Lost

12

Camden Car Pound looks like a World War II prison camp with razor wire on the fences and spotlights around the perimeter. It even has a wooden hut where a lone security guard has his polished boots propped on a desk with a small TV perched between his knees. I hammer on the window and his head snaps around. Swinging his feet to the floor, he hoists his trousers. He has a baby face and spiked hair. A nightstick in a leather pouch sways on his belt.

“My name is Detective Inspector Ruiz. You have a vehicle here that was towed from a street on Haverstock Hill two weeks ago.”

His eyes flick up and down, sizing me up. “You here to collect it?”

“No. I'm here to inspect it.”

He glances at the Professor, wondering why his left arm is trembling. What a pair we make—Hopalong Cassidy and Pegleg Pete.

“Nobody told me you was coming. I should have been told. You gonna pay the towing fee?”

“We're not taking the vehicle. We're just looking at it.”

Something stirs behind him. An Alsatian uncurls and seems to self-inflate until it stands as high as the desk. The dog growls and the guard hisses a command.

“Don't mind him. He won't hurt you.”

“You'll make sure of it.”

There must be a hundred cars on the lot, each with a number and grid reference. It takes the guard several minutes to find the details of Rachel's Renault Estate.

The reference says the car was found on Lyndhurst Road with the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. Someone had stolen the stereo and one of the seats.

He directs us across the pound, which is divided into painted squares.

Rachel's car is beaded with rain and the internal light doesn't work when I open the door. I reach inside and trigger it manually.

There is no front passenger seat. The space is empty except for a dark blanket bundled on the floor. Carefully lifting the blanket I find a bottle of water, chocolate bars and a hand-held periscope.

“Someone was meant to lie on the floor, out of sight,” says Joe.

“Rachel must have delivered the ransom. Someone went with her.”

We're both thinking the same thing—was it me? Campbell called me a vigilante. Aleksei said no police, which means there were no surveillance teams in cars, on motorbikes or in the air.

“If I were delivering a ransom, what would I make sure of?”

“Proof of life!” says Joe.

“Yes, but apart from that—when I was physically carrying the ransom, what would I be sure of?”

Joe shrugs. I answer for him. “Backup. I would have wanted someone following me, at least from a distance. And I would have made sure they didn't lose me.”

“How?”

“A tracking device.” I would have put one in the car and another with the ransom.

The universe suddenly shrinks to one thought. That's how Aleksei found me at the prison. And that's why Keebal wanted to search the house. One of the bundles of diamonds must have a transmitter.

Ali!

One ring, two rings, three rings . . .

“Pick up the phone. Pick it up now!” I wait several seconds. She's not answering.

I try her home number. Pick up the phone, Ali. Please.

“Hello.” (Thank God.)

“What did you do with my coat?”

“It's here.”

“Stay right there! Lock the door. Stay away from the windows.”

“What's wrong?”

“Please, Ali, just do as I say. There's a tracking device with the diamonds. That's how Aleksei found me.”

The traffic suddenly melts away. Joe has his foot down, weaving through backstreets, taking shortcuts across garage forecourts and parking lots. God knows where he learned to drive like this. He's either an expert or a complete amateur who's going to put us through a plate-glass window.

“What diamonds? What are you talking about?” he yells.

“Just shut up and drive.”

Ali is still on the phone.

“I might be wrong about the transmitter,” I tell her. “Just relax.”

She's already ahead of me—ripping open the packages. I can hear her breaking open the blocks of foam. I know what she's going to find. Radio transmitters can weigh less than eighty grams and have a battery life of three, maybe four weeks. My kitchen floor was dusted with polystyrene foam and scraps of plastic. I hollowed out the foam with a knife.

“I found it.”

“Disconnect the battery.”

Joe is yelling at me. “You have Aleksei Kuznet's diamonds! Are you crazy?”

The car swerves suddenly into Albany Street and he brakes hard, pulling us around a line of traffic. He accelerates again and we leap over a speed bump.

Ali lives in a run-down, crumbling neighborhood in Hackney, on a narrow street of soot-blackened warehouses and barred shop windows. She's still on the phone.

“Where are you now?”

“Close. Are the lights turned off?”

“Yes.”

In the background I hear a doorbell ringing.

“Are you expecting anyone?”

“No.”

“Don't answer it.”

Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty seconds pass. Then comes the sound of breaking glass.

“Someone just smashed a door panel,” says Ali, her voice thick with fear. The burglar alarm is sounding.

“Are you armed?”

“Yes.”

“Just give them the diamonds, Ali. Don't take any risks.”

“Yes, Sir. I can't talk anymore. Hurry!”

The phone goes dead.

The next few minutes are the longest I can remember. Joe has his foot hard on the floor, braking around the corners and running red lights. Weaving onto the wrong side of the road, he accelerates past three buses and forces oncoming cars off the road.

Wrenching the wheel, he puts us into a half spin, sliding around a tight bend. I'm thrown against the door and the phone smacks my ear. I'm calling the police, telling them there's an officer in trouble.

“It's the next on the left . . . about halfway down.”

There are terraced houses on either side of the road. The streetlights have turned everything yellow, including the pebble-dash façades and net curtains.

