Page 23

23

Two dozen detectives and uniformed officers are gathered in the foyer of Birchin Way Custody Facility. Some I recognise from the incident room or on the beach at Cleethorpes.

Carlson emerges from the stairwell, shrugging on his jacket.

He spies Evie. ‘What’s she doing here?’

‘She was with me.’

‘Leave her here.’

‘No.’

He thinks about arguing but changes his mind. ‘She’s your responsibility.’

I could have sent Evie home in my Fiat, but I don’t want her being alone – not today, not after her diagnosis. And I’m not sure if she should be driving or if she has fully processed the news.

Carlson quickly briefs the waiting officers before two vans and four unmarked police cars set off in convoy, pulling through the electric gates and heading west along the A180. Fifteen minutes later, we cross the Humber Bridge and turn east along the northern bank of the permanently brown estuary, which marks the southern boundary of Yorkshire.

Evie and I are in the back seat of a car being driven by a uniformed constable who keeps sneaking glances in the mirror, wondering what Evie is doing on a police operation. Carlson is on the phone, issuing instructions and receiving intel from the incident room. Whenever a piece of information annoys him, he drops the F-bomb, and the driver glances at Evie as though wanting to cover her ears.

The main road turns back on itself and uses an underpass to reach the historic docks, some of which have been demolished and built upon, creating retail parks and factory outlets. Other sections are abandoned and overgrown, waiting to be repurposed.

A small container ship is propped within a dry dock, which is separated from the estuary by large metal gates that are sealed. Water has been pumped out, and wooden beams are braced against the sides of the vessel to stop it tipping over. Beyond that, past a rusting fence, railway tracks appear and disappear beneath mounds of rubble and waste.

We pass through an unmanned security gate, marked by rusting drums and a makeshift boom gate. The cars and minibuses pull up. Officers pile out and disperse across the docks. There must be more than thirty buildings, most of them abandoned or derelict. Bolt-cutters and battering rams are needed to enter some of them.

Evie and I wait with the vehicles. The radio squawks as information passes between the teams. It’s hot and I look around for some shade. A nearby building has an awning. As we get nearer, a security guard appears from around the corner, hitching his belt. Puffing. Overweight. Annoyed.

‘You’re trespassing,’ he says belligerently. ‘This place is off limits.’

‘We’re with the police,’ I say.

‘I don’t care. You need a warrant.’

I motion to his unzipped fly. He zips it up, embarrassed but still protesting.

‘We’re looking for a trawler with a damaged prop shaft,’ I say.

‘No fishing boats here. You got the wrong place.’

Evie takes an interest. ‘You haven’t seen a trawler?’

‘No.’

‘You’re lying. Is it that way?’ She points.

‘You’re talking out of yer arse.’

‘What about that way?’

‘Are you deaf? There is no trawler.’

Evie looks at me. ‘It’s that way.’

‘Never play poker with her,’ I tell the guard. ‘You’ll always lose.’

The police teams have disappeared, searching the different buildings. I call Carlson’s number. It’s busy.

‘Let’s take a look,’ says Evie.

‘We should stay here.’

‘Come on. The cops are close by.’

We set off, ignoring the complaints of the guard.

‘He won’t be here when we get back,’ she says.

‘Probably not.’

Railway lines criss-cross the broken concrete docks and stop abruptly at an old slipway that has silted up and become a wasteland of weeds and thistles. Beyond that, there are acres of industrial decay, crumbling walls, rusting machinery and mounds of rubble. We pass a gutted factory, five storeys high, with every window shattered or boarded up. Beneath the graffiti is a faded sign for a long-defunct trawler company. The brown water of the Humber estuary ripples in the wind. Dredgers and tugboats are at work, as well as a freighter floating so low on the water that it might be stuck on the bottom.

We reach the edge of St Andrew’s dock gate. Rusting. Defunct. I look down. A trawler is moored twenty feet below us. Inflatable buffers protect it from being smashed against the gates. A rope ladder hangs down the nearest stone wall.

