In the first few months after his conviction he received bundles of fan mail. Many of the letters were from women who fell in love with his lonely countenance and his crime. One of them, Bettina Gallagher, a legal secretary from Cardiff, is a notorious pinup among the lifers. She sends pornographic photographs of herself and has twice been engaged to death row inmates in Alabama and Oklahoma.
Howard is allowed one free postage-paid letter a week but can buy more stationery and stamps from the prison shop. Each prisoner is also given a unique PIN number he must use when using the telephone. Pedophiles and child molesters can dial only approved numbers. Letters and calls are monitored.
These details rattle in the emptiness. I can't see Howard arranging a ransom drop—not from inside a prison cell.
“Give your eyes a chance,” my stepfather used to say when we were looking for newborn lambs on frosty nights. White on white is difficult to see. Sometimes you have to look past things before you really see them.
There used to be a really good comedian who called himself Nosmo King. I watched this guy for years and didn't realize where the name came from. NO SMOKING. Nosmo King. That's why you have to keep your eyes open. The answer can be right in front of you.
The Professor has opened his briefcase and pulled out a photograph album. The cover is frayed and silverfish have given it a mottled finish along the spine. I recognize it from somewhere.
“I went to see your mother,” he says.
“You did what!”
“I went to see her.”
My teeth are clenched. “You had no right.”
Ignoring me, he runs his fingers over the album cover. Here it comes—the search backward, the probing of my childhood, my family and my relationships. What does it prove? Nothing. How can another human being have any appreciation of my life and the things that shaped me?
“You don't want to talk about this.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you're poking your nose into my business—you're screwing with my head.”
It takes me a moment to realize that I'm shouting at him. Thankfully, there's nobody around except the barman and the sleeping drunk.
“She doesn't seem very happy in the nursing home.”
“It's a fucking retirement village.”
He opens the album. The first photograph is of my stepfather, John Francis Ruiz. A farmer's son from Lancashire, he's dressed in his RAF uniform, standing on the wing of a Lancaster bomber. Already losing his hair, his high forehead makes his eyes seem bigger and more alive.
I remember that photograph. For twenty years it stood on the mantelpiece beside a silver jubilee picture frame and one of those tacky snowballs of St. Paul's Cathedral.
John Ruiz went missing over Belgium on July 15, 1943, while on his way to bomb a bridge in Ghent. The Lancaster was hit by German fighters and exploded in midair, dropping like a fiery comet.
“Missing in action. Presumed dead,” the telegram said. Only he wasn't dead. He survived a German POW camp and came home to discover that the “future” he had fought so hard to protect had run off and married an American catering corps sergeant and moved to Texas. Nobody blamed her, least of all him.
And then he met Sofia Eisner (or Germile Purrum), a “Jewish” seamstress with a newborn son. She was striding down the hill from Golders Green, between two young friends, their arms locked together, laughing.
“Don't forget now,” shouted the eldest of them. “We're going to meet the men we're going to marry tonight.”
At the cinema at the bottom of the hill they came across a group of young men waiting in the queue. One of them wore a single-breasted jacket with notched lapels and three buttons.
Germile whispered to her friends, “Which one's mine?”
John Ruiz smiled at her. A year later they were married.
Joe turns another page of the album. The sepia images seem to have soaked into the paper. There is a photograph of the farm—a plowman's cottage with small leadlight windows and doors so low my stepfather had to duck his head to get through them. My mother filled the rooms with bric-a-brac and souvenirs, managing to convince herself they were heirlooms of her vanished family.
Outside the plowed fields were milk-chocolate brown and smoke fluttered like a ragged white flag from the chimney. In late summer wheels of hay dotted the hillsides like spilled lozenges.
I can still smell the mornings sometimes—the burned toast, strong tea and the talcum powder my stepfather sprinkled between his toes before pulling on his socks. As he closed the door the dogs barking excitedly, dancing around his feet.
I learned all about life and death on the farm. I snipped the scrotums of newborn lambs and pulled out the testes with my teeth. I put my forearm deep in a mare, feeling for the dilation of the cervix. I killed calves for the freezer and buried dogs that were more like siblings than working animals.
There aren't any photographs of everyday workings on the farm. The album records only special occasions—weddings, births, christenings and anniversaries.
“Who's this?” Joe points to a picture of Luke, who is wearing a sailor's suit and sitting on the front stairs. His blond cowlick stands up like a flag fall on an old-fashioned taxicab meter.
The lump forming in my throat feels like a tumor. Covering my mouth with my fingers, I try to stop the alcohol and morphine from talking but words leak out through my open pores.
Luke was always small for his age but he compensated for it by being loud and annoying. Most of the time I was at boarding school so I only saw him during the holidays. Daj would tell me to keep an eye on him and at the same time she'd tell Luke to stop bugging me because he constantly wanted to play Old Maid and to look at my football cards.
In the depths of winter when it snowed I used to go tobogganing down Hill Field, starting off near the front door and finishing at the pond. Luke was too young so he rode on a toboggan with me. Several hillocks along the way would throw us in the air and he squealed with laughter, clinging to my knees.
