A Dark and Twisted Tide (16 page)

33

The Swimmer

THE SWIMMER ROSE
to the surface roughly twenty yards away from Lacey’s boat. The last of the marina’s residents had gone below some time ago. All seemed quiet.

Slowly. Lacey is wary now, on edge. Her nervousness as plain as daylight when she came back to the boat earlier. She’s holding herself differently, her shoulders high, her weight forward on the balls of her feet, as though ready to run. She’s never still any more, her head turning, her eyes searching for something she wouldn’t necessarily recognize if she saw it, her nerves anticipating fears she can’t even begin to name. Lacey is afraid, and a frightened Lacey is a dangerous one.

Hearing, seeing nothing, the swimmer moves forward through the still, cold water, into the shadow of the hull, to the stern of the boat. The swim ladder is down, as it always is. The swimmer reaches up, takes hold of the bottom rung and then the next.

Several of the hatches are open to catch the night breeze. Careful now. A noise below. Lacey awake, after all.

From the bow cabin comes the sound of a heavy sigh. It escapes into the night, hovers like mist above the boat before drifting away across the creek. The night it leaves behind has chilled. It was the sound of misery.

The swimmer waits for the weeping that will surely follow such a sigh, but hears nothing other than a creaking of wood, a rustling of cotton sheets.

When no further sound comes, the swimmer reaches forward and places the small, plastic, blue-hulled toy boat on the flat door of the stern locker.

A twist, a jump, a gentle splash and the swimmer is gone.

MONDAY, 23 JUNE

34

Lacey

‘
THERE’S PEOPLE-SMUGGLING AND
people-trafficking,’ said the civil servant, a bland-looking man in his early thirties whose name badge read Dale. ‘People use them interchangeably but they mean something quite different, you know that, don’t you?’

Lacey was at Lunar House on Marsham Street, headquarters of the UK Border Agency, the government body with responsibility for managing immigration into the United Kingdom. That morning, Chief Inspector Cook had announced a desire to be brought up to speed on the whole business of people-smuggling. He wanted as much background as possible before he organized resources. Consequently, Lacey, the newest member of the team and the only one with a background in CID, was off river duty for a couple of days.

The room she’d been shown into was grey. Grey walls, grey furniture, grey carpet. Even the lukewarm coffee she’d been served was grey.

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘People-smuggling is consensual. The people concerned want to access another country without the necessary permissions. The smugglers help them do it, for financial reward.’

Dale dropped his head and tapped something into the laptop in
front of him, as though Lacey had made a point he wanted to remember. His limp, mousey-brown hair was thinning at the crown. He suffered from dandruff and smelled of medicated shampoo.

‘People-trafficking, on the other hand, is altogether darker,’ Lacey went on. ‘The people themselves are the commodity. Usually women and children – they’re brought illegally into a country and then sold. People-trafficking is effectively the slave trade.’

Dale looked up. ‘You’ve not been with the Marine Unit long, have you? I just wonder why Chief Inspector Cook assigned you to this.’

Lacey took a deep breath. ‘About three months.’

‘I suppose it could be your background as a detective,’ Dale went on. ‘I’m not sure I’ve met anyone before who’s chosen to go back into uniform. Quite a few who were obliged to, but that’s another matter.’

The question was left hanging in the air. Which was exactly where it was going to stay. Lacey spotted a splash of coffee on the table and, without thinking, touched it with her index finger and drew a heart.

‘So, what’s puzzling us, Dale,’ she pressed on, ‘is why anyone would choose to bring illegal immigrants up the Thames. For one thing, it’s an extremely busy patch of water. The chances of being seen are very high.’

‘Yes, you’d think so.’ Dale’s eyes were fixed on the heart she’d drawn.

‘Of all the routes illegal immigrants could take into this country, why this one?’

