The Night Ferry

9

Chief Superintendent Lachlan North has an office on the eleventh floor of New Scotland Yard overlooking Victoria Street and Westminster Abbey. He is standing by the window, beside a telescope, peering into the eyepiece at the traffic below.

“If that moron thinks he can turn there…”

He picks up a two-way radio and communicates a call-sign to traffic operations.

A tired voice answers. “Yes, sir.”

“Some idiot just did a U-turn in Victoria Street. Did you see it?”

“Yes, sir, we’re onto him.”

The Chief Superintendent is talking while still peering through the telescope. “I can get his number plate.”

“It’s under control, sir.”

“Good work. Over and out.”

Reluctantly, he turns away from the telescope and sits down. “There are some dangerous bloody morons loose on our roads, Detective Constable Barba.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In my experience, the morons are more dangerous than the criminals.”

“There are more of them, sir.”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

He dips his head into a drawer and retrieves a dark green folder. Shuffling through the contents, he clears his throat and smiles, attempting to appear warmer and fuzzier. A nagging doubt hooks me in the chest.

“The results of your medical have been reviewed, DC Barba, along with your psychological evaluation. I must say you have made a remarkable recovery from your injuries. Your request to return to active duty with the Diplomatic Protection Group has also been noted. Courageous is the word that comes to mind.” He tugs at his cuffs. Here it comes. “But under the circumstances, having reviewed the matter thoroughly, it has been decided to transfer you out of the DPG. You might be a little gun-shy, you see, which is hardly a good thing when protecting diplomats and foreign heads of state. Could be embarrassing.”

“I’m not gun-shy, sir. Nobody fired a gun at me.”

He raises his hand to stop me. “Be that as it may, we have a responsibility to look after our foreign guests and while I have every confidence in you, there is no way of testing your fitness when push comes to shove and Abdul the terrorist takes a potshot at the Israeli ambassador.” He taps the folder several times with his finger to stress the point.

“The most important part of my job is shuffling people and priorities. It is a thankless task but I don’t ask for medals or commendations. I am simply a humble servant of the public.” His chest swells. “We don’t want to lose you, DC Barba. We need more women like you in the Met, which is why I am pleased to offer you a position as a recruitment officer. We need to encourage more young women into the Met, particularly from minority communities. You can be a role model.”

A mist seems to cloud my vision. He stands now, moving back to the window where he bends to peer through his telescope again.

“Unbelievable! Moron!” he screams, shaking his head.

He turns back to me, settling his haunch on the corner of the desk. A print behind his head is a famous depiction of the Bow Street Runners, London’s renowned early police force.

“Great things are expected of you, DC Barba.”

“With all due respect, sir, I am not gun-shy. I am fitter than ever. I can run a mile in four and a half minutes. I’m a better shot than anyone at the DPG. My high-speed defensive driving skills are excellent. I am the same officer as before—”

“Yes, yes, you’re very capable I’m sure, but the decision has been made. It’s out of my hands. You’ll report to the Police Recruitment Center at Hendon on Monday morning.”

He opens his office door and waits for me to leave. “You’re still a very important member of the team, Alisha. We’re glad to have you back.”

Words have dried up. I know I should argue with him or slam my fist on his desk and demand a review. Instead, I meekly walk out the door. It closes behind me.

Outside, I wander along Victoria Street. I wonder if the Chief Superintendent is watching me. I’m tempted to look up toward his window and flip him the bird. Isn’t that what the Americans call it?

Of course, I don’t. I’m too polite, you see. That’s my problem. I don’t intimidate. I don’t bully. I don’t talk in sporting clichés or slap backs or have a wobbly bit between my legs. Unfortunately, it’s not as though I have outstanding feminine wiles to fall back on such as a killer cleavage or a backside like J-Lo. The only qualities I bring to the table are my gender and ethnic credibility. The Metropolitan Police want nothing else from me.

I am twenty-nine years old and I still think I’m capable of something remarkable in my life. I am different, unique, beyond compare. I don’t have Cate’s luminous beauty or infinite sadness, or her musical laugh or the ability to make all men feel like warriors. I have wisdom, determination and steel.

