The Night Ferry

5

Regret is such an odd emotion because it invariably comes a moment too late, when only our imagination can rewrite what has happened. My regrets are like pressed flowers in the pages of a diary. Brittle reminders of summers past; like the last summer before graduation, the one that wasn’t big enough to hold its own history.

It was supposed to be the last hurrah before I entered the “real world.” The London Metropolitan Police had sent me an acceptance letter. I was part of the next intake for the training college at Hendon. The class of 1998.

When I went to primary school I never imagined getting to secondary school. And at Oaklands I never imagined the freedom of university. Yet there I was, about to graduate, to grow up, to become a full-fledged, paid-up adult with a tax file number and a student loan to repay. “Thank God we’ll never be forty,” Cate joked.

I was working two jobs—answering phones at my brothers’ garage and working weekends on a market stall. The Elliots invited me to Cornwall again. Cate’s mother had suffered her stroke by then and was confined to a wheelchair.

Barnaby still had political ambitions but no safe seat had become available. He wasn’t made of the right stuff—not old school enough to please the die-hard Conservatives and not female, famous or ethnic enough to satisfy modernizers in the party.

I still thought he was handsome. And he continued to flirt with me, finding reasons to lean against me or punch my arm or call me his “Bollywood beauty” or his “Indian princess.”

On Sunday mornings the Elliots went to church in the village, about a ten-minute walk away. I stayed in bed until after they’d gone.

I don’t know why Barnaby came back, what excuse he made to the others. I was in the shower. Music videos were turned up loud on the TV. The kettle had boiled. The clock ticked as if nothing had happened.

I didn’t hear him on the stairs. He just appeared. I held the towel against me but didn’t cry out. He ran his fingers slowly over my shoulder and along my arms. Perfect fingernails. I looked down. I could see his gray trousers and the tips of his polished shoes growing out from under his cuffs.

He kissed my throat. I had to throw my head back to make room for him. I looked up at the ceiling and he moved his lips lower to the space between my breasts. I held his head and pushed against him.

My hair was long back then, plaited in a French braid that reached down to the small of my back. He held it in his fists, wrapping it around his knuckles like a rope. Whispering in my ear, sweet nothings that meant more, he pushed down on my shoulders, wanting me to kneel. Meanwhile, the TV blared and the clock ticked and the water in the kettle cooled.

I didn’t hear the door open downstairs or footsteps on the stairs. I don’t know why Cate came back. Some details don’t matter. She must have heard our voices and the other noises. She must have known but she kept coming closer until she reached the door, drawn by the sounds.

In real estate location is everything. Barnaby was standing naked behind me. I was on all fours with my knees apart. Cate didn’t say a word. Having seen enough she stayed there watching more. She didn’t see me fighting or struggling. I didn’t fight or struggle.

This is the way I remember it. The way it happened. All that was left was for Cate to tell me to leave and that she never wanted to see me again. And time enough for her to lie sobbing on her bed. A single bed away, I packed my bag, breathing in her grief and trying to swallow something that I couldn’t spit out.

Barnaby drove me to the station in silence. The seagulls were crying, accusing me of betrayal. The rain had arrived, drowning summer.

It was a long journey back to London. I found Mama at her sewing machine, making a dress for my cousin’s wedding. For the first time in years I wanted to crawl onto her lap. Instead I sat next to her and put my head on her shoulder. Then I cried.

Later that night I stood in front of the bathroom mirror with Mama’s big dressmaking scissors and cut my hair for the first time. The blades carved through my tresses and sent them rocking to the tiles. I trimmed it as short as the scissors allowed, nicking my skin so that blood stained the blades and tufts of hair stood out from my skull like sprouts of wheat germ.

I can’t explain why. Somehow the act was palliative. Mama was horrified. (She would have been less shocked if I’d sliced open my wrists.)

I left messages for Cate and wrote her notes. I couldn’t visit her house without risking meeting her father—or worse, her mother. What if Ruth Elliot knew? I caught the same buses and trains as Cate. I orchestrated chance meetings and sometimes I simply stalked her, but it made no difference. Being sorry wasn’t enough. She didn’t want to see me or talk to me.

Eventually I stopped trying. I locked myself away for hours, coming out only to run and to eat. I ran a personal best a month later. I no longer wanted to catch up with the future—I was running away from the past. I threw myself into my police training, studying furiously. Filling notebooks. Blitzing exams.

