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 m
y 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.”
&n
bsp; 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.
The Night Ferry Page 19
