11:59

by David Williams

  “I can’t... I haven’t got any money.”

  “Fuck off then,” the guy says evenly, and makes to shut the door.

  “Mister!” It’s not me shouting, it’s Oliver. The chain pulls taut again. Oliver has his purse in hand, and he’s pulling a wad of notes out. The door closes and opens, free of its chain. I can now see another chain, a thick gold one, round the neck of the man standing at the door. His skin is unseasonably red under his white tee-shirt, plainly a sun-bed enthusiast as well as a dog-lover. Gym fanatic as well, I’d hazard, with the muscles on him. He takes the notes that Ollie is offering, and places my mobile on the floor to free his hands for counting.

  “There’s only a hundred and forty here,” he says.

  “A hundred and forty,” Oliver repeats.

  “I said two hundred.”

  I’m gazing down at my phone on the threshold, dangerously near his Doc Martens. Don’t even think about it. I try draining all adulthood out of my expression as I lift my face to him. “A hundred and forty is all we have.”

  “A hundred and forty,” Oliver agrees, equably. Laurel and Hardy.

  The man stares, daring us to escalate this into an argument. I place my hands behind my back, naive, non-confrontational. If he was to swing a Doc Marten now he’d probably kill me.

  Instead he stuffs the money into a pocket of his combats and bends down to pick up the phone. “Found this in the street when I was walking the dogs,” he says. “Hope it’s the one you’re looking for, I like to do a good turn.” He passes it over, careful not to touch my fingers – that would be gay -and retreats into his fortress. The dogs start up again indoors as we make our way along the path.

  “I’ll pay you back tomorrow, Ollie, you’re a top bloke, thanks.”

  “Mam gave us the money.”

  “She’s a star.” I mean it too, about both of them. Expectations confounded once again.

  I wait till we reach the first unbroken street lamp before I stop to examine the phone. For a horrible moment, as I press down the power switch and hold my breath for its revival, I have a doubt that this lifeless piece of metal has anything at all to do with me. Then the screen lights up and the warm tones reassure. No missed calls registered. A couple of seconds later the message alert beeps. Sam’s mobile. Amina. Nerves at my wrist quiver as my thumb searches for the button, and I have to grab at the phone to stop it spilling out of my hand. Staring at the screen, jaws set. The black band flows across the screen and the text appears.

  Sending me away wthout tarik pls pls help

  XV

  I’m in the back of an unmarked police car alongside Detective Inspector Liam Guthrie. I haven’t been introduced to the driver who’s taking us to Manchester, or to his colleague in the front passenger seat. Not exactly James Bond types, these two - anyway, he’s MI6, not MI5 – but I’ve been impressed by their efficiency. They sussed out what was happening to Amina pretty quickly, though Liam assures me it wasn’t rocket science.

  While she probably didn’t know where she was being packed off to, Amina’s phrase sending me away gave them a start. It could have been anywhere in the world, but logic suggested either somewhere in the UK or in Pakistan. Difficult to keep an uncooperative legal under wraps for a long period in this country, so the Pakistan option seemed more likely. From there it was a matter of checking reservations for upcoming flights, and it didn’t take that much digging to come across the name of Amina Begum Khan booked, along with someone called Fatima Bhat, on a flight to Lahore from Manchester Airport via Abu Dhabi. The secret service guys, according to Liam, were encouraged by the fact that the bookings were made in real names onto a cheap flight – they inferred that this is neither a well-funded nor a particularly sophisticated set-up (what they called a typical Al Qaeda franchise) and that the conspirators have no notion anyone is looking out for Amina.

  The plan is to apprehend the women after they’ve passed through security on their way to boarding, just in case their departure is being monitored. Two female decoys will take their places on the flight and will travel as far as the stop-over in Abu Dhabi. It will be at least twenty-four hours before anyone waiting to meet them in Lahore will be aware that they’ve gone missing. That’s a vital window, the chance for us to find out what’s really going on and try to stop it. I say us – my role at the airport is to confirm Amina’s identity and be the friendly face she sees when they bring her through for questioning. Someone she can trust. After that, I go back to being the man waiting for the call in the studio, just as I’ve done for the last couple of nights.

