John Milton: The Jungle Part 27

Chapter Fifty.

MILTON OPENED HIS EYES. It was dark; no, he corrected, not just dark, but dark in that there was a complete absence of light. He closed his eyes again, aware of the migraine that was pounding against the inside of his skull. His thoughts moved slowly, and it was a struggle to put words together. He breathed in and out, trying to compose himself, trying to remember what had happened. For a moment he was certain that he had been drinking. It felt the same as he remembered it, waking up in a room that he didn't remember, his memories gone. A cla.s.sic alcoholic blackout. But no. He could taste something in his mouth. Not alcohol. It was metallic. Unpleasant.

He hadn't been drinking. It was anaesthetic.

The memories rushed up at him.

The camp.

The tent.

The man who had distracted him and the accomplice who had injected him in the neck.

The men and the women inside the tent.

He tried to move his arms, but he couldn't. They were behind his back, his wrists shackled together. His shoulders throbbed with cramp. He concentrated on his legs. They, at least, were free. He opened his eyes again. Nothing. No light. He was on his back, lying on something firm. Not a mattress. Something solid. The floor, perhaps.

He moved his legs to the side and found that he had only a few inches of s.p.a.ce before his feet b.u.mped up against something solid. He lifted his right leg and found that his toes quickly touched up against another obstruction. He shuffled his body to the right and then the left, his shoulders b.u.mping against what he now was sure were the sides to something.

As consciousness returned more fully, he became aware of a rising and falling, up and down, again and again. As he became more aware of it, he felt a throb of nausea. He managed to turn his head in time, and, his mouth to the side, he voided his guts. The vomit kept coming, obliterating the metallic aftertaste of the anaesthetic with its overpowering acrid tang. He felt the warmth of it against his shoulder and the top of his arm, and, as he moved, he felt it sliding beneath his back.

He kicked up, and the sound of his boot as it crashed into the obstruction left him with no doubts at all.

He had been sealed inside a wooden box.

He remembered what Hamza had told him.

How the smugglers moved the women over the border.

He was in a coffin.

He let his head fall back. He felt hollowed out. A numbing wave of la.s.situde rolled over him and, helpless to resist it, he closed his eyes.

Chapter Fifty-One.

MILTON CAME AROUND AGAIN.

Something had jolted him awake.

He opened his eyes, saw the darkness again, and remembered: he was in a box.

No, not a box.

A coffin.

He blinked, trying to clear the gunk from his eyes.

He heard the sound of voices, a language that he couldn't place-guttural, harsh-and, as he tried to move his arms, remembered from the pain that they were fixed behind his back. He struggled with the bonds. There was no play there, and no prospect that he would be able to break free. The muscles in his shoulders and the top of his back throbbed with a fearsome ache, locked into an unnatural position for who knew how long, and his hands were numb from where his weight had been pressed down against them.

The voices continued. There were two, one of them more strident than the other. He tried to listen, to understand what was being said, but he didn't recognise the language. The voices were m.u.f.fled, and he was still stupefied from whatever it was that had been used to knock him out.

He heard the creak of splintering wood. A patch of light appeared above his head, widening as the groaning continued and the nails that secured the lid to the rest of the coffin were prised out. Milton tried to rouse himself. The lid closed again, but now with narrow lines of light limning the joins between the box and the lid, and then there came the sound of breaking wood as the crowbar was jammed into the opposite corner and that nail forced out. More light, and then still more as the nails at the corners of the box nearest Milton's feet were removed.

The lid was lifted up and tossed aside, and bright, painful, artificial light flooded down.

Milton was blinded by it.

He heard voices, louder now that they were no longer m.u.f.fled by the box, and felt hands on his shoulders and around his ankles. He was hauled out of the box, his legs lifted over the edge and dropped to the floor.

He opened his eyes, wincing at the stabbing pain from the light, forcing the lids apart so that he could start to understand the mess he was in.

He was in a room, lying against a cold, undressed concrete floor. To his right was a coffin. Wooden, a little longer than him. Cheap. There were other coffins in the room, a whole line of them stacked up against the opposite wall.

The voices spoke again. They were behind him. Milton tried to turn his head so that he could see who was speaking. He twisted around and saw a pair of booted feet stride through his field of vision. He looked up and saw a big man with a shaven head and tattoos on his neck.

