The Night Ferry

by Michael Robotham

  I climb higher, moving from landing to landing, aware of the crumbling plaster and buckling linoleum. Laundry hangs over banisters and somewhere a toilet has overflowed.

  I reach the top landing. A bathroom door is open at the far end of the corridor. Zala appears in the space. A bucket of water tilts her shoulders. In the dimness of the corridor I notice another open door. She wants to reach it before I do. The bucket falls. Water spills at her feet.

  Against all my training I rush into a strange room. A dark-haired girl sits on a high-backed sofa. She is young. Familiar. Even dressed in a baggy jumper and peasant skirt she is obviously pregnant. Her shoulders pull forward as if embarrassed by her breasts.

  Zala pushes past me, putting her body between us. Samira is standing now, resting a hand on the deaf girl’s shoulder. Her eyes travel over me, as though putting me in context.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  In textbook English: “You must leave here. It is not safe.”

  “My name is Alisha Barba.”

  Her eyes bloom. She knows my name.

  “Please leave. Go now.”

  “Tell me how you know me?”

  She doesn’t answer. Her right hand moves to her distended abdomen. She caresses it gently and sways slightly from side to side as if rocking her passenger to sleep. The motion seems to take the fight out of her.

  She signs for Zala to lock the door and pushes her toward the kitchen where speckled linoleum is worn smooth on the floor and a shelf holds jars of spices and a sack of rice. The soup canisters are washed and drying beside the sink.

  I glance around the rest of the apartment. The room is large and square. Cracks edge across the high ceiling and leaking water has blistered the plaster. Mattresses are propped against the wall, with blankets neatly folded along the top. A wardrobe has a metal hanger holding the doors shut.

  There is a suitcase, a wooden trunk, and on the top a photograph in a frame. It shows a family in a formal pose. The mother is seated holding a baby. The father is standing behind them, a hand on his wife’s shoulder. At her feet is a small girl—Samira—holding the hem of her mother’s dress.

  I turn back to her. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Please go.”

  I glance at the swell of her pregnancy. “When are you due?”

  “Soon.”

  “What are you going to do with the baby?”

  She holds up two fingers. For a moment I think she’s signing something to Zala but this has nothing to do with deafness. The message is for me. Two babies! Twins.

  “A boy and a girl,” she says, clasping her hands together, beseeching me. “Please go. You cannot be here.”

  Hair prickles on the nape of my neck. Why is she so terrified?

  “Tell me about the babies, Samira. Are you going to keep them?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Who is the father?”

  “Allah the Redeemer.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I am a virgin.”

  “You’re pregnant, Samira. You understand how that happens.”

  She confronts my skepticism defiantly. “I have never lain down with a man. I am a virgin.”

  What fantasies are these? It’s ridiculous. Yet her certainty has the conviction of a convert.

  “Who put the babies inside you, Samira?”

  “Allah.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “The doctors helped him. They put the eggs inside me.”

  She’s talking about IVF. The embryos were implanted. That’s why she’s having twins.

  “Whose eggs were put inside you?”

  Samira raises her eyes to the question. I know the answer already. Cate had twelve viable embryos. According to Dr. Banerjee there were five IVF procedures using two eggs per treatment. That leaves two eggs unaccounted for. Cate must have carried them to Amsterdam. She arranged a surrogacy.

  That’s why she had to fake her pregnancy. She was going to give Felix his own child—a perfect genetic match that nobody could prove wasn’t theirs.

  “Please leave,” says Samira. Tears are close.

  “Why are you so frightened?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Just tell me why you’re doing this.”

  She pushes back her hair with her thumb and forefinger. Her wide eyes hold mine until the precise moment that it becomes uncomfortable. She is strong-willed. Defiant.

  “Did someone pay you money? How much? Did Cate pay you?”

  She doesn’t answer. Instead she turns her face away, gazing at the window, a dark square against a dark wall.