The track leveled off toward the end and a mesh fence sagged between posts having been hit so many times by braced feet.
My stepfather had gone into town to get a thermostat for the boiler. Daj was trying to hand dye my bedsheets a darker color to hide the semen stains. I can't remember what I was doing. Isn't that strange? I can remember every other detail with the clarity of a home movie.
At bath time we noticed him missing. We used a spotlight powered by the tractor engine to search the pond but the hole in the ice had closed over.
I lay awake that night, trying to will Luke into being. I wanted him to be lying in his bed, snuffling in his sleep and twitching like a dog dreaming of fleas.
They found him in the morning beneath the ice. His face was blue, his lips bluer. He was wearing hand-me-down trousers and hand-me-down shoes.
I watched from my bedroom window as they laid him on a sheet and tucked another beneath his chin. The ambulance had mud-streaked arches and open doors. As they lifted the stretcher I went flying out of the front door, screaming at them to leave my brother alone. My stepfather caught me at the gate. He picked me up and hugged me so hard I could barely breathe. His face was gray and prickly. His eyes were blurred with tears.
“He's gone, Vince.”
“I want him back.”
“We've lost him.”
“Let me see.”
“Go back inside.”
“Let me see.”
His chin was pressing into my hair. Daj had fallen to her knees beside Luke. She screamed and rocked back and forth, rubbing her fingers through his hair and kissing his closed lids.
She would hate me now. I knew that. She would hate me forever. It was my fault. I should have been looking after him. I should have helped him count his football cards and played his childish games. Nobody ever blamed me; nobody except me. I knew the truth. It had been my fault. I was responsible.
“We lost him,” my stepfather had sai
d.
Lost? You lose something down the back of the sofa or through a hole in your pocket; you lose your train of thought or you lose track of time. You don't lose a child.
I wipe the wetness from my eyes and look at the Professor. I've been talking all this time. Why did he start me on this? What does he know about guilt? He doesn't have to look at it every day in the mirror or scrape whiskers off its soapy skin or see it reflected in his mother's eyes. I turned Daj into an alcoholic. She drank with the ghosts of her dead family and her dead son. She drank until her hands shook and her world smeared like lipstick on the edge of a glass. Alcoholics don't have relationships—they take hostages.
“Please leave this alone,” I whisper, wanting him to stop.
Joe closes the photograph album. “Your memory loss was the result of psychological trauma.”
“I was shot.”
“The scans showed no injuries or bruising or internal bleeding. You didn't get a bump on the head. You didn't lose particular memories; you blocked them out. I want to know why.”
“Luke died more than forty years ago.”
“But you think about him every day. You still wonder if you could have saved him just like you wonder if you could have saved Mickey.”
I don't answer. I want him to stop talking.
“It's like having a film inside your head, isn't it, eh? Playing on a continuous loop, over and over—”
“That's enough.”
“You want to be riding down the icy hill with Luke sitting between your knees. You want to hold on tightly to him and drive your boots into the snow, making sure the toboggan stops in time—”
“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!”
On my feet now, I'm standing over him. My finger is pointed between his eyes. The barman reaches behind the counter for a phone or a metal pipe.
Joe hasn't moved. Christ, he's cool. I can see my reflection—desolate and hollow—mirrored in his eyes. The anger leaks away. My cell phone is rattling on the table.
“Are you OK?” asks Ali. “I heard about what happened at the station.”
Bile blocks my throat. I finally get the words out. “Have you found Rachel?”
“No, but I think I've found her car.”
“Where?”
“Someone reported it abandoned. It was towed away from Haverstock Hill about a fortnight ago. Now it's at a car pound on Regis Road. You want me to check it out?”
“No, I'll go.”
I look at my watch. It's nearly six. Car pounds stay open all night. It's not about the revenue, of course, it's about keeping the city moving. If you believe that I could sell you the Tower of London.
Finishing my beer, I grab my things. The Professor looks ready to wave me off.
“You're coming, too,” I tell him. “You can drive, just keep your mouth shut.”
12
Camden Car Pound looks like a World War II prison camp with razor wire on the fences and spotlights around the perimeter. It even has a wooden hut where a lone security guard has his polished boots propped on a desk with a small TV perched between his knees. I hammer on the window and his head snaps around. Swinging his feet to the floor, he hoists his trousers. He has a baby face and spiked hair. A nightstick in a leather pouch sways on his belt.
“My name is Detective Inspector Ruiz. You have a vehicle here that was towed from a street on Haverstock Hill two weeks ago.”
His eyes flick up and down, sizing me up. “You here to collect it?”
“No. I'm here to inspect it.”
He glances at the Professor, wondering why his left arm is trembling. What a pair we make—Hopalong Cassidy and Pegleg Pete.
“Nobody told me you was coming. I should have been told. You gonna pay the towing fee?”
“We're not taking the vehicle. We're just looking at it.”
Something stirs behind him. An Alsatian uncurls and seems to self-inflate until it stands as high as the desk. The dog growls and the guard hisses a command.
“Don't mind him. He won't hurt you.”
