The Night Ferry

15

A girl and a boy—Pitter and Patter—each with ten fingers and ten toes, squashed-up noses, tiny ears. Rocking back on my heels, I feel like laughing with relief, until I catch my reflection in the mirror. I am smeared with blood and tears yet have a look of complete wonderment on my face.

Samira groans softly.

“You’re bleeding.”

“It will stop when I feed them.”

How does she know so much? She is massaging her belly, which ripples and sways in its emptiness. I swaddle the baby girl and tuck her next to Samira.

“Go now!”

“I can’t leave you.”

“Please!”

An extraordinary calmness washes through me. I have only two options—to fight or to fall. I take the scissors, weighing them in my hand. Maybe there is a way.

I open the door. Pearl is in the passage.

“Quickly! I need a drinking straw. The girl. Her lungs are full of fluid.”

“What if I can’t?”

“A ballpoint pen, a tube, anything like that. Hurry!”

I close the door. He will leave Yanus to watch the passage.

Taking the babies from Samira, I lie them side by side on the floor of the bathroom, tucked between the sink and the toilet. Cupping my hands beneath the running water, I wash away the blood and clean my face.

I have been trained to use a firearm. I can shoot a perfect score with a pistol from thirty yards on an indoor range. What good is that now? My hand-to-hand skills are defensive but I know the vital organs. I glance again at the scissors.

It is a plan I can only try once. Lying on the bathroom floor, I face the bedroom, holding the scissors like an ice pick with a reverse grip. My thumb hooks through the handle. If I look toward my toes, I can see the babies.

Taking a deep breath I open my lungs, screaming for help. How long will it take?

Yanus shoulders the door open, shattering the lock. He charges inside, holding the knife ahead of him. In mid-stride he looks down. Beneath his raised foot is the afterbirth, purple slick and glistening. I don’t know what he imagines it to be, but the possibilities are too much for him to comprehend. He rears back and I drive the scissors into the soft flesh behind his right knee, aiming for the artery and the tendons that work his leg. The knee buckles and he swings his arm down in an arc trying to stab me but I’m too low and the blade sweeps past my ear.

I grab his arm and lock it straight, spearing the scissors into the inside of his elbow, severing another artery. The knife slips from his fingers.

He tries to spin and grab me, but I am already out of reach. Leaping to my feet, I jump onto his back and send him down. I could kill him if I wanted. I could drive the blade into his kidneys.

Instead, I reach into his pocket and find the masking tape. His right leg is flapping like the wooden limb of a marionette. Pulling his good arm behind his back, I tape it in a reverse sling around his neck. Another piece covers his mouth.

Yanus is groaning. I grab his face. “Listen to me. I have severed the popliteal artery in your leg and the brachial artery in your arm. You know this already because you’re a knife man. You also know that you will bleed to death unless you keep pressure on these wounds. You will have to squat on your haunches and keep this arm bent. I will send someone to help you. If you do as I suggest, you might still be alive when they get here.”

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.

I am being kept away, at arm’s length, as though I’m a liability or worse, a hysterical woman. What could I have done differently? Hindsight is a cruel teacher. I should never have left Samira or the twins. I should have stayed with them. Perhaps I could have fought Pearl off.

My mind goes further back. I should never have gone to Amsterdam looking for her. I have made things worse rather than better. That’s the story of my life—good intentions. And being a hundredth of a second too slow—close enough to touch victory in a contest where first and last were separated by the width of a chest.

How can they negotiate with Pearl? He can’t be trusted. The chief engineer hands me something hot to drink.

“Not long to go now,” he says, motioning to the windows. The lights of Harwich appear and disappear as we ride the swell. Massive cranes with four legs and oblong torsos seem to stand guard at the gates of the town. I stay at the window watching it approach.

The captain and navigator stare at screens, using external cameras to maneuver the ferry, edging it against the dock. We are so high up that the stevedores look like Lilliputians trying to tie down a giant.

DI Forbes is first on board, pausing just long enough to look at my clothes with a mixture of awe and disgust. He takes the phone from the captain.

“Don’t trust him,” I yell across the bridge. It is all I have a chance to say before the DI introduces himself to Pearl. I can only hear one side of their conversation but Forbes repeats each demand as it is made. The clicks in his throat are like punctuation marks.

Pearl wants the main ferry doors opened and vehicles moved to clear a path for his truck. Nobody is to approach. If he sees a police officer on the deck, or if he hears a fire alarm, or if anything is different or untoward, he will kill Samira and the twins.

