The Orpheus Trail (26 page)

‘Is this the sort of set-up you expected?’ Hildreth turned to me.

‘It’s a re-enactment of a Mithraic bull slaying initiation ceremony,’ Hilary said, stepping forward.

‘Nobody move. Hawkins, take some pictures. Then bring the lot along except the boy. Untie him and lay him down. The doctor should be here shortly. Get some proper lights in here. Lock them up
separately
. I’ll have them out one by one for interview.’ He turned to Hilary. ‘If you could write me an explanatory note about what you think was going on it would help.’

There was no question of my going home that night. We went back to Hilary’s flat where she poured us both whiskies and then we drank a bottle of wine, going over and over the same ground until we fell into bed too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

In the morning Hildreth rang. ‘I thought you’d be there. Can you come over, Alex, and I’ll fill you in with what we’ve got. We’ve caught a big fish at last.’

Obediently I set off for New Scotland Yard while Hilary steeled herself to go to work. ‘You’ll let me know, Alex, won’t you. God, I hope this is the end of it all.’

‘We’ve got one serious,’ Hildreth said. ‘The others were just actors hired for the job. We’ve let them go on police bail.’

‘What was meant to happen?’

‘The boy was to be stabbed ritually. The actor who was supposed to do it believed he was using one of those daggers with a retracting blade that they kill people with on stage. He didn’t know it had been substituted with a real one. The boy was already dead so he couldn’t be killed but there would have been a lot of animal blood of some sort. Our catch is going to sing, we think. Anyway we’ve seized his
computer
and mobile and a lot of other stuff. We’ll get Interpol to follow it up. Looks like it leads back to Bulgaria and then, Christ knows, on from there. Your girlfriend emailed us her background note. She’s been very helpful. We might have taken a long time to get there.’

‘I can’t see it makes much difference what it was all for.’

‘That’s because you’re not in the force. Every bit of knowledge is valuable because it helps you understand the psychology and piece the bits together. The crims are always looking for new ways to do things. Seven of these new porno sites go up every day. Cruder stuff. Not this tasty necroporn as I call it.’

‘How do you manage not to feel disgust for the human race?’ I said wearily. ‘Everything we invent seems to cause some terrible new
pollution
. The factories and mills filled the air with smoke and the rivers with filth. Now we’ve found a new form of pollution, of the mind. Global tides of it washing all our shores.’

‘You’re tired, Alex. Go home and have a rest.’

‘Is this the end of it?’

He shrugged. ‘Who can say? I hope we’ve broken the ring, and maybe we’ll get the whole gang. At least we’ll have stopped this end of the operation. For a while anyway.’

Saeed’s Story
AD
2007

After my parents had paid the money we waited for instructions. It seemed a long time although it was only ten days. Then I was told to pick up an e-ticket for the bus that would take me on the first part of the journey and the documents that would see me across the borders first into Turkestan and then across through Europe. I could take only one small bag which my mother packed for me. At the bottom she put a copy of the Quran and I added the poems of Hafiz. Then she stuffed it with as many changes of clothing as she could until it was as tight as a drum and filled the front pocket with washing stuff and medicines, painkillers, plasters and quinine. Anything else I needed I could buy as soon as I started the job that they had waiting for me.

The bus is to leave at dawn. It’s still cold in the chill wind coming down from the mountains with only a smear of light showing in the sky. My father comes with me to the village square where the bus is already waiting with some boys on board.

‘Hi, Saeed. What are you waiting for? Let’s go.’

It’s Hamid from my class at school. I hadn’t known he’d be on the bus although we had often discussed going to the West, to Europe but he had always said his parents couldn’t afford it. He’s a beautiful boy, everyone’s favourite, slim and athletic where I am stocky and short.

My father hugs me and orders me to let them know that I’m safe as soon as I get to Engelestan. We’ve been told the journey will take three days. My mother I know will be weeping at home and praying to God for my safety. They have given me all the money they can spare. A man stands by the open door of the bus inspecting tickets and
hurrying
us on board. When my father first contacted him through our cousin Ali he said he was from Bulgaria and we had wondered if that was the way the bus would go. It is old, with the paint peeling and with faint writing on the side in letters. I can’t read but think it might be Greek.

The Bulgarian shuts the door. He isn’t coming with us. The driver starts the engine and the old bus shudders and groans with the effort. I hope the brakes are the best part of it when we come to the mountains. The driver guns the engine and we begin to move.
I look down at my father and wave. He raises his hand and there are tears on his cheeks glistening in the light from the rising sun. I crane my head to see him falling away from us, growing smaller until he seems to vanish.

