Chris hadn’t been happy about doing this job right from the start, and now things were looking decidedly worse. Since he’d joined Serco, all he seemed to do was escort refugees around. The flight to Frankfurt was delayed. For two hours. The driver that had dropped him and his charge at the airport had left immediately, muttering about overtime and fog. Chris was planning on catching a train to London after seeing Lorik onto the ‘plane, hoping to see his sister before heading back to his rented room in Milton Ernest, just down the road from Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre. Chris had anticipated a short wait at the airport; Lorik wasn’t being accompanied on the flight, so all Chris had to do was see him onto the plane. The airport immigration officer who had met them suggested that they wait in the coffee shop, which had just closed. He left Chris his mobile number. Chris and Lorik sat down on some rather uncomfortable wooden chairs and Lorik took a phone from his pocket. Chris wasn’t keen on the idea of hanging around in an airport for hours with a deportee. At least he wasn’t in uniform. What was he supposed to do? Lorik was hardly the most fun guy he’d ever met. Even if he’d wanted to talk to him, how were you supposed to communicate with someone who just gave a thumbs up and said OK every time you looked at him?
Chris observed Lorik as he fiddled with his phone, likely searching for free WiFi. Chris already knew that getting on this airport’s WiFi was a tedious process; it was his second trip here this year. Of medium build, Lorik was in his late twenties, and with his fair complexion, cropped blonde hair and fit physique, he looked more Scandinavian than Eastern European. He had very strange eyes of a luminous grey colour, which made him look slightly spooky. Chris had assumed all Albanians were gypsies before he’d started working at Yarl’s Wood. He’d come across a few Albanians when he’d been working doors in Birmingham, but none of them had looked like Lorik. This young man definitely wasn’t a typical deportee, appearing surprisingly laid-back for someone being escorted out of a country he had entered illegally. Most Albanians, and there’d been a lot of them recently, claimed to be escaping some ill-defined menace in their home country. Some said they were gay or transsexual. Chris’ friend Pete, who worked in immigration, said it was impossible to challenge these claims nowadays without being accused of homophobia or transphobia, so they tended to just write down whatever the asylum seekers told them about their sexuality. A lot of these “refugees” disappeared shortly after being placed in hotels. Lorik, however, had walked into a police station and said he wanted to go home, even offering to pay for his own flight. Because of these unusual circumstances, and the fact that Lorik had become a folk hero on social media, he wasn’t deemed a flight risk. Chris’ job was just to make sure Lorik got on the plane. In spite of knowing that he was breaking rules by talking to Lorik, Chris found himself really wanting to find out why Lorik had gone to all the effort and expense of getting in a dinghy and crossing the English Channel in the first place, and this only just a few weeks earlier.
Lorik broke the uncomfortable silence, putting his phone back in his pocket. ‘Let’s drink some beer’ he said, in his heavily accented English. ‘Flight is late.’
‘I can’t drink on duty’ Chris replied. He wasn’t supposed to communicate with his charge except to relay instructions.
‘You have energy problem. You uptight. Not my fault English aeroplanes are late.’ Lorik signalled towards the departures board on the wall opposite. More than half the flights listed were delayed. ‘You not going home until I am on aeroplane. Let’s go have beer. I will pay.’ Lorik pulled out his wallet and opened it; he seemed to have quite a bit of cash on him, Euros as well as Sterling.
‘I guess there’s not much point in just sitting here’ Chris answered, after a pause where he was obviously weighing the idea up. ‘OK. Let’s have a beer. I’ll only have one, and only if you promise not to post anything about it on social media.’
‘I promise. And when Lorik makes promise, you can trust him. In my country, broken promise means broken bones.’ Lorik grinned as he said this, but Chris didn’t doubt him for one minute.
The bar was a drab faux-English pub, badly lit and smelling of stale beer. A disparate collection of passengers from delayed flights sat alone or in small groups staring at their overpriced drinks. On a bench in one corner, a guy was asleep, a newspaper draped over his face to keep out the light. A young family were noisily playing cards on a table near the entrance.
‘What you drink?’ Lorik asked. ‘Sit here, I buy drinks.’ Lorik indicated a table near the bar; out of sight of the main concourse. Lorik knew the score; Chris was not allowed to let Lorik out of his sight until he was on the flight. He had already had to listen to Lorik having a rather noisy crap, shortly after they had arrived at the airport.
