Lost (18 page)

“Good morning, Inspector, welcome to our home. I trust you slept wel .” Her dark eyes seem to be smiling at me and her accent is incredibly proper as though I'm someone important. She doesn't even know me.

“Fine, thank you.”

“I have prepared you breakfast.”

“I normal y eat breakfast closer to lunch.”

Her look of disappointment makes me regret the statement. She doesn't seem bothered. She is already clearing the table from the first sitting. Some of Ali's brothers stil live at home. Two of them run a garage in Mile End, one is an accountant and the other is at university.

A toilet flushes at the rear of the house and Ali's father appears moments later dressed in a British Rail uniform. He has a salt-and-pepper beard and a bright blue turban.

Shaking my hand, he bows his head slightly.

“You are welcome, Inspector.”

Ali appears, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. Her father swal ows his disappointment.

“We're al British now, Babba,” she says, kissing him on the forehead.

“Outside these wal s, yes,” he replies. “In this house you are stil
my
daughter. It's bad enough that you cut your hair.” Ali is supposed to wear a sari when she visits her parents. I saw her once, looking self-consciously beautiful, wrapped in orange-and-green silk. She was on her way to a cousin's wedding. I felt strangely envious. Instead of being caught between two cultures she seemed to straddle them.

“Thank you for letting me stay like this,” I say, trying to change the subject.

Mr. Barba rocks his head from side to side. “That's quite al right, Inspector. My daughter has explained everything . . .”
Somehow I doubt that.

“You are very welcome. Sit. Eat. I must apologize for leaving.”

He takes a lunch box and thermos from the kitchen bench. Mrs. Barba walks him to the front door and kisses his cheek. Whistling steam bil ows from the kettle and Ali begins making a fresh pot of tea.

“You'l have to forgive my parents,” she says. “And I should warn you about the questions.”

“Questions?”

“My mother is very nosey.”

A voice answers from the hal way. “I heard that.”

“She also has ears like a bat,” whispers Ali.

“I heard that, too.” Mrs. Barba appears again. “I'm sure you don't talk to
your
mother like this, Inspector.” I feel a stab of guilt. “She's in a retirement home.”

“And I'm sure it's very nice.”

Does that mean expensive?

Mrs. Barba puts her arms around Ali's waist. “My daughter thinks I spy on her just because I come to clean her house once a week.”

“I don't need you to clean.”

“Oh, yes! And if you are Queen and I am Queen, who is to fetch the water?”

Ali rol s her eyes. Mrs. Barba directs a question at me. “Do you have any children, Inspector?”

“Two.”

“You're divorced, aren't you?”

“Twice. I'm trying for third time lucky.”

“That is sad for you. Do you miss your wife?”

“Yes, but my aim is improving.”

The joke doesn't make her smile. She puts a fresh cup of tea in front of me. “Why didn't your marriage work out?” Ali looks horrified. “You don't ask questions like that, Mama!”

“That's al right,” I say. “I don't real y know the answer.”

“Why not? My daughter says you are very clever.”

“Not in matters of the heart.”

“It's not hard to love a wife.”

“I could love one, I just couldn't hold on to her.”

Without realizing how it happens, I'm tel ing her how my first wife, Laura, died of breast cancer at thirty-eight and my second wife, Jessie, left me when she realized that marriage wasn't just for the weekend. Now she's in Argentina filming a documentary about polo players and most likely shagging one of them. And my current wife, Miranda, packed her bags because I spent more time in the office than I did at home. It sounds like a soap opera.

Mrs. Barba picks up on the melancholy note in my voice when I talk about Laura, who should have been my childhood sweetheart because then I would have known her longer than fifteen years. We deserved more.
She
deserved more.

One thing leads to another and soon I'm tel ing her about the twins—how Claire is dancing in New York and every time I see her disfigured toes I feel like arresting everyone at the New York City Bal et; and the last I heard from Michael he was crewing on charter yachts in the Caribbean.

