Lost (24 page)

“How is the food?”

“They're trying to poison me.”

“Have you been playing bridge?”

“Some of them cheat.”

Even the half deaf can hear her.

“You real y should make an effort, Daj.”

“Why? We're al just waiting to die.”

“It's not like that.”

I stop and button up the top of her coat. Spidery wrinkles radiate from her lips but her eyes haven't aged. From a distance we are mother and son sharing an intimate moment.

Up close we are a stuttering monosyl abic tragicomedy played out over fifty years.

“Can I have the envelope now?”

“After morning tea.”

Inside we sit in the dining room and go through the ritual of stilted conversation served with jam and cream. The manager is wandering between the tables.

“Hel o there! How lovely to see you. Isn't it nice to have your son here, Mrs. Ruiz? Maybe he'd like to come and hear Mr. Wilson's lecture on trekking in the Andes.”
I'd rather be strung up and dunked headfirst into a vat of cold porridge.

Daj announces in a loud voice, “Yanko was always the strongest baby. I needed both hands to pul him away from the bottle. He didn't want the breast.”

“Nobody wants to know that, Daj.”

Louder this time: “His father was a Nazi, you know. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger's father.” I feel my cheeks redden. She's on a rol . “I don't know if he looks like his father. There were so many of them. Maybe al their sperm got mixed up inside me.”

The manager almost chokes and quickly makes her excuses before escaping. Her parting look reminds me of those my teachers used to give me when Daj came to Open Day.

With the tea grown cold and a token scone left on the plate, I go back to Daj's room and col ect the envelope. On my way out I drop into the manager's office and write a check.

“You must love your mother very much,” the secretary says.

I look at her impassively. “No. She's my mother.”

Back in the car I open the large padded envelope. Inside are copies of the original postcard and envelope, along with the DNA tests and analysis of the ink, stationery and hair samples.

There is another letter in a plain plastic sleeve. Slipping my hand inside, I withdraw the note, blowing it open with my breath.

Dear Mrs. Carlyle,

Your daughter is alive. She will remain so if you cooperate. Any mistakes and she will die. Her life is in your hands.

We require two million pounds worth of superior quality cut diamonds, with no stone smaller than a carat. You will separate these stones into four velvet pouches. Each pouch must be taped to a
square of quarter-inch-thick polystyrene foam and then double sealed in fluorescent plastic. Each package must be no more than 6 inches long, 21⁄2 inches wide and 3⁄4 inch deep. They are to be placed inside
a 20-inch pizza box.

Three days from now you will place an advertisement in
The Sunday Times
travel classifieds seeking to rent a Tuscan cottage. This will contain a cell-phone number for further communications.

You must always answer the phone, Mrs. Carlyle. Only you. Anyone else picks up and Michaela dies.

No negotiation will be possible. No excuses are acceptable. If the police are involved, you know the outcome. YOU HAVE ONE CHANCE.

The letter is neatly typed and appears to have been laser printed. Although there is no attempt at childish handwriting this time, the emotional blackmail is just as great.

I placed the advertisement. I obtained the cel phone. I must have believed Mickey was stil alive. Maybe it was the weight of evidence rather than conclusive proof that convinced me. We convicted Howard on circumstantial evidence and perhaps I resurrected Mickey on anecdotes and inferences.

“At least it's confirmation,” says Ali, reading the DNA report.

“But it doesn't change the story. Campbel won't reopen the investigation or admit mistakes were made. The forensic experts, lawyers, police witnesses and politicians aren't going to backtrack on Howard's conviction.”

“Do you blame them? Do you real y want to set him free?”

“No.”

“Wel , why are we doing this, Sir?”

“Because I don't believe the ransom was a hoax. I think she's alive! Why else would I have risked everything?” I stare across the road at a bus shelter where a young girl, barely twelve, looks longingly down the street for the 11:15 that won't arrive until 11:35.

This isn't about Howard. I don't care about reasonable doubt or innocence or guilt. I just want to find Mickey.

A storm is coming. The static electricity in the air lifts strands of hair on Ali's head and suspends them like invisible wires. Within minutes raindrops are bouncing off the windshield like marbles and the gutters are choked with leaves. Put it down to global warming or climate change, but I don't remember storms like this when I was younger.

