Lost jo-2

by Michael Robotham

  As we drive out of the parking lot, she glances at me in the mirror, waiting for some sign of recognition.

  “So tell me about yourself, Detective Constable.”

  A furrow forms just above her nose. “My name is Alisha Barba. I'm in the Diplomatic Protection Group.”

  “Have we met before?”

  “Ah—well—yes, Sir, you used to be my boss.”

  “Fancy that! That's one of the three great things about having amnesia: apart from being able to hide my own Easter eggs, I get to meet new people every day.”

  After a long pause, Ali asks, “What's the third thing, Sir?”

  “I get to hide my own Easter eggs.”

  She starts to laugh and I flick her on the ear. “Of course I remember you. Ali Baba, the catcher of thieves.”

  She grins at me sheepishly.

  Beneath her short jacket I notice a shoulder holster. She's carrying a gun—an MP5 A2 carbine, with a solid stock. It's strange seeing her carrying a firearm because so few officers in the Met are authorized to have one.

  Driving south past Victoria through Whitehall, we skirt parks and gardens that are dotted with office workers eating lunch on the grass—healthy girls with skirts full of autumn sunshine and fresh air and men dozing with their jackets under their heads. Turning along Victoria Embankment, I glimpse the Thames, sliding along the smooth stone banks. Waxing and waning beneath lion-head gargoyles, it rolls beneath the bridges past the Tower of London and on toward Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe.

  Ali parks the car in a small lane alongside Cannon Street Station. There are seventeen stone steps leading down to a narrow gravel beach slowly being exposed by the tide. On closer inspection the beach is not gravel but broken pottery, bricks, rubble and shards of glass worn smooth by the water.

  “This is where they found you,” Joe says, sliding his hand across the horizon until it rests on a yellow navigation buoy, streaked with rust.

  “Marilyn Monroe.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It's nothing.”

  Above our heads the trains accelerate and brake as they leave and enter the station across a railway bridge.

  “They say you lost about four pints of blood. The cold water slowed down your metabolism, which probably saved your life. You also had the presence of mind to use your belt as a tourniquet.”

  “What about the boat?”

  “That wasn't found until later that morning, drifting east of Tower Bridge. Any of this coming back?”

  I shake my head.

  “There was a tide running that night. The water level was about six feet higher than it is now. And the tide was running at about five knots an hour. Given your blood loss and body temperature that puts the shooting about three miles upstream . . .”

  Give or take about a thousand different variables, I think to myself, but I see where he's coming from. He is trying to work backward.

  “You had blood on your trousers, along with a mixture of clay, sediment and traces of benzene and ammonia.”

  “Was the boat engine running?”

  “It had run out of fuel.”

  “Did anyone report shots being fired on the river?”

  “No.”

  I stare across the shit-brown water, slick with leaves and debris. This was once the busiest thoroughfare in the city, a source of wealth, cliques, clubs, boundary disputes, ancient jealousies, salvage battles and folklore. Nowadays, three people can get shot within a few miles of Tower Bridge and nobody sees a thing.

  A blue-and-white police launch pulls into view. The sergeant is wearing orange overalls and a baseball cap, along with a life vest that makes his chest look barrel shaped. He offers his hand as I negotiate the gangway. Ali has donned a sun hat as though we're off for a spot of fishing.

  A tourist boat cruises past, sending us rocking in its wake. Camcorders and digital cameras record the moment as though we're part of London's rich tapestry. The sergeant pushes back on the throttle and we turn against the current and head upstream beneath Southwark Bridge.

  The river runs faster on the inside of each bend, rushing along smooth stone walls, pulling at boats on their moorings, creating pressure waves against the pylons.

  A young girl with long black hair rows under the bridge in a single scull. Her back is curved and her forearms slick with perspiration. I follow her wake and then raise my eyes to the buildings and the sky above them. High white clouds are like chalk marks against the blue.

  The Millennium Wheel looks like something that should be floating in space instead of scooping up tourists. Nearby a class of schoolchildren sit on benches, the girls dressed in tartan skirts and blue stockings. Joggers ghost past them along Albert Embankment.

  I can't remember if it was a clear night. You don't often see stars in London because of light and air pollution. At most they appear as half a dozen faint dots overhead or sometimes you can see Mars in the southeast. On a cloudy night some stretches of the river, particularly opposite the parks, are almost in total darkness. The gates are locked at sunset.

  A century ago people made a living out of pulling bodies from the Thames. They knew every little race and eddy where a floater might bob up. The mooring chains and ropes, the stationary boats and barges that split the current into arrowheads.

  When I first came down from Lancashire I was posted with the Thames Water Police. We used to pull two bodies a week out of the river, mostly suicides. You see the wannabes all the time, leaning from bridges, staring into the depths. That's the nature of the river—it can carry away all your hopes and ambitions or deliver them up unchanged.

  The bullet that put a hole in my leg was traveling at high velocity: a sniper's bullet fired from long range. There must have been enough light for the shooter to see me. Either that or he used an infrared sight. He could have been anywhere within a thousand yards but was probably only half that distance. At five hundred yards the angle of dispersion can be measured in single inches—enough to miss the heart or the head.

