Departures: Seven Stories from Heathrow

Fur, Actually

Tim got down on his knees to take a better look at the white lion cub.

It was inside a green crate with a small barred window and even in the cool shadows of the cargo terminal at Heathrow its fur looked as white as bone.

‘Hello there,’ Tim said softly, smiling with shy delight at the sight of this creature. The white lion cub looked far more like a dog than a cat, a surly pup that now strutted on bandy legs to the front of its crate to bare its fangs at Tim, as if unsure whether it should play with him or rip his face off.

Tim peered at the documents in his hand. He cleared his throat.

‘You’re going to be staying with us for a while,’ he said. ‘I know you thought you were going to a zoo in Belgium, but whoever packed your crate in South Africa did a lousy job.’

He looked disapprovingly at the green crate that housed the white lion cub. The air vents were not big enough. There was no real bedding, just a scrap of blanket. And the crate itself was just about the right size for a domestic moggy, but way too small for a white lion cub.

‘There are strict regulations about transporting live animals,’ Tim said, and the white lion cub cocked its head to one side, as if this was news to him. ‘And this shoebox they stuck you in breaks all of them. We’re going to contact the airline and give them two days to re-crate you to my satisfaction. After that, you’re the Property of the Crown.’ The cub showed its teeth and Tim let it have a bit of a chew on his fingers until he could no longer stand the pain. ‘Now, how about a saucer of milk back at my place?’ he said.

A small blonde woman crouched down beside him and looked into the crate. The white lion cub con­­sidered her for a moment and then lifted a front paw, as if to strike.

‘What is it?’ said Jaswinder ‘Jazz’ Smith of the UK Border Agency. ‘Some kind of exotic dog?’

‘It’s a lion,’ Tim said. ‘And it just missed its flight to Belgium. What else you got for me, Jazz?’

‘Plenty,’ she said.

The pair of them stood up and Jazz leafed through the sheaf of papers in her hand.

‘At T5 there’s a giant scorpion that crawled into the suitcase of a honeymoon couple coming back from Cancún in Mexico,’ she said. ‘And there’s a white-throated monitor that’s been seized by UKBA. Endangered species, right?’

Tim nodded, picturing the lizard with its large muscular body, its strong short legs and thick vicious tail. He would have to watch out for that tail.

‘Someone tried to smuggle it in?’ he said, wondering how much a white-throated monitor lizard went for on the black market these days.

Jazz shook her head. ‘It was in a crate of Golden Delicious from the Cape,’ she said.

Tim smiled. ‘Nobody wants their organic fruit sprayed with pesticide these days,’ he said. ‘So we get all sorts of stowaways. That it?’

‘Not quite – some nutter came back from Las Vegas with two rattlesnakes in his rucksack,’ she said. ‘They escaped just as the in-flight entertainment was being switched off for landing. The cleaners are refusing to go on board. I’ve got some seized rhino horns that may or may not be fake that I want you to take a look at – but they can wait. Everything can wait. The priority is the rattlesnakes on the flight from Vegas.’

‘I’ll get my pillowcase,’ he said. ‘It’s in the car. They’ll be quite happy in my pillowcase.’

‘Oh, good,’ Jazz said. ‘Because that’s really what’s con­­­cerning me, Tim – the happiness of the rattlesnakes.’

Tim took one more look at the white lion cub and then followed Jazz to the exit of the cargo terminal. She paused in the doorway and as he reached her side he saw what she was looking at. A dozen horses were leaving a giant Airbus and being gently led onto three caged lorries by their grooms.

‘Beautiful,’ Jazz said.

‘Yes,’ Tim said.

They were polo ponies from Argentina, thoroughbreds crossed with local Criollo horses. Everyone outside the cargo terminal stopped what they were doing for a few seconds to watch the horses being loaded onto the lorries. And they were indeed beautiful.

Although to Tim Brady of the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre, they were no more beautiful than a white lion cub, or a monitor lizard, or a pair of runaway rattlesnakes.

Tim didn’t know much about cars, but he knew that the car he pulled his Nissan Micra alongside in the ARC car park was a Porsche. Or perhaps a Ferrari. Or maybe a Maserati.

He looked at it with vague interest as he carried the pillowcase inside.

He could see the man and woman in the waiting area, talking urgently to each other. They were both tall, tanned and wearing dark glasses. From the same privileged world, if not the same generation. The man was perhaps fifteen years older than the woman, who for some reason did not look like any other woman that Tim Brady had ever seen in his life.

One of Tim’s colleagues, a girl called Wanda who was wonderful with reptiles, was suddenly in his face, grinning wildly and talking in a mad whisper.

‘It’s her,’ Wanda said. ‘Don’t you recognize her?’

‘No,’ said Tim.

Wanda waved her hands.

‘Can’t you see? It’s her! She was in that film – what was it? Jane Eyre? Jane Austen? Gosford Park? Finsbury Park? Where there’s the man and he gets his trousers wet – or is it his shirt? – and then there’s the misunderstanding, but they sort it all out. You know.’

But he didn’t know. He didn’t have the faintest idea what Wanda was talking about. He shook his head, absent-mindedly fingering the top of the pillowcase.

‘Well, she hasn’t got a bonnet on, has she?’ Wanda said. ‘That’s why you don’t recognize her. She’s not in all the kit.’

Wanda looked over at the glamorous couple – the thin, fabulous young woman, who was apparently famous too, apart from everything else, and the rich-looking, serious-looking older man. Wanda’s smile disappeared.

‘They’ve been waiting for you,’ she said. ‘They’re not very happy. About waiting. But you said that you had to be the one who talked to them.’

‘I did?’

Wanda nodded. ‘It was their dog,’ she said. ‘The one that died.’

‘Ah,’ he said, understanding now, handing her the pillowcase. Inside it, life seemed to stir and slither and sigh. ‘Crotalus oreganus,’ he said. ‘Two of them. Be careful.’

Wanda grinned. ‘Rattlesnakes?’ she said. ‘Cool.’

She took the pillowcase and disappeared.

Tim drew in a deep breath, held it and let it go. But it didn’t really make him feel any better. He went through to the waiting area and the couple looked up at him.

‘Are you the guy that’s going to talk to us?’ said the man, standing up. His shirt had perhaps one or possibly two too many buttons undone and Tim could see a small forest of silverish hairs on the man’s tanned chest.

‘Yes, I am,’ Tim said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m—’

The man shook his head and laughed, ignoring Tim’s hand. Tim slowly withdrew it.

‘Cut to the chase, buddy,’ the man said. Tim thought that he sounded very American – possibly more American than anyone Tim had ever met in his life. ‘What happened to my fiancée’s dog?’ the man demanded. ‘You lose it? Did it wind up in Frankfurt?’ He turned to the young woman. ‘I told you that’s the problem,’ he said, triumphant. ‘I told you. These dumb-ass schmucks have lost your dog and now we get their pathetic excuses and lame apologies.’

The young woman took off her sunglasses. She had the bluest eyes that Tim had ever seen and the sight of those eyes gave him a stab of real sadness. This was a terrible thing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, addressing the young woman and not the older man. ‘Your dog – Finn, a Golden Retriever, three years old – did not survive the journey from Los Angeles. He died here – this morning – but it was the flight that killed him.’