Lost

31

The only other person in Joe's waiting room is a middle-aged man in a cheap suit that bunches at his shoulders when he folds his arms. He picks at his teeth with a matchstick and watches me take a seat.

“The secretary went to get coffee,” he says. “The Professor has a patient.”

I nod and notice him watching me. Finally, he asks, “Do we know each other?”

“I don't think so. Are you a copper?”

“Yeah. DS Roger Casey. They call me the Dodger.” He moves a few seats closer and thrusts out his hand, at the same time eyeing up Rachel.

“So where are you working, Roger?”

“Vice out of Holborn.”

He's sitting close, feeling a sense of camaraderie. I should probably remember his face but a lot of guys his age have left the service in the past ten years.

“You heard this one,” he asks. “How many coppers does it take to throw a man down the stairs?”

“I don't know. How many?”

“None. He fell.”

Roger laughs and I offer him a chiseled smile. He lifts an eyebrow and goes quiet.

The Professor's secretary arrives back, carrying takeout coffee and a brown paper bag stained by a pastry. She looks barely out of school and blinks through wire-frame glasses as though she should have known we were coming.

“I'm DI Ruiz. Could you tell the Professor we're here?”

She sighs, “Join the queue.”

At that moment the inner door opens and a young woman emerges with red-rimmed eyes.

Joe is behind her.

“So I'll see you next week, Christine. Remember, it's not immodest to wear culottes and it doesn't make you less feminine.”

She nods and keeps her eyes down. Everyone in the room does the same apart from Roger who starts giggling. The poor woman flees down the corridor.

Joe gives him an angry stare and is about to say something when he sees me sitting with Rachel. “Come inside, you two.”

“The Detective Sergeant was here first,” I suggest.

Joe shakes his head and sighs. “Oh dear . . . and you were doing so well, Roger.” He turns to his secretary. “For future reference, Philippa, DI Ruiz is a real police officer. Not everyone who comes in here claiming to be a detective is a fantasist.”

Philippa's cheeks redden and Rachel starts to giggle.

“I'm sorry about Roger,” says Joe, as we're ushered into his office. “He pretends to be a police officer and tricks prostitutes into giving him free sex.”

“Does it work?”

“Apparently.”

“He's a freak!”

Joe looks at me awkwardly. “Well, he's part of our team.”

There's a promising start!

Joe has spent the morning calling in favors. So far we have thirteen volunteers including two of my old rugby mates and a snitch called “Dicko” who has a nose for trouble and no sense of smell at all, which unfortunately means his personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired.

Over the next hour the rest of the “team” arrives. Joe has managed to recruit his brother-in-law Eric and his younger sister, Rebecca, who works for the United Nations. Julianne is coming after she picks up Charlie from school. There are also several patients, including Margaret, who is nursing a torpedo-shaped life preserver, and another woman, Jean, who keeps disinfecting the phones with wet wipes.

Margaret sidles up to me. “I hear you almost drowned. Don't trust bridges.” She taps her orange torpedo reassuringly.

When the last of the stragglers arrive, I gather them in the waiting room. It is the strangest collection of “detectives” I have ever commanded.

Pinning two photographs to a corkboard, I clear my throat and introduce myself—not as a Detective Inspector but as a member of the public.

“The two people in these photographs are missing. Their names are Kirsten Fitzroy and Gerry Brandt. We hope to find them.”

“What did they do?” asks Margaret.

“I believe they kidnapped a young girl.”

A murmur goes around the room.

“We need to discover how they're linked—when they met, where they talked, what they have in common—but most importantly we have to locate them. Each of you will be given a task. You won't be asked to do anything illegal, but this is detective work and has to remain confidential.”

“Why don't we just ask the police to find them?” asks Eric, perched on the edge of a desk.

“The police aren't looking hard enough.”

“But you're a policeman!”

“Not anymore.”

Moving on, I explain that Kirsten was last seen going over the side of the Charmaine. “She suffered a stomach wound and may not have survived her injuries or the river but we're going to assume she's still alive. Gerry Brandt is a known drug dealer, pimp and armed robber. Nobody is to approach him.”

I glance at Dicko. The flesh around his mouth seems to be moving but no sound comes out.

Addressing him directly, I say, “I want you to talk to anyone who knows him—suppliers, junkies, mules, friends . . . He used to hang out in a pub on Pentonville Road. See if anyone remembers him.”

After a few seconds of clicking his teeth, he says, “Might need some readies.”

“If I catch you drinking I'll drill a hole in your head.”

