The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries

A CASE OF ASYLUM by Michael Jecks

It had cost him a fortune, that passport. Not because it was illegal, but because his need was so obvious. Someone in his position couldn’t afford to stay, not even when his wife and daughter remained. When the authorities were after you there was only limited time to escape; and the desperate have to pay.

He’d known he’d have to bolt when he realized he was being watched.

The farm had long been the centre of attention, and the dogs had patrolled his fences enthusiastically all through the hotter weather, their ridged backs terrifying his workers when they materialized from the bushes, heads lowered in truculent demonstration, brows wrinkled and glowering. Alan had loved those two, the dog and the bitch. When he found their corpses out by the boundary fence, even as he wept over them, he was reviewing his options. The two were proof that an attack would come soon.

The government didn’t want his family. Others might – it was possible that they could be held and ransomed – but even here women and children tended to be safe. No, it was him they’d try to “arrest”; him whom they would shoot and leave in a dirt track far from anyone. Not the dignity of a grave for someone who worked against this government.

He’d escape and go to England. Where people were free.

Paul Jeffries yawned and glanced across the Arrivals hall to Jeannie.

She was wearing her “invisible” clothes today: grey trouser suit; a small briefcase of ballistic material holding her laptop hanging from her shoulder; dark hair bobbed in a vaguely professional cut; her face partly concealed behind small, rectangular glasses. But it couldn’t hide her delicate bone structure. Like Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul reckoned. Really good looking, but with a sort of healthiness about her. Pfeiffer was almost unwell looking, with those big pale eyes and all. Jeannie was plain gorgeous once you noticed her – not that many did. She just blended into the background, the best of their intake.

He lifted a finger to his right eye and scratched at the eyebrow three times – “I need a pee” – saw her acknowledge tersely, and moved away from Arrivals to the toilets.

She was often short with him. Probably she’d guessed he was crap. She’d been with him almost from day one, and perhaps because she was so much older and more confident in herself, she resented his laziness and stupidity. That was his impression, anyway. Meanwhile, all he wanted to do was rip her clothes off and get sweaty with her.

It could just be the shift. Most hated this – first thing in the morning, keeping an eye on tourists, holidaymakers, businessmen, and Christ knew who else, but Paul liked it. He’d always wanted to make use of his degree, and although this wasn’t the way he’d anticipated things panning out, with his good second in Anthropology and Psychology, he was happy enough. Standing about here, simply watching the folks walking back into the country was itself an education.

Sometimes the best part was watching the others who worked here. Especially cops. Jesus, he’d almost jumped a crew last month. He’d seen them shoving packets into pockets before walking to customs, and it was only when the first in the line had held up his warrant card at the gate that he’d realized they’d come over from Holland. There were enough who’d go there for a smoke, and these had brought back a small stash. Bleeding idiots, if you asked Paul. He’d never smoked, and didn’t see why others should.

Jeannie smoked sometimes. It had been useful, when she’d been watching someone who was a smoker. There was a sort of fraternity among the morons. They’d stand and exchange sidelong, self-effacing grins; rapport established without words. She’d been able to get closer to them by bringing out her own pack and apologetically nodding towards their lighter. Fluent in Arabic and Swahili, she’d been able to stand nearby and listen without their having the faintest idea. Not that many would look twice at her anyway. No one thought that a coloured woman would work for a disgraced government like this British one.

Yeah, she was a diamond among the watchers.

He washed his hands, fastidious to the last, left the toilets and strolled over to the concessions. Buying good filter coffee, he moved over to the farther side of the hall, from where he still had an unimpeded view of Jeannie.

“Hi, Pete! How’s it hanging?”

“Dave. Nothing so far today.”

David was the massively ineffectual section head of the team. More proof of the rash of urgent recruiting and promotions in recent years, and the perfect example of the Peter Principle - once a moderately competent operative, as manager of the team he had reached his own level of incompetence. Soon it would be noticed, and another effective watcher would be removed from the field. Daft.