  This was no ordinary contract killer. Few have this sort of skill. Most hit men kill at close range, lying in wait or pulling alongside cars at traffic lights, pumping bullets through the window. This one was different. He lay prone, completely still, cradling the stock against his chin, caressing the trigger . . . A sniper is like a computer firing system, able to calculate distance, wind speed, direction and air temperature. Someone had to train him—probably the military.

  Scanning the broken skyline of factories, cranes and apartment blocks, I try to picture where the shooter was hiding. He must have been above me. It can't have been easy trying to hit targets on the water. The slightest breeze and movement of the boat would have caused him to miss. Each shot would have created a flash, giving away his position.

  The tide is still going out and the river shrinks inward, exposing a slick of mud where seagulls fight for scraps in the slime and the remnants of ancient pylons stick from the shallows like rotting teeth.

  The Professor looks decidedly uncomfortable. I don't think speed or boats agree with him. “Why were you on the river?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Speculate.”

  “I was meeting someone or following someone . . .”

  “With information about Mickey Carlyle?”

  “Maybe.”

  Why would someone meet on a boat? It seems an odd choice. Then again, the river at night is relatively deserted once the dinner-party cruises have finished. It's a quick escape route.

  “Why would someone shoot you?” asks Joe.

  “Perhaps we had a falling out or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “It was a mopping-up operation. We haven't found any bodies. Maybe we're not supposed to.”

  Christ, this is frustrating! I want to reach into my skull and press my fingers into the gray porridge until I feel the key that's hidden there.

  “I want to see the boat.”

  “It's at Wapping, Sir,” replies the sergean
t.

  “Make it so.”

  He spins the wheel casually and accelerates, creating a wave of spray as the outboard engine dips deep into the water and the bow lifts. Spray clings to Ali's eyelashes and she holds her flapping hat to her head.

  Twenty minutes later, a mile downstream from Tower Bridge, we pull into the headquarters of the Marine Support Unit.

  The motor cruiser Charmaine is in dry dock, propped upright on wooden beams and surrounded by scaffolding. At first glance the forty-foot inland cruiser looks immaculate, with a varnished wooden wheelhouse and brass fittings. A closer inspection reveals the shattered portholes and splintered decking. Blue-and-white police tape is threaded around the guardrails and small white evidence flags mark the various bullet holes and other points of interest.

  Ali explains how the Charmaine had been reported stolen from Kew Pier in West London fourteen hours after I was found. She rattles off the engine size, range and top speed. She knows I appreciate facts.

  A SOCO (scene of crime officer) in white overalls emerges from the wheelhouse and crouches near the stern. Running a tape measure across the deck, she makes a note of the measurement and adjusts a surveyor's theodolite mounted on a tripod beside her.

  Turning, she shields her eyes from the sun behind us, recognizing the sergeant.

  “This is DC Kay Simpson,” he says, making the introductions.

  Only in her thirties, she has short-cropped blond hair and inquisitive eyes. She keeps staring at me like I'm a ghost.

  “So what exactly are you doing now?” I ask, self-consciously.

  “Trajectories, impact velocity, yaw angle, the point of aim, distances, margin for error and blood patterns—” She stops in mid-sentence when she realizes that she has left us all behind. “I'm trying to work out how far away the shooter must have been, as well as his elevation and how often he missed his target.”

  “He hit me in the leg.”

  “Yes, but he could have been aiming at your head.” She adds the word “Sir” as an afterthought, just in case I'm offended. “The shooter used Boat Tail Hollow Point ammunition with a velocity of 2,675 feet per second. They're not widely available commercially but nowadays you can source almost anything from Eastern Europe.”

  A thought occurs to her. “Would you mind helping me, Sir?”

  “How?”

  “Can you lie on the deck just here?” She points to her feet. “Half on your side, with your legs stretched out, one just crossing the other.” Letting go of my crutches I let her move me into position like an artist's model.

  As she leans over me I get a sudden image of another woman bending to brush her lips against mine. The air twitches and the picture is gone.

  DC Simpson takes the tripod and angles it down toward my legs. A bright red beam of light reflects on my trousers above my bandaged thigh.

  Pure fear rushes through me and suddenly I'm screaming at her to get down. Everyone! Get down! I remember the red light, a dancing red beam that signaled death. I lay in darkness, doubled over in pain as the beam moved back and forth across the deck, searching for me.

  Nobody seems to have noticed me screaming. The sound is inside my head. They're all listening to the DC.

  “The bullet came down from here, entered your thigh here, exited and lodged in the deck. It nudged against your femur and tumbled end-on-end, which is why the exit wound was so large.”

  She walks several paces away and uses a tape measure to check the distance between the side rail and another bullet hole. “For years people have debated whether momentum or kinetic energy is the best means of determining the striking power of a bullet. The answer is to merge the two parameters of bodies in motion. We have software programs that can tell us—based on measurements—the distance traveled by a particular bullet. In this case we're looking at 430 yards, with a two percent margin for error. Once we know the location of the shooting we can reconstruct the trajectory and find out where the shooter was hiding.”

  She looks down at me as though I should have an answer ready for her. I'm still trying to slow my heart rate.