  It’s been nerve-wracking for Sam and me, even though we were told it was very unlikely the plotters would play their hand before they’d spirited Amina out of the country. First there was the pre-recording, with agents acting as callers, which we’ll turn to in case of an emergency. Then the shows themselves, me trying to act naturally on-air while there’s half a dozen extra bods in the ops room and god knows how many unseen others on surveillance duty, all of us on tenterhooks for that call from Hassan. So far, nothing.

  “Any idea where Amina is travelling from?” I ask Liam in the car.

  “Only roughly. Unfortunately the location of her first call to you had already been deleted by the time we contacted the company. Sam’s cell phone must have been switched off after that, no signals were being picked up. The only information we have is from the time of Amina’s text message, which was very brief. Just one tower picked up the signal, in a fairly remote spot, so we know the phone was being used in a 26-mile radius between the borders of Northumberland and Cumbria. So, surprise surprise, she’s not being kept anywhere near the home of Mr Ali. If she’d been in town we’d have had a good chance that two or three towers would be in range of the signal. That’s what the engineers need to get a close fix through triangulation.”

  “Pity. I was thinking you might be able to track her journey, find who was bringing her to the airport, that kind of thing.”

  Liam smiles. “You’ll make a detective yet, Marc.” He nods in the direction of the two in front. “These people will have spotters in and around the terminal, but it’s quite likely they’ll make the last part of the journey by themselves using public transport. We’ll be trying to cover all the bases, that’s all we can do.”

  “What about this other woman, Fatima something?”

  “Fatima Bhat. Interesting. Not that we really know much about her, but she lives in the Birmingham area, so there’s another possible connection with Mr Ali. The worrying thing is the likelihood of some networking going on between cells. These guys’ll tell you, it’s a lot easier to deal with when things are done purely on a local basis. That’s right, isn’t it, guys?” he says louder.

  The passenger immediately in front of him doesn’t respond. The driver makes languid eye contact with Liam through his rear view mirror and says, in a tone of Oxbridge urbanity, “I’d recommend another topic of conversation, Inspector Guthrie. Football, perhaps?”

  I can see Liam’s ear colouring slightly as he turns away to look out of the window. We spend the rest of the journey in silence.

  While I’m waiting for one police operation to get properly underway I can reflect on another that seems to have gone off half-cock. The strategy that we agreed at Chrissie’s the other night, whereby we would officially report Edona’s existence to Children’s Services through Fern and let her use that as a springboard for a multi-agency exercise aimed at closing down the brothel, rescuing the other girls and getting Edona (as the whistle-blower) on a privileged path to properly-managed repatriation, has been pre-empted by a police raid on 29 Warkworth Street, acting on information from another source. What Fern predicted has happened – all of the women in the house have been arrested along with Boris and Lev, though it appears that others, including Emmanuel and Stefan, have slipped the net. Fern has been effectively shut out of any involvement with the other females as none of them are as young as Edona. They all face deportation, and Edona could even now be
swept up with the rest, though for the moment they’ve left her with Chrissie, if only because they have nowhere else to accommodate her but a cell. Fern is frantically working behind the scenes to prevent her being transferred to a deportation centre. The police, though, are very much in charge of the investigation. They’ve been in touch, very keen to interview me as a witness, but internal politics has prevailed and the guys that have got me working with them on the Hassan case have quietly told their colleagues to back off. So much for mutuality and partnership.

