The Jungle - John Milton #9 (John Milton Thrillers) Read online

  “I will tell you,” Hamza said.

  “I know you will.”

  Milton was disgusted by him. He fastened a fresh length of tape across his mouth, wrapping it around his head, and then wound another length of tape around his wrists. Once Milton was satisfied that the smuggler was secure, he went back into the front and lay across the seats.

  He set his alarm for six and fell asleep within moments of closing his eyes.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  THEY CALLED IT THE JUNGLE, and it was with good reason. The camp had taken over twenty or thirty acres of rough scrubland on the eastern edge of Calais. It was not static, and, over the time it had first coalesced, the tents and structures had been cleared and the inhabitants had moved on. The men and women and children had gathered again around a new location, pitched their tents and built their ramshackle hovels and, before long, the camp had reformed once more. This latest iteration of the camp had found a home in a former landfill site three miles from the centre of the town. Satellites had sprung up in other spots around the perimeter of the town, but this was the principal gathering.

  Milton had left the Sprinter on a quiet road that led up to a derelict quarry. He had interrogated Hamza one final time, and the smuggler had given him clear directions and a description of the tent within which the meeting would take place. Milton had gagged him again and left him trussed up in the back of the van. He made sure that the odds were against anyone coming across the van, that if he did nothing, then Hamza would die there. It was a tempting proposition, but Milton knew that that way of thinking was the influence of his old self. It would be the satisfaction of his own selfish desire to punish, and giving in to the temptation would bring him closer to the bottle. The man that he had tossed over the side of the ferry had been different: then, there had been a need to thin out the numbers against him. He knew, though, of course, that retribution had been a contributing motivation. He remembered the way that Kolo had been treated, and the smuggler had personified all of the cruelties that Milton saw in Ali’s operation.

  Bad luck for him.

  But Milton would play this one straight. He would call the police and alert them once he was out of harm’s way. The authorities could deal with Hamza.

  #

  THERE WAS A MILE between the van and the camp and now, as Milton crested a hill, he saw the sprawling site laid out below him. There were no obvious boundaries, with tents being pitched wherever there were suitable spaces, growing denser and denser as they drew nearer to the middle of the camp. He saw the flicker of campfires and the tendrils of smoke that curled into the gloomy early morning; artificial lights shone steadily near to electrical generators. It was impossible to judge how many people were stuffed into the camp, but Milton guessed that it was in the thousands.

  There was little order to the way the camp had grown, but spaces had been left between tents that resembled roads or paths. Milton started down into the fringe of the camp and followed the paths deeper inside. Whole families were crammed into tents, pale faces staring out of the openings at the comings and goings. Milton saw children gazing out at him with sad eyes, and their parents, recognising him as European, put out their hands for change.

  Hamza’s instructions were good, and Milton made his way via a series of waypoints that matched the descriptions that he had been given: a cargo container that had been set down on bricks to serve as a legal advice centre; an open kitchen where volunteers served free meals; a lean-to that had been fashioned out of concrete blocks and sheets of corrugated metal, a sign on that sheeting announcing that this was a shop. Milton glanced in through the doorway and saw rows of shelving illuminated by a single naked bulb, each shelf holding tins of food, bags of rice and bottled water. He passed a similar structure, but larger, this one equipped with picnic tables and chairs and advertised as a café. There were two tables outside the entrance, too, and the men who sat around them, smoking and drinking tea, watched Milton pass with surly interest.

  Milton found a tent that was being used as a clothes shop. He went inside and, for a few euros, he was able to buy a second hand jacket that was stained and threadbare, a garment that would blend in much better than the jacket he was wearing. He changed, discreetly transferred his pistol to the inside pocket, gave his jacket to a coatless man who was browsing the rails, and went outside again.

  Milton continued to the middle of the camp. The scrum of people grew denser, with crowds gathering around a caravan that was marked with the logos of Médecins Sans Frontières and another that was staffed by volunteers offering immigration advice. Milton had to shoulder his way through the sudden tide of people who surged toward another caravan where bags of rice were being given out. It was hot and smelly, the air freighted with the odour of unwashed human bodies and raw sewage. It was difficult to understand how people could live like this.

