60. The Services
In which Gimbal counts…
On the far side of the car park stood a long, low building lit from end to end, with a red canopy outside it saying CIRCLE in white lettering and a red K in a white circle.
“It’ll be warm in there,” said Gimbal.
The gerbils walked towards it.
Outside the doors was a row of picnic tables with the remains of other people’s dinner. Graphic checked each one before anyone touched anything. She walked past the first table shaking her head. A half-eaten sandwich lying on a paper bag and a carton of cold chips were on the second table and a torn sachet containing something sweet and an opened bottle of water were on the third.
“These ones,” said Graphic.
They ate the chips and the sandwich, squeezed the contents of the sachet onto the empty chip carton, and tipped the bottle very carefully between the three of them.
“We’re in Sweden,” said Griffin.
“How do you know?” asked Gimbal.
Griffin held up the paper bag. The writing on it had a small circle over the letter a. “This is the same as Pernilla Ågren’s name and Umeå.”
“But how will Gosie and Hedgehog find us in Sweden? They think we’re in the crate, so that’s what they’ll be looking for,” said Graphic. “They won’t be looking for us at a motorway services.”
Gimbal was looking at the car park.
She had counted the vans in the car park as they crossed it. Four were bright turquoise with postnord written on their sides in white. Two lime green vans had the word bring on the side. Another van was white, with DB in red letters in a box, then SCHENKER in black capitals. A second van just like it pulled in while they were eating.
“The blue vans are all the same,” said Gimbal. “And the green ones. And the white ones. There are four blue ones. If there was one grey van with KS on it, there’ll be another one eventually.”
“We should wait here and watch for it,” said Griffin.
“It’s cold out here, though,” said Gimbal.
“The courier wore a pale grey fleece,” said Graphic. “It was the same colour as the van and had KS in white at the top of the sleeves. She was wearing it when she got out.”
“But not when I saw her at the back of the van,” said Gimbal. “She must have jumped out to take it off, then walked round to the passenger side and put it on the seat. Then she walked round the back.”
“It was very warm in that van,” said Griffin. “If she was hot, she would take off the fleece.”
“And she had been driving a long time,” said Gimbal. “She would have wanted to stretch her legs.”
“Could we wait inside and wait for someone in the same fleece?” asked Graphic.
They considered this.
“That is a good plan,” said Griffin.
They all agreed.
All three of them slipped into the services building and found a space under a bench by the big glass window, where they could see both the doors and the car park.
Over the next hour Gimbal counted grey fleeces.
“One,” she said, at a quarter to eleven. “No. That’s a wolf on the front.”
“Two,” she said, at twenty-five past eleven. It was a man.
“Does a man count?” asked Graphic.
“His fleece is grey,” said Gimbal. “But he doesn’t have the letters.”
At ten to midnight a woman came in with white on her sleeve and all three of them sat up and then slumped down. It was a logo of a skier, not writing. Gimbal counted her anyway.
At three minutes past midnight the doors opened, and a woman came in wearing a pale grey fleece. On the top of each sleeve, small and white, were two letters. KS. She went straight to the toilets.
The gerbils ran outside before she came out of the loos. The grey van stood at the end of the row, lights off, ticking as it cooled, and they sat in a line in the dark beside the driver’s door.
They had to wait eleven minutes before the courier came out of the doors, with a cardboard cup in one hand and her keys in the other. The lock gave a short beep and as the door swung open the three of them scurried up past the driver’s seat and into the back of the van, where it smelled of cardboard and was dark and warm. Within minutes they had curled up together and fallen asleep.
The gerbils were woken by light coming in through the back doors. Two voices spoke in Swedish, and they could see the boxes being moved out of the van one at a time.
“Where are we?” asked Graphic.
Griffin looked out of the doors and saw that it was still dark outside. The van had backed up to a pale grey building, and the light was coming from an open roller door leading to a loading area. Above the door were white letters saying KS.
A woman in a grey jacket was carrying boxes in through the roller door and coming back for more.
“We’re at a KS depot,” said Griffin.
Gimbal looked at the lit doorway. “Then we should get out.”
All three of them left the van by the open back doors and ran over to the building and into the depot. It was one long room with a concrete floor, full of cages and pallets, and a line of unmoving steel rollers.
At the far end, past the last pallet, sat Kitty.
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