The Night Ferry

by Michael Robotham

  I take Dave through everything that’s happened. Occasionally he interrupts with a question, but mostly he eats and listens. This whole affair is laced with half-truths and concocted fictions. The uncertainties and ambiguities seem to outweigh the facts and they nag at me, making me fretful and uncomfortable.

  I borrow his notebook and write down names.

  Brendan Pearl

  Yanus

  Paul Donavon

  Julian Shawcroft

  On the opposite side of the page I write another list: the victims.

  Cate and Felix Beaumont

  Hassan Khan

  Samira Khan

  There are likely to be others. Where do I list those who fall in between, people like Barnaby Elliot? I still think he lied to me about Cate’s computer. And Dr. Banerjee, her fertility specialist. It was more than a coincidence that he turned up at my father’s birthday party.

  I’m not sure what I hope to achieve by writing things down. Perhaps it will give me a fresh slant on events or throw up a new link. I have been searching for a central figure behind events but maybe that’s too simplistic a notion. People could all be linked like spokes of a wheel that only touch in the center.

  There is another issue. Where was the baby—or the babies—going to be handed over? Perhaps Cate planned to take a holiday or a weekend break to the Netherlands. She would go into “labor” tell everyone she had given birth and then bring her newborn home to live happily ever after.

  Even a baby needs travel documents. A passport. Which means a birth certificate, statutory declarations and signed photographs. I should call the British consulate in The Hague and ask how British nationals register a foreign birth.

  In a case like this it would be much easier if the baby were born in the same country as the prospective parents. It could be a home birth or in a private house, without involving a hospital or even a midwife.

  Once the genetic parents took possession of the baby nobody could ever prove it didn’t belong to them. Blood samples, DNA and paternity tests would all confirm their ownership.

  Samira said Hassan was going to the U.K. ahead of her. She expected to follow him. What if that’s where they plan to take her? It would also explain why Cate gave Samira my name in case something went wrong.

  “Last night you said you were giving up and going home,” says Dave.

  “I know. I just thought—”

  “You said yourself that these babies belong to Samira. They always have.”

  “Someone killed my friend.”

  “You can’t bring her back.”

  “They torched her house.”

  “It’s not your case.”

  I feel a surge of anger. Does he really expect me to leave this to Softell and his imbecile mates? And Spijker doesn’t fill me with confidence after letting Yanus go.

  “Last night you were crying your eyes out. You said it was over.”

  “That was last night.” I can’t hide the anger in my voice.

  “What’s changed?”

  “My mind. It’s a woman’s prerogative.”

  I want to say, Don’t be a fucking jerk, Dave, and stop quoting me back to myself.

  What is it about men? Just when you think they’re rational members of the human race they go all Neanderthal and protective. Next he’ll be asking me how many partners I’ve had and if the sex was any good.

  We’re drawing stares from other patrons. “I don’t think we should talk about it here,” he whispers.

  “We’re not going to talk about it at all.” I get up to leave.

  “Where are you going?”

  I want to tell him it’s none of his damn business. Instead I say that I have an appointment with Samira’s lawyer, which isn’t entirely true.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No. You go and see Ruiz. He’ll appreciate that.” My voice softens. “We’ll meet up later.”

  Dave looks miserable but doesn’t argue. Give him his due—he’s a quick learner.

  Lena Caspar’s waiting room is being vacuumed and tidied. Magazines sit neatly stacked on a table and the toys have been collected in a polished wooden crate. Her desk is similarly neat and empty except for a box of tissues and a jug of water on a tray. Even the wastepaper basket is clean.

  The lawyer is dressed in a knee-length skirt and a matching jacket. Like many women of a certain age, her makeup is applied perfectly.

  “I cannot tell you where Samira is,” she announces.

  “I know. But you can tell me what happened yesterday.”

  She points to a chair. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  The lawyer places her palms flat on the desk. “I knew something was wrong when I saw the interpreter. Samira’s English is perfect, yet she pretended not to understand what I said to her. Everything had to be translated back and forth. Samira volunteered no information without being prompted.”

  “Did Yanus spend any time alone with her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did she see him?”

  “Yanus took part in a lineup. She picked him out through a two-way mirror.”

  “He couldn’t see Samira?”

  “No.”

  “Did Yanus have anything in his hands?”

  She sighs, irritated at my pedantry.

  I press her. “Did he have something in his hands?”

  She is about to say no but remembers something. “He had a blue handkerchief. He was pushing it into his fist like a magician preparing a conjuring trick.”

  How did he find Zala? Nobody knew she was at the convent except the nuns. Sister Vogel wouldn’t have given her up. De Walletjes is a small place. What did the lawyer once say to me? The walls have mice and the mice have ears.

  Mrs. Caspar listens patiently while I explain what I think happened. Zala is not her concern. She has four hundred asylum seekers on her books.

  “What will happen to Samira now?” I ask.

  “She will be sent back to Afghanistan, which is I think a better option than marrying Yanus.”