At sixteen I wanted to win Olympic gold. Now I want to make a difference. Maybe falling in love will be my remarkable deed. I will explore the heart of another human being. Surely that is challenge enough. Cate always thought so.

When I need to think I run. When I need to forget I run. It can clear my thoughts completely or focus them like a magnifying glass that dwarfs the world outside the lens. When I run the way I know I can, it all happens in the air, the pure air, floating above the ground, levitating the way great runners imagine themselves in their dreams.

The doctors said I might never walk again. I confounded predictions. I like that idea. I don’t like doing things that are predictable. I don’t want to do what people expect.

I began with baby steps. Crawl before you can walk, Simon my physiotherapist said. Walk before you can run. He and I conducted an ongoing skirmish. He cajoled me and I cursed him. He twisted my body and I threatened to break his arm. He said I was a crybaby and I called him a bully.

“Rise up on your toes.”

“I’m trying.”

“Hold on to my arm. Close your eyes. Can you feel the stretch in your calf?”

“I can feel it in my eyeballs.”

After months in traction and more time in a wheelchair, I had trouble telling where my legs stopped and the ground began. I bumped into walls and stumbled on pavements. Every set of stairs was another Everest. My living room was an obstacle course.

I gave myself little challenges, forcing myself out on the street every morning. Five minutes became ten minutes, became twenty minutes. After every operation it was the same. I pushed myself through winter and spring and a long hot summer when the air was clogged with exhaust fumes and heat rose from every brick and slab.

I have explored every corner of the East End, which is like a huge, deafening factory with a million moving parts. I have lived in other places in London and never even made eye contact with neighbors. Now I have Mr. Mordecai next door, who mows my postage-stamp-size lawn, and Mrs. Goldie across the road picks up my dry cleaning.

There is a jangling, squabbling urgency to life in the East End. Everyone is on the make—haggling, complaining, gesticulating and slapping their foreheads. These are the “people of the abyss” according to Jack London. That was a century ago. Much has changed. The rest remains the same.

For nearly an hour I keep running, following the Thames past Westminster, Vauxhall and the old Battersea Power Station. I recognize where I am—the back streets of Fulham. My old boss lives near here, in Rainville Road: Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz, retired. We talk on the phone every day or so. He asks me the same two questions: are you okay, and do you need anything. My answers are always: yes, I’m okay; and no, I don’t need anything.

Even from a distance I recognize him. He is sitting in a folding chair by the river, with a fishing rod in one hand and a book on his lap.

“What are you doing, sir?”

“I’m fishing.”

“You can’t really expect to catch anything.”

“No.”

“So why bother?”

He sighs and puts on his ah-grasshopper-you-have-much-to-learn voice.

“Fishing isn’t always about catching fish, Alisha. It isn’t even about the expectation of catching fish. It is about endurance, patience and most importantly”—he raises a can of draft—“it is about drinking beer.”

Sir has put on weight since he retired—too many pastries over coffee and the Times crossword—and his hair has grown longer. It’s strange to think he’s no longer a detective, just an ordinary citizen.

Reeling in his line, he folds up his chair.

“You look like you’ve just run a marathon.”

“Not quite that far.”

I help him carry his gear across the road and into a large terrace house, with lead-light windows above empty flower boxes. He fills the kettle and moves a bundle of typed pages from the kitchen table.

“So what have you been doing with yourself, sir?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me sir.”

“What should I call you?”

“Vincent.”

“How about DI?”

“I’m not a detective inspector anymore.”

“It could be like a nickname.”

He shrugs. “You’re getting cold. I’ll get you a sweater.”

I hear him rummaging upstairs and he comes down with a cardigan that smells of lavender and mothballs. “My mother’s,” he says apologetically.

I have met Mrs. Ruiz just the once. She was like something out of a European fairy tale—an old woman with missing teeth, wearing a shawl, rings and chunky jewelry.

“How is she?”

“Mad as a meat ax. She keeps accusing the staff at the hostel of giving her enemas. Now there’s one of life’s lousy jobs. You got to feel sorry for that poor bastard.”

Ruiz laughs out loud, which is a nice sound. He’s normally one of the most taciturn of men, with a permanent scowl and a generally low opinion of the human race, but that has never put me off. Beneath his gruff exterior I know there isn’t a heart of gold. It’s more precious than that.

