The meanest Flood

wouldn’t affect his fellow passengers.
    The moon was a gold coin on the horizon and the layby was void of people or vehicles. The hum of Kiel was audible in the still night air and off to his left the unnatural light of the city gave the illusion of warmth.
    The Scania V8 came along the road with dipped headlights and pulled up alongside Sam. The trucker leaned over and unlocked the passenger door, allowing Sam to climb up beside him.
    ‘Fares, please,’ the trucker said, a smile on his lips. If anything his hair had got thinner during the afternoon. His forehead was on its way to meet the back of his head.
    Sam dug the envelope from his rucksack and handed it over. The guy ripped it open and took out the wad of notes. He flipped through them without counting. He took two twenties from the centre of the wedge and held one in each hand, working them with his thumb and forefinger. He held them up to the light above his door and wrinkled his eyes and his nose for a while until he decided to accept that they were real money.
    ‘There’s a lot of cops about,’ he said. ‘Down by the docks area. They could be after you.’
    ‘I’m not hot,’ Sam told him. ‘Nobody’s looking for me.’
    ‘I should charge you a supplement.’
    ‘They don’t care about blokes like me,’ Sam said. ‘They’ll be looking for an escaped prisoner. Somebody important.’
    The trucker gave him a long look. ‘I’ll show you to your room, sir,’ he said. He kept that same grin on his face, never varied it. It was an all-weather, multi-tasking, guess-if-I’m-happy facial expression that was designed to hide rather than expose the little boy that crouched behind it.
    Sam followed him to the rear of the truck and waited while he manipulated the rods and handles that released the locks on the end of the container. The trucker pulled down an aluminium ladder and Sam climbed up into the darkness above him. ‘See you in Immingham,’ the guy said as he closed the door behind him. The locking mechanisms clanged and echoed around Sam as he went down on one knee, feeling around in his rucksack for the torch.
    Two young men, sallow-skinned, hollow-eyed, were sitting on the base of the container with their legs outstretched. ‘How you doing?’ Sam asked.
    ‘I am Omed,’ one of them said, stretching out a hand. ‘This is my friend, Rachid. We are coming from Iraq.’
    ‘I’m Sam. Coming from Oslo, on my way to York.’
    ‘You are English?’
    ‘Afraid so.’
    ‘I love England,’ Omed said. ‘I am a scientist. I can work. I would like England to be my home, where the government will not try to kill me. I can marry English girl and my children will be English.’
    ‘Just take it one step at a time,’ Sam told him. Rachid, the friend, leaned forward. ‘You have food?’
    ‘Some,’ Sam said. ‘You hungry?’
    ‘Very hungry,’ Rachid said. ‘Very, very hungry.’
    ‘Tell me when it gets bad,’ Sam said.
    He moved on along the container, between boxes and packing crates. In a small clearing were a family group: a father with a grey moustache and his wife with staring eyes. When Sam appeared she gathered her three children around her, seeming to bury them in her skirts. ‘What’s your story?’ Sam asked the father.
    ‘We are from Bolivia,’ he said. ‘We have been in Switzerland but they were going to send us back. My wife’s brother is an informer against the robbers. You understand robbers?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘I understand robbers.’
    ‘The police, they look after the brother, they keep him safe. But the robbers kill my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, they kill my wife’s two brothers and her sister and their children. If we go back to Bolivia they kill us as well. So we have to go to England. We will be safe there.’
    ‘Jesus,’ Sam said, getting ready to move on, shining the beam of his torch to the far wall of the container.
    ‘You are English?’ the father asked.
    ‘For my sins.’
    ‘You have a house we can live?’
    ‘I’ll think about it,’ Sam told him.
    He shifted a box to one side, carving out a nook about two metres long and one metre wide. He rolled out his sleeping bag and stretched out on it, using his rucksack as a pillow. He listened and tried to interpret the sounds around him. The truck seemed to be in a queue, probably at the docks, moving forward occasionally, then stopping again.
    The fearful voices of the Bolivian children and the anxiety in the voice of their mother