Lost (37 page)

“I'm just making a pot of tea.”

“That real y won't be necessary.”

She doesn't hear me. “I have a cake.”

Brian Bird hobbles into view, a slow-motion cadaver who has a completely bald head and a face as wrinkled as crushed cel ophane. He rocks forward on a walking stick and takes what seems like an hour to lower himself into a chair.

Nothing is said as the tea is brewed, poured, strained and sweetened. Slices of cake are offered around.

“Do you remember when I last came to see you?”

“Yes. It was about that missing girl—the one we saw on the station platform.”

Rachel looks from Mrs. Bird's face to mine and back again.

“That's right. You thought you saw Michaela Carlyle. This is her mother, Rachel.”

The couple give her sad smiles.

“I want you to tel Mrs. Carlyle what you saw that night.”

“Yes, of course,” says Mrs. Bird, “but I think we must have been mistaken. That dreadful man went to prison. I can't think of his name.” She looks to her husband who stares at her blankly.

Rachel finds her voice. “Please tel me what you saw.”

“On the platform, yes . . . let me see. It was . . . a Wednesday evening. We'd been to see
Les Miserables
at the Queens Theatre. I've been to see
Les Miz
more than thirty times. Brian missed out on some shows because of his heart bypass operation. Isn't that right, Brian?”

Brian nods.

“What makes you think it was Mickey?” I ask.

“Her picture had been in al the papers. We were just going down the escalator. She was loitering at the bottom.”

“Loitering?”

“Yes. She seemed a little lost.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Wel , let me think. It's so long ago now, dear. What did I tel you then?”

“Trousers and a jacket,” I prompt.

“Oh, yes, although Brian thought she was wearing a pair of those tracksuit bottoms that zipped up over her shoes. And she definitely had a hood.”

“And this hood was up?”

“Up.”

“So you didn't see her hair—if it was long or short?”

“I couldn't tel .”

“What about the color?”

“Light brown.”

“How close did you get to her?”

“Brian couldn't move very quickly on account of his legs. I was ahead of him. We were maybe ten feet away. I didn't recognize her at first. I said to her, ‘Can I help you, dear? Are you lost?' But she just ran off.”

“Where?”

“Along the platform.” Her hand points the way, past Rachel's shoulder, and she nods resolutely. Then she leans forward with her teacup, using her other hand to find the saucer and bring both together.

“I think I talked to you back then about your glasses, do you remember?”

She touches the bridge of her nose self-consciously. “Yes.”

“You weren't wearing them?”

“No. I normal y don't forget.”

“Did she have pierced ears?”

“I can't remember. She ran off too quickly.”

“But you did say she had a gap in her teeth and freckles. She was also carrying something. Could it have been a towel?”

“Oh dear, I don't know. I didn't look that closely. There were other people on the platform. They must have seen her.”

“We looked for them. Nobody came forward.”

“Oh dear.”

A teacup rattles against a saucer. Rachel's hands are shaking. “Do you have grandchildren, Mrs. Bird?”

“Oh, yes, dear. Six of them.”

“How old are they?”

“They're aged between eight and eighteen.”

“And the girl you saw on the platform, she was about the same age as your youngest grandchild is now?”

“Yes.”

“Did she seem frightened?”

“Lost. She seemed lost.”

Rachel's eyes are fixed with an almost ecstatic intensity.

“I'm sorry I can't remember any more. It's so long ago.” Mrs. Bird glances at her hands. “It did look like her but when the police arrested that chap . . . wel . . . I thought I must have been mistaken. When you get old your eyes play tricks. I'm very sorry for your loss. Another cup of tea?” Back in the car Rachel is ful of questions, most of which I can't answer. There were dozens of reported sightings of Mickey in the weeks after she disappeared. Without any independent corroboration and given that Mrs. Bird wasn't wearing her glasses, I couldn't rely on her account.

“There must have been cameras at the station,” says Rachel.

“The footage is useless. We couldn't even tel if it was a child.”

Rachel is adamant. “I want to see it.”

“Good. That's where we're going now.”

The headquarters of London Underground is on Broadway, around the corner from New Scotland Yard. The Area Commander of the Transport Police, Chief Superintendent Paul Magee, is an old friend. I've known him for thirty years. Back in those days the IRA kept him awake at night. Now it's a different type of terrorist.

His face is thin and shaved. He looks almost youthful, despite his gray hair, which seems whiter every time I see him. Soon he'l pass for blond.

“You look like shit, Vince.”

“People keep tel ing me that.”

“I hear you're getting divorced again. What happened?”

“I forgot to put sugar in her tea.”

He laughs. Paul is married to a girl he met in grammar school. Shirley is a real keeper, who thinks I'm a bad influence but stil made me godfather to her eldest boy.

We're sitting in Paul's office, which has a view over Wel ington Barracks. He can watch the “new guard” march out every morning along Birdcage Walk to Buckingham Palace.

Rachel is hanging back, waiting for an introduction. He doesn't recognize her name. I tel him we need to see a CCTV tape from three years ago.

“We don't keep them that long.”

“This one you kept. I asked you to.”

He suddenly puts two and two together and glances back at Rachel. Without another word, he takes us out of his office and down the corridor, tapping security codes into consoles and leading us deeper into the building.

Eventual y, we're sitting in a smal room, waiting for a video player to rewind a tape. Rachel watches motionless, even her breathing seems suspended. Grainy black-and-white images appear on the screen. They show a figure near the bottom of the escalators at Leicester Square Underground. Assuming it's a girl, she is wearing a dark blue tracksuit and carrying something in her arms. It might be a beach towel. It could be anything.

There were twelve security cameras at the station, each mounted above platforms and escalators. The angles were wrong because they didn't pick up faces. No amount of computer enhancement could make someone look up into the lens.

