Lost

9

My clothes are in a suitcase in the trunk of Ali's car along with the shopping bag full of the unopened mail. The diamonds are there, too. I have never had two million pounds. I've never had a Ferrari either or a wife who could tie knots in cherry stems with her tongue. Maybe I should be more impressed.

The Professor is right, I have to follow the trail—the invoices, phone calls and diary appointments. I have to retrace my steps until I find the ransom letters and the proof of life. I wouldn't have delivered a single stone without them.

Sarah Jordan lives around the corner from Dolphin Mansions. Her mother answers the door and remembers me. Behind her Mr. Jordan is double-parked on the sofa with the Racing Post on his stomach and the TV blaring.

“Sarah won't be long,” she says. “She's just gone to pick up a few things from the supermarket. Is everything all right?”

“Fine.”

“But you talked to Sarah a few weeks ago.”

“It's just a follow-up.”

The supermarket is only around the corner. I leave Ali at the house and go looking for Sarah, happy to stretch my legs. The brightly lit aisles are stacked with cartons and half-empty boxes creating an obstacle course for shopping carts.

On my second circuit, I see a young girl in a long coat lurking at the far end of the aisle. She glances in both directions and then stuffs chocolate bars into her pockets. Her right arm is pressed against her side, holding something else beneath her coat.

I recognize Sarah. She's taller, of course, having lost her puppy fat. Light brown bangs fall across her forehead and her fine straight nose is dusted with freckles.

I glance up at the surveillance camera bolted to the ceiling. It is pointing down the aisle away from her. Sarah knows the blind spots.

Wrapping the coat around her, she walks toward the checkout and puts a box of breakfast cereal and a bag of marshmallows on the conveyor belt. Then she picks up a magazine and flicks through the pages, looking disinterested as the cashier deals with the customer ahead of her.

A young mother and toddler join the queue. Sarah looks up and notices me staring at her. Immediately she looks away and counts the loose change in her hand.

The store security guard, a Sikh wearing a bright blue turban, has been watching her through the window, hiding behind the posters for “red spot” specials. He marches through the automatic doors with one hand on his hip as though reaching for a nonexistent gun. The light behind him creates a halo around his turbaned head: the Sikh Terminator.

Sarah doesn't realize until he grabs hold of her arm and bends it behind her back. Two magazines tumble from beneath her coat. She twists from side to side and screams. Everything stops—the cashier chewing her pink bubble gum, a shelf stacker on a stepladder, the butcher slicing ham . . .

A frozen chicken korma is burning my fingers. I can't remember picking it out of the freezer. I push past the queue and hand it to the cashier. “Sarah, I told you to wait for me.”

The security guard hesitates.

“I'm sorry about this. We didn't have a basket.” I reach into Sarah's pockets and take out the chocolate bars, placing them on the conveyor belt. Then I pick up the magazines from the floor and find a packet of biscuits tucked into the waistband of her jeans.

“She was trying to steal those,” protests the guard.

“She was holding them. Take your hands off her.”

“And who the fuck are you?”

My badge flips open. “I'm the guy who's going to charge you with assault if you don't let her go.”

Sarah reaches inside her coat and takes a box of tea bags from an inner pocket. Then she waits while the cashier scans each item and packs them into a plastic bag.

I take hold of the shopping bag and she follows me through the automatic doors. The manager intercepts us. “She's not welcome here. I don't want her coming back.”

“She pays, she comes,” I say, as I pass him and walk into the bright sunshine.

For a fleeting moment I think Sarah might run, but instead she turns and holds out her hand for her groceries.

“Not so fast.”

She shrugs off her overcoat revealing khaki jeans and a T-shirt.

“It's a bit of a giveaway.” I motion to the coat.

“Thanks for the advice.” Her voice is full of fake toughness.

“You want a cold drink?”

She balks. She's waiting for a lecture on the evils of shoplifting.

I hold up the shopping bag. “You want this stuff, you have a cold drink.”

We go to a juice bar on the corner and take a table outside. Sarah orders a banana smoothie before eyeing up the muffins. I get hungry watching her eat.

“You saw me a few weeks ago.”

She nods.

“What did we talk about?”

She gives me an odd look.

“I had an accident. I've forgotten a few things. I was hoping you could help me remember them.”

Sarah glances at my leg. “You mean like amnesia?”

“Something like that.”

She takes another mouthful of muffin.

“Why did I come and see you?”

“You wanted to know if I ever cut Mickey's hair or counted the coins in her money box.”

