Tamaruq (30 page)

She leaps forwards and strikes the back of the handler’s head with the barrel of her gun. The woman staggers, but does not fall. She turns. She’s taller than Ramona, and stronger too by the look of it, but she’s temporarily disorientated. Ramona clouts her again, hard across the temples, putting all of her strength into the blow. The handler slumps and Ramona lowers her to the floor.

She resists the desire to beat the handler’s head to a pulp.

Now Ramona works quickly. She drags the handler backwards. The woman is muscled and heavy. Her bare feet slither along the floor. When she reaches the holding place, Ramona strips her of her trousers, leaving the woman in the tank top and her underwear. She takes the nylon rope from around her waist and trusses the handler to the pipes, drawing the bonds tight and finally fixing in place a gag torn from her own clothes. She can’t risk any screaming.

She fights the urge to go and check on the prisoners straight away. She has to be here when this one wakes.

While the handler remains unconscious, Ramona runs the torch over her, checking the woman’s body for any identifying marks and the pockets and linings of the clothing she removed. She removes a knife and a pair of handcuffs, which she puts to use to shackle the handler’s ankles. Like the Boreal kidnapper in the highlands, this woman has no birthmarks, tattoos or other identifying markings. She carries no identity papers. Her body is honed for action, with strength in the arms and thighs, and her hair is cut short, out of the way of her eyes.

Ramona sits and waits. Her entire body is sticky with sweat; it’s been over seventy-two hours since she was able to wash and she probably stinks. She wonders how far up the coast they are now. She wonders how the hell she is going to get her mother off the ship and back to safety. For the first time since boarding she allows herself to think of Félix, who she left in a papaver-induced slumber, Félix’s horror on waking up and finding her gone, Félix’s worry, Félix’s anger that she’s undertaken this mission without him. From childhood friends to intermittent lovers, they’ve always led their own nomadic paths, but put herself in his position and she knows she would feel the same worry, the same anger. She hopes he hasn’t done anything stupid, like try and follow her. Ramona’s life is hers to gamble with; he shouldn’t be dragged into her mess. Félix has to understand that, even if he doesn’t agree.

Despite their long history, there are instances in her life that she has never shared with him, and doubtless he with her – things they have seen or done, acts too strange or shameful to speak of. Observing the handler’s shallow breathing, it occurs to her that this trip is likely to be one of them.

When the handler begins to stir, Ramona speaks softly.

‘You’re in a part of the ship where no one will come looking for you. There is no point in shouting or trying to scream. If you do, I’ll kill you here. I’ll cut your throat.’

She draws the edge of her knife gently along the handler’s bare leg, not hard enough to cut, but enough for her to feel the blade.

She hears the handler’s breathing, shallow and ragged. She switches on the torch. The handler’s eyes squint in the sudden brightness before settling on Ramona with a clear, steady hate.

‘Do you understand me?’ Ramona asks. ‘You speak Spanish?’

The handler nods.

Ramona sets the torch upright on the floor and loosens the gag, taking care to avoid the handler’s teeth.

‘Now you’re going to talk. Who are those people you’re guarding?’

The handler stares at her contemptuously. Ramona considers her for a moment. She has met people like her before, people so inured to violence you could shoot their best friend in front of them without them flinching. But most people will fight for their life when it comes down to it. The handler has to feel the thread her life is dangling on.

Ramona backhands her, and a thin line of blood trickles from the corner of the handler’s mouth.

‘Who are those people?’

‘Scum,’ says the handler. ‘Lizards. They’re nobodies.’

‘Where are you taking them?’

The handler spits. Ramona strikes her a second time, and feels a crunch in the soft tissues of the nose.

‘I said, where are you taking them?’

‘North.’

‘Where north?’

‘To a place where they can be useful.’

‘What place?’

The handler doesn’t answer. This time, she gets up and puts her boot into the handler’s stomach. The woman folds over, groaning. It’s a miserable sight. Ramona reminds herself: this woman has her mother captive.

‘What place?’ she repeats.

‘How should I know? It’s in the middle of the fucking desert.’

‘The desert?’

‘Yes, the desert.’

‘In Alaska?’

The handler sneers.

