Love on the Dark Side of the City Read online

  Ivan disappeared back into his den and Sonia went to the stairwell and down into the kitchen basement area.

  Deirdre the house cleaner was talking to the cook Katherine and they both looked up as she arrived.

  “Coffee?” Cook asked.

  “How are things?” Sonia asked as she nodded yes for the coffee. Cook got fresh beans and prepared the coffee as she talked.

  “Four girls came down for Breakfast. The others are still comatose.”

  “Its half three in the afternoon, they better get themselves moving.” Sonia said and sat beside Deirdre.

  “I’ve done the halls and corridors” Deirdre said, “I’ll do the bedrooms next.”

  “Have you seen Sara Teasdale?” Sonia asked.

  “Yes” Deirdre replied, she is up in the library room, I think she is writing a letter to her kids.”

  Sara was English and worked out of London and Dublin on alternative two-month cycles. She had three young children by different fathers who had been serious lovers. She and Sonia had become friends.

  Sara was in her late twenties and had a very attractive figure, which showed no sign of the children she had borne. Sonia and Sara had worked together down the years and shared a lot of experiences.

  In addition, as Sonia had her own child in Russia cared for by her parents, the links of parenthood and their discussions around children had helped to bring their relationship closer. However Sara saw her children every day for two months at a time as she lived in her own flat in London, whereas Sonia could only see her boy a few times a year.

  Sonia made her way up to the library room and saw Sara was sitting at a table busily writing.

  “Hi Sara”

  “Hi Sonia, how was the café?”

  “Interesting” Sonia, replied with a smile, “Are you writing a letter?”

  “I write a letter for the kids every day I am away, just a few lines. Their granny will read it to the youngest.”

  The exchanged pleasantries for a while and then Sonia came to the point

  “Sara, I had an experience today.”

  “Yes?” Sara was all attention.

  “Nothing too strange. An older gentleman asked me if I would like to go see Ireland play Poland in a European something match.”

  “So” Sara said with her cheeky smile, “I take it that is the gentleman you have previously mentioned, the one you like to talk to in the café. So you like football, what’s the problem? Tickets for that match will be like gold dust. Soccer is very popular.”

  “Would you like to come? He has a spare ticket. You’d have to be ready at mid day and you won’t be back until six at the latest.”

  “I’d love to,” Sara said, “I can write and tell the kids. Most of the Irish team play their club soccer in England and the kids know of them. And there are one or two coloured players on the Irish team. Because the kids have Jamaican grand parents they like to follow coloured footballers. I suppose they can relate to them in their dreams of glory”

  “Settled then” Sonia said, “we go to the football match on Wednesday”

  “Agreed” Sara said and went back to her letter.

  Chapter six

  Adizua awoke with a start. Something was very wrong. Something did not fit expectations. He lay absolutely still, trying to get a feel for his bearings. The stygian blackness was disorientating. As he awoke more fully he also calmed down.

  They were at sea. That was the problem. It felt like they were at sea. He looked at his luminous watch dial in the blackness. If it was still correct he was in position for about ten hours. This was much longer than planned.

  But the lorry had not stopped. He had stayed awake for the Calais to Dover part of the trip, tensed and afraid of discovery.

  But all had seemed to go well. He felt the roll of the lorry at sea and then the arrival on dry land again. Followed by the passage through customs. But then the lorry had not stopped again. It just motored on relentlessly. He needed it to stop so that he could escape.

  Now the lorry seemed to be at sea again. Adizua cursed himself for falling asleep. It was the steady rocking motion of the lorry. He was in the rear half of a two-trailer taut liner lorry. Idiot, idiot, he cursed himself. It had taken him two years to get this far. Was it to all fall apart at the last moment, just as he seemed to be a success in arriving on the Island of the United Kingdom?

  If the lorry was at sea, he reasoned, it must have turned around and now it must be on its’ way back to Calais. Maybe he could remain undiscovered. Nothing could be done except to wait until the lorry came to a halt on dry land. Then he could get out and see where he was. At worst if he remained undetected he could try again.

  Resigned to fate Adizua took another sip of water from the bottle he had brought for the journey. It was nearly all gone. Around him there was a silence. But the background of noise was definitely to do with a ship at sea.

  Adizua checked his cocoon. The silver foil seemed to be in place, it was uncomfortably warm, but he resisted the temptation to open his vent any wider.

  Adizua had planned meticulously. Starting from a job in a café far enough south of Calais to be less obvious as a staging post. From the vantage point of his role as dishwasher in the café he had spent a number of months recovering his finances and planning the next stage of the journey. He had begun to note the registration numbers of the lorries that made a regular run with a stop at the café.

  It took patience but he persisted over months.

  Then he had waited and watched and targeted a lorry he had seen cross a number of times. It was large and had a skin over the trailers similar in texture to the one he had prepared from some covering suitable for a taut liner.

  His car stripping and repair skills learned in Nigeria had served him well. With the covering he had fashioned a cocoon large enough to hold his size and to fit attached to the roof section on the interior of the taut liner. He lined the cocoon with silver foil so that any heat detectors used by customs would not pick up his body heat.

