Lost (14 page)

“Wel , wel .” He makes a little church with his fingers. “Perhaps you took something from them.”

It's not an admission.

“We can discuss this.”

“Like gentlemen?” He's teasing me now. “You have an accent.”

“No, I was born here.”

“Maybe so, but you stil have an accent.”

He takes a long thin paper tube of sugar from his pocket and tears it open.

“My mother is German.”

He nods and pours the sugar on his tongue. “Zigeuner?” It's the German word for Gypsy. “My father used to say Gypsies were the eighth plague of Egypt.” The insult is delivered without any sense of malice.

“Do you have children, Detective?”

“Twins.”

“How old are they?”

“Twenty-six.”

“You see much of them?”

“Not anymore.”

“Maybe you forget how it feels. I am thirty-six now. I have done things I am not particularly proud of but I can live with that. I sleep like a baby. But let me tel you—I don't care how much someone has in the bank, until they have a child they have nothing of value. Nothing!”

He scratches at the scar on his cheek. “My wife turned against me a long time ago but Michaela was always going to be half mine . . . half of me. She was going to grow up and make up her own mind. She was going to forgive me.”

“You think she's dead?”

“I let you convince me otherwise.”

“I must have had a good reason.”

“I hope so.”

He turns to leave.

“I'm not your enemy, Aleksei. I just want to find out what happened. What do you know about the sniper? Does he work for you?”

“Me?” He laughs.

“Where were you on the night of September 25?”

“Don't you remember? I have an alibi. I was with you.”

He swivels and signals to the Russian who's been waiting like a dog tied to a post. I can't let him leave. He
has
to tel me about Rachel and the ransom demand. I grab his arm and twist it outward until his back arches and he drops to his knees. My walking stick clatters to the pavement.

Pedestrians and prison visitors turn to watch. It strikes me how vaguely ridiculous I must look—making an arrest with a walking stick. Vanity stil matters.

“You're under arrest for withholding information from a police investigation.”

“You're making a big mistake,” he hisses.

“Stay down!”

A shape materializes behind me and the warm metal of a gun brushes the base of my skul . It's the Russian, massive, fil ing the space like a statue. Suddenly, his attention shifts. Ali is standing with her feet apart in a half crouch and her gun pointed at his chest.

Stil holding Aleksei's arms, I put my face close to his ear.

“Is this what you want? Are we al going to shoot each other?”

“Nyet!” he says. The Russian takes a step back and slips the gun into its holster. He looks closely at Ali, memorizing her face.

I'm already steering Aleksei toward the car. Ali walks backward behind me, watching the Russian.

“Cal Carlucci,” Aleksei yel s. Carlucci is his lawyer.

Pushing his head down, he sits in the backseat. I slide in alongside him. My overcoat is hanging over the seat in front of us. Ali hasn't said a word but I know her mind is working faster than ever.

“You're going to be sorry,” mutters Aleksei, peering past me out the window. “You said no police. We had a deal.”

“Help me then! Someone shot me that night. I suffered something cal ed transient global amnesia. I can't remember what happened.” His tongue rol s around his mouth like he's sucking on the idea.

“Go to hel !”

Frank Carlucci is already at the Harrow Road Police Station when we arrive. Smal , tanned and very Italian, his face is wrinkled like a walnut except for around his eyes. A surgeon has been at work.

He scuttles up the stairs beside me, demanding to speak with his client.

“You can wait your turn. He has to be processed.”

Ali has stayed in the car. I turn back toward her. “Look after my coat.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Find the Professor. Tel him I need him. Then look for Rachel. She must be somewhere.”

Ali's face is ful of questions. She's not sure if I know what I'm doing. I try to muster a confident smile and turn back to Aleksei.

As we enter the charge room the place fal s silent. I swear I can actual y hear the indoor plants growing and ink drying on paper. That's how quiet things get. These people were once my friends and col eagues. Now they avoid my eyes or ignore me completely. Maybe I died on the river and just don't realize it yet.

I leave Aleksei in an interview room with Carlucci. My heart is pounding and I want to pul myself together. First up I cal Campbel . He's in a meeting at Scotland Yard so I leave a message on his voice mail. Twenty minutes later he comes storming through the front door looking for a cat to kick.

He finds me in the corridor.

“ARE YOU COMPLETELY INSANE?”

I put this down as a rhetorical question. “Would you mind keeping your voice down?”

“What?”

“Please keep your voice down. I have a suspect in the interview room.”

Calmer this time: “You arrested Aleksei Kuznet.”

“He knows about the ransom demand. He's withholding information.”

“I told you to stay away from this.”

“People were shot. Mickey Carlyle might stil be alive!”

“I've heard enough of this. I want you back in the hospital.”

“No, Sir!”

He lets out a deep growl like a bear coming out of a cave. “Surrender your badge, Detective. You're suspended!” Along the corridor a door opens and Frank Carlucci emerges fol owed by Aleksei. Carlucci yel s and points at finger at me. “I want that officer charged.”

“Fuck you! You want a piece of me? Outside!”

It's like someone hits a panic button inside me and I'm consumed by a bloodred rage. Campbel has to hold me back. I'm fighting at his arms.

Aleksei turns slowly and smiles. His physical smoothness is remarkable.

“You have something of mine. Like I said, I don't pay for things twice.”

11

I have been sitting in silence in an interview room, having finished my tea and eaten the ginger-nut biscuits. The room smel s of fear and loathing. Maybe it's me.

Given a choice, Campbel would have had me arrested. Instead he wants me taken back to the hospital because he can't guarantee my safety. In reality, he wants me out of the way.