The women peel their eyebrows off their hairlines.

“Maybe I should go with him,” suggests Roger.

“Fine. Remember what I said. Under no circumstances do you approach Gerry Brandt.”

Roger gives me a casual salute.

“Philippa, Margaret and Jean, I want you to ring the hospitals, clinics and doctors' surgeries. Make up a story. Say you're looking for a missing friend. Rachel and the Professor will contact Kirsten's family and any former employers. She grew up in the West Country.”

“What are you going to do?” asks Joe.

“Gerry Brandt had a former girlfriend, a skinny thing with bleeding gums and blond streaks. I'm hoping she might know where he's hiding.”

Hell's Half Mile is a road behind Kings Cross Station where the curbs get crawled and prostitutes hunt in packs. Some of these girls are barely sixteen but there's no way of telling. Even without the scars and bruises, a year on the streets adds five years to the faces.

Very few prostitutes work the streets anymore because the police have chased them indoors. Now they work for escort agencies and massage parlors, or they move around following the political conferences, trade shows and exhibitions. Become a prostitute and see the world!

The walk-up places are open doorways leading to upstairs flats with signs in the windows announcing BUSTY YOUNG MODEL or something similar. Most have a maid, usually an older woman, who takes the money and a small tip.

Apart from the passing trade, they advertise with cards in phone boxes or rely on the patron saint of the horny—the London cabbie.

Cruising the street slowly I try to recognize any of the girls. A pixie with a pageboy cut and a padded bra saunters over.

“You want to ask me something?”

“Yeah, what was on Sesame Street this morning?”

Her face flushes. “Piss off!”

“I'm looking for a particular girl. Her name is Theresa. She's about five foot six. Blond. Comes from Harrogate. And she has a tattoo on her shoulder of a butterfly.”

“What's this girl got that I ain't?”

“Boobs. Cut the crap. Have you seen her?”

“Nah.”

“OK, here's the deal. I got a fifty here. You walk down the street, knock on the doors and ask if any of the girls know this Theresa. You get me the right answer and you get the fifty.”

“Are you a copper?”

“No.” For once I'm telling the truth.

“Why you want her?”

“She won the bloody lottery. What does it matter to you?”

“I'll do it for a ton.”

“You get fifty. It's the easiest money you ever made.”

“You reckon! Some of these guys blow just looking at me.”

“Sure.”

I watch her leave. She doesn't even know how to walk like a woman yet. Maybe it's an occupational trait.

The streetlights are beginning to glow purple as they blink into life. I take a table at a delicatessen on the corner which is doing a roaring trade in takeout coffee and homemade soup served by Czech girls with heavy accents and tight tops. I'm old enough to be their grandfather but that doesn't make me feel as guilty as it should. One of them brings me coffee and a muffin that looks half-cooked inside.

The place is full of pimps and working girls, counting the wages of sin. A couple of them regard me suspiciously, sitting still and very straight like a pair of magistrates.

Pimps don't look the same in real life as they do in films. They're not snappy dressers in long leather coats and lots of gold jewelry. Mostly they're dealers and boyfriends who'd spread their own legs if anyone would pay for the privilege.

The pixie with the pageboy cut has come back. She eyes the large pot of soup steaming on a burner. I buy her a bowl. An older black girl is looking at us nervously through the window. She's dressed in a microskirt and lace-up boots. Her hair is twisted into bangs that run back from her forehead between paler strips of scalp.

“She says she knows Theresa.”

“What's her name?”

“Brittany.”

“Why won't she come inside?”

“Her pimp might be watching. He don't like her slacking. Where's my fifty?”

She reaches to snatch it out of my fingers. I pin her wrist to the table and turn it over, pulling her sleeve up her arm. Her skin is pale and unblemished.

“I'm not using,” she sniffles.

“Good. Go home.”

“Yeah, sure—you should see where I live.”

Brittany talks to me outside. She has ants in her pants about something and can't stand still. Her jaw works constantly on gum, punctuating sentences with a sucking noise.

“What's Theresa done?”

“Nothing, I just want to talk to her.”

Brittany glances down the street, trying to decide if she believes me. Eventually, she surrenders to apathy and a twenty quid note.

“She lives in a tower block in Finsbury Park. She's got a kid now.”

“Is she still on the game?”

“Only a few regulars.”

Fifteen minutes later I'm climbing to the fourteenth floor of a tower block because the lift is out of order. Various cooking smells mingle in the stairwell, along with the noise from dueling TVs and domestic disputes.

