Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

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 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 skulls and joints.