My hair grew back. Mama calmed down. I used to daydream, in the years that followed, that Cate and I would find each other and somehow redeem the lost years. But a single image haunted me—Cate standing silently in the doorway, watching her father fuck her best friend to the rhythm of a ticking clock and a cooling kettle.

In all the years since, not a day has passed when I haven’t wanted to change what happened. Cate did not forgive me. She hated me with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it was the opposite of love.

After enough time had passed, I didn’t think about her every hour or every day. I sent her cards on her birthday and at Christmas. I heard about her engagement and saw the wedding photographs in a photographer’s window in Bethnal Green Road. She looked happy. Barnaby looked proud. Her bridesmaids (I knew all their names) wore the dresses she always said she wanted. I didn’t know Felix. I didn’t know where they’d met or how he’d proposed. What did she see in him? Was it love? I could never ask her.

They say time is a great healer and a lousy beautician, but it didn’t heal my wounds. It covered them over with layers of regret and awkwardness like pancake makeup. Wounds like mine don’t heal. The scars simply grow thicker and more permanent.

The curtains sway back and forth, breathing in and then out like lungs drawing restless air. Light spills from around the edges. Another day.

I must have dozed off. I rarely sleep soundly anymore. Not like I did as a child when the world was still a mystery. Now I snatch awake at the slightest noise or movement. The scars on my back are throbbing, telling me to stand and stretch.

Ruiz is lying on a bed in the dimness. Wires, fluids and machines have captured him. A mask delivers oxygen. Three hours ago surgeons inserted a tube in his chest and reinflated his right lung. They stitched his arm, commenting on his many scars.

My ear is wrapped in bandages and an ice pack has melted on my cheek. The swelling has gone down but the bruising will be ugly. At least I can let down my hair to hide the worst of it.

The doctors and nurses have been very kind. They wanted me to leave the DI’s room last night. I argued. I begged. Then I seem to remember lying down on the linoleum floor, challenging them to carry me out. They let me stay.

I feel numb. Shell-shocked. This is my fault. I close my eyes to the darkness and listen to him breathing. Someone has delivered a tray with a glass of orange juice under a frilled paper lid. There are biscuits. I’m not hungry.

So this is all about a baby. Two babies. Cate Beaumont tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant through IVF. She then met someone who convinced her that for £80,000 another woman would have a baby for her. Not just any baby. Her own genetic offspring.

She traveled to Amsterdam where two of her fertilized embryos were implanted into the womb of an Afghani teenager who owed money to people smugglers. Both embryos began growing.

Meanwhile, in London Cate announced she was “pregnant.” Friends and family celebrated the news. She began an elaborate deception that she had to maintain for nine months. What went wrong? Cate’s ultrasound pictures—the fake ones—showed only one baby. She didn’t expect twins.

Someone must have arranged the IVF procedure. Doctors were needed. Fertility specialists. Midwives. Minders.

A nurse appears at the door, an angel in off-white. She walks around the bed and whispers in my ear. A detective has come to interview me.

“He won’t wake yet,” she whispers, glancing at Ruiz. “I’ll keep watch.”

A local politieagent has been sitting outside the room all night. He looks very smart in dark blue trousers, light blue shirt, tie and jacket. Now he’s talking to a more senior colleague. I wait for them to finish.

The senior detective introduces himself as Spijker, making it sound like a punishment. He doesn’t give me a first name. Maybe he only has the one. Tall and thin with a narrow face and thinning hair, he looks at me with watery eyes as though he’s already having an allergic reaction to what I might say.

A small mole on his top lip dances up and down as he speaks. “Your friend will be all right, I think.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I shall need to talk to him when he wakes up.”

I nod.

We walk to the patient lounge, which is far smarter than anything I’ve seen in a British hospital. There are eggs and cold meats and slices of cheese on a platter, along with a basket of bread rolls. The detective waits for me to be seated and takes out a fountain pen, resting it on a large white pad. His smallest actions have a function.

Spijker explains that he works for the Youth and Vice Squad. Under normal circumstances, this might sound like an odd combination but not when I look at Samira’s age and what she’s been through.

As I tell him the story, explaining events, it strikes me how implausible it all sounds. An Englishwoman transports fertilized embryos to Amsterdam inside a small cooler box. The eggs are placed in the womb of an unwilling surrogate. A virgin.

Spijker leans forward, with his hands braced on either side of his chair. For a moment I think he might suffer from piles and want to relieve some of the pressure.