I spy an old-fashioned typewriter in the corner.

“Are you writing, DI?”

“No.” He answers too abruptly.

“You’re writing a book.”

“Don’t be daft.”

I try not to smile but I know my lips are turning up. He’s going to get cross now. He hates people laughing at him. He takes the manuscript and tries to stuff it into an old briefcase. Then he sits back at the table, nursing his cup of tea.

I let a decent interval go by. “So what’s it about?”

“What?”

“Your book.”

“It’s not a book. It’s just some notes.”

“Like a journal.”

“No. Like notes.” That settles the issue.

I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Ruiz offers to make me something. Pasta puttanesca. It is perfect—far too subtle for me to describe and far better than anything I could have cooked. He puts shavings of Parmesan on slices of sourdough and toasts them under the griller.

“This is very good, DI.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am surprised.”

“Not all men are useless in the kitchen.”

“And not all women are domestic goddesses.” I talk to my local Indian takeout more often than I do my mother. It’s called the tandoori diet.

Ruiz was there the day my spine was crushed. We have never really spoken about what happened. It’s like an undeclared pact. I know he feels responsible but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t force me to be there and he can’t make the Met give me my old job back.

The dishes are washed and packed away.

“I am going to tell you a story,” I tell him. “It’s the sort of story you like because it has a puzzle at the center. I don’t want you to interrupt and I won’t tell you if it’s real or invented. Just sit quietly. I need to put all the details in order to see how it sounds. When I’m finished I will ask you a question and you can tell me if I’m totally mistaken. Then I will let you ask me one question.”

“Just one?”

“Yes. I don’t want you to tear apart my logic or pick holes in my story. Not now. Tomorrow maybe. Is it a deal?”

He nods.

Carefully, I set out the details, telling him about Cate, Donavon and Earl Blake. Like a tangle in a fishing line, if I pull too tightly the story knots together and it becomes harder to separate fact from supposition.

“What if Cate arranged a surrogacy and something went wrong? Could there be a baby out there somewhere—Cate’s baby?”

“Commercial surrogacy is illegal,” he says.

“It still happens. Women volunteer. They get their expenses paid, which is allowed, but they cannot profit from the birth.”

“Usually they’re related in some way—a sister or a cousin.”

I show him the photograph of Samira. He searches her face for a long time as though she might tell him something. Turning it over he notices the numbers.

“The first four digits could be a mobile phone prefix but not in the U.K.,” he says. “You need the exact country code or you won’t be able to call it.”

It’s my turn to be surprised again.

“I’m not a complete technophobe,” he protests.

“You’re typing your notes on an ink ribbon.”

He glances at the old typewriter. “Yeah, well, it has sentimental value.”

The clouds have parted just long enough to give us a sunset. The last golden rays settle on the river. In a few minutes they’ll be gone, leaving behind a raw, damp cold.

“You promised me a question,” he says.

“One.”

“Do you want a lift home?”

“Is that it?”

“I thought maybe we could swing by Oaklands and you could show me where it happened.”

The DI drives an old Mercedes with white leather seats and soft suspension. It must guzzle petrol and makes him look like a lawn bowler, but Ruiz has never been one to worry about the environment or what people think of him.

I feel strange sitting in the passenger seat instead of behind the wheel. For years it was the other way around. I don’t know why he chose me to be his driver, but I heard the gossip about the DI liking pretty faces. He’s really not like that.

When I first moved out of uniform into the Serious Crime Group, the DI showed me respect and gave me a chance to prove myself. He didn’t treat me any differently because of my color or my age or my being a woman.

I told him I wanted to become a detective. He said I had to be better, faster and cleverer than any man who wanted the same position. Yes, it was unfair. He wasn’t defending the system—he was teaching me the facts of life.

Ruiz was already a legend when I did my training. The instructors at Hendon used to tell stories about him. In 1963, as a probationary constable, he arrested one of the Great Train Robbers, Roger Cordrey, and recovered £141,000 of the stolen money. Later, as a detective, he helped capture the Kilburn rapist, who had terrorized North London for eight months.

