Lost jo-2

by Michael Robotham

  She acknowledged my opinion without agreeing with it. Ali was moving through the flat, admiring the artifacts.

  “What did you say you did?” she asked Kirsten.

  “I didn't.” Her eyes were smiling at the edges. “I manage an employment agency in Soho. We provide cooks, waitresses, hostesses, that sort of thing.”

  “Business must be good.”

  “I work hard.”

  Kirsten prepared us tea in a hand-painted Japanese teapot and ceramic bowls. We had to kneel at a table while she dipped a ladle into simmering water and beat the powdered tea like scrambled eggs. I didn't understand the elaborate ceremony. Ali seemed more in tune with the idea of meditation and “the One Mind.”

  Kirsten had lived at Dolphin Mansions for three years, moving in just a few weeks after Rachel and Mickey. She and Rachel became friends. Coffee buddies. They shopped together and borrowed each other's clothes. Yet apparently Rachel didn't confide in Kirsten about Aleksei or her famous family. It was one secret too far.

  “Who would have thought . . . talk about Beauty and the Beast,” Kirsten told me, when she learned the news. “All that money and she's living here.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I would have taken my share and gone to live in Patagonia—as far away as possible—and slept with a gun under my pillow for the rest of my life.”

  “You have a vivid imagination.”

  “Like I said, I've heard the stories about Aleksei. Everyone's got one, right? It's like the one about him playing blackjack in Las Vegas and this Californian dot-com millionaire comes over and tells him that he's sitting in his chair. Aleksei ignores him, so the Californian says, ‘Listen, you limey faggot, I'm worth sixty million dollars and this is my goddamn chair.' So Aleksei takes a coin out of his pocket and says, ‘Sixty million? I'll toss you for it.'”

  She didn't expect anyone to laugh. Instead she let the silence stretch out. I wish my legs could have done the same.

  She had an alibi for when Mickey disappeared. The caretaker, Ray Murphy, was fixing her shower. It had only taken him three attempts, she said.

  “What did you do afterward?”

  “I went back to sleep.” She looked at me quizzically and then added: “Alone.”

  Twenty years ago I would have said she was flirting, but I knew she was making fun of me. Being older and wiser doesn't help the ego. Youth and beauty rule the world.

  Returning to the sitting room, I find Ali going through the contents of the toppled bookcase. Whoever did this opened every book, box file and photograph album. Diaries, address books, computer disks and photographs were taken. This wasn't a robbery, it was a search. They were looking for Kirsten. They wanted the names of friends and contacts—anyone who might know her.

  “We should call this in, Sir.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Tell them the truth. We found a break-in.”

  We wait downstairs for the uniforms to arrive, sitting on the front steps and going over possible scenarios. Misty rain has started falling. It settles on Ali's hair and the weave of her coat.

  Across the road a handful of muddy boys spill from a Range Rover with football boots hanging from laces and socks pushed down around their ankles.

  Farther along the street, someone is waiting in a car. I wouldn't have noticed except for the flare of a cigarette lighter. It crosses my mind that Keebal has had me followed but almost immediately I consider another explanation. Maybe someone is waiting for Kirsten to come home.

  I step out onto the pavement and stretch. The sun is trying to break through but keeps getting swallowed by fat putty-gray clouds. I begin to walk around the square. At first I'm heading away from the suspicious car but at the corner I turn and cross the street. I pause to read the plaque beneath a statue of a bronze horseman.

  I turn again and set off. A pigeon takes flight in an awkward flurry. I'm walking toward the car now. I can just make out the silhouette of someone at the wheel.

  I stay close to the gutter, keeping the line of vehicles between us. At the last possible moment I step alongside the Audi. Resting on the passenger seat is a photograph of Kirsten Fitzroy.

  A burly, gray-haired man, gapes at me dumbfounded. I can see two bloated versions of myself in his sunglasses. I try to open the door. He reaches for the ignition and I yell at him to stop.