Theresa must be expecting someone else because she opens the door with a flourish, wearing only a black teddy and bunny ears.

“Shit! Who are you?”

“The Big Bad Wolf.”

She looks past me into the hallway and then back at me. The penny drops. “Oh, no!”

Turning away from the door she wraps a dressing gown around her shoulders and I follow her inside. There are baby toys scattered on the living-room floor and a monitor hums on top of the TV. The bedroom door is closed.

“You remember me?”

“Yeah.” She flicks her hair over her shoulder and lights a cigarette.

“I'm looking for Gerry.”

“You were looking for him three years ago.”

“I'm very patient.”

She glances at a pineapple-shaped clock on the wall. “Hey, I got someone coming. He's my best customer. If he finds you here he'll never come back.”

“Married is he?”

“The best customers are.”

I push aside a colorful baby rug and take a seat on the sofa bed. “About Gerry.”

“I ain't seen him.”

“Maybe he's hiding in the bedroom.”

“Please don't wake the baby.”

She's quite a pretty-looking thing, except for her crooked nose and the junkie hollows beneath her eyes.

“Gerry ran out on me three years ago. I thought he was probably dead until he turned up again during the summer with a suntan and lots of big-shot stories about owning a bar in Thailand.”

“A bar?”

“Yeah. He had a passport and a driver's license in the name of some other geezer. I figured he must have pinched it.”

“You remember the name?”

“Peter Brannigan.”

“Why did he come back?”

“Dunno. He said he had a big payday coming.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Three days ago—must have been Tuesday night.” She stubs out her cigarette and lights another. “He came busting in here, sweating and yelling. He was scared. I ain't never seen anybody that scared. He looked like the devil himself was chasing him.”

That must have been after he crippled Ali. I remember how terrified he looked when he took off. He thought Aleksei had sent someone to kill him.

Theresa dabs at the lipstick in the corners of her mouth. “He wanted money. Said he had to get out of the country. He was crazy, I tell you. I let him stay but as soon as he fell asleep I got a knife. I put it right under here.” She points to her septum, pushing up her nostrils. “I told him to get out. If he comes back I'll kill him.”

“And that was Tuesday night.”

“Early hours of Wednesday.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Nope. And I don't care. He's a bloody nutcase.”

The packet of cigarettes is crushed in her hand. Glossy eyes slide over the sofa and the toys before resting on me. “I got something good going here. I don't need Grub, or Peter Brannigan or whoever else he calls himself, to mess it up.”

Three hours ago it was midnight. The desk lamp in Joe's office casts a circular glow, harsh in the center and soft at the edges. My eyes are so full of grit I can only look at the shadows.

I bought pizzas at nine and the coffee ran out at eleven. The rest of the volunteers have gone home except for Joe and Rachel, who are still hard at work. A large corkboard in the waiting room is plastered with phone messages and notes. Nearby there are box files stacked five abreast beneath the window forming a makeshift shelf for leftover pizza and bottles of water.

Rachel is still on the phone.

“Hello, is that St. Catherine's? I'm sorry to call so late. I'm looking for a friend of mine who has gone missing. Her name is Kirsten Fitzroy. She's thirty-three, with brown hair, green eyes and a birthmark on her neck.”

Rachel waits. “OK, she's not there now but she may have needed medical help in the past few weeks. You have a clinic. Is it possible you could check your files? Yes, I know it's late but it's very important.” She refuses to lose this battle. “She's actually my sister. My parents are worried sick about her. We think she might have hurt herself . . .”

Again she waits. “No record. OK. Thank you so much. I'm sorry to have troubled you.”

They have all worked so hard. Roger and Dicko took a magical mystery tour of London's underbelly, visiting pubs, illegal casinos and strip joints looking for Gerry. Meanwhile, Margaret proved to be a genius at getting passenger manifests out of airlines, ferry and train operators. So far we've established that Kirsten hasn't left the country on any regular transport service.

London's major hospitals and twenty-four-hour clinics have no record of a female shooting victim in the week after the ransom drop. Now we're ringing individual doctors and hospices.

We know more about Kirsten than we did six hours ago. She was born in Exeter in 1972, the daughter of a postman and a teaching assistant. Her two brothers still live in Devon. In 1984 she won a scholarship to Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset. She excelled in art and history. One of her sculptures was accepted in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. In her final year she left the school under a cloud, along with two other students. Drugs were mentioned but nothing went on file.