After 9/11, the British government had reversed decades of under-investment in immigration and customs controls, and started making changes. The disaster of 7/7 in London added urgency to the new policy. Where politicians had floundered ineffectually, the big guns of business took their opportunity.

Weapons and surveillance companies had suffered with the peace dividend after the cold war, and turned their best sales teams onto the police and politicians. Police commanders keen to exercise more authority demanded better guns, more cameras, identity cards, new laws to ban everything from airguns to congregations larger than two people with a child; and a callow, incompetent government swallowed every worst-case scenario presented to them. The power to arrest and hold men and women, uncharged, returned for the first time in four hundred years.

With these came the need for accurate surveillance on the ground.

The Watchers had been all but disbanded under previous administrations, but suddenly they were needed. Once-redundant officers were offered new packages, tempted with golden hellos, but few wanted to return. Burned once, they were less eager to return. So Human Resources had to seek new blood, returning to the usual fertile grounds: the universities. Not only Oxbridge, either. The new government couldn’t swallow that sort of injustice. The new world order demanded equality in controlling the public.

Yes, the services were taking on people from the smaller universities. The main thing was, bodies on the streets and at ports. Which was how Paul had slipped in, really. And how David had been put in charge of his own team when he was scarcely able to use a phone, let alone the radios.

“We have a new one,” Dave was saying.

Paul took the file with surprise. It was not usual for his leader to present him with a file so conspicuously. Just as Paul was not allowed to have his earpiece plugged in, because the little clear plastic coil gave away his profession, all briefings were supposed to be given in the room out at the back, behind the Special Branch area. He glanced at it, and felt a little worm of anxiety moving in his belly. “What is it?”

“FARC. Watch the BA flight from Bogotà. Twenty minutes.”

Andy Campbell was in the armoury already. His vest was itching, the heavy weight of the ceramic plates pulling at his shoulders as he pulled out the magazine from his H &K sub-machinegun, then drew back the cocking lever to empty the breech. The cartridge flew out, and he caught it with a practised snatch of his hand. He racked the breech a couple of times, from habit, pulled the trigger to ease the springs, and put the gun down on the table.

He wouldn’t be here many more times. He’d been a specialist shooter here at the airport for some months, but he couldn’t carry on. Not once he’d admitted what had happened.

It was last night. He’d knocked off bloody late after doing a favour and working a shift at Heathrow because they’d had a minor flu epidemic. Jack, his partner, and he’d taken overtime and given them a hand, but he’d known he had to be up at four to get to Gatwick airport for the first shift. He’d been dog tired, though. Knackered. So when he got home, he’d started undressing in his hallway, before going up to bed. He had three hours to kip before the alarm was going to go off, and the last thing he wanted was a row with the missus about his hours again. So he’d left his clothes downstairs, his handgun on the belt. The sub-machinegun he took upstairs, of course. But the Glock stayed there in the hall.

He knew he shouldn’t have brought it home, but shit, when the hours were this daft, what the fuck were you supposed to do? If he’d driven to the airport armoury last night to dump his guns before going home, he’d have had no time to sleep. All the lads took risks sometimes – it was the old rule: don’t get found out.

Well, he would be found out this time. Some fucker had broken into his house, gone through the stuff in the hall, and his Glock had been nicked. Bloody gone, just like that. Today he’d been able to get away without it, saying he’d left it behind, and he had the H &K, so there was little enough to be said, but when he got home tonight, he’d have to have a good hunt, just in case. Maybe it had fallen down behind the umbrellas, or got kicked along the hall… Andy just prayed – Jesus, please don’t let it be – yes, that either the thing hadn’t been taken by some crook who was going to use it to hold up a bank or something, or that it hadn’t been thrown away in the road outside his house.

He’d looked, of course, he’d looked everywhere, and just now all he could feel was a cold sweat breaking out at the mere thought that he’d be discovered at any moment. He had to get back home and make sure that the thing wasn’t just lying there.

