Lost (5 page)

“How do we do that?”

“We talk. We investigate. We use diaries and photographs to prompt recol ections.”

“When did you last see me?” I ask him suddenly.

He thinks for a moment. “We had dinner about four months ago. Julianne wanted you to meet one of her friends.”

“The publishing editor.”

“That's the one. Why do you ask?”

“I've been asking everyone. I cal them up and say, ‘Hey, what's new? That's great. Listen, when did you last see me? Yeah, it's been too long. We should get together.'”

“And what have you discovered?”

“I'm lousy at keeping in touch with people.”

“OK, but that's the right idea. We have to find the missing pieces.”

“Can't you just hypnotize me?”

“No. And a blow on the head doesn't help either.”

Reaching for his briefcase, his left arm trembles. He retrieves a folder and takes out a smal square piece of cardboard, frayed at the edges.

“They found this in your pocket. It's water damaged.”

He turns his hand. Spit dries on my lips.

It's a photograph of Mickey Carlyle. She's wearing her school uniform and grinning at the camera with her gappy smile like she's laughing at something we can't see.

Instead of confusion I feel an overwhelming sense of relief. I'm not going mad. This
does
have something to do with Mickey.

“You're not surprised.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You're going to think I'm crazy, but I've been having these dreams.”

Already I can see the psychologist in him turning my statements into symptoms.

“You remember the investigation and trial?”

“Yes.”

“Howard Wavel went to prison for her murder.”

“Yes.”

“You don't think he kil ed her?”

“I don't think she's dead.”

Now I get a reaction. He's not such a poker face after al .

“What about the evidence?”

I raise my hands. My bandaged hand could be a white flag. I know al the arguments. I helped put the case together. Al of the evidence pointed to Howard, including the fibers, bloodstains and his lack of an alibi. The jury did its job and justice prevailed; justice pol ed on one day in the hearts of twelve people.

The law ruled a line through Mickey's name and put a ful stop after Howard's. Logic agrees but my heart can't accept it. I simply cannot conceive of a world that Mickey isn't a part of.

Joe glances at the photograph again. “Do you remember putting this in your wal et?”

“No.”

“Can you think why?”

I shake my head but in the back of my mind I wonder if perhaps I wanted to be able to recognize her. “What else was I carrying?” Joe reads from a list. “A shoulder holster, a wal et, keys and a pocketknife . . . You used your belt as a tourniquet to slow the bleeding.”

“I don't remember.”

“Don't worry. We're going to go back. We're going to fol ow the clues you left behind—receipts, invoices, appointments, diaries. We'l retrace your steps.”

“And I'l remember.”

“Or learn to remember.”

He turns toward the window and glances at the sky as though planning a picnic. “Do you fancy a day out?”

“I don't think I'm al owed.”

He takes a letter from his jacket pocket. “Don't worry—I booked ahead.”

Joe waits while I dress, struggling with the buttons on my shirt because of my bandaged hand.

“Do you want some help?”

“No.” I say it too harshly. “I have to learn.”

Keebal watches me as I cross the foyer, giving me a look like I'm dating his sister. I resist the urge to salute him.

Outside, I raise my face to the sunshine and take a deep breath. Planting the points of my crutches careful y, I move across the parking lot and see a familiar figure waiting in an unmarked police car. Detective Constable Alisha Kaur Barba (everyone cal s her Ali) is studying a textbook for her sergeant's exam. Anybody who commits half that stuff to memory deserves to make Chief Constable.

Smiling at me nervously, she opens the car door. Indian women have such wonderful skin and dark wet eyes. She's wearing tailored trousers and a white blouse that highlights the smal gold medal ion around her neck.

Ali used to be the youngest member of the Serious Crime Group. We worked on the Mickey Carlyle case together, and she had the makings of a great detective until Campbel refused to promote her.

Nowadays she works with the DPG (Diplomatic Protection Group), looking after ambassadors and diplomats, and protecting witnesses. Perhaps that's why she's here now—

to protect me.

As we drive out of the parking lot, she glances at me in the mirror, waiting for some sign of recognition.

