Say You Never Met Me

by Martin Yallop

  “You English?” The whispered question came from the girl next to her sitting with her arms around her drawn up knees and her face lowered to hide her mouth. Susanna nodded dumbly and glanced sideways at her. She was the tallest of the group, with high-cheekbones, a classic profile and long, mousy hair drawn back into a ponytail. Leather Jacket, squatting beside the door, caught the movement from the corner of his eye and swivelled to point the pistol straight at Susanna. He mouthed what was obviously a threat and Susanna froze. The older man nudged him and indicated impatiently that he should keep watching through the bottom of the blinds of the half-glazed office.

  “Yes, English,” whispered Susanna. “You?”

  “From Albania: Tirana. My name is Natasha. Her, she is my sister, Irma.”

  “The others?”

  “Marianna is from Pogradec in the East, also Albania. Anna is from Macedonia, a village near Skopje, I think.”

  Under her breath Susanna asked, “What is all this about? Who are these men?”

  “That one says his name is Gregor,” she pointed with her eyes to the older man. “He works for a man called Michael. The other is Stanislav. Take care for him. He is stupid and bad. He hurt Anna very much. They are from Russia. I don’t know where.”

  “But why are you here?”

  “You don’t understand? We are going to England. I studied in England for one year and it is very beautiful. You know Princeton Language College, in Tottenham? I think it is quite famous. The others don’t care where they go, maybe Germany, maybe Holland but I want England. We paid to be taken to England but we don’t have all the money so we pay some when we get there. We have jobs as waitresses in nightclubs. We can get more than a hundred pounds every day. We will soon pay what we must. That is why Gregor and Stanislav are with us. They say they are to help us but they are guards to make sure we don’t run away before we pay.”

  “How much must you pay?”

  “Three thousand dollars each, and now our fares and the costs of travelling and waiting. But when we have paid we will have money to send to our families. My mother is ill and we have not enough money for doctors and hospital.”

  “Did you try to go on your own, without paying these men?”

  “Of course. I told you. I was in London as a student. I should have stayed but I left because my mother was ill and then I cannot get a new visa. This is the best way because we have jobs also.”

  “My mother is ill, too. That is why I am going to England.”

  For several minutes a silence united them. The two men continued their watch and exchanged occasional whispers in what Susanna now assumed to be Russian. Everyone jumped and one of the girls gasped when the telephone suddenly shrilled. Gregor rolled across the floor to pick it up. He listened. Susanna could hear a faint voice with a calm, reasonable tone but none of the words, even if she had understood. There was a change of language, and another, She thought she heard the words ‘speak English’. Clearly the authorities were trying to open communications with the men. Gregor said something and put the telephone down before crawling back to the door. He started explaining something to Stanislav.

  “Why are you here, Natasha? There must be easier ways to get to England or Germany or wherever.”

  “Sure. We plan to go by boat, fast boat to Italy then by train and lorry. Three times, at night, we try to go to Italy but the Italian police have boats in the sea and we cannot go. One time we very lucky. Very nearly they catch us. And there was storm, very powerful wind, big, big waves. I think I will go down with this boat. So after nearly one month waiting and trying, Gregor said, ‘Okay. Not Italy. We go to Greece,’ and two days ago the boat came here and we find taxi and came to the airport. Greece is Europe, yes? So we are in Europe and can go where we want. We have papers with Gregor. Only a flight and we are in England. That stupid Stanislav. His fault. Now maybe he will shoot us. If not they send us back. All the fault of Stanislav. Just another pointless, stupid man; none of them are any good. Maybe my mother will die. I would kill him for this.” The look of malice in her eyes convinced Susanna that Natasha was speaking the truth.

  “Natasha, I have read about this. I don’t think you will just work as waitresses. I think you will be forced to have sex with men who will pay.”

  Natasha shrugged. “We know. We think so too. Then the money is better, but now nothing. We need money very much so we take the risk. What else should we do?” There did not seem to be much point in arguing or telling Natasha that they would see little if any of the money they earned, would never be allowed out without an escort and would be threatened with exposure as illegal immigrants or beaten up if they refused to work. One way or another, they would not be going anywhere now. Gregor turned and hissed at them to be silent. Perhaps he had seen some movement outside.