‘Why didn’t your parents come to see you off?’ I ask Hamid.

‘They don’t know I’m going. I saved up for the fare myself doing things for people, cutting their hair when they were too poor for a proper barber. That’s what I want to do in England, become a real barber. People always need their hair cut.’

‘Hey, you can cut mine when we get there. Save me money.’

‘I’ll shave it smooth as an egg,’ he laughs and gives me a little punch.

I don’t have a watch so I don’t know how long we’ve been going but it must be several hours. The sun is right overhead and the bus is stifling until we begin to wind up and down the mountains on narrow roads that fall away on one side down to the valley, and on the other are walled in sheer rock. My mother has given me a bottle of water and some little cakes that I share with Hamid who has nothing. I try not to think about his parents’ despair when they find he has gone. He tells me he has left them a note so that they at least know that he is safe.

The bus judders to a halt in the high mountains above a lake, big as an inland sea, gleaming under the fierce sun. The driver tells us to get out and relieve ourselves. He gives us bread and cold tea. ‘We are going to cross the border,’ he says. From his accent I think he is an Afghan.

‘But I have no passport,’ I say.

‘I have your passport and documents. That is partly what you pay for. Your parents gave me the photographs and I got the passports.’

‘But my parents didn’t know,’ Hamid says.

‘I have a spare one for such as you. The soldiers will only count them when I hand them over and then count you, not check your faces with the pictures. Remember if anyone asks you, this is a school project. You are tracing the boundaries of the Persian empire.’

I like this idea very much, and part of it is true in a way, at least as far as the Danube as we have been taught. We get back in the bus and go on. The road is very narrow and runs between the mountains, climbing all the time. At the top we are stopped by a barrier manned only by two soldiers who come out of a hut. The driver gets down from the bus. One points a rifle at him. He opens a bag and brings out a bunch of papers that must be our passports.

One soldier goes into the hut with them while the other keeps his gun pointing at the driver. The other soldier comes back and climbs into the bus. He begins to countus us. I sit up and try to look smart and confident. He gets out of the bus and speaks to
the driver. Then he goes back into the hut. After a bit he comes out again and gives the documents back to the driver. The other soldier lowers his rifle. The driver offers them cigarettes and they stand there smoking and talking. Then the soldier who took the passports, nods. The driver gets back in the bus. The other soldier raises the barrier. The driver starts the engine which coughs and belches smoke and we drive slowly through the gap. We are in Turkestan.

After another hour or so I fall asleep in spite of the swaying and bumping of the bus. Hamid wakes me. The driver has stopped at a small village in the mountains. We climb down to sit at wooden tables and a big man with a moustache brings a pot of soup and ladles some into wooden bowls with flat flaps of bread. The driver goes into the taverna to eat and talk to the people inside. He seems to know them well and they were obviously expecting us because the food was already waiting.

The driver hurries us back into the bus and we’re off again. The journey has become monotonous and I no longer bother to look out of the window at the mountain passes, the high peaks and the valley bottoms where goats wander. By nightfall we are in the outskirts of a town, the first we have come to, very dusty and poor-looking. There are as many women as men in the streets and a lot of them don’t wear the hijab.

We pull up in the rear of a grim block of flats with dim lights behind shuttered windows. The driver gets out from behind the wheel. ‘You will sleep here.’ We climb down. My whole body aches with the vibration of the bus. He leads us through a back entrance and down narrow dark stairs to a basement room that must have been used for some kind of store. There’s a pile of tattered-looking rugs or covers in one corner and a pail in the other.

‘No pissing on the floor. Use the bucket. The door will be locked so don’t try to go out. I don’t want you wandering round the town.’ Then he leaves us. There’s one dim bulb high up in the ceiling. I can hardly make out the faces of the other boys. There are twelve of us altogether. We use our bags as pillows and cover ourselves with the mouldy rugs smelling of damp and mildew.

Although I’m tired I sleep badly, starting awake from time to time to wonder where I am. One of the boys is weeping quietly with a snivelling sound. The Afghan wakes us early in the morning. There’s a big jug of hot tea and some stale cakes. Then he takes us to a kind of washroom where laundry lies in piles on the concrete floor.

‘You can wash here. Then you must take it in turns to use the lavatory. Today is a long drive.’

