Let me look.’ Britta’s fingers were already on the keyboard. ‘I can’t promise. If he’s done a good job, it might be hard to find anything.’
Ellen sat on the bed, watching her. She felt very sick. This was what Frank had been accused of doing, of making money out of the crisis and looking the other way while innocent people died. Frank was paying the price, possibly with his life. She shook her head. Even if she were right about Khan, how could she prove it? Not just to the authorities but to Mohammed Bul Gourn while there was still time. She looked again at the packet on the table.
‘I need to prove they’re fake.’
‘And then what?’ Britta blew out her cheeks, not looking up from the computer screen. ‘No one would prosecute Khan. Certainly not in Pakistan. He’s got too many powerful friends.’
Ellen felt her shoulders sag. Britta was right. Khan would have the best legal team money could buy.
‘Whatever you do, you need a lot more samples.’ Britta spoke without looking up. She was logged on now, flicking through sites, concentrating as she searched. ‘And from more than one batch.’
The clock on the bedside table showed one forty-one. Outside, it was pitch dark. Britta was right. She needed a range of packets, from different batches, different dates. Laboratory tests would take too long. But fake holograms might be enough to convince Mohammed Bul
Gourn.
She went into Britta’s bathroom, closed the door and ran the tap to mask any noise. Britta’s keys were lying on the marble surround. She slipped them in her pocket, then flushed the toilet, paused, and returned to the room.
‘I might go and get some sleep.’ Ellen yawned. ‘You mind? Do you need me?’
Britta shook her head. ‘You should.’ She was losing herself now in accounts and numbers, her hands flicking across the keyboard, her eyes intent on the screen. ‘You go.’
Chapter 27
A taxi was parked in the road outside the hotel. Ellen tapped on the window. The driver was asleep, his seat tipped back, bare ankles crossed on the dashboard. She rapped again and he scrambled to get upright and let her in. The interior smelt of feet.
He drove along deserted roads towards the camp, sitting hunched over the steering wheel, a woollen tribal hat on his head. He looked barely awake.
When they reached the edge of the mudflats, she asked him to stop. Please wait here. She patted the air with a flat hand. He wagged his head without commitment.
It was pitch black. Far off, across the plains, light shone in the gloom. She stood by the taxi for a moment, listening. A low breeze blew across the mud, lapping at her cotton trousers and catching the ends of her scarf. She felt very vulnerable, alone in the darkness. Overhead, fragments of cloud washed over a thin moon. She wrapped her scarf round her head and face until only her eyes were uncovered, shielded her torch with her hand and followed its circle of light slowly, step by step, towards the camp.
The track was rutted and scattered with loose rocks which caught her boots and made her stumble. Along its sides, there were deep ditches, rancid with stagnant water and sewerage. She kept her head low and watched the slow progress of her boots. Her blood pumped loud in her ears, beating time with her footsteps.
When she’d been walking for about twenty minutes, she sensed a sudden movement to one side and snapped off her torch. She stood, trembling, straining to listen. Nothing. The sound of her own breathing made her nervous. Far away, a dog howled, then fell silent. In the ditch by her feet, a sudden plop. A frog or mouse. She took deep breaths to calm herself, switched her torch back on and started to walk again. An owl’s broad silhouette skimmed low.
The light from the camp had grown rapidly. Now it separated into three glowing smudges in the dark. She narrowed her eyes to make out the shapes. The lights were raised from the ground, showing the outline of the closed gates and, beyond, the vehicle bay and the square bulk of the medical tents. To one side, the short flagpole on the administration building gleamed.
She picked her way to the left, leaving the track to skirt the fence and approach the camp from a different angle. Her torch caught a sudden flash of movement, low on the ground. She jumped, then inched forwards to look more carefully. The end of a strand of silver tinsel waved, stirred by the wind and glistening in the torchlight. It lay across one of the graves, weighted by pebbles.
She ran her torch along the ground. The row of fresh mounds, some pitifully small, had lengthened since she’d last been here. More deaths. She breathed in the cloying scent of churned earth. Several graves were decorated with tinsel and shone eerily in the torchlight. She paused for a moment, thinking of Layla’s mother and Ibrahim and the little girl called Syma.
She turned her back on the graveyard and crossed to the wire fence. There was a place somewhere round here which was used as an illicit entry point. She’d seen children and youths prising up the wire, holding it clear so friends could wriggle underneath and slip, unchecked, in and out of the camp. She bent down and tugged on the wire. It was too stiff for her to lift more than a few inches. She sat on her haunches in the mud, trying to get her bearings. If I can’t get in along here, she told herself, I’ll go back. The taxi’s still there. She closed her eyes and imagined the safety of the hotel lobby, of her room. Her body ached for bed. Layla would still be asleep. It would be as if she’d never left.
