The Night Ferry (50 page)

“Ten.”

Ruiz offers to drive her into Southampton where she’s studying for her A-levels at the City Col ege. Her exams aren’t until June and the big question is whether she’l sit them at Her Majesty’s pleasure or in a normal classroom with other students.

Her lawyers seem confident that they can argue a case of diminished responsibility or temporary insanity. Given what she’s been through, nobody is very enthusiastic about sending her to prison, not even Mr. Greenburg, who had to choke back his emotions when he told her the CPS was pressing ahead with the murder charge.

“What about the public interest?” I demanded, acidly.

“The public saw it happen on the BBC, prime time. She kil ed a man. I have to let it go to a jury.”

Samira posted bail thanks to Ruiz and my parents. The DI has become like a grandfather to the twins, who seem enthral ed by his craggy face and by the low rumble of his voice.

Perhaps it’s his Gypsy blood but he seems to understand what it’s like to enter the world violently, clinging on to life.

My mother is the other one who is besotted. She phones four times a day wanting updates on how they’re sleeping and feeding and growing.

I take Jasper from Samira and hold him over my shoulder, gently rubbing his back. She scoops up Claudia with her right hand and offers her a breast, which she nuzzles anxiously until her mouth finds the nipple.

A missing hand doesn’t even seem like a disability when you watch her with the twins, loving them completely; doing everyday chores like washing and feeding and changing nappies.

She is a bright, pretty teenage mother of baby twins.

Samira doesn’t talk about the future. She doesn’t talk about the past. Today matters. The twins matter.

I don’t know how long we’re going to have them or what’s going to happen next, but I’ve come to realize that we can never know something like that. There are no certainties in life or in death. The end of one story is merely the beginning of the next.

Also by Michael Robotham

SUSPECT

LOST

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JULY 2008

Copyright © 2007 by Bookwrite Pty Ltd

Al rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Original y published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2007.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.vintagebooks.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robotham, Michael, 1960–

The night ferry: a novel / Michael Robotham.—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. London (England)—Fiction. 2. Amsterdam (Netherlands)—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6118.O26N54 2007

823'.92—dc22 2006019771

eISBN: 978-0-307-45583-3

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