I know he’s not the sort to reminisce or talk about the good old days but I sense he misses a time when it was easier to tell the villains from the constabulary and the general public respected those who tried to keep them safe.

He parks the car in Mansford Street and we walk toward the school. The Victorian buildings are tall and dark against the ambient light. Fairy lights still drip from the windows of the hall. In my imagination I can see the dark stain on the tarmac where Cate fell. Someone has pinned a posy to the nearest lamppost.

“It’s a straight line of sight,” he says. “They can’t have looked.”

“Cate turned her head.”

“Well she can’t have seen the minicab. Either that or he pulled out suddenly.”

“Two cabdrivers say they saw the minicab farther along the street, barely moving. They thought he was looking for an address.”

I think back, mentally replaying events. “There’s something else. I think Cate recognized the driver.”

“She knew him?”

“He might have picked her up earlier as a fare.”

“Or followed her.”

“She was frightened of him. I could see it in her eyes.”

I mention the driver’s tattoo. The Crucifixion. It covered his entire chest.

“A tattoo like that might be traceable,” says the DI. “We need a friend on the inside.”

I know where he’s going with this.

“How is ‘New Boy’ Dave?” he asks. “You two still bumping uglies?”

“That would be none of your business.”

Sikh girls blush on the inside.

Dave King is a detective with the Serious Crime Group (Western Division), Ruiz’s old squad. He’s in his early thirties with a tangle of gingery hair that he cuts short so it doesn’t escape. He earned the nickname “New Boy” when he was the newest member of the SCG, but that was five years ago. He’s now a detective sergeant.

Dave lives in a flat in West Acton, just off the Uxbridge Road, where gas towers dominate the skyline and trains on the Paddington line rattle him awake every morning.

It is a typical bachelor pad in progress, with a king-size bed, a wide-screen TV, a sofa, and precious little else. The walls are half stripped and the carpet has been ripped up but not replaced.

“Like what you’ve done to the place,” observes Ruiz sardonically.

“Yeah, well, I been sort of busy,” says Dave. He looks at me as if to say, What’s going on?

Pecking him on the cheek, I slip my hand under his T-shirt and run my fingers down his spine. He’s been playing rugby and his hair smells of mown grass.

Dave and I have been sleeping together, on and off, for nearly two years. Ruiz would smirk over the “on and off” part. It’s the longest relationship of my life—even discounting the time I spent convalescing in hospital.

Dave thinks he wants to marry me but he hasn’t met my family. You don’t marry a Sikh girl. You marry her mother, her grandmother, her aunties, her brothers…I know all families have baggage but mine belongs in one of those battered suitcases, held together with string, that you see circling endlessly on a luggage carousel.

Dave tries to outdo me by telling stories about his family, particularly his mother who collects roadkill and keeps it in her freezer. She is on a mission to save badgers, which includes lobbying local councils to build tunnels beneath busy roads.

“I don’t have anything to drink,” he says apologetically.

“Shame on you,” says Ruiz, who is pulling faces at the photographs on the fridge. “Who’s this?”

“My mother,” says Dave.

“You take after your father then.”

Dave clears the table and pulls up chairs. I go through the story again. Ruiz then adds his thoughts, giving the presentation added gravitas. Meanwhile, Dave folds and unfolds a blank piece of paper. He wants to find a reason not to help us.

“Maybe you should wait for the official investigation,” he suggests.

“You know things get missed.”

“I don’t want to tread on any toes.”

“You’re too good a dancer for that, ‘New Boy,’” says Ruiz, cajoling him.

I can be shameless. I can bat my big brown eyelashes with the best of them. Forgive me, sisters. Taking the piece of paper from Dave’s hand, I let my fingers linger on his. He chases them, not wanting to lose touch.

“He had an Irish accent but the most interesting thing is the tattoo.” I describe it to him.

Dave has a laptop in the bedroom on a makeshift desk made from a missing bathroom door and saw horses. Shielding the screen from me, he types in a username and a password.

The Police National Computer is a vast database that contains the names, nicknames, aliases, scars, tattoos, accents, shoe size, height, age, hair color, eye color, offense history, associates and modus operandi of every known offender and person of interest in the U.K. Even partial details can sometimes be enough to link cases or throw up names of possible suspects.

