The Night Ferry (20 page)

“Are you in Amsterdam?” he counters.

“What did he tel you?”

“You can’t just
leave
the fucking country. You’re a suspect.”

“I wasn’t made aware of any restrictions.”

“Don’t give me that crap! If you’re running a paral el investigation I’l have you up on disciplinary charges. You can forget about your career. You can forget about coming home.” I can hear the annoying click in his voice. It must drive his wife mad—like living with a human metronome.

Eventual y he calms down when I tel him about Hassan. We swap information. The truck driver has been charged with manslaughter, but there is a complication. U.K. immigration officers received a tip-off about a suspect vehicle before the rol -on, rol -off ferry docked in Harwich. They had the license number and were told to look for a group of il egal immigrants.

“Who provided the tip-off?”

“The Port Authority in Rotterdam received an anonymous phone cal two hours after the ferry sailed. We think it came from the traffickers.”

“Why?”

“They were setting up a decoy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They were sacrificing a smal number of il egals who would tie up resources. Customs and immigration would be so busy that they wouldn’t notice a much larger shipment.”

“On the same boat?”

“Two articulated lorries haven’t been accounted for. The companies listed on the freight manifest are nonexistent. They could have smuggled a hundred people in the back of those trucks.”

“Could the air vents have been closed deliberately—to create a more effective decoy?”

“We may never know.”

“I don’t want a health club, I want a gym,” I tel the desk clerk who doesn’t appreciate the difference. I shadow box and she backs away. Now she understands.

I know a little about gyms. In our last year at Oaklands, I convinced Cate to take karate classes with me. They were held in a grungy old gym in Penwick Street, mostly used by boxers and old guys in sleeveless vests whose veins would pop out of their heads when they were on the bench press.

The karate instructor was Chinese with a Cockney accent and everyone cal ed him “Peking,” which got shortened to “P.K.,” which he didn’t seem to mind.

There was a boxing ring and a weight-training room with mirrors and a separate annex with mats on the floor for karate. P.K. spent the first few lessons explaining the principles behind karate, which didn’t particularly interest Cate. “The mental discipline, physical training and study help build respect toward our fel ow man,” he said.

“I just want to be able to kick them in the bal s,” said Cate.

“The two Japanese characters that make up the word ‘karate’ have the literal meaning of ‘empty hands,’” explained P.K. “It is a system of self-defense that has evolved over hundreds of years. Every move is based on a knowledge of the muscles and joints and the relationship between movement and balance.” Cate raised her hand. “When do I learn to hit people?”

“You wil be taught the techniques of counterattack.”

He then described how the word “karate” came from Mandarin and Cantonese phrases like “chan fa” and “ken fat,” which sent Cate into a fit of giggles. The literal meaning is “The Law of the Fist.” Attacks to the groin of an opponent are frowned upon by most martial arts. Karate also doesn’t approve of targeting the hip joints, knee joints, insteps, shins, upper limbs and face.

“What’s the bloody point?” muttered Cate.

“I think he means in competition.”

“Forget competition. I want to hurt their bal s.”

She persevered with learning the theory but every week she pestered him with the same question: “When do we learn the groin kick?” P.K. final y relented. He gave Cate a private lesson after the gym had closed. The blinds were drawn and he turned off al the lights except for the one over the ring.

She came out looking flushed and smiling, with a mark on her neck that looked suspiciously like a love bite. She didn’t go back to self-defense classes again.

I kept going, working my way through the belts. P.K. wanted me to go for black but I was already at the police training col ege.

Ruiz is on his second beer when I get to the restaurant. He’s watching the pizza chef spin a disk of dough in the air, draping it over his knuckles before launching it again.

The waiters are young. Two of them are watching me, commenting to each other. They’re trying to fathom my relationship with Ruiz. What is a young Asian woman doing with a man twice her age? I’m either a mail-order bride or his mistress, they think.

The café is nearly empty. Nobody eats this early in Amsterdam. An old man with a dog sits near the front door. He slips his hand beneath the table with morsels of food.

“She could be anywhere,” says Ruiz.

“She wouldn’t have left Amsterdam.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Hassan was only sixteen. She wouldn’t leave him.”