“So tel me about yourself, Detective Constable.”

A furrow forms just above her nose. “My name is Alisha Barba. I'm in the Diplomatic Protection Group.”

“Have we met before?”

“Ah—wel —yes, Sir, you used to be my boss.”

“Fancy that! That's one of the three great things about having amnesia: apart from being able to hide my own Easter eggs, I get to meet new people every day.” After a long pause, Ali asks, “What's the third thing, Sir?”

“I get to hide my own Easter eggs.”

She starts to laugh and I flick her on the ear. “Of course I remember you. Ali Baba, the catcher of thieves.” She grins at me sheepishly.

Beneath her short jacket I notice a shoulder holster. She's carrying a gun—an MP5 A2 carbine, with a solid stock. It's strange seeing her carrying a firearm because so few officers in the Met are authorized to have one.

Driving south past Victoria through Whitehal , we skirt parks and gardens that are dotted with office workers eating lunch on the grass—healthy girls with skirts ful of autumn sunshine and fresh air and men dozing with their jackets under their heads. Turning along Victoria Embankment, I glimpse the Thames, sliding along the smooth stone banks. Waxing and waning beneath lion-head gargoyles, it rol s beneath the bridges past the Tower of London and on toward Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe.

Ali parks the car in a smal lane alongside Cannon Street Station. There are seventeen stone steps leading down to a narrow gravel beach slowly being exposed by the tide.

On closer inspection the beach is not gravel but broken pottery, bricks, rubble and shards of glass worn smooth by the water.

“This is where they found you,” Joe says, sliding his hand across the horizon until it rests on a yel ow navigation buoy, streaked with rust.

“Marilyn Monroe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It's nothing.”

Above our heads the trains accelerate and brake as they leave and enter the station across a railway bridge.

“They say you lost about four pints of blood. The cold water slowed down your metabolism, which probably saved your life. You also had the presence of mind to use your belt as a tourniquet.”

“What about the boat?”

“That wasn't found until later that morning, drifting east of Tower Bridge. Any of this coming back?”

I shake my head.

“There was a tide running that night. The water level was about six feet higher than it is now. And the tide was running at about five knots an hour. Given your blood loss and body temperature that puts the shooting about three miles upstream . . .”

Give or take about a thousand different variables, I think to myself, but I see where he's coming from. He is trying to work backward.

“You had blood on your trousers, along with a mixture of clay, sediment and traces of benzene and ammonia.”

“Was the boat engine running?”

“It had run out of fuel.”

“Did anyone report shots being fired on the river?”

“No.”

I stare across the shit-brown water, slick with leaves and debris. This was once the busiest thoroughfare in the city, a source of wealth, cliques, clubs, boundary disputes, ancient jealousies, salvage battles and folklore. Nowadays, three people can get shot within a few miles of Tower Bridge and nobody sees a thing.

A blue-and-white police launch pul s into view. The sergeant is wearing orange overal s and a basebal cap, along with a life vest that makes his chest look barrel shaped. He offers his hand as I negotiate the gangway. Ali has donned a sun hat as though we're off for a spot of fishing.

A tourist boat cruises past, sending us rocking in its wake. Camcorders and digital cameras record the moment as though we're part of London's rich tapestry. The sergeant pushes back on the throttle and we turn against the current and head upstream beneath Southwark Bridge.

The river runs faster on the inside of each bend, rushing along smooth stone wal s, pul ing at boats on their moorings, creating pressure waves against the pylons.

A young girl with long black hair rows under the bridge in a single scul . Her back is curved and her forearms slick with perspiration. I fol ow her wake and then raise my eyes to the buildings and the sky above them. High white clouds are like chalk marks against the blue.

The Mil ennium Wheel looks like something that should be floating in space instead of scooping up tourists. Nearby a class of schoolchildren sit on benches, the girls dressed in tartan skirts and blue stockings. Joggers ghost past them along Albert Embankment.

