Lost jo-2

by Michael Robotham

  “Yes.”

  The room has grown darker and she seems to be turning to shadow. The distance between us has grown wide and cold.

  “When the shooting started, I thought it must be the police. Then they just kept firing.”

  “Did you see the sniper?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  She shakes her head.

  Although exhausted she looks almost relieved to be talking. She can't remember how long she spent in the water. The tide carried her east past Westminster. Eventually she crawled onto the steps at Bankside Jetty near the Globe Theatre. She broke into a pharmacy and stole bandages and painkillers. She slept in a shop that was being refurbished, lying beneath painter's sheets.

  She couldn't run and she couldn't go to a hospital. Aleksei would have found her. Once he knew who had kidnapped Mickey he was never going to stop looking.

  “And since then you've been hiding?”

  “Waiting to die.” Her voice is so soft it might be coming from another room.

  The cloying smell of sweat and infection thickens the air. Either everything Kirsten has told me is the truth or an extraordinarily elaborate lie. “Please move away from the window,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “I keep seeing red dots. They're burned into my eyelids.”

  I know what she means.

  Taking a chair beside the bed, I pour her a glass of water. Her finger is no longer curled around the trigger of the gun.

  “What were you going to do with the ransom?”

  “I had plans.” She describes a new life in America, making it sound almost irresistible—the idea of walking away and never looking back, the romance of the clean slate.

  I have thoughts like that sometimes—wanting to be someone else or to start afresh—but then I realize I have no desire to see most of the world and I have enough trouble keeping old friends without meeting new ones. What would I be running from? I'd be another dog chasing its tail.

  “We were foolish. We should have walked away and counted our blessings that nobody knew the truth about Mickey. Now it's too late.”

  “I can protect you,” I say.

  “Nobody can.”

  “I can talk to the Crown Prosecution Service. If you give evidence against Aleksei they can put you—”

  “What evidence?” she says harshly. “I didn't see him shoot anyone. I can't point to a mug shot or pick someone out of a police lineup. So what if he paid two ransoms—it's not against the law.”

  She is right. The most Aleksei is guilty of is withholding information from the police about the first ransom demand.

  Surely there must be something more. A man organizes to have people executed and nobody can touch him.

  For the first time in a long while, I have no idea of what to do next. I know I have to call the police. I also have to keep her safe. There are witness protection programs for IRA informers and organized crime witnesses but what can they offer Kirsten? She can't give them Aleksei. She can't link him to the executions or any of his many crimes.

  “What if we arrange a meeting?”

  “What?”

  “Contact Aleksei—organize to see him.”

  She puts her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear. Her skin is like metal, shining at angles in the light from the bedside lamp.

  She's right. Aleksei would never agree.

  “You can't save me. If I were you, I'd phone him now and tell him where I am. You might win a reprieve.”

  “I'm going to call an ambulance.”

  “No.”

  “You can't stay here. How long before your landlady gives you up?”

  “We're old friends.”

  “I can see that! How much has it cost you to still be here?”

  She holds up her fingers. Her jewelry is gone.

  We sit in silence and after a while I hear her breathing find a steady rhythm. She's asleep. Moving to her side, I gently take the revolver from her lap before covering her with a blanket. Then I move to the landing and call “New Boy” Dave. My hands are shaking.

  “I've found Kirsten Fitzroy. I need an ambulance and a police escort. Don't tell Meldrum or Campbell.”

  “OK.”

  Back in the room Kirsten's eyes are open.

  “Are they coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “The cavalry or a hearse?”

  “An ambulance.”

  Gritting her teeth against the pain, she swings her legs off the bed and sits facing away from me. Her black shirt is stuck perfectly to her body with sweat and it looks as though someone has poured oil over her.

  “You might be able to protect me today but it is just one day,” she says, managing to stand and shuffle toward the bathroom. Sensing I'm about to follow, she stops me. “I have to go potty.”