“He made
two
North Sea crossings without her.”

I have no answer.

So far we have been trying to make inquiries without drawing attention to ourselves. Why not change our tactics? We could print up posters or place an advertisement.

Ruiz doesn’t agree. “Cate Beaumont tried to take this public and look what happened. This isn’t some seat-of-the-pants operation where someone panicked and kil ed the Beaumonts. We’re dealing with an organized gang—guys like Brendan Pearl.”

“They won’t expect it.”

“They’l know we’re looking.”

“We’l flush them out.”

Ruiz continues to argue, but he understands my point. Chance or fate wil not decide what takes place next. We can
make
things happen.

Hotel rooms in strange cities are lonely places where the human spirit touches rock bottom. I lie on the bed but cannot sleep. My head refuses to abandon the image of a child in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, lying next to his mother, beneath a closed air vent.

I want to rewind the clock back to the night of the reunion and further. I want to sit down with Cate and take turns at talking and crying and saying we’re sorry. I want to make up for the last eight years. Most of al , I want to be forgiven.

3

A mobile vibrates gently beneath my pil ow.

I hear Ruiz’s voice. “Rise and shine.”

“What time is it?”

“Just gone seven. There’s someone downstairs. Lena Caspar sent him.”

Pul ing on my jeans, I splash water on my face and brush my hair back in a band.

Nicolaas Hokke is in his mid-sixties with short springy gray hair and a beard. His six-foot frame helps hide the beginnings of a paunch beneath a scuffed leather jacket.

“I understand you need a guide,” he says, taking my hand in both of his. He smel s of tobacco and talcum powder.

“I’m looking for a girl.”

“A girl?”

“An asylum seeker.”

“Hmmm. Let’s talk over breakfast.”

He knows a place. We can walk. The intersections are a flurry of trams, cars and bicycles. Hokke negotiates them with the confidence of a deity crossing a lake.

Already I am fal ing for Amsterdam. It is prettier and cleaner than London with its cobbled squares, canals and wedding-cake façades. I feel safer here: the anonymous foreigner.

“Often people want tours of the red light district,” Hokke explains. “Writers, sociologists, foreign politicians. I take them twice—once during daylight and again at night. It is like looking at different sides of the same coin, light and dark.”

Hokke has an ambling gait with his hands clasped behind his back. Occasional y, he stops to point out a landmark or explain a sign. “Straat” means street and “steeg” means lane.

“This was your beat?” asks Ruiz.

“Of course.”

“When did you retire?”

“Two years ago. And you?”

“A year.”

They nod to each other as if they share an understanding.

Turning a corner, I get my first glimpse of Amsterdam’s famous “windows.” Initial y, they appear to be simple glass doors with wooden frames and brass numbers. The curtains are drawn across some of them. Others are open for business.

Only when I draw closer do I see what this means. A skinny dark woman in a sequined bra and G-string is sitting on a stool with her legs crossed and boots zipped up to her knees.

Under the black lights the bruises on her thighs appear as pale blotches.

The blatancy of her pose and her purpose diminishes a smal part of me. She watches me aggressively. She doesn’t want me with these men. I wil stop them coming to her door.

Negotiating more of the narrow lanes, we pass windows that are so close on either side that it is like being at a tennis match and fol owing the bal back and forth across the net. In contrast, Ruiz looks straight ahead.

A large Dominican woman cal s out to Hokke and waves. Dressed in a red tasseled push-up bra that underpins a massive bust, she is perched on a stool with her legs crossed and stomach bulging over her crotch.

Hokke stops and talks to her in Dutch.

“She has four children,” he explains. “One of them is at university. Twenty years a prostitute but she’s stil a woman.”

“What do you mean a woman?”

“Some of them turn into whores.”

He waves to several more prostitutes, who blow him kisses or tease him by slapping their wrists. Farther down the street an older woman comes out of a shop and throws her arms around him like a long lost son. She presses a bag of cherries into his hand.

“This is Gusta,” he explains, introducing us. “She stil works the windows.”

“Part-time,” she reminds him.

“But you must be—”

“Sixty-five,” she says proudly. “I have five grandchildren.”

