8 Cyrus

8

At some point during the night I wake to the sound of an argument in the hospital corridor. Evie is still asleep. I go to investigate. A young black woman is arguing with the police officer who is guarding the survivor.

‘How did you get past the front desk?' he asks. ‘You're not supposed to be here.'

‘He can tell us what happened,' says the woman. ‘He knows the truth.'

She's dressed in motorcycle leathers and carrying a full-face helmet. She ducks under his arm. The constable blocks her way and talks into his shoulder radio, calling for back-up.

Boots echo along the tiled floor as more officers arrive, surrounding the woman, pinning her arms to her sides and marching her towards the main entrance.

‘They weren't supposed to die,' she yells. ‘They were murdered.'

The automatic doors open and close. I follow from a distance and watch a sergeant lecture the woman beneath a neon light where a cloud of moths is circling the brightness. He lets her go and she walks towards a motorbike, parked near the access road. Zipping up her jacket, she flicks the straps from her helmet, before spinning to confront me. Eyes flashing. ‘What's your problem?'

‘I heard what you said to the police – what did you mean?'

Cautiously, ‘Are you a reporter?'

‘No. I was there today – on the beach – when the bodies washed ashore. You said they were murdered.'

‘They were. Did you see the survivor?'

‘He's a boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen.'

‘Did you talk to him?'

‘No. He's sedated.'

Her dark brown eyes travel the length of me before resting on my face. ‘The migrant boat was deliberately rammed.'

‘How could you know that?'

‘I've seen the messages.'

She holds up her phone. I step closer and look at the screen.

A boat has stopped us. They are telling us to turn back. We have claimed asylum, but they will not listen.

The message is dated and time coded. Fourteen minutes later, a second one arrived.

The engine has stopped. We are drifting but we can see the shore. The boat is following us.

There is a much longer gap of forty minutes before the last message.

Help. They are killing us. People are in the water. Help.

‘You need to show these to the police,' I say.

The woman looks towards her motorbike, unsure of what to do.

‘What's your name?' I ask.

‘Florence Gatsi. I'm a lawyer. I could get into trouble for having these texts.'

‘You'll have to explain that to me,' I say. ‘How about I buy you a coffee?'

She glances at the hospital and the police officers waiting outside. ‘I don't think I'm allowed in there.'

‘We can drink it here.'

I point to a picnic table with bench seats, bathed in the glow from a streetlight. ‘My name is Cyrus Haven. I'm a forensic psychologist.'

‘You work with the police.'

‘Sometimes.'

This doesn't reassure her. If anything, she looks more nervous. She's in her late twenties, with a slight accent, South African, maybe, or Kenyan, but softened by years of boarding schools and college debating contests. With her high cheekbones and slightly turned-down mouth, she could grace a glossy magazine cover. Many women are pretty in their teens or twenties or thirties or forties. Some grow more beautiful with age or find a particular sweet spot when they're at their most beautiful, but Florence is clearly parked there for a lifetime.

‘You won't run away, will you?' I ask.

She tentatively shakes her head. Her dreadlocks are threaded with coloured beads that make click-clacking sounds as they swing.

I go inside and negotiate two hot drinks from a dispensing machine that spits out sump oil claiming to be coffee. When I return, Florence is at the picnic table, studying her phone.

‘I didn't ask if you wanted sugar.'

‘No,' she says distractedly. ‘You live in Nottingham.'

‘You googled me.'

‘You don't make it easy. No Instagram page or Twitter account.'

‘I avoid social media.'

‘Why?'

‘Privacy. Anonymity.'

She is still reading. I know what's coming.

‘Ah,' she says, not looking up from her phone. She has discovered a news story about the event that shaped my life. At age thirteen, I came home from football practice and discovered the bodies of my parents and twin sisters. The killer was my older brother, Elias, a paranoid schizophrenic, who heard voices in his head.

Florence blinks at me sadly. I hate that look. It makes me feel like a three-legged dog or an ageing polar bear rocking from side to side in a zoo.