  I'm expected to wait on the landing, which I do—pleased to escape from the sickroom smell and the hypocrisy. The sheer number of lies and depth of betrayal is staggering. Mickey is dead! I failed. I want to crawl back into the sewer where I belong.

  There's a knock on the door downstairs. Mrs. Wilde answers. I look over the banister half expecting to see “New Boy” Dave. It's a courier. I can't make out what he's saying.

  Mrs. Wilde turns away from the door holding a bunch of flowers. In that same instant I hear a blunt sound, metal on bone. She topples forward, crushing the flowers beneath her. A motorcycle courier in leathers and a gleaming black helmet steps over her body.

  I hit the redial button on the cell phone. Dave's number is engaged. He must be calling the ambulance.

  I can hear the courier searching downstairs—kicking open doors. I can imagine him crouching and swinging the gun in a wide arc. He's a professional. Ex-military.

  Kirsten flushes the toilet and walks from the bathroom. I signal for her to get down and she drops to her knees with a groan. She sees something in my eyes that wasn't there before.

  “Don't leave me,” she mouths. I hold my finger to my lips and point above my head.

  The courier has heard the toilet flushing and the cistern filling. Now he's at the bottom of the stairs. Turning away from Kirsten I climb to the next landing. Again I hit the speed dial. Engaged.

  A floorboard depresses and releases. The noise vibrates through me. Kirsten fired two shots. Assuming the gun is fully loaded, I have four bullets left.

  I should be scared but maybe I'm beyond that. Instead I think of the past three weeks and all those times that Aleksei has toyed with me. I'm not angry or bitter. This is like one of those children's stories, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where Goldilocks gets chased out of the house for eating porridge and breaking a chair. Only in my new version she comes back with a gun and she's going to make sure she aims not too high and not too low but just right.

  “New Boy” Dave answers his phone.

  “Code One. Officer in trouble. Help!”

  The courier is on the stairs, staying close to the wall to shield himself from above. When he turns onto the landing I should get a clean shot. I wait in darkness, trying to make myself small. A river leaks down my back.

  Another step. His shadow appears. He's carrying a fully automatic machine pistol that sweeps from side to side. My finger pulls gently on the trigger, pushing the hammer backward and compressing a metal spring in the handle. A ratchet rotates the cylinder, putting a bullet in the breech chamber in line with the barrel.

  He's fully in view—about to turn into the bedroom. I can't see his face behind the visor.

  “Police! Put the gun down!”

  He drops and rolls, firing blindly up the stairs. Bullets punch tattered holes in the wallpaper beside my head and shatter the banister. A splinter of wood slices into my neck.

  The moment I shoot he'll see the muzzle flash and know where I am. I pull the trigger lever all the way back, releasing the hammer.

  The bullet enters through his shoulder, angling down into his chest. His head hits the wall. The wide dark visor
is staring at me. His finger closes on the trigger again. We fire together and he tumbles backward.

  I can taste blood in my mouth where I've bitten my tongue and my lungs hurt like a bastard. Where has all the oxygen gone? I don't know how long I sit on the stairs. There are sirens and screeching tires in the street. “New Boy” Dave comes through the door so fast he almost trips over Mrs. Wilde.

  Kneeling on the landing, I put the gun at my side and stare down at my chest. Dave is climbing the stairs, yelling my name. Ripping open the buttons, I press my fingers to my breastbone. A neat depression, still warm from the bullet, lies at the center of the vest.

  Well I'll be damned! Ali saved my life.

  Looking through the railings I see the courier's body crumpled at the foot of the stairs. Forty-three years in the police force, thirty-five of them as a detective, and I managed not to kill anyone. Another unwanted milestone reached.

  36

  Four hours ago a warrant was issued for Aleksei's arrest but it hasn't been served. His motor yacht left Chelsea Harbour at midnight on Saturday, only an hour after our meeting. The skipper claimed to be doing a transfer to Moody's boatyard in Hamble on the south coast but failed to arrive by midday Sunday.