‘I’ll have a pint of bitter, please’ Chris replied, taking a seat against the wall, where he could watch Lorik.
‘Bitter. Stupid name for stupid beer. No bubbles, warm, and taste like shit. I tried it. My friend Valon likes it, but he also like McDonalds. Me, I drink Pilsner.’
With that, Lorik made his way to the bar, where a bored looking youngster with face piercings took his order.
Returning from the bar, Lorik placed a pint of bitter in front of Chris, then sat opposite him, taking a large mouthful from his own beer as he settled his seat. ‘I like beer’ Lorik rather pointlessly informed Chris. ‘So why you have such shit job?’ he continued.
‘Shit job? Cheeky bastard. At least I have a job.’
‘Me too, I have job. I have business. I have mobile phone shop and hotel in Tirana.’
‘Really? Then what the fuck are you doing coming across the English Channel in a dinghy? I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true. I did not come here for asylum.’
‘If you didn’t come here for asylum, then what did you come here for?’ Chris was confused now.
‘Buy us another beer, and I tell you’ Lorik replied, winking at him.
Chris knew that getting drunk with a detainee could lose him his job, but what the hell. As Lorik had pointed out, it was a shit job anyway. He went to the bar and came back with two beers.
‘Tel me’ Chris asked, sitting down as Lorik took a swig of his beer. ‘If you didn’t come over seeking asylum, why did you come over in a dinghy?’
Taking another sip of his beer, Lorik folded his arms on the table and leaned towards Chris. ‘My friend Bashkim is getting married. That is why we come.’
‘We? There was more than one of you? Where are the rest?’ This sounded rather concerning. Were Lorik’s confederates now on the loose in southern England?
‘My friends are home already’ Lorik answered. ‘It was just me who had problem.’
‘So you and your friends came across the channel in a rubber dinghy for a wedding? Couldn’t you just get tourist visas?’
‘We not try for visas. The wedding not here in England. It is next week, in Tirana. Lucky I can now still go. I am best man. We come to England for Bashkim’s party. You know, I think you call it stag party?’ Lorik put his hands on top of his head, fingers spread like antlers. ‘My friend Dr Dre, he organise this trip for us. He call it Full English.’
‘Dr Dre? The American rapper?’ Chris asked in astonishment.
‘No,not that Dr Dre. Dr Dre is from Tirana.’ Sitting back in his seat, Lorik observed Chris with his strange grey eyes, a slight smile on his face. He could see that Chris was fascinated. ‘I get more beer’ he announced, standing up. Before Chris could object, Lorik was back at the bar, laughing with the barman about something as the beers were poured. Lorik was shaking his head and rolling his eyes as he returned with the beers.
‘Why people put metal in their face here?’ Lorik asked as he sat down. ‘Not good if you get in fight.’ He made a hand gesture as if something was being torn from his face. ‘England is very strange country.’ he continued. ‘People seem a bit stupid. They think everyone is nice. They put people with no documents in hotels, and believe them when they say they are refugee. I would not like to live here.’
Chris felt a bit insulted by these comments, but he had to admit that Lorik had a point. He’d seen someone getting a nose-ring ripped out at a night club when he’d been working as a bouncer. It hadn’t been pretty. And the immigration issue did seem to continually be ramping up to ever higher levels: 26000 so far this year.
‘So tell me’ Chris asked, ‘who is Dr Dre?’
‘Dr Dre have business of bachelor parties’ Lorik replied, fiddling with a coaster. ‘Parties for men before marriage. Stag. He does ladies too, but not so many. Dre means stag in Albanian.’ Lorik made the antler sign again. ‘He organise, what you call it, extreme stag parties? For people who like adventure. This is second one I go on. First one was swimming with sharks, when my cousin Edvin getting married. You can go skydiving, or rally racing in mountains in old cars. Very dangerous. One time the guy getting married was killed rallying, so it not so popular any more. This stag is new. It is very expensive.’ Lorik made the universal sign of money, rubbing his fingers together. ‘Dr Dre suggest it because he knows me and Frenk very well. He call this package Full English. It is most expensive option, but real adventure. I think we going to die in boat. We all very scared.’ Lorik chuckled at the memory. ‘Dr Dre, he knows many people, and the boats, nearly all is Albanian. We are third stag party to come here.’