‘If you’d ever been north you’d know the answer to that.’

‘I haven’t been north. You have. You’re going to tell me what’s there.’

‘I don’t know what’s fucking there. It’s the North American desert. It’s outside the border. There’s nothing there. Just sand.’

Ramona’s mind works quickly. The desert. Outside the border. This is something illegal. Something outside of Boreal jurisdiction.

‘You’re not going through all this trouble to dump a bunch of southerners in a different desert,’ she says slowly.

The handler licks her bloody teeth.

‘I need water.’

Ramona gives her a small sip. The handler spits blood.

‘More.’

‘Later. Tell me how the process works. Tell me exactly how it works and maybe I’ll let you live. Did you kidnap these people, in the highlands?’

‘No. That’s not my end. The batch is delivered to me at Panama. At the Exchange. And then I tell them the new quota, and they go back to where they get them from.’

‘The batch?’

Ramona is trembling. The handler’s eyes dart away, perhaps in self-preservation, alert to the emotions she is inducing.

‘That’s what they call it.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I bring them on board. It’s always the same ship. This ship. I guard them. I feed them and keep them alive through the journey. There’s a halfway house where the ship makes a stop and someone comes to pick us up. The crew are all paid off. They pretend they don’t see anything.’

‘Where’s the drop point? How far from here?’

‘I’m not telling you any more.’

‘If you don’t tell me what I want to hear, I’ll fucking kill you.’

The handler’s lip curls. ‘You’re no killer. I can always tell.’

‘Do you want to test that? Do you know who you’ve got in there? In your batch?’

The handler says nothing. Her tongue flicks out, seeking moisture, but finding none. Ramona leans closer and speaks softly.

‘My ma. That’s who you’ve got. My ma.’

She places the bottle of water on the floor in front of the handler, just out of reach. Then she places a second bottle next to it.

‘One of these is drinking water. The other is saltwater. Which of these I leave with you depends on your answers to the next question. I said I’d kill you. I didn’t say how. Now. How far is the drop point from here?’

The handler’s eyes dart from bottle to bottle. Ramona can see the conflict in her face. She moves the drinking water backwards.

‘Six days,’ says the handler quickly. ‘Maybe five, without storms. Depends on the weather, doesn’t it?’

‘How do you know you’ve arrived?’

‘A crew member comes for us.’

‘And what happens when they drop you off? You stay with these people?’

‘There’s an aeroplane, sea and land, it can land on both. It takes us inland. If there’s no sandstorms, that is. Sometimes we’re waiting for fucking days. It’s a joke.’

‘So you do go all the way. Where do they take them? Look at me. Look – at – me. Remember what I said to you. Where do they take them?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a compound. Some secret place, mostly underground. Camouflaged. I’ve never been inside. I only take them as far as the door. Maybe I get a meal and a shower. Then I go back to the halfway house with the plane, and when the ship comes back down the coast they pick me up.’

Ramona sits back on her heels. The handler dips her chin towards her shoulder, trying to wipe away the blood at her mouth. Ramona doesn’t help her.

‘This compound. What are they doing there? What do they need people for?’

‘Are you listening? How should I know?’

‘How long have you been running this rig?’

‘Couple of years.’

‘And in all that time, you’ve never wondered? Never asked? Never thought about where you’re taking these people?’

Just for a moment, she sees something close to fear creep into the handler’s expression. But it quickly returns to defiance.

‘They’re northerners, aren’t they? You think I want to know what the fuck they’re doing? Nazca keep us.’

Only now does the realization hit Ramona. A horrible, nauseating realization that trebles her rage.

‘You’re not even Boreal. You’re fucking Patagonian!’

The handler shrugs.

‘What the fuck do you care?’

‘You’re Patagonian and you’re trafficking these people.’ She squeezes the gun. ‘I should kill you right now.’

‘Everyone’s got to make a living.’ A gob of saliva and blood dribbles down the handler’s chin. ‘I know your type. Righteous. Deluded. The world’s full of fools like you. So judge all you like but you don’t know shit about me.’

Ramona gazes at her with cold anger.

‘No. But I can leave you here to rot.’

