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‘A do-gooder.’
‘The texts are genuine.’
‘Bring them to me . . . and her.’
Evie emerges, wearing the change of clothes that I brought her from the guest house – jeans, a cotton blouse and red Vans. I introduce her to Carlson, who asks if she’ll sit with Arben for the interviews. Evie is not a natural volunteer or joiner of things because her better angels are elusive, but she agrees to help because she feels sorry for Arben.
Back in the main hospital building, we meet the official police interpreter, an elderly man with a bushy grey moustache and eyebrows that dance on his forehead when he speaks. He says something to Evie in Albanian. She nods but doesn’t reply.
‘Grandpa smells funny,’ she whispers, pinching her nose.
‘Be nice. He’s old,’ I reply.
‘Try ancient. A fossil. A dinosaur. A wrinkly. A coffin dodger.’
I put my finger to my lips. ‘Shhhh.’
Carlson summons us into Arben’s room. The boy is sitting up in bed, propped up on pillows. His face looks bruised, and his eyes are red-rimmed, but they brighten when he spies Evie. Chairs are arranged around the bed. Cameras and recording devices have been set up and tested.
I take a seat near the window, making sure that Evie can see me. The protesters have gone quiet outside, having been moved further away from the hospital buildings after complaints from patients and visitors.
Carlson begins slowly and addresses each question directly to Arben, who is answering in English when he can. We learn the boy’s full name: Arben Pasha, aged fourteen. He grew up in a village outside of Tirana, the Albanian capital, with his two siblings, Besart, nineteen, and his sister Jeta, seventeen. Their mother died of cancer three years ago. Their father went to the Middle East to find work and didn’t return. Besart had looked after his siblings since then, working as a tour guide during the summer and training to be a mechanic at a garage owned by a family friend. Jeta had won a place at the University of Tirana but didn’t have the money to study.
One day Besart borrowed a customer’s car to take Arben to an endocrinologist because his blood sugar levels were spiking, causing periodic blackouts. Returning to the garage, he was arrested by police and charged with stealing the vehicle. Before the trial, Besart sold all of the family possessions and he and Arben and Jeta caught a speedboat across the Adriatic Sea to Italy. From there they travelled by bus and train to France and spent three months living in a migrant camp on the outskirts of Calais. They were twice evicted by police and slept under bridges and in abandoned warehouses.
Besart did odd jobs during the day. Picking up rubbish off the beaches or weeding gardens, earning enough to buy them food. There were problems in the camp. Violence. Robberies. Some of the young men were harassing Jeta, trying to get her alone. Besart bought a knife to better protect her, carrying it in his sock.
As the weather grew warmer, they began visiting beaches south of Calais every night, hoping to find a boat that would take them to England. They would hide in the sand dunes, scanning the beach, watching for departures.
They had no money to pay a smuggler, so they tried to talk their way on to boats or sneak on board. One trick was to hide in the sandhills until the last moment. As the boat pushed off, they would sprint across the sand and try to scramble on board, but they were beaten back by passengers who feared the boat would sink if it carried too many people. After each failure, they returned to the camp, hungry and exhausted.
Besart barely slept, working all day, scrounging for food, and watching the beach at night. He met a Serbian called Keller as they waited in a food queue. Keller had big hands and a big laugh and had once been a fisherman. He said he could steer a boat to England if they could find one.
Together, they began collecting money from migrants, who each paid what he or she could afford. They drew lots to choose who would get a place on the boat. Besart found one for sale. He met the broker on the beach at Sangatte. He asked for the money up front, but Besart said he’d get paid when he saw the boat and checked it was seaworthy. They arranged to meet the following night, but it was a trick. Besart was jumped by three men who stole the money and left him with two broken ribs.
‘How did you get a boat?’ asks Carlson.
‘Besart found another one.’
‘He stole it.’
Arben shakes his head.
‘We checked,’ says Carlson. ‘The owner of the boat reported it stolen.’
‘He sold it to us.’
‘Your brother was a people smuggler.’
‘No!’
The interpreter has a habit of copying Arben’s tone and volume, as though dubbing a foreign film. He is also inclined to use more words than Arben does, which makes me wonder if he’s embellishing the answers.
Eventually, the questions begin to focus on the crossing from Calais. Arben describes waiting on the beach for the boat to arrive. The tide was coming in and they had difficulty getting everybody on board.
‘How many people?’ asks Carlson.
Arben asks for a piece of paper and begins to draw a picture of the RHIB, with small stick figures representing the migrants. He holds the pencil in his fist like he wants to stab the page. Counting the figures, he estimates there were twenty people, including four women and two children.