The tires of the Vauxhal swish through the wet. Ali has a way of concentrating when she drives that brings to mind an arcade game. It's as though she expects someone to run a red light or step out from the pavement.

We cross Tower Bridge and turn east along the A2, passing through Blackheath and Shooters Hil before reaching Dartford. The storm has passed and the sky is low and gray.

A cold wind picks up scraps of paper that swirl and dip along the pavements.

This is real English suburbia, with privet hedges and puddle-size birdbaths. I can even smel the lawn fertilizer and watch television three houses away through the picture windows.

The White Horse pub advertises al -day breakfasts but doesn't open until midday. Peering through the windows I see an empty bar, chairs stacked on tables, a vacuum cleaner squatting on claret carpet, a dartboard and a brass footrail along the base of the bar.

I circle around the back, Ali never more than a few feet away. The large wooden gate is shut but not locked. It leads to a bricked courtyard, ful of silver kegs, with a motorbike and two cars, one of them marooned on bricks and painted camouflage green.

Just outside the door, a teenage boy, perhaps fifteen, is sitting on the hood of a car, cleaning a carburetor with an oily rag. His worn sneakers swing back and forth and his jaw moves constantly—biting off words, chewing them up and spitting them out.

Spying me, his head jerks. “FUKLEMICK!”

“Hel o Stevie.”

Sliding off the car he grasps my hand, pressing his ear to my wristwatch. “Tickatock, tickatock.”

Tourette's syndrome has turned him into a riot of twitches, cusses and screeches—“a human freak show,” according to his father, Ray Murphy, the former caretaker at Dolphin Mansions.

I turn to Ali. “This is Stevie Murphy.”

“S. Murphy. Smurfy. Smurf. Smurf.” He barks the words like a seal.

Ali runs her fingers through his short-cropped hair and he purrs like a kitten.

“Is your dad inside?”

His head jerks. “FUKLEOFF! GONE!”

“Where's he gone?”

He shrugs.

Ray Murphy provided Kirsten with her alibi on the morning Mickey disappeared. According to both their statements, he was fixing her shower. A smal man, slung low to the ground like a dachshund, I remember seeing Murphy fight at Wembley—top of the bil for the British bantamweight title. That must have been the early eighties.

I interviewed him twice during the original investigation. I thought he might have some ideas on how Mickey got out of the building.

“Same way as everyone else,” he told me. “Through the front door.”

“You think maybe her friend Sarah missed her.”

“Kids don't always do what you want.”

He was speaking from experience. His eldest boy, Tony, was in Brixton prison, doing five years for armed robbery.

Turning away from Stevie, I knock three times on the pub door. A chair scrapes and the door opens a few inches. A large woman with nicotine-colored hair, lacquered to concrete, regards me suspiciously. She is wearing a furry yel ow pul over and black leggings that make her look like an oversize duckling.

“Mrs. Murphy?”

“You found him yet?”

“Excuse me?”

“You found my Ray? What slut is he shagging?”

Ali tries to sort out the confusion. “Are you saying that you haven't seen your husband?”

“No, shit, Miss Marple!”

She turns away from the door and waddles to her chair. The remains of breakfast cover the table and a TV perched on the counter is broadcasting images of a couple on a sofa, looking cheery and bright.

“I remember you,” she says, not looking away from the screen. “You're that copper who looked for that little girl.”

“Mickey Carlyle.”

She gestures with her hand. “Stevie remembers. He doesn't forget things.”

“Mickey ficky sticky licky,” says Stevie, playing with the rhyme.

“Don't you be disgusting,” scolds Mrs. Murphy. Stevie flinches and avoids her slap. He steps back and swivels his hips in an oddly adult dance.

The kitchen is smal and cluttered. A strange col ection of souvenirs and bric-a-brac decorates the mantelpiece, including a Donald Duck salt and pepper set, a boxing trophy and a signed photograph of Henry Cooper.

Stevie is stil dancing while Mrs. Murphy has her eyes glued to the TV. I could be eighty before I get her undivided attention. I hit the standby button on the TV remote and Mrs.

Murphy looks at me like I've turned off her life support.

“When did you last see Ray?”

