The Night Ferry (14 page)

“Why didn’t you report any of this earlier?”

“I couldn’t be sure.”

“So you went looking for evidence. You broke into the house.”

“No.”

“Then you tried to cover your tracks with a can of lighter fluid and a cock-’n’-bul story.”

“Not true.”

Ruiz is nearby, clenching and unclenching his fists. For the first time I notice how old he looks in a shapeless overcoat, worn smooth at the elbows.

“Hey, Detective Sergeant, I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “You want some kitchen-sink, bog-standard example of foul play you can solve by nine o’clock and stil make your bal et lesson. This is one of your col eagues, one of your own. Your job is to believe her.”

Softel puffs up, too stupid to keep his mouth shut. “And who do you think you are?”

“Godzil a.”

“Who?”

Ruiz rol s his eyes. “I’m the monster that’s going to stomp al over your fucking career if you don’t pay this lady some respect.” Softel looks like he’s been bitch-slapped. He takes out his mobile and punches in a number. I overhear him talking to his superintendent. I don’t know what he’s told. Ruiz stil has a lot of friends in the Met, people who respect what he’s done.

When the cal finishes Softel is a chastened man. A task force investigation has been authorized and a warrant issued for the arrest of Brendan Pearl.

“I want you at the station by midday to make a statement,” he says.

“I can go?”

“Yeah.”

Ruiz won’t let me drive. He takes me home in my car. Squeezed behind the wheel of my hatchback, he looks like a geriatric Noddy.

“Was it Pearl?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes.”

Taking one hand off the wheel, he scratches his chin. His ring finger is severed below the first knuckle, courtesy of a high-velocity bul et. He likes to tel people his third wife attacked him with a meat cleaver.

I tel Ruiz about the boarding passes and the brochure for the New Life Adoption Center. We both know stories about stolen and trafficked babies. Most stray into the realm of urban myth—baby farms in Guatemala and runaways snatched from the streets of São Paulo for organ harvesting.

“Let’s just say you’re right and Cate Beaumont organized some sort of private adoption or to buy a baby. Why go through the pretense of pregnancy?”

“Perhaps she wanted to convince Felix the baby was his.”

“That’s a pretty ambitious goal. What if the kid looks nothing like him?”

“A lot of husbands are happy to
believe
they’ve fathered a child. History is littered with mistakes.” Ruiz raises an eyebrow. “You mean lies.”

I rise to the bait. “Yes, women can be devious. Sometimes we have to be. We’re the ones who get left changing nappies when some bloke decides he’s not ready to commit or to get rid of his Harley or his porn col ection.”

Silence.

“Did that sound like a rant?” I ask.

“A little.”

“Sorry.”

Ruiz begins thinking out loud, trawling through his memory. That’s the thing about the DI—nothing is ever forgotten. Other people grimace and curse, trying to summon up the simplest details but Ruiz does it effortlessly, recal ing facts, figures, quotes and names.

“Three years ago the Italian police smashed a ring of Ukrainian human traffickers who were trying to sel an unborn baby. They ran a kind of auction looking for the highest bidder.

Someone offered to pay £250,000.”

“Cate traveled to Amsterdam in February. She could have arranged a deal.”

“Alone?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did they communicate with her?”

I think back to the fire. “We might never know.”

He drops me home and arranges to meet me in the morning.

“You should see an eye specialist.”

“First I have to make a statement.”

Upstairs, I pul the phone jack from the wal and turn off my mobile. I have talked to enough people today. I want a shower and a warm bed. I want to cry into a pil ow and fal asleep. A girl should be al owed.

13

Wembley Police Station is a brand-new building decked in blue and white on the Harrow Road. The new national stadium is almost a mile away with soaring light towers visible above the rooftops.

Softel keeps me waiting before taking my statement. His attitude has changed since last night. He has looked up Pearl on the computer and the interest sparks in his eyes like a gas ring igniting. Softel is the sort of detective who goes through an entire career with his head under his armpit, not understanding people’s motives or making any headline arrests. Now he can sense an opportunity.

The deaths of Cate and Felix Beaumont are a side issue. A distraction. I can see what he’s going to do: he’l dismiss Cate as a desperate woman with a history of psychiatric problems and a criminal record. Pearl is the man he wants.

“You have no evidence a baby ever existed,” he says.

“What about the missing money?”

“Someone probably ripped her off.”

“And then kil ed her.”

“Not according to the vehicle accident report.”

Softel hands me a typed statement. I have to sign each page and initial any changes. I look at my words. I have lied about why I was at the house and what happened before the fire.

Does my signature make it worse?

Taking back the statement, he straightens the pages and punches the stapler. “Very fucking professional,” he sneers. “You know it never stops—the lying. Once you start it just keeps getting worse.”

“Yeah, wel , you’d know,” I say, wishing I could think of a put-down that wasn’t so lame. Mostly, I wish I could tear up the statement and start again.

Ruiz is waiting for me in the foyer.

“How’s the eye?”

“The specialist said I should wear an eye patch for a week.”

“So where is it?”

“In my pocket.”

Stepping on a black rubber square, the doors open automatical y.

“Your boyfriend has cal ed six times in the last hour. Ever thought of getting a dog instead?”

“What did you tel him?”

“Nothing. That’s why he’s here.”

I look up and see Dave leaning on Ruiz’s car. He wraps me in a bear hug with his face in my hair. Ruiz turns away as though embarrassed.

“Are you smel ing me, Dave?”

“Yup.”

“That’s a bit creepy.”

“Not to me. I’m just glad you’re in one piece.”

“Only bruises.”

“I could kiss them better.”

“Perhaps later.”

Dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt and maroon tie, Dave has tidied up since his promotion, but I notice a brown sauce stain on the tie that he hasn’t managed to sponge away. My mother would recognize a detail like that. Scary.

My stomach is empty. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.

We find a café near Wembley Central with a smudged blackboard menu and enough grease in the air to flatten Dave’s hair. It’s an old-fashioned “caff” with Formica tables, paper napkins, and a nervy waitress with a nose stud.

I order tea and toast. Ruiz and Dave choose the al -day breakfast—otherwise known as the 999 because it’s a heart attack on a plate. Nobody says anything until the food is consumed and tea poured. The DI has milk and sugar.

“There is a guy I used to play rugby with,” he says. “He never talked about his job, but I know he works for MI5. I cal ed him this morning. He told me an interesting thing about Brendan Pearl.”

“What’s that?”

Ruiz takes out a tattered notebook held together with a rubber band. Loose pages tumble through his fingers. A lot of detectives don’t believe in keeping notes. They want their memories to be “flexible” should they ever get in the witness box. Ruiz has a memory like the proverbial steel trap, yet he stil backs it up on paper.

“According to my friend, Pearl was last known to be working as a security consultant for a construction company in Afghanistan. Three foreign contractors were kil ed in mid-September 2004 in a convoy traveling on the highway leading from the main airport to central Kabul when a suicide bomber drove into them. Pearl was among the wounded. He spent three weeks in a German hospital and then signed himself out. Nobody has heard from him since then.”

“So what’s he doing here?” asks Dave.

“And how did Cate meet him?” I add.

Ruiz gathers the pages and slips the rubber band around them. “Maybe we should check out this New Life Adoption Center.” Dave disagrees. “It’s not
our
investigation.”

“Not
officially
,” concedes the DI.

“Not even unofficial y.”

“It’s an
independent
investigation.”

“Unauthorized.”

“
Unconstrained
.”

Interrupting them, I suggest, “You could come with us, Dave.”

He hesitates.

Ruiz spies an opening. “That’s what I like about you, Dave. You’re a freethinker. Some people think the modern British detective has become timid and punctilious, but not you. You’re a credit to the Met. You’re not frightened to have an opinion or act on a hunch.”

It’s like watching a fisherman casting a fly. It curls through the air, settles on the water and drifts downstream, drifting, drifting…

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check it out,” says Dave.

There are no signs pointing out the New Life Adoption Center, either in the nearest vil age or at the gates, which are flanked by sandstone pil ars. A loose gravel driveway curves through fields and crosses a single-lane stone bridge. Friesians dot the pasture and scarcely stir as we pass.

Eventual y, we pul up in front of a large Adam’s-style house, in the noise shadow of Gatwick Airport. I take Dave’s arm.

“OK, we’ve been married for six years. It was a big Sikh wedding. I looked beautiful of course. We’ve been trying for a baby for five years but your sperm count is too low.”

“Does it have to be
my
sperm count?”

“Oh, don’t be so soft! Give me your ring.”

He slides a white gold band from his pinkie and I place it on my ring finger.

Ruiz has stayed behind in the vil age pub, chatting with the locals. So far we’ve established that the adoption center is a privately run charity operating out of a former stately home, Fol owdale House. The founder, Julian Shawcroft, is a former executive director of the Infertility and Planned Parenthood Clinic in Manchester.

A young woman, barely out of her teens, answers the doorbel . She’s wearing wool y socks and a powder-blue dressing gown that struggles to hide her pregnancy.

“I can’t real y help you,” she confides immediately. “I’m just minding the front desk while Stel a has a tinkle.”

“Stel a?”

“She’s in charge. Wel , not real y in charge. Mr. Shawcroft is
really
in charge but he’s often away. He’s here today, which is unusual. He’s the chairman or the managing director. I can never work out the difference. I mean, what does an MD do and what does a chairman do? I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I do that sometimes. My name is Meredith. Do you think Hugh is a nice boy’s name? Hugh Jackman is very cute. I can’t think of any other Hughs.”

“Hugh Grant,” I suggest.

“Cool.”

“Hugh Hefner,” says Dave.

“Who’s he?” she asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tel her, glaring at Dave.

Meredith’s hair is just long enough to pul into a ponytail and her nail polish is chipped where she has picked it off.

The lobby of the house has two faded Chesterfields on either side of a fireplace. The staircase, with its ornate banister, is sealed off by a blue tasseled rope hung from brass posts.

She leads us to an office in a side room. Several desks have computers and a photocopier spits out pages as a light slides back and forth beneath the glass.

There are posters on the wal . One of them shows a couple swinging an infant between their outstretched hands, except the child is cut out like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Underneath the caption reads: IS THERE A CHILD-SIZE HOLE IN YOUR LIFE?

Through French doors I can see a rose garden and what might once have been a croquet lawn.

“When are you due?” I ask.

“Two weeks.”

“Why are you here?”

She giggles. “This is an adoption center, sil y.”

“Yes, but people come to adopt a baby, not to have one.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she says in a matter-of-fact way.

A woman appears—Stel a—apologizing for the delay. She looks very businesslike in a dark polo-neck, black trousers and imitation snakeskin shoes with pointed toes and kitten heels.

Her eyes survey me up and down, as though taking an inventory. “Nope, the womb is vacant,” I feel like saying. She glances at her diary.

“We don’t have an appointment,” I explain. “It was rather a spur-of-the-moment decision to come.”

“Adoption should never be spur-of-the-moment.”

“Oh, I don’t mean
that
decision. We’ve been talking about it for months. We were in the neighborhood.” Dave chips in. “I have an aunt who lives close.”

“I see.”

“We want to adopt a baby,” I add. “It’s al we think about.”

Stel a takes down our names. I cal myself Mrs. King, which doesn’t sound as weird as it probably should.