“You have to give me more time,” says Forbes. “I’ll need at least an hour…That’s not long enough. I can’t do it in fifteen minutes…Let me talk to Samira…Yes, that’s why I want to talk to her…No, I don’t want that. Nobody has to get hurt.”

In the background one of the babies is crying—perhaps both of them. Do twins sound the same? Do they harmonize when they cry?

There are CCTV cameras on the vehicle decks. One of them is trained on the truck. Yanus can be seen clearly behind the wheel. Samira is in the passenger seat.

The rest of the passengers are being evacuated down gangways to the main terminal building. The port area has been closed and sealed off by armed response teams in black body armor. There are sharpshooters on surrounding rooftops.

The anguish of the past hours has swelled up inside me, making it hard to breathe. I can feel myself sinking into the background.

Forbes has agreed to take a limited number of vehicles off the ferry, clearing a path for the truck. I follow the detective down the footbridge to the dock as he supervises the evacuation. Men in yellow reflective vests wave the first of the rigs down the ramp.

Forbes has put Pearl onto a speakerphone. The Irishman sounds calm. Confident. Perhaps it’s bravado. He is talking over the sound of engines, telling Forbes to hurry. Slowly a clear lane emerges on the vehicle deck. The Mercedes truck is at the far end, with its headlights blazing and engine running.

I still can’t understand how he hopes to get away. There are unmarked police cars waiting outside and helicopters in the air. He can’t outrun them.

Yanus is bleeding to death. Even with a bandaged leg and forearm his blood pressure will be dropping. How long before he loses consciousness?

“You definitely saw a gun?” asks Forbes, addressing me directly for the first time.

“Yes.”

“Could he have other firearms?”

“Yes.”

“What is the truck carrying?”

“This one is empty. There’s another on Deck 5. I didn’t see inside.” I give him the vehicle number.

“So it could be a trafficking run. There might be illegals on board.”

“It’s possible.”

The last of the rigs has been moved. Yanus has a clear path to the ramp. Pearl is still issuing instructions. The twins are silent.

In a beat of flushed silence I realize something is wrong. Pearl is too calm, too confident. His plan doesn’t make sense. As the notion occurs to me, I’m moving, pushing past Forbes and sprinting up the ramp. A hundred meters is not my favorite distance but I can cover it in less time than it takes most people to tie their shoes.

Forbes is yelling at me to stop. He’s too late. Reacting to the new development, he orders his teams to move. Heavy boots thunder up the ramp after me, sweeping between the outer rows of trucks.

Yanus is still behind the wheel, staring out through the windscreen, unperturbed by my approach. His eyes seem to follow me as I swing on the door handle and wrench it open. His hands are taped to the steering wheel. Blood has drained onto the floor at his feet. I press my hand to his neck. He’s dead.

Samira’s hands are also taped. I lean across Yanus and touch her shoulder. Her eyes open.

“Where are they?”

She shakes her head.

I swing down and run to the rear of the truck. A sledgehammer pulverizes the lock and the doors swing open. Guns sweep from side to side. The trailer is empty.

Forbes reaches us, puffing and wheezing, still clogged with his cold. I snatch the phone from him. The line is dead.

Amid the commotion of the next few minutes I see things at half speed and struggle to find saliva to push around my mouth. Forbes is bellowing orders and kicking angrily at the truck tires. Someone will have to pop him with a tranquilizer gun if he doesn’t calm down.

Teams of police have secured the ferry. Nobody is being allowed on or off. Passengers are being screened and interviewed in the terminal. Floodlights on the dock make it appear like a massive stage or film set, ready for the cameras to roll.

Yanus watches and waits, as though expecting his cue. My heart jolts on the reality of having killed him. Yes, he deserved it, but I did this. I took his life. His blood still stains my clothes, along with Samira’s.

Paramedics are lifting her onto a stretcher. The towel is still wedged between her thighs. The medics gently shunt me to one side when I approach. She can’t talk to me now. I want to say I’m sorry, it was my fault. I should never have left her. I should have stayed with them. Perhaps I could have stopped Pearl.

Some time later Forbes comes looking for me.

“Let’s walk,” he says.

Instinctively, I take his arm. I’m frightened my legs might fail.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Five thirty.”

“My watch says five fifteen.”

“It’s slow.”

“How do you know yours isn’t fast?”

“Because the ferry company has those big fucking clocks on the wall that say your watch is wrong in four different time zones.”

We walk down the ramp, along the dock, away from the ferry. Refinery tanks and shipping containers create silhouettes against the brightening sky. Wind and smoke and scudding clouds are streaming over us.

“You don’t think he’s on the ferry, do you?” asks Forbes.