I can't remember if it was a clear night. You don't often see stars in London because of light and air pol ution. At most they appear as half a dozen faint dots overhead or sometimes you can see Mars in the southeast. On a cloudy night some stretches of the river, particularly opposite the parks, are almost in total darkness. The gates are locked at sunset.

A century ago people made a living out of pul ing bodies from the Thames. They knew every little race and eddy where a floater might bob up. The mooring chains and ropes, the stationary boats and barges that split the current into arrowheads.

When I first came down from Lancashire I was posted with the Thames Water Police. We used to pul two bodies a week out of the river, mostly suicides. You see the wannabes al the time, leaning from bridges, staring into the depths. That's the nature of the river—it can carry away al your hopes and ambitions or deliver them up unchanged.

The bul et that put a hole in my leg was traveling at high velocity: a sniper's bul et fired from long range. There must have been enough light for the shooter to see me. Either that or he used an infrared sight. He could have been anywhere within a thousand yards but was probably only half that distance. At five hundred yards the angle of dispersion can be measured in single inches—enough to miss the heart or the head.

This was no ordinary contract kil er. Few have this sort of skil . Most hit men kil at close range, lying in wait or pul ing alongside cars at traffic lights, pumping bul ets through the window. This one was different. He lay prone, completely stil , cradling the stock against his chin, caressing the trigger . . . A sniper is like a computer firing system, able to calculate distance, wind speed, direction and air temperature. Someone had to train him—probably the military.

Scanning the broken skyline of factories, cranes and apartment blocks, I try to picture where the shooter was hiding. He must have been above me. It can't have been easy trying to hit targets on the water. The slightest breeze and movement of the boat would have caused him to miss. Each shot would have created a flash, giving away his position.

The tide is stil going out and the river shrinks inward, exposing a slick of mud where seagul s fight for scraps in the slime and the remnants of ancient pylons stick from the shal ows like rotting teeth.

The Professor looks decidedly uncomfortable. I don't think speed or boats agree with him. “Why were you on the river?”

“I don't know.”

“Speculate.”

“I was meeting someone or fol owing someone . . .”

“With information about Mickey Carlyle?”

“Maybe.”

Why would someone meet on a boat? It seems an odd choice. Then again, the river at night is relatively deserted once the dinner-party cruises have finished. It's a quick escape route.

“Why would someone shoot you?” asks Joe.

“Perhaps we had a fal ing out or . . .”

“Or what?”

“It was a mopping-up operation. We haven't found any bodies. Maybe we're not supposed to.”

Christ, this is frustrating! I want to reach into my skul and press my fingers into the gray porridge until I feel the key that's hidden there.

“I want to see the boat.”

“It's at Wapping, Sir,” replies the sergeant.

“Make it so.”

He spins the wheel casual y and accelerates, creating a wave of spray as the outboard engine dips deep into the water and the bow lifts. Spray clings to Ali's eyelashes and she holds her flapping hat to her head.

Twenty minutes later, a mile downstream from Tower Bridge, we pul into the headquarters of the Marine Support Unit.

The motor cruiser
Charmaine
is in dry dock, propped upright on wooden beams and surrounded by scaffolding. At first glance the forty-foot inland cruiser looks immaculate, with a varnished wooden wheelhouse and brass fittings. A closer inspection reveals the shattered portholes and splintered decking. Blue-and-white police tape is threaded around the guardrails and smal white evidence flags mark the various bul et holes and other points of interest.

Ali explains how the
Charmaine
had been reported stolen from Kew Pier in West London fourteen hours after I was found. She rattles off the engine size, range and top speed.

She knows I appreciate facts.

A SOCO (scene of crime officer) in white overal s emerges from the wheelhouse and crouches near the stern. Running a tape measure across the deck, she makes a note of the measurement and adjusts a surveyor's theodolite mounted on a tripod beside her.

Turning, she shields her eyes from the sun behind us, recognizing the sergeant.

“This is DC Kay Simpson,” he says, making the introductions.

Only in her thirties, she has short-cropped blond hair and inquisitive eyes. She keeps staring at me like I'm a ghost.

“So what exactly are you doing now?” I ask, self-consciously.