Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

I should call Ruiz’s family. Who, exactly? I don’t have numbers for his children or any of his ex-wives—not even the most recent, Miranda.

I pick up the phone and punch the numbers. Dave is at the station. I hear other voices in the background.

“Hello, sweet girl, where have you been?”

“My mobile was stolen.”

“How?”

“There was an accident.”

His mood alters. “An accident!”

“Not really an accident.” I’m not doing this very well .

“Hang on.” I hear him apologizing to someone. He takes me somewhere private.

“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“The DI is in hospital. Someone stabbed him.”

“Shit!”

“I need a favor. Find a number for his ex-wife.”

“Which one?”

“Miranda. Tell her that he’s in the Academisch Medisch Centrum. It’s a hospital in Amsterdam.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I think so. He’s out of surgery.”

Dave wants the details. I try to fudge them, making it sound like a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time scenario. Bad luck. He isn’t convinced. I know what’s coming now. He’s going to get clingy and pathetic and ask me to come home and I’ll be reminded of all the reasons I don’t want to be married to someone.

Only he doesn’t. He is matter-of-fact and direct, taking down the number of the hospital, along with Spijker’s name. He’s going to find out what the Dutch police are doing.

“I found Samira. She’s pregnant.”

I can hear Dave’s mind juddering through the consequences. He is careful and methodical, like a carpenter who measures twice and cuts once.

“Cate paid for a baby. A surrogate.”

“Jesus, Ali.”

“It gets worse. She donated the embryos. There are twins.”

“Who owns the babies?”

“I don’t know.”

Dave wants the whole story but I don’t have time. I’m about to hang up when he remembers something.

“I know it’s probably not the time,” he says, “but I had a phone call from your mother.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. She invited me to lunch on Sunday.”

She threatened to do it and she went and did it!

He’s waiting for a response.

“I don’t know if I’ll be home by then,” I say.

“But you knew about the invite?”

“Yes, of course,” I lie. “I told her to invite you.”

He relaxes. “For a moment I thought she might have gone behind your back. How embarrassing would that be—my girlfriend’s mother arranging dates for me? Story of my life—mothers liking me and their daughters running a mile.”

Now he’s blathering.

“It’s all right, Dave.”

“Brilliant.”

He doesn’t want to hang up. I do it for him. The shower is running. I step beneath the spray and flinch as the hot water hits my cheek and the cut on my ear. Washed and dried, I open my bag and take out my Dolce Gabbana pants and a dark blouse. I see less of me in the mirror than I remember. When I ran competitively my best weight was 123 pounds. I got heavier when I joined the Met. Night shifts and canteen food will do that to you.

I have always been rather un-girlie. I don’t have manicures or pedicures and I only paint my nails on special occasions (so I can chip it off when I get bored).

The day I cut my hair was almost a rite of passage. When it grew back I got a sensible layered shag cut. My mother cried. She’s never been one to ration tears.

Ever since my teens I have lived in fear of saris and skirts. I didn’t wear a bra until I was fourteen and my periods started after everyone else’s. I imagined them banked up behind a dam wall and when the gates opened it was going to be like a scene from a Tarantino film, without Harvey Keitel to clean up afterward.

In those days I didn’t imagine ever feeling like a woman, but slowly it happened. Now I’m almost thirty and self-conscious enough to wear makeup—a little lip gloss and mascara. I pluck my eyebrows and wax my legs. I still don’t own a skirt and every item in my wardrobe, apart from my jeans and my saris, is a variant on the color black. That’s okay. Small steps.

I make one more phone call. It diverts between numbers and Lena Caspar answers. A public address system echoes in the background. She is on a railway platform. There is a court hearing in Rotterdam, she explains. An asylum seeker has been charged with stealing groceries.

“I found Samira.”

“How is she?”

“She needs your help.”

The details can wait. I give her Spijker’s name and phone number. Samira will need protection and guarantees about her status if they want her to give evidence.

“She doesn’t know about Hassan.”

“You have to tell her.”

“I know.”

The lawyer begins thinking out loud. She will find someone to take over the court case in Rotterdam. It might take a few hours.

“I have a question.”

My words are drowned out by a platform announcement. She waits. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I have a hypothetical question for you.”

“Yes?”

“If a married couple provided a fertilized embryo to a surrogate mother who later gave birth, who would the baby belong to?”

“The birth mother.”

“Even if genetically it had the DNA of the couple?”

“It doesn’t matter. The law in the Netherlands is the same as the law in the U.K. The birth mother is the legal mother. Nobody else has a claim.”

“What about the father?”

“He can apply for access, but the court will favor the mother. Why do you want to know?”

“Spijker will explain.”

I hang up and take another look in the mirror. My hair is still wet. If I wear it down it will hide the swelling on my cheek. I’ll have to stop my natural inclination to push it behind my ears.

Downstairs I find the detective and desk clerk in conversation. A notebook is open. They stop talking when they see me. Spijker is checking my details. I would do the same.

It is a short drive to the Augustinian Convent. We turn along Warmoesstraat and pull into a multistory car park. The African parking attendant comes running over. Spijker shows him a badge and tears up the parking stub.

Against his better judgment he has agreed to let me see Samira first. I have twenty minutes. Descending the concrete steps, I push open a heavy fire door. Across the street is the convent. A familiar figure emerges from the large front door. Dressed in her pink jacket and a long ankle-length skirt, Zala puts her head down and hustles along the pavement. Her blue hijab hides the bruising on her face. She shouldn’t be outside. I fight the urge to follow her.

A large ruddy-faced nun answers the door. Like the others she is creased and crumbling, trying to outlive the building. I am led down a corridor to Sister Vogel’s office, which contains a curious mixture of the old and the new. A cabinet with a glass-front full of books is stained the same dark color as the mahogany desk. In the corner there is a fax machine and a photocopier. A heart-shaped box of candies sits on the mantel, alongside photographs that could be of her nieces and nephews. I wonder if Sister Vogel ever regrets her calling. God can be a barren husband.

She appears beside me. “You didn’t tell me you were a police officer.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

She doesn’t answer. “You sent more people for me to feed.”

“They don’t eat very much.”

She folds her arms. “Is this girl in trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Has she been abandoned?”

“Abused.”

Sorrow fills every crease and wrinkle of her face. She notices the bruising on my cheek and reaches toward it sympathetically. “Who did this to you?”