“What makes you think this girl was forced to become pregnant?”

“She told me.”

“And you believe her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps she agreed.”

“No. She owed money to traffickers. Either she became a prostitute or she agreed to have a baby.”

“Trafficking is a very serious crime indeed. Commercial surrogacy is also illegal.”

I tell him about the prostitute on Molensteeg who mentioned seeing a second pregnant girl. A Serb. Samira had a Serbian friend on the campus, according to Lena Caspar.

There could be others. Babies born at a price, ushered into the world with threats and blackmail. I have no idea how big this is, how many people it touches.

Spijker’s face gives nothing away. He speaks slowly, as if practicing his English. “And this has been the purpose of your visit to Amsterdam?”

The question has a barbed tip. I have been waiting for this—the issue of jurisdiction. What is a British police officer doing investigating possible crimes in the Netherlands? There are protocols to be followed. Rules to be obeyed.

“I was making private inquiries. It is not an official investigation.”

Spijker seems satisfied. His point has been made. I have no authority in the Netherlands.

“Where is this woman—the pregnant one?”

“Safe.”

He waits, expecting an address. I explain about Samira’s asylum appeal and the deportation order. She’s frightened of being sent back to Afghanistan.

“If this girl is telling the truth and becomes a witness there are laws to protect her.”

“She could stay?”

“Until the trial.”

I want to trust him—I want Samira to trust him—yet there is something in his demeanor that hints at skepticism. The notepad and fountain pen have not been touched. They are merely props.

“You tell a very interesting story, Detective Constable. A very interesting story, indeed.” The mole on his top lip is quivering. “However, I have heard a different version. The man we found unconscious at the scene says he returned home and found you in his apartment. You claimed to be a nurse and that you were trying to examine his fiancée.”

“His fiancée!”

“Yes indeed his fiancée. He says that he asked you for some proof of your identity. You refused. Did you conduct a physical examination of Miss Khan?”

“She knew I wasn’t a nurse. I was trying to help her.”

“Mr. Yanus further claims that he was attacked by your colleague as he endeavored to protect his fiancée.”

“Yanus had a knife. Look at what he did!”

“In self-defense.”

“He’s lying.”

Spijker nods, but not in agreement. “You see my dilemma, DC Barba. I have two different versions of the same event. Mr. Yanus wants you both charged with assault and abducting his fiancée. He has a good lawyer. A very good lawyer indeed.”

“This is ridiculous! Surely you can’t believe him.”

The detective raises a hand to silence me. “We Dutch are famous for our open minds but do not mistake this openness for ignorance or naïveté. I need evidence. Where is the pregnant girl?”

“I will take you there, but I must talk to her first.”

“To get your stories straight, perhaps?”

“No!” I sound too strident. “Her brother died three days ago. She doesn’t know.”

We drive in silence to my hotel. I am given time to shower and change. Spijker waits in the lobby.

Peeling off my clothes, I slip on a hotel robe and sit cross-legged on the bed, leafing through the messages that were waiting at reception. “New Boy” Dave has phoned four times, my mother twice and Chief Superintendent North has left a terse six-word “please explain.” I screw it into a ball and flush it away. Maybe this is what he meant by shuffling people and priorities.

I should call Ruiz’s family. Who, exactly? I don’t have numbers for his children or any of his ex-wives—not even the most recent, Miranda.

I pick up the phone and punch the numbers. Dave is at the station. I hear other voices in the background.

“Hello, sweet girl, where have you been?”

“My mobile was stolen.”

“How?”

“There was an accident.”

His mood alters. “An accident!”

“Not really an accident.” I’m not doing this very well.

“Hang on.” I hear him apologizing to someone. He takes me somewhere private.

“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“The DI is in hospital. Someone stabbed him.”

“Shit!”

“I need a favor. Find a number for his ex-wife.”

“Which one?”

“Miranda. Tell her that he’s in the Academisch Medisch Centrum. It’s a hospital in Amsterdam.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I think so. He’s out of surgery.”

Dave wants the details. I try to fudge them, making it sound like a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time scenario. Bad luck. He isn’t convinced. I know what’s coming now. He’s going to get clingy and pathetic and ask me to come home and I’ll be reminded of all the reasons I don’t want to be married to someone.

Only he doesn’t. He is matter-of-fact and direct, taking down the number of the hospital, along with Spijker’s name. He’s going to find out what the Dutch police are doing.

“I found Samira. She’s pregnant.”