We are off again, this time on unmade roads so that the old bus shudders and
clatters
as if it might fall to pieces and we rattle about in it like lentils in a pot. All day we 
batter along with only a stop, more bread and tea, and to stretch our legs in the stony scrub at the side of the road. Sometimes we pass boys herding goats who wave at the bus and we wave back glad of a moment of human warmth.

Darkness comes down and finally we stop on the outskirts of a village at another taverna, where we are allowed to sit at the tables and a woman brings us lamb stew and rice. I think of running away. All my taste for adventure has gone and I just want to be home with my father’s arms hugging me to him.

‘You can sleep in the bus tonight. Use the lavatory first. One at a time.’ He stands at the door to make sure we don’t run away. Then we climb back into the bus and are locked in.

‘Have you said your prayers, Saeed? I think we should pray God to keep us safe. I don’t trust that man.’

‘I’ve got a copy of the Quran in my bag. My mother packed it. Which way is Mecca?’

‘We’re travelling West so it must be behind us.’

We knelt down in the aisle. ‘What are you doing?’ another boy asked.

‘We’re going to pray. You should too.’

One by one all the boys kneel facing the back of the bus, some in the aisle, some on the seats.

In the morning I ache all over. A big lorry drives into the yard. We go through what has become our morning ritual.

‘We are going to drive to the ferry. Just before we get there you will all get into the lorry and be absolutely silent until I open the doors again.’

After a couple of hours bumping along, the bus and the lorry pull off the road into a small wood. The driver gets out and we climb down. The back of the lorry is open. It smells of rotten fruit. Far away through the trees I catch a glimpse of something shining. It must be the sea. We climb into the back of the lorry behind a row of boxes. The lorry driver comes in after us and makes us huddle together close to the front and lie down. He throws a pile of dirty sacks over us and rearranges the boxes.

The door is shut. The engine starts up. I can hardly breathe in the smothering dark and the fumes from the old diesel engine are making me feel sick. The lorry clatters over some wooden boards and stops. The floor is rising and falling. I mustn’t throw up. It seems that we’re waiting here forever. Now the engine starts and the rolling sensation grows worse. Then there are shouts and a shudder as the ferry hits something. It must be a dock on the other side. The lorry starts up and rolls forward. We must be going ashore. Where will we be? How long before they let us out?

The lorry stops at last. There are voices. Police? Soldiers? Eventually we start up again and move forward. We go on for what I think is about half an hour more.
 

The lorry stops again. The doors are opened. Light comes in above the boxes. The boxes are moved aside. We throw off the sacks and crawl out. The bus driver is standing at the back. ‘Welcome to Thracia. To Yoonan.’ We are in Europe. I realise how we have been deceived. There are no real passports. This is a journey of illegals. Yet we can’t go back or protest. Now we have to go on.

I get up my courage and ask, ‘Why are we hiding? Why don’t our passports let us in? This isn’t what we paid for.’

‘If you’re not happy you can stay here. I’ve taken you to Europe. That’s all I need to do. Get out now and see how you get on.’

I am defeated. I know I can’t manage alone. At least in England I can speak a little from my classes at High School. Here I can’t even read the signs. I keep silent.

The days blend into each other. We are always hungry and dirty, and always tired, our bones and flesh aching from the constant battering and the cramped seats of the bus where we sleep. There are no more stops at friendly tavernas for stew and bread. Again we are packed into the lorry to cross water. Then on. Sometimes in the night we hear voices and I can judge our progress by the different sounds and rhythms though I can’t make out the words.

At last we draw up again on a deserted strip of beach. I can see the waves grey under the clouds from the bus windows. We climb out of the bus.

‘Over there is Engelestan,’ the driver says, waving out to sea. ‘Here I leave you, my lovely little ones. My job is done. You will cross in the lorry and you must be very silent. The police here are very cunning.’

We take up our places in the lorry. There’s a long wait before the engine starts. It coughs several times until it settles into its usual noisy clatter. We drive a long way before there are the noises of not a boat, I think, but a train. The engine is switched off but the lorry is full of its fumes. I lift up the sack to get more air. Hamid is very quiet beside me. Perhaps he is holding his breath. I can’t tell how long we’ve been in there. The engine starts its bronchial coughing.

I drop the piece of sacking back in place. The lorry begins to roll. It goes a short way then stops with the engine running. There are voices. Suddenly the back is thrown open.

‘What’s in the boxes?’

We hear one being lifted out. ‘Empty. What’s behind.’

‘Nothing.’

There’s a sound of someone climbing into the lorry. ‘What’s here then?’ The sacks are lifted. ‘I thought so. Arrest the driver. There’s a load of kids here.’