She thought of the Americans and their intelligence. Thirty-six hours was running out. Whatever I can do, she thought, I must do it now. It may already be too late. She shook herself and moved on. Every few yards, she found small gaps and tested them with her fingers. None gave. Finally she found a place where the fencing had been torn loose from the bottom of a post, making a narrow crawl space. She raised it. It sprang back out of her hands, the jagged edges just missing her face.
She switched off the torch and put it in her pocket. Darkness engulfed her. She waited, steadying her nerve. The mud was dark and cold as she lay down, her head to the fence. Something wet brushed her neck. She shuddered. A damp shred of tissue, carried by the breeze. She flicked it away. She lifted her hands above her head and held the sharp wire teeth clear of her face. She didn’t want to think about the damage it would do to her eyes if it slipped back while she was under it.
She began to worm her way through, inch by inch, eyes closed. Her scarf rubbed up fragments of stone as she moved, which dug into her head. Her face was through. She opened her eyes. The wire was poised like a guillotine over her neck. She kept wriggling. She was almost through, ready to slide her legs out and push clear, when her sweaty fingers slipped. The fence bit down hard into her thighs, ripping her trousers, scratching and stabbing her flesh. She clenched her lips to stop herself from crying out.
For a moment, she lay there, pinned, exhausted and afraid to move. She was clammy with sweat. High above, strips of cloud swam across the moon.
Eventually she managed to raise her shoulders and started trying to free herself, untangling each sharp piece of metal which snared her trousers, only for another to dig deeper. Moisture from the mud seeped through her clothes as she struggled.
When she finally kicked her feet clear, she scrambled away from the fence and sat in the shadows with her arms round her legs, examining the tears in her trousers, the scratches and rising weals on her skin. The tops of her legs stung. Around her, everything was silent. The camp was stupefied, heavy with sleep.
She moved around the back of the two medical tents. One of the bright security lights was mounted between them, casting a broad cone of white. It lit the hard, clean lines of the administration building and made the flagpole gleam. She paused, catching her breath.
Beyond the administration building, facing out towards the gates, an elderly man was slouched in a plastic chair. The silver strands of his hair glimmered in the light. His shoulders were stooped and his head was bowed to his chest. The muzzle of a battered gun protruded from his lap.
She stood, her breath loud in her ears, trying to think. There were two ways into the administration building. The main entrance, which led to Frank’s office, had been attacked in the riot. It had a strong lock and a new double chain and padlock. Britta must have keys to both but the security light fell right across the front of the building. It would take her a minute or two to get in and while she was standing there, she’d be clearly visible.
The second entrance was further back, beyond the office area, on the side of the building. It was smaller and more discreet. She’d never used it before but it might be a better option. She edged along the side of the block, keeping close to the brickwork. The guard was slumped in a low rumble of snoring.
She crossed behind the building. The side entrance was slightly recessed. She cupped her hand round her torch and switched it on. The stone step was filthy with cigarette butts, fragments of nut shell and splashes of stained spittle. It smelt of urine. She ran her hand over the surface of the door. The wood was dirty and splintered. A new chain, fastened with a padlock, had been fed through iron hoops which might otherwise have held a bolt. She cupped the padlock in her hand, trying to judge the size of the lock, and pulled out Britta’s fat bunch of keys. She fumbled to fit one, then tried another, pausing to listen to the silence every time the keys rattled.
Voices. She snapped off the torch, fumbling so much in panic that she almost dropped it. A man’s voice, very close. She turned her back to
the door, pressed herself against it and listened. Her heart thumped. A sudden grunt and exclamation, then low laughter. Someone had crept up on the sleeping old man and startled him. The voices became banter as they settled into conversation. A match rasped as a cigarette was lit. She struggled to listen but couldn’t make out the words. Her legs, tense against the door, shook.
She stared into the darkness, trying to remember the layout. She could run to the back of the building but there was little cover until she reached the medical tents. She stood stiffly where she was, willing the guards to leave. A light shone near the corner, the swaying beam of a torch. She closed her eyes, tried to flatten herself into the wood. It was a tiny recess, not deep enough to conceal her. If the light swung down the side of the building, they’d see her. Her lungs were bursting. The voices stopped. The light receded. A minute later, footsteps, slowly fading. She leant her head back against the worn door and looked up at the cloudy sky, weak with relief.
After that, she didn’t dare switch on her torch again. Instead she had to work by touch in the darkness, lifting each key clear of the bunch, one by one, holding the others tightly in her spare hand to stop them from jangling, and fitting one key after another against the lock with the tips of her fingers. The trembling in her hands made the metal slip. She was more than halfway through the bunch and starting to despair when a key finally slid home. She held it there for a moment, breathing deeply. The padlock clicked as it opened and she set it on the step, drew through the chain as quietly as she could and squeezed the latch. She put her shoulder to the door to prise it ajar. It fell inwards with a sudden crack.
It was pitch black. She rested against the wood, catching her breath and listening. Her vision was full of spangled rods of light. All she could hear was her own shallow breathing. The air was musty with a smell of old brick, like a dry, unused cellar. She put Britta’s keys back in her pocket and brought out the torch.
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