I can hear Dave’s mind juddering through the consequences. He is careful and methodical, like a carpenter who measures twice and cuts once.

“Cate paid for a baby. A surrogate.”

“Jesus, Ali.”

“It gets worse. She donated the embryos. There are twins.”

“Who owns the babies?”

“I don’t know.”

Dave wants the whole story but I don’t have time. I’m about to hang up when he remembers something.

“I know it’s probably not the time,” he says, “but I had a phone call from your mother.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. She invited me to lunch on Sunday.”

She threatened to do it and she went and did it!

He’s waiting for a response.

“I don’t know if I’ll be home by then,” I say.

“But you knew about the invite?”

“Yes, of course,” I lie. “I told her to invite you.”

He relaxes. “For a moment I thought she might have gone behind your back. How embarrassing would that be—my girlfriend’s mother arranging dates for me? Story of my life—mothers liking me and their daughters running a mile.”

Now he’s blathering.

“It’s all right, Dave.”

“Brilliant.”

He doesn’t want to hang up. I do it for him. The shower is running. I step beneath the spray and flinch as the hot water hits my cheek and the cut on my ear. Washed and dried, I open my bag and take out my Dolce Gabbana pants and a dark blouse. I see less of me in the mirror than I remember. When I ran competitively my best weight was 123 pounds. I got heavier when I joined the Met. Night shifts and canteen food will do that to you.

I have always been rather un-girlie. I don’t have manicures or pedicures and I only paint my nails on special occasions (so I can chip it off when I get bored).

The day I cut my hair was almost a rite of passage. When it grew back I got a sensible layered shag cut. My mother cried. She’s never been one to ration tears.

Ever since my teens I have lived in fear of saris and skirts. I didn’t wear a bra until I was fourteen and my periods started after everyone else’s. I imagined them banked up behind a dam wall and when the gates opened it was going to be like a scene from a Tarantino film, without Harvey Keitel to clean up afterward.

In those days I didn’t imagine ever feeling like a woman, but slowly it happened. Now I’m almost thirty and self-conscious enough to wear makeup—a little lip gloss and mascara. I pluck my eyebrows and wax my legs. I still don’t own a skirt and every item in my wardrobe, apart from my jeans and my saris, is a variant on the color black. That’s okay. Small steps.

I make one more phone call. It diverts between numbers and Lena Caspar answers. A public address system echoes in the background. She is on a railway platform. There is a court hearing in Rotterdam, she explains. An asylum seeker has been charged with stealing groceries.

“I found Samira.”

“How is she?”

“She needs your help.”

The details can wait. I give her Spijker’s name and phone number. Samira will need protection and guarantees about her status if they want her to give evidence.

“She doesn’t know about Hassan.”

“You have to tell her.”

“I know.”

The lawyer begins thinking out loud. She will find someone to take over the court case in Rotterdam. It might take a few hours.

“I have a question.”

My words are drowned out by a platform announcement. She waits. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I have a hypothetical question for you.”

“Yes?”

“If a married couple provided a fertilized embryo to a surrogate mother who later gave birth, who would the baby belong to?”

“The birth mother.”

“Even if genetically it had the DNA of the couple?”

“It doesn’t matter. The law in the Netherlands is the same as the law in the U.K. The birth mother is the legal mother. Nobody else has a claim.”

“What about the father?”

“He can apply for access, but the court will favor the mother. Why do you want to know?”

“Spijker will explain.”

I hang up and take another look in the mirror. My hair is still wet. If I wear it down it will hide the swelling on my cheek. I’ll have to stop my natural inclination to push it behind my ears.

Downstairs I find the detective and desk clerk in conversation. A notebook is open. They stop talking when they see me. Spijker is checking my details. I would do the same.

It is a short drive to the Augustinian Convent. We turn along Warmoesstraat and pull into a multistory car park. The African parking attendant comes running over. Spijker shows him a badge and tears up the parking stub.

Against his better judgment he has agreed to let me see Samira first. I have twenty minutes. Descending the concrete steps, I push open a heavy fire door. Across the street is the convent. A familiar figure emerges from the large front door. Dressed in her pink jacket and a long ankle-length skirt, Zala puts her head down and hustles along the pavement. Her blue hijab hides the bruising on her face. She shouldn’t be outside. I fight the urge to follow her.

