I take a photograph of Kirsten from my jacket pocket and slide it across the table. “Do you recognize her?”
Tony studies it for a moment. Lying comes easier than telling the truth, which is why he takes so long. He shakes his head. I believe him.
Back in the car I go over the details with Ali, letting her bounce questions off me. She is one of those people who reasons out loud whereas I work things out in my head.
“Do you remember someone called Gerry Brandt?”
She shrugs. “Who is he?”
“A nasty toerag with a toilet mouth and a taste for pimping.”
“Charming.”
“His name came up in the original investigation. When Howard was taking photographs outside Dolphin Mansions on the day Mickey disappeared, Gerry Brandt turned up in one of the shots—a face in the crowd. Later his name popped up again, this time on the sex offender's register. He had an early conviction for sex with a minor. Nobody read much into the sex charge. He was seventeen at the time and the girl was fourteen. They knew each other. We wanted to interview Gerry but we couldn't find him. He just seemed to vanish. Now he's turned up again. According to Tony, he came to see Ray Murphy three months back.”
“It could be just a coincidence.”
“Maybe.”
Kirsten Fitzroy and Ray Murphy are both missing. Three years ago they provided each other with alibis when Mickey disappeared. She must have walked straight past Kirsten's door on her way downstairs to meet Sarah. Meanwhile, Sir Douglas Carlyle was paying Kirsten to keep watch on Rachel and gather evidence for a custody application. Perhaps he decided to go one step further and have his granddaughter kidnapped. It doesn't explain where she's been or why a ransom demand has arrived three years later.
Maybe Ali is right and it's all a hoax. Kirsten could have collected Mickey's hair from a pillow or a brush. She might have known about the money box. She could have concocted a plan to take advantage of the situation.
A chill wades through my skin like it's five o'clock in the morning. The Professor says coincidences are just two things happening simultaneously, but I don't believe that. Nothing twists a knife quicker than fate.
19
The Thames Water truck is parked halfway down Priory Road, facing south into the low sun. A foreman is standing beside it, sucking on a cigarette. He straightens up and adjusts his crotch. “This is my day off, it had better be important.”
Not surprisingly, he looks like a man with nothing more important to do than play billiards with his mates at the pub.
Ali makes the introductions and the foreman grows more circumspect.
“Mr. Donovan, on September 26 you repaired a burst water main in this street.”
“Why? Is someone complaining? We did nothing wrong.”
Interrupting his excuses, I tell him I just want to know what happened.
Crushing the cigarette under his heel, he nods toward a dark stain of fresh bitumen covering thirty feet of road. “Looked like the Grand fucking Canyon, it did. Half this road got washed away. I ain't never seen a water main rupture like that one.”
“How do you mean?”
He hitches up his trousers. “Well, you see, some of these pipes have been around for a hundred years and they're wearing out. Fix one and another one goes. Bang! It's like trying to plug a dozen holes when you only got ten fingers.”
“But this one was different?”
“Yeah. Mostly they break on a join—the weakest point. This one just sort of blew apart.” He presses his hands together and springs them open. “We couldn't reseal it. We had to replace twenty feet of pipe.”
“Any idea what would have caused a break like that?” asks Ali.
He shakes his head and adjusts his crotch again. “Lew, a guy on our crew, used to be a sapper in the army. He reckoned it was some sort of explosion because of the way the metal got bent out of shape. He figured maybe a pocket of methane ignited in the sewers.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Nope. Used to happen a lot. Nowadays they vent the sewers better. I heard about something similar to this a few years back. Flooded six streets in Bayswater.”
Ali has been walking up and down the road, peering between her feet. “How do you know where the pipes are?” she asks.
“That depends,” says Donovan. “A magnetometer can pick up iron and sometimes we need ground-probing radar, but in most cases you don't need any gizmos. The mains are built alongside the sewers.”
“And how do you find those?”
“You walk downhill. The whole system is gravity fed.”
Crouching down I run my fingers over a metal grate covering a drain. The bars are about three-quarters of an inch apart. The ransom had been wrapped very carefully. Each package was waterproof and designed to float. They were 6 inches long, 21⁄2 inches wide and 3⁄4 inch deep . . . just the right size.
Whoever sent the demand must have expected a tracking device. And the one place a transmitter or a global positioning system can't operate is below ground.
“Can you get me down in the drains, Mr. Donovan?”
“You're joking, right?”
“Humor me.”
He rocks his hand back and forth. “Since 9/11 they been right edgy about the sewers. You take the Tyburn sewer—it runs right under the U.S. ambassador's residence and Buckingham Palace. The Tachbrook goes under Pimlico. You won't find 'em on maps—least not the maps they publish nowadays. And you won't even find the records in public libraries. They took 'em away.”
“But it still must be possible. I can make an application.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Might take a while.”
“How long?”
He rubs his chin. “Few weeks, I guess.”
I can see where this is going. The vast, moribund wheels of British bureaucracy will take my request and pass it between committees, subcommittees and working groups where it will be debated, deliberated upon, knocked about and run up the flagpole—and that's just to decide a form of words for the rejection.
Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat. There are three according to the Professor and he should know—he's been to medical school.
Nearly a decade ago in the battle over the Newbury bypass a man lived in a hole no wider than his shoulders for sixteen days. We had to dig him out but he could tunnel faster with his bare hands than a dozen men with picks and shovels.
Back then he called himself an eco-warrior, fighting the “earth rapists.” The tabloids nicknamed him “Moley.”
It takes Ali three hours and fifty quid in bribes to find his last known address—an abandoned warehouse in Hackney in one of those run-down areas that are hard to find unless you have a can of spray paint or need a “fix.”
Driving slowly between soot-blackened factories and boarded-up shops, we pull up opposite a wasteland where kids have marked out football goals with their puffer jackets. Our arrival is noted. The message will be telegraphed through the neighborhood on whatever grapevine reaches under rocks and into holes.
“Maybe I should stay with the car,” suggests Ali, “while it still has four wheels.”
Ahead of us, a disused factory has soaked up layers of graffiti until one forms an undercoat for the next. To the right is a raised loading dock and large shutters. It includes a regulation doorway that has been covered with a sheet of corrugated iron. Levering it open, I step inside. Shafts of light slant through windows high up on the walls turning floating cobwebs into silver threads.
The ground floor is mostly empty, apart from discarded crates and boxes. Climbing to the second floor, I find a series of former offices, with broken plasterboard panels and exposed wires. One particular room, barely six feet square, has a narrow shelf with a blanket and a mattress stuffed with clothes. A pair of trousers hangs from a nail and cans of food are lined up on a beam. Resting on a box in the center of the room is a tin plate and a mug with a Batman logo.
I trip over an oil lamp on the floor and catch
it before it breaks. The glass is warm. He must have heard me coming.
Around me the walls are plastered with sheets of newspaper and old election posters, forming a collage of faces from the news—Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair, Yasser Arafat and David Beckham. George W. Bush is dressed in desert fatigues holding a Thanksgiving turkey.
Another page has a picture of Art Carney along with an obituary. I didn't know Art Carney had died. I always remember him in The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason. He was the neighbor upstairs. In this one episode he and Jackie are trying to learn golf from a book and Jackie says to him, “First you must address the ball.” So Art gives it a wave and says, “Helloooo ball!”
At precisely that moment my fist punches through the newspaper and closes around a clump of filthy, matted hair. Dragging my arm forward, the paper shreds and a squealing, feral creature squirms at my feet.
“I didn't do it! It wasn't me!” cries Moley, as he rolls into a ball. “Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!”
“Nobody is going to hurt you. I'm the police.”
“Trespassing. You're trespassing. You got no right! You can't just come in here—you can't.”
“You're squatting illegally, Moley, I don't think you have many rights.”
He looks up at me with pale eyes in a paler face. His hair has been twisted into dreadlocks that hang down his neck like rattails. He's wearing cargo pants and a camouflage jacket with metal buckles and handles that look like ripcords for a nonexistent parachute.
Having coaxed him to sit on a packing case, he watches me suspiciously. I marvel at his makeshift furniture.
“I like your place.”
“Keeps the rain off,” he says, with no hint of sarcasm. His sideburns make him look like a badger. He scratches his neck and under his arms. Christ, I hope it's not contagious.
“I need to go into the sewers.”
“Not allowed.”
“But you can show me.”
He shakes his head and nods at the same time. “No. No. No. Not allowed.”
“I told you, Moley, I'm a police officer.”
I light the oil lamp and set it on a box. Then I spread a map on the floor, smoothing the creases. “Do you know this place?”
I point to Priory Road but Moley stares at it blankly.
“It's near the corner of Abbot's Place,” I explain. “I'm looking for a storm-water drain or a sewer.”
Moley scratches his neck.
Suddenly, it dawns on me—he can't read a map. All his points of reference are below ground and he can't equate them to crossroads or landmarks above ground.
I take an orange from my pocket and put it on the map. It rolls several times and rocks to a stop. “You can show me.”
Moley watches it intensely. “Follow the fall. Water finds the way.”
“Yes, exactly, but I need your help.”
Moley is still fixated by the orange. I hand it to him and he puts it into his pocket, zipping it closed. “You want to see where the devil lives.”
“Yes.”
“Just you.”
“Just me.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Why not today?”
“I need to see Weatherman Pete. Pete will give us the forecast.”
“What difference does it make in a sewer?”
Moley makes a whooshing sound like an express train. “You don't want to be down there when it rains. It's like God Himself pulled the chain.”
20
“Why are you so interested in the drains?” asks Joe. He motions me to sit with a mannered almost mechanical movement as though he's been practicing.
It's Monday morning and we're in his office, a private practice just off Harley Street. It's a Georgian house with black downspouts and white windowsills. The plaque on the door has a string of initials after his name, including a small round smiley face designed to make patients feel less intimidated.
“It's just a theory. The ransom was supposed to float.”
“Is that all?”
“Ray Murphy used to work in the sewers. Now he's missing.”
