Lost jo-2

by Michael Robotham

  “Listen to me, Rachel. It's not Mickey. It's just a doll. Look! See!”

  She has a strange, almost serene look on her face. Only her eyelids are moving of their own accord. Slowly, I pry her fingers loose from the doll and lean her head against my chest.

  A note is tied around the doll's neck, threaded with the same blue wool as the hair. Each letter is smeared dark red. I pray to God that it's paint.

  Four words—written in capitals: THIS COULD BE HER!

  Wrapping my jacket around Rachel, I lead her slowly back to the car and sit her inside. She hasn't uttered a sound. Nor does she respond to my voice. Instead she stares straight ahead at a point in the distance or in the future, a hundred yards or a hundred years from here and now.

  I pick up the cell phone on the front seat. Silence. Inside my head I scream in frustration.

  They'll call back, I tell myself. Sit tight. Wait.

  Sliding onto the seat beside Rachel, I take her pulse and tug my jacket tighter around her shoulders. She needs a doctor. I should call this off now.

  “What happened?” she asks, regaining some hold on reality.

  “They hung up.”

  “But they'll call back?”

  I don't know how to answer her. “I'm calling an ambulance.”

  “No!”

  It's amazing! Although deep in shock there is still one pure, undamaged, functioning brain cell working inside her. It's like the queen bee of brain cells, being guarded by the hive . . . and it's buzzing now.

  “If they have Mickey they'll call back,” she says. The statement is so forceful and clear that I can't help doing as she says.

  “OK. We wait.”

  She nods and wipes her nose with my sleeve. The headlights still pour white light in a path across the weeds and debris. I can just make out a line of trees, bruised purple against the ambient light.

  We messed up. What else could we have done? I glance across at Rachel. Her lips are blue and trembling. With her arms hanging loosely by her sides, it seems only her skeleton is keeping her upright.

  The silence amplifies the distant traffic noise . . . and then the phone!

  Rachel doesn't flinch. Her mind has gone somewhere safer. I glance at the square glowing screen and take the call.

  “Mrs. Carlyle?”

  “She's not available.”

  I could finish a book in the pause.

  “Where is she?” The voice is still distorted.

  “Mrs. Carlyle is in no condition to talk. You'll have to talk to me.”

  “You're a policeman.”

  “It doesn't matter who I am. We can end this now. A straight exchange—the diamonds for the girl.”

  There is another long pause.

  “I have the ransom. It's right here. Either you deal with me or you walk away.”

  “The girl dies.”

  “Fine! I think she's dead already. Prove me wrong.”

  The screen goes blank. He's hung up.

  27

  The door in my mind is suddenly sucked closed. A feeling of desperation replaces it, along with the sound of the wind. Joe is kneeling over me. We gaze at each other.

  “I remember.”

  “Just lie still.”

  “But I remember.”

  “There's an ambulance coming. Stay calm. I think you just fainted.”

  Around us the police divers are dragging air tanks from the Zodiacs and dropping them on the dock. The sound reverberates through my spine. Navigation lights have appeared on the water and the towers of Canary Wharf look like vertical cities.

  Joe was right all along. If I kept gathering details and following the trail, something would eventually trigger my memories and the trickle would become a torrent.

  I take a sip of water from a plastic bottle and try to sit up. He lets me lean on his shoulder. Somewhere overhead I see a passenger jet on its final approach to Heathrow.

  An ambulance officer kneels next to me.

  “Any chest pains?”

  “No.”

  “Shortness of breath?”

  “No.”

  The guy has a really thick mustache and pizza breath. I recognize him from somewhere. His fingers are undoing the buttons of my shirt.

  “I'm just going to check your heart rate,” he says.

  My hands shoot out and grip him by the wrist. His eyes widen and he gets a strange look on his face. Slowly, he shifts his gaze to my leg and then to the river.

  “I remember you,” I tell him.

  “That's impossible. You were unconscious.”

  I'm still holding his wrist, squeezing it hard. “You saved my life.”

  “I didn't think you'd make it.”

