Excerpt: Untitled

Heathrow was busy, and passport control officer William Firth hadn’t had time to think about much of anything since he’d sat down in his booth in the morning and, sucking down the dregs of a last fortifying cup of tea (with just a dash of duty-free whiskey in it), nervously flicked the switch that advertised, in blinking, frazzled neon, the fact that his station was open. Roll up, roll up, he had thought dimly, as the first crowds rushed towards him and then skidded to a halt behind the worn yellow line. Come and abuse your first British immigration officer here!

The crowd was a fairly normal one, or at least as normal as it could get when you had passengers from every country imaginable and in all stages of dress coming at you – and when you were only two weeks into the job, he found himself thinking during his lunch break under the temporarily switched-off sign, munching on an egg sandwich and eyeing a large woman behind the line who, in a gigantic fur and with a cane topped with a heavy-looking gold jaguar’s head, rather looked as though she was about to leap forward, break the glass, and knock him over the head to get him to eat faster. Her eventual arrival as he timidly turned the sign back on was over mercifully fast, just a whirl of disgusted mutterings and fat, ring-encrusted fingers as she swept past.

(Will tactfully kept his mouth shut about the fact she could have used the digital passport machines and just smiled as she whooshed through towards Claims.)

Even being a native Londoner, and after having seen what should have been every possible outfit and having heard every possible language under the sun, he was still surprised every day by the inexorable crush of variety. For every flock of cap-wearing, camera-toting Japanese there was a complete nutter from somewhere in South America with a slightly-crumpled sombrero; for every British football hooligan returning from a far-off match, hungover and red-eyed, there was someone in elegant African costume smoking a slender wooden pipe; and for every Emirates flight, there was a bewildering array of colourful headdresses, moustaches, frisky children and endless lines of greeting kisses.

Sometimes, Will even regretted the fact that he wasn’t allowed to bring a camera to work and treat the job as a curio. People-watchers, he found himself thinking idly as he waved through a sweating young man shoving an enormous double bass (the precious instrument had, of course, had to have a seat booked in its name), would eat their hats for this job.

But even the most curious of jobs could wear one down after a whole day in a windowless, crowded box of stone, metal, and plastic, so he was mostly comatose by the time the sixth hour of his eight-hour shift rolled around, flicking through passports using only two fingers and typing slouched as far down in his chair as he could get without being picked up as lax by the security cameras or no longer being able to reach up to grab papers through The Slot. He was even closing his eyes for brief periods when few flights were coming through, telling himself he was just inspecting the insides of his eyelids while longing for a pint at his local pub, wondering whether Spurs would delay kickoff just long enough for him to get home before the match started…

“Oomph! Oh, damn it. Sorry. I. Uh.”

Said utterance had been accompanied by a monumental, shaking wallop to the front of his booth, and Will sat up in a hurry, only after a few seconds waving off the officer in the next booth after it became clear that the aggressor was not a terrorist trying to make a statement about the evil of bored immigration clerks, but just someone who had dropped their hand luggage and, in the process, managed to fall head-first into the glass partition.

“You alright, sir?”

The man seemed not to have heard him, and was instead swearing vociferously, in an accent that was not quite American and not quite Australian, over his carry-on bag, which had managed to spill its voluminous contents (it was a bloody great travel rucksack, Will saw with a sigh) all over the floor, and the bloke was scrambling red-faced about other peoples’ feet to recover his piles of books, jumpers, electronics and a few crumpled crisp packets, shoving his crooked glasses up his thin nose.

Someone less patient than Will pushed past the man and got checked through, and then finally, panting, the man presented himself at the desk, dropping a stack of books and guides onto the counter before he rummaged in a pocket of his faded leather jacket and shoved his bent passport and a visa through the gap. Will tilted his head a little as he unbent the much-maligned passport, catching sight of various London tourists guides, along with a battered copy of something called ‘Policy and Practice in the Metropolitan Police’ before the man swept them back up into his long arms.

“Sorry. Really sorry. Damn strap broke on the bag. Paid a hundred bucks for it and all – shoddy worksmanship. Knew I should’ve gone to REI or somewhere worthwhile.”

“May I ask you your purpose in coming to the UK, Mr. – Clarke?”

“Moving here,” Clarke said – or rather he said ‘movin’ he-yah”, in a most peculiar accent indeed, his tall, lanky form bent almost double as he hauled the broken bag up onto his shoulders. “Emigrating. Visa says that, don’t it? I think that was the right piece of paper.”

“This is a work visa, sir. You’re aware this is only valid for six months?”

“Yeah. I’ve got it worked out. Gonna be working after then, got it all figured out with the guys here.”

Will made a non-committal noise as the man continued to grumble over his bag. The crowd behind the line were starting to get restive as he flipped the passport under his scanner and then took a closer look at the visa – a six-month sponsorship by ‘P&I Brothers of London, Private Investigator Services.’

He raised an eyebrow. Well, that was a new one. He folded the visa and put it inside the passport, sliding it back through the slot into Clarke’s waiting hands. “Thank you, sir.”

“Thanks.” Will doubted the man could sound less content if he’d tried.

“No worries. Welcome to London. And happy holidays.”