He was going to smuggle people.
Ramon approached him with a big smile on his face. ‘See — simple. Now all we do is collect the goods.’
‘Fuck you,’ blurted the lorry driver.
‘You do not need to worry, my friend. You will not be caught, if that is what is bothering you.’
Whitlock was not assured by the words. All he wanted to do — still — was vomit. He nodded numbly, watching as the new container was finally fixed and the jib of the crane was raised away.
A car drove into the yard, but it was nothing like Ramon’s beaten-up old banger. This was a smooth-looking black Mercedes, two men on board. It stopped near to the static caravan and both men climbed out. They were expensively dressed and a little incongruous against the background of scrap-heap cars and containers.
Ramon hurried across to them, like a puppy.
Whitlock thought, ‘Boss men.’ He climbed quickly into the cab of his lorry, feeling safer in the confines of his comfort zone, but kept watching the men, unable to stop his face contorting with an expression of contempt, and a feeling of looming disaster in the pit of his stomach. He swore continuously under his breath, hoping the repetition of that single, obscene word would somehow ease his burden.
It was interesting to watch Ramon’s body language towards the new arrivals, as though he was a serf and they were lords of the manor.
No doubt they were.
The three men had an intense conversation. Ramon turned and pointed to Whitlock’s lorry, obviously explaining something. Instinctively Whitlock shuddered and ducked as the two new arrivals looked across at him. He averted his eyes, still swearing.
When he looked again, they were back in huddled conference. One of the men walked round to the back of the Mercedes and opened the boot. He heaved out three heavily packed holdalls and dropped them on to the floor. They were big bags, obviously weighty. Ramon and the other man gathered around them and Ramon listened as they spoke to him, nodding.
The men then got back into their luxury car and set off with a scrunch of tyres, leaving a cloud of rising dust as they accelerated out of the gates and disappeared in the direction of Zeebrugge.
Ramon watched them go. The tension which had been visible in his body was replaced by relaxation and the resumption of his role as boss. He barked a couple of things at the men who had fitted the container. They picked up the holdalls and put them into Ramon’s car, whilst he strode across to Whitlock, who lowered his window.
‘Follow me.’
It was only a short journey. Two or three minutes at most, and once again Ramon led Whitlock into another industrial park, driving to a detached factory unit in its own grounds, surrounded by a high, chain-link fence. Ramon drove around the perimeter of the building, Whitlock following in his artic, coming right back around the front where they started from.
Immediately shutter doors began to rise, revealing the inside of the building, nothing more than a concrete-floored warehouse.
Whitlock caught his breath.
The whole place seemed to be packed with people, levered in there like sardines in a tin. At least a hundred of them, possibly more. All blinking as the daylight hit them, all tired, all beaten. It was, literally, a transit camp, although it reminded Whitlock of the old photographs he had seen of people bedding down in the London Underground during the Blitz. People were laid out on military-style camp beds, others were standing huddled around free-standing gas heaters, warming themselves. Some were sat at trestle tables scattered throughout the floorspace. Their faces looked pale and uncertain, hopeless yet hopeful at the same time.
Whitlock was staggered by the sight.
Ramon got out of his car and entered the building, emerging moments later with two more heavies who opened the container door on the back of Whitlock’s trailer.
Some of the people inside the warehouse moved forward expectantly. Ramon barked a warning. A gun appeared in his hand. They hesitated and retreated. In his other hand he had a list from which he began to call names.
From the cab, using the wing mirror, Whitlock counted the number of people being herded into the container. Twenty poor souls climbed in, all men, he noticed. His heart pounded and he thought it was going to explode, that he was going to have a heart attack.
As the last person scrambled inside, the door was secured. The cargo was on board and ready for transportation.
Ramon swung up to the driver’s door window. ‘OK?’
‘Great.’
‘Just pretend they’re chunks of meat,’ Ramon said with a sneer. ‘And don’t worry about them. The ventilation system will work for about forty-eight hours, there’s a chemical toilet in there and plenty of food and drink. All you have to do is follow the instructions on this piece of paper.’ He pushed the said paper into Whitlock’s hands. ‘Simple.’
The passenger-side door of the cab opened. Whitlock watched as the three tightly packed holdalls which Ramon had been given by the two boss men at the container depot were dropped into the footwell.
‘What the fuck’s this?’ the driver demanded.
‘Just something extra. . don’t worry about it, and don’t worry about getting caught. The law of averages is on your side. Here. .’ He dropped an envelope on to Whitlock’s lap. ‘Pounds sterling,’ he said with a wink.
Whitlock sneered, engaged first gear and Ramon jumped down off the lorry as it began to move. Once again, the obscene word under Whitlock’s breath was repeated continually. But it did not make him feel any better, because whatever, he had just become a human trafficker.
Six
The identification of the body of Renata Costain had gone as well as it could have done, given the circumstances.
Henry and Rik Dean drove Troy Costain to the mortuary at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and the dirty deed was carried out in the identification suite. Once away from the confines of his family, Troy had chilled considerably and been pretty indifferent to the point of apathy at the sight of his dead cousin, whom he had loved so deeply less than twenty minutes earlier. He merely blinked, nodded and said, ‘Yeah, that’s her,’ with a shrug of his shoulders. The whole of that family-induced emotion seemed to have evaporated in the early-morning sunshine.
Back outside the mortuary Henry said, ‘Sit in the car,’ to Troy.
‘No, it’s right, Henry — I’ll be on my way.’ He made to walk off, but the detective clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder. A very worried expression smacked on to Troy’s face.
‘Uh-uh, no chance, pal,’ Henry said. ‘Let me rephrase that — sit in the fucking car — got that?’
Troy wilted visibly under Henry’s hard hand and slunk to the car. If he’d had a tail, it would have been tucked between the cheeks of his backside.
Rik Dean watched the interaction, puzzled, his dark eyebrows in a deep furrow over the top of his nose, trying to get the measure of the relationship between the two men. It was plainly obvious they knew each other quite well. Henry smiled corruptly at Dean, noticing his expression. ‘Old friends,’ he said, which in no way explained a damned thing to Dean.
When Troy was seated in the car, out of earshot, Dean said, ‘What’s the plan, boss?’
‘Strategy, you mean?’ Henry corrected him. ‘Plans go wrong, strategies get tweaked.’
Dean shrugged. ‘And the strategy is. .?’