  Milton paused. Hamza had said that the rendezvous was in a tent here. He had described the tent, but now, as Milton searched, he couldn’t see it.

  Milton looked left and right and saw a man with two pretty young girls approaching from behind. He waited until they passed. The man was behind the girls, leading them ahead with hands on their shoulders. They looked frightened, and the man was impatient and self-important.

  Milton recognised them for what they were: another smuggler bringing more merchandise for sale.

  Milton followed and watched. The man led the girls to a tent, stopped them with a hand on each shoulder, and spoke to them.

  Milton stopped, too, stepping inside another semi-permanent structure that had been given over to another shop.

  The proprietor glared up at him. “What you want?”

  Milton spared a quick glimpse at him and his store. The man had built a set of rickety shelves to display the sum total of his goods: a dozen boxed mobile phones, with a sign behind the counter announcing that he also had SIM cards to sell.

  He looked back outside. The tent was as Hamza had described it: large, the canvas patched and stitched and marked with a stencil that identified it as property of the UN. The tent flap had been opened and folded back against the side of the tent, and the two girls were being ushered inside.

  “You can’t just stand there,” the shopkeeper complained.

  “That tent over there,” Milton said, pointing as the man who had shepherded the two girls went inside and pulled the tent flap closed behind him. “Who’s inside?”

  The proprietor came out from behind the counter. “You buy, or go.”

  Milton ignored his complaint. Instead, he took a note from his pocket and gave it to the man. “That tent,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

  The man held out his hand with the note laid flat across it. “Another.”

  Milton took another ten and laid it atop the first.

  “I don’t know who they are,” the man said. “I have seen them before. Two times. The last time was one week ago. The men are not from the camp.”

  “Describe them.”

  “There are three. One is big—this big.” The proprietor was a touch under six feet tall, and he raised his hand four or five inches above his head. “Shaved head, tattoos on his neck. The other two come with him. All white. Not from camp.”

  “And?”

  “Girls come to see them. Most girls come out again, go back to camp. Others stay. They take them away. It is like a bazaar. A souk. You know these words?”

  “I do. Thank you.”

  Milton stepped away from the proprietor and turned away. He reached into his pocket for the little pistol. His fingers found the grip, and he pressed down until the butt was pressed in his palm and his finger was around the outside of the trigger guard. He pulled it out a little, freeing it so that it would be easier to pull, and crossed the path to the tent into which the man had led the two women.

  He could hear the sounds of conversation emanating from inside: laughter, a timorous voice, a harsh word, more laughter. He walked on for a little while, turning through the cha
otic lanes and alleys until he was at the other side of the tent. He couldn’t see anything that gave him any cause for concern. The people went about their business, none of them sparing the tent any more attention than the other tents nearby.

  Milton continued around it until he was back at the front again.

  He took the gun out, holding it against his body so that it would be hidden from the crowds that eddied along the thoroughfare behind him.

  He knew what he was going to do. His plan had been successful, so far at least; this was where the Albanians came to do their recruitment. This was the place they came to stock their brothels.

  He held the gun in his right hand; he reached out with his left for the flap of the tent.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Milton turned his head. There was a man next to him.

  Milton realised what was about to happen, but by then it was too late for him to do anything about it. He was aware of a second person behind him, but, before he could turn or step away, he felt a sharp scratching against the skin on the back of his neck. He felt a sensation of cold deep inside his muscles. His arm, held up so that he could probe his neck with his fingers, became weak. He was dazed by sudden wooziness, and the strength drained out of his legs as if at the press of a switch.

  He stumbled forward, his fall arrested by hands that slipped beneath his shoulders.

  The tent flaps were opened, and Milton caught a glimpse of the men and women inside, lit by the flickering light of a hurricane lamp, before he was dropped inside. He fell to his knees. He looked up into the frightened faces of the women he had seen outside, and, behind them, a large man with a shaven head and tattoos on his neck.

  He was identical to the man Milton had suffocated in the brothel.

  Milton lost his balance and toppled over onto his side, the plasticky smell of the groundsheet filling his nostrils.

  A curtain of darkness fell. His eyes closed, and the darkness was complete.

  Part 6

  London

  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 classic 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 space before his feet bumped 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 bumping 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 lassitude 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 muffled, 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 muffled 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.”<
br />
  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?”