Dead Tomorrow

63

At half past eight in the morning, two people, looking to the outside world like a mother and son, stood in line at one of the dozen EU Passport Holders immigration queues at Gatwick Airport.

The woman was a confident, statuesque blonde in her forties, with hair just off her shoulders in a chic, modern style. She wore a fur-trimmed, black suede coat and matching boots, and towed behind her a Gucci overnight bag on wheels. The boy was a bewildered-looking teenager. He was thin, with ruffled black hair cut short, and with a hint of Romany in his features, dressed in a denim jacket that looked too big for him, crisp blue jeans and brand-new trainers with the laces trailing loose. He carried nothing, except a small electronic game he had been given to occupy him, and the hope in his heart that soon, hopefully this morning, he would be reunited with the only person he had ever loved.

The woman made a series of phone calls in a language the boy did not speak, German, he presumed, while he played with his game, but he was bored with it. Bored with the travelling. Hoping against hope the journey would soon be over.

Finally, it was their turn next. A businessman in front handed his passport to the female, Indian-looking immigration officer, who scanned it, looking faintly bored, as if she was coming to the end of a long shift, and handed it back to him.

Marlene Hartmann stepped forwards, squeezed the boy’s hand, her leather gloves masking the clamminess of her own hands, then handed over the two passports.

The officer scanned Marlene’s first, looked at the screen, which flagged up nothing, and then scanned the boy’s. Rares Hartmann. Nothing. She handed the passports back.

Outside, in the Arrivals hall, among the plethora of drivers holding up printed or handwritten name-boards, and anxious relatives scanning everyone coming through the door, Marlene spotted Vlad Cosmescu.

They greeted each other with a formal handshake. Then she turned to the boy, who had never been outside of Bucharest in his life and was looking even more bewildered now.

‘Rares. This is Uncle Vlad. He will look after you.’

Cosmescu greeted the boy with a handshake and, in his native Romanian tongue, told him he was happy to welcome him to England. The boy mumbled a reply that he was happy to be here and hoped to see his girlfriend, Ilinca, soon – this morning?

Cosmescu assured him Ilinca was waiting for him and longing to see him. They were going to drop Frau Hartmann off, then go on to see Ilinca.

The boy’s eyes lit up and, for the first time in a long time, he smiled.

Five minutes later, the brown Mercedes, with grubby little buck-toothed Grigore at the wheel, pulled out of Gatwick Airport and on to the link road to the M23 motorway. Minutes later they were heading south towards the city of Brighton and Hove. Marlene Hartmann sat in the front passenger seat. Rares sat quietly in the back. This was the start of his new life and he was excited. But more than anything, he could scarcely wait to see Ilinca again.

It had only been a few weeks since they parted company, in a flurry of kisses and promises and tears. And less than a couple of months since this angel, Marlene, had come into their lives to rescue them.

It felt like a dream.

His real name was Rares Petre Florescu and he was sixteen years old. Some time back, he could not remember exactly when but it was shortly after his seventh birthday, his mother had run away from his father, who drank and hit her constantly, taking him with her. Then she had met another man. This man did not want a family, she had explained sadly to Rares, so she was putting him in a home where he would have lots of friends, and would be with people who loved and cared for him.

Two weeks later a silent old woman, with a face as flat and hard as a steam iron, led him up four flights of stone stairs, into a crowded, flea-infested dormitory. His mother was wrong. No one loved or cared for him there, and at first he was bullied. But eventually he made friends with other children his own age, though never with older boys, who regularly beat him up.

Life was hell. Early every morning they were forced to sing national songs, and like all the others, boys and girls, if he did not stand up straight, he was beaten. When he was ten he started wetting his bed and was beaten regularly for that. Gradually, he learned to steal from some of the older boys, who seemed to be able to get extra food. One day he was caught with two chocolate bars he had taken.

To escape retribution, he ran away. And stayed away, joining a community who hung out at Bucharest’s main railway station, Gara de Nord, begging and doing drugs. They slept wherever they could, sometimes in doorways, sometimes in tiny one-room shacks built along the overland steam pipes, and sometimes in cavities beneath the roads.

It was meeting pretty, lost Ilinca, in a hole beneath the road when he was fourteen, that had brought Rares alive for the first time. She had given him a reason to go on living.

Dragging their bedding further up the tunnel beneath the hot pipeline, away from their friends, they made love and they dreamed.

They dreamed of a better life.

Of a land where they could have a home of their own.

And then one day, on the street, fresh from stealing several bottles of Aurolac, he met the angel he had always believed – but had never dared to hope – would visit him.

Her name was Marlene.

And now he was in the back seat of her Mercedes car, and in a short while he would meet his beloved Ilinca.

He was in a state of bliss.

The car was stopping in a residential street. It was so clean. It was like one of the rich sectors of Bucharest where he sometimes went begging.

Marlene turned round and said to him, ‘Vlad and Grigore will look after you now.’

‘Will they take me to see Ilinca?’

‘Exactly,’ she replied. Then she climbed out of the car and walked to its rear.

Peering through the rear windscreen, Rares saw the boot lid pop open. A few moments later, she slammed it shut and walked up the path to the front door of a house, holding an attaché case. He watched her, waiting for her to turn and wave at him. But she just kept looking straight ahead.

The Mercedes pulled away, sharply, jerking him against the seat back.