Lost (39 page)

“Whoever conceived the plan worked everything out but they made it too complicated. Look at al 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 col ect 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'l cal him in a few hours.

“What about Gerry Brandt?” asks Joe.

“He had a passport in the name of Peter Brannigan as wel 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 cal ed Brannigan's in Phuket.”

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

“Time to wake them up.”

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

“But what about Mickey?”

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

“Dolphin Mansions.”

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

He's stil 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 smel s 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 cal 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 tel ing her to be careful.”

“Al 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 al 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 wil ow 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 bal of down against the darkness of the shade—separated from the others. It took the ful 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 fel over each other to ignore them. Others watched and waited for someone else to intervene.

The pigeon man was nearest. Grizzled and yel ow-toothed, he raised himself up from his bench, brushing pigeons off his lap as though they were spil ed 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, spil ing 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 al little ducks come back.

32

Weatherman Pete brushes milk foam from his mustache and motions toward the river with his paper cup. “Sewers are no place for little girls.” His van is parked up on a boat ramp in the shadow of Putney Bridge where eight-oared shel s skim the surface of the river like gigantic water beetles. Moley is asleep in the back of the van, curled up with one eye open.

“Where could they have kept her?”

Pete exhales slowly, making his lips vibrate. “There are hundreds of places—disused tube stations, service tunnels, bomb shelters, aqueducts, drains . . . What makes you think he's hiding down there?”

“He's scared. People are looking for him.”

Pete hums. “Takes a unique sort of individual to live down there.”

“He
is
unique.”

“No, you don't get me. You take Moley. If he disappeared down there you wouldn't find him in a hundred years. You see he likes the dark, just like some people prefer the cold.

You know what I mean?”

“This guy isn't like that.”

“So how does he know his way down there?”

“He's going from memory. Someone showed him where to hide and how to move around. A former flusher cal ed Ray Murphy.”

“Saccharine Ray! The boxer.”

“You know him?”

“Yeah, I know him. Ray was never real y the genuine article as a boxer. He took more dives than Ruud van Nistelrooy. I don't remember him working down the sewers.”

“It was a long time ago. After that he worked as a flood planner.”

A slow sweet smile spreads across Pete's face like jam on toast. “The old HQ of London Flood Management is underground—in the Kingsway Tram Underpass.”

“But there haven't been trams in central London for more than fifty years.”

“Precisely. The tunnel was abandoned. If you ask me it was a bloody sil y place to have a flood emergency center. It would have been the first place under water if the Thames broke its banks. Bureaucrats!”

The Kingsway Underpass is one of those strange, almost secret, landmarks you find in cities. Tens of thousands of people walk past it and drive over it every day with no idea it's there. Al you can see is a railing fence and a cobblestone approach road before it disappears underground. It runs beneath Kingsway—one of the busiest streets in the West End—

down to the Aldwych, where it turns right and comes out directly beneath Waterloo Bridge.

Weatherman Pete parks his van on the approach road, ignoring the painted red lines and NO STOPPING signs. He hands me a hard hat and pul s out a construction sign. “If anyone asks we work for the council.”

The remnants of the tram tracks are embedded in the stones and a large gate guards the entrance to the tunnel.

“Can we get inside?”

“That'd be il egal,” he says, producing the biggest set of bolt cutters I've ever seen. Moley moans and pul s a blanket over his head.

Trying to curb Pete's enthusiasm I explain that Gerry Brandt is dangerous. He's already put Ali in the hospital and I don't want anyone else getting hurt. Once we know he's in there, I'l cal the police.

“We could send a mole down the hole.” Pete nudges the bundle of blankets. Moley's head appears. “You're up.” Trooping down the ramp we look like a trio of engineers on our way to survey something on a typical Saturday morning. The padlock on the gate looks secure enough but the bolt cutters snap it like balsa wood. We slide inside.

Although I can only see about twenty feet of tunnel it appears to open out and grow wider before the darkness becomes absolute. The most obvious feature is a pile of road signs stacked against the wal s—street names, traffic controls, posts and paving slabs. The council must use the tunnel for storage.

“We should wait here,” whispers Pete. “No use us blundering around in the dark.” He hands Moley what looks like an emergency flare. “Just in case.” Moley presses his ear to the wal of the tunnel and listens for about fifteen seconds. Then he jogs forward silently and listens again. Within seconds he is out of sight. The only sounds are my heartbeat and the throb of traffic forty feet above our heads.

Fifteen minutes later Moley returns.

“There's someone there. About a hundred yards farther on there are two Portakabins. He's in the first one.”

“What's he doing?”

“Sleeping.”

I know I have to cal it in. I can talk directly to “New Boy” Dave and hopeful y bypass Meldrum and Campbel . Dave hates Gerry Brandt as much as I do. We look after our own.

But another part of me has a different desire. I can't rid myself of the memory of Gerry Brandt holding Ali against his back, looking directly at me, as he fel backward, crushing her spine. This is just the sort of place I wanted to find him—a dark place, with nobody around.

The police wil come charging in here, armed to the teeth. That's when people get hurt or get kil ed. I'm not talking conspiracies here, I just know the reality—people fuck up. I can't afford to lose Gerry Brandt. He's a violent impulsive thug who peddles misery in tiny packets of foil but I need him for Ali's sake and for Mickey's. He knows what happened to her.

“So what do you want to do?” whispers Pete.

“I'm going to cal the police but I also want to talk to this guy. I don't want him getting away or getting hurt.” The light from the entrance forms a halo around Moley's head. He cocks his face to one side and looks at me with a mixture of apprehension and expectancy. “He did a bad thing, this guy?”

“Yes, he did.”

“You want me to take you in there?”

“Yes.”

Pete gives it five seconds of contemplation and nods his head. It's like he does this every day of the week. Back at the van I cal “New Boy” Dave. Glancing at my watch, I realize that Ali wil be in surgery. I don't know the exact details but they're going to insert pins into her spine and fuse several vertebrae.

Weatherman Pete has col ected some gear from the van—extra flares and his “secret weapon.” He shows me two Ping-Pong bal s. “I make these myself. Black powder, flash powder, magnesium ribbon and a drop of candle wax.”

“What do they do?”

“Kerboom!” He grins at me. “Nothing but sound and fury. You should hear one of them go off in a sewer.” The plan is simple enough. Moley is going to make sure there are no other exits. Once he's in place, he'l set off the flash-bangs and flares.