Almost instinctively my fingers find the morphine capsules. My leg is hurting again but maybe it's my pride. I don't want to think about anything for a while. I want to forget and float away. Amnesia isn't such a bad thing.

This is where I interviewed Howard Wavel for the first time. He had been holed up in his flat for three days with people buzzing on the intercom and the media camped outside.

Most people would have disappeared by then—gone to stay with friends or family—but Howard wouldn't risk bringing the circus with him.

I remember him standing at the front counter, arguing with the desk sergeant. He rocked from one foot to the other, glancing over his shoulder. The short sleeves of his shirt stretched tight over his biceps and the buttons pul ed across his stomach.

“They put dog shit through my mailbox,” he said, incredulously. “And someone threw eggs at my windows. You have to stop them.” The desk sergeant regarded him with an exhausted authority. “Are you reporting a crime, Sir?”

“I'm being threatened.”

“And who exactly is threatening you?”

“Vigilantes! Vandals!”

The sergeant pul ed an incident pad from beneath the counter and slid it across the bench top. Then he took a cheap pen and placed it on the pad. “Write it down.” Howard looked almost relieved when I made an appearance.

“They attacked my flat.”

“I'm sorry. I'l send someone over to stand guard. Why don't you come and sit down.”

He fol owed me along the corridor to the interview room and I pul ed his chair nearer to the air-conditioning unit, offering him a bottle of water.

“I'm glad you're here. We haven't real y had a chance to catch up. It's been a long time.”

“I guess,” he said, sipping at the water.

Acting like we were old friends I started reminiscing about school and some of the teachers. With a little prompting, Howard added his own stories. There is a theory about interrogations that once suspects begin talking easily about any particular topic it is harder for them to stop talking about other topics that you raise or for them to suddenly start lying.

“So tel me, Howard, what do you think happened to Mickey Carlyle? You must have given it some thought. Everyone else seems to be trying to figure it out. Do you think she just walked out of the front door without anyone seeing her or was she abducted? Maybe you think aliens whisked her away. I've heard every bizarre theory you can imagine over the past seven days.”

Howard frowned and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. A pigeon landed on the ledge outside, beside the air-conditioning unit. Howard gazed at the bird as though it might have brought him a message.

“At first I thought she might just be hiding, you know. She used to like hiding under the stairs and playing in the boiler room. That's what I thought last week but wel , now, I don't know. Maybe she went to sel cookies or something.”

“There's a possibility I hadn't considered.”

“I didn't mean to sound flippant,” he said clumsily. “That's how I first met her. She knocked on my door sel ing Girl Scout cookies—only she wasn't wearing a uniform and the cookies were homemade.”

“Did you buy any?”

“Nobody else was going to—they were burned to a crisp.”

“So why did you?”

He shrugged. “She showed a bit of initiative. I got nieces and nephews . . .” The statement tailed off.

“I thought you might have a sweet tooth. Sugar and spice and al things nice, eh?”

A wave of pale pink shaded his cheeks and his neck muscles tightened. He couldn't tel if I was inferring something.

Changing focus, I took him back to the beginning, asking him to explain his movements in the hours before and after Mickey disappeared. His blinds had been drawn that Monday morning. None of his workmates saw him mowing the covered reservoir at Primrose Hil . At one o'clock the police searched his flat. He didn't go back to work. Instead he spent the afternoon outside, taking photographs.

“You didn't go to work on Tuesday morning?”

“No. I wanted to do something to help. I printed up a photograph of Mickey to put on a flyer.”

“In your darkroom?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I did some washing.”

“This is Tuesday morning, right? Everyone else is out searching and you're doing your laundry.”

He nodded uncertainly.

“There used to be a rug on the floor in your sitting room.” I showed him a photograph—one of his own. “Where is this rug now?”

“I threw it away.”

“Why?”

“It was dirty. I couldn't get it clean.”

“Why was it dirty?”

“I spil ed some potting compost on it. I was making hanging baskets.”

“When did you throw it away?”

“I don't remember.”

“Was it after Mickey disappeared?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“Where did you throw it?”

“In a Dumpster off the Edgware Road.”

“You couldn't find one closer?”

“Dumpsters get fil ed up.”

“But you work for the council. There must have been dozens of trash cans you could have used.”

“I . . . I didn't think . . .”

“You see how it looks, Howard. You cleaned up your flat, you took out the rug, the place smel ed of bleach—it looks like you might be hiding something.”

“No, I just cleaned up a bit. I wanted the flat to look nice.”

“Nice?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever seen these before, Howard?” I held up a pair of girl's panties enclosed in a plastic evidence bag. “They were found in your laundry bag.” His voice tightened. “They belong to one of my nieces. They stay with me al the time—my nieces and nephews . . .”

“Do they sleep over?”

“In my spare room.”

“Has Mickey Carlyle ever been in your spare room?”

“Yes. No. Maybe.”

“Do you know Mrs. Carlyle very wel ?”

“Only to say hel o when I see her on the stairs.”

“She a good mother?”

“I guess.”

“A good-looking woman.”

“She's not real y my type.”

“Why's that?”

“She's kind of abrupt, you know, not very friendly. Don't tel her I said that; I don't want to hurt her feelings.”

“And you prefer?”

“Um, you know, it's not a sexual thing. I don't know real y. Hard to say.”

“You got a girlfriend, Howard?”

“Not just now.”

He made it sound like he had one for breakfast with his coffee.

“Tel me about Daniel e.”

“I don't know any Daniel e.”

“You have photographs of a girl cal ed Daniel e—on your computer. She's wearing bikini bottoms.”

He blinked once, twice, three times. “She's the daughter of a former girlfriend.”

“She's not wearing a top. How old is she?”