The Night Ferry

9

The digital numbers of my alarm clock glow in the darkness. It has just gone four. I won’t sleep again. Samira is curled up next to me, breathing softly.

I am a collector of elephants. Some are soft toys; others are figurines made from cut glass, porcelain, jade or crystal. My favorite is six inches high and made from heavy glass, inlaid with mirrors. Normally it sits beneath my reading light, throwing colored stars on the walls. It’s not there now. I wonder what could have happened to it.

Slipping out of bed quietly, I dress in my running gear and step outside into the darkness of Hanbury Street. There is an edge to the breeze. Seasons changing.

Cate used to help me train after school. She rode her bicycle alongside me, speeding up before we reached the hills because she knew I could outrun her on the climbs. When I ran at the national age championships in Cardiff she begged her parents to let her come. She was the only student from Oaklands to see me win. I ran like the wind that day. Fast enough to blur at the edges.

I couldn’t see Cate in the stands but I could pick out my mother who wore a bright crimson sari like a splash of paint against the blue seats and gray spectators.

My father never saw me compete. He didn’t approve.

“Running is not ladylike. It makes a woman sweat,” he told me.

“Mama sweats all the time in the kitchen.”

“It is a different sort of sweat.”

“I didn’t know there were different kinds of sweat.”

“Yes, it is a well-known scientific fact. The sweat of hard work and of food preparation is sweeter than the sweat of vigorous exercise.”

I didn’t laugh. A good daughter respects her father.

Later I heard my parents arguing.

“How is a boy supposed to catch her if she runs so fast?”

“I don’t want boys catching her.”

“Have you seen her room? She has weights. My daughter is lifting barbells.”

“She’s in training.”

“Weights are not feminine. And do you see what she wears? Those brief shorts are like underwear. She’s running in her underwear.”

In darkness I run two circuits of Victoria Park, sticking to the tarmac paths, using the streetlights to navigate.

My mother used to tell me a folktale about a village donkey that was always mocked for being stupid and ugly. One day a guru took pity on the animal. “If you had the roar of a tiger they would not laugh,” he thought. So he took a tiger skin and laid it across the donkey’s back. The donkey returned to the village and suddenly everything changed. Women and children ran screaming. Men cowered in corners. Soon the donkey was alone in the market and feasted on the lovely apples and carrots.

The villagers were terrified and had to be rid of the dangerous “tiger.” A meeting was called and they decided to drive the tiger back to the forest. Drumbeats echoed through the market and the poor bewildered donkey turned this way and that. He ran into the forest but the hunters tracked him down.

“That’s no tiger,” one of them shouted. “Surely it’s only the donkey from the market.”

The guru appeared and calmly lifted the tiger skin from the terrified beast. “Remember this animal,” he said to the people. “He has the skin of a tiger but the soul of a donkey.”

I feel like that now—a donkey not a tiger.

I am just passing Smithfield Market when a realization washes over me. At first it is no more than an inkling. I wonder what prompts such a reaction. Maybe it’s a pattern of footsteps or a sound that is out of place or a movement that triggers a thought. It comes to me now. I know how to find the twins!

Forbes has been concentrating on couples who succeeded in obtaining a child by using a genetic surrogate. They cannot give evidence against Shawcroft without incriminating themselves. Why would they? Science supports them. Nobody can prove they’re not the birth parents.

But whoever has the twins doesn’t have a genetic safety net. DNA tests will expose rather than sustain them. They haven’t had time to fake a pregnancy or set up an elaborate deceit. Right now they must be feeling vulnerable.

At this hour of the morning it isn’t difficult to find a parking spot in Kennington, close to Forbes’s office. Most of the detectives start work at nine, which means the incident room is deserted except for a detective constable who has been working the graveyard shift. He’s about my age and quite handsome in a sulky sort of way. Perhaps I woke him up.

“Forbes asked me to come.” I lie.

He looks at me doubtfully. “The boss has a meeting at the Home Office this morning. He won’t be in the office until later.”

“He wants me to follow up a lead.”

“What sort of lead?”

“Just an idea, that’s all.”