God, but any moment he could be called to be asked what the fuck his gun was doing in the hands of some drugged up shite who’d been holding a hostage or…

“Andy? Stop that. We’ve got a shout on. Some wanker with bombs or something. Get tooled up again.”

He had to stop thinking of his real name. Now he was Ramón, not Jean-Jacques. Ramón Escobar. The lightness in his belly was unbearable as he peered down through the window at Britain.

It was surprisingly green. He wasn’t used to that. In Bogotà the city lay almost dead on the equator, although at that height it was hard to believe sometimes. The weather was not too hot. Not like Africa. The temperature in Colombia remained constant, and there was little in the way of seasonal variation. No summer and winter, just a slight change, a little cooler or a little warmer.

Like this, it was very green. You took off from Bogotà airport, and all you could see for miles around was greenhouses. The hothouses spread all over the plain, and even when the plane lifted and the ground fell away from that high plateau up in the mountains, the glass reflected the light all about the area. They said that Colombia’s biggest legal export was cut flowers to America, and… Ramón could believe it. Easily.

Here, though, the plane was slowly descending through wisps of pale cloud, and beneath the greenness was… darker. Not so rich and blooming as the plant life of Bogotà. It looked harsher, as though the trees and shrubs were struggling more to survive, and it was easy to see why as the aircraft drew nearer to the ground. Here the greyness of concrete and tarmac was all about, but without the bright colours of jacaranda and bougainvillea to ease the sight. No, here, all was unrelenting, grey, miserable, and he felt the tears welling again to think that this place was his refuge.

His sanctuary in his exile. His new motherland.

The system was well worked out, and they swung into action as soon as the papers had been digested.

Paul walked casually away from the main hall as soon as he had checked the details in the print out and glanced up at the arrivals display. The plane was close, but not here yet. He had time.

Jeannie had seen the discussion, and now was play-acting as only she could. She looked up at the boards, and frowned at her watch, looking about her with a discontented expression, before wandering off in the direction of the women’s toilets. Paul made his own way through a security barrier with a palmed card shown discreetly to the man at the gate, and into the Special Branch section. She was waiting for him.

“What’s going on?”

He passed her the papers. “Terrorist, they reckon. Bloke from Colombia. He’s used this ID before – it was noted when the IRA three were over there. It’s fake. Why the hell he didn’t get something new before taking off…”

“Perhaps no time?” She frowned as she absorbed the description of the man.

“He was with FARC, the terrorists who control the country out towards Venezuela,” Paul said. He shivered. This was the kind of incident he had feared. “They were trained by the IRA in new bombs and mortars. This Escobar was a cousin of one of the cartel leaders from Medellìn, and he escaped the crack down when his cousin was killed. He made it to Panama originally, then turned up back in Colombia with FARC. Now he’s coming here.”

“Why?”

“Jesus! I don’t know, all right?” he snapped. “All we have to do is find him and watch, just like we always do. And when we see him, we go live on radio in case we have to call in the shooters.”

Jeannie nodded, and he saw a small smile of satisfaction on her face – she liked to needle him. There was a reasonably fresh brew of coffee in the jug. She poured, added a good slug of milk, and sipped it easily, walking from the room out to the main hall again, leaving him alone with his fears.

He should have been honest about his education, but when he was interviewed, he assumed that they’d never want him for active duties. He’d said he was good with languages, because that was what his mate said they wanted, but it never occurred to him that he’d be needed. God – the nearest he’d got to languages was a smattering of Bantu and Ndebelele when he took a gap year to study anthropology in Botswana.

Anyway, when he wrote out his CV, no one had seemed remotely interested. There’d been no time for checks. Perhaps someone would spot his lying later, when they went back through the CVs they’d collected in the last years since 9/11. Probably not, though. Human Resources had been reduced as they increased the Watchers – if you spend in one area you have to cut a budget elsewhere – and now there weren’t the HR people to check all the new staff, let alone trawl through existing ones.