  “He is not going to marry her.”

  “No.”

  “He is going to find her and take her babies.”

  She shrugs. How can she blithely accept such an outcome? Leaning on the windowsill, she looks down at the courtyard where pigeons peck at the base of a lone tree.

  “Some people are born to suffer,” she says pensively. “It never stops for them, not for a second. Look at the Palestinians. The same is true of Afghanis and Sudanese, Ethiopians and Bangladeshis. War, famine, droughts, flood, the suffering never stops. They are made for it—sustained by it.

  “We in the West like to think it can be different; that we can change these countries and these people because it makes us feel better when we tuck our own children into their warm beds with full stomachs and then pour ourselves a glass of wine and watch someone else’s tragedy unfold on CNN.” She stares down at her hands as if she despises them. “Unless we truly understand what it’s like to walk in their shoes, we should not judge people like Samira. She is only trying to save what she has left.”

  Something else trembles in her voice. Resignation. Acceptance. Why is she so ready to give up? In that split second I realize there is something that she’s not telling me. Either she can’t bring herself to do it or Spijker has warned her off. With her innate sense of honesty and justice, she will not lie to me directly.

  “What happened to Samira?”

  “She went missing last night from the migrant center at Schiphol Airport.”

  8

  There is a scientific theory called the uncertainty principle that states it is impossible to truly observe something without altering it. I have done more than observe. By finding Samira I have changed the course of events.

  During the taxi journey to police headquarters my fists are clenched and my fingernails dig into the soft flesh. I want to scream. I warned Spijker this would happen. I said Samira would run or Y
anus would find her.

  I don’t expect him to see me. He will hide behind his workload or make excuses that I’ve wasted enough of his time already. Again I wait in the foyer. This time the summons comes. Perhaps he has a conscience after all.

  The corridors are lined in light gray carpet and dotted with palms. It feels more like a merchant bank than a police station.

  Spijker is jacketless. His sleeves are rolled up. The hair on his forearms is the color of his freckles. The door closes. His jacket swings from a hanger behind it.

  “How long are you intending to remain in Amsterdam?” he asks.

  “Why, sir?”

  “You have already stayed longer than is usual. Most visitors are here for a day or two.”

  “Are you advising me to leave?”

  “I have no authority to do that.” He spins on his chair, gazing out the window. His office looks east across the theater district to the neo-Gothic spires of the Rijksmuseum. Lined on the windowsill are tiny cacti in painted clay pots. This is his garden—fleshy, bulbous and spiky.

  I had a speech prepared during my taxi ride, when I vented my spleen and caused the taxi driver a few anxious moments, peering into the rear mirror. Now all my best lines seem pointless and wasted. I wait for the detective to speak.

  “I know what you think, DC Barba. You think I have dropped the ball on this. That is a rugby term, yes? A British game not a Dutch one. In the Netherlands we do not pick up the ball. Only a goalkeeper can do this.”

  “You should have protected her.”

  “She chose to escape.”

  “She’s eight months pregnant and eighteen years old. You couldn’t hold her for twenty-four hours.”

  “Did you want me to handcuff her?”

  “You could have stopped her.”

  “I am trying to keep this investigation low key. I don’t want it reaching the media. Black market babies make dramatic headlines.”

  “So it was a political decision?”

  “There is no politics in the Dutch police.”

  “No?”

  “No one has talked politics to me.”

  Despite his down-turned mouth and sad eyes, Spijker comes across as an optimist, a man who has faith in the human condition.

  “I have twenty years’ service. I know how to make a case. I am like the little pig that builds his house out of bricks. You are like the little pig who builds her house from straw. Do you remember what happens to such a house?” He puffs out his cheeks and blows. A flake of cigarette ash swirls from his desk into my lap.

  Sporting metaphors and fairy-tale metaphors, what next? He opens the top drawer of his desk, withdrawing a file.

  “There is a fertility clinic in Amersfoort. It has a very good reputation and has helped thousands of couples to begin a family. Occasionally, when IVF has been unsuccessful, the clinic has agreed to implant embryos into the uterus of a surrogate mother. This is called gestational surrogacy. In 2002 there were only four such procedures out of 1,500 normal IVF implantations. In 2003 and 2004 there were two in total.” He glances at the file. “In the past year there have been twenty-two.”

  “Twenty-two! That’s an increase of more than tenfold.”

  “Gestational surrogacy is legal in the Netherlands. Commercial surrogacy is not. Nor is blackmail or bonded slavery.

  “Directors of the clinic and staff insist they are unaware of any wrongdoing. They also insist the surrogate mothers were properly screened. They were examined physically, financially and psychologically.

  “On January 26 this year Samira Khan underwent this examination. She was asked questions about her menstrual cycle and was given pills and injections—estrogen and progesterone—to prepare her uterus for the implantation.