  At that moment Ali arrives, slewing her car across the road to block his getaway. Finding reverse, he plants his foot and rubber shrieks on pavement. He slams into the car behind and then lurches forward, pushing the cars apart. Tires screech and smoke as he fires into reverse again.

  Ali is out of the door with a hand on her holster. The driver sees her first. He raises a pistol, aiming at her chest.

  Instinctively, I smash my walking stick across the windshield, where it explodes into shards of lacquered wood. The sound is enough to make him hesitate. Ali drops and rolls into the gutter. I spin the other way, falling fast and nowhere near as gracefully.

  In the adjacent house, barely eighteen feet away, the door opens. Two teenage girls appear, one of them pushing a bicycle. The pistol swings toward them.

  I yell a warning, but they stop and stare. He won't miss from this range.

  I glance across at Ali. She has her feet planted and arms outstretched, with the Glock in her right hand and her left hand cupped underneath.

  “I can take him, Sir.”

  “Let him go.”

  She drops her arms between her thighs. The driver accelerates backward along the road, doing a handbrake turn at the end of the square, before swinging north into Ladbroke Grove.

  Ali sits next to me in the gutter. The air stinks of burning clutch and rubber. The teenage girls have gone but curtains have opened and anxious faces are pressed to windows.

  Ali wipes a smudge of gun oil from her fingers. “I could have taken him.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when they teach you how to shoot people, they don't teach you how to live with it.”

  She nods and a puff of breeze pushes hair across her eyes. She brushes it away.

  “Did you recognize him?”

  I shake my head. “He was waiting for Kirsten. Someone wants her very badly.”

  A Panda car rounds the corner and cruises slowly up the street. Two kids in uniform peer from side to side, looking for house numbers. Five minutes earlier they would have shat themselves or been shot. Thank heavens for small mercies.

  Interviews must be conducted and statements taken. Ali fields most of the questions, giving a description of the car and driver. According to the computer the license plates belong to a builder's van in Newcastle. Someone has either stolen or copied them.

  Under normal circumstances, the local CID would label the whole incident as road rage or call it a fail-to-stop accident. By normal circumstances, I mean if ordinary members of the public were involved instead of two police officers.

  The Detective Sergeant, Mike Drury, is one of the young Turks from Paddington Green, who cut his teeth interviewing IRA and now Al Qaeda suspects. He looks up and down the street burying both hands in his pockets. His long nose sniffs the air as though he doesn't like the smell of it.

  “So tell me again, why did you want to see Kirsten Fitzroy?”

  “I'm trying to find a friend of hers—Rachel Carlyle.”

  “And why do you want to see her?”

  “To catch up on old times.”

  He waits for something more. I'm not budging.

  “Did you have a warrant?”

  “I didn't need one. Her door was open when we arrived.”

  “And you went inside?”

  “To make sure there wasn't a crime in progress. Miss Fitzroy might have been hurt. There was probable cause.”

  I don't like the tone of his questions. This is more like an interrogation than an interview.

  Drury scribbles something in his notebook. �
��So you reported the break-in and then noticed the guy in the car.”

  “He seemed out of place.”

  “Out of place?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you approached him, did you show him your badge?”

  “No. I don't have my badge with me.”

  “Did you announce yourself as a police officer?”

  “No.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to open the passenger door.”

  “So this guy was just sitting in a car, minding his own business, and you appeared from nowhere and tried to break into his car?”

  “It wasn't like that.”

  Drury is playing devil's advocate. “He didn't know you were police officers. You must have scared the shit out of him. No wonder he took off—”

  “He had a gun. He pointed it at my partner.”

  “Partner? I was under the impression that DC Barba worked for the Diplomatic Protection Group and is currently on holiday leave . . .” He consults his notebook. “And according to my information, you were suspended from all duties yesterday and are now the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.”

  I'm getting pretty pissed off with this guy. It's not just him—it's the whole attitude. Forty-three years on the force and I'm being treated as if I'm Charles Bronson making Death Wish XV.

