But Sarah felt differently. Perhaps because she was only twenty-three and an ‘idealist’, according to her parents. But if she could cry for these people every day, why couldn’t the citizens of Lesbos? In Sarah’s view it was because the Greeks didn’t see the African migrants as ‘people’. The harsh reality was that indifference was probably the kindest, most compassionate emotion shown to the boat people. Many locals felt an active rage, bordering on hatred, for the swarms of desperate families overwhelming their islands. They used words like eisvoli (invasion), panoukla (plague) and zoyfia (vermin). Pascale Dutroit argued that, in their own poverty, the Greek islanders could not be expected to bear such a huge influx. ‘If you want to blame someone, blame the EU. Blame the UN, the rich countries of the world, for doing nothing.’ But Sarah Wade didn’t want to blame someone. She just wanted people to show a little humanity. Perhaps, if they worked on the boats as she did …
The big man groaned and coughed, spewing out a mixture of seawater and phlegm. He was coming round.
‘You’re OK,’ Sarah spoke calmly, pulling her red hair back from her face as she leaned more closely into his. ‘You’re safe. We’re taking you to Lesbos where you’ll see a doctor.’
He sat up, with the look of wild desperation on his face that Sarah had seen so many times before. ‘My daughters!’ he gasped in Arabic. ‘My wife?’
Sarah steeled herself not to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied in English. ‘There were very few survivors. A handful.’
‘Yes, but maybe … they was …’ His English was faltering and he was still straining for breath. ‘Hoda Salim. My wife. She’s small with dark hair. And my girls. They were wearing …’ He reached down to touch his orange life vest but it was gone.
Sarah Wade laid a hand over his against his sodden chest and forced herself to look him in the eye.
‘I’m so sorry. All the survivors are adult males. The coast guard are still searching …’
Her voice trailed off. But her face had already told Mahmoud Salim all he needed to know. He lay back and closed his eyes, too numb with shock to do anything more than breathe. The girl continued stroking his hand and talking. Another vessel had hit them. Both boats had capsized. They’d done all they could but almost everyone on Mood’s boat had been trapped underneath as she sank. Only the experienced smugglers and a handful of other strong men had made it out.
And Parzheen, thought Mood. She fought. She fought for her life. Maybe …?
But the hope was too painful to sustain. He couldn’t. He had to block it out, to try to protect himself.
‘When you leave this boat you’ll be taken to see a doctor at one of the camps. You’re entitled to food and shelter and technically to a legal representative, although you likely won’t get one. The local police will want to interview you when you’re well enough to talk. What happens then will be up to the Greek authorities, but most likely you’ll be sent back home.’
Home. For Mood Salim, that place no longer existed.
The redheaded English girl was the last kind face he’d seen, and the last person to treat him like a human being. From the moment he set foot on Greek soil, he was no longer Mood Salim, husband, father, son and brother. He was an animal, a thing to be herded and prodded, glared at and insulted and despised. But that was OK.
Mood didn’t want compassion.
He wanted revenge.
Inspector Georgiou Thalakis clutched his throat, grateful to be alive. Staggering to his feet, he looked in the mirror at the line of deep purple bruises already forming on his neck, one for each of the monstrous Arab’s fingers. How much longer would he be expected to deal with these pieces of scum? These violent, deranged foreigners, these animals, worse even than the Turks. They all claimed to be fleeing violence, and perhaps they were. But somewhere along the way, that same violence had infected them too. And now it was spreading here, to Greece, like some foul disease for which no one, apparently, had the cure.
‘Is he dead?’ Thalakis glared down at the prisoner sprawled out on the stone floor of the cell, a pool of blood around his head like a devil’s halo.
One of the guards crouched over and put a finger to the giant’s neck. ‘Not yet. Should I call a doctor?’
Thalakis considered. One more dead Libyan was a problem solved, in his opinion. On the other hand, he wanted the name of the bastard in charge of this particular trafficking gang. Thanks to the meddling, do-gooder charity rescue boats, he had the boat’s so-called ‘captain’ and his ragtag crew of smugglers. But Georgiou Thalakis wasn’t interested in six monkeys. He wanted the organ grinder.
The smugglers were a lot more afraid of their bosses than they were of the Greek police and would never give up a name. Which meant he needed one of the survivors, either this brute Mahmoud or his sobbing buddy in the cell next door.
Just then the door opened and Thalakis’s colleague, Inspector Vallas burst in. ‘I think we’ve got him!’ he grinned. ‘My boy didn’t have a name but we got a positive ID from a photo. Andreas Kouvlaki. What happened here by the way?’ He glanced without much concern at the collapsed prisoner and the pool of blood.
‘He slipped,’ said Thalakis, equally uninterested. Kouvlaki. How did he know that name?
All of a sudden it came to him. ‘Andreas Kouvlaki. Any relation of Perry Kouvlaki?’
‘Bingo,’ Inspector Vallas smiled. ‘Andreas is Perry’s little brother.’
‘So Alexiadis is behind this?’ Inspector Thalakis rubbed his sore neck again. ‘I knew it!’
Makis Alexiadis, or ‘Big Mak’ to his friends and cronies, was the de-facto leader of the Petridis crime operation, a vast network of illegal businesses that were still going strong twelve years after its eponymous founders were killed in a ‘tragic’ helicopter accident in the United States. Perry Kouvlaki was well known as Alexiadis’s right-hand man and chief lackey. If Perry’s little brother was in Libya, recruiting cargo for the death boats, then Petridis Inc. was branching out into the migrant business. Which made sense. Even in this modern world of Bitcoin and cyber fraud, there were still fortunes to be made in good old-fashioned slavery and all of its many nefarious offshoots – prostitution, illegal farm labor, organized crime, even armed robbery. Once on European soil the migrants had no rights and no money and were ripe for exploitation by the likes of the Petridis gang.
Of course, no court would accept the word of a penniless Libyan as evidence that Makis Alexiadis was involved in people-trafficking, or that he was anything more than the legitimate businessman he claimed to be. Like Spyros Petridis before him, Alexiadis was a slippery customer, with more expensive lawyers at his disposal to protect his ‘good name’ than your average Congolese dictator. But a positive ID on Perry Kouvlaki’s brother was a start. Now all they had to do was find the bastard.
‘Shall I call a doctor?’ Inspector Vallas asked his colleague.
Inspector Thalakis looked down again at the man who’d just tried to kill him.