John Milton: The Jungle Part 1

THE JUNGLE.

by Mark Dawson.

PROLOGUE.

NADIA BLINKED. It took a moment to realise that her eyes were open. It was completely dark. She was lying down on something hard. She felt her hands folded across her chest, but she couldn't see them. She blinked her eyes again. She unclasped her fingers and brought her right hand right up to her face. All she could see was the suggestion of a shape pa.s.sing through the thicker black.

She squeezed her eyes shut and listened. She heard her breathing, quick and shallow, and then, beyond that, the low rumble of an engine.

The muscles in her back were sore. Her legs twitched with cramp. She reached up. Her hands could only have been a few inches above her chest when her knuckles grazed something hard. She turned her hands over and probed with her fingers. She felt something solid and rough, an abrasiveness that snagged against her fingernails.

She felt the first icy stabs of fear in her stomach.

Her memory was foggy, clouded with uncertainty, and she tried to make sense of what had happened to her. It came back to her in fragments. She remembered the trip across the desert; she remembered the boat, so loaded with pa.s.sengers that she had been certain that it would capsize and tip them all into the ocean; she remembered the way that her brother had clasped her hand and told her everything would be all right; she remembered the way that she had felt at the first sight of land, of Europe, at the promise of a new life that it represented. She had knelt down and kissed the concrete of the dock.

And five minutes later she had been picked up and tossed into the back of the van.

She remembered: the men with guns who took her from Samir; the long drive north in the back of the van with two other women, Amena and Rasha; the tented city that teemed with refugees, men and women like her; the tent, and the big man with the shaven head who had looked at her and nodded; her arms being held behind her back, the p.r.i.c.k of the needle in her neck, the plunge into darkness.

Nadia opened her eyes again and pressed up once more, tracing the fingers of both hands to the left and right. She felt another panel, perpendicular to the one that was above her. She found the join between them. Her finger caught in the otherwise flat panel and she realised that she had found a knot in the wood.

She realised where she was.

She was in a wooden box.

"Help!"

Her voice was both loud and deadened, all at once.

She became frantic. "Help! Please, help me!"

She banged her fists on the sides of the box and slapped her palms against the lid until her skin burned. Her heart raced and she started to sweat. She kept banging and screaming until she was gasping for breath.

No-one came.

She heard the rumble of the engine again and then the sensation of renewed motion. She banged the lid and kicked out with her legs, her feet thumping against the end of the box, but it was all in vain. No-one came.

She lay back, panting, her eyes stinging with hot tears.

She had been taken. She had been stolen from her brother, their hopes of a better life ruined. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know what was going to happen to her.

She stopped struggling.

There was no point. No-one was coming to help her.

Nadia was alone.

And she was scared.

Part One.

Calais and Dover.

Chapter One.

JOHN MILTON'S SAt.u.r.dAY MEETING was held in the sports hall of a school in Chelsea. It was one of his favourites: it was early, at eight o'clock, which meant that he had gotten the meeting out of the way before most people were up and about, and had given himself the best possible start to the day that he could; and, just as important, it was a lively, friendly meeting that was full of positive energy. Milton occasionally felt closer to taking a drink at the weekend, and he had found that the meeting was an effective bolster to help him get through to Monday.

He helped himself to a cup of coffee and a biscuit and took a seat in the middle of the room. He recognised many of the other regulars and exchanged smiles and nods of greeting with a few of them.

Milton closed his eyes and relaxed, feeling the usual serenity that he had only ever found in the meetings.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen."

Milton opened his eyes. The secretary of the meeting was Tommy McCall, a burly Glaswegian with a shaven head and tattoos on both forearms. He was an imposing character, but Milton had quickly warmed to him as soon as he heard him speak for the first time. He had a thick accent, occasionally impenetrably so, but his almost const.i.tutional dourness was leavened with a quicksilver sense of humour that belied his aggressive appearance. He was ruthlessly funny, lambasting the other attendees and, more often than not, himself.

"A word or two about my appearance," McCall said, holding up his right arm. It was encased in plaster from the wrist all the way up to just below his shoulder. "Despite what you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds might think, I haven't fallen off the wagon. I was playing football with my son. I tripped, put my arm down to break my fall and..." He left the arm up, nodding to it with a rueful smile. "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm bulls.h.i.tting you, but I swear to G.o.d I'm not. And believe me, the irony that I'd do twenty years of hard Scottish drinking and emerge with not even a scratch on me and then I'd trip over a seven-year-old and do my arm in two places like this, well, I can a.s.sure you, that's not lost on me at all."