  Coast guards and lifeboat stations have been alerted and all vessels within a five hundred nautical mile range have been told to report any sightings. Descriptions of the vessel are also being sent to harbormasters in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain.

  I didn't expect Aleksei to run. A part of me still thinks he's going to waltz into a police station with a team of lawyers looking smug and ready to rumble. He knows there is nothing but circumstantial evidence. Nobody can put him at the scene of the murders. If Kirsten dies I can't even prove he paid the first ransom.

  Of course, it's not my job to prove anything, as Campbell keeps telling me, as he storms around the hospital, dressed in an overcoat of angry tweed. Every time his eyes reach me he looks away. He was right and I couldn't have been more wrong. Despite all the bloody mayhem of the past few weeks, the facts have remained unchanged—Mickey died three years ago and Howard Wavell killed her.

  According to the X-rays my ribs are only bruised and the cut on my neck doesn't need stitches. Kirsten is under guard upstairs. Not even the paramedics knew her name when they delivered her into intensive care.

  Tomorrow morning Eddie Barrett and the Rook will argue that Howard Wavell should be released from prison. They will claim that Mickey Carlyle was taken for a ransom and killed by her abductors. The CCTV footage from Leicester Square Underground could be of anyone. The towel found at East Finchley Cemetery was planted there to frame Howard for a murder he didn't commit.

  It's a version of events that is far easier to argue than the truth. The police case against Howard was always circumstantial. Evidence had to be laid out piece by piece, showing the jury how it all fitted together. Now it seems more like a house of cards.

  Howard will get his retrial and our only hope of maintaining his conviction is if a jury believes Kirsten's story. Defense barristers will be queuing up to dismantle her credibility as a confessed kidnapper, extortionist and manager of an escort agency.

  I was wrong about Howard, wrong about Mickey, wrong about almost everything. A child killer is going to walk free. I am responsible.

  Things get messy when police shoot people. They get even messier when it's an ex-policeman. There will be an inquest and an investigation by the Police Complaints Commission. There will also be drug tests and psych reports. I don't know enough about morphine to say if the opiates are still in my system. If I test positive I'll be swimming in shit.

  The man I killed hasn't been identified. He rode a stolen motorbike and carried no papers. His dental work was Eastern European and he carried a fully automatic machine pistol stolen from a Belfast police station four years ago. His only other distinguishing feature was a small silver cross around his neck inlaid with a purple gemstone, chariote, a rare silicate found only in the Bratsk region of Siberia. Perhaps Interpol will have more luck.

  Visiting hours are over but the nursing sister has let me in. Although flat on her back, staring at a mirror above her head, Ali gives me a bigger smile than I deserve. She turns her head, making it only partway before the pain catches in her throat.

  “I brought you chocolates,” I tell her.

  “You want me to get fat.”

  “You haven't been fat since you were hanging off the tit.”

  It hurts when she laughs.

  “How is it going?” I ask.

  “OK. I managed to stand this afternoon.”

  “That's a good sign. So when can we go dancing?”

  “You hate dancing.”

  “I'll dance with you.”

  It sounds too maudlin and I wish I could take it back. Ali seems to appreciate the sentiment.

  She explains that she has to wear a special cast for the next three months and then a canvas brace with shoulder bands for another three months after that.

  “With any luck I'll be walking by then.”

  I hate the expression “with any luck.” It's not a resounding affirmative but a fingers-crossed, if-all-goes-well sort of statement. What sort of luck has Ali had so far?

  I pull a bottle of whiskey from a brown paper bag and wave it in front of her eyes. She grins. Two glasses are next, pulled from the bag like a rabbit from a hat.

  I pour her a glass and add water from a tap in the sink.

  “I can't really handle a glass,” she says apologetically.

  Reaching into the bag again, I produce a crazy drinking straw with spirals and loops. I rest the glass on her chest and put the straw in her mouth. She takes a sip and gasps slightly. It's the first time I have ever seen her drink.

