The Night Ferry

6

Earl Blake’s address is a small terrace off Pentonville Road in the neglected end of King’s Cross. There is nobody home. My legs have gone to sleep I’ve been sitting here for so long, staring out the windscreen, tapping a rhythm on the wheel.

A drug pusher leans against a low wall outside a pub on the corner, his face half hidden under the brim of a baseball cap. Two teenage girls walk by and he says something, smiling. They toss back their hair and sashay a little faster.

A red hatchback pulls into a parking space ahead of me. A woman in her fifties emerges, dressed in a nurse’s uniform. She collects a bag of groceries from the boot and walks to the terrace, cursing as she drops her keys.

“Are you Mrs. Blake?” I ask.

“Who wants to know?” Her blue-gray hair is lacquered into place.

“I’m looking for your husband.”

“You trying to be funny?”

She has opened the door and stepped inside.

“Your husband was involved in a car accident last Friday night.”

“Not bloody likely.”

She is disappearing down the hallway.

“I’m talking about Earl Blake.”

“That’s his name.”

“I need to speak to him.”

Shouting over her shoulder: “Well, missy, you’re six years too late. That’s when I buried him.”

“He’s dead!”

“I sure hope so.” She laughs wryly.

The house smells of damp dog and toilet freshener.

“I’m a police officer,” I call after her. “I’m sorry if there’s been a mistake. Do you have a son called Earl?”

“Nope.”

Dumping her shopping on a table in the kitchen, she turns. “Listen, love, either come in or stay out. This place costs a fortune to bloody heat.”

I follow her into the house and shut the door. She has taken a seat at the table and kicked off her shoes, rubbing her feet through her support hose.

I look around. There are medications lined up on the windowsill and food coupons stuck under fridge magnets. A picture of a baby in a hollowed-out pumpkin is on the calendar.

“Put the kettle on will you, love.”

The tap spits and belches.

“I’m sorry about your husband.”

“Nowt for you to be sorry about. He dropped dead right there—face-first into his egg and chips. He was moaning about how I over-cooked the eggs and then whump!” Her hand topples onto the table. “I told him not to wear his underwear to breakfast but he never listened. All the neighbors watched him wheeled out of here in his old Y-fronts.”

She tosses her shoes in the corner beside the back door. “I know all men leave eventually but not when you’ve just made ’em egg ’n’ chips. Earl was always bloody inconsiderate.”

Mrs. Blake pushes herself upward and warms the teapot. “You’re not the first, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some bloke came here yesterday. He didn’t believe me either when I said Earl was dead. He said Earl owed him money. As if! Can’t see him gambling from beyond.”

“What did this man look like?”

“Had this tattoo on his neck. A cross.”

Donavon is searching for Blake.

“I hate tattoos,” she continues. “Earl had ’em on his forearms. He was in the merchant navy before I met him. Traveled all over the place and came back with these souvenirs. I call ’em skin complaints.”

“Did he have one just here?” I point to my chest. “A Crucifixion scene.”

“Earl weren’t religious. He said religion was for people who believed in hell.”

“Do you have a photograph of him?”

“Yeah, a few. He was handsome once.”

She leads me to the sitting room, which is full of seventies furniture and faded rugs. Rummaging in a cupboard next to the gas fire, she pulls out a photo album.

“Course it’s easier keeping the place clean now. He was a real slob. Dropped clothes like they was crumbs.”

She hands me a snapshot. Earl is wearing a jacket with a fur collar and fluorescent strips. He looks nothing like the driver of the minicab, although both are roughly the same age.

“Mrs. Blake, do you ever get mail for your late husband?”

“Yeah, sure, junk stuff. Banks are always sending him applications for credit cards. What’s he going to do with a credit card, eh?”

“Did you cancel his driver’s license?”

“Didn’t bother. I sold his old van. Bought meself the hatchback. Reckon the dealer ripped me off, the Paki bastard. No way that thing had done only four thousand miles.”

She realizes her mistake. “No offense, love.”

“I’m not Pakistani.”

“Right. I don’t know much about the difference.”

She finds me another photograph.

“Do you ever take in lodgers or have visitors staying?”

“Nah.”

“Ever had a break-in?”

“Yeah, a few years back.” She looks at me suspiciously.

I try to explain that someone has stolen her husband’s identity, which is not as difficult as it sounds. A bank statement and a gas bill is all it takes to get a credit report, which will yield a National Insurance number and a list of previous addresses. The rest falls into place—birth certificates, credit cards, a passport.

“Earl never did anything wrong,” says Mrs. Blake. “Never did much right either.” She overbalances a little as she stands and her forearms wobble beneath the short sleeves of her uniform.

I don’t stay for a cup of tea, which disappoints her. Letting myself out, I stand for a moment on the front steps, raising my face to the misty rain. Three kids are practicing their literacy skills on a wall across the road.

Farther down the street is a triangular garden with benches and a playground surrounded by a semicircle of plane trees and a copper beech. Something catches my eye beneath the lower branches.

When soldiers are trained to hide in the jungle, they are told four main things that will give them away: movement, shape, shine and silhouette. Movement is the most important. That’s what I notice. A figure stands from a bench and begins walking away. I recognize his gait.

It is strange how I react. For years, whenever I have conjured up Donavon’s face, panic has swelled in the space between my heart and lungs. I’m not frightened of him now. I want answers. Why is he so interested in Cate Beaumont?