A year later Kirsten sat A levels and won a place to read art and history at Bristol University. After several false starts, she graduated with a first in 1995. That same year she was photographed at a polo match in Windsor by Tatler magazine with the son of a Saudi Minister. Then she seemed to disappear, surfacing again six years later as the manager of the employment agency.

“I spoke to a few people at Sotheby's,” says Rachel. “Kirsten was well known among the dealers and salesroom staff. She always wore black to auctions and talked constantly on a cell phone.”

“She was bidding for someone else?”

“Four months ago she bid £170,000 for a Turner watercolor.”

“Who was the real buyer?”

“Sotheby's wouldn't say but faxed me a photograph of the painting. I've seen it hanging in my father's study.”

Her eyes, unnaturally wide, flick back and forth between my face and Joe's. Her thoughts are moving at a terrible speed—making her whole body vibrate.

“I still can't believe she could have done this. She loved Mickey.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Ask my father.”

“Will he tell you the truth?”

“There's always a first time.”

Joe's arm twitches as he reaches for a bottle of water. “We're a long way behind. Kirsten's family and friends have been contacted. Some have been threatened. One of Kirsten's brothers was beaten senseless only an hour after he slammed the door on a man claiming to be a debt collector.”

“Do you think her family knows where she is?” I ask him.

“No.”

Rachel nods. “Kirsten wouldn't put them in danger.”

Why is Aleksei going to so much trouble? If he sat back he knows that Kirsten will turn up eventually. They always do, look at Gerry Brandt. This isn't just about the diamonds. It's more personal than that. According to the stories, Aleksei had his own brother killed for dishonoring the family. What would he do to someone who kidnapped his daughter?

Sitting opposite me, Joe continues making notes. He reminds me of my old primary-school teacher, who knew exactly how many pencils, books and paintbrushes were in the storeroom, yet would arrive at school with shaving foam on his neck, or wearing different-colored socks.

Julianne called me. She made me promise not to let Joe drive home. His Parkinson's gets worse when he's tired. She also talked to Joe and told him to look after me.

Rachel begins picking up cups and carrying them into the kitchenette. There isn't much to wash. Jean has been manically cleaning all evening.

Reaching into his pocket, Joe takes out a crumpled page of notes and smooths it on his thigh. “I've been thinking.”

“Good.”

“I want to forget about the kidnapping question and concentrate on the ransom demand. If you look at the letters there's no indication of psychological looseness or obsession. They asked for a huge ransom but it was a feasible amount for someone like Aleksei to pay or even Sir Douglas. Enough to be worth the risk.

“We know there were at least three people involved. Kirsten was the likely planner. Ray Murphy did the logistics. Intellectually Kirsten is above average. Everything about her typifies carefulness and preplanning. She must have experimented with the packages, getting the right dimensions. She was aware of tracking devices and forensic tests . . .”

The Professor is on a roll. I've seen him do this before—crawl inside someone's head until he knows what they know and feels what they feel. “The ransom plot was clever but overcomplicated. When people are faced with a complex problem they often only consider a certain number of options or scenarios. If there are too many unknowns, they get confused. That's why people plan up to a point or in sections. Sometimes they leave out the exit strategies because they don't consider failure as a possibility.

“Whoever conceived the plan worked everything out but they made it too complicated. Look at all the things that had to go right. The packaging of the ransom had to be perfect, the control of the courier, getting the diamonds to the storm-water drain, detonating the explosives, creating the flood . . . If any one of these things had gone wrong, the plan would have failed.”

“Maybe they tested the system first. The voice on the phone to Rachel said, ‘Let's do this one more time.'”

Joe nods slowly but isn't convinced. “This is the sort of operation you only mess up once. Given a second chance, you'd want to simplify things.”

He begins pacing, flourishing his hands. “Let's assume just for a moment that they did kidnap her. They took her underground, which is also how they chose to collect the ransom. They needed somewhere to hold her. Somewhere that Ray Murphy was most likely to have chosen.”

“Not in the sewers—it's too dangerous.”

“And taking her above ground meant risking recognition. Her photograph was everywhere.”

“You think they held her underground?”

“It's worth considering.”

There's someone I can ask—Weatherman Pete. I look at my watch. I'll call him in a few hours.

“What about Gerry Brandt?” asks Joe.

“He had a passport in the name of Peter Brannigan as well as a driver's license. It costs a lot of money to get a new identity and to disappear—even to a place like Thailand. You need connections.”

“You thinking drugs?”

“Maybe. According to international directory inquiries there's a beach bar called Brannigan's in Phuket.”