  “Are you OK, Sir?”

  “I'm fine.”

  Joe is crouching next to me now. “Maybe you should take it easy.”

  “I'm not a fucking invalid!”

  Instantly I want to take it back and apologize. Everyone is uncomfortable now.

  DC Simpson helps me stand.

  “How much more can you re-create of what happened?” I ask.

  She seems quite pleased with the question.

  “OK, this is where you were initially shot. Someone else got hit and fell on top of you. Traces of their bone and blood were found in your hair.”

  She sits down and drags herself backward until her back is braced against the side rail.

  “One of the main clusters of bullets is this one.” She points to the deck near her legs. “I believe you pulled yourself back here to get cover but more bullets went through the sides and hit the deck. You were too exposed, so—”

  “I rolled across the deck and took cover behind the wheelhouse.”

  Joe looks at me. “You remember?”

  “No, but it makes sense.” Even as I answer I realize that part of it must be memory.

  The DC scrambles across the deck to the far side of the wheelhouse. “This is where you lost your finger. You wanted to look inside or to see where the shooting was coming from. You were badly wounded. You hooked your fingers over the ledge around the porthole and raised yourself up. A bullet came through the glass and your finger disappeared.”

  Dried blood stains the wall, leaking around exit holes in the splintered wood.

  “We found twenty-four bullet holes in the vessel. The sniper fired only eight of them. He was very controlled and precise.”

  “What about the others?”

  “The rest were 9mm rounds.”

  My Glock 17 self-loading pistol was signed out of the station armory on September 22 and still hasn't been found. Maybe Campbell is right and I shot someone.

  DC Simpson continues with her hypothesis. “I think you were dragged over the railing at the stern with the help of a boat hook which tore one of your belt loops. You vomited just here.”

  “So I must have been in the water first—before I was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  I look at Joe and shake my head. I can't remember. Blood—that's all I can see. I can taste it in my mouth and feel it throbbing in my ears.

  I look at the DC and my voice catches in my throat. “You said someone died, right? You must have tested the blood. Was it . . . I mean . . . did it belong to . . . could it have been . . . ?” I can't get the words out.

  Joe finishes the question and answers it all at once.

  “It wasn't Mickey Carlyle.”

  Back in the car, we edge through Tobacco Dock, past a gray square of water surrounded by warehouses. I can never tell if these new housing developments are gentrification or reclamation—most of them were derelict before the developers arrived. The dockside pubs have gone, replaced by fitness centers, cybercafés and juice bars selling shots of wheatgrass.

  Farther from the river, squeezed between the Victorian terraces, we find a more traditional café and take a table by the window. The walls are decorated with posters of South and Central America, and the air smells of boiled milk and porridge.

  Two gray plump women run the dining room—one taking orders and the other cooking.

  Fried eggs stare up from my plate like large jaundiced eyes, along with a blackened sausage and a twisted mouth of bacon. Ali has a vegetarian sandwich and pours the tea from a stainless steel teapot. The brew is a dark shade of khaki, thick with floating leaves.

  A local school has just broken for lunch and the street is full of Asian teenagers eating buckets of hot chips. Some of them smoke by the phone box while others swap headphones, listening to music.

  Joe tries to stir his coffee with his left hand and stalls, switching to the right. His voice cut
s through the sound of metal knives scraping on crockery. “Why did you think Mickey might have been on the boat?”

  Ali's ears prick up. She's been asking herself the same question.

  “I don't know. I was thinking about the photograph. Why would I carry it—unless I wanted to recognize her? It's been three years. She won't look the same.”

  Ali glances from me to the Professor and back to me again. “You think she's alive?”

  “I didn't imagine all this.” I motion to my leg. “You saw the boat. People died. I know it has something to do with Mickey.”

  I haven't touched my food. I don't feel hungry anymore. Perhaps the Professor is right—I'm trying to right the wrongs of the past and ease my own conscience.

  “We should get back to the hospital,” he says.

  “No, not yet, I want to find Rachel Carlyle first. Maybe she knows something about Mickey.”

  Joe nods in agreement. It's a good plan.

  4

  The autumn leaves swirl across Randolph Avenue, collecting against the steps of Dolphin Mansions. The place still looks the same, with a white-trimmed arch over the entrance and bronze letters sandblasted into the glass above the door.

  Ali taps impatiently on the steering wheel with short manicured fingernails. The place unnerves her. We both remember a different time of year, the haste and noise and sullen heat, the shock and sadness. Joe doesn't understand but must sense something. Shuffling through leaves, we cross the road and climb the front steps. The bottom buzzer automatically opens the door between nine and four every day. Standing in the foyer, I glance up the central stairwell as though listening for a distant echo. Everything passes up and down these stairs—letters, furniture, food, newborn babies and missing children.

  I can remember the names and faces of every resident. I can draw lines between them on a whiteboard showing relationships, contacts, employment history, movements and alibis for when Mickey disappeared. I remember it not like yesterday but like I remember the meal I just ordered and failed to eat, the fried eggs and lean bacon.

  Take Rachel Carlyle, for instance. The last time I saw her was at the memorial service for Mickey a few months after the trial.