“It's like I told them—September 24.”

“Who did you tel ?”

“The police! Twice I been down to see them, but they never believed me. They figured Ray had just taken off like before.”

“Before?”

She wipes her eyes and glances at Stevie. Ali picks up on the signal.

“Perhaps we should go outside,” she suggests. Stevie grins and hugs her around the waist.

“Just make sure he keeps his hands off you,” says his mother, glancing forlornly at the blank TV.

When the door closes, Mrs. Murphy continues, “Ray could never keep his trousers buttoned. But ever since we got the pub he stayed home. He loved the White Horse . . .” The statement trails off.

“Being a caretaker must have paid pretty wel to afford this place.”

She bristles. “We bought it fair and square. An uncle left Ray some money.”

“You ever meet this uncle?”

“He worked in Saudi Arabia. You don't pay taxes in Saudi Arabia. And Ray deserved it. He worked down them sewers for twenty years as a flusher. You know what that means? He shoveled shit. He worked knee-deep in the stuff, in the dark, with the rats. He used to come across huge nests of them, writhing like worms in a bucket.”

“I thought he used to work on flood management.”

“Yeah, later, but that's only after his back gave out. He helped Thames Water Board draw up plans in case a surge tide flooded London. People forget the Thames is a tidal river. Always was, always wil be.”

Her voice takes on a bitter tone. “When they built the Thames Flood Barrier they said surge tides weren't a problem no more. They got rid of Ray. He said they were idiots! Sea levels are rising and the southeast of England is sinking. You do the maths.”

“What made him choose a pub?”

“You show me a man who doesn't want to own one.”

“Most of them drink away the profits.”

“Not my Ray—he hasn't touched a drop in sixteen years. He loved this place. Things were going OK, you know, until that bleedin' theme pub opened up the street. The Frog and Lettuce. What sort of name is that for a pub, eh? We were gonna do this place up and put on darts tournaments. Our Tony was going to arrange it. He knows lots of them professional players.”

“How is Tony?”

She goes quiet.

“I was hoping to have a word with him.”

“He's not here.”

The answer is too abrupt. I glance toward the ceiling. The woman is like a fortune-tel ing bal —shake her up and the answer is written al over her face.

“He's done nothing wrong, my Tony. He's been a good boy.”

“When did he get out?”

“Six months ago.”

“You ever hear Ray mention Kirsten Fitzroy?”

The name slowly rings a bel .

“She was that uppity bird who lived in Dolphin Mansions. Had that scar on her neck . . .”

“A birthmark.”

“Whatever,” she says dismissively.

“She ever visit or telephone?”

“Ray wouldn't be shagging her. She's too skinny. He likes his women with some meat on their bones. That's where he'l be now—screwing some tart. He'l come home soon enough. Always does.”

A car engine splutters and snarls outside. Stevie is peering under the hood while Ali sits behind the wheel, working the throttle. Somewhere on the floor above me a sash window opens and a string of invective fil s the air, tel ing them to be quiet.

“Now that Tony is awake . . .” I say, maximizing her discomfort.

She plants both hands flat on the table, rises to her feet and clumps wearily up the stairs.

A few minutes later Tony emerges, wiry and loose-limbed in a dressing gown. He has shaved his head until only one tuft of hair remains, cut into a circle above the nape of his neck. With the tattoos on his forearms and ears that stick out like satel ite dishes, he looks like an extra from an episode of
Star Trek
.

Like his father, Tony had been a promising fighter until he tried to apply some elements of the World Wrestling Federation to his boxing. The pageantry and phoney feuds might have been OK but when he started fixing fights he got into trouble. He came unstuck again when he tried to fix a darts tournament. He broke the fingers of a player who miscounted and won a game he was supposed to lose.

Tony opens the fridge and drinks from a carton of orange juice. Wiping his lips, he sits down. “I don't have to answer nothing. I don't even have to get out of bed for you.”

“I appreciate you making the effort.” The sarcasm is lost on him. “When did you last see your father?”

“Do I look like I keep a fucking diary?”

Reaching quickly across the table, avoiding the soggy cereal, I pin his forearm in my fist. “Listen you vicious little scumbag! You're stil on parole. You want to go back inside?