A large ruddy-faced nun answers the door. Like the others she is creased and crumbling, trying to outlive the building. I am led down a corridor to Sister Vogel’s office, which contains a curious mixture of the old and the new. A cabinet with a glass-front full of books is stained the same dark color as the mahogany desk. In the corner there is a fax machine and a photocopier. A heart-shaped box of candies sits on the mantel, alongside photographs that could be of her nieces and nephews. I wonder if Sister Vogel ever regrets her calling. God can be a barren husband.

She appears beside me. “You didn’t tell me you were a police officer.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

She doesn’t answer. “You sent more people for me to feed.”

“They don’t eat very much.”

She folds her arms. “Is this girl in trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Has she been abandoned?”

“Abused.”

Sorrow fills every crease and wrinkle of her face. She notices the bruising on my cheek and reaches toward it sympathetically. “Who did this to you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I must talk to Samira.”

She takes me to a room on the second floor which is stained with the same dark panels. Samira is at the window when the door opens. She’s wearing a long dress, buttoned down the middle, with a Peter Pan collar. The light from the window paints an outline of her body inside it. Watching me carefully, she takes a seat on the sofa. Her pregnancy rests on her thighs.

Sister Vogel doesn’t stay. As the door closes, I glance around the room. On the wall there is a painting of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Both are pictured beside a stream, where fruit hangs from trees and fat naked cherubs dance above the water.

Samira notices me looking at it. “Are you a Christian?”

“A Sikh.”

She nods, satisfied.

“Do you dislike Christians?”

“No. My father told me that Christians believe less than we believe. I don’t know if that is true. I am not a very good Muslim. I sometimes forget to pray.”

“How often are you supposed to pray?”

“Five times a day, but my father always said that three was enough.”

“Do you miss him, your father?”

“With every breath.”

Her copper-colored eyes are flecked with gold and uncertainty. I can’t imagine what they’ve seen in her short life. When I picture Afghanistan I see women draped in black like covered statues, mountains capped with snow, old caravan trails, unexploded mines, scorching deserts, terra-cotta houses, ancient monuments and one-eyed madmen.

I introduce myself properly this time and tell Samira how I found her. She looks away self-consciously when I mention the prostitute on Molensteeg. At the same time she holds her hand to her chest, pressing down. I see pain on her forehead.

“Are you OK?”

“Heartburn. Zala has gone to get medicine.” She glances at the door, already missing her friend.

“Where did you meet her?”

“At the orphanage.”

“You didn’t leave Afghanistan together.”

“No. We had to leave her behind.”

“How did she get here?”

“In the back of a truck and then by train.”

“By herself?”

Samira’s face softens. “Zala can always find a way to make herself understood.”

“Has she always been deaf?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“Her father fought with the mujahideen against the Taliban. When the Talibs took over they punished their enemies. Zala and her mother were imprisoned and tortured with acid and melted plastic. Her mother took eight days to die. By then Zala could not hear her screaming.”

The statement sucks the oxygen from the room and I feel myself struggling for breath. Samira looks toward the door again, waiting for Zala. Her fingers are splayed on her belly as if reading the bumps and kicks. What must it feel like—to have something growing inside you? A life, an organism that takes what it needs without asking or sharing, stealing sleep, changing hormones, bending bones and squeezing organs. I have heard my friends and sisters-in-law complain of weak nails, molting hair, sore breasts and stretch marks. It is a sacrifice men could not make.

Samira is watching me. She has something she wants to ask.

“You said Mrs. Beaumont is dead.”

“Yes.”

“What will happen now to her babies?”

“It is your decision.”

“Why?”

“They belong to you.”

“No!”

“They’re your babies.”

Her head pivots from side to side. She is adamant.

Standing suddenly, she rocks slightly and reaches out her hand, bracing it on the back of the sofa. Crossing the room, she stares out the window, hoping to see Zala.

I’m still contemplating her denial. Does she love her unborn twins? Does she imagine a future for them? Or is she simply carrying them, counting down the days until the birth, when her job is done?

“When did you meet Mrs. Beaumont?”

“She came to Amsterdam. She bought me clothes. Yanus was there. I had to pretend I didn’t speak English but Mrs. Beaumont talked to me anyway. She gave me a piece of paper with your name. She said if I was ever in trouble I had to find you.”

“When was this?”

“In February I saw her the first time. She came to see me again in September.”

“Did she know you were having twins?”

She shrugs.

“Did she know why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did she know about the debt? Did she know you were forced to get pregnant?”

Her voice softens. “She thanked me. She said I was doing a good thing.”