Chris wasn’t sure if he was being wound up. It all sounded too bizarre to be true, but he was feeling a bit tipsy now, and it sounded like a good story. Not much else to do in an airport on a Wednesday night. ‘So how does this Dr Dre organise the trips?’ he asked Lorik. ‘How does he know where you’ll be sent when you get here?’
‘He does not know. We do not know. It is part of adventure. Adventure is boring if you know what happen next. Before we leave, Dr Dre check no-one of us has criminal record with police. It is a condition of booking for Full English, or fingerprints might be problem when we arrive. Dr Dre then get us European ID cards. They cost four hundred Euro in Tirana. We travel to Bulgaria, then catch train to France. In Calais, we call Dr Dre’s contact. He take us to boat in early morning. There were Tunisians and an Afghan on our boat, and two Syrians. We get picked up soon after leaving France, by a boat for rescuing drowning people. RNLI? We spend one day in processing. We say we have no ID, but we hide ID, bank card, passport and phone. Passport is just for emergency. If we get sent to different hotels, we arrange meet up, party for rest of week, then go home. We lucky, we all go to very nice hotel, except for Frenk. Frenk was in different hotel, so he catched bus and taxi to join us. He stayed in my room. No-one in hotel knows who stay there or not. We spend one week there in hotel. It is four star, very nice, in countryside. They have sauna, and tennis. Bar is closed, but we buy beer and whisky from gas station. It was fantastic holiday. We make one new friend, Abdul, from Morocco. He is very funny, so he partied with us. He come to England because he fuck his boss wife. His boss want to kill him. Some other refugees in the hotel did not like us, but I do not know why. Maybe they do not like Albanians. There were two Albanians in the hotel, but Frenk knew of them. Not good people. We have excellent time, and even weather is nice. Then I have problem when I go buy present for my wife and kids, because I helped someone.’
Chris knew what had happened next; he’d seen the video. Lorik had come across an old lady being mugged at knifepoint. Lorik had disarmed the man from behind, thrown him against a wall, tripped him up then stamped on his wrist. He’d then given the lady her purse back, and bizarrely had bowed to her before leaving the scene. Some members of the public had detained the mugger, who required hospitalisation. Lorik had walked into a police station a few hours later, after downing several pints of lager in a pub a few hundred yards from the scene. By then, there were already videos of the incident on Facebook. A tabloid had offered money to anyone who could identify the well-mannered good Samaritan.
‘So why didn’t you just go back to the hotel?’ Chris asked.
‘I did not want my friends to have problem too. Next day was our flight home, from Dublin. They all go in taxi to Dublin. I call them, and they bring my things to the bar. Then I go to police. I think I will get home quicker if I go to police. And here I am’ Lorik opened his arms, a wide grin displaying a perfect set of teeth. .
‘Dublin? Why did they go to Dublin?’
‘Dublin is in EU. Easy to get to Dublin in taxi, on boat. Easier than from Dublin to England. Many Albanians come other way, from Dublin to England. My friends flyed out from Dublin using fake European ID card, to Sofia. Immigration are not going to stop Albanian leaving their country to go to Bulgaria. What for? I stay behind in case police catch me. You have much video here in UK. Also, I saw someone film me with their cellphone. Soon it will be on Facebook I think. I was correct. The police show me the video. They very nice to me.’ Smiling, Lorik downed half of his beer in one go, wiped his lips and continued his tale.
‘We all agree this before we leave home, anyone in any problem leaves the trip.’
‘And what if one of you stays? If they decide not to go home?’
‘Last time, Dr Dre said one man stayed. I do not know where he is. He told immigration he is from Syria. Because he speaks very good English, Dr Dre says no-one checked if he can speak Arabic or Kurdish. He will go home when he have to leave hotel, but he gets money from the government. He is paid for holiday. But me? Stay for what? I have business. I told you, none of us is criminals. We are business people, one is a teacher at the university. Only criminals want to stay here, or people who want to be criminals. Most of Albanian people on the boats, they are not refugees. Many Albanians coming to England now, looking for money. Some are sent by the gangs. These are not my people. I can get visa if I want, but now maybe not. Now they have my fingerprints.’
Chris had recently seen a report at work stating that sixty percent of people now crossing the channel were Albanian. How many were just on an adventure, or a holiday he now wondered.
