Dark Roots Read Online Free PDF Page A

was going down. Jesus, like his dad, holding a carpenter’s tool against his flowing cloak. I wonder if they made him make his own cross. Would he have chiselled and mortised the joints? Now that would be dying with dignity.
    We descend and land and taxi into the unloading zone. I’m hot in my blue dress; it’s sticking to my back. It’s a wash and wear synthetic and I’m going to bundle it up and throw it in the garbage first thing when I get home. When I get home. I close my eyes and call up a vision of the kitchen, the smell of the lino, the chug of my ancient fridge. If all goes well, I can be there in a couple of hours. Just through customs, a short trip through the airport, past security, and into the taxi rank. I imagine pulling away in a cab, away from the airport and home free.
    The thing to do now is forget about the cocaine, pretend I really am an innocent person. I keep my face demure as I watch the luggage turning on the silver conveyers. My case is an absolutely nondescript black. A luggage label in Spanish and English is tied carefully to the handle. Inside there are two changes of clothes, my toiletries and towel, a spare pair of shoes and three kilos of cocaine. Wonderful, splendid cocaine, meltingly pure and snowy. My superannuation fund brochure had outlined many exciting ways to spend your payment, but up your nose was not one of them.
    I pick up the case. I carry it carefully to the customs declaration points and stand in a queue at the first gateway. I find that if I keep my mind on home and refuse to think about where I am, I can keep my heart rate down. Meditation, taken under sufferance at Dr Mick’s urging, is proving to be an unexpected bonus. I meditate on the customs officer’s hands as he takes my passport and declaration and notes things down, ticks boxes, glances into my face to check the likeness in the photo. His pen hesitates.
    â€˜Something to declare?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Go to number seven at the end there. Thank you.’
    Thank you . Gates one to six, green lights, are choked with people, children, luggage trolleys and bags. They will be hours. Number seven, a red light, has two people standing in it, both holding yellow plastic bags of duty-free and whatever else they think is declarable. As I move into place behind them, the first one sorts out his query with camera lenses and moves off. Through this gateway is the escalator, then the forecourt, then the self-opening doors to International Arrivals, then out onto the windy pavement of the airport and the taxis. God, God. Hold it together.
    â€˜I bought these lily bulbs in the airport in Hawaii,’ the punter in front of me is saying, ‘and the girl said they’re vacuum sealed and okay to take through without quarantine.’
    â€˜I’m afraid there’s always someone who’ll tell you that,’ says the man in the uniform shortly. My heart rate, despite me, goes up a few notches. A closed face, an unhappy mouth, a stickler for the rules and in a bad mood to boot. ‘They’re illegal to import.’
    â€˜What do I have to do? Have them sprayed?’
    â€˜No, I’m afraid you have to surrender them to customs to dispose of.’
    Down into the big chute they go. The passenger looks glum, but he’s also through declarations in record time. I wonder if it was a deliberate ploy. His bags are searched in a rudimentary fashion. Cocaine is also surrendered to customs upon detection, and destroyed. Breaks your heart to think of it. All that brain-sharpening, energy-giving, nausea-suppressing potential chucked away.
    I make my brain go somewhere else, focused anywhere rather than on the case in front of me. It has been my experience working with juvenile offenders that when they have stolen something their eyes keep swerving back to where they have hidden it. If it is secreted on their person they can’t seem to stop their hands from going to that place.