“No.”

There is another long pause. “We found a life buoy missing from the starboard railing. He could have gone over the side.”

“Someone would have seen him.”

“We were distracted.”

“Even so.”

I can still smell the twins and feel the smoothness of their skin. We’re both thinking the same thing. What happened to them?

“You should never have put yourself on that ferry,” he says.

“I couldn’t be sure she was on board.”

Taking a packet of cigarettes from his pockets, he counts the contents.

“You shouldn’t smoke with a cold.”

“I shouldn’t smoke at all. My wife thinks men and women can have precisely the same ailment with the same symptoms but it’s always the man who is sicker.”

“That’s because men are hypochondriacs.”

“I got a different theory. I think it’s because no matter how sick a woman is there’s always a small part of her brain thinking about shoes.”

“I bet you didn’t tell her that.”

“I’m sick, not stupid.”

His demeanor is different now. Instead of sarcasm and cynicism, I sense anxiety and a hardening resolve.

“Who’s behind this?”

“Samira mentioned an Englishman who called himself ‘Brother.’ She said he had a cross on his neck. There’s someone you should look at. His name is Paul Donavon. He went to school with Cate Beaumont—and with me. He was there on the night she was run down.”

“You think he’s behind this?”

“Samira met ‘Brother’ at an orphanage in Kabul. Donavon was in Afghanistan with the British Army. The traffickers targeted orphans because it meant fewer complications. There were no families to search for them or ask questions. Some were trafficked for sex. Others were given the option of becoming surrogates.”

“The pregnant illegals you asked about. Both claimed to be orphans.”

Forbes still hasn’t lit his cigarette. It rests between his lips, wagging up and down as he talks. He glances over his shoulder at the ferry.

“About the other night.”

“What night?”

“When we had dinner.”

“Yeah?”

“Did I conduct myself in a proper fashion? I mean, did I behave?”

“You were a perfect gentleman.”

“That’s good,” he mumbles. “I mean, I thought so.” After a pause. “You took something that didn’t belong to you.”

“I prefer to think that we shared information.”

He nods. “You might want to reconsider your career choice, DC Barba. I don’t know if you’re what I’d call a team player.”

He can’t stay. There is a debriefing to attend, which is going to be rough. His superiors are going to want to know how he let Pearl get away. And once the media get hold of this story it’s going to run and run.

Forbes looks at my clothes. “If he’s not on the ferry, how did he get off?”

“He could still be on board.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No. What about the crew?”

“You think he took a uniform?”

“It’s possible.”

He turns abruptly and strides back toward the waiting police cars. The CCTV footage will most likely provide the answer. There are cameras on every corner of the dock and every deck of the ship. One of them will have recorded Pearl.

“Eat bananas,” I yell after him.

“Pardon?”

“My mother’s remedy for a cold.”

“You said you never listened to her.”

“I said almost never.”

***

There have been too many hospitals lately. Too many long waits on uncomfortable chairs, eating machine snacks and drinking powdered coffee and whitener. This one smells of boiled food and feces and has grim checked tiles in the corridors, worn smooth by the trolleys.

Ruiz called me from Hull, after his ferry docked. He wanted to come and get me but I told him to go home and rest. He’s done enough.

“Are they looking after you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Samira?”

“She’s going to be OK.”

I hope I’m right. She’s been asleep for ten hours and didn’t even wake when they lifted her from the ambulance and wheeled her to a private room. I have been waiting here, dozing in my plastic chair, with my head on the bed near her shoulder.

It is mid-afternoon when she finally wakes. I feel the mattress shift and open my eyes to see her looking at me.

“I need the bathroom,” she whispers.

I take her by the elbow and help her to the en suite.

“Where am I?”

“In a hospital.”

“What country?”

“England.”

There is a nod of acceptance but no hint of a journey completed or sense of achievement.

Samira washes her face, ears, hands and feet, talking softly to herself. I take her arm again, leading her back to bed.

Motioning to the window, she wants to look outside. The North Sea is just visible over the rooftops and between buildings. It is the color of brushed steel.

“As a child I used to wonder what the sea looked like,” she says. “I had only ever seen pictures in books and on TV.” She gazes at the horizon.

“What do you think now?”

“I think it looks higher than the land. Why doesn’t the water rush in and sweep us away?”

“Sometimes it does.”

I notice a towel in her hand. She wants to use it as a prayer mat but doesn’t know which direction to face toward Mecca. She turns slowly round and round like a cat trying to settle.

There are tears in her eyes and her lips tremble, struggling to form the words.

“They will be hungry soon. Who will feed them?”