Michael Robotham - The Night Ferry

“My father took us to Pakistan. We lived in a camp. My mother died there and my father blamed himself. One day he announced that we were going home. He said he would rather starve in Kabul than live like a beggar.”

She falls silent, shifting in her chair. The motor of the refrigerator rattles to life and I feel the same shudder pass through me.

“The Americans dropped leaflets from the sky saying they were coming to liberate us but there was nothing left to free us from. Still we cheered because the Talibs were gone, running, like frightened dogs. But the Northern Alliance was not so different. We had learned not to expect too much. In Afghanistan we sleep with the thorns and not the flowers.”

The effort of remembering has made her sleepy. I wash the mugs and follow her upstairs. She pauses at my door, wanting to ask me something.

“I am not used to the quiet.”

“You think London is quiet?”

She hesitates. “Would it be all right if I slept in your room?”

“Is there something wrong? Is it the bed?”

“No.”

“Are you frightened?”

“No.”

“What is it then?”

“At the orphanage we slept on the floor in the same room. I am not used to being alone.”

My heart twists. “You should have said something earlier. Of course you can sleep with me.”

She collects a blanket and spreads it on the floor beside my wardrobe.

“My bed is big enough. We can share.”

“No, this is better.”

She curls up on the floor and breathes so quietly that I want to make sure she’s still there.

“Good night,” I whisper. “May you sleep amid the flowers, not the thorns.”

DI Forbes arrives in the morning, early as usual. Dressed in a charcoal suit and yellow tie, he is ready to front a news conference. The media blackout is being lifted. He needs help to find the twins.

I show him to the kitchen. “Your cold sounds better.”

“I can’t stomach another bloody banana.”

Hari is with Samira in the sitting room. He is showing her his old Xbox and trying to explain what it does.

“You can shoot people.”

“Why?”

“For fun.”

“Why would you shoot people for fun ?”

I can almost hear Hari’s heart sinking. Poor boy. The two of them have something in common. Hari is studying chemical engineering and Samira knows more about chemical reactions than any of his lecturers, he says.

“She’s an odd little thing,” says Forbes, whispering.

“How do you mean?”

“She doesn’t say much.”

“Most people talk too much and have nothing to say.”

“What is she going to do?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

What would I do in her shoes? I have never been without friends or family or stranded in a foreign country (unless you count Wolver-hampton, which is pretty bloody foreign).

Hari walks into the kitchen looking pleased with himself.

“Samira is going teach me to make fireworks,” he announces, taking a biscuit from Forbes’s plate.

“So you can blow yourself up,” I say.

“I’m very careful.”

“Oh yes. Like the time you filled that copper pipe with black powder and blew a hole in the wooden siding.”

“I was fifteen.”

“Old enough to know better.”

“Sunday is Guy Fawkes Night. We’re going to make a whistling chaser.”

“Which is?”

“A rocket that whistles and has white-and-red stars with a salute at the end.”

“A salute?”

“A big bang.”

Hari has already compiled a list of ingredients: potassium nitrate, sulfur, barium chlorate and copper powder. I have no idea what this stuff does but I can almost see the fireworks exploding in his eyes.

Forbes looks at the list. “Is this stuff legal?”

“We’re only making three-inch shells.”

It doesn’t answer the question but the detective lets it pass.

Although Samira doesn’t mention the twins, I know she must think about them, just as I do. Rarely does a minute pass when my mind doesn’t drift back to them. I can feel their skin against my lips and see their narrow rib cages moving with each breath. The baby girl had trouble breathing. Perhaps her lungs weren’t fully developed. We have to find her.

Forbes has opened the car door and waits for Samira to sit in the rear seat. She is wearing her new clothes—a long woolen skirt and white blouse. She looks so composed. Still. There is a landscape inside her that I will never reach.

“You won’t have to answer questions,” the DI explains. “I’ll help you prepare a statement.”

He drives hunched over the wheel, frowning at the road, as if he hates city traffic. At the same time he talks. With the help of Spijker, he has managed to trace five asylum seekers impregnated at the fertility clinic in Amsterdam who subsequently turned up in the U.K.

“All admit to giving birth and claim the babies were taken from them. They were each given £500 and told their debt had been repaid.”

“Where did they give birth?”

“A private address. They couldn’t give an exact location. They were taken there in the back of a transit van with blacked-out windows. Two of them talked of planes coming in to land.”

“It’s under a flight path?”

“That’s what I figure.”

“Births have to be registered. Surely we can find the babies that way.”

“It’s not as easy as you think. Normally, the hospital or health authority informs the registrar of a birth but not when it happens in a private home or outside of the NHS. Then it’s up to the parents. And how’s this? Mum and Dad don’t even have to turn up at the registry office. They can send along someone else—a witness to the birth or even just the owner of the house.”

“Is that it? What about doctor’s certificates or medical records?”

“Don’t need them. You need more paperwork to register a car than a baby.”

We’re passing the Royal Chelsea Hospital on the Embankment before turning left over Albert Bridge and circling Battersea Park.

“What about Dr. Banerjee?”

“He admits to providing Cate Beaumont with her surplus embryos but claims to have no knowledge of the surrogacy plan. She told him she was transferring to a different fertility clinic with a higher success rate.”

“And you believe him?”

Forbes shrugs. “The embryos belonged to her. She had every right to take them.”

This still doesn’t explain why Banerjee lied to me. Or why he turned up at my father’s birthday party.

“What about Paul Donavon?”

“He did two tours of Afghanistan and six months in Iraq. Won the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. The guy is a bona fide fucking hero.”

Samira hasn’t said a word. Sometimes I feel as if she has turned off or tuned out, or is listening to different voices.

“We are contacting the orphanage in Kabul as well as one in Albania and another in Russia,” says Forbes. “Hopefully they can give us more than just a nickname.”

The conference room is a stark, windowless place, with vinyl chairs and globe lights full of scorched moths. This used to be the old National Criminal Intelligence Service building, now refitted and re-branded to suit the new crime-fighting agency with new initials. Despite the headlines and high-tech equipment, SOCA still strikes me as being rather more Loch Ness than Eliot Ness—chasing shadowy monsters who live in dark places.

Radio reporters have taken up the front row, taping their station logos to the microphones. Press reporters slouch in the middle rows and their TV counterparts are at the rear with whiter teeth and better clothes.

When I did my detective training at Bramshill they sent us in groups to see an autopsy. I watched a pathologist working on the body of a hiker who had been dead for a fortnight.