Lost (6 page)

“Trajectories, impact velocity, yaw angle, the point of aim, distances, margin for error and blood patterns—” She stops in mid-sentence when she realizes that she has left us al behind. “I'm trying to work out how far away the shooter must have been, as wel as his elevation and how often he missed his target.”

“He hit me in the leg.”

“Yes, but he could have been aiming at your head.” She adds the word “Sir” as an afterthought, just in case I'm offended. “The shooter used Boat Tail Hol ow Point ammunition with a velocity of 2,675 feet per second. They're not widely available commercial y but nowadays you can source almost anything from Eastern Europe.” A thought occurs to her. “Would you mind helping me, Sir?”

“How?”

“Can you lie on the deck just here?” She points to her feet. “Half on your side, with your legs stretched out, one just crossing the other.” Letting go of my crutches I let her move me into position like an artist's model.

As she leans over me I get a sudden image of another woman bending to brush her lips against mine. The air twitches and the picture is gone.

DC Simpson takes the tripod and angles it down toward my legs. A bright red beam of light reflects on my trousers above my bandaged thigh.

Pure fear rushes through me and suddenly I'm screaming at her to get down. Everyone! Get down! I remember the red light, a dancing red beam that signaled death. I lay in darkness, doubled over in pain as the beam moved back and forth across the deck, searching for me.

Nobody seems to have noticed me screaming. The sound is inside my head. They're al listening to the DC.

“The bul et came down from here, entered your thigh here, exited and lodged in the deck. It nudged against your femur and tumbled end-on-end, which is why the exit wound was so large.”

She walks several paces away and uses a tape measure to check the distance between the side rail and another bul et hole. “For years people have debated whether momentum or kinetic energy is the best means of determining the striking power of a bul et. The answer is to merge the two parameters of bodies in motion. We have software programs that can tel us—based on measurements—the distance traveled by a particular bul et. In this case we're looking at 430 yards, with a two percent margin for error. Once we know the location of the shooting we can reconstruct the trajectory and find out where the shooter was hiding.” She looks down at me as though I should have an answer ready for her. I'm stil trying to slow my heart rate.

“Are you OK, Sir?”

“I'm fine.”

Joe is crouching next to me now. “Maybe you should take it easy.”

“I'm not a fucking invalid!”

Instantly I want to take it back and apologize. Everyone is uncomfortable now.

DC Simpson helps me stand.

“How much more can you re-create of what happened?” I ask.

She seems quite pleased with the question.

“OK, this is where you were initial y shot. Someone else got hit and fel on top of you. Traces of their bone and blood were found in your hair.” She sits down and drags herself backward until her back is braced against the side rail.

“One of the main clusters of bul ets is this one.” She points to the deck near her legs. “I believe you pul ed yourself back here to get cover but more bul ets went through the sides and hit the deck. You were too exposed, so—”

“I rol ed across the deck and took cover behind the wheelhouse.”

Joe looks at me. “You remember?”

“No, but it makes sense.” Even as I answer I realize that part of it must be memory.

The DC scrambles across the deck to the far side of the wheelhouse. “This is where you lost your finger. You wanted to look inside or to see where the shooting was coming from. You were badly wounded. You hooked your fingers over the ledge around the porthole and raised yourself up. A bul et came through the glass and your finger disappeared.” Dried blood stains the wal , leaking around exit holes in the splintered wood.

“We found twenty-four bul et holes in the vessel. The sniper fired only eight of them. He was very control ed and precise.”

“What about the others?”

“The rest were 9mm rounds.”

My Glock 17 self-loading pistol was signed out of the station armory on September 22 and stil hasn't been found. Maybe Campbel is right and I shot someone.

DC Simpson continues with her hypothesis. “I think you were dragged over the railing at the stern with the help of a boat hook which tore one of your belt loops. You vomited just here.”

“So I must have been in the water first—before I was shot?”

“Yes.”

I look at Joe and shake my head. I can't remember. Blood—that's al I can see. I can taste it in my mouth and feel it throbbing in my ears.

I look at the DC and my voice catches in my throat. “You said someone died, right? You must have tested the blood. Was it . . . I mean . . . did it belong to . . . could it have been

. . . ?” I can't get the words out.

Joe finishes the question and answers it al at once.

“It wasn't Mickey Carlyle.”

Back in the car, we edge through Tobacco Dock, past a gray square of water surrounded by warehouses. I can never tel if these new housing developments are gentrification or reclamation—most of them were derelict before the developers arrived. The dockside pubs have gone, replaced by fitness centers, cybercafés and juice bars sel ing shots of wheatgrass.

Farther from the river, squeezed between the Victorian terraces, we find a more traditional café and take a table by the window. The wal s are decorated with posters of South and Central America, and the air smel s of boiled milk and porridge.

Two gray plump women run the dining room—one taking orders and the other cooking.

Fried eggs stare up from my plate like large jaundiced eyes, along with a blackened sausage and a twisted mouth of bacon. Ali has a vegetarian sandwich and pours the tea from a stainless steel teapot. The brew is a dark shade of khaki, thick with floating leaves.

A local school has just broken for lunch and the street is ful of Asian teenagers eating buckets of hot chips. Some of them smoke by the phone box while others swap headphones, listening to music.

Joe tries to stir his coffee with his left hand and stal s, switching to the right. His voice cuts through the sound of metal knives scraping on crockery. “Why did you think Mickey might have been on the boat?”

Ali's ears prick up. She's been asking herself the same question.