  “Put paddles on my chest and I'll rip your heart out.”

  He nods and laughs nervously.

  I take a belt of oxygen from a mask, while he takes my blood pressure. The clatter and crash of remembering has ceased for a moment like a held breath. I don't know if I should exhale.

  In the spotlights I can see the Thames sliding across the rocks like a black tide. “New Boy” Dave has sealed off the dock with crime-scene tape. The divers are coming back in the morning to continue searching. How many more secrets lie in the silt?

  “Let's go home,” says Joe.

  I don't answer him but I can feel my head shaking from side to side. I'm so close to remembering it all. I have to keep going. It can't wait for another day or be slept on overnight.

  Joe calls Julianne and tells her he'll be home late. Her secondhand voice sounds tinny through the cell phone. It's a voice from the kitchen. She has children to feed. We have a child to find.

  On the drive away from the river, I tell Joe about what I've remembered—describing the phone calls, the rag doll and the cold finality of the last phone call. Everything had a meaning, a function; a place in the pattern, the diamonds, the tracking devices, the pizza box . . .

  We park on the same plot of waste ground, opposite the abandoned industrial freezer. Headlights reflect from the pitted silver door. The rag doll has gone but the witch's hat traffic cone lies among the weeds.

  I get out of the car and move gingerly toward the freezer. Joe does his royal consort trick of walking four paces behind me. He's wearing a crumpled-looking linen jacket as if he's going on safari.

  “Where was Rachel?”

  “She stayed with the car. She couldn't go on.”

  “What happened next?”

  I rack my brains, trying to trigger the memories again.

  “He must have called back. The man who hung up the phone—he called again.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I don't know. I can't remember. Wait!”

  I look down at my clothes. “He wanted me to take my shoes off, but I didn't do it. I figured he couldn't be watching me—not all this time. He told me to walk straight ahead, past the freezer.”

  I'm moving as I talk. Ahead of us is a wire fence and beyond that the Bakerloo line. “I heard a young girl crying on the phone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, in the background.”

  The glow of the headlights is fainter now as we move farther from Joe's car. My eyes grow accustomed to the dark but my mind plays tricks. I keep seeing figures in the shadows, crouching in hollows and hiding behind trees.

  The purple sky has no stars. That's one of the things I miss about living in the country—the stars and the silence and the frost on winter mornings like a freshly laundered sheet.

  “There is a chain-link fence up ahead. I turned left and followed it until I reached the footbridge. He was giving me instructions on the phone.”

  “You didn't recognize his voice?”

  “No.”

  The fence appears, dividing the darkness into black diamonds with silver frames. We turn and follow it to an arched footbridge above the railway line. A generator rumbles and repair crews are working beneath spotlights.

  In the middle of the footbridge, I peer over the side at the
silver ribbons curving to the north. “I can't remember what happened next.”

  “Did you drop the ransom off the bridge?”

  “No. This is where the phone rang again. I was traveling too slowly. They were tracking me. The cell phone must have had a GPS device. Someone was sitting in front of a computer screen plotting my exact position.”

  We both peer down at the tracks as though looking for the answer. The breeze carries the smell of burning coal and detergent. I can't hear the voice in my head anymore.

  “Give it time,” says Joe.

  “No. I can't give it any more. I have to remember.”

  He takes out his cell phone and punches a number. My pocket vibrates. I flip it open and he turns away from me.

  “Why have you stopped? KEEP MOVING! I told you where to go.”

  The knowledge rises up and breaks soundlessly through the surface. Joe has done it again—helped me to go back.

  “Will Mickey be there?” I yell into the phone.

  “Shut up and keep moving!”

  Where? It's close by. The parking lot on the far side of the station! Move!

  Running now, I quickly descend the stairs. Joe has trouble keeping up. I can barely see where I'm going but I remember the path. It curves alongside the railway line, above the cutting. Rigid steel gantries flank the tracks carrying the overhead wires.