‘It happened a long time ago,' I say, wanting to change the subject.

‘And it doesn't define you,' she adds.

‘Not as much as people like to think.'

‘Where is your brother now?'

‘In a secure psychiatric hospital.'

‘Do you ever visit him?'

‘Twice a month.'

She seems intrigued, but for the right reasons.

Florence has retrieved a notebook from the pannier of her motorbike. The front cover artwork is Monet's Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge. She opens the notebook and clicks the button on a ballpoint pen.

‘I write everything down,' she explains. ‘Have done since university.'

‘So, it's not a legal thing.'

‘More a remembering thing.'

‘How did you get the text messages?' I ask.

‘I work for an organisation called Migrant Rescue. We provide information to people who are trying to cross the Channel. Tides. Weather. Currents. Shipping lanes.'

‘You facilitate unauthorised crossings?'

‘No. It's not like that. These people are going to make the journey anyway. They're desperate. They've left their homes, families, friends, histories. They've travelled thousands of miles and now they're this close.' She holds up her thumb and forefinger, as if showing me the distance. ‘We are making the journey safer.'

‘Is that what happened today?'

Florence narrows her eyes and sets her jaw defiantly.

‘Migrant Rescue saves lives. People used to argue against needle exchange programmes for drug addicts, claiming they encouraged junkies to inject themselves. Instead, they made drug use safer and cleaner and kept addicts alive until they could turn their lives around. We're doing the same thing. Keeping people safe.'

‘I pulled bodies out of the water today. Women and children. If they had stayed home . . . or in France—'

‘Their boat was rammed.'

‘How did you get the messages?'

Florence sighs. ‘For the past month I've been corresponding with a young woman from Sudan, a university student studying in Nottingham. Her brother texted her from the beach in Calais two nights ago, saying he was on his way.'

‘He sent the messages?'

Florence nods.

‘Is he the survivor?'

‘I don't think so. He's older. Twenty-four.'

I ask to see her phone again. This time she shows me earlier texts sent from Calais. One of them includes a photograph of three young men, arm in arm, who are sitting on stone steps above the sand.

‘That's Jaden,' says Florence. ‘It was taken ten days ago in Calais.'

She pulls up another image. It shows Jaden sitting next to a young woman: his sister, Nadia. They could be twins. Both are wearing traditional Sudanese clothes, white with splashes of colour around the hems and sleeves and collars.

‘This was taken at a cousin's wedding in Khartoum, two years ago,' says Florence. ‘Jaden arrived in Calais in March. He made two attempts to cross in July. The first time he was forced back by the weather and the second time by the French coastguard.'

‘He was paying people smugglers?'

‘I have no information about that.'

Florence is already covering herself legally. She can't admit to having knowledge of a crime.

‘Nadia phoned me two nights ago and said he was coming. She wanted me to handle Jaden's asylum claim.'

I read the messages again. Jaden sent them during the journey when the migrant boat was in range of phone towers on the coast. Clearly, someone tried to make the migrants turn back. Fifty-six minutes later, they were in the water, dying.

I look up at Florence. ‘Did you contact the coastguard?'

‘Of course, but I had no coordinates or any way of tracking the signal.'

I spend a moment considering the implications. I have heard stories of migrant boats being turned back or impounded by the coastguard or police. Others have been sabotaged before leaving France, but nothing comes close to a deliberate sinking.

‘Where is Nadia now?' I ask.

‘In Nottingham. She's waiting for me to call her.'

‘I'll talk to the detective handling the investigation. He'll want access to Nadia's phone.'

‘Can you keep my name out of it?' asks Florence.

‘That's not possible, but you know that already.'

She sighs and nods her acceptance.

‘How do I contact you?' I ask.

‘Give me your phone.'

‘I don't have one.'

She looks at me like I'm from another planet. ‘I lost it today,' I explain.

Florence tears a page from the back of her notebook and jots down her number.

‘Call me.'