Taking her time, she deliberately pulls on the handler’s trousers, then takes up her knife. The handler watches her uneasily.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What do you care?’

Ramona takes a handful of her own hair and lifts the knife. Gently she saws back and forth until the hair comes away in her fingers.

‘Almost like yours. Don’t you think?’

She moves both of the bottles out of reach, and rises. The handler wriggles in her bonds.

‘Hey, you can’t leave me here. I’ve told you what you want. I’ve told you everything! What are you doing?’

Ramona stuffs the gag back into the handler’s mouth. She can see the woman’s lips working around the gag.
You can’t leave me here!

‘Oh, I can leave you here,’ says Ramona. ‘Or, I can take your place. Don’t think I haven’t been watching you. You said it yourself – the crew pretend you’re not here. No one on this ship acknowledges you. They don’t look you in the face. I doubt a single one of them could describe you. So all I need to do is borrow your clothes and… when the time comes, you can take the place of one of your victims.’

She watches the handler’s eyes widen under the torchlight, a genuine fear now visible, a fear that in any other circumstances, Ramona would be compelled to try and eradicate. The look sickens her. Her own actions sicken her. She tells herself: this is necessary. Then she switches off the torch, plunging the handler into darkness, and walks away. She can hear the woman’s muffled voice, trying to shout or plead. She ignores it.
This is necessary
. Now’s the time to let her simmer. Let her think that all is lost. When the handler is nearing the level of despair of her prisoners, then, and only then, Ramona will introduce the next phase of her plan.

At the hatch she hesitates, then berates herself for her own fear. She wheels open the lock. It’s heavy, and takes some effort. She steps inside and pulls the door to, but wedges it ajar as a precaution.

The compartment is thick with the stench of human waste and sour sweat. There is a single, dim light set into the ceiling. The prisoners are sat around the room. Each is cuffed and they are roped together. Their faces are dirty and soporific and they barely react to Ramona’s entrance.

Ramona’s mother is sat to one side of the room.

Inés stares at her, eyelids blinking ever so slowly, perhaps trying to decide which cycle of her unconscious mind has just delivered up this vision.

‘Ramona?’

The uncertainty in her mother’s voice breaks Ramona.

‘Ma, it’s me. It’s really me.’

She stumbles forwards, sinking to her knees and pulling her mother into an embrace. She can feel the terrible thinness of Inés’s body under her clothes, how much weight she has lost, the ribs protruding like sticks against her own chest, the shoulder blades sharp beneath her hands. She sees the scalp through the thin grey hair, smells the pungent oils that have accumulated through lack of washing facilities but can’t quite eradicate the smell that is Inés and Inés alone, a smell that reminds her of stones on a terrace and clean pots and light streaming through the shutters of the shack. She clasps her mother to her as though if Ramona were to let go, even for a second, Inés might dissolve in her arms. Ramona can’t bear it.

‘It’s not really you,’ says her mother, a note of suspicion now creeping into her voice. ‘It can’t be. Not my girl, not here.’

‘Ma, it’s me. I promise you. I’m real. Hold on to me. Hold my hand. It’s me. I’m here. I’m going to get you out.’

She releases her embrace and takes her mother’s face in her hands. Inés gazes at her, still mistrustful.

‘Ramona?’

‘It’s me, Ma. I swear, you’re not dreaming.’

Tentatively, Inés raises her own hand, her fingers curling around Ramona’s.

‘A vision would say that. I should know.’

‘Ma—’

‘My lucky one.’ She says it with a kind of pride. Ramona can imagine the internal monologue running through her head, her mother struggling to reconcile her own eyesight. She must have dreamed of rescue, or that she was never on this ship, and is now unable to trust the reality before her, afraid she will wake, to find herself alone again, lost again.

‘I’m here. I’m here.’ She repeats it, over and over, gently squeezing the bony fingers. ‘I’m here. I’m real.’

Slowly, Ramona becomes aware of the others in the room, stirring from their stupor, watching her. Their faces frightened, uncertain. Hopeful. The sight of those faces is like a knife twisting in Ramona’s stomach. She came here for one purpose, but how can she leave these people behind?

When she speaks to her mother again she speaks to them as well.

‘I’m going to get you out. I promise.’