The Night Ferry (9 page)

“Yes, yes, you’re very capable I’m sure, but the decision has been made. It’s out of my hands. You’l report to the Police Recruitment Center at Hendon on Monday morning.” He opens his office door and waits for me to leave. “You’re stil a very important member of the team, Alisha. We’re glad to have you back.” Words have dried up. I know I should argue with him or slam my fist on his desk and demand a review. Instead, I meekly walk out the door. It closes behind me.

Outside, I wander along Victoria Street. I wonder if the Chief Superintendent is watching me. I’m tempted to look up toward his window and flip him the bird. Isn’t that what the Americans cal it?

Of course, I don’t. I’m too polite, you see. That’s my problem. I don’t intimidate. I don’t bul y. I don’t talk in sporting clichés or slap backs or have a wobbly bit between my legs.

Unfortunately, it’s not as though I have outstanding feminine wiles to fal back on such as a kil er cleavage or a backside like J-Lo. The only qualities I bring to the table are my gender and ethnic credibility. The Metropolitan Police want nothing else from me.

I am twenty-nine years old and I stil think I’m capable of something remarkable in my life. I am different, unique, beyond compare. I don’t have Cate’s luminous beauty or infinite sadness, or her musical laugh or the ability to make al men feel like warriors. I have wisdom, determination and steel.

At sixteen I wanted to win Olympic gold. Now I want to make a difference. Maybe fal ing in love wil be my remarkable deed. I wil explore the heart of another human being. Surely that is chal enge enough. Cate always thought so.

When I need to think I run. When I need to forget I run. It can clear my thoughts completely or focus them like a magnifying glass that dwarfs the world outside the lens. When I run the way I know I can, it al happens in the air, the pure air, floating above the ground, levitating the way great runners imagine themselves in their dreams.

The doctors said I might never walk again. I confounded predictions. I like that idea. I don’t like doing things that are predictable. I don’t want to do what people expect.

I began with baby steps. Crawl before you can walk, Simon my physiotherapist said. Walk before you can run. He and I conducted an ongoing skirmish. He cajoled me and I cursed him. He twisted my body and I threatened to break his arm. He said I was a crybaby and I cal ed him a bul y.

“Rise up on your toes.”

“I’m trying.”

“Hold on to my arm. Close your eyes. Can you feel the stretch in your calf?”

“I can feel it in my eyebal s.”

After months in traction and more time in a wheelchair, I had trouble tel ing where my legs stopped and the ground began. I bumped into wal s and stumbled on pavements. Every set of stairs was another Everest. My living room was an obstacle course.

I gave myself little chal enges, forcing myself out on the street every morning. Five minutes became ten minutes, became twenty minutes. After every operation it was the same. I pushed myself through winter and spring and a long hot summer when the air was clogged with exhaust fumes and heat rose from every brick and slab.

I have explored every corner of the East End, which is like a huge, deafening factory with a mil ion moving parts. I have lived in other places in London and never even made eye contact with neighbors. Now I have Mr. Mordecai next door, who mows my postage-stamp-size lawn, and Mrs. Goldie across the road picks up my dry cleaning.

There is a jangling, squabbling urgency to life in the East End. Everyone is on the make—haggling, complaining, gesticulating and slapping their foreheads. These are the “people of the abyss” according to Jack London. That was a century ago. Much has changed. The rest remains the same.

For nearly an hour I keep running, fol owing the Thames past Westminster, Vauxhal and the old Battersea Power Station. I recognize where I am—the back streets of Fulham. My old boss lives near here, in Rainvil e Road: Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz, retired. We talk on the phone every day or so. He asks me the same two questions: are you okay, and do you need anything. My answers are always: yes, I’m okay; and no, I don’t need anything.

Even from a distance I recognize him. He is sitting in a folding chair by the river, with a fishing rod in one hand and a book on his lap.

“What are you doing, sir?”

“I’m fishing.”

“You can’t real y expect to catch anything.”

“No.”

“So why bother?”

He sighs and puts on his ah-grasshopper-you-have-much-to-learn voice.

“Fishing isn’t always about catching fish, Alisha. It isn’t even about the expectation of catching fish. It is about endurance, patience and most importantly”—he raises a can of draft—“it is about drinking beer.”

Sir has put on weight since he retired—too many pastries over coffee and the
Times
crossword—and his hair has grown longer. It’s strange to think he’s no longer a detective, just an ordinary citizen.

Reeling in his line, he folds up his chair.

“You look like you’ve just run a marathon.”

“Not quite that far.”

I help him carry his gear across the road and into a large terrace house, with lead-light windows above empty flower boxes. He fil s the kettle and moves a bundle of typed pages from the kitchen table.

“So what have you been doing with yourself, sir?”

“I wish you wouldn’t cal me sir.”

“What should I cal you?”

“Vincent.”

“How about DI?”

“I’m not a detective inspector anymore.”

“It could be like a nickname.”

He shrugs. “You’re getting cold. I’l get you a sweater.”

I hear him rummaging upstairs and he comes down with a cardigan that smel s of lavender and mothbal s. “My mother’s,” he says apologetical y.

I have met Mrs. Ruiz just the once. She was like something out of a European fairy tale—an old woman with missing teeth, wearing a shawl, rings and chunky jewelry.

“How is she?”

“Mad as a meat ax. She keeps accusing the staff at the hostel of giving her enemas. Now
there’s
one of life’s lousy jobs. You got to feel sorry for that poor bastard.” Ruiz laughs out loud, which is a nice sound. He’s normal y one of the most taciturn of men, with a permanent scowl and a general y low opinion of the human race, but that has never put me off. Beneath his gruff exterior I know there
isn’t
a heart of gold. It’s more precious than that.