She pauses at the bottom of the escalator, as though momentarily unsure of where to go. Mrs. Bird comes into view and then Mr. Bird a few moments later, planting his walker and shuffling behind her. Mrs. Bird can be seen saying something to the girl, who turns away, disappearing through an arch onto the southbound platform.

The time and date are displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen: 22:14, July 24, Wednesday evening.

A second camera on the platform picked up the girl again, but from much farther away. She appeared to be alone. A plump, dark-haired woman dressed in a nurse's uniform walked past her.

“So what do you think?” I ask Rachel.

She doesn't answer. I turn to face her and see tears wel ing up in her eyes. She blinks and they fal .

“Are you sure?”

She nods, stil silent.

“But she could be seven or seventeen. You can't even see her face.”

“It's her. I know my daughter. I know how she walks and holds her head.”

Nine times out of ten I would not believe it was anything more than a mother's desperate desire to believe her daughter is alive. That's why I didn't show Rachel the tape three years ago. It risked derailing the entire investigation, sending dozens of officers off on a tangent and diverting public attention instead of focusing it.

Now I believe Rachel. I know there isn't a judge or a jury in the land who would accept beyond doubt that Mickey is the person on the tape but that doesn't matter. The person who knows her best is sure. On Wednesday, July 24—two days after she disappeared—Mickey was stil alive.

31

The only other person in Joe's waiting room is a middle-aged man in a cheap suit that bunches at his shoulders when he folds his arms. He picks at his teeth with a matchstick and watches me take a seat.

“The secretary went to get coffee,” he says. “The Professor has a patient.”

I nod and notice him watching me. Final y, he asks, “Do we know each other?”

“I don't think so. Are you a copper?”

“Yeah. DS Roger Casey. They cal me the Dodger.” He moves a few seats closer and thrusts out his hand, at the same time eyeing up Rachel.

“So where are you working, Roger?”

“Vice out of Holborn.”

He's sitting close, feeling a sense of camaraderie. I should probably remember his face but a lot of guys his age have left the service in the past ten years.

“You heard this one,” he asks. “How many coppers does it take to throw a man down the stairs?”

“I don't know. How many?”

“None. He fel .”

Roger laughs and I offer him a chiseled smile. He lifts an eyebrow and goes quiet.

The Professor's secretary arrives back, carrying takeout coffee and a brown paper bag stained by a pastry. She looks barely out of school and blinks through wire-frame glasses as though she should have known we were coming.

“I'm DI Ruiz. Could you tel the Professor we're here?”

She sighs, “Join the queue.”

At that moment the inner door opens and a young woman emerges with red-rimmed eyes.

Joe is behind her.

“So I'l see you next week, Christine. Remember, it's not immodest to wear culottes and it doesn't make you less feminine.” She nods and keeps her eyes down. Everyone in the room does the same apart from Roger who starts giggling. The poor woman flees down the corridor.

Joe gives him an angry stare and is about to say something when he sees me sitting with Rachel. “Come inside, you two.”

“The Detective Sergeant was here first,” I suggest.

Joe shakes his head and sighs. “Oh dear . . . and you were doing so wel , Roger.” He turns to his secretary. “For future reference, Philippa, DI Ruiz is a
real
police officer. Not everyone who comes in here claiming to be a detective is a fantasist.”

Philippa's cheeks redden and Rachel starts to giggle.

“I'm sorry about Roger,” says Joe, as we're ushered into his office. “He pretends to be a police officer and tricks prostitutes into giving him free sex.”

“Does it work?”

“Apparently.”

“He's a freak!”

Joe looks at me awkwardly. “Wel , he's part of our team.”

There's a promising start!

Joe has spent the morning cal ing in favors. So far we have thirteen volunteers including two of my old rugby mates and a snitch cal ed “Dicko” who has a nose for trouble and no sense of smel at al , which unfortunately means his personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired.

Over the next hour the rest of the “team” arrives. Joe has managed to recruit his brother-in-law Eric and his younger sister, Rebecca, who works for the United Nations. Julianne is coming after she picks up Charlie from school. There are also several patients, including Margaret, who is nursing a torpedo-shaped life preserver, and another woman, Jean, who keeps disinfecting the phones with wet wipes.

Margaret sidles up to me. “I hear you almost drowned. Don't trust bridges.” She taps her orange torpedo reassuringly.

When the last of the stragglers arrive, I gather them in the waiting room. It is the strangest col ection of “detectives” I have ever commanded.

Pinning two photographs to a corkboard, I clear my throat and introduce myself—not as a Detective Inspector but as a member of the public.

“The two people in these photographs are missing. Their names are Kirsten Fitzroy and Gerry Brandt. We hope to find them.”

“What did they do?” asks Margaret.

“I believe they kidnapped a young girl.”

A murmur goes around the room.

“We need to discover how they're linked—when they met, where they talked, what they have in common—but most importantly we have to locate them. Each of you wil be given a task. You won't be asked to do anything il egal, but this is detective work and has to remain confidential.”

“Why don't we just ask the police to find them?” asks Eric, perched on the edge of a desk.

“The police aren't looking hard enough.”

“But you're a policeman!”

“Not anymore.”

Moving on, I explain that Kirsten was last seen going over the side of the
Charmaine
. “She suffered a stomach wound and may not have survived her injuries or the river but we're going to assume she's stil alive. Gerry Brandt is a known drug dealer, pimp and armed robber. Nobody is to approach him.” I glance at Dicko. The flesh around his mouth seems to be moving but no sound comes out.

Addressing him directly, I say, “I want you to talk to anyone who knows him—suppliers, junkies, mules, friends . . . He used to hang out in a pub on Pentonvil e Road. See if anyone remembers him.”