Lost

by Michael Robotham

  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 Wavell a dozen times after that, hoping he might give up Mickey's burial place, but he said nothing. Periodically, 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 well?”

  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 following the wrong line of questioning.

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

  “She knows everyone. Mr. Wavell downstairs, Kirsten across the hall, 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 ball 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 totally enclosed.

  “He would never hurt her,” she pronounced suddenly. “And he's not silly 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 will never touch Mickey or me. He knows I can destroy him.”

  “And how exactly can you do that?”

  She didn't have to answer. I could see my reflection in her unblinking stare. She believed this. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind.

  “There's something else you should know,” she said. “Mickey has a panic disorder. She won't go outside by herself. Her psychologist says she is agoraphobic.”

  “But she's only a—”

  “Child? Yes. People don't expect it, but it happens. Even the thought of going to school used to make her sick. Chest pains, palpitations, nausea, shortness of breath . . . Most days I had to walk her right to the classroom and pick her up from the same place.”

  The tears almost came again, but she found a place to put them. Women and tears—I'm no good with them. Some men can just wrap their arms around a woman and soak up the hurt, but that's not me. I wish it were different.

  Rachel seemed too damaged to hold herself together but she wasn't going to break in front of me. She was going to show me how strong she could be. I didn't doubt it. Any woman who walked away from Aleksei Kuznet needed courage beyond words.

  “Have you remembered something?” asks Joe, close to me now.

  “No. I'm just daydreaming.”

  Ali looks over the banister. “Maybe one of the neighbors knows where Rachel is. What about the one with the cats?”

  “Mrs. Swingler.”

  A lot of the neighbors have moved on since the tragedy. The Murphys were managing a pub in Dartford and Kirsten Fitzroy, Rachel's best friend, had moved to Notting Hill. Perhaps tragedy permeates a place like a smell you can't get rid of.

  Taking the lift to the first floor, I knock on Mrs. Swingler's door. Resting on my crutches, I hear her coming down her hallway. Long strings of colored beads threaded into her hair gently clack as she moves. The door opens a crack.

  “Hello, Mrs. Swingler, do you remember me?”

  She peers at me aggressively. She thinks I'm a health inspector from the local council, come to take away her cats.

  “I was here a few years ago—when Mickey Carlyle disappeared. I'm looking for Rachel Carlyle. Have you seen her?”

  The smell coming from inside is a fetid stench, part feline and part human. She finds her voice. “No.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  She shrugs. “Weeks back. She must have gone on holidays.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “Have you seen her car parked outside?”

  “What sort of car does she drive?”

  I think hard. I don't know why I remember. “A Renault Estate.”

  Mrs. Swingler shakes her head, making the beads clack.

  The hallway behind her is crammed with boxes and chests. I notice a small movement, then another, as though the shadows are shifting. Cats. Everywhere. Crawling out of boxes and drawers, from under the bed and on top of wardrobes. Dark shapes leak across the floor, gathering around her, rubbing against her pale legs and nipping her ankles.

  “When did you last see me?”

  She looks at me oddly. “Last month . . . you was in and out of here all the time.”

  “Was I with anyone?”

  She glances at the Professor suspiciously. “Is your friend trying to be funny?”

  “No. He has just forgotten a few things.”

  “You were seeing her upstairs, I suppose.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Her laugh rasps like a violin. “Do I look like your social secretary?”

  She's about to shut the door but thinks of something else. “I remember you now. You was always looking for that little girl got murdered. It's her fault, you know.”

  “Whose fault?”

  “People like her shouldn't have kids if they can't control them. I don't mind my taxes going to sick kiddies in hospitals and to fix the roads but why should I pay for single mothers, sponging on welfare and spending their money on cigarettes and booze?”

  “She didn't need handouts.”

  Mrs. Swingler hitc
hes up her caftan. “Once an alkie, always an alkie.”

  I step toward her. “You think so?”

  Suddenly she's less sure of her ground.

  “I'll be sure to tell my mother. One day at a time, eh?”

  The Professor pulls the cage door closed and the lift jerks into motion. When we reach the foyer, I turn back toward the stairs. I have searched this building dozens of times—in reality and in dreams—but I still want to search it again. I want to take it apart, brick by brick.