Tommy put his arm down, resting it on the table with a deliberate clunk that drew more good-natured laughter. He started the meeting properly, welcoming newcomers and then beginning the prayers, a familiar routine that Milton had come to find particularly rea.s.suring. He had been to meetings all over the world, and, barring a few minor differences, the structure and content was almost always the same. There was a rea.s.surance in that routine.

Milton closed his eyes and intoned the prayers with the others.

THE SPEAKER at the meeting was a young mother who laid out, during the course of her share, an unfortunate life that had seen her fight to bring up her two children after her husband had died of lung cancer. Six months after he had died, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She reported, to warm applause, that the cancer was in remission, but that an old predisposition toward alcoholic thinking had been awakened by her struggles.

Milton listened intently throughout, thinking that her experiences cast his own in stark relief. His drinking had been to drown out the clamour of his guilt. But the source of his guilt were the decisions that he had made and the career that he had chosen for himself. Comparing his life to hers seemed selfish and inappropriate, and he started to feel uncomfortable until Tommy reminded everyone that they should focus on the similarities and not the differences. She had relied on drink to solve a problem. Milton had done the same. They had both lost control of their drinking, and both had ended up in the rooms as a last resort. That was what they shared, and, in that knowledge, Milton found his usual measure of peace.

The meeting came to an end and the men and women started to disperse. Some went for breakfast at a greasy spoon on the King's Road. Milton had his running gear in his bag. He had planned to change into it and then go for a long run along the towpath of the Thames, following it into central London and then looping back in a route that he could stretch out to fifteen miles if he was in the mood. It was a beautiful day, clear and crisp, and the prospect of the exercise was very appealing.

He would get changed in the bathroom. He returned his empty cup to the table, thanked the old woman who had taken on the responsibility for the refreshments, and, as he turned, Tommy was behind him.

"h.e.l.lo, John."

"All right?"

"Not so bad," he said, holding up his arm, "all things considered."

Milton nodded at the cast. "Is that really what happened?" he said with a grin. "You tripped?"

"I'm serious. I caught my foot and went over. b.l.o.o.d.y agony. Cried like a baby. Had to turn down the morphine, too. Last thing I want to do is to end up on that again."

Milton could relate to that. He had been on gabapentin and oxycodone for years, a c.o.c.ktail to take the edge off the pain caused by the long list of injuries that he had suffered during his career with the Group. He had stopped taking those when he decided that he wasn't going to put anything in his body that might artificially alter the way that he felt. He was going to live an entirely unmedicated life from now on. The occasional ache was a welcome reminder of the things that he had done, and a gentle-and sometimes not so gentle-reminder of his need to atone. And, he had discovered, simple things like long runs, meetings and meditation had the same effect as the drugs.

"How are you managing at work?"

"That's the thing," Tommy said. "I'm supposed to be driving to France tomorrow. I've just signed a contract to bring a shipment of furniture over."

Milton remembered. Tommy ran his own import/export business.

"Do you have another driver?"

"Not for tomorrow."

Milton wondered whether he should help. Service was one of the central tenets of being in the rooms, and he knew that he could help Tommy.

He decided that he would offer. "I could do it."

"Thanks, but that won't work-you need an HGV licence."

"I've got one."

"Really?"

"Pa.s.sed it when I was in the army. Used to drive trucks around Salisbury Plain."

"What about your work?"

Milton had been working in the taximen's shelter in Russell Square until the previous month. "They let me go," he explained. "There wasn't the demand for it to be open nights anymore. Uber is killing black cabs."

"So you're not working?"

"I'm keeping an eye open. Something will come up. Until then, I've got a lot of free time on my hands. Happy to help. It wouldn't be a problem."

"I'll pay you," Tommy said. "I don't expect you to do this for nothing."

"Whatever you like," Milton said. "Just tell me when and where, and I'll be there."

Chapter Two.

TOMMY HAD A WAREHOUSE in Hounslow, beneath the Heathrow flight path. He told Milton that they would need to make an early start the next day, so he had risen at four, gone for a thirty-minute run, and then caught the first tube from Bethnal Green.

