‘We’re early,’ Holm said. According to the manifest the Excelsior was due to arrive from Felixstowe at ten p.m. ‘Let’s hope there’s a canteen or something here. Mind you, we’d better be careful not to miss the boat.’
‘No chance of that.’ Javed pulled out his phone and showed Holm an image. Holm squinted at the screen. There was a map of the coast of the Netherlands.
‘What’s this?’
‘A marine traffic website. There’s the Excelsior.’ Javed jabbed at the phone. ‘She’s about twenty-five miles away. Allowing for unloading, the container should be coming down this road in about three or four hours. We can monitor everything from here.’
Holm groaned. At a stroke, Javed had taken all the fun out of the night. They’d arranged to visit the port control room where they could watch the ship dock and unload. Now the visit was unnecessary. Holm pushed the phone away. He knew he was being left behind by technology, but he didn’t care. He’d see out his time with his notepad and a pencil.
‘Shoe leather,’ Holm said. ‘In my day you had to earn your stripes by wearing your soles out. Now there seems to be an app for everything. Won’t be long before I’m replaced by a kid sitting in a room with a touchscreen.’
‘Talking of which…’ Javed smiled and reached into the back of the car where he’d parked his bag. He rummaged in a side pocket and handed something to Holm. ‘Here.’
Another phone. This time in a clear plastic pouch and bound with gaffer tape to some sort of battery pack. The whole package was encircled with a length of bungee cord.
‘What the hell is this?’ Holm tried to work out what the contraption was but was distracted by Javed grinning. ‘OK. Tell me.’
‘It’s a tracker. I found one of my old phones and cobbled it together with this charging pack. One of us can attach it to the truck the container is loaded onto. Then we can follow the progress of the vehicle through Europe. You see the old phone updates its location via a server every few minutes and my current phone displays the result on a map.’
‘How…?’
‘An app.’ Javed grinned again as Holm shook his head. ‘Thought you’d like that.’
Holm turned the package over in his hands. ‘And who’s going to attach it to the truck?’
‘Perhaps that should be your job, sir?’ Javed was laughing now. ‘What with your experience of live operations and all.’
A couple of hours later they were inside the port control room. Holm had got tired of waiting and anyway they needed to introduce themselves to their Dutch counterparts. The day had filtered into a grey twilight, and huge sodium lamps glowed orange over the lanes of vehicles awaiting clearance to leave. Drizzle wafted beneath the lights, swirled by a chill wind blowing in off the North Sea. The warmth and darkness of the control room was soporific and Holm tried to stay alert as they monitored the Excelsior as she docked. Within minutes of coming alongside, the cranes got to work, and as each container was plucked from the ship, its consignment number flashed up on a screen. Holm began to get bleary-eyed trying to spot the one they were interested in but eventually Javed gave him a nudge.
‘There it is.’ He pointed at the screen and then out through the control room window. Far down the quay a container was being lowered onto a truck. ‘Blue cab, Christmas tree lights on the grille. Got it?’
Holm nodded and they went outside into the light rain, dragging a reluctant port police officer with them. They began to work their way down a line of vehicles. Holm had made sure their visit was flagged as a familiarisation exercise rather than anything specific, but the man wanted to know more.
‘What exactly are you looking for?’ he asked. ‘We don’t get much of interest coming from the UK.’
‘It’s just routine,’ Holm said. ‘To check our systems more than anything. Highlighting areas of concern. Possible improvements we can make. Learning from what you do here. After all, Rotterdam has three times the throughput of Felixstowe.’
Javed stifled a laugh as the officer pointed at the main office building.
‘You’ve seen how it’s all logged. Cameras, number-plate recognition, driver identification.’ The officer grimaced. ‘Why do we have to stand out in the wet?’
‘Shoe leather,’ Javed said.
‘Hey?’ The officer turned to Javed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Never mind.’ Holm casually gestured at the next truck. ‘This one looks interesting. The one with the Christmas tree lights. Let’s have a word with the driver.’
‘Sure.’
The officer waved up at the cab and the driver opened the door. ‘Consignment papers, please.’
The driver, a burly guy with little English, reached onto his dashboard for a clipboard. He handed it down.
‘I just pick up,’ he said. ‘Why you need to check already? Only marine parts for some ship.’
‘Marine parts?’ Holm scanned the documents, noting the container number at the top right, the driver’s name – Ivan Kowlowski – top left. He peered at the side of the container and checked the numbers matched; they did. ‘Good, good. All OK.’
Javed slipped towards the rear of the vehicle and disappeared. Ahead, the line of trucks had moved on and a space had opened up.
‘Come on. I got to get moving. Long way I drive.’ The driver glanced in his mirror. ‘What your man doing back there? He mustn’t get me into trouble.’ The driver was rising from his seat, swinging himself down from the cab. ‘I need to see.’
Holm followed the man towards the rear of the vehicle and turned at the end.
‘Where he go?’
‘Um…’ Holm tried to think of something to distract the driver, but he was already moving on round to the nearside. The driver cursed in his own tongue and then laughed.
Holm rounded the
