Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

The trafficking syndicate demanded more money to get them to England. The price had risen to ten thousand American dollars. Samira wrote a letter to “Brother” but didn’t know where to send it. Finally they were moved. A fishing boat took them across the Aegean Sea to Italy where they caught a train to Rome with four other illegals. They were met at the station and taken to a house.

Two days later, they met Yanus. He took them to a bus depot and put them inside the luggage compartment of a tourist coach that traveled through Germany to the Netherlands. “Don’t move, don’t talk—otherwise you will be found,” he told them. When the coach arrived at the Dutch border they were to claim asylum. He would find them.

“We are supposed to be going to England,” Samira said.

“England is for another day,” he replied.

The rest of the story matches what I’ve already learned from Lena Caspar.

Sister Vogel knocks softly on the door. She is carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. The delicate cups have chipped handles. I pour the tea through a broken strainer. Samira takes a biscuit and wraps it in a paper napkin, saving it for Zala.

“Have you ever heard the name Paul Donavon?”

She shakes her head.

“Who told you about the IVF clinic?”

“Yanus. He said we had to pay him for our passage from Kabul. He threatened to rape me. Hassan tried to stop him but Yanus cut him over and over. A hundred cuts.” She points to her chest. Noonan found evidence of these wounds on Hassan’s torso.

“What did Yanus want you to do?”

“To become a whore. He showed me what I would have to do—sleep with many men. Then he gave me a choice. He said a baby would pay off my debt. I could remain a virgin.”

She says it almost defiantly. This is a truth that sustains Samira. I wonder if that’s why they chose a Muslim girl. She would have done almost anything to protect her virginity.

I still don’t know how Cate became involved. Was it her idea or Donavon’s?

Spijker is waiting outside. I can’t delay this. Opening my satchel I take out the charcoal drawing, smoothing the corners.

Excitement lights Samira’s eyes from within. “Hassan! You’ve seen him!”

She waits. I shake my head. “Hassan is dead.”

Her head jerks up as though tied to a cord. The light in her eyes is replaced by anger. Disbelief. I tell her quickly, hoping it might spare her, but there is no painless way to do this. His journey. His crossing. His fight to stay alive.

She puts her hands over her ears.

“I’m sorry, Samira. He didn’t make it.”

“You’re lying! Hassan is in London.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

She rocks from side to side, her eyes closed and her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. The word she wants to say is no.

“Surely you must be wondering why you haven’t heard from him,” I say. “He should have called by now or written to you. You sewed my name into his clothes. That’s how I found you.” I close the gap between us. “I have no reason to lie to you.”

She stiffens and pulls away, fixing me with a gaze of frightening intensity.

Spijker’s voice echoes from downstairs. He has grown tired of waiting.

“You must tell the police everything you have told me.”

She doesn’t answer. I don’t know if she understands.

Turning toward the window, she utters Zala’s name.

“Sister Vogel will look after her.”

She shakes her head stubbornly, her eyes full of imbecile hope.

“I will find her. I’ll look after her.”

For a moment something struggles inside her. Then her mind empties and she surrenders. Fighting fate is too difficult. She must save herself to fight whatever fate throws up.

There is a pharmacy in the heart of de Walletjes, explains Sister Vogel. The pharmacist is a friend of hers. This is where she sent Zala. She was carrying a note.

Turning each corner I expect to see a flash of pink or her blue hijab coming toward me. I pass a greengrocer and catch the scent of oranges, which makes me think of Hassan. What will happen to Samira now? Who will look after her?

I turn into Oudekerksteeg. There is still no sign of Zala. A touch on my arm makes me turn. For a second I don’t recognize Hokke, who is wearing a woolen cap. With his light beard it makes him look like a North Sea fisherman.

“Hello, my friend.” He looks at me closely. “What have you done to yourself?” His finger traces the bruising on my cheek.

“I had a fight.”

“Did you win?”

“No.”

I look over his shoulder, scanning the square for Zala. My sense of urgency makes him turn his own head.

“Are you still looking for your Afghani girl?”

“No, a different one this time.”

It makes me sound careless—as though I lose people all the time. Hokke has been sitting in a café. Zala must have passed by him but he doesn’t remember her.

“Perhaps I can help you look.”

I follow him, scanning the pedestrians, until we reach the pharmacy. The small shop has narrow aisles and neatly stacked shelves. A man in a striped shirt and white coat is serving customers at a counter. When he recognizes Hokke he opens his arms and they embrace. Old friends.

“A deaf girl—I’d remember her,” he announces, breaking into English.

“She had a note from Sister Vogel.”

The pharmacist yells to his assistant. A head pops out from behind a stand of postcards. More Dutch. A shrug. Nobody has seen her.

Hokke follows me back onto the street. I walk a few paces and stop, leaning against a wall. A faint vibration is coming off me; a menacing internal thought spinning out of control. Zala has not run away. She would not leave Samira willingly. Ever.

Police headquarters is on one of the outer canals, west of the city. Fashioned by the imagination of an architect, it looks scrubbed clean and casts a long shadow across the canal. The glass doors open automatically. CCTV cameras scan the foyer.

A message is sent upstairs to Spijker. His reply comes back: I’m to wait in the reception area. None of my urgency has any effect on the receptionist, who has a face like the farmer’s daughter in American Gothic . This is not my jurisdiction. I have no authority to make demands or throw my weight around.

Hokke offers to keep me company. At no point has he asked how I found Samira or what happened to Ruiz. He is content to accept whatever information is offered rather than seeking it out.

So much has happened in the past week yet I feel as though I haven’t moved. It’s like the clock on the wall above the reception desk, with its white face and thick black hands that refuse to move any faster.

Samira is somewhere above me. I don’t imagine there are many basements in Amsterdam—a city that seems to float on fixed pontoons held together by bridges. Perhaps it is slowly sinking into the ooze like a Venice of the north.

I can’t sit still. I should be at the hospital with Ruiz. I should be starting my new job in London or resigning from it.

Across the foyer the double doors of a lift slide open. There are voices, deep, sonorous, laughing. One of them belongs to Yanus. His left eye is swollen and partially closed. Head injuries are becoming a fashion statement. He isn’t handcuffed, nor is he being escorted by police.

The man beside him must be his lawyer. Large and careworn, with a broad forehead and broader arse, his rumpled suit has triple vents and permanent creases.

Yanus looks up at me and smiles with his thin lips.

“I am very sorry for this misunderstanding,” he says. “No hard feelings.”

He offers me his hand. I stare at it blankly. Spijker appears at his left shoulder, standing fractionally behind him.