  A wind has sprung up, rattling fences and sending rubbish swirling past my legs. There are lights along the path, making it easier to see. Abruptly, the footpath opens into a deserted parking lot. A solitary lamppost at the center paints a dome of yellow on the tarmac. I remember a traffic cone sitting under the light. I ran toward it, holding the pizza box under one arm. It seemed an odd place to bring me. It was too open.

  Joe has caught up with me. We're standing beneath the lamppost. At my feet is a barred metal grate.

  “He wanted me to push the packages into the drain.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told him I wanted to see Mickey. He threatened to hang up again. His voice was very calm. He said she was close.”

  “Where?”

  I turn my head. Thirty yards away is the dark outline of a storm-water drain. “He said she was waiting for me . . . down there.”

  Walking to the edge, we peer over the side. The steep concrete walls are sprayed with graffiti.

  “I couldn't see her. It was too dark. I shouted her name. ‘Mickey! Can you hear me?' I was yelling into the phone. ‘I can't see her. Where is she?' ‘She's in the pipe,' he said. ‘Where?' I shouted: ‘Mickey. Are you in there?'”

  Joe has hold of me now. He's frightened I might fall over the edge. At the same time he wants me to go on. “Show me,” he says.

  Set into the wall of the drain is a steel ladder. The rungs feel cold against my fingers. Joe is following me down. I couldn't hold the Glock and carry the pizza box at the same time. I left the gun in its holster and tucked the pizza box under my arm.

  “‘Mickey! Can you hear me?' ”

  My feet touch the bottom. Against the nearside wall I can just make out the deeper shadow of an access pipe.

  She must have been in the pipe. It was the only place to hide.

  “‘Michaela?'”

  There was a muffled rumble, like distant thunder. I could feel it through my shoes. I reached for my gun but left it there.

  “‘Mickey?'”

  Wind ruffled my hair and I heard a rushing sound, like a train in a tunnel or the thunder of hooves on a loading ramp. My head jerked left and right, looking for her. The sound grew louder. It was coming toward me, coming out of the darkness . . . a wave.

  Again the door opens and the world dissolves into noise and movement. Gravity is no more. I am flying, tumbling over and over, as an ocean roars past my ears. Head up, half a breath and I'm underwater, plunging into blackness.

  Totally disoriented, I can't find the surface. I'm dragged sideways by the current and carried down a pipe or tunnel. My fingernails are torn and broken as they claw at the slick sides.

  Seconds later I tumble into another vertical shaft. Snatching half a breath, I suck in silt and shit and detritus. I'm in a flooded sewer, full of reeking gases and decomposing turds. I'm going to die down here.

  There are flashes of light above me. Iron grates. I reach out and my fingers close around the metal bars. The pressure of the water surges against my chest and neck, filling my mouth with foulness.

  Holding my mouth and nose above the water, I try to push the grate upward. It won't budge. The force of the water pulls me horizontally.

  Through the grate I see lights. Moving shapes. Pedestrians. Traffic. I try to scream something. They can't hear me. Someone steps off the pavement and tosses a cigarette into the gutter. Red sparks shower into my eyes.

  “Help me! Help me!”

  Something is crawling on my shoulder. A rat digs its claws into my shirt, dragging its sodden body from the current. I can smell wet fur and see sharp teeth, reflected in the square of light. My whole body shudders. Rats are all around me clinging to crevices.

  Finger by finger, my hands surrender. I can't hold on much longer. The current is too strong. I think of Luke. He had such great lungs; air-sucking bags. He could hold his breath for much longer than I could, but not beneath the ice.

  He was a stubborn little tyke. I used to give him Chinese burns. “Give up?” I'd say.

  Tears would be welling in his eyes. “Never!”

  “You just have to give up and I won't hurt you anymore.”

  “No.”

  In awe of him I'd offer a truce, but he'd refuse.

  “OK, OK, you win,” I'd say, sick of the game and embarrassed at hurting him.

  My last finger surrenders. I roll faceup in the current and take a deep sulfurous breath. Washed into darkness, I tumble over a waterfall and get dragged into a larger pipe.