Ali's place is ahead of us. The burglar alarm is still ringing. The car brakes and I'm out of the door hobbling in a half run toward the house. Joe is yelling at me to slow down.

The front door gapes darkly. Pressing my back to the outside wall, I glance inside. I can see the hallway and the stairs to the upper floor. Sliding sideways, I move inside, letting my eyes get used to the darkness.

I have visited Ali's house once before. It was years ago. We sat outside on her roof garden, drinking beer and resting our feet on a skylight. Everything was painted gold by the sunset and I remember thinking that maybe London was the new Babylon after all. The thought disappeared in the darkness.

There's a living room just off the left and a dining room farther along the hall. The kitchen is at the rear. I can see moonlight coming through the window and no sign of a telltale silhouette.

The shrill alarm is shredding my senses. Running my fingers along the wall, I search for the control panel. The alarm will be linked to the main electric supply and have a backup twelve-volt battery with an anti-tamper switch.

Joe puts his hand on my shoulder and nearly gets flattened with a walking stick. Shouting to be heard, I tell him to go back outside, find the alarm bell and pull it off the wall.

“What with?”

“Use your imagination.”

He disappears and I search the kitchen and sitting room. A streetlight is shining outside and I can see Joe crossing the road with a tire iron. Hoisting himself onto a brick wall, he takes a swing at the alarm bell. Twice more he hits the box and suddenly the alarm falls silent. The change is so dramatic it feels like the air pressure has dropped.

Climbing the stairs, I step onto the next landing. For all my opposition to firearms, I wish I had one now. My gun is somewhere at the bottom of the river or fenced on the black market.

Reaching the first door I pause and listen. I can only hear my heartbeat. Then, in the stillness, I pick up another sound, someone breathing. Pressing my ear against the door, I wait, trying to hear the sound again.

Weighing my walking stick, I reach for the door handle and push it open. The darkness is more intense than the dimness behind me.

Here, too, I wait.

I hear metal shaking . . . springs. It's a tremble born of dependency rather than fear. Reaching forward, I flick the light switch. Ali is perched on her bed, her MP5 A2 carbine pointing directly at my chest.

We gaze into each other's eyes. She blinks at me slowly and lets out a long slow breath. “You were lucky I didn't shoot you.”

“I had it covered.”

Pulling open my shirt, I show her the bulletproof vest.

The Professor slumps in a chair, his hands gripping the armrests. The last few minutes have drained his reserves. Ali pours him a glass of water. He takes it with his right hand—the steady one.

“Where did you learn to drive like that?”

“At Silverstone,” he replies. “I won an advanced driving course at a school trivia night.”

“Michael Schumacher eat your heart out.”

Ali has barricaded the front door and is moving through the rooms, checking to see if anything is missing. Whoever broke in triggered the alarm and then fled.

“Did you see anyone?”

“No.”

“Where are the diamonds?”

Ali opens a drawer. “I put them where a girl puts anything personal—with her underwear.”

Four velvet pouches are tucked inside. She opens one of them and diamonds spill through her fingers onto the duvet. Sometimes when you see an excess of something rare and beautiful it begins to pale. Diamonds are different. They always take your breath away.

I can hear police sirens approaching. Ali goes downstairs to meet them. I don't expect there'll be fingerprints or physical evidence left behind but we'll go through the motions of making statements and dusting for prints. Joe still doesn't understand how the ransom ended up with Ali. I relate the whole story about the linen cupboard and the scraps of plastic on my kitchen floor.

I have to admire his sense of priorities. Instead of being frightened or angry, he sits on Ali's bed and studies the remnants of the packages, the bright orange plastic, white foam and electrical tape. The transmitter is the size of a matchbox with twin wires separated from a smaller battery unit.

“Why are they packed like this?”

“I think they were meant to float.”

“So you took the diamonds to the river.”

“I don't know. This type of transmitter sends out a signal every ten seconds and is picked up by a receiver. Unlike a satellite tracking device the transmitter has a limited range—about three miles in the city and six miles in the countryside.”

“How accurate is it?”

“Down to within fifty yards.”

If Rachel acted as the ransom courier and I went with her, I would have arranged for someone to follow us, tracking the signals. Aleksei had the most to gain. They were his diamonds and it was his daughter.

Joe weighs the transmitter in his hands. “But how did the ransom wind up in your cupboard? Something must have gone wrong.”

“Tell me about it! I got shot.”

“No, but think about it. You were in the hospital for two weeks. If Aleksei knew you had the diamonds, he could have taken them back at any time. Instead he waited.”

“Perhaps he wanted someone else to find them first—like Keebal.”

Almost immediately, I try to push the thought away. I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories and I have nothing against Keebal except the job he does—spying on his colleagues—but someone tipped him off about the diamonds. It must have been Aleksei. Are they working together or feeding off each other?

The Professor is still studying the packaging as if trying to re-create the dimensions.

“What do we do now?” asks Ali, returning upstairs.

“We take advantage of this.” I toss her the transmitter.

She grins. We're both singing from the same song sheet. “Are you thinking Intercity Express?”

“Nah, it's too fast.” I look at my watch. “The printing presses are just starting to run at Wapping. Some of those newspaper trucks drive all the way to Cornwall.”

Bon voyage!