  When his target lorry stopped for refreshment on a Calais Dover run he had installed himself on board. Kitted out in overalls and carrying a piece of taut liner cover, an apparent patch matching the taut liner, he had managed to pass off his accession to the lorry while the driver was still at breakfast.

  Once inside he had quickly put his cocoon design in place, secured it and then climbed inside and sealed it from the inside. He had reckoned on three hours to get through to Dover and through customs and then any number of hours on land while the lorry made its way through to its destination in the UK.

  Trouble was he did not know the destination of the load and he was prepared, if necessary, to sit out a long journey through the UK. But he had not reckoned on a second sea crossing. He had chosen the wrong time to fall asleep and lose track of what was going on.

  Time passed slowly, then things began to happen in a rush. The driver came back on board with his helper when the ship’s motion changed as it came into dock. Then the Lorry engine gunned into life. They were coming ashore.

  There were voices as the truck came ashore. Adizua strained to hear but there was a lot on noise. Then another stop. Customs.

  The side covering on the trailer was swished back a few yards at both ends. The driver talking, more muted conversation. The sides were closed again. The lorry started up.

  Adizua allowed himself to relax. Wherever they were he had got through customs again. Now he had to stay awake and be ready to make his escape at the soonest possible opportunity. He had no way to see, but it should be dark by now.

  Eventually the lorry came to a halt. More manoeuvring and then it reversed a little. With great skill the driver manoeuvred the two-trailer truck through a narrow entrance into a dispatch yard. He parked the lorry alongside several others. The engine stopped and there was silence.

  After some noisy pulling at the skin of the taut liner, a voice shouted, “Load checked and secure.” A dog barked and Adizua tensed. Must be
a security man with a guard dog. He remained as still and silent as he could, breathing slowly.

  “We’ll let it be unloaded in the morning,” the voice from the drivers cab said.

  “Thanks Bill” the outside voice said. “I did not think you would get back in time. Did you get the tickets?”

  “Sure did, I got ten tickets as arranged. Once I had the tickets for the soccer match I had to make it. First time I have ever driven non stop from Dover to Dublin, I’m wrecked.”

  “I’m sure you had a bit of a nap on the Irish Sea. Just get a good night’s sleep Bill. You’ll be fresh and able for it tomorrow. That Polish driver was good to get us the tickets.”

  “Did I not arrange it the last time we were over on the continent? No way the likes of us would get that many tickets for the match if we tried in Ireland. They are like gold dust. Tickets from Poland had to be the answer. Mind you I had to pay a few bob the get the job done. Our Polish contact made a few Euro on the transaction.”

  “Fair play to you, you bring the tickets tomorrow and we will fix you up. I’ve arranged with the lads that where we would meet tomorrow, Mulligan's pub at twelve o’clock tomorrow, Billy. We want to be in good time. You bring the tickets and we’ll take it from there.”

  There was more clanging and the security man for the site came took charge of the keys to the lorry. The security man’s dog barked again, but it did not seem agitated. Then silence descended.

  Slowly, about an hour later, keeping noise to a minimum, Adizua lowered himself from his cocoon. He disconnected the unit from the roof of the taut liner and folded it carefully. He had entered the trailer by cutting a slice into the covering near the front.

  He had then meticulously resealed this cut when he was aboard. He now used the same exit to depart, swiftly and silently slitting along his previous repair. He would not be able to repair again. They would notice it at some time, probably during the unloading in the morning. Probably they would then make a connection to a possible illegal entrant. However he needed to be well gone by then.

  The next problem was the security guard and his dog. Adizua climbed onto the cab of the lorry and from there onto the roof of the taut liner trailer. He was wearing dark clothes and melded into the darkness.

  As he lay in position the cold began to get to him. And the dampness. It was cold and damp. He shivered.

  It took a while to spot the security guard. The dog was roaming free and that was a problem. There was a light at a hut at the front of the yard. The yard was large with about twenty trailers, most without the lorry unit, or tractor unit as it was called, attached.

  Only a few tractor units were in place, most of the trailers were free standing and appeared loaded and ready to depart. The lorry driver would drop off his trailers when he delivered to the yard, and then take the tractor unit and reattach to the trailers ready for dispatch. Adizua had seen the system in action in Nigeria and assumed it would be similar.

  There was a wall around the yard and lights. However the focus would be on stopping a break in, hopefully less concentrated on stopping a break out. He scanned the yard, watching the dog. It was a cold night and the dog was sticking near to the control hut and its warmth. The security guard was inside and there was a faint sound of a radio.

  Then Adizua saw his escape route. There was a skip along one side of the wall. It seemed to be full with rubbish and near by there was a heap of broken glass and other packaging rubbish. He would be able to stay downwind of the dog.

  Adizua slid silently off the roof of the Taut-liner trailer and carrying his cocoon of material he very carefully made his way to the skip. He lowered his cocoon over the side and left it in the hope it would not be discovered. He stood on the edge of the skip and threw his jacket over the glass-impregnated top of the wall. Then he was up and over, pulling his jacket down after him.

  He was in some sort of industrial estate. The roads were dark and quiet but had street lighting.

