Donaldson nodded at a few of the raised pairs of eyes, but none returned the greeting. They were all miserable — and Karl Donaldson was responsible for their plight.
He edged over to the kettle, flicked it on and selected a coffee from the mouth-watering selection of freeze-dried drinks on offer. As he poured steaming water into it, he saw there were no spoons so he stirred it with a pen, then took a sip. It tasted dreadful, but at least it was hot.
He took a few moments to look around the ‘building’. There was a real cocktail of people therein, a genuine multi-agency approach, and yes, he was the one who had brought them all together to the salubrious Port of Hull.
There was a pair of surly individuals from the Immigration Service, a customs officer, a cop (a rather deliciously attractive female, Donaldson noted innocently), a social worker and some low-ranking bod from the Home Office who had come close to being punched by Donaldson on two separate, but recent, occasions. Nearby and on call was a customs search team with dogs and all manner of specialized equipment. They were housed in the main customs building where there was real heat and coffee to be had.
And they were all there because of him.
Donaldson, an American, worked for the FBI’s Legal Attache Department at the American Embassy in London. Much of his time was spent in liaison with law-enforcement agencies in the UK and Europe and it was acting upon information he had personally sourced that this pleasant bunch of people had been mustered. The information was that a particular lorry would be landing in Hull and would contain a number of illegal immigrants and a large stash of drugs. It had taken Donaldson a lot of cajoling to bring them together because these days there was a fair degree of apathy in response to such information. Illegal immigrants? So what? Hundreds came across every day. It was easier to let them in. Drugs? Not sure if we have the resources. Get in the queue, our priorities are not your priorities. These were the types of responses he’d had to field. Eventually he’d shamed the other agencies into pooling their resources in this ragbag team who probably wouldn’t scare the skin off a rice pudding. They had been sent along merely as a sop to the Feds.
It didn’t help matters that the boat carrying the expected illicit cargo did not land the previous day when expected due to extremely rough seas. At the last moment the team were all forced to find accommodation in Hull for the night. It wasn’t the most sociable of evenings and Donaldson, exasperated, had retired early for a restless night.
Donaldson stood awkwardly in one corner of the hut, concentrating on his coffee and thinking through why he had engineered this operation. The hope was, of course, that illegal immigrants would be prevented from entering the country and that a haul of drugs would be seized and there would be some arrests too. But even as he stood there, he concluded that was not enough for his purposes. It would not go deep enough into the organization he was looking to destroy. It would be a minor blip for them, nothing more, but it might just open up some alleyway into their structure that he could then begin to widen into a six-lane highway. . his thoughts were interrupted by the woman detective who stood up and sidled across the room to him, rubbing her chilly hands together.
Donaldson gave her a weak smile. She returned it with a warmer one.
‘Not long now,’ she said hopefully.
‘No.’
She dropped her voice conspiratorially. ‘You went to bed early. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.’
‘Needed the shut-eye.’
‘Hm. . what’s it like working for the FBI? Dead exciting, I bet.’
‘I’m mainly office-bound, to be honest. I used to be a field agent — over in Florida — but I’m too old for that now, on a regular basis, that is.’
‘What made you come over here?’
‘Love and marriage.’
The detective seemed to be taken aback by this remark. She was about to say something, but the cabin door opened and a high-viz-jacketed customs official stuck his head in and announced, ‘Your ferry is due in ten minutes.’
There wasn’t quite a groan from the assembled team. . but almost.
‘Hold on,’ Donaldson said before any of them moved, ‘the target has changed. . I’ve just had some up-to-date information. .’ He reeled off the new gen to them and they listened as though they were having needles stuck into their eyes.
When he had finished, Donaldson tossed his plastic cup into the bin, excused himself and eased past the female detective who, he thought, purposely did not make his passage easy. He wanted to watch the ferry dock.
Donning a hi-viz jacket himself, he walked out to the quayside of King George Dock and waited, peering into the low cloud.
Suddenly a ro-ro ferry, the Nordic Pride, emerged like a bull elephant out of a thicket, huge and impressive, the dark shape looming larger and larger as she approached port.
From that point on it took only minutes of well-rehearsed manoeuvring before she was moored, the ramp lowered and the vehicles starting to spew out on to dry land. It was a very smooth operation.
‘You definitely know which one you’re going to pull,’ one of the pair of sulky immigration officials said into Donaldson’s ear. ‘Only I wouldn’t like to think I’ve wasted my time. I’m very busy, y’know. I’m working on the cockling disaster.’
Donaldson nearly snapped something back, but held his tongue.
‘They’re out of control — immigrants. Bugger all we can do about them, if truth be known. They outnumber us by the thousand. I’ll bet when we stop your lorry and there’s, say, twenty on board, another hundred’ll get through just from this landing. Happenin’ all over the country,’ the official moaned. ‘Hundreds of the fuckers every day.’
‘I know,’ Donaldson sighed. ‘Bit of a problem.’
‘A bit!’ he blurted, flabbergasted. ‘It’s a major social and political scandal, compounded by the ineptitude of a weak-kneed government which cannot get its own bloomin’ house in order. .’
Donaldson held up a hand with a very sharp gesture. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘We have work to do here.’
Open-mouthed, the officer watched the American muscle past and make his way towards the ferry. ‘Twat,’ he said quietly.
The heavy lorries had just started to roll off.
Henry Christie worked out that he had been on his toes for about thirty hours and that he was no longer a fully functioning human being. The morning had been spent in a whirl of hastily arranged meetings and briefings both to deal with the inevitable media onslaught and to get the bones of the investigation set up. He had even given two press interviews, one for local radio, one for TV, and he cringed when he thought about how he must have come across. Like some half-brained dimwit, he imagined. At least they were done and out of the way.
Attempts were in hand to trace Roy Costain, who had gone well to ground, and to encourage the Costains to hand the little bugger over. Troy had been unshakeable in his unhelpfulness towards Henry, who felt that whacking him might not be the best approach under the circumstances. But Henry was not impressed by his informant and could tell he was lying to his back teeth. As a result of Henry’s frustration, he had let Troy walk back from the hospital.
At one p.m. Henry decided he had had enough.
He called Dave Anger to let him know where he was up to.
‘Henry, we’re just talking about you,’ Anger said on hearing his voice.
‘I thought my ears were burning.’
‘They should be,’ Anger said darkly.
‘Anyway,’ Henry said, clearing his throat, ‘I’m calling it a day. I’m off home to bed for a few hours, but I’ll be ready for on-call at six. If that’s OK with you.’
‘Yeah. . you’ve done a pretty good job actually,’ Anger said reluctantly. ‘Oh, Jane Roscoe’s here. Do you want to say hello?’