Conflict of Interest

The two men had opened up the back of the van and were climbing in. As the huge, rear doors swung to each side with a resounding crash, Judith and Chris could see inside; it was packed with cardboard boxes. From floor to ceiling, they were crammed so tight they looked like a towering, impenetrable wall. Then from the shed appeared a group of adolescent boys, dressed in rags, a foreman behind them shouting orders. They weren’t especially young, thought Judith – sixteen, seventeen – although they were scrawny and unkempt. Leaping up into the van in what was evidently a well-rehearsed routine, they began unloading its contents at high speed. The cardboard boxes, each the size of a tea chest, were rapidly taken out of the van and into the shed, the foreman and guards closely watching over the process, like prison officers supervising a gang of convicts.

What would happen when the van was emptied? Judith couldn’t help wondering. Were they going to pack it with the finished goods? But the moment the last box was taken out of the van, the driver slammed the rear doors shut, and the guards herded the boys back into the shed. There was much revving and juddering as the driver turned the van to go back in the direction from which he’d come. Then with a thunderous roar, he was heading up the street.

Judith turned back to Chris and pulled a face. It wasn’t quite the firsthand evidence she had hoped for. There’d been nothing obviously suspicious about what was unloaded. And the teenage boys were no younger than those to be found in factories anywhere else in the world. But, she supposed, they would hardly have sent out eight-year-olds to collect the boxes; they had other uses.

Ravi now looked from her to Chris, clearly expecting them to want to leave.

‘I just wish we could get closer,’ she said. ‘I wish we could look inside.’

Ravi and Aziz were both shaking their heads vigorously. ‘No go inside.’ Ravi was firm.

‘But look inside,’ she gestured. ‘I know it’s dangerous. But I need to see if there are children.’

‘Many, many children,’ said Aziz. ‘Many of them.’

Ravi had stepped into the street and was glancing about nervously before returning to them. ‘There’s a place … there.’ He pointed across the road to a decrepit, two-storey building which had evidently long since been closed up. ‘You can see the children there.’

Judith looked up to the flat roof of the building. Directly across the road from the shed, it looked straight down on to it. If there were any gaps in the roof ….

‘You want me to take you?’ Ravi looked at her.

She nodded.

Once the guards were out of sight again, Ravi made his way across the street and approached the door to the closed-up building, now secured only by a padlock. Taking something out of his pocket, he fiddled with the lock for a moment before it sprang open. Then he waved to Judith.

She turned to Chris. ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ she told him, leaving him with Aziz, before crossing the road and following Ravi into the building. The moment she had stepped inside she was hit by a stench of human excreta and decomposing garbage. Ravi was already making his way up a flight of wooden stairs, but she buckled, gagging on the foetid vileness of it, before covering her mouth and nose with her arm and following.

The staircase was falling apart and the balustrade in a state of collapse. She found herself hardly daring to put her weight on steps that were so rickety they felt about to cave in. The whole structure creaked and warped perilously as they made their way, first up three flights of steps to the upstairs floor, then up another, narrower series of stairs, in a state of even worse repair, leading up to the roof. She didn’t dare look down at the putrid void beneath as they picked their way round missing steps, treading on rotten boards which slipped and cracked beneath them.

Finally they reached the top, and Ravi threw open a trapdoor which led on to the roof. Judith didn’t think she’d ever felt such relief to escape from a building. As she clambered out on her hands and knees, camera dangling from her neck, she paused a moment, out of breath and heart racing. Ravi was a short distance in front of her, bent double as he approached the low wall running around the top of the roof. She followed suit a few moments later, joining him.

They both peered over the edge, checking out the position of the two guards, who were walking away from them. Tentatively, they stood, looking away from the guards and out across the roof of the shed. It took Judith a moment to work out what she was seeing. There were gaps in the roof, where sheets of corrugated iron had fallen away and hadn’t been replaced – gaps into which she could see. But what was going on inside? It was a while before she could take it in, then, suddenly, it all clicked into place. She was looking down on the heads and shoulders of dozens and dozens of children squashed on to workbenches, their hands moving constantly, feeding the machines in front of them. It was the scale and densely packed squalor of it that she didn’t, at first, comprehend. There were just so many of them, such a mass of tiny bodies and such a blur of arms – it was like staring into an ants’ nest or a hive of bees. Hastily raising the camera to her eye, she focused the zoom lens as close as she was able, firing off half a dozen shots.

Ravi pulled her down as the guards began to come up the other side of the building. ‘You hear the machines?’ he asked.

With all the street noises, she hadn’t been aware of noise from anywhere else, but now that she paid attention she realised there was a steady hum of turning motors – inside the shed it must be deafening. Ravi mimed feeding cloth through a sewing machine. ‘They want children for the little fingers.’

She shook her head. ‘Terrible.’

‘Yes, indeed. But you will save them?’ He looked at her with a searching expression.

‘Well,’ the task before her now seemed suddenly more daunting, ‘I’m trying my best.’

He was peering over the wall again, before gesturing that she could stand. There was some commotion in the factory, which she had to stand up fully to see. The foreman she’d seen outside the shed had something in his hand and was viciously beating one of the children on the head and shoulders. All around him, she noticed, the other children continued to work, as though nothing was happening. Ravi looked over at her. ‘That one is evil,’ he said, pointing.

She nodded, outraged by what she was seeing, but realising there was absolutely nothing she could do to prevent it. Once again, she lifted up her camera and began shooting. So absorbed were they both by the scene that they realised, too late, that they also were being watched. An ageing Land Rover had pulled up outside the shed. In the passenger seat sat a large, uniformed Indian man with an automatic rifle resting across his knees. Behind him an Indian, in the same khaki as the shed guards, was pointing up towards them.

Judith and Ravi both saw them at the same moment.

‘Quick!’ Ravi turned and was tugging her away. ‘They kill us!’

It was less a rooftop than a patchwork of planks, but she raced across behind him to the other side of the building, propelled by an instinct she’d never known she possessed. Suddenly, everything was happening in slow motion and she was anaesthetised from fear. They reached the edge of the building, and the next rooftop was one level down. She’d never dream of jumping from that height – usually. But now she didn’t even stop to think. Ravi was already down there, and he paused, to help break her fall. Then they were running again.

Looking behind them, down into the street, she saw guards emerging from the building they’d just jumped from, shouting and waving their arms in confusion. Aziz and Chris had seen what was happening and had pulled out of the alley on the scooters. Reaching the edge of the second roof, Judith and Ravi had no choice but to jump again. Thank God for the fruit seller! They headed straight for a pile of mangos. The moment she hit the ground, Judith felt herself being yanked by Aziz on to the back of his scooter. Ravi was already back on his with Chris, racing up the street beside them.

She guessed she shoul

dn’t look back, but she couldn’t help it. They were all in the Land Rover now – four of them plus the guy with the rifle – homing down on them fast, firearms at the ready. Crunching through gears as it roared up behind them, the Land Rover was mowing down anything in its path. Pedestrians, bike riders and beggars were diving out of the way as it left a trail of destruction in its wake, smashing market stands to the ground, hoeing down the pitiful stalls of fruit and lamp oil and knick-knacks that were the livelihoods of their owners. It couldn’t be more than twenty yards behind them now.