He doesn’t believe me. I call Forbes to get approval.

“This better be fucking important,” he grumbles.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Who’s this?”

“DC Barba.”

“Don’t good morning me.”

“Sorry, sir.”

I can hear Mrs. Forbes in the background telling him to be quiet. Pillow talk.

“I need access to Shawcroft’s phone records.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

He’s about to say no. He doesn’t trust me. I’m bad news or bad luck. Everything I’ve touched has turned to shit. I sense another reason. A nervousness. Ever since he released Shawcroft, the DI has backtracked and made excuses. He must have copped some heat, but that goes with the territory.

“I want you to go home, DC Barba.”

“I have a lead.”

“Give it to the night detective. You’re not part of this investigation.” His voice softens. “Look after Samira.”

Why is he being so negative? And why the briefing at the Home Office? It must be about Shawcroft.

“How is your wife, sir?” I ask.

Forbes hesitates. She’s lying next to him. What can he say?

There is a long pause. I whisper, “We’re on the same side, sir. You didn’t screw me that night so don’t screw me now.”

“Fine. Yes, I can’t see a problem,” he answers. I hand the phone over to the night detective and listen to their yes-sir, no-sir exchange. The phone is handed back to me. Forbes wants a final word.

“Anything you find, you give to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

The call ends. The night detective looks at me and we smile in unison. Waking up a senior officer is one of life’s small pleasures.

The DC’s name is Rod Beckley but everyone calls him Becks. “On account of me being crap at football,” he jokes.

After clearing a desk and finding me a chair, he delivers a dozen ring-bound folders. Every incoming and outgoing call from the New Life Adoption Center is listed, including the numbers, the duration of each call, the time and the date they were made. There are six voice lines and two fax lines, as well as a direct-dial number into Shawcroft’s office.

Further folders cover his mobile phone and home line. Text messages and e-mails have been printed out and stapled together in chronological order.

Taking a marker pen, I begin to group the calls.

Rather than concentrate on the phone numbers, I look at the times. The ferry arrived in Harwich at 3:36 a.m. on Sunday morning. We know that Pearl walked off the ferry just after four. At 10:25 a.m. he bought nappies and baby formula from a motorway service station on the M25 before stealing a car.

I look down the list of calls to Shawcroft’s mobile. There was an incoming call at 10:18 a.m. that lasted less than thirty seconds. I check the number. It appears only once. It could be a wrong number.

DC Beckley is flicking at a keyboard across the office, trying to look busy. I sit on the edge of his desk until he looks up.

“Can we find out who this number belongs to?”

He accesses the Police National Computer and types in the digits. A map of Hertfordshire appears. The details are listed on a separate window. The phone number belongs to a public phone box at Potter’s Bar—a motorway service area near junction 24 on the M25. It’s the same service area where Brendan Pearl was last sighted. He must have phoned Shawcroft for instructions about where to deliver the twins. It is the closest I’ve come to linking the two men, although it’s not conclusive.

Going back to the folders, I strike a dead end. Shawcroft didn’t use his mobile for the next three hours. Surely if his plan was coming apart, he would have called someone.

I try to picture last Sunday morning. Shawcroft was on the golf course. His foursome teed off at 10:05. One of his playing partners said something when Samira interrupted their game and Shawcroft tried to drag her off the course: “Not again.”

It had happened before—a week earlier. After the phone call from Pearl, Shawcroft must have abandoned his round. Where did he go? He needed to let the buyer or buyers know that the twins had arrived. He had to bring the pickup forward. It was too risky using his own mobile so he looked for another phone—one that he thought couldn’t be traced.

I go back to Becks. “Is it possible to find out if there is a public phone located at a golf club in Surrey?”

“Maybe. You got a name?”

“Yes. Twin Bridges Country Club. It could be in a locker room or lounge. Somewhere quiet. I’m interested in outgoing calls timed between 9:20 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, October 29.”

“Is that all?” he asks facetiously.

“No. Then we have to cross-check them with the adoption waiting list at the New Life Adoption Center.”

He doesn’t understand, but he begins the search anyway. “You think we’ll find a match.”

“If we’re lucky.”