  “On February 10 she returned to the clinic. The embryo transfer took less than fifteen minutes. A soft tube was inserted through her vagina to a predetermined position. A small inner catheter was then loaded with two embryos and these were injected into the uterus. Samira Khan was told to lie still for thirty minutes and then discharged. She was taken to the car park in a wheelchair and driven away by Yanus. Her pregnancy was confirmed two weeks later. Twins.”

  Spijker finally looks up at me. “But you know this already.”

  There are other papers in his file.

  “Do you have the names of the intended parents?”

  “Legal contracts are required between couples and the surrogate mothers. The clinic does not draw up these contracts, but requires a written statement from a lawyer confirming they exist.”

  “Have you seen the contracts?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment I think he’s going to wait for me to ask, but he is not a cruel man.

  “Each copy of the contract was signed by Samira Khan and countersigned by Cate Beaumont. Is this what you wish to know?”

  “Yes.”

  He returns the folder to the drawer and rises from his seat, surveying the view from his window with a mixture of pride and protectiveness.

  “Of the twenty-two procedures I mentioned, eighteen resulted in pregnancies. One of the failures involved a woman named Zala Haseeb. Doctors discovered she was unable to fall pregnant because of earlier damage to her reproductive organs caused by blunt force trauma.”

  “She was tortured by the Taliban.”

  He doesn’t turn from the window but I know he hears me.

  “Twelve of the surrogate mothers are past term but we have no confirmation of the births. Normally the clinic monitors every stage of the pregnancy and keeps a record of each outcome for statistical purposes. In this case, however, it lost track of the women.”

  “Lost track of them!”

  “We are in the process of finding them. The clinic has provided us with their names but the addresses appear to be fictitious.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find any trace of the births in the Netherlands,” I say. “I think the mothers were smuggled across borders or overseas to where the intended parents live. This meant the babies could be handed over immediately after they were born and registered without any questions.”

  Spijker sees the logic of this. “We are tracking the intended parents through financial transactions. There are receipts and statutory declarations.”

  “Who drew up the contracts?”

  “A legal firm here in Amsterdam.”

  “Are they being investigated?”

  Spijker pauses for a brief moment. “You met the senior partner yesterday. He represents Mr. Yanus.”

  His gaze builds into a stare. For the first time I realize what a burden he carries. I have been chasing the truth about a single woman. He now has a case that touches dozens, perhaps hundreds of people’s lives.

  Spijker turns away from the window. After a long silence he speaks. “Do you have children?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I have four of them.”

  “Four!”

  “Too many, not enough—I can’t decide.” A smile flirts with his lips. “I understand what it means to people; how they can want a child so badly that they will do almost anything.” He leans slightly forward, inclining his head to one side. “Do you know the legend of Pandora’s box, DC Barba?”

  “I’ve heard the term.”

  “The box didn’t belong to Pandora; it was built by the Greek god Zeus and it was crammed full of all the diseases, sufferings, vices and crimes that could possibly afflict humanity. I cannot imagine such a malignant brew. The god Zeus also created Pandora—a beautiful woman, inquisitive by nature. He knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist peeking inside the mysterious box. She heard pitiful whispers coming from inside. So she raised the lid just a little. And all the ills of the world flew out, fastening upon the carefree and innocent, turning their cries of joy into wails of despair.”

  His fingers open showing me his palms. Empty. This is what he fears. An investigation like this risks tearing apart entire families. How many of these babies are in loving homes? Consider how
lucky they are when so many children are abused and unwanted. The argument triggers a feeling of déjà vu. Julian Shawcroft had made a similar case when I visited him at the adoption center.

  I understand the concerns, but my best friend was murdered. Nothing anyone says to me will justify her death and their ominous warnings sound hollow when I picture Cate lying broken on the road.

  The briefing is over. Spijker stands rather formally and escorts me downstairs.

  “I spoke to a Chief Superintendent North of Scotland Yard last evening. He informed me that you are absent without leave from the London Metropolitan Police. You are facing disciplinary proceedings for neglect of duty.”

  There is nothing I can say.

  “I also spoke to a Detective Inspector Forbes who is investigating the deaths of illegals on a ferry at Harwich. You are helping him with this investigation. There was also, I think, a Detective Sergeant Softell, who wishes to speak to you about a suspicious fire.”

  Spijker could have used the term “suspect” but is far too polite.

  “These men have asked me to put you on the first available flight back to London, but as I explained to them, I have no authority for this.” He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I also assume you do not wish to leave Amsterdam without your friend Mr. Ruiz. I spoke to him this morning. He is recovering well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He has great affection for you.”

  “We have known each other a long time.”

  “He believes that you will make a very fine investigator. He used a term I am not familiar with. He said you were ‘sharper than a pointy stick.’”

  That sounds like the DI.

  “I understand why you are here and why you will stay a little longer, but now it is time for you to leave this investigation to me.”

  “What about Samira?”

  “I will find her.”

  9

  I don’t normally notice people when I run. I shut out the world, floating over the ground like a vague impression. Today is different. I can hear people talking, arguing and laughing. There are muffled footsteps and car doors closing, the hum of traffic and machines.