At his interview they were more keen on his post as a prefect at school. Responsible character, they’d said. No one had guessed he’d lied about that as well.

His eyes were drawn back to the sheet of paper, to the words that were highlighted: Paul Jeffries to keep close. Spanish essential.

Shit!

The H &K was soon made ready again. The mag slammed into the gun and smacked with the palm of his hand to seat it. He pulled the cocking lever back and let it drive forward, stripping the first round from the magazine and leaving the gun cocked and ready. He switched on the safety, keeping his finger well away from the trigger. In the last few years more police officers had been wounded because of negligent discharges than by criminals. He had enough on his plate without that, sod it.

Jack was waiting at the door. “Shit of a day to leave the Glock behind, eh?”

“Fuck it!” Andy hissed. They both walked out together, their guns across their chests, fingers clear, and they turned their radios on as they entered the thronging main hall.

The man who called himself Ramón knew a fair amount about Bogotà, but only from reading. Not many people went to the city unless they had to. The bombs, the bullets, the murdering, the kidnapping and ransoming all dissuaded tourists, not only foreign ones. Locals were as unlikely to travel there. Anyone could be stopped and kidnapped, and a man like him, with a price on his head, would be best served keeping off the roads. Travel was very dangerous. Just like home. Except here the terrorists and guerillas were better armed than the police, whereas back home only the police and army had guns. And the President’s friends.

Bogotà was beautiful. Ringed by the high, dark peaks, the place had an atmosphere all of its own. He had thought that, sitting in the Parc de Periodistas, waiting for the man to arrive with the new passport. There was a smell of thick smog in the air, and he could see the coal smoke rising from several chimneys in the tower blocks nearby. A sulphurous odour that caught in his throat, and yet the buildings were typical Spanish colonial in so many areas of the city, especially the older parts where the emeralds were sold for so little. Spanish, American, there were so many influences. It was a lovely country.

His contact was a scrawny man, with a sallow, pock-marked complexion and a thatch of filthy brown hair. He spoke English only haltingly, and that suited Ramón. Neither wanted to know much about the other, and Ramón had been assured he was safe. He’d paid well for the advice.

Their business was soon completed, an envelope with much of Ramón’s remaining cash, all in US dollars, was passed over, and in exchange a fake passport, driving licence, and some local identification cards. With these Ramón was safe. With these he could fly from the country and not be turned away at British immigration. It was too easy for asylum-seekers to be refused now, unless they had applied before leaving their homes, but he couldn’t apply back home, and no one would help in Colombia. They had other things to worry about: terrorists and drug-dealers.

The jerk of the wheels hitting tarmac brought him back to the present. In his bag in the hold there was the explosive material, and soon he would be in a position to light the touch-paper, he told himself.

Paul’s first warning was the nod from immigration. There was no need for a buzzer or pager to call when a watcher was present. Only if there was an immediate danger did they “hit the tit” for the armed fuzz. Otherwise everything had to be managed silently, with a minimum of fuss to alert the bad guys that they were being followed.

At the carousel Paul stood back, watching his mark. Not tall, but well muscled, and a face that spoke of a warmer climate than Britain in November. Yes, he was the one, all right. There were plenty of Spaniard types on the place, but this one definitely fitted the photo and profile best. Jeannie was down in the carousel hall, and they had a dummy bag for her to collect. She stood near the mark, and grabbed her bag as it came round.

Paul took a deep breath, shivering with expectation. Then he walked out through the customs tunnel, walking through the red channel and waiting with his own small luggage bag in case the target came this way. Jeannie would wait until he had left, then go through green no matter what.

The customs officer was a slim blonde girl, and she waited with Paul patiently until he had the signal from another officer. Then Paul hurried through the channel and out into the main hall.

Jack and Andy were waiting idly when the call came through.