“Did I say why?”

“No.”

“What else did we talk about?”

“I dunno. Stuff, I guess.”

Sarah glances down at her shoes, stubbing the toe against the legs of the chair. The sun is pitched high and sharp, like the last hurrah before winter.

“Do you ever think about Mickey?” I ask.

“Sometimes.”

“So do I. I guess you have lots of new friends now.”

“Yeah, some, but Mickey was different. She was like an . . . a . . . a . . . appendix.”

“You mean appendage.”

“Yeah—like a heart.”

“That's not really an appendage.”

“OK, like an arm, real important.” She drains her smoothie.

“You ever see Mrs. Carlyle?”

Sarah runs her fingers around the rim of her glass, collecting froth. “She still lives in the same place. My mum says it'd give her the creeps living where someone got killed but I reckon Mrs. Carlyle stays for a reason.”

“Why's that?”

“She's waiting for Mickey. I'm not saying that Mickey is gonna come home, you know. I just figure Mrs. Carlyle wants to know where she is. That's why she goes to prison every month and visits him.”

“Visits who?”

“Mr. Wavell.”

“She visits him!”

“Every month. My mum says there's something sick about that. Gives her the creeps.”

Sarah reaches across the table and turns my wrist so she can read the time. “I'm in heaps of trouble. Can I have my stuff now?”

I hand her the plastic shopping bag and a ten-quid note. “If I catch you shoplifting again, I'll make you mop supermarket floors for a month.”

She rolls her eyes and is gone, pedalling furiously on her bicycle, carrying her coat, the bag of groceries and my frozen chicken korma.

The idea of Rachel Carlyle visiting Howard Wavell in prison sends chills through me. A grooming pedophile and a grieving parent—it's wrong, it's sick, but I know what she's doing. Rachel wants to find Mickey. She wants to bring her home.

I remember something she said to me a long while ago. Her fingers were tumbling over and over in her lap as she described a little routine she had with Mickey. “Even to the post office,” they would say to each other, as they said goodbye and hugged.

“Sometimes people don't come back,” said Rachel. “That's why you should always make your goodbyes count.”

She was trying to hold on to every detail of Mickey—the clothes she wore, the games she played, the songs she sang; the way she frowned when she talked about something serious or a hiccupping laugh that made milk spurt out of her nose at the dinner table. She wanted to remember the thousands of tiny details and trivia that give light and shade to every life—even one as short as Mickey's.

Ali meets me at the juice bar and I tell her what Sarah said.

“You're going to go and see Howard, aren't you, Sir?”

“Yes.”

“Could he have sent the ransom demand?”

“Not without help.”

I know what she's thinking, although she won't say anything. She agrees with Campbell. Every likely explanation has the word “hoax” attached, including the one where Howard uses a ransom demand to win his appeal.

On the drive to Wormwood Scrubs we cross under the Westway into Scrubs Lane. Teenage girls are playing hockey on the playing fields, while teenage boys sit and watch, captivated by the blue pleated skirts that swirl and dip against muddy knees and moss-smooth thighs.

Wormwood Scrubs Prison looks like a film set for a 1950s musical, where the filth and grime have been scrubbed off for the cameras. The twin towers are four stories high and in the center is a huge arched door impregnated with iron bolts.

I try to picture Rachel Carlyle arriving here to visit Howard. In my mind I see a black cab pull up in the forecourt and Rachel sliding out, never letting her knees separate. She walks carefully over the cobblestones, wary of turning her ankle. Glamour hasn't been bred into her, despite her family's money.

The visitors center is located to the right of the main gate in a set of temporary buildings. Wives and girlfriends have already started to gather, some with children who fidget and fight.

Once inside they are searched and asked for proof of identity. Their belongings are stored in lockers and gifts are vetted in advance. Anyone wearing clothes that too closely match the prison uniform is asked to change.

Ali gazes up at the Victorian façade and shivers.

“You ever been inside?”

“Once or twice,” she replies. “They should tear the place down.”

“It's called a deterrent.”

“Works on me.”

Leaving her for a moment, I open the trunk and retrieve the diamonds. I can fit two packages in the inside pockets of my overcoat and two more in the outer pockets. I put the coat on the seat beside her.

“I want you to stay with the car and look after the diamonds.”

She nods. “You want to wear the vest?”

“I think I'm safe enough in prison.”