  I don't know where the ransom has gone. Washed away, along with my shoes. And what of Mickey—is she drowning somewhere ahead of me or behind me? I heard a soft cry when I peered into the pipe. Perhaps it was the wind or the rats.

  So this is how it ends! I am going to drown in stinking slime water, which is pretty much how I've lived—in a putrid soup of thieves, liars, murderers and victims. I'm a rat catcher and a sewer hunter, a bone grubber and a muck dredger. Poverty, ignorance and inequality create criminals, and I lock them away so that polite society doesn't have to smell them or fear them.

  My shoulder strikes something hard and the pressure of the water rolls me over. Gulping a mouthful of air, I flay from side to side, trying to find a handhold as I tumble down a sloping ramp or weir.

  Blindly, I plunge into a deep pool. I don't know which way is up. I could be swimming away from safety. My hand breaks the surface but the current won't let me go. A whirlpool drags me around and around, sucking me under. I want the air but the water wins.

  The end is close now. I'm inside a narrow pipe, barely wide enough for my shoulders. There is no air pocket. My chest feels like it is wrapped in cables pulled tight with a ratchet.

  I need to breathe. Carbon dioxide is building up in my blood. I'm being poisoned from within. The instinct not to breathe is being overcome by the agony of airlessness. My mouth opens. The first involuntary breath fills my windpipe with water. My throat contracts but can't stop water flooding into my lungs. I'm as helpless as the day I was born.

  My shoulders are no longer scraping along the walls. A different, slower current has picked me up, turning me over and over like a leaf caught in a gust of wind.

  I'm dying but I can't accept it. Above me—or maybe it's below—there is a solid gray light. I feel myself rising, fighting for the surface; climbing one hand at a time as if trying to pull the light toward me like it's a candelabrum at the end of a long table. The last few strokes are impossibly hard.

  Breaking free, I vomit water and phlegm, making room for that first breath. A floodlight is blinding me. Something hard hooks my belt from behind and hauls me
upward, dragging me onto a wooden deck. My lungs are heaving in their cage like bloated battery hens. Strong hands pump my stomach. Someone leans over me and wipes my chin and neck. It's Kirsten Fitzroy!

  I loll back against her arm. She strokes my head, pushing wet hair across my forehead.

  “Jesus, you're a crazy bastard!” she mutters, wiping my mouth again.

  My stomach is still contracting and I can't speak.

  The boat engine is idling in neutral. I can smell the fumes and see a dull light shining in the cockpit. Taking ragged, greedy gulps of air I turn my head and recognize Ray Murphy kneeling next to me, dressed all in black. “We should have let him drown,” he says.

  “Nobody is supposed to get hurt,” replies Kirsten.

  They argue with each other but Kirsten refuses to listen.

  “Where's Mickey?” I whisper.

  “Sshhh, just relax,” she says.

  “Is she OK?”

  “Don't tell him a fucking thing!” threatens Murphy.

  A tiny red dot is dancing on his forehead as though bouncing over the lyrics of a song. A fraction of a second later he makes a noise like a popped water balloon and half his head disappears in a spray of fine red mist and shattered bone. One eye, one cheek, half a jaw are suddenly erased from his face.

  The sound of the bullet comes a heartbeat later. Zip!

  Kirsten screams. Her eyes are as wide as a child's. Blood has splattered her cheeks.

  Murphy's body is lying across me with his head on my chest. I roll him off me, kicking my legs to get away, sliding on the wet and bloody deck.

  Kirsten still hasn't moved, immobilized by the shock. I turn and crawl back toward her.

  A bullet enters my thigh. It's only a small hole, no bigger than my little finger, but as it exits it vaporizes skin, muscle and flesh, leaving a wound the size of a pie tin. Part of me is impressed. It's like watching a building getting blown up or a car crash.

  Another bullet passes close to my ear and hits the deck near my right knee. Whoever is shooting is above us. I roll sideways, sliding through blood, until I reach Kirsten and pull her below the level of the wooden railings.