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I look down. My shirt is flapping open. The knife sliced it vertically along the line of the buttons but didn’t cut my skin. ‘Next time ah’ll draw blood,’ he says. ‘And the third time, I’ll open an artery and watch you bleed out. You’ll nae feel a thing.’
To an outsider, it must look like a strange dance, full of lunges and parries and twirls. I dodge him again, but he’s moving just as quickly, keeping me pinned down with the water behind me, blocking my escape. What would I break if I jumped?
Again, I feel the blade whisper over my clothes. My shirt sleeve has been opened up and a thin red line oozes blood along my forearm.
‘That’s the second warning,’ he says. ‘Where is yer car?’
‘The other side of the gates.’
‘Gimme the keys.’
I reach inside my trouser pocket and hold them up.
‘Dinnae be a dickhead this time,’ he says.
I toss the keys at his feet and immediately turn, hoping to reach the gates before he does.
I hear Carlson’s voice. ‘Put it down.’
The detective is fifteen feet away, holding a Taser. My attacker twirls the knife across his knuckles and turns to face him.
Bang!
Two wires snake across the space and the metal probes cling to the trawlerman’s shirt. Fifty thousand volts of electricity enter his body with a crackling sound. He goes rigid and drops to the ground, raising a puff of dust.
‘Don’t touch him,’ says Carlson.
Other officers wait until the electrical surge has dissipated before holding him down, one sitting on his legs and the other on his back. Pulling his arms behind him. Snapping on handcuffs. Reading him his rights. On the water, the second man is being pulled onto the police launch.
Evie is still standing on the far side of the dock gates. I raise my hand, letting her know that I’m OK, but she doesn’t respond. She walks across the silted-up slipway and joins me.
‘You’re an idiot,’ she says, examining the cut on my right arm. She rips at the torn shirt sleeve, creating a bandage which she wraps around my forearm, tying the knot angrily, ignoring my pain. I look for my car keys. Evie has picked them up.
The two suspects are being escorted to waiting police cars. Carlson joins me at the water’s edge. ‘Does that need stitches?’ he asks, pointing to my arm.
‘No.’
‘Well, I’m not paying for a new shirt.’
Below us, the trawler is moving up and down on the swell. The police launch has pulled alongside and is being held against the current by the engines.
Carlson tosses me a pair of latex gloves. ‘Let’s take a look before SOCO arrives.’
We’re both wondering the same thing – could the missing migrant women be on board? The detective is first down the ladder. I follow. Flecks of rusting metal stick to my gloves and the boat sways under my weight as I step on board. I haven’t spent much time around boats unless you count a ferry trip to Ireland to watch a rugby match at Lansdowne Road. I threw up most of the voyage to Dublin and was too drunk to remember the journey home.
The trawler is a squat-looking vessel with a square wheelhouse. Water slaps against the hull as I step around the anchor winch and edge along the starboard side. I’ve seen TV shows about trawlermen in the North Sea; fly-on-the-wall documentaries that describe it as ‘the most dangerous job in the world’, being battered by huge waves, surviving the cold and chasing fewer and fewer fish. The breathless narration makes every voyage look like a cross between Survivor and Moby Dick.
I’ve reached the wheelhouse. The doors are open. The galley is down a set of five steps. I follow Carlson into a box-like room with benches, a table and a cooktop with swinging potholders. Dirty dishes fill a sink. Metal mugs. Cold teabags. A saucepan with congealed baked beans.
We move forward to the cabins, which are lower again. The bunk rooms have thin mattresses and thinner blankets. Carlson nods towards the smaller of the two. A self-locking plastic cable tie is curled beside the pillow. A second cable tie is lying on the floor between the bunks, coiled up like a dead centipede. The bedding is disturbed. Damp. The missing women were here.
Carlson takes photographs with his phone. The engine room is through a bulkhead door. It smells of diesel and oil and rustproofing. The main hold is further forward, beneath a waterproof hatch. Nylon mesh fishing nets are draped from hooks like enormous string shopping bags. A dull orange life-vest is discarded on the floor. It’s similar to some of the ones I saw on some of the bodies washed up on Cleethorpes Beach. More photographs are taken. Carlson signals and we retrace our steps.
Back on deck, I skirt the side of the wheelhouse and cross the foredeck. At the bow, I peer over the railing, looking for evidence of a collision. The angle is wrong, and any damage is probably below the waterline.
A name is visible. New Victory. Some of the letters are obscured by a plastic bin bag that has been crudely taped over that section of the hull.
Carlson has joined me. ‘Sixty feet. Twin rig. Steel hull. Built in 2005 in Macduff, Scotland. She was christened the Catelina, but had her name changed four years ago.’