“He’s in the main hall now. Following him out.”

Andy beckoned with his head and wandered over to the main arrivals corridor. There was a family, then a couple of teens with backpacks, long fair hair straggling. A gap, a long gap. Andy felt his palms begin to sweat. He took his pistol hand away from the H &K and wiped it down his trousers, willing himself to look a little away from the corridor, but unable to obey. The bright fluorescent glow of the arrival tunnel transfixed him. He saw the tall figure appear.

Ramòn. Ramòn. Not Jean-Jacques Bressonard. He had to remember his new name until he could get his package delivered, but the officials on all sides petrified him. There was a young brunette watching him, and he forced himself to blink slowly, smiling through his exhaustion, looking away innocently and striding on determinedly, through the wide corridor, turning right at the end, passing through the crowds. He was safe.

There were two policemen in armour ahead of him, and he hardly glanced at them. He was thinking about his ancestors. They had fled from the terror in France, first arriving here in England, then making the long and dangerous journey to Africa. There they had thrived until the independence, until the new regime.

Over the centuries, England had remained their homeland. They owed their existence to the British who welcomed his Huguenot forebears. His grandfather volunteered and died in the trenches of the first war, his father nearly died in the Battle of Britain as a Hurricane pilot. Yes, Ramón was coming home.

In his own land he had ceased to exist. When his ID card was confiscated, he became a non-person. A man with no ID was nothing. He had no rights.

He smiled and nodded to the police, but then a chill entered his blood as he took in their faces: dead; cold, inhuman. Just like at home.

Walking more swiftly, he went right, avoiding them. Ahead of him was a beautiful woman, just like his lovely Miranda, and he felt a pang in his breast at the thought. He missed his family so much… but hopefully he could have them rescued too. They could come here to this cold, grey country.

For a moment he thought he could hear Miranda calling to him: “Good morning!” just one instant before he saw the gun, realized it was flashing, felt the slugs hit his breast, and collapsed slowly, sinking to his knees even as the police emptied their H&Ks into him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Andy shivered, his finger still tight on the trigger as he stood over the body.

“Cease firing! Cease firing! Cease firing!”

The terrorist was down, bullet wounds weeping all over his torso. An eye was punctured, and wept jelly, and Andy could only stare, too shocked even to feel sick yet. That would come later.

“Andy. Andy! Get a fucking grip. Secure the place! Come on!”

“Why’d he do that? Why’d he fire?”

Paul had been hit twice that he knew of. He had been behind the target when he saw the man’s body jerk and collapse, saw the bullets strike from the police guns, saw the body suddenly lifeless like a dummy, arms flailing as he was thrown to the side.

“No need for Spanish after all!” he said, almost giggling with reaction.

At his side a young girl was weeping, sprawled, a bloody mess on her back to show the exit wound. Near her a man was still and silent, an elderly woman was slumped by the wall, staring with surprise at a bloody hole in her belly, while her husband stood beside her with an expression of spaniel-like hurt and confusion. Paul gazed about him at them all, and tried to stand, but couldn’t. All he could do was sit and watch as the police bellowed at the people in the area to get clear. Dazed, he looked up at the policeman with the sub-machinegun when he approached, and began to wonder what he might do. He’d just seen the man empty his magazine into a crowd.

“There’s an ambulance on its way,” Jack said. He stood behind Andy. “You all right?”

“I’m hit.”

“I can see that.”

Paul shook his head, tasted bile. “Why did she say that? Why did she call to him and shoot him?”

Jack sighed and walked off. Andy frowned. “Who did?”

“Jeannie,” Paul said. He choked a little on the phlegm that had materialised in his throat. “My partner. Where is she?”

It was late when Andy returned to the gun room. He sat on the bench, exhausted. Jack walked in a few minutes later to unload his weapon.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Unload, then. Come on, Andy! Unload.”

Andy stood and fumbled with the cocking lever, but there was nothing to do. His magazine was empty. Instead he pulled the mag free and stared at it dumbly.