He knows I’ve clocked him. His hands are out of his pockets, swinging freely as he runs. If I let him reach the far side of the park I’ll lose him in the side streets.

Rounding the corner, I accelerate along the path which is flanked by a railing fence and tall shrubs. An old Royal Mail sorting office is on the opposite corner, with tall windows edged in painted stone. Turning left, I follow the perimeter fence. The exit is ahead. Nobody emerges. He should be here by now.

I pause at the gate, listening for hard heels on the pavement. Nothing. A motorcycle rumbles to life on the far side of the park. He doubled back. Clever.

Run, rabbit, run. I know where you live.

My hallway smells of bleach and the stale backdraft of a vacuum cleaner. My mother has been cleaning. That’s one of the signs that my life isn’t all that it should be. No matter how many times I complain that I don’t need a cleaner, she insists on catching a bus from the Isle of Dogs just to “straighten a few things up.”

“I am defrosting the freezer,” she announces from the kitchen.

“It doesn’t need defrosting. It’s automatic.”

She makes a pfffhh sound. Her blue-and-green sari is tucked up into her support stockings, making her backside appear enormous. It is an optical illusion just like her eyes behind her glasses, which are as wet and brown as fresh cow dung.

She is waiting for a kiss on the cheek. I have to bend. She is scarcely five feet tall and shaped like a pear, with sticky-out ears that help her hear like a bat and X-ray vision that only mothers possess. She also has an oddly selective sense of smell, which can pick up the scent of perfume from fifty feet, yet allows her to sniff the crotches of my four brothers’ underpants to establish if they need washing. I feel like retching at the thought of it.

“Why is there a padlock on my Hari’s door?”

“Privacy, perhaps.”

“I found it open.”

That’s strange. Hari is always very careful about locking the door.

Mama holds my face in her hands. “Have you eaten today?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying. I can tell. I have brought some dahl and rice.”

She uses perfect schoolbook English, the kind they used to teach in the dark ages when she went to school.

I notice a suitcase in the corner. For a moment I fear she might be planning to stay but one suitcase would never be enough.

“Your father was cleaning out the attic,” she explains.

“Why?”

“Because he has nothing else to do.” She sounds exasperated.

My father has retired after thirty-five years driving mainline trains and is still making the adjustment. Last week he went through my pantry checking use-by dates and putting them in order.

Mama opens the suitcase. Lying neatly across the top is my old Oaklands school uniform. I feel a stab of recognition and remember Cate. I should phone the hospital for an update on her condition.

“I didn’t want to throw things away without asking you,” she explains. There are scarves, scrapbooks, photo albums, diaries and running trophies. “I had no idea you had a crush on Mr. Elliot.”

“You read my diary!”

“It fell open.”

Matricide is a possibility.

She changes the subject. “Now you’re coming early on Sunday to help us cook. Make sure Hari wears something nice. His ivory shirt.”

My father is having his sixty-fifth birthday and the party has been planned for months. It will include at least, one eligible Sikh bachelor, no doubt. My parents want me to marry a good Sikh boy, bearded of course; not one of those clean-shaven Indians who thinks he’s a Bollywood film star. This ignores the fact that all my brothers cut their hair, apart from Prabakar, the eldest, who is the family’s moral guardian.

I know that all parents are considered eccentric by their children, but mine are particularly embarrassing. My father, for example, is a stickler for conserving energy. He studies the electricity bill every quarter and compares it to previous quarters and previous years.

Mama crosses entire weeks off the calendar in advance so that she “doesn’t forget.”

“But how will you know what day it is?” I once asked her.

“Everyone knows what day it is,” she replied.

You cannot argue with logic like that.

“By the way, your phone is fixed,” she announces. “A nice man came this afternoon.”

“I didn’t report a problem.”

“Well, he came to fix it.”

A chill travels across my skin as if someone has left a door open. I fire off questions: What did he look like? What was he wearing? Did he have identification? Mama looks concerned and then frightened.

“He had a clipboard and a box of tools.”

“But no ID.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“He should have shown it to you. Did you leave him alone?”

“I was cleaning.”

My eyes dart from one object to the next, taking an inventory. Moving upstairs, I search my wardrobes and drawers. None of my jewelry is missing. My bank statements, passport and spare set of keys are still in the drawer. Carefully, I count the pages of my checkbook.

“Perhaps Hari reported the fault,” she says.

I call him on his mobile. The pub is so noisy he can barely hear me.

“Did you report a problem with the phone?”

“What?”

“Did you call British Telecom?”

“No. Was I supposed to?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

My mother rocks her head from side to side and makes concerned noises. “Should we call the police?”

The question had already occurred to me. What would I report? There was no break-in. Nothing has been taken as far as I can tell. It is either the perfect crime or no crime at all.

“Don’t worry about it, Mama.”

“But the man—”

“He was just fixing the telephone.”

I don’t want her worrying. She spends enough time here already.

Mama looks at her watch. If she doesn’t leave now she won’t be home for dinner. I offer to drive her and she smiles. It is the widest, most radiant smile ever created. No wonder people do as she says—they want to see her smile.

On the bedside table is a book that I started reading last night. The bookmark is in the wrong place—twenty pages forward. Perhaps I moved it inadvertently. Paranoia is not reality on a finer scale; it is a foolish reaction to unanswered questions.