‘Well, that’s another misconception,’ he drawled. ‘Most illegal immigrants aren’t smuggled in in the depths of night. They come into the country perfectly legally, with a work or study visa, and quietly stay behind when the permit runs out. That’s the real immigration problem this country faces, trying to find all these people and send them home. Not the odd boatload sneaking up the Thames.’

Christ, if this bloke were any more laid back, he’d be asleep under the table. ‘I understand that. But in the last year, I’ve personally witnessed two boatloads coming up the Thames. According to records at Wapping and anecdotal evidence, there have been several
other sightings. The one I was involved with last October could have ended very badly. The boat the people were travelling in overturned. We had to pull them out of the water.’

Dale started pressing keys on the laptop again. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said after a moment. ‘First of October, just east of Greenwich, wasn’t it? Now that’s interesting. Three of the occupants weren’t illegal immigrants at all. Only the woman was.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘The three men were all known to the police, all had records,’ said Dale. ‘They were charged, found guilty and sentenced. They’re in Wormwood Scrubs, eligible for parole in a couple of months.’

‘So that gang has been out of action for nearly a year?’

Dale shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t read anything into that. These gangs employ any number of gofers and the people at the top never get their hands dirty. If whatever they’re doing is lucrative, someone else will have stepped in.’

‘What about the girl?’ A sudden flashback to that night last October. The cripplingly cold water, a desperate woman trying to pull her under.

‘Nadia Safi. According to this, she was sent to a hostel that takes in victims of trafficking. I can give you an address.’ He wrote something down on a Post-it note.

Lacey took it. An address in London.

‘You made an arrest on Friday night, I understand. Did you learn nothing from him?’

‘Nothing,’ Lacey admitted. ‘He insisted he was alone in the boat and that he was just out for a spot of night fishing. Absolutely wouldn’t budge. We charged him with having an unauthorized craft on the river and causing a danger to other shipping, but that was all we could get him on.’

‘Frustrating.’ Dale nodded sympathetically.

‘Tell me about it. But I still don’t understand why they’re coming up the Thames.’

‘I’d say their initial destination is somewhere along the river,’ said Dale. ‘Otherwise it hardly seems worth the extra risks.’

‘What are we talking about? A brothel with a river view?’

‘Hardly. More likely to be some sort of holding facility. You know,
a derelict building, maybe a lock-up somewhere. There’s still a lot of waste land and abandoned buildings along that stretch of the south bank. Somewhere between Greenwich and Rotherhithe would be my guess. Probably closer to Greenwich, if anything. Bringing them right into the city seems too risky.’

Somewhere near Deptford Creek. Near where the body was found.

The body of an immigrant?

‘I hope you find them, Lacey,’ said Dale, who didn’t look remotely laid back any more. ‘If women are being trafficked, they’ll be kept in conditions that would have the RSPCA baying for blood if it was happening to animals. They’ll be half starved, probably ill, and frightened out of their wits. And that’s while they’re still in transit.’

Lacey felt a sudden urge to get up, out of the chair and the building, to get moving. ‘It gets worse?’

‘Oh yeah. And if you’ve seen two, the chances are there are a whole lot more.’

35

Pari

Dear Mother
,
At last I have time to write to you. I have been a little poorly, but am much better now.

Pari put the pen down. Her mother had always known when she was lying. Would she be able to tell now, across thousands of miles? And was it less of a lie, or more of one, if it were written down?

This city is bigger than I could ever have dreamed. Every day I see something new.

That wasn’t a lie. Every day Pari saw huge stone churches and elegant buildings like palaces, gleaming towers made of jewel-coloured glass. Always something new, and really no need to tell her mother that everything she saw was on television; that her only real view of this massive, alien city had been the night she’d arrived, along the dark river that ran through its heart.

But I should not have believed the people who said this country would be cold. Since I have been here, the sun has shone hot and strong most days, like our springtime. All the time, I am warm as bread from the oven.