Jack eyed him, then unloaded his own weapon. It was unfired. He set it in the safe, and as he did so, his foot kicked something under the bench. “Shit, Andy – is that your gun? You didn’t lock it in the safe, you prick!”

Andy jerked awake from his nightmare and gazed at Jack dumbly. Seeing the direction of his pointing finger, he reached down and took up the Glock in its holster. He hefted it in his hand, pulled it free. It had been fired. He could smell the powder in the barrel. And when he looked closer, the serial number on the side was one he knew all too well.

His hand began to tremble.

Paul took the advice from the ambulance driver, still shivering slightly as the needle went in and he watched the clear liquid pushed into his arm. The wounds were small: one bullet had winged his shoulder, which was already as sore as hell, and a second had caught his rib, running around the outside of it, and ending up in his back after running around underneath his skin. The medic had offered to cut it loose, but he refused the offer.

“You’ll need it taken out soon,” the medic said. He didn’t bother to add that Paul would have to have the entire bullet’s track opened and cleaned to remove all the bits of material and burned powder, or risk septicaemia.

“Davie? Where is she?”

“Who? Jeannie? I told her to go home. She was in shock.”

Paul shivered. Davie looked at him sympathetically. “Look, Paul, you need to rest, mate. Get on home.”

“She murdered the guy.”

“What?”

“She had a handgun. I saw her. She shouted something and opened fire. The cops started shooting as soon as she started. She started it, though. I saw her.”

“What did she shout? Spanish?”

“Lotjhani - in Ndebele it means ‘Hello’.”

“Are you sure?”

The files in the bags were exhaustive. Details of murders, of officially sanctioned brutality. Paul shivered as he took in pictures of bodies in streets, strewn in fields, punctured with gunshots, or slashed with pangas, and he felt the sickness in his belly.

“Who is he?” Dave muttered.

“An asylum seeker. We killed an asylum seeker from Zimbabwe,” Paul spat. The pain was washing through him now as he stared at the sheet of paper, and he could feel a cold sweat run over his spine. Nausea roiled in his belly. “And Jeannie murdered him.”

Perhaps, he wondered, the HR team hadn’t only cocked up with his application?

The woman he had known as Jeannie climbed out of the car with the diplomatic plates, and walked in through the guarded doors into the High Commission as the car purred round to the parking space. The lift took her up, and soon she was seated, waiting for the debriefing, running the events through her mind once more.

It had been perfect. The theft of the policeman’s firearm was a calculated risk, but when she had seen the changed rotas, it seemed a good bet. All the police took their guns home occasionally, even though it was officially disapproved of, and when a man had to travel far to his next shift, it made sense for him to keep his gun nearby. And the gamble paid off.

She had waited for the man this morning, and he had passed her the Glock at the airport entrance. The theft had gone without a hitch. The fool was too exhausted to hear the two as they rifled his clothing and bags. After that all she had to do was wait until she saw Bressonard while the policeman was present. Shoot, and run. They’d said that the police expected a terrorist, so they’d shoot as soon as they heard shots, and they’d been right. They always saw what they expected, or what they feared. No one would suspect her, a “spook”.

So the enemy of the country was dead. He had been led carefully down a route preplanned for him. A contact with FARC had agreed to provide obvious ID for him, and then they had known which aircraft he would take to Britain, and now he was dead. Well, now the world would see what a safe country Britain was for asylum seekers. Like the Brazilian, a white farmer had been removed, and the police were guilty of his homicide. Either the machine gun or the pistol had killed him, and both were one officer’s weapons.

The woman who had been called Jeannie removed her ID and placed it carefully before her on a glass-topped table. She wouldn’t need these again. No. She was looking forward to returning to her own name. Her real one.

And returning to the glorious Zimbabwe sun, of course. Perhaps she could buy a small farm. Maybe even take Bressonard’s?

Life was good.