Joe's left arm jerks in his lap. There's a book lying open on his desk: Reversing Memory Loss.
“How's the leg?”
“Getting stronger.”
He wants to ask me about the morphine but changes his mind. For a few seconds the silence spreads out like thick oil. Joe stands and sways for a moment, fighting for balance. Then he begins a slow, deliberate walk around the room, each step containing a struggle. Occasionally, he drifts to the right and has to straighten.
Glancing around his office, I notice that things are slightly askew—the books on the shelves and files on the filing cabinet. He must be finding it harder to keep things tidy.
“Do you remember Jessica Lynch?” he asks.
“The U.S. soldier captured in Iraq.”
“When they rescued her she had no recollection of any events from the time of the ambush until she awoke in an Iraqi hospital. Even months afterward, despite all the debriefings and mental evaluations, she still couldn't remember. The doctors called it a memory trace, which is completely different from amnesia. Amnesia means you have a memory but something traumatic happens and you suddenly forget. In Jessica's case her brain never allowed her to collect memories. It was like she was sleepwalking.”
“So you're saying I might never remember everything that happened?”
“You might never have remembered. It didn't register.”
He lets the news sink in while I try desperately to push it away. I don't want to accept an outcome like that. I am going to remember.
“Have you ever been involved in a ransom drop?” he asks.
“About fifteen years ago I helped run an operation to catch an extortionist. He threatened to contaminate baby food.”
“So what do you plan for?”
“There are two types of drop—the long haul or the quick intervention. The long haul involves a complex set of instructions, making the courier jump through hoops, moving him around from A to B to C, stretching the resources of the police.”
“And the alternative?”
“Well it starts off the same way, sending the courier back and forth between public phone boxes, on or off buses, swapping directions . . . then suddenly, somewhere along the way, something happens. They strike hard and fast, radically changing the plan.”
“For example?”
“Back in the eighties a fellow called Michael Sams kidnapped a young estate agent, Stephanie Slater, and demanded a ransom. Stephanie's boss was the courier. It was a dark, foggy night in an isolated part of South Yorkshire. Sams left messages on telegraph poles and in public phone boxes. He moved the courier around like a chess piece through narrow country lanes until suddenly he stopped the car with a roadblock. The courier had to leave the money on a wooden tray on the edge of a bridge. Sams was down below. He pulled a rope, the tray fell down, and he escaped on a motor scooter along a muddy track.”
“He got away?”
“With £175,000.”
The Professor's eyes betray a glimmer of admiration. Like a lot of people he appreciates ingenuity but this wasn't a game. Michael Sams had already killed a girl.
“Would you have chosen Rachel to be the courier?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You can't expect to make rational decisions when it's your own child involved. They must have nominated Rachel. It's what I would have done in their shoes.”
“OK, what else would you have done?”
“I would have prepared her. I would have gone over the different scenarios and tried to get her ready.”
“How?” Joe points to an empty chair. “Imagine Rachel is sitting here now. How would you prepare her?”
I stare at the empty chair and try to picture Rachel. There were three coffee cups in my kitchen sink. Rachel was with me. Who else? Aleksei perhaps. They were his diamonds.
Closing my eyes I can see Rachel in black jeans and a gray
pullover. Until now her appearance has melted into vagueness because of her pain but she's an attractive woman, rather bookish and sad. I can see why Aleksei was drawn to her.
She has her legs together and a soft leather satchel on her lap. Scraps of plastic and confetti-like foam are scattered on the kitchen floor.
“Remember, this is not a done deal,” I say. “This is a negotiation.”
She nods at me.
“They want you to follow blindly but we cannot let them dictate terms,” I tell her. “You have to keep insisting on assurances that Mickey is alive. Keep asking for proof. Say you want to see her and speak to her.”
“But they'll say we have the hair and bikini to prove it.”
“And you'll say they prove nothing. You just want to be sure.”
“What if they want me to drop the ransom somewhere?”
“Don't do it. Demand a straight exchange—Mickey for the diamonds.”
“And if they don't agree?”
“It's no deal.”
Her voice is as fragile as spun glass. “What if they don't bring Mickey? What if they want the diamonds first?”
“You say no.”
“They'll kill her.”
“No! They'll claim that she's alone or hungry or running out of air or water. They'll try to frighten and bully you—”
“But what if . . .” her voice catches, “. . . what if they hurt her?”
I can almost see the penny dropping.
She sobs. “They're going to kill her, aren't they? They'll never let her go because she can identify them . . .”
I cover her hands with mine and make her look at me. “Stop! Pull yourself together. Right now Mickey is their most valuable asset.”
“And afterward?”
“That's why we have to dictate the terms and you have to be ready.”
On my feet now, I stand behind her. “OK, let's practice what you're going to say.” I pull out my cell phone and dial. The phone in front of her begins to ring. I nod toward it.
Uneasily she flips open the receiver. “Hello?”
“DITCH THE FUCKING WIRE!”
She looks up at me and stutters, “What . . . what . . . do you mean?”
“NOW, BITCH! DITCH THE WIRE OR I KILL MICKEY. RIGHT NOW.”
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