Crossing the road, I show my badge at the visitors center. Ten minutes later I climb two flights of stairs and emerge into a large room with a long continuous table divided down the middle by a partition. Visitors stay on one side and prisoners on the other. Knees can't touch or lips meet. Physical contact is restricted to holding hands or lifting young children over the divide.

Heavy boots echo in the corridors as the cons are brought in. Each visitor hands over a docket and has to wait until the prisoner is in place before being admitted.

I watch a young prisoner greet his wife or girlfriend. He kisses her hand and doesn't want to let it go. They both lean forward as though trying to breathe the same air. His hand reaches under the table.

Suddenly, the screws seize her chair and wrench it backward. Falling to the floor, she shields her swollen belly. She's pregnant, for Christ's sake. He only wants to feel his baby, but there's no sign of empathy from the screws.

“DI Ruiz, you can't stay away.”

The Governor appears beside me. Barrel-chested and balding, he's in his late forties. Finishing a sandwich, he dabs at his lips with a paper napkin, missing egg yoke on his chin.

“So what brings you back?”

“It must be the ambience.”

He laughs roughly and glances through the Perspex screen at the reunions.

“How long since I was here last?”

“Don't you remember?”

“Old age, I'm getting forgetful.”

“About four weeks ago; you were interested in that woman who comes to see Howard Wavell.”

“Mrs. Carlyle.”

“Yeah. She's not here today. She comes every month and tries to bring the same gifts: kiddie catalogs. That sick fuck better not get an appeal!”

I try to picture Howard sitting opposite Rachel. Did she reach across the partition and take his hand? I even feel a pang of jealousy and imagine his eyes traveling down the V-neck of her blouse. We live in a sick sick world.

“I need to talk to him.”

“He's in segregation.”

“Why?”

The Governor picks at his fingernails. “Like I told you before, nobody expected him to live this long. He killed Aleksei Kuznet's little girl! That's a death sentence whichever way you look at it.”

“But you've managed to protect him.”

He laughs wryly. “You could say that. He was only here four days before someone ran a razor blade across his throat. He spent the next month in the hospital wing. Nobody's touched him since then so I figure Aleksei must want him alive. Howard doesn't care.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I told you before, he keeps refusing to take his insulin. Twice in the last six months he's lapsed into a diabetic coma. If he can't be bothered why should Her Majesty, eh? I'd let the bastard die.”

The Governor senses I don't agree with him. He sneers. “Contrary to popular opinion, Inspector, I'm not here to play nursemaid to prisoners. I don't hold their hands and say, ‘You poor things, you had a lousy childhood or a crap lawyer or a hanging judge.' A dog on a leash could do what I do.”

(With a lot more compassion no doubt.)

“I still need to see him.”

“He wasn't listed for visitors today.”

“But you can bring him up.”

The Governor grunts softly to a senior guard, who picks up a phone, setting the chain of command into motion. Somewhere deep in the intestines of this place someone will fetch Howard. I can picture him lying on a narrow cot, smelling the sourness of the air. The future is a scary business when you're a pedophile in prison. It's not next summer's holiday or a long weekend in the Lake District. The future stretches from when you wake up until you go to sleep again. Sixteen hours can seem like a lifetime.

Visiting time has almost ended. Howard pushes against the tide, walking as though his legs are shackled. He gazes around the room, looking for his visitor, perhaps expecting Rachel.

More than forty years on I can still recognize him as the fat kid from school, who changed behind a towel and chain-smoked on an asthma puffer. He was almost a semi-tragic figure but not quite so tragic as Rory McIntyre, a sleepwalker who did a high dive off the third-floor balcony in the early hours of Foundation Day. They say that sleepwalkers wake up in midair but Rory didn't make a sound. Nor did he make a splash. He always was a good diver.

Howard takes a seat and doesn't seem surprised by the sound of my voice. Instead he stops, arches his neck and swivels his head like an old tortoise. I step in front of him. He blinks at me slowly.

“Hello, Howard, I want to talk to you about Rachel Carlyle.”

He smiles little by little but doesn't answer. A scar runs from one side of his throat to the other, just beneath his chins.

“She comes to see you. Why?”

“You should ask her.”

“What do you talk about?”

He glances at the screws. “I don't have to tell you anything. My appeal application is next Thursday.”

“You're not getting out of here, Howard. Nobody wants to set you free.”

Again he smiles. Certain people don't seem to match their voices. Howard is like that. It is pitched too high, as though laced with helium, and his pale face seems disconnected from his body like a white balloon moving gently in a breeze.