  In the old days there would have been sixty officers crawling all over this place—searching for the car, interviewing witnesses. Instead, I have to put up with this crap. Maybe Campbell's right and I should have retired three years ago. Everything I do nowadays is either against the rules or treading on someone's toes. Well, contrary to popular opinion, I haven't lost my edge. I'm still smarter than most scrotes and a damn sight cleverer than this prick.

  “Ali can answer the rest of your questions. I have better things to do.”

  “You'll have to wait. I haven't finished,” says Drury.

  “Are you carrying a gun, DS?”

  “No.”

  “What about handcuffs?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you can't shoot me and you can't shackle me—you can't keep me here.”

  15

  The Professor lives in Primrose Hill, at the poor end of a leafy street where every house is worth seven figures and every car is covered in bird shit. The perverse symmetry appeals to me.

  Joe answers the door on the second ring, dressed in corduroy trousers and an open-neck shirt.

  “You look awful.”

  “Tell me about it! People keep wanting to shoot me.”

  Julianne appears behind him, looking like a woman plucked off a film poster. High cheekbones, blue eyes, perfect skin . . . In a soft voice, she announces, “You look terrible.”

  “So everyone keeps telling me.”

  She kisses me on the cheek and I follow her down the hall toward the kitchen. A toddler sits in a high chair, holding a spoon. Pureed apple is stuck to her cheeks and forehead. Charlie, aged eleven, is home from school and in charge of feeding.

  “I'm sorry,” I whisper to Julianne, suddenly embarrassed to barge in. “I didn't realize . . . you're all here.”

  “Yes, we have children remember?”

  Joe wants to ask me what happened but he holds off for the sake of Charlie, who has a fascination with police stories—the more gruesome the better.

  “Have you arrested anyone today?” she asks me.

  “Why? Have you done something wrong?”

  She looks horrified. “No!”

  “Keep it that way.”

  Julianne hands me coffee. She notices my missing finger. “I guess it's official then—you're not the marrying kind.”

  Charlie is equally fascinated, leaning closer to examine the blunt stump where pink skin has puckered at the join.

  “What happened?”

  “I ate a hamburger too quickly.”

  “That's gross.”

  “I didn't taste a thing.”

  Julianne admonishes me. “Shush, you'll give her nightmares. Come on, Charlie, you have homework.”

  “But it's Friday. You said you'd take me shopping for new boots.”

  “We'll go tomorrow.”

  Her spirits soar. “Can I get heels?”

  “Only if they're this high.” She holds her thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

  “Sick.”

  Charlie lifts the baby onto her hip, dips her head and tosses the bangs out of her eyes. Christ she looks like her mother!

  Joe suggests we go to his study. I follow him up the stairs into a small room, overlooking the garden. A desk takes up most of the available space, squeezed between bookshelves and a filing cabinet. To the right on the wall is a corkboard, covered in notes, postcards and family photographs.

  This is Joe's bolt-hole. If I lived with three women I'd want one, too, although mine would come with a bar fridge and a TV.

  Joe scoops files off a chair and tidies his desk. I get the impression he's not so organized anymore. Maybe it's the Parkinson's.

  “You've stopped using the walking stick,” he observes.

  “I broke it.”

  “I can lend you another one.”

  “That's OK. My leg is getting stronger.”

  For the next hour we pick over the wreckage of my day. I tell him about Sir Douglas and the attack outside Kirsten's flat. His face gives nothing away. It's like a blank page on one of his notepads. He once told me about something called a Parkinson's mask. Maybe this is it.

  Joe begins drawing lines on the pad. “I've been thinking about the ransom.”

  “And what did you come up with?”

  “There must have been an initial letter or an e-mail or a phone call. You mentioned DNA tests.”

  “On strands of hair.”

  “That first contact must have come as a tremendous shock. We have a dead girl, a man in prison for her murder, then suddenly a ransom demand arrives. What did you think?”

  “I can't remember.”