  Rachel is missing. So are the people who left bloodstains on the boat. I don't know what any of it means but a twitch of the brain, a nervous shudder and something like instinct tells me to worry.

  It's getting late. Streetlights are beginning to blink and taillights glow. We skirt along the side path and reach the rear garden—a narrow rectangle of grass surrounded by brick walls. A child's wading pool lies upturned in the shadows and outdoor furniture has been stacked outside a shed.

  Beyond the rear fence is Paddington Recreation Ground where muddy puddles dot the turf. To the left is a lane with garages, while to the right, across half a dozen walls, is the Macmillan Estate, a drab, postwar council housing estate. There are ninety-six flats, with laundry hanging from the balconies and satellite dishes bolted to the walls.

  This is the spot where Mickey and Sarah used to sunbathe. Above is the window Howard watched them from. On the day Mickey disappeared I came to the garden to find some shade and quiet. I knew then that she hadn't just wandered off. And a child doesn't accidentally go missing in a five-story mansion block. It felt like a kidnapping or something worse.

  Missing children, you see, no good news can come of them. Dozens disappear every day, mostly runaways or throwaways. A seven-year-old is different because the only possibilities are the stuff of nightmares.

  I crouch gingerly and stare into the pond where ornamental carp are lazily circling. I have never understood why people keep fish. They're indifferent, expensive, covered in scales and have such a fragile hold on their lives. My second wife, Jessie, was like that. We were married for six months and then I went out of fashion faster than male thongs.

  As a kid I bred frogs. I used to collect the spawn from a pond on our farm and keep them in a forty-four-gallon drum cut down the middle. Baby frogs are cute but put a hundred of them in a bucket and you have a squirming, slippery mass. They finished up invading the house. My stepfather told me I was “fantastic” at raising tadpoles. I'm assuming he didn't mean “fantastic” in a good way.

  Ali is standing next to me. She pushes hair behind her ears. “You thought she might already be dead on that first day.”

  “I know.”

  “We hadn't done background checks and SOCO hadn't arrived. There were no bloodstains or suspects, but you still had a bad feeling.”

  “Yes.”

  “And right from the outset you noticed Howard. What was it about him?”

  “He was taking photographs. Everyone else in the building was searching for Mickey but he went back to get his camera. He said he wanted to have a record.”

  “A record?”

  “Of all the excitement.”

  “Why?”

  “So he could remember it.”

  5

  By the time I get back to the hospital it's almost dark. The whole place has a sour smell like the dead air in closed-up rooms. I have missed a physiotherapy session and Maggie is waiting to change my bandages.

  “Somebody took some pills from the pharmacy cart yesterday,” she says, cutting the last of the bandages. “It was a bottle of morphine capsules. My friend is in trouble. They think it's her fault.”

  Maggie isn't accusing me but I know there's a subtext. “We're hoping the capsules might turn up. Maybe they were misplaced.”

  She withdraws, walking backward, the tray with bandages and scissors held before her.

  “I hope your friend doesn't get into too much trouble,” I say.

  Maggie nods, turns and is gone without a sound.

  Lying back, I listen to the carts and gurneys rattling to distant rooms and someone waking from a nightmare with a scream. Four times during the evening I try to phone Rachel Carlyle. She's still not home. Ali has promised to run her name and vehicle through the Police National Computer.

  There's nobody in the corridor outside my room. Maybe the weasels from the ACG have grown tired of watching me.

  At 9:00 p.m. I call my mother at Villawood Lodge. She takes a long while to answer the phone.

  “Were you sleeping?” I ask.

  “I was watching TV.” I can hear it buzzing in the background. “Why haven't you come to see me?”

  “I'm in the hospital.”

  “What's wrong with you?”

  “I hurt my leg, but I'm going to be fine.”

  “Well if it's not serious you should come to see me.”

  “The doctors say I have to be here for another week or so.”

  “Do the twins know?”

  “I didn't want to bother them.”

  “Claire sent me a postcard from New York. She went to Martha's Vineyard last weekend. And she said Michael might be doing a yacht transfer to Newport, Rhode Island. They can catch up with each other.”