‘So do you have any regrets now? Since getting caught?’
‘Regrets, I have a few, but then again, too few to mention.’ Lorik sang, then laughed softly. ‘Frank Sinatra. My mother loves Frank Sinatra.’
‘My mother loved Frank Sinatra too.’ Chris replied wistfully.
‘Your mother died? I am sorry.’ Unexpectedly, Lorik touched Chris’s hand on the table and squeezed it.
‘It was many years ago. I miss her. Another beer?’
‘Sure. But I buy them.’ Lorik went to the bar, again engaging the barman in conversation. Both of them laughed at something Lorik had said.
On returning with the beers, Lorik told Chris about his two young kids, four and six years old. He pulled a picture from his wallet, passing it to Chris. The photograph showed two smiling children in a park, evidently taken in autumn judging by the brown and yellow trees in the background. Behind them kneeled a young blonde woman in a frilly pink summer dress, proudly smiling at the camera with her arms around their shoulders.
‘Your wife?’
‘Yes, Anna. We were at school together. She is a good mother. I want a good life for them. It is difficult in Albania, but I think it is harder here. Here, there is no life for an Albanian. Taxi driver, maybe. I know one man who drives a bus in London. Everyone else is criminal nowadays. The British love cocaine.’ Lorik sneered at this, evidently disapproving. ‘Do you have children?’
‘Yes, I have two boys, Five and seven.’ He selected a picture on his phone and handed it to Lorik.
‘They look like you’ Lorik remarked, handing the picture back.
They were interrupted by the flight to Frankfurt being called. Chris looked at his watch. They’d been chatting for well over an hour. It was time to get Lorik on his flight home. In Frankfurt, a German counterpart would escort Lorik onto his flight to Tirana.
‘Time to go’ Lorik announced, picking up his beer and draining it ’It was nice to meet you’ Lorik added.
Chris finished his beer too. They both stood up. Bizarrely, Chris reflected on how it was often difficult saying goodbye. In spite of himself, he liked this strange young man. He was almost sad that the flight hadn’t been delayed longer.
‘So Lorik, before you go, I’d like to ask you something. Why did you tell me all this? How do you know I won’t go back to the office and write a report on what you have told me?’
Lorik smiled at Chris, put his hand on his shoulder. ‘What you tell them? Trips on boats to England are advertised on TikTok. Do you think they will believe you that I was on holiday? And don’t forget, you have been drinking on duty.’ Lorik tapped his nose. ‘We have been filmed. There are cameras in the bar. It is probably better that you tell your friends it was just boring because the flight was delayed. You do not have any information they don’t know already, apart that some people on boats are maybe on holiday You seem a good guy. Don’t waste your life on shit job.’
The two men made their way though security, where Chris showed the security guards the paperwork. They were obviously expecting them. Chris held his breath as he went through the metal detector in case the security staff smelt alcohol on his breath. One of the security guys then escorted them to immigration, where an officer left his desk and accompanied them to the gate. The immigration officer, a plump little guy in a uniform that looked like it hadn’t been ironed, was evidently surprised when he saw Chris shaking hands with his charge after handing him his passport. He was even more surprised when Lorik pulled Chris towards him and hugged him
‘Take care, my friend’ Lorik said ‘If you ever in Tirana, call me.’
Before Chris could reply, Lorik broke off their embrace and walked towards the plane. From the door of the aircraft, he turned round briefly, winked and gave a thumbs-up. Chris winked back, raising his thumb too. A stewardess checked Lorik’s boarding card, and he was gone.
‘Did you know that guy?’ the scruffy little immigration guy asked Chris as they walked back from the gate.
‘No, I don’t know him. Well, maybe a little bit. He’s not what he seems.’
‘They never are’ the security guy replied. ‘Bloody illegal immigrants.’
Chris smiled. If only he knew, he thought to himself. After passing back through security, he pulled out his phone to check train times to London. With a shock, after opening the screen with his fingerprint, he found his phone was open on his contacts. Shit. He remembered passing Lorik his phone to show him pictures of his kids. Had Lorik been noting down numbers? He scrolled through the list, wondering which numbers might cause a security issue. When he got to L, he found the name Lorik had been added, with a foreign number. How on Earth had Lorik done that without him noticing? Smiling, he checked the train times. There was one leaving in ten minutes. It hadn’t been such a bad day after all.