  “Is that how you know my name? Cate gave it to you. She said that if anything happened, if anything went wrong, you had to contact me. Is that right?”

  She nods.

  “I need to know why you’re doing this. What did they offer you?”

  “Freedom.”

  “From what?”

  She looks at me as though I’ll never understand. “Slavery.”

  I kneel down, taking her hand, which is surprisingly cool. There is a speck of sleep in the corner of her eye. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened. What were you told? What were you promised?”

  There is a noise from the corridor. Zala reappears. Terror paints her face and her head swings from side to side, looking for somewhere to hide.

  Samira motions for her to stay in the kitchen and turns to face the door. Waiting. A brittle scratching. A key in the lock. My nerve ends are twitching.

  The door opens. A thin man with pink-rimmed eyes and bad teeth seems to spasm at the sight of me. His right hand reaches into a zipped nylon jacket.

  “Wie bent u?” he barks.

  I think he’s asking who I am.

  “I’m a nurse,” I say.

  He looks at Samira. She nods.

  “Dr. Beyer asked me to drop by and check on Samira on my way home. I live not far from here.”

  The thin man makes a sucking sound with his tongue and his eyes dart about the room as though accusing the walls of being part of the deceit. He doesn’t believe me, but he’s not sure.

  Samira turns toward me. “I have been having cramps. They keep me awake at night.”

  “You are not a nurse,” he says accusingly. “You don’t speak Dutch!”

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. English is the official language of the European Union.” I use my best Mary Poppins voice. Officious. Matter-of-fact. I don’t know how far I can push him.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Like I said, it’s just around the corner.”

  “The address?”

  I remember a cross street. “If you don’t mind I have an examination to conduct.”

  He screws his mouth into a sneer. Something about his defiance hints at hidden depths of brutality. Whatever his relationship to Samira or Zala, he terrifies them. Samira mentioned slavery. Hassan had a property tattoo on his wrist. I don’t have all the answers but I have to get them away from here.

  The thin man barks a question in Dutch.

  Samira nods her head, lowering her eyes.

  “Lieg niet tegen me, kutwijf. Ik vermoord je.”

  His right hand is still in his jacket. Lithe and sinewy like a marathon runner, he weighs perhaps 180 pounds. With the element of surprise I could possibly take him.

  “Please leave the room,” I tell him.

  “No. I stay here.”

  Zala is watching from the kitchen. I motion her toward me and then unfold a blanket, making her hold it like a curtain to give Samira some privacy.

  Samira lies back on the couch and lifts her jumper, bunching it beneath her breasts. My hands are damp. Her thighs are smooth and a taut triangle of white cotton lies at the top of them. The skin of her swollen belly is like tracing paper, stretched so tightly I can see the faint blue veins beneath the surface.

  The babies move. Her en
tire torso seems to ripple. An elbow or a knee creates a peak and then slips away. I can feel the outline of tiny bodies beneath her skin, hard little skulls and joints.

  She lifts her knees and raises her hips, indicating I should remove her underwear. She has more of an idea of what to do than I have. Her minder is still at the door. Samira fixes him with a defiant glare as if to say: You want to see this?

  He can’t hold her gaze. Instead he turns away and walks into the kitchen, lighting a cigarette.

  “You lie so easily,” Samira whispers.

  “So do you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Yanus. He looks after us.”

  I look around the room. “He’s not doing such a good job.”

  “He brings food.”

  Yanus is back at the doorway.

  “Well the babies are in good position,” I say loudly. “They’re moving down. The cramps could be Braxton Hicks, which are like phantom contractions. Your blood pressure is a little higher than it has been.”

  I don’t know where this information is coming from; some of it must be via verbal osmosis, having heard my mother’s graphic descriptions of my nieces and nephews arriving in the world. I know far more than I want to about mucus plugs, fundal measurements and crowning. In addition to this, I am a world authority on pain relief—epidurals, pethidine, Entonox, TENS machines and every homeopathic, mind-controlling family remedy in existence.