I spy an old-fashioned typewriter in the corner.

“Are you writing, DI?”

“No.” He answers too abruptly.

“You’re writing a book.”

“Don’t be daft.”

I try not to smile but I know my lips are turning up. He’s going to get cross now. He hates people laughing at him. He takes the manuscript and tries to stuff it into an old briefcase. Then he sits back at the table, nursing his cup of tea.

I let a decent interval go by. “So what’s it about?”

“What?”

“Your book.”

“It’s not a book. It’s just some notes.”

“Like a journal.”

“No. Like
notes
.” That settles the issue.

I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Ruiz offers to make me something. Pasta puttanesca. It is perfect—far too subtle for me to describe and far better than anything I could have cooked.

He puts shavings of Parmesan on slices of sourdough and toasts them under the gril er.

“This is very good, DI.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I
am
surprised.”

“Not al men are useless in the kitchen.”

“And not al women are domestic goddesses.” I talk to my local Indian takeout more often than I do my mother. It’s cal ed the tandoori diet.

Ruiz was there the day my spine was crushed. We have never real y spoken about what happened. It’s like an undeclared pact. I know he feels responsible but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t force me to be there and he can’t make the Met give me my old job back.

The dishes are washed and packed away.

“I am going to tel you a story,” I tel him. “It’s the sort of story you like because it has a puzzle at the center. I don’t want you to interrupt and I won’t tel you if it’s real or invented. Just sit quietly. I need to put al the details in order to see how it sounds. When I’m finished I wil ask you a question and you can tel me if I’m total y mistaken. Then I wil let you ask me one question.”

“Just one?”

“Yes. I don’t want you to tear apart my logic or pick holes in my story. Not now. Tomorrow maybe. Is it a deal?” He nods.

Careful y, I set out the details, tel ing him about Cate, Donavon and Earl Blake. Like a tangle in a fishing line, if I pul too tightly the story knots together and it becomes harder to separate fact from supposition.

“What if Cate arranged a surrogacy and something went wrong? Could there be a baby out there somewhere—Cate’s baby?”

“Commercial surrogacy is il egal,” he says.

“It stil happens. Women volunteer. They get their expenses paid, which is al owed, but they cannot profit from the birth.”

“Usual y they’re related in some way—a sister or a cousin.”

I show him the photograph of Samira. He searches her face for a long time as though she might tel him something. Turning it over he notices the numbers.

“The first four digits could be a mobile phone prefix but not in the U.K.,” he says. “You need the exact country code or you won’t be able to cal it.” It’s my turn to be surprised again.

“I’m not a complete technophobe,” he protests.

“You’re typing your
notes
on an ink ribbon.”

He glances at the old typewriter. “Yeah, wel , it has sentimental value.”

The clouds have parted just long enough to give us a sunset. The last golden rays settle on the river. In a few minutes they’l be gone, leaving behind a raw, damp cold.

“You promised me a question,” he says.

“One.”

“Do you want a lift home?”

“Is that it?”

“I thought maybe we could swing by Oaklands and you could show me where it happened.”

The DI drives an old Mercedes with white leather seats and soft suspension. It must guzzle petrol and makes him look like a lawn bowler, but Ruiz has never been one to worry about the environment or what people think of him.

I feel strange sitting in the passenger seat instead of behind the wheel. For years it was the other way around. I don’t know why he chose me to be his driver, but I heard the gossip about the DI liking pretty faces. He’s real y not like that.

When I first moved out of uniform into the Serious Crime Group, the DI showed me respect and gave me a chance to prove myself. He didn’t treat me any differently because of my color or my age or my being a woman.

I told him I wanted to become a detective. He said I had to be better, faster and cleverer than any man who wanted the same position. Yes, it was unfair. He wasn’t defending the system—he was teaching me the facts of life.

Ruiz was already a legend when I did my training. The instructors at Hendon used to tel stories about him. In 1963, as a probationary constable, he arrested one of the Great Train Robbers, Roger Cordrey, and recovered £141,000 of the stolen money. Later, as a detective, he helped capture the Kilburn rapist, who had terrorized North London for eight months.

I know he’s not the sort to reminisce or talk about the good old days but I sense he misses a time when it was easier to tel the vil ains from the constabulary and the general public respected those who tried to keep them safe.

He parks the car in Mansford Street and we walk toward the school. The Victorian buildings are tal and dark against the ambient light. Fairy lights stil drip from the windows of the hal . In my imagination I can see the dark stain on the tarmac where Cate fel . Someone has pinned a posy to the nearest lamppost.

“It’s a straight line of sight,” he says. “They can’t have looked.”

“Cate turned her head.”

“Wel she can’t have seen the minicab. Either that or he pul ed out suddenly.”

“Two cabdrivers say they saw the minicab farther along the street, barely moving. They thought he was looking for an address.” I think back, mental y replaying events. “There’s something else. I think Cate recognized the driver.”

“She knew him?”

“He might have picked her up earlier as a fare.”

“Or fol owed her.”

“She was frightened of him. I could see it in her eyes.”

I mention the driver’s tattoo. The Crucifixion. It covered his entire chest.

“A tattoo like that might be traceable,” says the DI. “We need a friend on the inside.”

I know where he’s going with this.

“How is ‘New Boy’ Dave?” he asks. “You two stil bumping uglies?”

“That would be none of your business.”

Sikh girls blush on the inside.

Dave King is a detective with the Serious Crime Group (Western Division), Ruiz’s old squad. He’s in his early thirties with a tangle of gingery hair that he cuts short so it doesn’t escape.

He earned the nickname “New Boy” when he was the newest member of the SCG, but that was five years ago. He’s now a detective sergeant.