“It is a crime to force someone to have a baby. She did a very foolish thing.”

Samira shrugs, unwilling to be so harsh. “Sometimes friends do foolish things,” she says. “My father told me that true friends are like gold coins. Ships are wrecked by storms and lie for hundreds of years on the ocean floor. Worms destroy the wood. Iron corrodes. Silver turns black but gold doesn’t change in seawater. It loses none of its brilliance or color. It comes up the same as it went down. Friendship is the same. It survives shipwrecks and time.”

The swelling in my chest suddenly hurts. How can someone so young be so wise?

“You must tell the police what happened.”

“They will send me back.”

“These people have done very bad things. You owe them nothing.”

“Yanus will find me. He will never let me go.”

“The police can protect you.”

“I do not trust them.”

“Trust me.”

She shakes her head. She has no reason to believe me. Promises don’t fill stomachs or bring back dead brothers. She still doesn’t know about Hassan. I can’t bring myself to tell her.

“Why did you leave Kabul?”

“Brother.”

“Your brother?”

“No. An Englishman. We called him Brother.”

“Who is he?”

“A saint.”

Using her forefinger she traces the outline of a cross on her neck. I think of Donavon’s tattoo. Is it possible?

“This Englishman, was he a soldier?”

“He said he was on a mission from God.”

She describes how he visited the orphanage, bringing food and blankets. There were sixty children aged between two and sixteen, who slept in dormitories, huddling together in winter, surviving on scraps and charity.

When the Taliban were in control they took boys from the orphanage to fill their guns with bullets and the girls were taken as wives. The orphans cheered when the Northern Alliance and the Americans liberated Kabul, but the new order proved to be little different. Soldiers came to the orphanage looking for girls. The first time Samira hid under blankets. The second time she crawled into the latrine. Another girl threw herself off the roof rather than be taken.

I’m amazed at how ambivalent she sounds. Fateful decisions, issues of life and death, are related with the matter-of-factness of a shopping list. I can’t tell if she’s inured to shock or overcome by it.

“Brother” paid off the soldiers with medicine and money. He told Samira that she should leave Afghanistan because it wasn’t safe. He said he would find her a job in London.

“What about Hassan?”

“Brother said he had to stay behind. I said I would not go without him.”

They were introduced to a trafficker called Mahmoud, who arranged their passage. Zala had to stay behind because no country would accept a deaf girl, Mahmoud told them.

Hassan and Samira were taken overland to Pakistan by bus and smuggled south through Quetta and west into Iran until they reached Tabriz near the Turkish border. In the first week of spring they walked across the Ararat mountain range and almost succumbed to the freezing nights and the wolves.

On the Turkish side of the mountains, sheep farmers smuggled them between villages and arranged their passage to Istanbul in the back of a truck. For two months brother and sister worked in a sweatshop in the garment districts of Zeytinburnu, sewing sheepskin waistcoats.

The trafficking syndicate demanded more money to get them to England. The price had risen to ten thousand American dollars. Samira wrote a letter to “Brother” but didn’t know where to send it. Finally they were moved. A fishing boat took them across the Aegean Sea to Italy where they caught a train to Rome with four other illegals. They were met at the station and taken to a house.

Two days later, they met Yanus. He took them to a bus depot and put them inside the luggage compartment of a tourist coach that traveled through Germany to the Netherlands. “Don’t move, don’t talk—otherwise you will be found,” he told them. When the coach arrived at the Dutch border they were to claim asylum. He would find them.

“We are supposed to be going to England,” Samira said.

“England is for another day,” he replied.

The rest of the story matches what I’ve already learned from Lena Caspar.

Sister Vogel knocks softly on the door. She is carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. The delicate cups have chipped handles. I pour the tea through a broken strainer. Samira takes a biscuit and wraps it in a paper napkin, saving it for Zala.

“Have you ever heard the name Paul Donavon?”

She shakes her head.

“Who told you about the IVF clinic?”

“Yanus. He said we had to pay him for our passage from Kabul. He threatened to rape me. Hassan tried to stop him but Yanus cut him over and over. A hundred cuts.” She points to her chest. Noonan found evidence of these wounds on Hassan’s torso.

“What did Yanus want you to do?”

“To become a whore. He showed me what I would have to do—sleep with many men. Then he gave me a choice. He said a baby would pay off my debt. I could remain a virgin.”

She says it almost defiantly. This is a truth that sustains Samira. I wonder if that’s why they chose a Muslim girl. She would have done almost anything to protect her virginity.

