The first thing I do after I’ve landed in Germany is to ditch my passport, along with my Australian credit cards and anything else with my real ID on it. I lay low in Germany for as long as it takes me to buy a new passport on the dark web. Which is about five days, if you’re interested.
Actually, ditching my real passport is the second thing I do. The first, once I’ve cleared border control, is to put up the hood on my sweatshirt so that any camera tracking my movements is not going to be able to get a proper image of my face. Then I go to the electronics concession at the duty-free mall and buy myself a smartphone, for cash, before stopping at a bureau de change to convert most of my dollars into sterling, with a few euros for good luck.
I choose the same name that I chose for my former dating app profiles for my shiny new, British passport. As soon as the courier drops it off, I head back to the airport and buy a ticket to London, for cash. Since I don’t speak any European languages, the UK is the obvious choice as a final destination.
It’s tempting to book into a nice hotel as if I’m a tourist, but of course that would require proper ID. And, besides, I would quickly burn my way through my funds if I lived like that. I’ve got to make my resources last. So, after crouching in the shadows of a side street for at least two hours to disrupt a potential CCTV trail, I get myself a room in a grotty two-star place in Victoria that’s less a hotel, more a flophouse. Cash in hand, no questions asked.
It’s the same when it comes to work. Apart from the passport, I have no formal ID, no National Insurance number, no home address. So again I’m forced to stay within the cash economy. I become one of those men who haunt the morning streets like weather-beaten ghosts, waiting for building sites to open and take on the casual labour they need for that day. The scenes are like something from a Charles Dickens novel. I’m strong enough to deal with the hard labour after all those hours spent in a pricey members-only gym, and the money’s decent – enough for bed and board anyway. But I’m only too aware I can’t exist in this no-man’s land for ever. For a start, it’s no way to live. And how long before someone works out that the guy who bought drinks from Pearl Liu immediately jacked in his job and jumped on a flight to Europe the very next day? It’s probably already happened. The people on my trail could already have made it to Germany and figured out that I left there using false ID. I’m going to have to come up with a plan B.
I’ve never been the type of guy who believes in fate, but it’s fate that determines what happens next.
But if you think about it, what is fate, really, other than just a series of linked events? What if one of the Romanian labourers hadn’t taken a monster crap and blocked the construction workers’ Portaloo toilet on site that day, making it unusable? What if someone hadn’t suggested going across the road to use the facilities at a neighbouring office block instead? What if we hadn’t been putting up and tying rebars that day, resulting in me having a length of steel binding wire in my pocket?
What if, what if, what if.
I get word of some work going on a massive construction site in East London, in an area I’ve never heard of before: Silvertown. It’s for three days, which will leave me with enough cash to tide me over a week or two. But by the third day, the single on-site Davlav – already practically overflowing – has blocked, and the site manager tells us not to use it until it can be replaced with a new cubicle. In the meantime, we just have to hope we won’t get caught using the dunnies at the glossy offices of nearby Ellwood Archer.
After a visit to the facilities in their reception area, I leave the building via the subterranean car park and head back to work, half-walking, half-jogging because we’re not really supposed to leave the construction site during our contracted hours. I stumble slightly and a six-inch bradawl flies out of my pocket and hits the side panel of a Mitsubishi Shogun.
‘Oi!’ The car’s owner is sitting inside it, and he flings open the passenger door as I scrabble on the concrete floor for my bradawl, leaning across the passenger seat to yell at me. ‘You’d better not have scratched my bloody paintwork!’
I approach the open door and squat down to examine it. ‘Nah, it’s okay; just a tiny mark.’
He leaps out of the car and comes towards me. ‘You fucking idiot!’
‘Hey, cool it, mate!’ I hold up my hands to indicate that I’m not looking for an altercation, but he grabs my shoulder, knocking me to my backside.
‘I’m not your mate!’ he snarls.
I’m on my feet in an instant. All that manual work and exercise pays off as I skip lightly to one side to avoid his flailing right arm and land a blow of my own, knocking him backwards onto the car’s passenger seat. With lightning speed and with gut instinct bypassing the sentient part of my brain, I whip out the binding wire from my pocket and loop it round his neck from behind, pulling it tight. His fingers fly up to his neck, but I’m too quick for him, using the full force of my weight. He can’t even turn round and look at me. He’s young and fit, but I’m taller and heavier and just that little bit stronger. You see, it all falls into place so neatly.
Once he’s stopped struggling, I know I have to act quickly. The car park is dimly lit and currently deserted, but it may not stay that way for long. I shove him over to the driver’s seat, climb into the car beside him and shut the door. There’s a heap of papers on the seat beneath me and I pull them out and scrutinise them. A glossy Ellwood Archer corporate brochure has a job description and an interview schedule interleaved between its pages. There’s also a printed copy of a resumé. So, the guy was here for a job. What a stroke of fortune. As if it’s meant to be.
