Питер Джеймс: Find Them Dead

Mickey Starr gazed into the night, feeling restless and apprehensive. And afraid. It wasn’t fear of the darkness but of what lay beyond it.

Going to be fine , he tried to reassure himself. He’d done these Channel crossings before without a hitch, so why should this one be any different?

But it was. No escaping the fact. This was different.

Fear was something that had never troubled him before, but throughout this trip he had been feeling a growing anxiety, and now as the shore grew closer, he was truly frightened. Terrified, if it all went pear-shaped, what would happen to the one person in his life who had ever really meant anything to him and who loved him unconditionally. Whatever bad things he may have done.

Wrapped up against the elements in a heavy coat and a beanie, roll-up smouldering in his cupped hand, the muscular, grizzled, forty-three-year-old stood on the heaving deck of the car ferry, braced against a stanchion to keep his balance.

In prison, some eighteen years back, his cellmate, an Irishman with a wry sense of humour, had given him the nickname Lucky Starr . Mickey should feel lucky, he’d told him, because he had a spare testicle after losing one to cancer in his teens, a spare eye, after a detached retina in one had put an end to his boxing career, and a spare arm for the one he’d subsequently lost in a motorbike accident.

It was 4 a.m. and he was fighting off seasickness. He wasn’t feeling particularly lucky at this moment, out here in the middle of the English Channel, in this storm. He had a bad feeling that maybe he’d used up all his luck. Perhaps he should have found someone else to come with him after his colleague had pulled out at the last minute due to sickness. He always felt less vulnerable and conspicuous when he had a female companion with him. Maybe the Range Rover he was driving was too shouty?

Put it out of your mind, Mickey, get on with the job.

The sea was as dark as extinction. The salty spray stung as he squinted through the bitter wind and driving rain. His confidence in tatters, he was wondering if he was making the most stupid mistake of his life.

Calm down. Pull yourself together. Look confident. Be lucky!

Be lucky, and soon he would be home, back with his younger brother, Stuie, who totally depended on him. Stuie had Down’s Syndrome and Mickey affectionately referred to him as his ‘homie with an extra chromie’. Many years ago, Mickey made a promise to their dying mum that he would always take care of him, and he always had. His ‘differently-abled’ brother had taught Mickey how to see life in other ways, more simply. Better.

He wouldn’t be doing any more runs for the boss after this. He’d talked with Stuie about setting up a business with the cash he’d stashed away — nice money from the small quantities of drugs he’d pilfered from his boss on each run, too small for him to ever notice. Although this time he’d added substantially to the cargo, and a very nice private deal awaited him. Big proceeds — the biggest ever!

But now he was riddled with doubt. All it needed was one sharp-eyed Customs officer. He tried to shake that thought away. Everything was going to be fine, just as it always had been on each of these trips.

Wasn’t it?

Stuie liked cooking and constantly, proudly, wore his ‘special’ chef’s toque Mickey had bought him for his birthday last year. Mickey had planned to buy a chippy as close to Brighton seafront as he could afford — or in nearby Eastbourne or Worthing, where prices were lower. But with the money he stood to make now, he’d be able to afford something actually on Brighton seafront, where the best earnings were to be made, and he had his eye on a business in a prime location near to the Palace Pier that had just come up for sale. Stuie would work in the kitchen preparing the food and he would be doing the frying and front-of-house. All being well, in a few days he’d have the cash to buy it. He just had to get his load safely through Customs and onto the open road. And then — happy days!

He swallowed, his nerves rattling him again, breathing in the noxious smells of fresh paint and diesel fumes. The boss had patted him on the back a few days ago, before he’d headed to Newhaven, and told him not to worry, all would be fine. ‘If shit happens, just act normal, be yourself. Be calm, take a deep breath, smile. Yep? You’re lucky , so be lucky!’

The 18,000-ton, yellow-and-white ship ploughed on through the stormy, angry swell of the English Channel, nearing the end of its sixty-five-nautical-mile crossing from Dieppe. Ahead, finally, he could now start to make out the port and starboard leading lights of the deep-water channel between the Newhaven Harbour moles, and beyond — spread out along the shore even more faintly — the lights of the town.

A short while later a tannoy announcement requested, ‘Will all drivers please return to your vehicles.’

Starr took a final drag on his cigarette, his fifth or sixth of the voyage, tossed it overboard in a spray of sparks and hurried through a heavy steel door back inside, into the relative warmth, where he made his way down the companionway stairs, following the signs to Car Deck A.

No need to be nervous , he told himself yet again. He had all the correct papers and everything had been planned with the military precision he had come to expect of the boss’s organization, after nearly sixteen years of working loyally for him. Well, pretty loyally.

The boss had long ago told him this was always the best time of day to pass through Customs, when the officers would be tired, at their lowest ebb. He glanced at his watch. All being well, he’d be home in two hours. Stuie would still be asleep, but when he woke, boy, would they celebrate!

Oh yes.

He smiled. It was all going to be fine. Please, God.

At 4.30 a.m., Clive Johnson sat in his uniform dark shirt, with epaulettes and black tie, in the snug, glass-fronted office overlooking the cavernous, draughty Customs shed at Sussex’s Newhaven Port. The Border Force officer was sipping horrible coffee and thinking about the beer festival at the Horsham Drill Hall next Saturday — the one light at the end of the tunnel of a long, dull week of almost fruitless night shifts and big disappointment among his team, so far.

An average height, stout man of fifty-three, with a friendly face topped by thinning hair, Johnson wore large glasses which helped mask the lenses he needed for his poor eyesight, steadily deteriorating from macular degeneration. Coincidentally and helpfully, his wife owned a Specsavers franchise in Burgess Hill. So far he’d kept his condition from his colleagues, but he knew to his dismay that it would be only a year or two, as the ophthalmologist — who worked for his wife — had informed him, before he would have to give up this job he had come to love, despite its frequent unsociable hours.

Rain lashed down outside, and a Force 7, gusting 8/9, was blowing. One of the sniffer dogs barked incessantly in the handler’s van at the far end of the building, as if it sensed the team’s anticipation that maybe, after a week of waiting on high alert, acting on a tip-off from a trusted intel source, this might be their night. Although ‘trusted’ was a questionable term. Intelligence reports were notoriously unreliable and often vague. It had indicated that a substantial importation of Class-A drugs was expected through this port imminently, concealed in a vehicle, possibly a high-value one, and coming in on a night ferry this week. Which was why tonight, as for the past six days, they had a much larger contingent of officers than usual present here at Newhaven, backed up by Sussex Police detectives and an Armed Response Unit waiting on standby. All of them growing bored but hopeful.