The Night Ferry

“No.”

Forbes takes a sheet of paper from a folder. “This is a list of names. I want you to tell me if you recognize any of them.”

Samira’s finger dips down the page and stops. “This girl, Allegra, she was at the orphanage.”

“Where did she go?”

“She left before me. Brother had a job for her.”

The detective smiles tightly. “He certainly did.”

Forbes’s office is on the second floor, opposite a large open-plan incident room. There is a photograph of his wife on a filing cabinet. She looks like a no-nonsense country girl, who has never quite managed to shed the baby pounds.

He asks Samira to wait outside. There’s a drink machine near the lift. He gives her change. We watch her walk away. She looks so young—a woman in progress.

“We have enough for a warrant,” I say. “She identified Shawcroft.”

Forbes doesn’t answer. What is he waiting for? He stacks the photographs, lining up the edges.

“We can’t link him with the surrogacy plot. It’s her word against his.”

“But the other orphans—”

“Have talked about a saintly man who offered to help them. We can’t prove Shawcroft arranged for them to be trafficked. And we can’t prove he blackmailed them into getting pregnant. We need one of the buyers to give evidence, which means incriminating themselves.”

“Could we indemnify them from prosecution?”

“Yes, but we can’t indemnify them against a civil lawsuit. Once they admit to paying for a surrogate baby, the birth mother could reclaim her child.”

I can hear it in his voice—resignation. The task is proving too hard. He won’t give up but neither will he go the extra yard, make the extra call, knock on one more door. He thinks I’m clutching at straws, that I haven’t thought this through. I have never been more certain.

“Samira should meet him.”

“What?”

“She could wear a wire.”

Forbes sucks air through his teeth. “You gotta be kidding! Shawcroft would see right through it. He knows we have her.”

“Yes, but investigations are about building pressure. Right now he thinks we can’t touch him. He’s comfortable. We have to shake him up—take him out of his comfort zone.”

There are strict rules governing the bugging of phones and properties. The surveillance commissioner has to grant permission. But a wire is different—as long as she stays in a public place.

“What would she say?”

“He promised her a job.”

“Is that it?”

“She doesn’t have to say anything. Let’s see what he says.”

Forbes crunches a throat lozenge between his teeth. His breath smells of lemons.

“Is she up for it?”

“I think so.”

5

Any sport can be made to sound ridiculous if you break it down to its basics—stick, ball, hole—but I have never really understood the appeal of golf. The courses are pretty in an artificial sort of way, like Japanese gardens planned down to the last pebble and shrub.

Julian Shawcroft plays every Sunday morning in the same foursome, with a town planner, a car dealer and a local businessman. They tee off just after ten.

Their club is on the border of Sussex and Surrey, somewhere in the greenbelt and the white stockbroker belt. Brown is a color rarely seen out here unless you take a big divot.

Samira has a battery the size of a matchbox taped to the small of her back and a thin red fiber threaded under her right armpit to a button-sized microphone taped between her breasts.

Adjusting her blouse, I lift my eyes to hers and smile reassuringly. “You don’t have to go through with this.”

She nods.

“Do you know what you’re going to say?”

Another nod.

“If you get frightened, walk away. If you feel threatened, walk away. Any sign of trouble, you understand?”

“Yes.”

Groups of golfers are milling outside the locker room and on the practice green, waiting for the starter to call their names. Shawcroft has the loudest laugh but not the loudest trousers, which belong to one of his playing partners. He takes a practice swing beside the first tee and looks up to see Samira standing at the top of a set of stone steps with the sun behind her. He shields his eyes.

Without hesitation, she moves toward him, stopping six feet away.

“Can I help you?” asks one of the other golfers.

“I’ve come to see Brother.”

Shawcroft hesitates, looking past her. He is searching for us.

“Nobody called Brother here, lass,” says the car dealer.

Samira points. They turn to Shawcroft, who stutters a denial. “I don’t know who she is.”

Forbes adjusts the volume on the digital recording equipment. We’re watching from eighty yards away, parked beneath the branches of a plane tree, opposite the pro shop.

Samira is a foot shorter than any of the men. Her long skirt flares out in the breeze.

“Maybe she can caddy for you, Julian?” one of them jokes.

“You remember me, Brother,” says Samira. “You told me to come. You said you had a job for me.”

Shawcroft looks at his playing partners apologetically. Suspicion is turning to anger. “Just ignore her. Let’s play.”

Turning his back, he takes a hurried practice swing and then sprays his opening drive wildly to the right where it disappears into trees. He tosses his club to the ground in disgust.

The others tee off. Shawcroft is already at the wheel of a golf cart. It jerks forward and accelerates away.

“I told you he wouldn’t fall for this,” says Forbes.

“Wait. Look.”

Samira floats down the fairway after them, the hem of her skirt growing dark with dew. The carts have separated. Shawcroft is looking for his wayward drive in the rough. He glances up and sees her coming. I hear him yelling to his partner. “Lost ball. I’ll hit another.”

“You haven’t even looked for this one.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He drops another ball and hacks it out, looking more like a woodchopper than a golfer. The cart takes off again. Samira doesn’t break stride.

I feel a lump in my throat. This girl never ceases to amaze me. She follows them all the way to the green, skirting the bunkers and crossing a small wooden bridge over a brook. Constantly looking over his shoulder, Shawcroft thrashes at the ball and hurries forward.

“She’s going to walk out of range,” says Forbes. “We have to stop her.”

“Wait. Just a little longer.”