Carlson answers his phone.

‘It’s here,’ I say. ‘Below the gates.’

The message is relayed.

At that moment, a man emerges onto the deck, a phone in hand. Bearded and dressed in dark overalls, he glances up and notices me. He yells to someone below and a second man appears. Immediately, they run. The first man tosses his mobile phone into the water and jumps over the railing into a dinghy with an outboard. He presses the ignition and unhooks the tether rope, steering away from the trawler.

The second man jumps for the rope ladder and scrambles up, hand over hand, scaling it easily. He’s heading for a car, a Land Rover parked beside the old engineering shop.

I begin to move. Evie grabs my arm trying to stop me. I pull loose and run across the metal gates between the water and the silted-up dock. The safety railings are rusted and the gates groan under my feet.

The man in the dinghy has reached open water, but a police launch appears at speed, dual engines churning. A loudhailer cuts through the air, telling him to stop.

His mate gets to the Land Rover and jumps behind the wheel, searching for the ignition. I grab at his wrist. The keys slip from his fingers into the footwell. We both reach for them. He swings his elbow at my head but hits the door frame. Cursing.

I have the keys and fling them behind me. He’s out of the car and we’re grappling, rolling on the ground. He grabs my hair and drives his fist into my stomach. I double over and drop to my knees, sucking for air.

His hand reaches into his jacket. As if by magic, he’s holding a black polished rod. A steel blade snaps from the handle. He twirls the knife over his knuckles like a juggler. He’s in his late thirties with dark curly hair and a large scar running down the side of his neck and across his cheeks where the skin bubbles and puckers like melted plastic.

‘Gimme the keys,’ he says in a Scottish accent.

I crab-walk backwards, my arse dragging in the dirt.

‘You can’t get away,’ I say.

‘Gimme the fookin’ keys.’

They’re lying ten feet away. I pick them up. He motions with his free hand, wanting me to toss them. I do just that. High over his head. His eyes follow them as they arc, out of reach, and hit the water with a satisfying plunk twenty feet below him.

‘I’m gonnae gut you like a fish,’ he says, pointing the knife and crouching in an attacking pose.

I back away. He moves with me, smoothly, gracefully, and the blade sweeps through the air. Misses. He grins. I hear Evie yelling and officers shouting. I feint one way and go the other, skipping past the knife, but I feel it brush against my clothes.

‘You missed,’ I say.

‘If you say so.’

I look down. My shirt is flapping open. The knife sliced it vertically along the line of the buttons but didn’t cut my skin. ‘Next time ah’ll draw blood,’ he says. ‘And the third time, I’ll open an artery and watch you bleed out. You’ll nae feel a thing.’

To an outsider, it must look like a strange dance, full of lunges and parries and twirls. I dodge him again, but he’s moving just as quickly, keeping me pinned down with the water behind me, blocking my escape. What would I break if I jumped?

Again, I feel the blade whisper over my clothes. My shirt sleeve has been opened up and a thin red line oozes blood along my forearm.

‘That’s the second warning,’ he says. ‘Where is yer car?’

‘The other side of the gates.’

‘Gimme the keys.’

I reach inside my trouser pocket and hold them up.

‘Dinnae be a dickhead this time,’ he says.

I toss the keys at his feet and immediately turn, hoping to reach the gates before he does.

I hear Carlson’s voice. ‘Put it down.’

The detective is fifteen feet away, holding a Taser. My attacker twirls the knife across his knuckles and turns to face him.

Bang!

Two wires snake across the space and the metal probes cling to the trawlerman’s shirt. Fifty thousand volts of electricity enter his body with a crackling sound. He goes rigid and drops to the ground, raising a puff of dust.

‘Don’t touch him,’ says Carlson.

Other officers wait until the electrical surge has dissipated before holding him down, one sitting on his legs and the other on his back. Pulling his arms behind him. Snapping on handcuffs. Reading him his rights. On the water, the second man is being pulled onto the police launch.