The first thing I do is to pull off his suit, shirt and tie and put them on in place of my grotty T-shirt and cargo pants. This is really difficult to manage in the confined space of the car’s interior, to put it mildly, and I’m pink-faced and sweating by the time I’ve finished. Since I’m a little taller, the trousers are not a great fit, but they’re just about good enough. I tip the passenger seat back as far as I can get it, then heave the guy onto the rear seat, covering him with a blanket that I find in the car’s boot. Then, keeping one eye on the dashboard clock, I sit and read carefully through his resumé until I’ve got it more or less off pat. The folder also contains his passport, which HR must have requested to confirm his ID. I check inside it. He’s called Dominic Stephen Gill, and he’s a few years younger than me. From the photo, he was in his late teens when the passport was issued, and that unformed male face – white, Caucasian, fairish colouring – could just about be me when I was younger. I check the date of issue, and, sure enough, the passport’s ten-year period expires in a few months. Another stroke of luck.
I glance behind me at the blanketed shape. So still, it’s hard to relate it to a living, breathing human being. My mind races back to Pearl Liu lying motionless above Bondi Beach, but I push the image away. I have to stay focused, and think clearly. The body still being in the car is unnerving, but right now there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that. I need to forget it, to compartmentalise my thoughts. Ex-girlfriends have said I’m all too good at doing that.
I check my pockets for my newly acquired phone and wallet, lock the car and head off towards the lift. When I reach the top floor, the receptionist indicates that I should help myself to coffee from the machine, then wait in the seating area. There’s a low table with a magnificent display of orchids and a pile of glossy magazines. I pick up a copy of L’Automobile and flick through the photographs of Ferraris and Aston Martins, not really taking them in. Not even really looking at them.
Eventually, a woman appears in a doorway and calls me.
‘Mr Gill? Would you like to come through? They’re ready for you.’
The interview goes surprisingly well.
It’s probably because I haven’t had a chance to overthink things and get nervous. And also, having read through Dominic Gill’s resumé, I realise that, if anything, I’m a bit overqualified for the job. I’ve got more experience in the financial sector than he has. My Australian twang could have been an issue, but neither of my Scottish parents ever lost their broad Scots accent. It was all I heard at home when I was growing up, and I’m a good enough mimic to lapse into it almost without thinking. I decide not to risk trying a Newcastle accent, even though it’s where Dominic Gill grew up.
As I walk out of the interview room, I see a tallish woman with shiny brown hair introducing herself to the girl on reception. She’s wearing Louboutins, I notice, and an expensive watch. Her face reminds me of someone. The young Zoey Daley. She has that same open, trusting quality. The same colouring too, if you discount the expensive highlights in her hair.
‘I just wanted to give you this expenses form. I’m from Comida,’ she says. ‘Alice Palmer.’
‘Ah yes, the catering company, right?’
‘Exactly. We’re going to be doing some work here, starting soon.’
‘Lovely.’ The woman takes the form. ‘And what do you do for them, Alice?’
The woman flushes slightly. ‘Actually, it’s my company. I own the whole thing.’
Some sort of weird instinct makes me follow her to the lift and jump in just as the doors are sliding shut. Sliding doors, I think, an appropriate metaphor for how today has worked out. I toy with the idea of following her when we reach the ground floor and contriving some sort of meet-cute, but it turns out I don’t need to. The lift gets stuck between floors and Alice and I end up talking. She agrees to join me for a coffee.
In addition to the thick brown hair, she has clear skin and very good taste in clothes. If I’m honest, she’s not really my physical type – she’s a classic pear shape, with matronly hips. I can also tell that she’s not going to be up to much in bed: too much of the head-girl type. There’s no physical spark on my side. But my attention is piqued when she reveals she not only has her own business but also a house in a nice part of London. A house all bought and paid for represents the sort of security I can only dream of at the moment. She also tells me she has a boyfriend, but she’s a bit half-hearted about it, so I’m not discouraged.
The underground car park closes at 10 p.m., so I don’t have the option of leaving the car and coming back for it later. I spend some time going through the glovebox. There’s a baseball cap in there, which I put on, in case ANPR picks up the car’s movements. Using Gill’s own phone as a GPS, I then drive back in a westerly direction towards the Blackwall Tunnel, heading for the south bank of the Thames. I turn east again and keep going until I get to Thamesmead, finding an undeveloped area of scrubland just near the sewage works. I sit in the car for hours, listening to the radio and dozing a little until it’s dark and the surrounding area is deserted. Then I carry the blanketed bundle, fireman-style, to the edge of the river. It occurs to me that I need to weight it, so I go back to the car and fetch my grimy work trousers, fill the pockets with small rocks and wriggle them onto the body, before tipping it into the river. None of this is my fault, I tell myself, as I get on with this task. It’s Dominic Gill’s. He attacked me: I was really only acting in self-defence. In a way, this is a form of justice.
The echoing splash is very satisfying. A fitting end to what has been an unbelievable day. So much of it might not have turned out this way. So much of it might never have happened.
And yet, it did.