He remembered him. The man in the tent. The twin of the man Milton had killed.

The Albanian?

The man gestured down at him, spat out an instruction, and left the room through a plain wooden door.

Milton felt hands beneath his shoulders and he was dragged away in the opposite direction. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the top of a door frame, and then he was in a more dimly lit corridor with a single bulb that fizzed and hissed, the light flickering on and off.

The man who was dragging him dropped him to the floor. Milton heard the sound of a key turning inside a lock, a door opening, and then he was hauled through a second door into a darker room that was only barely illuminated from the glow that leaked in from the bulb in the corridor.

"You stay here," came a voice, in heavily accented English. "No noise. No trouble. Understand?"

"My arms," Milton said. "Please. I can't feel my hands."

There was no response. The door slammed.

Chapter Fifty-Two.

MILTON HEARD the key turn in the lock and then the sound of footsteps fading away as the man made his way back along the corridor.

He looked around the room. It wasn't quite as dark as he had first thought-there was a little dim light filtering through a gap between the bottom of the door and the floor-but it was too dark to make out much of anything. The floor was bare concrete. Milton could smell urine and excrement.

"Who's there?"

Milton jumped. "Hicks?"

"Milton? Is that you?"

Milton turned and located the voice: it was coming from the corner of the room.

He sat up and used his legs to shuffle across.

"Milton?"

"I'm here."

Milton could see the shape of a man and, as his eyes adjusted, he could make out a little detail.

It was Hicks. He had been badly beaten. His face was covered in bruises, and both eyes were partially closed thanks to contusions that had swollen the flesh around his brows. His nose was stoppered with plugs of dried blood, and it looked as if he had lost a tooth. He was dressed in what Milton thought was a dressing gown, his legs and feet naked.

"What do I look like?" Hicks asked.

"Can't see much."

"That's probably for the best."

"Are you okay?"

"Been better."

"Anything broken?"

"Lost a tooth. Nothing else. They were working up to that."

"Are you cuffed?"

Hicks held up his right hand. A metal bracelet had been fitted to his wrist, and a chain led from the cuff to a ring that had been fitted to the wall. He jangled the chain and then let his head hang down.

"Do you know where we are?" Milton asked him.

"I think it's an undertaker's."

"Yes," Milton said. "It is."

"What happened?"

"I was in France. Calais. They jumped me. I think they brought me over in a coffin. It's clever-bringing people into the country in boxes. Who's going to open a coffin to check?"

Hicks tried to shift his position and groaned in pain.

"What about you?" Milton asked him.

"They knocked me out. Injected me with something."

"How did they find you?"

"Sarah."

"What do you mean?"

"She f.u.c.ked us over," Hicks said.

"What are you talking about?"

Hicks sighed. "She ran off and told them where to find me."

"Why would she do that?"

"She came onto me-"

"Oh, Hicks..."

"p.i.s.s off, John, please. I turned her down. But I've been thinking about it-why she'd do it. She was scared. She was looking for someone to guarantee she'd be safe. The way she was thinking, maybe if she got together with me-or you-then we'd make sure she'd be okay. But I told her no; I said I loved my wife. She panicked, she didn't know what else to do, so she went back to what she knew. That's the only way they could have found us. She told them what happened and where I was, and then they came after me."

"When was this?"

"I'm not sure. It's difficult to keep track of time. A couple of days ago. They worked me over. It's not just a beating. They did that for s.h.i.ts and giggles. They've got a torture table. They strap you onto it and then run electricity through you. I held out for as long as I could, but he knows what he's doing."

"Who?"

"The main man. His name is Pasko."

"What did you tell him?"

He delivered the word in a blank voice. "Everything."

"About me?"

"Everything."

"Nadia?"

"Everything, John. About her, her brother, you topping the bloke in the brothel, you going to Libya... everything."

Milton had been blaming himself for being taken, but they had been ready for him. There was nothing to suggest that might even have been a possibility. Milton had been beating himself up for allowing it to happen, and the knowledge that it was a trap should have made him feel better. It didn't. He just felt angry.

"I'm sorry, John," Hicks said.