Free The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham Page B

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