I still don’t know how Cate became involved. Was it her idea or Donavon’s?

Spijker is waiting outside. I can’t delay this. Opening my satchel I take out the charcoal drawing, smoothing the corners.

Excitement lights Samira’s eyes from within. “Hassan! You’ve seen him!”

She waits. I shake my head. “Hassan is dead.”

Her head jerks up as though tied to a cord. The light in her eyes is replaced by anger. Disbelief. I tell her quickly, hoping it might spare her, but there is no painless way to do this. His journey. His crossing. His fight to stay alive.

She puts her hands over her ears.

“I’m sorry, Samira. He didn’t make it.”

“You’re lying! Hassan is in London.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

She rocks from side to side, her eyes closed and her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. The word she wants to say is no.

“Surely you must be wondering why you haven’t heard from him,” I say. “He should have called by now or written to you. You sewed my name into his clothes. That’s how I found you.” I close the gap between us. “I have no reason to lie to you.”

She stiffens and pulls away, fixing me with a gaze of frightening intensity.

Spijker’s voice echoes from downstairs. He has grown tired of waiting.

“You must tell the police everything you have told me.”

She doesn’t answer. I don’t know if she understands.

Turning toward the window, she utters Zala’s name.

“Sister Vogel will look after her.”

She shakes her head stubbornly, her eyes full of imbecile hope.

“I will find her. I’ll look after her.”

For a moment something struggles inside her. Then her mind empties and she surrenders. Fighting fate is too difficult. She must save herself to fight whatever fate throws up.

There is a pharmacy in the heart of de Walletjes, explains Sister Vogel. The pharmacist is a friend of hers. This is where she sent Zala. She was carrying a note.

Turning each corner I expect to see a flash of pink or her blue hijab coming toward me. I pass a greengrocer and catch the scent of oranges, which makes me think of Hassan. What will happen to Samira now? Who will look after her?

I turn into Oudekerksteeg. There is still no sign of Zala. A touch on my arm makes me turn. For a second I don’t recognize Hokke, who is wearing a woolen cap. With his light beard it makes him look like a North Sea fisherman.

“Hello, my friend.” He looks at me closely. “What have you done to yourself?” His finger traces the bruising on my cheek.

“I had a fight.”

“Did you win?”

“No.”

I look over his shoulder, scanning the square for Zala. My sense of urgency makes him turn his own head.

“Are you still looking for your Afghani girl?”

“No, a different one this time.”

It makes me sound careless—as though I lose people all the time. Hokke has been sitting in a café. Zala must have passed by him but he doesn’t remember her.

“Perhaps I can help you look.”

I follow him, scanning the pedestrians, until we reach the pharmacy. The small shop has narrow aisles and neatly stacked shelves. A man in a striped shirt and white coat is serving customers at a counter. When he recognizes Hokke he opens his arms and they embrace. Old friends.

“A deaf girl—I’d remember her,” he announces, breaking into English.

“She had a note from Sister Vogel.”

The pharmacist yells to his assistant. A head pops out from behind a stand of postcards. More Dutch. A shrug. Nobody has seen her.

Hokke follows me back onto the street. I walk a few paces and stop, leaning against a wall. A faint vibration is coming off me; a menacing internal thought spinning out of control. Zala has not run away. She would not leave Samira willingly. Ever.

Police headquarters is on one of the outer canals, west of the city. Fashioned by the imagination of an architect, it looks scrubbed clean and casts a long shadow across the canal. The glass doors open automatically. CCTV cameras scan the foyer.

A message is sent upstairs to Spijker. His reply comes back: I’m to wait in the reception area. None of my urgency has any effect on the receptionist, who has a face like the farmer’s daughter in American Gothic. This is not my jurisdiction. I have no authority to make demands or throw my weight around.

Hokke offers to keep me company. At no point has he asked how I found Samira or what happened to Ruiz. He is content to accept whatever information is offered rather than seeking it out.

So much has happened in the past week yet I feel as though I haven’t moved. It’s like the clock on the wall above the reception desk, with its white face and thick black hands that refuse to move any faster.

Samira is somewhere above me. I don’t imagine there are many basements in Amsterdam—a city that seems to float on fixed pontoons held together by bridges. Perhaps it is slowly sinking into the ooze like a Venice of the north.

I can’t sit still. I should be at the hospital with Ruiz. I should be starting my new job in London or resigning from it.

