The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham Read Free Book Online Page B

difference.”
    She finds me another photograph.
    “Do you ever take in lodgers or have visitors staying?”
    “Nah.”
    “Ever had a break-in?”
    “Yeah, a few years back.” She looks at me suspiciously.
    I try to explain that someone has stolen her husband’s identity, which is not as difficult as it sounds. A bank statement and a gas bil is al it takes to get a credit report, which wil yield a National Insurance number and a list of previous addresses. The rest fal s into place—birth certificates, credit cards, a passport.
    “Earl never did anything wrong,” says Mrs. Blake. “Never did much right either.” She overbalances a little as she stands and her forearms wobble beneath the short sleeves of her uniform.
    I don’t stay for a cup of tea, which disappoints her. Letting myself out, I stand for a moment on the front steps, raising my face to the misty rain. Three kids are practicing their literacy skil s on a wal across the road.
    Farther down the street is a triangular garden with benches and a playground surrounded by a semicircle of plane trees and a copper beech. Something catches my eye beneath the lower branches.
    When soldiers are trained to hide in the jungle, they are told four main things that wil give them away: movement, shape, shine and silhouette. Movement is the most important. That’s what I notice. A figure stands from a bench and begins walking away. I recognize his gait.
    It is strange how I react. For years, whenever I have conjured up Donavon’s face, panic has swel ed in the space between my heart and lungs. I’m not frightened of him now. I want answers. Why is he so interested in Cate Beaumont?
    He knows I’ve clocked him. His hands are out of his pockets, swinging freely as he runs. If I let him reach the far side of the park I’l lose him in the side streets.
    Rounding the corner, I accelerate along the path which is flanked by a railing fence and tal shrubs. An old Royal Mail sorting office is on the opposite corner, with tal windows edged in painted stone. Turning left, I fol ow the perimeter fence. The exit is ahead. Nobody emerges. He should be here by now.
    I pause at the gate, listening for hard heels on the pavement. Nothing. A motorcycle rumbles to life on the far side of the park. He doubled back. Clever.
    Run, rabbit, run. I know where you live.
    My hal way smel s of bleach and the stale backdraft of a vacuum cleaner. My mother has been cleaning. That’s one of the signs that my life isn’t al that it should be. No matter how many times I complain that I don’t need a cleaner, she insists on catching a bus from the Isle of Dogs just to “straighten a few things up.”
    “I am defrosting the freezer,” she announces from the kitchen.
    “It doesn’t need defrosting. It’s automatic.”
    She makes a pfffhh sound. Her blue-and-green sari is tucked up into her support stockings, making her backside appear enormous. It is an optical il usion just like her eyes behind her glasses, which are as wet and brown as fresh cow dung.
    She is waiting for a kiss on the cheek. I have to bend. She is scarcely five feet tal and shaped like a pear, with sticky-out ears that help her hear like a bat and X-ray vision that only mothers possess. She also has an oddly selective sense of smel , which can pick up the scent of perfume from fifty feet, yet al ows her to sniff the crotches of my four brothers’
    underpants to establish if they need washing. I feel like retching at the thought of it.
    “Why is there a padlock on my Hari’s door?”
    “Privacy, perhaps.”
    “I found it open.”
    That’s strange. Hari is always very careful about locking the door.

    Mama holds my face in her hands. “Have you eaten today?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re lying. I can tel . I have brought some dahl and rice.”
    She uses perfect schoolbook English, the kind they used to teach in the dark ages when she went to school.
    I notice a suitcase in the corner. For a moment I fear she might be