  George heard the sirens as he was about to drive out of the airport car park and stopped to watch the escorting police cars and the Mercedes with tinted windows sweep past. ‘I bet he doesn’t have to stand in a bloody queue,’ he thought, assuming that some politician or celebrity was arriving at the airport. The memory of queuing rekindled his school day reminiscence. For Mr. Crabtree’s carpentry lessons, standard kit had been a thick, white, cotton apron worn to protect the compulsory grey sweaters, grey shirt, grey socks and grey shorts from sawdust, glue and, occasionally, blood. He remembered a term spent making a twelve inch ruler that was, as specified, exactly twelve inches long and scored to mark the one inch, half inch and quarter inch divisions, but was three quarters of an inch thick and so useless for any practical application. The next term’s artefact had been a pipe rack. To his embarrassment he was expected to take it home when it was finished; that would have surprised him less if he had known that his parents had had to pay for the wood but what amazed him more was his father’s enthusiasm for the pipe rack that, for weeks, was proudly displayed, pipe-less, on the dining room sideboard. His surprise at his father’s enthusiasm arose because his father had always rolled his own cigarettes using liquorice papers and tobacco from whatever plastic pouch offered that week’s best bargain, rolling a day’s supply each morning before setting out in the Vauxhall to sell fire and flood insurance to the businesses of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. One pupil made an electric guitar; that seemed an altogether more worthwhile project. George had disliked carpentry lessons but they must have done him some good as he could still identify a tenon-saw with confidence and safely handle the various grades of sandpaper. Approved tools then had included saws and hand-drills and chisels and planes but, as pieces of wood were never nailed together but were dovetailed, drilled, screwed and glued using foul smelling animal glue heated to glutinous melting in a pot over a gas ring, the hammer was frowned upon as a woodworking implement. Each bench had a full set of other tools to be shared between two boys but there was only one hammer between every two benches. Good housekeeping was emphasised in the woodworking shop and time was allocated at the end of each lesson when tools were returned to their allocated places in the racks and cupboards and wood shavings, sawdust, illicit sweet wrappings and failed projects were swept up with a hand brush. The final act of each lesson had been a sort of tool roll-call. Everyone swapped places to check their neighbour’s inventory. ‘Each bench must have…’, Crabtree had chanted’. Items such as screwdrivers, saws, hand-drills, and planes were enumerated. The list always closed with ‘…and either a hammer or a brush.’

  The captain greeted George as he drove on to the inter-island ferry.

  “Your young lady get her flight okay?”

  “Yes, yes, fine”, George nodded. “Thank you.”

  “They say there is something happening at the airport.”

  “Yes, I saw,” said George. “It’s very busy.” He drove to the space indicated by a seaman wearing shorts and a vest and waving his grubby baseball cap and parked as close as he dared to the battered pick up truck in front of him, hoping that its driver had left it in gear with its brake hard on, before
climbing the companionway to watch the practiced ritual of casting off and getting under weigh. He liked boats and water. One of his favourite lunchtime pastimes in the City had been to lean on the riverside railings and watch tugs, barges and police boats chugging up and down river towing their ripple-spreading wakes through the muddy-brown water. Water and boats somehow implied continuity for him and he always found them soothing.

  By the time George drove off the ferry and on to the island it was almost dark. He already felt forlorn and alone and did not want to sit on his own in the silent house. He already missed Susanna’s cheerful company, pottering around in the kitchen, filling, and emptying, glasses and singing along, sometimes tunefully, with the music. He felt depressed and the spectre of his anxiety about his growing feeling of persecution was waiting in the wings of his mind, ready to appear when he was quiet and alone. To postpone the solitude he pulled up at the local taverna, parking, like all the other customers, on the pavement and settled himself in a white, plastic chair at a table near the road, well away from the flickering and faintly buzzing, neon ‘Koktails’ sign and blue-white tubes over the covered veranda.

  “Please?” The female voice behind him made him start and he twisted awkwardly in his chair to find himself face to face with the barely tee-shirted bosom of a young, dark-haired waitress. He was aware of a musky scent. “Yes please?” she repeated, still addressing him in English.

  “Er.., Oh, Yes. A large beer, please. And some olives or nuts or something.” He turned to watch the young woman’s back as she walked away, back into the bar. “She’s new. I wonder where Andreas found her?”

  Chapter 4

  “The next ‘plane to London is a scheduled flight and we have upgraded you to first class to help you forget your ordeal. It leaves in just over an hour. Please do not worry about your luggage. The airport head of security has agreed to make an exception to the rules and allowed your baggage to stay on the original flight. Our representative will collect it in London and keep it for you. Please ask at the baggage enquiry desk when you arrive.” The official checked his clipboard. “Ask for Fiona. She will have your case. Is there anything else we can do to help you?”

  “No, no. Thank you. That’s all very kind of you,” said Susanna.

  “The press and TV people are here, of course, but we haven’t released your name so you will have no problems.” The young airport official spoke near perfect English. She strongly suspected that his and his bosses’ concern was to get her on her way and out of theirs as soon as possible in case she should make some sort of official complaint or otherwise cause them more fuss and trouble. With the crisis over, the demands of the timetables of a busy airport were reasserting themselves in official minds. Her contact with the police had been similarly considerate and brief. A sergeant had typed her statement in English straight into his laptop computer, recording her home and mother’s addresses and telephone numbers almost as an afterthought. He allowed her to read the printed version, handed her a pen and smilingly accepted the signed version. Only when asked, did he produce a copy for her to keep, stressing anxiously that it was a confidential document and she must not give it to anyone else in case it affected the court case.

  “Don’t you need me to appear? To give evidence?”

  “Maybe, maybe, but it will not be for months yet. It is all pretty clear so maybe we will not need you in court.”