  Adizua listened carefully in the silence of the night. To his disgust it was beginning to rain in small soft cold drops, which began to trickle down his neck and dampen his clothes. There was a touch of fog around the street lamps. Then he heard what he hoped to hear, the sound of traffic.

  He surmised that a major road must be somewhere off to his right. He needed to get on that road and into a city centre where he could disappear, as he had successfully done during his travels of the past two years.

  He walked briskly as if going somewhere with a purpose. It would be little help if a police car came by. However if he did not look suspicious in his movements, then others who might see him might just ignore him. He needed a small edge if he was to succeed. That and he needed his luck to hold out.

  The road wound around to a major well-lit junction. He was in a side road and he hung back unwilling to expose himself in the light. The junction went up to a flyover and a Motorway ran underneath. The traffic was light at that time of night, but the motorway seemed busy enough with cars and lorries travelling at high speed.

  What really shook Adizua were the road signs. They certainly were not French. They were in English in large letters and smaller letters in another language he could not recognize. Signs for Naas and Dublin, and for the south.

  Was it possible that he was not back in France? Surely they had crossed water twice? He tried to remember what the men at the lorry had said as they departed. They had spoken in English, something about the Irish Sea. He racked his brains. Irish, there were Irish in Lagos. Guinness had a brewery there, black stout from Ireland.

  He remembered his geography vaguely. Ireland was an Island in Europe near Britain. It must be he was in Ireland. He sat down and put his face in his hands. He was cold and damp and sitting in the rain on damp ground and he was in Ireland. He wondered if his journey would ever end.

  Adizua was startled by a kick to his foot. He took his hands from his face and looked up. He had failed to notice the large van that had slid to a stop along the kerb.

  Three very rough looking men were staring down at him. Adizua’s nostrils were assailed by the smell of drink.

  “Are ye all right?” a harsh voice said, “what are ye doing sitting on the edge of the road in the rain?”

  “Jasus” another man said “he’s as black as the ace of spades.”

  “Give him a belt on the head and see if he is carrying any money,” the older harsh voice said again.

  “Let him be” a young voice from behind the two standing over him interjected, “can’t you see he can’t be well”

  Adizua had frozen with anxiety when he realized he was outnumbered. He stayed still trying not to evidence any behaviour that they could take as aggressive. Adizua had been robbed a number of times on his travels and was used to the prospect. His uncle had given him some good advice when he saw him off from Lagos.

  “I am giving you two wallets,” he had said. “Keep a small amount in one. That way if you are attacked you can surrender the smaller amount and hope that will save you.”

  Adizua had fifty pounds sterling in his front wallet and a few hundred Euro, the balance of his fortune in the lining of his pants. He still had the small sharp knife he had used to cut his way out of the trailer. It was in his boot, but he held still to see what developed before he made a move. He knew he could give a good account of himself in a fight but instinct told him to wait.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?” the younger voice said coming nearer and peering into his face.

  Adizua saw a rough face with a shock of red hair and dirt around his ears. But for all its’ toughness the face looked concerned. Adizua was about to speak when the middleman spoke again.

  “Who are you? He demanded. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m a traveller,” Adizua stammered, “I…”

  But he was interrupted by raucous laughter. The older man in particular was highly amused.

  “He ses he’s a traveller” he guffawed and the others laughed along with him.

&nb
sp; “I am on an itinerary…” Adizua tried to continue.

  “He’s an itinerant!” The older man was so amused he had to hold the side of the van or perhaps it was a combination of the laughing and the drink he had consumed earlier.

  “Ah lave him alone,” the younger man said. “When I was at school the nuns said the blacks were just like us only different on the outside.”

  “That’s not today nor yesterday,” the middle man said, “when were you last at school?”

  “We should take him back to Molly” the older man said with a vicious cackle, “I like to see her face when we tell her we have a black traveller”

  “She’d want to know if he was one of the O’Toole's of Galway,” the middleman said building on the joke and they laughed again.

  “Are you an illegal immigrant?” The younger man asked seriously. “How did you get here?’

  “We can’t dally around here for long” the older man said harshly, his foul humour returning. “Hit him a box and see if he had any money and let us away out of here before a squad car happens along.”

  Adizua met the eyes of the younger man. He did not need to say anything, the younger man understood.

  “I’m Phelan,” he said, “and this is Paddy,” he said indicating the middle man “and this is Joe,” he said indicating the older man.

  “I’m Adizua” Adizua said but remained sitting, afraid to move in case it acted as a trigger for them to attack him. “Freezing” he said pretending distress, “please help, a little help...”

  “Is it help he wants?” the old man said harshly.

  “He said he’s a traveller, we’re helping him” the younger man replied firmly.

  “The other two looked at him, then the older man shrugged. “I’m going back to me bottle of cider” he said and climbed back into the van.

  The other two helped Adizua to his feet. They regarded him cautiously; he was bigger and stronger looking standing up. They were tough but they knew the older man Joe was past it for a fight and they both had some drink taken. Nonetheless they had no fear of Adizua, they were used to a fight and could take any one man between the two of them.