“I don't know. I was thinking about the photograph. Why would I carry it—unless I wanted to recognize her? It's been three years. She won't look the same.” Ali glances from me to the Professor and back to me again. “You think she's
alive
?”

“I didn't imagine al this.” I motion to my leg. “You saw the boat. People died. I know it has something to do with Mickey.” I haven't touched my food. I don't feel hungry anymore. Perhaps the Professor is right—I'm trying to right the wrongs of the past and ease my own conscience.

“We should get back to the hospital,” he says.

“No, not yet, I want to find Rachel Carlyle first. Maybe she knows something about Mickey.”

Joe nods in agreement. It's a good plan.

4

The autumn leaves swirl across Randolph Avenue, col ecting against the steps of Dolphin Mansions. The place stil looks the same, with a white-trimmed arch over the entrance and bronze letters sandblasted into the glass above the door.

Ali taps impatiently on the steering wheel with short manicured fingernails. The place unnerves her. We both remember a different time of year, the haste and noise and sul en heat, the shock and sadness. Joe doesn't understand but must sense something. Shuffling through leaves, we cross the road and climb the front steps. The bottom buzzer automatical y opens the door between nine and four every day. Standing in the foyer, I glance up the central stairwel as though listening for a distant echo. Everything passes up and down these stairs

—letters, furniture, food, newborn babies and missing children.

I can remember the names and faces of every resident. I can draw lines between them on a whiteboard showing relationships, contacts, employment history, movements and alibis for when Mickey disappeared. I remember it not like yesterday but like I remember the meal I just ordered and failed to eat, the fried eggs and lean bacon.

Take Rachel Carlyle, for instance. The last time I saw her was at the memorial service for Mickey a few months after the trial.

I arrived late and sat at the back, feeling like I was intruding. Rachel's soft, drugged sobs fil ed the chapel and she looked devoid of hope and tired of living.

Some of the neighbors from Dolphin Mansions were there, including Mrs. Swingler, the cat lady, whose hairdo resembled one of her tabbies curled on top of her head. Kirsten Fitzroy had her arm over Rachel's shoulders. Next to her was S. K. Dravid, the piano teacher. Ray Murphy, the caretaker, and his wife were a few seats back. Their son Stevie sat between them, twitching and mumbling. Tourette's had hard-wired his movements to be quicker than a light switch.

I didn't stay for the whole service. I slipped outside, pausing to look at the plaque waiting to be blessed.

MICHAELA LOUISE CARLYLE

1995–2002

We didn't have time to say goodbye, my Angel, but you're

only a thought away.

There were no lessons to be learned, no logic or plot to be raked over, no moral comfort to be gained. According to the trial judge, her death had been pointless, violent and put into context.

I interviewed Howard Wavel a dozen times after that, hoping he might give up Mickey's burial place, but he said nothing. Periodical y, we investigated new leads, excavating a garden in Pimlico and dredging the pond in Ravenscourt Park.

I haven't talked to Rachel since then but sometimes, secretly, I have found myself parked outside Dolphin Mansions, staring out the windshield, wondering how a child disappears in five stories and eleven flats.

The old-fashioned metal lift rattles and twangs between the landings as it rises to the top floor. I knock on the door of number 11 but there's no answer.

Ali peers through the leadlight panels and then lowers herself onto one knee and pushes open the hinged mail flap.

“She hasn't been home for a while. There are letters piled up on the floor.”

“What else can you see?”

“The bedroom door is open. There is a dressing gown hanging on a hook.”

“Is it light blue?”

“Yes.”

I remember Rachel wearing the robe, sitting on the sofa, cradling the telephone.

Her forehead was pasty with perspiration and her eyes fogged. I had seen the signs before. She wanted a drink—she
needed
a drink—a steadier to get her through.

“Seven years old. That's a great age.”

She didn't respond.

“Did you and Mickey get on wel ?”

She blinked at me in bafflement.

“I mean did you ever fight?”

“Sometimes. No more than normal.”

“How often do you think normal families fight?”

“I don't know, Inspector. I only see normal families in TV sitcoms.”

She looked at me steadily, not with defiance but with a sure knowledge that I was fol owing the wrong line of questioning.

“Does Mickey hang out with anyone in particular in the building?”

“She knows everyone. Mr. Wavel downstairs, Kirsten across the hal , Mrs. Swingler, Mr. Murphy, Dravid on the ground floor. He teaches piano . . .”

“Is there any reason why Mickey might have wandered off?”

“No.” One bra strap slid down her shoulder and she tugged it back. It slid down again.

“Could someone have wanted to take her?”

She shook her head.

“What about her father?”

“No.”

“You're divorced?”

“Three years.”

“Does he see Mickey?”

She squeezed a bal of soggy tissues in her fist and again shook her head.

My marbled notebook rested open on my knee. “I need a name.”

She didn't reply.

I waited for the silence to wear her down but it didn't seem to affect her. She had no nervous habits like touching her hair or biting her bottom lip. She was total y enclosed.

“He would never hurt her,” she pronounced suddenly. “And he's not sil y enough to take her.”

My pen was poised over the page.

“Aleksei Kuznet,” she whispered.

I thought she was joking. I almost laughed.

Here was a name to conjure with; a name to tighten the throat and loosen the bowels; a name to speak softly in quiet corners with fingers crossed and knuckles rapping on wood.

“When did you last see your ex-husband?”

“On the day we divorced.”

“And what makes you so sure he didn't take Mickey?”

She didn't miss a beat. “My husband has a reputation as a violent and dangerous man, Inspector, but he is not stupid. He wil never touch Mickey or me. He knows I can destroy him.”

“And how exactly can you do that?”