Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

Samira has been watching all this with a curious detachment. Crawling off the bed, she takes several painful steps toward Yanus before leaning down and spitting in his face.

“We have to go.”

“You go. Take the babies.”

“Not without you.”

I take the smallest twin, the girl, whose eyes are open, watching me. Samira takes the sleeping boy. Cautiously, I peer into the passageway. Pearl will be coming back soon.

Samira has a towel pressed between her thighs. We head toward the stairs moving as quickly as she can. The passage is so narrow that I bounce off the wall as I try to keep hold of Samira’s arm. People are asleep. I don’t know which cabins are occupied.

There is a service lift. I can’t open the door. Samira’s legs buckle. I stop her falling. This is Deck 9. The bridge is on Deck 10. She isn’t strong enough to climb the stairs. I have to get her away from the cabin and hide her.

There is a linen room with shelves on either side, stacked with folded sheets and towels. I could leave her here and go for help. No, she shouldn’t be left alone.

I hear movement. Someone is awake. Hammering on the cabin door, it opens hurriedly. A middle-aged man, wearing pajamas and gray socks looks irritated. A fuzz of red hair spills from the V of his shirt and makes it seem like his stuffing is coming out.

I push Samira ahead of me. “Help her! I have to find a doctor!”

He says something in German. Then he spies the bloody towel between her thighs. I hand him the baby girl.

“Who are you?”

“Police. There’s no time to explain. Help her.”

Samira curls up on the bunk, her arms around the other twin.

“Don’t open the door. Don’t let anyone know she’s here.”

Before he can protest, I step back into the passage and run toward the stairs. The passenger lounge is deserted apart from two rough-looking men at the bar, hunched over pints. A woman files her nails at a cash register.

I yell for the captain. It isn’t the desperation in my voice that affects them most. It’s the blood on my clothes. I have come from a nightmare place, another dimension.

People are running. Members of the crew appear, yelling orders and ushering me farther upstairs. Sentences stream out of me, between snorting sobs. They’re not listening to me. They have to get Samira and the twins.

The captain is a large man with shaggy eyebrows and a semicircle of hair clinging to the scalp above his ears and neck. His uniform is white and blue, matching his eyes.

He stands in the middle of the bridge, his head thrust forward, listening without any hint of skepticism. The state of my clothes is proof enough. The chief engineer is a medic. He wants to examine me. We don’t have time. The captain is on the radio, using emergency frequencies, talking to HM Coast Guard, customs and mainland police. A cutter has been sent from Felixstowe to intercept and a Royal Navy helicopter is being scrambled from Prestwick in Scotland.

Pearl is somewhere on board. Yanus is bleeding to death. This is taking too long.

“You have to get Samira,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds shrill and frightened. “She needs medical help.”

The captain won’t be rushed. He is following the protocols and procedures set down for piracy or violent incidents at sea. He wants to know how many there are. Are they armed? Will they take hostages?

The information is relayed to the coast guard and police. We are twenty minutes from port. Huge glass windows frame the approaching coastline, which is still blanketed in darkness. The bridge is high up, overlooking the bow. Nothing approximates a steering wheel. Instead there are computer screens, buttons and keyboards.

I confront the captain, demanding that he listen to me.

“I understand that you’re a British police officer,” he says abruptly, “but this is a Dutch vessel and you have no authority here. My responsibility is to my passengers and crew. I will not endanger their safety.”

“A woman has just given birth. She’s bleeding. She needs medical help.”

“We are twenty minutes from docking.”

“So you’ll do nothing?”

“I am waiting for my instructions.”

“What about the passengers downstairs? They’re waking up.”

“I don’t believe they should be panicked. We have contingency plans to evacuate passengers to the Globetrotter Lounge, where most of them are due to have breakfast.”

The chief engineer is a neat little man with a college-boy haircut.

“Will you come with me?” I ask.

He hesitates. I pick up the first-aid box from the bench and turn to leave. The engineer looks at the captain, seeking permission. I don’t know what passes between them but he’s ready to follow me.

“Are there any weapons on board?”

“No.”

God, they make it hard! This time we use a service lift to reach Deck 9. The doors open. The passage is empty. The deck below has the freight drivers who are due to disembark first.

At every corner I expect to see Pearl. He is a natural at this. Even my presence on the ferry didn’t fluster him. He simply adjusted his sights and made a new plan. Yanus is the more unpredictable but Pearl is the more dangerous because he can adapt. I can picture him, waylaid for a moment by the loss of Samira and the twins, but still calculating his chances of escape.

Even before I reach the cabin I can see that something is wrong. A handful of passengers crowd the passage, craning to look over one another’s heads. Among them is the Welsh couple. Mrs. Jones looks naked without her lipstick and is squeezed into a gray tracksuit that struggles to encompass her buttocks.

“You can’t escape them,” she says to the others. “Thugs and criminals. And what do the police do? Nothing. Too busy giving out speeding tickets. Even if they do get charged, some judge or magistrate will let them off on account of their drug addiction or deprived childhood. What about the bloody victims, eh? Nobody cares about them.”

The cabin door is open, the lock broken. Sitting on his bunk, the German truck driver holds his head back to stop his nose bleeding. There is no sign of Samira or the twins.

“Where are they?” I grab his shoulder. “Where?”

The worst thing is not the anger. It is the murderous desire behind the anger.

My mobile phone is ringing. We must be in range of a signal. I don’t recognize the number.

“Hello.”

“And hello to you,” says Pearl. “Have you ever seen that TV commercial about the Energizer bunny that keeps going and going and going? You’re like that fucking bunny. You just don’t quit.”

His voice has an echo. He’s on the vehicle deck. “Where is she?”

“I found her, bunny.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how? The blood. You left a trail of it.” A baby is crying in the background. “I also found Yanus. You cut him pretty good, but I patched him up.”

“He’ll bleed to death.”

“Don’t you worry about that, bunny. I don’t leave my friends behind.”

I’m already on the move, running along the passage to the first cabin. The chief engineer struggles to keep up with me. Yanus has gone. The floor is polished red with blood and dozens of footprints stain the passageway.

People are amazing. They will walk past a scene like this and ignore it because it’s beyond their ordinary, mundane, workaday comprehension. Pearl is still on the line. “You’ll never get off the ferry,” I yell. “Give them back. Please.”

“I need to talk to the captain.”

“He won’t negotiate.”

“I don’t wanna fuckin’ negotiate! We have a mutual interest.”

“What’s that?”

“We both want me off this ferry.”

My head is clearer now. Others are making decisions for me. It is three hours before dawn and the Essex coast is somewhere ahead of us in the darkness. I can’t hear the engines from the bridge and without any points of reference the ferry doesn’t appear to be moving. Two coast guard launches have joined the Stena Britannica , escorting us into port. The captain is communicating directly with his superiors in Rotterdam.