Free The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham

brown one, it meant that person had been taken over by a fairy, but not in a scary way. Donavon is seriously scary. The bones of his shoulders shift beneath his shirt.
    “I found out some stuff about Blake,” he says, growing calmer. “He signed on with the minicab firm a week ago and only ever worked days. At the end of every shift he handed over eighty quid for the lease of the car but the mileage didn’t match the fares. He can’t have done more than a few miles. He told another driver that he had regular customers who liked to have him on cal . One of them was a film producer but there’s no way some hotshot film producer is going around London in a beat-up Vauxhal Cavalier.” He straightens up, into the story now. “So I ask myself, ‘Why does a guy need a car al day if it’s not going anywhere?’ Maybe he’s watching someone—or waiting for them.”
    “That’s a big leap.”

    “Yeah, wel , I saw the look Cate gave him. She recognized him.”
    He noticed it too .
    Kicking back his chair, he stands and opens a kitchen drawer.
    “I found this. Cate must have dropped it.”
    He hands me a crumpled envelope. My name is on the front of it. The swirls and dips of the handwriting belong to Cate. Lifting the flap, I pul out a photograph. A teenage girl gazes absently at the camera. She has fine limbs and ragged dark hair, trimmed by the wind. Her wide lips curl down at the edges making her look melancholy rather than gloomy. She is wearing jeans, sandals and a cotton shirt. Her hands are by her sides, palms open, with a white band on her wrist.
    I turn the photograph over. There is a name written on the back. Samira.
    “Who is she?” asks Donavon.
    “I don’t know.”
    “What about the number?”
    In the bottom right-hand corner there are ten digits. A phone number, perhaps.
    I study the image again as a dozen different questions chase one another. Cate faked her pregnancy. Does this girl have anything to do with it? She looks too young to be a mother.
    I take out my mobile and punch in the number. A recorded voice announces it is unavailable. The area code doesn’t belong in the U.K. It could be international.
    The fight seems to have gone out of Donavon. Maybe alcohol mel ows him.
    “What are you gonna do?” he asks.
    “I don’t know yet.”
    On my feet, I turn to leave. He cal s after me, “I want to help.”
    “Why?”
    He’s stil not going to tel me.
    Carla intercepts me before I reach the front door.
    “He’s losing it,” she whispers. “He used to have it together but something happened in Afghanistan or wherever the hel they sent him. He’s not the same. He doesn’t sleep. He gets obsessed about stuff. I hear him at night, walking about.”
    “You think he needs help?”
    “He needs something.”

    9
    Chief Superintendent Lachlan North has an office on the eleventh floor of New Scotland Yard overlooking Victoria Street and Westminster Abbey. He is standing by the window, beside a telescope, peering into the eyepiece at the traffic below.
    “If that moron thinks he can turn there…”
    He picks up a two-way radio and communicates a cal -sign to traffic operations.
    A tired voice answers. “Yes, sir.”
    “Some idiot just did a U-turn in Victoria Street. Did you see it?”
    “Yes, sir, we’re onto him.”
    The Chief Superintendent is talking while stil peering through the telescope. “I can get his number plate.”
    “It’s under control, sir.”
    “Good work. Over and out.”
    Reluctantly, he turns away from the telescope and sits down. “There are some dangerous bloody morons loose on our roads, Detective Constable Barba.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “In my experience, the morons are more dangerous than the criminals.”
    “There are more of them, sir.”
    “Yes. Absolutely.”
    He dips his head into a drawer and retrieves a dark green folder. Shuffling through the contents, he clears his throat and smiles, attempting to appear warmer and fuzzier. A nagging doubt hooks me in