  I feel as if I’m leaving Edona in limbo. Of course I can argue there is nothing I can do for her right now – chance has chosen me to be a major player in a drama that could have far greater consequences, and potentially cause far more suffering, than Edona’s individual plight, however pitiful that is – but I have to question whether my head is being turned by... well, let’s say the glamour implicit in this situation. What with all these secret service types, Home Office engineers tapping into the show, experts coaching and attending to my every word, fancy equipment, sleek cars – it has a Hollywood aspect to it. Does that make it any more important, any more worthy of all this attention (mine, theirs) than the abduction and rape of a fifteen-year-old girl from a poor village in rural Albania?

  I feel guilty - somehow personally responsible - for the contrast between the meticulous planning, energies, resources expended on this project and the botched up-and-at-’em raid on the whore-house in Warkworth Street, the indifference reported by Fern to the prospects of the victims there. I only hope that at least the investment in this operation will produce a better result. What I hold on to most – what I use to assuage my guilt over Edona – is the idea that I can maybe help rescue one more innocent woman from a desperate situation, reunite a mother with her child. The fate of Amina Begum Khan is the thought that steadies.

  I’ve never been in a security control centre before, but this one looks pretty impressive to me. I know Manchester Airport has had its lapses, but maybe the problems of the past have helped them raise the bar. Liam and I sit facing a huge video wall, focusing on monitors showing the key areas of Terminal 1, the main entrances from the car parks and the Skylink walkway that connects to the railway station. If we miss something or want to see it again we can ask for it to be retrieved from the CDR units that capture the images, or we can ask Barry, the operator sitting with us, to pan across or zoom in on anything that catches our eye on one of the screens showing the live action. It’s still more than two hours before the flight, so we have plenty of opportunity to spot Amina and her travelling companion. Our hope is that we can pick them up on arrival so they can be put under constant surveillance and any contacts they make there can be tailed by one of the spotters.

  I have to admit the fascination of watching a multi-screen display of people going about their humdrum business in the airport pales pretty quickly. Liam is still in taciturn mood from that subtle reprimand in the car, so there’s little relief in conversation, and I have to invent games to stop myself drifting off. I say games - truth be told they are more variations of voyeurism, based on a points system I’ve developed in my head to rate the attractiveness of the women I’m observing. I’ve even got a broad-based international league table going, with the oriental types currently ahead, largely based on my sighting of one stunningly beautiful member of the cabin crew from, I think, Singapore Airlines. These games are shamelessly sexist, but at least they’re only in my head, and it does keep me focused on the females in view, which I persuade myself makes me more likely to spot our targets.

  It works, in a weird counterintuitive double-take sort of way. I’ve become so focused on the game that at first my eyes skip over the two women coming into range of the camera trained on the Skylink, as their long, loose-fitting coats and headscarves give me no clues for assessing them. My brain catches up, registering vague disappointment, and a fraction of a second later clicks into why. It’s the Muslim hijab, protecting the women from the lustful gaze of men.

  “Barry! On the walkway. The two pulling the cases along, dark clothes.” Liam perks up and watches the monitor as Barry guides a lever with the heel of his hand, squaring onto and closing in on the two women. The camera moves to the face on the left – a stern-looking woman in her late forties, searching out information boards, then across right to a younger woman, chewing her lip, eyes lowered except for momentary glances at people passing by on the other side.

  “That’s Amina,” says Liam, beating me to it.

  “Agreed – she looks a lot like she did in the press photo. I was half-expecting them to be wearing the full veil.”

  “They’d have to lift them anyway, going through clearance. Probably reckoned it would bring undue attention.”

  Now that we have a fix on the pair we can follow them from camera to camera around Terminal 1 as they check in, hand over their luggage and wait for their flight to be called. I know that the spotters will be tracking them too, but I don’t see either of the women making contact with anyone other than airport and catering staff. I’m taking a close interest in Amina’s body language whenever she shows up on a monitor. She certainly looks anxious, but at no point does she make any move away from her chaperone, or try to speak to other people in the terminal except when asked questions by the check-in staff. She has several opportunities to simply get up and walk away, for example when Fatima is queuing at the café counter, but she doesn’t. Uppermost in her mind, I imagine, is what they might do to her little boy if she manages to escape. She must be relying on some miracle to happen as a result of her messages to me. I can feel that responsibility weighing me down. How on earth are the police going to find little Tarik and get him to safety in that narrow window of time before the gang realises Amina has eluded them?