“Fancy that. What's the time in Thailand?”

“Time to wake them up.”

Rachel has fallen asleep on the sofa in the waiting room. I gently shake her awake. “Come on, I'll take you home.”

“But what about Mickey?”

“We'll find her. First you need to sleep. Where do you want to go?”

“Dolphin Mansions.”

“Take my car,” says Joe. “I've called a cab.”

He's still on the phone to Phuket talking to a waitress who doesn't understand English, trying to get a description of Peter Brannigan.

Outside the streets are empty except for a council sweeping machine with twirling brushes and jets of water. I open the car door and Rachel slips inside. The interior smells of pine air freshener and ancient tobacco.

Using a borrowed overcoat as a blanket, she covers her knees. I know she has questions. She wants reassurance. Maybe we're both deluding ourselves.

Headlights sweep across the interior of the car as we drive toward Maida Vale. She rests her head against the seat, watching me.

“Do you have children, Inspector?”

“I'm not a policeman anymore. Please call me Vincent.”

She waits for an answer.

“Twins. They're grown up now.”

“Do you see much of them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It's a long story.”

“How long can it be? They're your children.”

I'm caught now. No matter what I say to her she won't understand. She desperately wants to find her child and I don't even talk to mine. Where's the fairness in that?

She tucks her hair behind her ears. “Do you know that sometimes I think I made Mickey frightened of the world.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I kept telling her to be careful.”

“All parents do that.”

“Yes, but it wasn't just the normal stuff like not patting stray dogs or talking to strangers. I made her frightened of what can happen if you love something too much and it disappoints you or gets taken away. She wasn't always scared to go outside. It only started when she was about four.”

“What happened?”

In a forlorn voice she describes a Saturday afternoon at a local park, where she and Mickey would often go to feed the ducks. This one particular Saturday there was an old-fashioned fair, with a steam-powered carousel, cotton candy and whirligigs. Mickey rode all by herself on a gaily painted horse, proud of the fact that she didn't need her mother to sit behind her. When the ride finished, she was on the far side of the carousel. Rachel had been drawn into conversation with a woman from her mothers' group and didn't notice the ride ending.

Mickey stepped off. Instead of circling, she wandered through the forest of legs thinking that surely one of the hands belonged to her mother.

She walked back toward the pond where the ducks had gathered in the skirts of a willow tree. Peering over the low railing fence she watched two boys, no older than eleven, throwing stones. The ducks huddled together. Mickey wondered why they didn't fly away. Then she noticed the ducklings, sheltering beneath a feathered breast and muddy tail feathers.

One duckling—a dark ball of down against the darkness of the shade—separated from the others. It took the full force of a stone and disappeared beneath the surface. Seconds later it reappeared, floating lifelessly on the green scum in that corner of the pond.

Mickey burst into hysterical wailing. Tears streamed down her cheeks into the wide corners of her mouth. Her crying made the boys drop their stones and edge away, not wanting to be blamed for whatever had made her cry.

The howls from the edge of the pond created a strange dichotomy of reactions. Some people almost fell over each other to ignore them. Others watched and waited for someone else to intervene.

The pigeon man was nearest. Grizzled and yellow-toothed, he raised himself up from his bench, brushing pigeons off his lap as though they were spilled crumbs. Shuffling across to Mickey, he hitched up his trousers so that he could kneel beside her.

“You got a problem, Missy?”

“Make them stop,” she wailed, with her hands clamped over her ears.

He didn't seem to hear her. “You want to feed the birds?”

“The ducks,” she sobbed.

“You want to feed the ducks?”

Mickey howled again and the pigeon man raised his eyebrows. He could never understand children. Taking her hand, he went in search of a park attendant or the girl's mother.

A policeman was already approaching. He pushed through the crowd and took in the scene. “I want you to let her go,” he demanded.

“I'm looking for her mother,” explained the pigeon man. Spittle clung to his tangled beard.

“Just let the girl go and step away.”

By then Rachel had arrived. She swept Mickey up, held her tightly, and the two of them tried to out-hug each other. Meanwhile, the pigeon man had his arms stretched wide on the back of a park bench, while the policeman patted him down and searched his pockets, spilling birdseed onto the grass.

Mickey didn't ask to feed the ducks again. She didn't go to the park and soon she stopped going outside Dolphin Mansions. A year later she saw her first therapist.

The children's book that Timothy found in Mickey's cubbyhole in the basement was about five little ducks who go out in the world and return home again. Mickey knew from experience that not all little ducks come back.