Hokke laughs at our surprise. “You’re wondering how many customers would sleep with a grandmother.”

Gusta puts her hands on her hips and rol s them seductively. Hokke looks for a polite way to answer our question.

“Some of the younger, prettier girls have men queuing up outside their windows. They are not concerned if a man comes back to them. There wil be plenty more waiting. But a woman like Gusta cannot rely on a sweet smile and a firm body. So she has to offer quality of service and a certain expertise that comes with experience.” Gusta nods in agreement.

Hokke doesn’t seem to resent or disapprove of the prostitutes. The drug addicts and dealers are a different story. A North African man is leaning on the railing of a bridge. He recognizes Hokke and dances toward him. Hokke doesn’t stop moving. The African has betel-stained teeth and dilated pupils. Hokke’s face is empty, neutral. The African jabbers in Dutch, grinning wildly. Hokke carries on walking.

“An old friend?” I ask.

“I’ve known him thirty years. He’s been a heroin addict for this much time.”

“It’s remarkable he’s stil alive.”

“Addicts do not die from the drugs, they die from the lifestyle,” he says adamantly. “If drugs were less expensive he wouldn’t have to steal to afford them.” On the far side of the bridge, we meet another junkie, younger and even less appealing. He points the glowing end of a cigarette at me and talks to Hokke in a wheedling voice. An argument ensues. I don’t know what they’re saying.

“I asked him if he was clean,” Hokke explains.

“What did he say?”

“He said: ‘I am always clean.’”

“You argued.”

“He wanted to know if you were for sale.”

“Is he a pimp?”

“When it suits him.”

We reach the café and take a table outside under the bare branches of a large tree that is threaded with fairy lights. Hokke drinks his coffee black and orders a slice of sourdough toast with jam. Afterward, he fil s a pipe, so smal that it seems almost designed for an apprentice smoker.

“My one vice,” he explains.

Ruiz laughs. “So in al those years you were never tempted.”

“Tempted?”

“To sleep with some of the women in the windows. There must have been opportunities.”

“Yes, opportunities. I have been married forty years, Vincent. I hope I can cal you Vincent. I have slept with only my wife. She is enough for me. These women are in business. They should not be expected to give away their bodies for free. What sort of business-woman would do that?”

His face almost disappears behind a cloud of pipe smoke.

“This girl you want to find, you think she might be a prostitute?”

“She was trafficked out of Afghanistan.”

“Afghani prostitutes are rare. The Muslim girls are normal y Turkish or Tunisian. If she is il egal she won’t be working the windows unless she has false papers.”

“Are they difficult to get?”

“The Nigerians and Somalis swap papers because they al look alike but the windows are normal y the easiest to police. The streets and private clubs are more difficult. It is like an iceberg—we see only the tip. Beneath the waves there are hundreds of prostitutes, some underage, working from parking lots, toilets and private houses. Customers find them through word of mouth and mobile telephones.”

I tel him about Samira disappearing from the care center.

“Who brought her to the Netherlands?” he asks.

“Traffickers.”

“How did she pay them?”

“What do you mean?”

“They wil want something in return for smuggling her.”

“She and her brother are orphans.”

He empties his pipe, tapping it against the edge of an ashtray.

“Perhaps they haven’t yet paid.” Refil ing it again he explains how gangs operate within the asylum centers. They pick up girls and turn them into prostitutes, while the boys are used as drug runners or beggars.

“Sometimes they don’t even bother kidnapping children from the centers. They col ect them for the weekend and bring them back. This is safer for the pimps because the girls don’t disappear completely and trigger an investigation. Meanwhile, they are fed, housed and learn a bit of Dutch—paid for by the Dutch government.”

“You think that’s what happened to Samira?”

“I don’t know. If she is young she wil be moved between cities or sold to traffickers in other countries. It is like a carousel. Young and new girls are prized as fresh meat. They generate more money. By moving them from place to place, it is harder for the police or their families to find them.” Hokke gets to his feet and stretches. He beckons us to fol ow him. We turn left and right down the cobbled lanes, moving deeper into the red light district. More windows are open.