“You'll make sure of it.”
There must be a hundred cars on the lot, each with a number and grid reference. It takes the guard several minutes to find the details of Rachel's Renault Estate.
The reference says the car was found on Lyndhurst Road with the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. Someone had stolen the stereo and one of the seats.
He directs us across the pound, which is divided into painted squares.
Rachel's car is beaded with rain and the internal light doesn't work when I open the door. I reach inside and trigger it manually.
There is no front passenger seat. The space is empty except for a dark blanket bundled on the floor. Carefully lifting the blanket I find a bottle of water, chocolate bars and a hand-held periscope.
“Someone was meant to lie on the floor, out of sight,” says Joe.
“Rachel must have delivered the ransom. Someone went with her.”
We're both thinking the same thing—was it me? Campbell called me a vigilante. Aleksei said no police, which means there were no surveillance teams in cars, on motorbikes or in the air.
“If I were delivering a ransom, what would I make sure of?”
“Proof of life!” says Joe.
“Yes, but apart from that—when I was physically carrying the ransom, what would I be sure of?”
Joe shrugs. I answer for him. “Backup. I would have wanted someone following me, at least from a distance. And I would have made sure they didn't lose me.”
“How?”
“A tracking device.” I would have put one in the car and another with the ransom.
The universe suddenly shrinks to one thought. That's how Aleksei found me at the prison. And that's why Keebal wanted to search the house. One of the bundles of diamonds must have a transmitter.
Ali!
One ring, two rings, three rings . . .
“Pick up the phone. Pick it up now!” I wait several seconds. She's not answering.
I try her home number. Pick up the phone, Ali. Please.
“Hello.” (Thank God.)
“What did you do with my coat?”
“It's here.”
“Stay right there! Lock the door. Stay away from the windows.”
“What's wrong?”
“Please, Ali, just do as I say. There's a tracking device with the diamonds. That's how Aleksei found me.”
The traffic suddenly melts away. Joe has his foot down, weaving through backstreets, taking shortcuts across garage forecourts and parking lots. God knows where he learned to drive like this. He's either an expert or a complete amateur who's going to put us through a plate-glass window.
“What diamonds? What are you talking about?” he yells.
“Just shut up and drive.”
Ali is still on the phone.
“I might be wrong about the transmitter,” I tell her. “Just relax.”
She's already ahead of me—ripping open the packages. I can hear her breaking open the blocks of foam. I know what she's going to find. Radio transmitters can weigh less than eighty grams and have a battery life of three, maybe four weeks. My kitchen floor was dusted with polystyrene foam and scraps of plastic. I hollowed out the foam with a knife.
“I found it.”
“Disconnect the battery.”
Joe is yelling at me. “You have Aleksei Kuznet's diamonds! Are you crazy?”
The car swerves suddenly into Albany Street and he brakes hard, pulling us around a line of traffic. He accelerates again and we leap over a speed bump.
Ali lives in a run-down, crumbling neighborhood in Hackney, on a narrow street of soot-blackened warehouses and barred shop windows. She's still on the phone.
“Where are you now?”
“Close. Are the lights turned off?”
“Yes.”
In the background I hear a doorbell ringing.
“Are you expecting anyone?”
“No.”
“Don't answer it.”
Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty seconds pass. Then comes the sound of breaking glass.
“Someone just smashed a door panel,” says Ali, her voice thick with fear. The burglar alarm is sounding.
“Are you armed?”
“Yes.”
“Just give them the diamonds, Ali. Don't take any risks.”
“Yes, Sir. I can't talk anymore. Hurry!”
The phone goes dead.
The next few minutes are the longest I can remember. Joe has his foot hard on the floor, braking around the corners and running red lights. Weaving onto the wrong side of the road, he accelerates past three buses and forces oncoming cars off the road.
Wrenching the wheel, he puts us into a half spin, sliding around a tight bend. I'm thrown against the door and the phone smacks my ear. I'm calling the police, telling them there's an officer in trouble.
“It's the next on the left . . . about halfway down.”
There are terraced houses on either side of the road. The streetlights have turned everything yellow, including the pebble-dash façades and net curtains.
Ali's place is ahead of us. The burglar alarm is still ringing. The car brakes and I'm out of the door hobbling in a half run toward the house. Joe is yelling at me to slow down.
The front door gapes darkly. Pressing my back to the outside wall, I glance inside. I can see the hallway and the stairs to the upper floor. Sliding sideways, I move inside, letting my eyes get used to the darkness.
I have visited Ali's house once before. It was years ago. We sat outside on her roof garden, drinking beer and resting our feet on a skylight. Everything was painted gold by the sunset and I remember thinking that maybe London was the new Babylon after all. The thought disappeared in the darkness.
There's a living room just off the left and a dining room farther along the hall. The kitchen is at the rear. I can see moonlight coming through the window and no sign of a telltale silhouette.
The shrill alarm is shredding my senses. Running my fingers along the wall, I search for the control panel. The alarm will be linked to the main electric supply and have a backup twelve-volt battery with an anti-tamper switch.
Lost jo-2 Page 12