Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

“What about the missing money?”

“Someone probably ripped her off.”

“And then killed her.”

“Not according to the vehicle accident report.”

Softell hands me a typed statement. I have to sign each page and initial any changes. I look at my words. I have lied about why I was at the house and what happened before the fire. Does my signature make it worse?

Taking back the statement, he straightens the pages and punches the stapler. “Very fucking professional,” he sneers. “You know it never stops—the lying. Once you start it just keeps getting worse.”

“Yeah, well, you’d know,” I say, wishing I could think of a put-down that wasn’t so lame. Mostly, I wish I could tear up the statement and start again.

Ruiz is waiting for me in the foyer.

“How’s the eye?”

“The specialist said I should wear an eye patch for a week.”

“So where is it?”

“In my pocket.”

Stepping on a black rubber square, the doors open automatically.

“Your boyfriend has called six times in the last hour. Ever thought of getting a dog instead?”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. That’s why he’s here.”

I look up and see Dave leaning on Ruiz’s car. He wraps me in a bear hug with his face in my hair. Ruiz turns away as though embarrassed.

“Are you smelling me, Dave?”

“Yup.”

“That’s a bit creepy.”

“Not to me. I’m just glad you’re in one piece.”

“Only bruises.”

“I could kiss them better.”

“Perhaps later.”

Dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt and maroon tie, Dave has tidied up since his promotion, but I notice a brown sauce stain on the tie that he hasn’t managed to sponge away. My mother would recognize a detail like that. Scary.

My stomach is empty. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.

We find a café near Wembley Central with a smudged blackboard menu and enough grease in the air to flatten Dave’s hair. It’s an old-fashioned “caff” with Formica tables, paper napkins, and a nervy waitress with a nose stud.

I order tea and toast. Ruiz and Dave choose the all-day breakfast—otherwise known as the 999 because it’s a heart attack on a plate. Nobody says anything until the food is consumed and tea poured. The DI has milk and sugar.

“There is a guy I used to play rugby with,” he says. “He never talked about his job, but I know he works for MI5. I called him this morning. He told me an interesting thing about Brendan Pearl.”

“What’s that?”

Ruiz takes out a tattered notebook held together with a rubber band. Loose pages tumble through his fingers. A lot of detectives don’t believe in keeping notes. They want their memories to be “flexible” should they ever get in the witness box. Ruiz has a memory like the proverbial steel trap, yet he still backs it up on paper.

“According to my friend, Pearl was last known to be working as a security consultant for a construction company in Afghanistan. Three foreign contractors were killed in mid-September 2004 in a convoy traveling on the highway leading from the main airport to central Kabul when a suicide bomber drove into them. Pearl was among the wounded. He spent three weeks in a German hospital and then signed himself out. Nobody has heard from him since then.”

“So what’s he doing here?” asks Dave.

“And how did Cate meet him?” I add.

Ruiz gathers the pages and slips the rubber band around them. “Maybe we should check out this New Life Adoption Center.”

Dave disagrees. “It’s not our investigation.”

“Not officially ,” concedes the DI.

“Not even unofficially.”

“It’s an independent investigation.”

“Unauthorized.”

“ Unconstrained .”

Interrupting them, I suggest, “You could come with us, Dave.”

He hesitates.

Ruiz spies an opening. “That’s what I like about you, Dave. You’re a freethinker. Some people think the modern British detective has become timid and punctilious, but not you. You’re a credit to the Met. You’re not frightened to have an opinion or act on a hunch.”

It’s like watching a fisherman casting a fly. It curls through the air, settles on the water and drifts downstream, drifting, drifting…

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check it out,” says Dave.

There are no signs pointing out the New Life Adoption Center, either in the nearest village or at the gates, which are flanked by sandstone pillars. A loose gravel driveway curves through fields and crosses a single-lane stone bridge. Friesians dot the pasture and scarcely stir as we pass.

Eventually, we pull up in front of a large Adam’s-style house, in the noise shadow of Gatwick Airport. I take Dave’s arm.

“OK, we’ve been married for six years. It was a big Sikh wedding. I looked beautiful of course. We’ve been trying for a baby for five years but your sperm count is too low.”

“Does it have to be my sperm count?”

“Oh, don’t be so soft! Give me your ring.”

He slides a white gold band from his pinkie and I place it on my ring finger.

Ruiz has stayed behind in the village pub, chatting with the locals. So far we’ve established that the adoption center is a privately run charity operating out of a former stately home, Followdale House. The founder, Julian Shawcroft, is a former executive director of the Infertility and Planned Parenthood Clinic in Manchester.

A young woman, barely out of her teens, answers the doorbell. She’s wearing woolly socks and a powder-blue dressing gown that struggles to hide her pregnancy.

“I can’t really help you,” she confides immediately. “I’m just minding the front desk while Stella has a tinkle.”

“Stella?”

“She’s in charge. Well, not really in charge. Mr. Shawcroft is really in charge but he’s often away. He’s here today, which is unusual. He’s the chairman or the managing director. I can never work out the difference. I mean, what does an MD do and what does a chairman do? I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I do that sometimes. My name is Meredith. Do you think Hugh is a nice boy’s name? Hugh Jackman is very cute. I can’t think of any other Hughs.”

“Hugh Grant,” I suggest.

“Cool.”

“Hugh Hefner,” says Dave.

“Who’s he?” she asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her, glaring at Dave.

Meredith’s hair is just long enough to pull into a ponytail and her nail polish is chipped where she has picked it off.

The lobby of the house has two faded Chesterfields on either side of a fireplace. The staircase, with its ornate banister, is sealed off by a blue tasseled rope hung from brass posts.

She leads us to an office in a side room. Several desks have computers and a photocopier spits out pages as a light slides back and forth beneath the glass.

There are posters on the wall. One of them shows a couple swinging an infant between their outstretched hands, except the child is cut out like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Underneath the caption reads: IS THERE A CHILD-SIZE HOLE IN YOUR LIFE?

Through French doors I can see a rose garden and what might once have been a croquet lawn.

“When are you due?” I ask.

“Two weeks.”

“Why are you here?”

She giggles. “This is an adoption center, silly.”

“Yes, but people come to adopt a baby, not to have one.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she says in a matter-of-fact way.

A woman appears—Stella—apologizing for the delay. She looks very businesslike in a dark polo-neck, black trousers and imitation snakeskin shoes with pointed toes and kitten heels.

Her eyes survey me up and down, as though taking an inventory. “Nope, the womb is vacant,” I feel like saying. She glances at her diary.