Beside Holm, Javed coughed. ‘That’s a gotcha,’ Holm said. ‘The animal rights thing is bogus.’
‘A ruse?’
‘Just so.’ Holm clicked open his door and got out. Javed and Cornish got out too and the three of them stood in front of the cars. A giant blue crane straddled a line of containers and plucked one from the ground. Like some sort of monstrous insect it scurried away down the dockside to its lair, a huge ship already laden with hundreds of containers. The crane plopped the container onto the boat.
Cornish gestured and they began to walk across to a large warehouse. ‘This is a BIP, or border inspection post. Containers can be pulled in here for examination. There’s a refrigerated section for cargoes for human consumption and an ambient section.’
‘So it’s mainly health and safety?’
‘Yes. The Border Force have an X-ray scanning unit though. Any container can be passed through so it can be inspected without unloading the contents.’
‘So what has SeaPak and the murder of Ben Western got to do with this?’
‘I’m not sure, but as a manager at SeaPak Western had unrestricted access to shipping manifests and logs. Container shipping is a complicated business and each container has a number which identifies it. The number determines where the container goes. For instance that ship in the harbour.’ Cornish pointed to the boat at the end of the quay. ‘It could have come from the Baltic. Some containers might be offloaded and others might be loaded. Some may stay on the boat because they’re heading for an onward destination. The boat could then go to Rotterdam where a similar thing happens. And so it goes on, containers loaded on and off at every stop.’
Holm reached up and placed his palm against his forehead. The pain behind his eyes was, if anything, growing. ‘Your point?’
‘If you’ve got control of the manifests you can decide where each container goes. You can also falsify the records of what’s in each container.’
‘But you just said the Border Force can open and inspect any container they want.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there you are. Your theory breaks down.’
Cornish was silent for a moment. ‘Have you heard of the CSCL Globe?’
‘No, what is it? Sounds like some kind of movie award.’
‘Not quite. The China Shipping Container Lines Globe is one of the largest ships in the world. It’s four hundred metres long and can carry over nineteen thousand containers. And that’s just one ship. Each year this port handles over four million TEUs.’
‘TEUs?’ Holm thought again about a strong coffee and something sweet to eat.
‘Twenty-foot equivalent units,’ Cornish said. ‘No matter about the terminology, you get my point. Ten thousand containers a day. Up to four thousand lorry movements too. Then there are the trains.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Holm turned towards the quayside. Rows and rows of containers stretched into the distance, stacked three or four high.
‘I think “needle” and “haystack” are the words you’re looking for, boss,’ Javed said. ‘If ten K containers go through here each day the chance of finding something must be minuscule.’
‘That’s true,’ Cornish said. ‘But intelligence from various sources allows the Border Force to target individual cargoes. Even so, when one of the big vessels comes in it really is needles in haystacks.’ Cornish halted at the vast doorway to the warehouse. ‘I think it’s about time you came clean with me, don’t you think?’
Chapter Sixteen
Silva left Fairchild’s envelope untouched until the next day. It sat on the saloon table along with a letter from her bank and a postcard from Sean. The picture on the front of the card was of a cute kitten and the caption said: You are Purrfect. On the other side Sean had scribbled a brief note: Sorry. Can we talk? Love, Sean.
No, they couldn’t talk. At least not about the most pressing issue in Silva’s life. She realised she’d been petulant walking out on him, but the situation around Karen Hope had to be resolved before she could even begin to consider if she had any kind of future with Sean.
She left the postcard on the table, picked up the envelope and ripped it open. It contained the photographs of Positano she’d already seen as well as various other images: Brandon Hope with Jawad al Haddad and high-ranking Saudis at some trade conference; Karen Hope on the election trail; other members of the Hope family; some blurred pictures of Mohid Latif. There were a number of other pieces of paper including a map and an itinerary. Everything to do with Fairchild’s mad plan. That wasn’t what she was interested in, so she delved inside again. This time she pulled out some kind of dossier. Printed but with additions and amendments scribbled across it in red pen. Pieces of shorthand, editing marks, a few short sentences. The handwriting was her mother’s.
A rush of emotion overcame her and, for a moment, with the dossier in her hand, Silva could sense her mother’s presence.
Move on, Rebecca. Live your life.
But she couldn’t. She knew too that in a similar situation her mother wouldn’t have been able to either. She began to read.
An hour later she’d finished. Little in the dossier was new – essentially it contained the same information Fairchild had told her – but seeing the amendments and comments in her mother’s own hand lent a certain veracity to the evidence. Whereas she’d been convinced Fairchild had been spinning the story, now she read the same information as the plain, unadorned truth. There was more though.
Several pages detailed arms exports. These were above board and legal, the arrangements brokered between governments and signed off at official visits by US and UK diplomats. On one page there was a copy of a handwritten memo purportedly from a US State Department official to somebody in British intelligence. The memo was a masterful piece of obfuscation, skirting round the subject of what Brandon Hope might or might not be up to and gleefully ignoring the evidence that Jawad al Haddad could be funding various
