The Night Ferry (36 page)

“It’s coming.”

“Push now.”

The head arrives with a gush of blood. I glimpse something white with blue streaks wrapped around its neck.

“Stop! Don’t push!”

My hand slides along the baby’s face until my fingers reach beneath her chin and untangle the umbilical cord.

“Samira you
really
need to push the next time. It’s very important.”

The contraction begins. She pushes once, twice…nothing.

“Push.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. One last time, I promise.”

She throws back her head and muffles a scream. Her body stiffens and bucks. A baby girl emerges, blue, slick, wrinkled, cupped in both my hands. I rub her nose. Nothing. I hold her on her side, sweeping my index finger round her mouth and throat, trying to clear the dripping goo.

I drape her over my hand, with her arms and legs dangling and slap her back hard. Why won’t she breathe?

Putting her on a towel I begin chest compressions with the tips of my index and middle fingers. At the same time I lower my lips and puff into the baby’s mouth and nose.

I know about resuscitation. I have done the training and I have witnessed paramedics do it dozens of times. Now I am breathing into a body that has never taken a breath. Come on, little one. Come on.

Samira is half on the bunk and half on the floor. Her eyes are closed. The first twin is swaddled and lying between her arm and her side.

I continue the compressions and breathing. It is like a mantra, a physical prayer. Almost without noticing, the narrowest of chests rises and eyelids flutter. Blue has become pink. She’s alive. Beautiful.

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 wil stop when I feed them.”

How does she know so much? She is massaging her bel y, 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 fal . 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 ful of fluid.”

“What if I can’t?”

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

I close the door. He wil 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 skil s 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 wil 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 kil 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. Pul ing 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 wil bleed to death unless you keep pressure on these wounds. You wil have to squat on your haunches and keep this arm bent. I wil send someone to help you. If you do as I suggest, you might stil be alive when they get here.”

Samira has been watching al 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 smal est twin, the girl, whose eyes are open, watching me. Samira takes the sleeping boy. Cautiously, I peer into the passageway. Pearl wil 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 wal 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 fal ing. 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 spil s 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 yel 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, yel ing 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 shril and frightened. “She needs medical help.” The captain won’t be rushed. He is fol owing the protocols and procedures set down for piracy or violent incidents at sea. He wants to know how many there are. Are they armed? Wil 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 stil 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 wil 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’l 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 col ege-boy haircut.

“Wil 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 fol ow 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 stil 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 wil 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.

“Hel o.”

“And hel o 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’l 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 wil walk past a scene like this and ignore it because it’s beyond their ordinary, mundane, workaday comprehension. Pearl is stil on the line. “You’l never get off the ferry,” I yel . “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.