Across the foyer the double doors of a lift slide open. There are voices, deep, sonorous, laughing. One of them belongs to Yanus. His left eye is swollen and partially closed. Head injuries are becoming a fashion statement. He isn’t handcuffed, nor is he being escorted by police.

The man beside him must be his lawyer. Large and careworn, with a broad forehead and broader arse, his rumpled suit has triple vents and permanent creases.

Yanus looks up at me and smiles with his thin lips.

“I am very sorry for this misunderstanding,” he says. “No hard feelings.”

He offers me his hand. I stare at it blankly. Spijker appears at his left shoulder, standing fractionally behind him.

Yanus is still talking. “I hope Mr. Ruiz is being looked after. I am very sorry I stabbed him.”

My eyes haven’t left Spijker. “What are you doing?”

“Mr. Yanus is being released. We may need to question him again later.”

The fat lawyer is tapping his foot on the floor impatiently. It has the effect of making his face wobble. “Samira Khan has confirmed that Mr. Yanus is her fiancé. She is pregnant by him.” His tone is extravagantly pompous, with just a hint of condescension. “She has also given a statement corroborating his account of what happened last night.”

“No!”

“Fortunately, for you, Mr. Yanus has agreed not to make a formal complaint against you or your colleague for assault, malicious wounding and abducting his fiancée. In return, the police have decided not to lay charges against him.”

“Our investigations are continuing,” counters Spijker.

“Mr. Yanus has cooperated fully,” retorts the fat lawyer, dismissively.

Lena Caspar is so small that I almost don’t see her behind him. I can sense my gaze flicking from face to face like a child waiting for a grown-up to explain. Yanus has withdrawn his hand. Almost instinctively he slides it inside his jacket, where his knife would normally be.

I imagine that I must look dazed and dumbstruck, but the opposite is true. I can see myself reflected in the dozens of glass panels around the walls and the news hasn’t altered my demeanor at all. Internally, the story is different. Of all the possible outcomes, this one couldn’t be anticipated.

“Let me talk to Samira.”

“That’s not possible.”

Lena Caspar puts her hand on my arm. “She doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Where is she?”

“In the care of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

“Is she going to be deported?”

The fat lawyer answers for her. “My client is applying for a visa that will allow his fiancée to remain in the Netherlands.”

“She’s not his fiancée!” I snap.

The lawyer inflates even further (it barely seems possible). “You are very fortunate, Miss Barba, that my client is so willing to forgive. You would otherwise be facing very serious charges. Mr. Yanus now demands that you leave him alone, along with his fiancée. Any attempt by you to approach either of them will be taken very seriously.”

Yanus looks almost embarrassed by his own generosity. His entire persona has softened. The cold, naked, unflinching hatred of last night has gone. It’s like watching a smooth ocean after a storm front has passed. He extends his hand again. There is something in it this time—my mobile phone and passport. He hands them to me and turns away. He and the fat lawyer are leaving.

I look at Spijker. “You know he’s lying.”

“It makes no difference,” he replies.

Mrs. Caspar wants me to sit down.

“There must be something,” I say, pleading with her.

“You have to understand. Without Samira’s testimony there is no case to answer, no evidence of forced pregnancies or a black market in embryos and unborn babies. The proof might lie in DNA or paternity tests, but these can’t be done without Samira’s permission and invasive surgery that could endanger the twins.”

“Zala will confirm my story.”

“Where is she?”

The entrance doors slide open. The fat lawyer goes first. Yanus pulls a light blue handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his forehead. I recognize the fabric. He rolls it over and over in his fingers. It’s not a handkerchief. It’s a headscarf. Zala’s hijab!

Spijker sees me moving and holds me back. I fight against his arms, yelling accusations out the door. Yanus turns and smiles, showing a few teeth at the sides of his mouth. A shark’s smile.

“See in his hand—the scarf,” I cry. “That’s why she lied.”

Mrs. Caspar steps in front of me. “It’s too late, Alisha.”

Spijker releases my arms slowly and I shake his fingers loose. He’s embarrassed at having touched me. There’s something else in his demeanor. Understanding. He believes me! He had no choice but to release Yanus.

Frustration, disappointment and anger fill me until I feel like screaming. They have Zala. Samira is sure to follow. For all the bruises and bloodshed, I haven’t even slowed them down. I’m like Wile E. Coyote, flattened beneath a rock, listening to the Road Runner’s infernal, triumphant, infuriating “beep, beep!”