“We can't all be perfect, Mr. Ruiz. We make mistakes and we deal with the consequences. The difference between you and me is that I have my God. He will judge me and get me out of here. Do you ever wonder who is judging you?”

He seems confident. Why? Maybe he knows about the ransom demand. Any suggestion Mickey might still be alive would automatically grant him a retrial.

“Why does Mrs. Carlyle come here?”

He raises his hands in mock surrender and lowers them again. “She wants to know what I did with Mickey. She's worried I might die before telling anyone.”

“You're messing up your insulin injections.”

“Do you know what it's like to go into a diabetic coma? First my breathing becomes labored. My mouth and tongue are parched. My blood pressure falls and my pulse accelerates. I get blurred vision, then pain in my eyes. Finally, I slip into unconsciousness. If they don't reach me quickly enough, my kidneys will fail completely and my brain will be permanently damaged. Soon after that I will die.”

He seems to revel in these details, as if looking forward to it.

“Did you tell her what happened to Mickey?”

“I told her the truth.”

“Tell me.”

“I told her that I'm not an innocent man but I am innocent of this crime. I have sinned but not committed this sin. I believe in the sanctity of human life. I believe all children are gifts from God, born pure and innocent. They only act with hate and violence because we teach them hate and violence. They are the only ones who can truly judge me.”

“And how are the children going to judge you?”

He goes silent.

Sweat rings beneath his arms have spread out and merged, plastering his shirt to his skin so that I can see every freckle and mole. There's something else on his back, beneath the fabric. Something has discolored the material, turning it yellow.

Howard has to look over his right shoulder to see me. He grimaces slightly. At that same moment, I force him forward across the table. Deaf to his squeals that are muffled against my forearm, I lift his shirt. His flesh is like pulped melon. Angry wounds crisscross his back, weeping blood and yellow crystalline scum.

Prison guards are running toward us. One of them puts a handkerchief over his mouth.

“Get a doctor,” I yell. “Move!”

Commands are shouted and phone calls are made. Howard is screaming and thrashing like he's on fire. Suddenly, he lies still, with his arms stretched across the table.

“Who did this to you?”

He doesn't answer.

“Talk to me. Who did this?”

He mumbles something. I can't quite hear him. Leaning closer, I pick up the words, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not . . . never yield to temptation . . .”

There is something tucked inside the sleeve of his shirt. He doesn't stop me pulling it free. It's the wooden handle of a skipping rope, threaded with a twelve-inch strand of fencing wire. Self-flagellation, self-mutilation, fasting and flogging—can someone please explain them to me?

Howard shrugs my hand away and gets to his feet. He won't wait for a doctor and he doesn't want to talk any more. He shuffles toward the door, with his flapping shoes, yellow skin and shallow breathing. At the last possible moment he turns and I'm expecting one of those pleading, kicked-dog looks.

Instead I get something different. This man whom I helped lock away for murder; who flays himself with fencing wire, who every day is spat upon, jeered, threatened and abused . . . this man looks sorry for me.

Eighty-five steps and ninety-four hours—that's how long Mickey had been missing when I served a search warrant on number 9 Dolphin Mansions.

“Surprise. Surprise,” I said as Howard opened the door. His large eyes bulged slightly and his mouth opened but no sound came out. He was wearing a pajama top, long shorts with an elasticized waist and dark brown loafers that accentuated the whiteness of his shins.

I started like I always did—telling Howard how much I knew about him. He was single, never married. He grew up in Warrington, the youngest of seven children in a big loud Protestant family. Both his parents were dead. He had twenty-eight nieces and nephews and was godfather to eleven of them. In 1962 he was hospitalized after a traffic accident. A year later he suffered a nervous breakdown and became a voluntary outpatient at a clinic in north London. He had worked as a storeman, a laborer, a painter and decorator, a van driver and now a gardener. He went to church three times a week, sang in the choir, read biographies, was allergic to strawberries and took photographs in his spare time.

I wanted Howard to feel like he was fifteen and I had just caught him jerking off in the showers at Cottesloe Park. And no matter what excuses he offered, I'd know he was lying. Fear and uncertainty—the most powerful weapons in the known world.

“You left something out,” he mumbled.

“What's that?”

“I'm a diabetic. Insulin shots, the whole business.”

“My uncle had that.”

“Don't tell me—he gave up chocolate bars and started jogging and his diabetes went away. I hear that all the time. That and, ‘Christ, I would just die if I had to stick a needle in myself every day.' Or this is a good one, ‘You get that from being fat don't you?'”

