The Night Ferry (23 page)

They are lined with aging, psoriatic houses, subdivided into bedsits, flats and maisonettes. Doorbel pushers form neat lines.

We pass a smal row of shops that are shuttered and locked. At the next corner Zala crosses the road and enters a gate. It belongs to a large, rundown apartment block at the heart of a T junction. The shrubs outside are like puffs of green against the darkness of the bricks. There are bars on the downstairs windows and shutters on the upper floors. Lights burn behind them.

I walk past the gate and check there are no other entrances. I wish Ruiz were here. What would he do? Knock on the door? Introduce himself? No, he’d wait and watch. He’d see who was coming and going. Study the rhythm of the place.

I look at my watch. It has just gone eight. Where is he? With luck, he’l get my text message with the address.

The wind has picked up. Leaves dance with scraps of paper at my feet. Hidden in a doorway, I’m protected by the shadows.

I don’t have the patience for stakeouts. Ruiz is good at them. He can block everything out and stay focused, without ever daydreaming or getting distracted. When I stare at the same scene for too long it becomes burned into my subconscious, playing over and over on a loop until I don’t register the changes. That’s why police surveil ance teams are rotated every few hours. Fresh eyes.

A car pul s up. Double-parks. A man enters the building. Five minutes later he emerges with three women. Neatly groomed. Dressed to kil . Ruiz would say it smel s like sex.

Two different men stop outside to smoke. They sit on the steps with their legs splayed, comfortable. A young boy creeps up behind one of them and covers his eyes playful y. Father and son wrestle happily until the youngster is sent back inside. They look like immigrants. It’s the sort of place Samira would go, seeking safety in numbers.

I can’t stay here al night. And I can’t afford to leave and risk losing my link to her. It’s almost nine. Where the hel is Ruiz?

The men on the steps look up as I approach.

“Samira Khan?”

One of them tosses his head, indicating upstairs. I step around them. The door is open. The foyer smel s of cooking spices and a thousand extinguished cigarettes.

Three children are playing at the base of the stairs. One of them grabs hold of my leg and tries to hide behind me before dashing off again. I climb to the first landing. Empty gas bottles have col ected against the wal s beside bags of rubbish. A baby cries. Children argue. Canned laughter escapes through thin wal s.

Two teenage girls are sitting outside a flat, heads together, swapping secrets.

“I’m looking for Samira.”

One of them points upstairs.

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 fal s. Water spil s at her feet.

Against al 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 pul 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.”

“Tel 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 wal , 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 smal 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 swel 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?

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

She shakes her head.

“Who is the father?”

“Al ah 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?”

“Al ah.”

“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 tel 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-wil ed. 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 wal .

“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’l 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 tel 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 wal s 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 al 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 stil 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 tel 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 swol en bel y is like tracing paper, stretched so tightly I can see the faint blue veins beneath the surface.

The babies move. Her entire 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 skul s 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 stil 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.

“Wel 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-control ing family remedy in existence.

Yanus turns away again. I hear him punch keys on his mobile phone. He’s cal ing 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 kil ed. 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 swel . 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 cal ing—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 yel 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, pul ing my arms back and looping plastic cuffs around my wrists. The ratchets pul them tighter, pinching my skin.

He opens my passport. Reads the name.