  Yanus turns away again. I hear him punch keys on his mobile phone. He’s calling someone. Taking advice. Time is running out.

  “You met a friend of mine. Cate Beaumont. Do you remember her?”

  Samira nods.

  “Do your babies belong to her?”

  The same nod.

  “Cate died last Sunday. She was run down and killed. Her husband is also dead.”

  Samira doubles over as though her unborn have understood the news and are grieving already. Her eyes flood with a mixture of disbelief and knowing.

  “I can help you,” I plead.

  “Nobody can help me.”

  Yanus is in the doorway. He reaches into his jacket again. I can see his shadow lengthening on the floor. I turn to face him. He has a can of beans in his fist. He swings it, a short arc from the hip. I sense it coming but have no time to react. The blow sends me spinning across the room. One side of my head is on fire.

  Samira screams. Not so much a scream as a strangled cry.

  Yanus is coming for me again. I can taste blood. One side of my face is already beginning to swell. He hits me, using the can like a hammer. A knife flashes in his right hand.

  His eyes are fixed on mine with ecstatic intensity. This is his calling—inflicting pain. The blade twirls in front of me doing figure eights. I was supposed to take him by surprise. The opposite happened. I underestimated him.

  Another blow connects. Metal on bone. The room begins to blur.

  Some things, real things, seem to happen half in the mind and half in the world; trapped in between. The mind sees them first, like now—a boot swings toward me. I glimpse Zala hanging back. She wants to look away but can’t drag her gaze from me. The boot connects and I see a blaze of color.

  Fishing roughly in my pockets, Yanus takes out my mobile, my passport, a bundle of Euros…

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a nurse.”

  “Leugenaar!”

  He holds the knife against my neck. The point pricks my skin. A ruby teardrop is caught on the tip of the blade.

  Zala moves toward him. I yell at her to stop. She can’t hear me. Yanus swats her away, with the can of beans. Zala drops and holds her face. He curses. I hope he broke his fingers.

  My left eye is closing and blood drips from my ear, warming my neck. He forces me upright, pulling my arms back and looping plastic cuffs around my wrists. The ratchets pull them tighter, pinching my skin.

  He opens my passport. Reads the name.

  “Politieagent! How did you find this place?” He spits toward Zala. “She led you here.”

  “If you leave us alone I won’t say anything. You can walk out of here.”

  Yanus finds this amusing. The point of his knife traces across my eyebrow.

  “My partner knows I’m here. He’s coming. He’ll bring others. If you leave now you can get away.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for Samira.”

  He speaks to Samira in Dutch. She begins gathering her things. A few clothes, the photograph of her family…

  “Wait for me outside,” he tells her.

  “Zala.”

  “Outside.”

  “Zala,” she says again, more determined.

  He waves the knife in her face. She doesn’t flinch. She is like a statue. Immovable. She’s not leaving without her friend.

  The door suddenly blasts inward as if blown from its hinges. Ruiz fills the frame. Sometimes I forget how big he can make himself.

  Yanus barely flinches. He turns, knife first. Here is a fresh challenge. The night holds such promise for him. Ruiz takes in the scene and settles on Yanus, matching his intensity.

  But I can see the future. Yanus is going to take Ruiz apart. Kill him slowly. The knife is like an extension of him, a conductor’s baton directing an invisible orchestra. Listening to voices.

  The DI has something in his hand. A half brick. It’s not enough. Yanus braces his legs apart and raises a hand, curling a finger to motion him onward.

  Ruiz swings his fist, creating a disturbance in the air. Yanus feints to the left. The half brick comes down and misses. Yanus grins. “You’re too slow, old man.”

  The blade is alive. I scarcely see it move. A dark stain blossoms on Ruiz’s shirtsleeve, but he continues stepping forward, forcing Yanus to retreat.

  “Can you walk, Alisha?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get up and get out.”

  “Not without you, sir.”