He arrived at the industrial park at six thirty, just as the sun was rising.

Tommy was preparing the tractor unit. It was an old Scania R480 Topline that looked as if it had already clocked up a good number of miles. Tommy had the bonnet up and was checking the engine oil.

"Morning," Milton said.

Tommy turned. "Morning." He closed the bonnet and wiped his hands on a dirty cloth that he had tucked into his belt. "We're booked on the eleven o'clock ferry from Dover. You ready to go?"

"Whenever you are."

Milton went around to the cab, opened the door and climbed up. The interior was showing its age. The upholstery of the seats was battered, the leather cracked and the padding secured in place with cross-hatches of gaffer tape. The floor was scuffed, one of the mats was missing, and a groove had been worn into the carpeting beneath the clutch from where Tommy, or whoever else had owned the vehicle, had rested his foot. A stack of old newspapers and freight doc.u.ments sat on the pa.s.senger seat.

Tommy opened the pa.s.senger door and, using his left hand, awkwardly clambered up.

"She's not much to look at," Tommy admitted as he swept the piles of papers from the pa.s.senger seat and onto the floor, "but she's reliable. Never once broken down on me yet. Keys are in the ignition."

Milton reached down and turned the key. The engine grumbled to life. Tommy settled into the seat and then struggled to fasten his seat belt. Milton waited until he was done, clipped his own into place, and put the truck into gear. He pulled out of the yard and started the journey.

THE TRIP TO DOVER had been straightforward. They had boarded the ferry and it had departed for Calais on time. Milton and Tommy had enjoyed a late breakfast in the Routemasters cafe, and now the ferry had arrived in port and they were ready to set off again.

Milton jockeyed the truck out of the maw of the ferry and set off to the south toward Boulogne-sur-Mer. Amiens was two hours on the A26. The law allowed him to drive for only ten hours a day; they had planned for him to have clocked up four hours by the time they reached the warehouse. He would rest while the goods were loaded, and then they would make the return trip. It meant that he would drive for around six hours in total. They were returning on the overnight crossing, so the clock would be reset provided they made it back to the ship before the end of the tenth hour.

Tommy had left spare time to take into account the possibility of delays, but getting out of the port took longer than it should have. Two hours pa.s.sed before they were even out of the terminal, and Milton was looking at a best case of eight hours behind the wheel to make it back to port. Tommy started to get anxious.

The long queue of trucks was crawling; Milton suspected a crash, but, as they left the facility and joined the main road, he could see that it wasn't that at all.

A crowd of people was cl.u.s.tered around the northbound road. The police and port security were there in force, and the spill over meant that people were on the southbound road, too. Traffic was moving at a few miles an hour.

"Who are they?" Milton asked. "Migrants?"

"Yes," Tommy said. "Trying to get over the Channel. They think it's the land of milk and honey. Suppose it is, compared to what they've got where they've come from. They're desperate to get over. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've seen driving through here."

Milton nudged the nose of the cab out into the road until a gap opened up for them and they could join the slow-moving queue.

"Calais has changed," Tommy said. "I used to love stopping here. We used to call it Beach back in the day. We'd all park our trucks on the front, go and get something to eat and drink, stretch the legs a bit, and sleep in the cab until the ferries started sailing in the morning. We'd never have any trouble. Now, though, you wouldn't dare stop. Some operators don't let their drivers stop anywhere within four hours of here. You know, soon as you get up, you're going to have pa.s.sengers in the back that you don't want. My old lady worries about me whenever she knows I'm coming through here. I'm a big bloke, John, right? You might think I can look after myself, and you'd be right, but I still worry about it. I've seen them go after drivers with knives when they tell them to get out of the back. But it's serious business. If I get caught with one of them in the back, it's a fine. A big one. My margins are already thin. I can't afford to get stuck with something like that."

The truck in front of them stopped suddenly. Milton braked and brought them to a halt.

"There are thousands of them here," Tommy went on. "The French put them into a camp."

"The Jungle," Milton said. "I've seen the news."

"They come from there, wait by the side of the road, and try to get into a lorry. Some of them go through the tunnel. They get into the freight. I read about one poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d, last week, he tried to cling onto the bottom of a trailer. Fell off, got squashed under the wheels."

"And you don't approve?"