Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

My mobile rattles on the table.

“You didn’t come to lunch today.”

“I’m still overseas, Mama.”

“Your auntie Meena made kulfi. It’s your favorite.”

It was my favorite at age six.

“All the boys came. Even Hari.”

Typical. He doesn’t show up unless he can show me up.

“Your friend Detective King phoned to say he couldn’t make it.”

“I know, Mama.”

“But another very eligible gentleman was here. He was disappointed not to see you.”

“Whose arm did you twist this time?”

“Dr. Banerjee seems to be very fond of you.”

It cannot be a coincidence. “What did he want?”

“He brought you flowers—such a thoughtful man. And his table manners are impeccable.”

If we get married I’ll have clean tablecloths.

“Where did you tell him I was?”

“I said you were in Amsterdam. You’re being very secretive about this. You know I don’t like secrets.”

She carries on describing the good doctor and a funny story he told her about his baby nephew. I don’t hear the punch line. I’m too busy trying to connect him to Samira.

Banerjee collected twelve viable embryos from Cate. Instead of six cycles of IVF, there were only five, which meant two embryos remained, frozen and stored in liquid nitrogen. He gave them to Cate, which means he knew about her surrogacy plan. That’s why he arranged an invitation to my father’s birthday party. He tried to warn me off.

“I have to go, Mama.”

“When will you be home?”

“Soon.”

I hang up and call “New Boy” Dave, who is just boarding his flight.

“Does this mean you miss me?”

“It’s a given. I need a favor.”

He sighs. “Just the one?”

“When you get back to London, run a ruler over Dr. Sohan Banerjee.”

“He was at your father’s party.”

“That’s him.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Does he have any links with fertility clinics outside of the U.K.? Also check if he has any links with adoption agencies or children’s charities.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

A stewardess is telling him to turn off his phone. “Safe journey.”

“You too.”

Forbes’s cold is getting worse and he’s developed a seal-like cough punctuated by the clicking in his throat. He sounds like a boom box.

“You should have stayed home,” I suggest.

“My house is full of sick people.”

“So you decided to infect the rest of the population.”

“That’s me. Patient Zero.”

“Did you find them—the pregnant asylum seekers?”

“I should have locked you up when I had the chance.” He blows his nose. “They arrived in early July hidden in a shipping container. A Russian, aged eighteen, and an Albanian, twenty-one. Both looked ready to drop any time. They were fingerprinted, issued with identification papers and taken to a reception center in Oxfordshire. Three days later they were taken to a bed-and-breakfast accommodation in Liverpool. They had two weeks to fill out a statement of evidence form and meet with a lawyer but neither of them showed up. They haven’t been seen since.”

“What about the babies?”

“There’s no record of the births at any NHS hospital but that doesn’t prove anything. A lot of people have them at home these days—even in the bath. Thank Christ our tub wasn’t big enough.”

I have a sudden mental image of his wife, whalelike in the family bathtub.

“It still doesn’t make much sense,” he says. “One of the attractions of the U.K. for asylum seekers is free health care. These women could have had their babies in an NHS hospital. The government also provides a one-off grant of £300 for a newborn baby, as well as extra cash for milk and nappies. This is on top of the normal food vouchers and income support. These women claimed to have no family or friends in the U.K. who could support them, yet they didn’t take advantage of the welfare benefits on offer. Makes you wonder how they survived.”

“Or if they did.”

He doesn’t want to go there.

Ruiz is waiting for me downstairs at the Academisch Medisch Centrum. He looks like a kid being picked up from summer camp, without the peeling nose or poison ivy stings.

“The staff wished me a long and healthy life,” he says. “They also told me never to get sick in the Netherlands again.”

“Touching.”

“I thought so. I’m a medical bloody miracle.” He holds up the stump of his missing finger and begins counting. “I’ve been shot, almost drowned and now stabbed. What’s left?”

“They could blow you up, sir.”

“Been tried. Brendan Pearl and his IRA chummies fired a mortar into a Belfast police station. Missed me by that much.” He does his Maxwell Smart impersonation.

He pauses at the revolving door. “Have you been crying, grasshopper?”

“No, sir.”

“I thought you might have been pining.”

“Not pining, sir.”

“Women are allowed to be warm and fuzzy.”

“You make me sound like a stuffed animal.”

“With very sharp teeth.”

He’s in a good mood. Maybe it’s the morphine. It doesn’t last long. I tell him about Zala and can see the tension rise to his shoulders and move to his neck. His eyes close. He takes a ragged breath as though the pain has suddenly returned.

“They’re going to smuggle Samira into Britain,” I say.

“You can’t be certain of that.”

“It happened to the others. The babies are delivered in the same country as the parents lived.”

“The Beaumonts are dead.”

“They’ll find other buyers.”

“Who are they ?”

“Yanus. Pearl. Others.”

“What does Spijker say?”

“He says I should go home.”

“A wise man.”

“Hokke says there is someone who might help us find Samira.”

“Who is he?”

“Eduardo de Souza. Yanus used to work for him.”

“This gets better and better.”

My mobile is ringing. Hokke is somewhere noisy. The red light district. He spends more time there now than when he was walking the beat.

“I will pick you up at seven from the hotel.”

“Where are we going?”

“Answers at seven.”

An enormous dishwater moon has risen in the east and seems to move across the sky, following our taxi. Even in darkness I recognize some of the roads. Schiphol Airport is not far from here.

This is a different area of Amsterdam. The chocolate-box façades and historic bridges have been replaced by the functional and harsh—cement-gray apartment blocks and shops protected by metal shutters. Only one store is open. A dozen black youths are standing outside.

De Souza doesn’t have a fixed address, Hokke explains. He moves from place to place, never staying more than a night in any one bed. He lives with the people he employs. They protect him.

“Be very careful what you say to him. And don’t interrupt when he speaks. Keep your eyes down and your hands by your sides.”

We have pulled up outside an apartment block. Hokke opens the door for me.

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“You must go alone. We will wait here.”

“No,” declares Ruiz. “I am going with her.”

Hokke responds with equal passion. “She goes alone or there will be nobody waiting to meet her.”

Ruiz continues to protest but I push him back into the car where he grimaces as he folds his arms across his bandaged chest.

“Remember what I told you,” says the Dutchman, pointing toward a building that is identical to the one next to it and the one next to that. A teenage boy leans against a wall. A second one watches us from an upstairs window. Lookouts. “You must go now. Phone me if there’s a problem.”