Also true. Pari put her pen down. She was burning hot and it had nothing to do with the weather outside. Her room was actually quite cool. When she laid her forearms or her forehead against the
whitewashed walls, it filled her with wonderful numbing coolness that never lasted quite long enough to make her feel better.

She had a fever. In a little while, if she felt well enough, she’d stand in the shower and let the water run cold; anything to stop the fire that was smouldering away inside her, getting hotter with every hour that passed.

My English is so much better already. I’m talking to lots of people, improving all the time. The different accents can be confusing, but I am getting used to them.

That was true too, or almost true. A few weeks ago, when she’d first arrived, Pari could barely understand the simple sentence construction and continual repetition of the toddlers’ TV programmes. Some days now, if she wasn’t feeling too bad, she could follow the news.

I’m sorry I haven’t written before now, I’ve just been so busy.

It had never occurred to her to ask. She’d been amazed, just now, when they’d agreed. ‘I want to write to my mother,’ she’d said, expecting the immediate refusal that had followed all her previous requests. ‘Of course,’ they’d replied. ‘We’re only surprised you didn’t ask sooner. Perhaps you can write her a sentence or two in English. Think how proud she’ll be.’

That was hardly likely. Pari’s ability to read and write her own language was limited. In her home province, most girls left school when they reached puberty. Even in the university city, they probably had half the school hours that the boys had benefited from, and less than half the teachers’ attention when they were there.

She was glad, though, even for the little time she’d spent in school. Education was important, they kept telling her here. She’d need to be able to speak English well by the time she left.

Soon now, I will be leaving this place and going to my new home and job. Then I will send you money. I will find a way to send it safely. They tell me this letter may take a few weeks to get to you, so I will try to think of you at the next new moon, opening my letter and reading all my news.

All my love
,

Pari.

36

Dana

WHEN HER PHONE
rang, Dana started, as though she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. She looked round and spotted an area near the wall where she’d be out of the way. Selfridges baby department. An hour to kill on the way home from work and this was where she’d ended up.

‘Ma’am, it’s Lacey. I’ve had an idea. I wanted to run it past you, is that OK?’

Dana looked back at the rows of baby-grows, patterned with rabbits, mice, butterflies. ‘Go ahead.’

Lacey talked fast, the way she often did when she was fired up about something. ‘You know how sometimes several ideas come together at once, and whilst none of them make sense individually, when you put them together, suddenly it all looks different?’ she began.

The lift opened and three women came out. One was heavily pregnant. ‘I think so.’

‘OK, we have a problem of illegal immigrants coming into London via the Thames,’ Lacey went on. ‘I’ve been involved in two cases, and there are others on record at Wapping. The two I witnessed involved young women, probably from somewhere in the
Middle East or Asia, which suggests people-trafficking, probably for the sex trade.’

Lacey was almost certainly right. The sex trade was like the drugs trade, an ongoing, ever-present problem. The more beautiful of the women would typically start out in private harems, the property of one man, who would be pretty generous about sharing with his friends. The girls would be passed round, forced to take part in orgies, used to make pornographic material. Nothing much would be out of bounds.

The less attractive would go to brothels where they’d be expected to service several clients nightly for twenty to fifty quid a time, of which they would see nothing. They’d quickly become hopeless drug addicts. They’d die, very young, in squalor. Met sources suggested that there were more than nine hundred brothels in London alone.

‘OK,’ Dana said, because to say anything else would probably take too long.

‘I was at the UK Border Agency earlier today,’ Lacey rushed on. ‘They think there could be some sort of holding facility on the riverbank around Deptford.’

‘It’s possible.’

A toddler ran squealing past Dana.

‘Right, now, according to Dr Kaytes, the dead woman I found in the river at Deptford was an immigrant. A young woman, possibly from somewhere in the Middle East or Asia.’

Dana spotted a door and made for it. ‘And you’re thinking she was part of this people-trafficking operation you think is going on up the Thames?’