  “But you can imagine. You can put yourself in the same position. What are you going to think when the ransom letter arrives?”

  “It's a hoax.”

  “You've never been convinced of Howard's guilt.”

  “It still smells like a hoax.”

  “What would change your mind?”

  “Proof of life.”

  “The letter contains strands of hair.”

  “I have it tested.”

  “What else?”

  “I have everything analyzed—the ink, the handwriting, the paper—”

  “Who does that?”

  “The Forensic Science Service.”

  “But your boss refuses to believe you? He tells you to leave the case alone.”

  “He's wrong!”

  “Nobody believes the letter except you and the girl's mother. Why do you believe?”

  “It can't just be the hair. I need more proof.”

  “Like what?”

  “A photograph or better still a video. And it has to include something time sensitive like the front page of a newspaper.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Blood or skin tissue—something that can't be three years old.”

  “If there's no such proof, do you still go ahead with the ransom drop?”

  “I don't know. It's too far-fetched.”

  “Maybe you want to catch the hoaxers.”

  “I wouldn't put Rachel in danger for that.”

  “So you must believe it.”

  “Yes.”

  “None of your colleagues agree with you. Why?”

  “Perhaps the proof of life isn't conclusive.”

  Joe has turned his chair slightly away from me, so his gaze fixes me off center. Whenever I pause or falter, he finds a new question. It's like painting by numbers, working inward from the edges.

  “Why would someone wait three years to post a ransom demand?”

  “Maybe they didn't kidnap her for ransom—not at first.�
��

  “Why kidnap her then?”

  I'm struggling now. According to Rachel, until Mickey disappeared nobody in England knew that Aleksei was her father. Sir Douglas Carlyle obviously did, but if he kidnapped Mickey he's hardly likely to send a ransom demand.

  “So someone else took Mickey and we go back to the same question: Why wait three years?” says Joe.

  Again, I don't know the answer. I'm guessing. “Either they didn't have her or they wanted to keep her.”

  “Why give her up now?”

  I see where he's going now. The ransom makes no sense. What do I really imagine: that Mickey has been chained to a radiator for the past three years? It's not credible. She isn't sitting in a waiting room, rocking her legs beneath a chair, expecting to be rescued.

  Joe is still talking. “There's another issue. If Mickey is still alive, we have to consider whether she wants to come home. Three years is a long time at the age of seven. She could have formed attachments, found a new family.”

  “But she wrote a letter!”

  “What letter?”

  The realization is like a sharp gust of wind. I remember this! A postcard in a child's hand—written in capital letters! I can recite the text:

  DEAR MUMMY,

  I MISS YOU VERY MUCH AND I WANT TO COME HOME. I SAY MY PRAYERS EVERY NIGHT AND ASK FOR THE SAME THING. THEY SAY THEY WILL LET ME GO IF YOU SEND THEM SOMETHING. I THINK THEY WANT MONEY. I HAVE £25 AND SOME GOLD COINS IN MY MONEY BOX UNDER MY BED. PLEASE HURRY. I CAN SEE YOU AGAIN SOON BUT ONLY IF YOU DON'T CALL THE POLICE.

  LOVE,

  MICKEY

  P.S. I HAVE BOTH MY FRONT TEETH NOW.

  For a moment I feel like I might hug Joe. God, it's good to remember. It's better than morphine.

  “What did you do with the postcard?” he asks.

  “I had it analyzed.”

  “Where?”

  “A private lab.”

  I can picture the postcard flattened under glass, being scanned by some sort of machine—a video spectral comparator. It can tell if any letters have been altered and what inks have been used.

  “It looked like a child's handwriting.”

  “You don't sound certain.”

  “I'm not.”

  I remember a handwriting expert explaining to me how most children tend to write “R”s with the extender coming down from the intersection of the vertical line and the loop. This didn't happen on the postcard. And children also draw the capital “E” with a center line the same length as the upper and lower lines. And they cross their capital “J”s, whereas adults drop the line.