  “That's nice.”

  “You should call them.”

  “Yes.”

  I ask her a few more questions, trying to make conversation, but she isn't concentrating on anything except the TV. Suddenly, she starts sniffling. It feels like her nose is right in my ear.

  “Good night, Daj.” That's what I call her.

  “Wait!” She presses her mouth to the phone. “Yanko, come and see me.”

  “I will. Soon.”

  I wait until she hangs up. Then I hold the receiver and contemplate calling the twins—just to make sure they're OK. It's the same call I always imagine making but never do.

  I imagine Claire saying, “Hi, Dad, how are you doing? Did you get that book I sent you? No, it's not a diet book; it's about lifestyle . . . cleansing your liver, purging toxins . . .” Then she invites me around for a vegetarian dinner that will purge more toxins and clear entire rooms.

  I also imagine calling Michael. We'll get together for a beer, swapping jokes and talking football like a normal father and son. Only there is nothing normal about any of this. I'm imagining someone else's life. Neither of my children would waste a phone conversation, let alone an evening, on their father.

  I love my children fit to bust—I just don't understand them. As babies they were fine, but then they turned into teenagers who drove too fast, played music too loud and treated me like some fascist conspirator because I worked for the Metropolitan Police. Loving children is easy. Keeping them is hard.

  I fall asleep watching a vacation program on TV. The last thing I remember is seeing a woman with a permanent smile drop her sarong and dive into a pool.

  Some time later the pain wakes me. There's a lethal swiftness in the air, like the vortex left behind by a passenger jet. Someone is in the room with me. Only his hands are in the light. Draped over the knuckles are polished-silver worry beads.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Don't believe everything you read about hospital waiting lists.”

  Aleksei Kuznet leans forward. He has dark eyes and even darker hair combed in rigid lines back from his forehead and kept there with hair gel and willpower. His other most notable feature is a pink puckered circle of scar tissue on his cheek, wrinkled and milky white. The watch on his wrist is worth more than I earn in a year.

  “Forgive me, I didn't ask after your welfare. Are you well?”

  “Fine.”

  “That is very pleasing news. I am sure your mother will be relieved.”

  He's sending me a message.

  Tiny beads of perspiration gather on my fingertips. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have come to collect.”

  “Collect?”

  “I seem to remember we had an arrangement.” His a
ccent is classic public-school English—perfect yet cold.

  I look at him blankly. His voice hardens. “My daughter—you were to collect her.”

  I feel as though some snippet of the conversation has passed me by.

  “What do you mean? How could I collect Mickey?”

  “Dear me, wrong answer.”

  “No, listen! I can't remember. I don't know what happened.”

  “Did you see my daughter?”

  “I don't think so. I'm not sure.”

  “My ex-wife is hiding her. Don't believe anything else.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because she's a cruel heartless bitch, who enjoys turning the knife. It can feel like a jousting stick.”

  The statement is delivered with a ferocity that lowers the temperature.

  Regaining his calm, he tugs at the cuffs of his jacket. “So I take it you didn't hand over the ransom.”

  “What ransom? Who wanted the ransom?”

  My hands are shaking. The uncertainty and frustration of the past few days condenses down to this moment. Aleksei knows what happened.

  Tripping over the words, I plead with him to tell me. “There was a shooting on the river. I can't remember what happened. I need you to help me understand.”

  Aleksei smiles. I have seen the same indolent, foreknowing expression before. The silence grows too long. He doesn't believe me. Bringing a hand to his forehead, he grips the front of his skull as though trying to crush it. He's wearing a thumb ring—gold and very thick.

  “Do you always forget your failures, Inspector?”

  “On the contrary, they're normally the only things I remember.”

  “Somebody must take responsibility for this.”

  “Yes, but first help me remember.”

  He laughs wryly and points at me with his hand. His right index finger is aimed at my head and his gold thumb ring is like the hammer of a gun. Then he smoothly turns his hand and frames my face within a backward “L”.

  “I want my daughter or I want my diamonds. I hope that's clear. My father told me never to trust Gypsies. Prove him wrong.”