  “What about the girls? What will happen to them?” Susannah had last seen them being led away by policemen, Natasha stony-faced, the other three sobbing with shock or fright or both.

  “They must stay, of course. They entered Greece illegally and their documents are probably forged. They will be questioned to find out what they know about the traffickers. If they have committed no other crime, I expect they will be sent back to Albania.”

  “Anna is from Macedonia,” said Susanna.

  Between police interviews and official expressions of concern and getting on the ‘plane she had tried twice to ring George at the house in the island village, but the telephone had rung, unanswered. If he had caught the afternoon ferry he should be home by now. She hoped he was all right. She had tried to ring her mother too but was not surprised when there was no reply. Valerie would be on her way to the airport to meet her. The airport staff had had her paged over the public address system at Heathrow and Susanna had eventually heard her mother’s worried voice over the telephone. It was just as well. News of the hostage incident had been on the radio and Valerie was in a state of alarm escalating towards hysteria, accelerated by being paged and called to the information desk. Susanna thought it better to allow her mother to assume that she had missed her flight because of additional security checks and so on and was glad her name had been withheld for the time being. She could tell her mother the full story in due course when they were both more relaxed and she knew more about this lump and what it meant. She insisted her mother go home and wait. She would ring as soon as she landed and, no, she did not know what flight they would put her on. Yes, George was fine. No, he wasn’t with her. Yes, she had been given a meal because of the delay. Yes, she was fine. No, she was not tired. Yes, she had money to hire a car. Yes, she would come straight home however late it was. It already felt late even though it had only been two hours since Stanislav had shot himself in his ankle while trying to drag the pistol out of his jacket pocket to point at someone or something outside the office. The single shot had been deafening in the confined space and its echoes had mingled with his curses and cries of pain, the screams of the girls and the crash of shattering glass as two black-overalled figures had smashed through the office windows, yelling at them all to lie down, lie down. Susanna had heard her own screams continuing when the other sounds stopped and she regained control with another effort. In the anti-climax and the release of tension, she found herself giggling uncontrollably as she was led away by a young policewoman.

  Dawn was breaking by the time Susanna turned on to the M23 and headed north. She could foresee that she would have to face the M25 in the rush hour and she put her foot down to try to cover as much distance as possible before hitting the heaviest of the morning traffic. The motorway was already busy with vans, lorries and company cars, all trying to beat the rush. The sluggish acceleration of her little car told her that she had made a false economy by hiring the smallest and cheapest vehicle the hire company had available and that being the car’s only passenger and not yet having any luggage did not compensate for the underpowered engine. She indicated and pulled into the middle lane to allow a tailgating white van to pass. Having chosen a car unsuitable for motorway driving added to her existing irritation and she cursed herself under her breath for her stupidity. In her exhausted and still faintly bewildered condition, she had not noticed that her flight was bound for Gatwick until she was seated, strapped in and the doors had been closed. The pilot had welcomed them on board the aircraft, wished them a pleasant flight and apologised for a slight delay in take-off, caused by technical difficulties with an earlier flight. He told them that the weather en route looked good and he would give them an update on the weather in the UK as they approached Gatwick. ‘Oh shit! My bloody bag will be at Heathrow,’ she had thought or, judging from the sideways glance from the elderly man in the seat next to her, she had muttered out loud. The solicitous young, airport official had escorted her to the aircraft steps. She was to have a pleasant journey and an enjoyable holiday… yes, of course, he hoped her mother would make a full recovery from her illness. They would be in touch with her when she returned. Thank you, thank you, and good-bye. An hour of telephoning from the baggage supervisor’s office at Gatwick had eventually located her suitcase in the custody of somebody called Phyllis at Terminal One at Heathrow. Would she like it sent back or delivered to Gatwick? Neither thank-you. She would collect it in person in a couple of hours. She had not mentioned the baggage problem or any of the other events on the telephone to her mother, confining herself to saying she was safely i
n the UK and would be home in time for lunch. She had toyed with the idea of getting George out of bed but had decided to punish him for her unanswered call the previous night by making him wait for news of her. The plodding, unresponsive little car and a lack of sleep made Susanna irritable. With a wrench, she turned on the radio and tuned it to a rock music station. ‘Stop crying your heart out,’ sang Oasis. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she thought. As she turned west and settled into the crawling jam of the southern section of the M25, the prospect of facing her mother and finding out whether or not the lump in her breast was malignant began to make her feel weary and depressed. Is it today, the doctor’s appointment? Hell! Yes, it is. God, she was tired. A couple of hours’ fitful sleep on the plane was not enough after yesterday’s events. She should have checked into an hotel and got some sleep but how could she have explained that to her mother? As far as Valerie knew, Susanna had travelled a bit later than expected and landed to face no more than an hour’s drive from Heathrow against the direction of the rush hour traffic. She fiddled with the switches and found the button to open the driver’s window and let in some fresh air as well as the deafening roar of the surrounding traffic. She turned up the radio and tried to concentrate on the early-morning banter of the two DJ-presenters.