People were trooping past us, wearing overalls and gloves. Some carried metal boxes with photographic equipment and lights. Duckboards had been laid like stepping-stones down the hall.

“What are you looking for?” he asked softly.

“Evidence. That's what detectives do. It's what we use to support a case. It turns hypothesis into theories and theories into cases.”

“I'm a case.”

“A work in progress.”

That was the truth of it. I couldn't say what I was looking for until I found it—clothing, fingerprints, binding material, videos, photographs, a seven-year-old girl with a lisp . . . any of the above.

“I want a lawyer.”

“Good. You can use my phone. Afterward we'll go outside and hold a joint press conference on the front steps.”

“You can't take me out there.” The television cameras were lined up along the pavement like metal Triffids, waiting to lash out at anyone who left the building.

Howard sat down on the staircase, holding on to the banister for support.

“I can smell bleach.”

“I was cleaning.”

“My eyes are watering, Howard. What were you cleaning?”

“I spilled some chemicals in my darkroom.”

There were scratches on his wrists. I pointed to them. “How did you get those?”

“Two of Mrs. Swingler's cats got loose in the garden. One of your officers left the door open. I helped her get them back.”

He listened to the sound of drawers being opened and furniture moved.

“Do you know the story of Adam and Eve, Howard? It was the most important moment in human history, the telling of the first lie. That's what separates us from the other animals. It has nothing to do with humans thinking on a higher plane or having easily available credit. We lie to each other. We deliberately mislead. I think you're a truthful person, Howard, but you're providing me with false information. A liar has a choice.”

“I'm telling you the truth.”

“Do you have any secrets?”

“No.”

“Did you and Mickey have a secret?”

He shook his head. “Am I under arrest?”

“No. You're helping us with our inquiries. You're a very helpful man. I noticed that right from the beginning when you were taking photographs and printing flyers.”

“I was showing people what Mickey looked like.”

“There you go. Helpful. That's what you are.”

The search took three hours. Surfaces were dusted, carpets vacuumed, clothes brushed and sinks dismantled. Overseeing the operation was George Noonan, a veteran scene of crime investigator who is almost albino with his completely white hair and pale skin. Noonan seems to resent searches where he doesn't have a body to work with. For him death is always a bonus.

“You might want to see this,” he said.

I followed him down the hallway to the sitting room. He had sealed off all sources of light by blacking out windows and using masking tape around the edges of the doors. He positioned me in front of the fireplace, closed the door and turned off the light.

Darkness. I couldn't even see my feet. Then I noticed a small pattern of droplets, glowing blue-green on the carpet.

“They could be low-velocity bloodstains,” explained Noonan. “The hemoglobin in blood reacts to the luminol, a chemical that I sprayed on the floor. Substances like household bleach can trigger the same reaction but I think this is blood.”

“You said low velocity?”

“A slow bleeder—probably not a stab wound.”

The droplets were no bigger than bread crumbs and stopped abruptly in a straight line.

“There used to be something here—possibly a carpet or a rug,” he explains.

“With more blood on it?”

“He may have tried to get rid of the evidence.”

“Or wrapped up a body. Is there enough to get DNA?”

“I believe so.”

My knee joints creaked as I stood. Noonan turned on the light.

“We found something else.” He held up a pair of child's bikini briefs sealed in a plastic evidence bag. “There don't appear to be traces of blood or semen. I won't be sure until I get it back to the lab.”

Howard had waited on the stairs. I didn't ask him about the bloodstains or the underwear. Nor did I query the 86,000 images of children on his computer hard drive or the six boxes of clothing catalogs—all featuring children—beneath his bed. The time for that would come later.

Howard's world had been turned upside down and emptied like the contents of a drawer yet he didn't even raise his head as the last officer left.

Emerging onto the front steps, I blinked into the sunshine and turned to the cameras. “We have served a search warrant at this address. A man is helping us with our inquiries. He is not under arrest. I want you to respect his privacy and leave the residents of this building alone. Do not jeopardize this investigation.”

A barrage of questions came from beyond the cameras.

“Is Mickey Carlyle still alive?”

“Are you close to making an arrest?”

“Is it true you found photographs?”

Pushing through the crowd I walked to my car, refusing to answer any questions. At the last moment, I turned back and glanced up at Dolphin Mansions. Howard peered from the window. He didn't look at me. Instead he stared at the TV cameras and realized, with a growing sense of horror, that they weren't going to leave. They were waiting for him.