Evie is still standing on the far side of the dock gates. I raise my hand, letting her know that I’m OK, but she doesn’t respond. She walks across the silted-up slipway and joins me.

‘You’re an idiot,’ she says, examining the cut on my right arm. She rips at the torn shirt sleeve, creating a bandage which she wraps around my forearm, tying the knot angrily, ignoring my pain. I look for my car keys. Evie has picked them up.

The two suspects are being escorted to waiting police cars. Carlson joins me at the water’s edge. ‘Does that need stitches?’ he asks, pointing to my arm.

‘No.’

‘Well, I’m not paying for a new shirt.’

Below us, the trawler is moving up and down on the swell. The police launch has pulled alongside and is being held against the current by the engines.

Carlson tosses me a pair of latex gloves. ‘Let’s take a look before SOCO arrives.’

We’re both wondering the same thing – could the missing migrant women be on board? The detective is first down the ladder. I follow. Flecks of rusting metal stick to my gloves and the boat sways under my weight as I step on board. I haven’t spent much time around boats unless you count a ferry trip to Ireland to watch a rugby match at Lansdowne Road. I threw up most of the voyage to Dublin and was too drunk to remember the journey home.

The trawler is a squat-looking vessel with a square wheelhouse. Water slaps against the hull as I step around the anchor winch and edge along the starboard side. I’ve seen TV shows about trawlermen in the North Sea; fly-on-the-wall documentaries that describe it as ‘the most dangerous job in the world’, being battered by huge waves, surviving the cold and chasing fewer and fewer fish. The breathless narration makes every voyage look like a cross between Survivor and Moby Dick.

I’ve reached the wheelhouse. The doors are open. The galley is down a set of five steps. I follow Carlson into a box-like room with benches, a table and a cooktop with swinging potholders. Dirty dishes fill a sink. Metal mugs. Cold teabags. A saucepan with congealed baked beans.

We move forward to the cabins, which are lower again. The bunk rooms have thin mattresses and thinner blankets. Carlson nods towards the smaller of the two. A self-locking plastic cable tie is curled beside the pillow. A second cable tie is lying on the floor between the bunks, coiled up like a dead centipede. The bedding is disturbed. Damp. The missing women were here.

Carlson takes photographs with his phone. The engine room is through a bulkhead door. It smells of diesel and oil and rustproofing. The main hold is further forward, beneath a waterproof hatch. Nylon mesh fishing nets are draped from hooks like enormous string shopping bags. A dull orange life-vest is discarded on the floor. It’s similar to some of the ones I saw on some of the bodies washed up on Cleethorpes Beach. More photographs are taken. Carlson signals and we retrace our steps.

Back on deck, I skirt the side of the wheelhouse and cross the foredeck. At the bow, I peer over the railing, looking for evidence of a collision. The angle is wrong, and any damage is probably below the waterline.

A name is visible. New Victory. Some of the letters are obscured by a plastic bin bag that has been crudely taped over that section of the hull.

Carlson has joined me. ‘Sixty feet. Twin rig. Steel hull. Built in 2005 in Macduff, Scotland. She was christened the Catelina, but had her name changed four years ago.’

‘Victory was Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar,’ I say. ‘It established British naval supremacy for more than a hundred years.’

‘Is that important?’

‘Far-right groups like banging on about past glories of the British Empire.’

‘We don’t know if this was a racist attack,’ he says, sounding hopeful rather than confident.

Evie has been waiting for me on the far side of the dock gates. She is sitting on a broken block of concrete, arms wrapped around her chest, rocking slightly, scuffing her shoes in the dirt. To reach the cars, we have to pass near the arrested men. She suddenly stops and stares at one of them. The man with the scarred neck is sitting in the back seat of an unmarked police car.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

Evie isn’t listening. Her eyes have glazed over, and she stares into the distance, at some point on the horizon, seen or unseen. Taking a step, she seems to lose her balance. I catch her before she falls. Putting my arm around her waist. She sinks against me.

‘What is it?’

Her face turns to mine.

‘I know him.’