  Our eyes meet in the mirror. “A Home Office lawyer came to see me today,” she says. “They're offering a compensation package and a full disability pension if I want to leave the job.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I want to stay.”

  “They're worried you might sue them.”

  “Why would I do that? It's nobody's fault.”

  We look at each other and I feel grateful and undeserving all at once.

  “I heard about Gerry Brandt.”

  “Yeah.”

  I watch the subtle change in her, a little shrinking created by a single affirmation. Something shifts inside me as well and I get a sense of how much pain she's endured already and the months of operations and physiotherapy still to come.

  A swatch of her hair, shiny black, has come loose from a bobby pin. She drops her gaze and sets her mouth defiantly. “And you found Kirsten. We should drink to that.”

  She takes a sip and notices I haven't joined her. “What's wrong?”

  “I'm so sorry. It was a stupid, foolish quest. I just wanted . . . I just hoped Mickey might be alive, you know. And now look! You're here and people are dead and Rachel is grieving all over again. And tomorrow Howard is going to get his retrial. It's my fault. What I've done is unforgivable.”

  Ali doesn't answer. Outside the sky is tinged with pink and the streetlights are blinking on. I rock forward and stare into the glass. She reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder to stop it shaking.

  “It hurts all over,” I moan. “Why put a child on this Earth and give her seven years if you're going to allow her to be kidnapped, raped, tortured, terrified or whatever else happened?”

  “There's no answer to that.”

  “I don't believe in God. I don't believe in eternal life or Heaven or reincarnation. Will you ask your God for me? Ask him why.”

  Ali looks at me sadly. “He doesn't work like that.”

  “Well ask him for his grand plan. While he concentrates on the big picture, who looks after kids like Mickey? One child might seem petty and trivial among a few billion but he could start by saving one at a time.”

  I down the rest of the whiskey, feeling the alcohol burn my throat. I'm already drun
k, but not drunk enough.

  A black cab drops me home. Fumbling for the keys, I stagger inside and up the stairs, where I lean over the toilet and vomit. Afterward I splash water on my face, letting it leak down my neck and chest.

  Staring back from the mirror is a pallid, leering stranger. In his eyes I see Mickey standing at the bottom of the escalator and Daj behind the razor wire and Luke lying beneath the ice.

  I seem to have no other memories. Missing children, abused children and dead children fill my thoughts. Babies drowned in bathtubs, toddlers shaken into comas, children sent to gas chambers or snatched from playgrounds or suffocated beneath pillows. How can I blame God when I couldn't save one little girl?

  37

  Opposite the Royal Courts of Justice a deliveryman is unloading naked mannequins from a truck. Male and female dummies are frozen in an orgy of plaster, some with wigs and others bare. The driver carries them two at a time, balanced across his shoulders, with his hands between each pair of buttocks to stop them from falling. I can see him laughing as cabdrivers toot their horns and office workers lean out of windows.

  I stand and watch. It's good to smile.

  The feeling doesn't last. Rachel Carlyle looks up as I approach along the corridor. Her gaze is not quite focused and her smile vague, as though she doesn't immediately recognize me. Light coming through high windows is broken and refracted, dissipating before it reaches the depths of the marble entrance hall.

  I take her off to one side, finding an empty conference room. Making her sit down I tell her the same story that Kirsten told me, trying to leave nothing out. When I reach the point about Mickey crossing London alone, late at night, she squeezes her eyes shut, endeavoring to rid herself of the image.

  “Where is Kirsten now?”

  “She's battling an infection. The next forty-eight hours will be crucial.”

  Rachel's face is etched with concern. Her capacity for forgiveness is beyond mine. I can imagine her saying a prayer for Kirsten or lighting a candle. She should be railing against her and against me. I raised her hopes and look at us now.

  Instead she blames herself. “If I hadn't asked Aleksei for the ransom none of this would have happened.”