  “Please, for once in your life—”

  “I’ll kill you both,” says Yanus.

  My hands are bound behind me. I can’t do anything. The acid sting of nausea rises in my throat. Samira goes ahead of me, stepping into the corridor. Zala follows, still holding her cheek. Yanus yells to her in Dutch, threateningly. He lunges at Ruiz who dodges the blade. I turn outside the door and run toward the stairs, waiting for the sound of a body falling.

  On every landing I shoulder the locked doors, banging my head against them and yelling for help. I want someone to untie my hands, to call the police, to give me a weapon. Nobody answers. Nobody wants to know.

  We reach the ground floor and the street, turning right and heading for the canal. Samira and Zala are ahead of me. What a strange trio we make hustling through the darkness. We reach the corner. I turn to Samira. “I have to help him.” She understands. “I want you to go straight to the police.”

  She shakes her head. “They’ll send me back.”

  I haven’t time to argue. “Then go to the nuns. Quickly. Zala knows the way.”

  I can feel the adrenaline still pumping through my body. Running now, aware of the void in my stomach, I sprint toward the house. There are people milling outside. They’re surrounding a figure slumped on the steps. Ruiz. Someone has given him a cigarette. He sucks it greedily, drawing in his cheeks and then exhaling slowly.

  Relief flows through me like liquid beneath my skin. I don’t know whether to weep or laugh or do both. Blood soaks his shirt. A fist is pressed against his chest.

  “I think maybe you should take me to a hospital,” he says, struggling to breathe.

  Like a crazy woman, I begin yelling at people to call an ambulance. A teenager summons the courage to tell me there’s one coming.

  “I had to get close,” Ruiz explains in a hoarse whisper. His brow and upper lip are dotted with beads of sweat. “I had to let him stab me. If he could reach me I could reach him.”

  “Don’t talk. Just be still.”

  “I hope I killed the bastar
d.”

  More people emerge from the flats. They want to come and see the bleeding man. Someone cuts away my cuffs and the plastic curls like orange peel at my feet.

  Ruiz gazes at the night sky above the rooftops.

  “My ex-wives have been wishing this on me for a long while,” he says.

  “That’s not true. Miranda is still in love with you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can see it. She flirts with you all the time.”

  “She can’t help herself. She flirts with everyone. She does it to be nice.”

  His breathing is labored. Blood gurgles in his lungs.

  “Wanna hear a joke?” he says.

  “Don’t talk. Sit quietly.”

  “It’s an old one. I like the old ones. It’s about a bear. I like bears. Bears can be funny.”

  He’s not going to stop.

  “There’s this family of polar bears living in the Arctic in the middle of winter. The baby polar bear goes to his mother one day and says, ‘Mum? Am I really a polar bear?’

  “‘Of course you are, son,’ she says.

  “And the cub replies, ‘Are you sure I’m not a panda bear or a black bear?’

  “‘No, you’re definitely not. Now run outside and play in the snow.’

  “But he’s still confused so the baby polar bear goes looking for his father and finds him fishing at the ice hole. ‘Hey, Dad, am I a polar bear?’

  “‘Well, of course, son,’ he replies gruffly.

  “‘Are you sure I don’t have any grizzly in me or maybe koala?’

  “‘No, son, I can tell you now that you’re a hundred percent purebred polar bear, just like me and your mother. Why in the world do you ask?’

  “‘Because I’m freezing my butt off out here!’”

  The DI laughs and groans at the same time. I put my arms around his chest, trying to keep him warm. A mantra, unspoken, grows louder in my head: “Please don’t die. Please don’t die. Please don’t die.”

  This is my fault. He shouldn’t be here. There’s so much blood.

  5

  Regret is such an odd emotion because it invariably comes a moment too late, when only our imagination can rewrite what has happened. My regrets are like pressed flowers in the pages of a diary. Brittle reminders of summers past; like the last summer before graduation, the one that wasn’t big enough to hold its own history.