In the good old days almost every police officer could access the PNC via the Internet. Unfortunately, one or two officers decided to make money selling the information. Now every request—even a license check—has to be justified.

Dave types in the age range, accent and details of the tattoo. It takes less than fifteen seconds for eight possible matches. He highlights the first name and the screen refreshes. Two photographs appear—a front view and a profile of the same face. The date of birth, antecedents and last known address are printed across the bottom. He is too young; too smooth-skinned.

“That’s not him.”

Candidate number two is older with horn-rimmed glasses and bushy eyebrows. He looks like a librarian caught in a pedophile sweep. Why do all mug shots look so unflattering? It isn’t just the harsh lighting or plain white background with its black vertical ruler measuring the height. Everybody looks gaunt, depressed, worst of all, guilty.

A new photograph appears. A man in his late forties with a shaved head. Something about his eyes makes me pause. He looks arrogant; as if he knows he is cleverer than the vast majority of his fellow human beings and this inclines him to be cruel.

I reach toward the computer screen and cup my hand over the top of the image, trying to imagine him with a long gray ponytail.

“That’s him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

His name is Brendan Dominic Pearl—born in 1958 in Rathcoole, a Loyalist district of north Belfast.

“IRA,” whispers Dave.

“How do you know?”

“It’s the classic background.” He scrolls down the screen to the biography. Pearl’s father was a boilermaker on the Belfast docks. His elder brother, Tony, died in an explosion in 1972 when a bomb accidentally detonated in a warehouse being used as a bomb-making factory by the IRA.

A year later, aged fifteen, Brendan Pearl was convicted of assault and firearms offenses. He was sentenced to eighteen months of juvenile detention. In 1977 he launched a mortar attack on a Belfast police station that wounded four people. He was sentenced to twelve years.

At the Maze Prison in 1981 he joined a hunger strike with two dozen Republican prisoners. They were protesting about being treated as common criminals instead of prisoners of war. The most celebrated of them, Bobby Sands, died after sixty-six days. Pearl slipped into a coma in the hospital wing but survived.

Two years later, in July 1983, he and fellow inmate Frank Farmer climbed out of their compound onto the prison roof and gained access to the Loyalist compound. They murdered a paramilitary leader, Patrick McNeill, and maimed two others. Pearl’s sentence was increased to life.

Ruiz joins us. I point to the computer screen. “That’s him—the driver.”

His shoulders suddenly shift and his eyes search mine.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why? What’s wrong?”

“I know him.”

It’s my turn to be surprised.

Ruiz studies the picture again as if the knowledge has to be summoned up or traded for information he doesn’t need.

“There are gangs in every prison. Pearl was one of the IRA’s enforcers. His favorite weapon was a metal pole with a curved hook something like a marlin spike. That’s why they called him the Shankhill Fisherman. You don’t find many fish in the Maze but he found another use for the weapon. He used to thread it through the bars while prisoners were sleeping and open their throats with a flick of the wrist, taking out their vocal chords in the process so they couldn’t scream for help.”

Cotton wool fills my esophagus. Ruiz pauses, his head bent, motionless.

“When the Good Friday peace agreement was signed more than four hundred prisoners were released from both sides—Republicans and Loyalists. The British government drew up a list of exemptions—people they wanted kept inside. Pearl was among them. Oddly enough, the IRA agreed. They didn’t want Pearl any more than we did.”

“So why isn’t he still in prison?” asks Dave.

Ruiz smiles wryly. “That’s a very good question, ‘New Boy.’ For forty years the British government told people it wasn’t fighting a war in Northern Ireland—it was a ‘police operation.’ Then they signed the Good Friday Agreement and declared, ‘The war is over.’

“Pearl got himself a good lawyer and that’s exactly what he argued. He said he was a prisoner of war. There should be no exemptions. Bombers, snipers and murderers had been set free. Why was he being treated differently? A judge agreed. He and Frank Farmer were released on the same day.”

A palm glides over his chin, rasping like sandpaper. “Some soldiers can’t survive the peace. They need chaos. Pearl is like that.”

“How do you know so much about him?” I ask.

There is sadness in his eyes. “I helped draw up the list.”