  Shortly before the flight is due to be called, Liam and I are moved to one of the interview rooms in the customs area where we will be able to talk to Amina. It’s not the most comfortable place – just a bare room with a table in the middle and a few chairs – but it will have to serve the purpose. Liam has recovered enough poise to tell me that the other woman, Fatima, will be detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and interviewed separately by the men from MI5. Amina, we hope, will gain confidence from seeing me when she’s brought in here. We want to try and keep things as informal and supportive for Amina as we can, but it’s vital that she helps us fill in the blanks as quickly as possible to give the police the best possible chance of a result.

  We learn that the flight has departed more or less on time, but we’re kept waiting in that room for almost an hour, already on our second cup of coffee, before the door opens and a female member of the airport security staff ushers in Amina, then stations herself discreetly on a seat in the corner. The first thing I notice is that Amina has changed her clothes. She’s now wearing a sort of hooded kaftan, slate-grey, still conforming I suppose to the hijab dress code, but far more fashionable than the cloak thing she had on earlier. It doesn’t click at first that both women will have been strip-searched and their clothes borrowed by the decoys while they have been provided with replacements from their own bags, which never made it to the hold. I don’t have time to think that through right now, because as Amina sits down in front of us, freeing her black hair from her hood, she immediately gives me something else to think about.

  “I have hidden Sam’s mobile in the lining of Tarik’s cot.”

  “Eh?”

  Impatient at my blankness, she turns to Liam, the obvious policeman in the room. “You can trace phones, can’t you? Like they tried with those Soham children? I’ve left it switched on. Will you be able to find him?”

  “We’ll try,” says Liam. He stands away from the table and draws out his own cell phone. Amina’s eyes follow him while he retreats to a corner to make his call to base, and I have to touch her shoulder lightly to bring her attention back to me.

  “How do you know her name is Sam? How did you recognise me?” It’s true Liam and I had agreed to a
void interrogation, but I’m bamboozled by this.

  Amina turns reluctantly from watching the progress of the call and settles her dark eyes on me, her brain adjusting to the questions I asked. “Oh, I wouldn’t have known you. Not when you came to the house, I wasn’t expecting... And you’ve changed your hair. No, it was Sam I recognised straightaway. Then I realised it was you. Tabarakallah.”

  “You know Sam?”

  “I have met her. I’ve met you both, briefly. Eighteen months ago, maybe, less. I know it was the first time I left Tarik with a babysitter.” She pauses, turning this over. “You were compèring an awards evening at the Park Hotel. Young Enterprise. Sam was with you as well, she had a lovely blue dress on.”

  “I remember the occasion, yes. Sorry, I don’t...”

  “No, well, I went along with Hassan. He’d designed the website for one of the businesses that was nominated, so they invited us onto their table. They did not win, actually, but we were having a chat with you afterwards. Hassan introduced me, you introduced Sam, you know, the way you do.”

  “That’s amazing.” But of course it isn’t. It’s perfectly ordinary, logical, the kind of thing that happens all the time. Meet once, pass the time of day... The way you do. There must be hundreds of people Sam and I have come across in the normal course of events. But I’m irrationally astonished by it. To think that I’d met Hassan before...

  Amina goes on. “That is what started me listening to you, as a matter of fact. Never bothered in the past, not on the radar, really. But there’s a bit of curiosity, isn’t there, when you have met the person? Like you feel part of it. I’ve seen Sam around the shops a couple of times since, not that I have said hello or anything. It’s not as if we really know each other.” Amina’s just vamping, not paying particular attention to what she’s saying, but she refocuses immediately as Liam comes back to the table. “What is happening?”