“You don't see much of them.”

“No.”

She shakes her head and I wait for a lecture on parental responsibility. Instead, she pours another cup of tea and begins talking about her children and her faith. She doesn't see any difference between races or genders or religions. Humanity is al the same except in some countries where life is held more lightly and hatred gets a hearing.

Ali apologizes again for her mother when we get outside.

“I thought she was very nice.”

“She drives me crazy.”

“Wanna swap?”

We have changed vehicles since yesterday. Ali has borrowed a car from one of her brothers. I know it is part of her training—never using the same vehicle or driving the same route two days in a row. People spend years learning this stuff. I wonder what happens to them afterward. Are they frightened of the world just like Mickey Carlyle?

Edging through the traffic, north along the Edgware Road, I feel a sense of expectation. The uncertainty could end today. Once I find Rachel she'l tel me what happened. I might not
remember
but I'l know.

We cross a railway bridge and turn right into an industrial area, ful of car-repair shops, wrecker yards, spray painters and engineering workshops. Pigeons pick at the trash behind a café.

The road runs out and we pul up on a patch of wasteland littered with rusting drums, broken chimney pots, fence posts and scaffolding. An abandoned freezer, pockmarked by stones, rises above the weeds.

“This is where they found Rachel. She was sitting in the passenger seat of a stolen car,” says Ali, studying an ordinance survey map on her lap. “The car was reported missing the previous evening from a multistory parking garage in Soho.”

The skies have cleared and the sun is shining strongly, reflecting off the puddles. Climbing out of the car, I walk toward the freezer, moving gingerly across the broken ground.

The nearest factory or warehouse is fifty yards away. London is littered with sites like this one. People imagine high-density living with every spare foot being utilized, but there are thousands of empty warehouses, vacant blocks and patches of waste ground.

I don't know what I expected to find. Answers. Witnesses. Something familiar. Everybody leaves a trail. The ridiculous thing is, I can't look at a vacant lot without thinking what crops might grow there. I'm in the middle of a vast city and I'm thinking about barley and rapeseed.

“Why can't I remember any of this?”

“You might never have been here,” says Ali. “Rachel abandoned her car three miles from here.”

“I would have fol owed her.”

“How?”

“I don't know.”

Finding the smoothest path through the weeds and rubble, she moves ahead of me until we reach a wire fence. Beyond are railway tracks—the Bakerloo line. The ground trembles as a train rattles past.

Turning left at the fence, we come to a pedestrian footbridge over the tracks. The platforms of Kilburn Station are partial y visible to the north. The dual tracks have weeds growing at the edges and rubbish has col ected in the ditches.

It's a good location to drop a ransom. Quiet. The factories and warehouses would have been empty at night. There are major roads leading north and south. The railway line runs east-west. Ten minutes traveling in any direction would put someone miles away.

“I need you to get hold of the incident logs from the local police stations,” I tel Ali. “I want to know everything that happened that night within a two-mile radius—burglaries, assaults, parking tickets, broken streetlights, whatever you can find.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I'l tel you when I find it.”

The Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead is less than half a mile from where Rachel's car was abandoned and three miles from where she was found. Ali waits outside while I go through the main doors.

The receptionist is in her fifties with reddish-brown hair pinned tightly to her skul . She might be a nurse but it's hard to tel without a uniform.

“I'm Detective Inspector Ruiz. I need some information about a woman who was treated here two weeks ago.” I notice her name tag and add, “Thank you very much, Joanne.” She straightens and touches her hair.

“Her name is Rachel Carlyle. She was brought in by the police.”

Joanne is leaning on her elbows, looking at me.

“Perhaps you should check on the computer,” I suggest.

Blushing slightly, she turns to the keyboard. “I'm afraid Miss Carlyle is no longer a patient.”

“Why was she admitted?”

“I'm afraid I can't give you that sort of information.”

“What day did she check out?”

“Let me see . . . September 29.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Wel , there is an address . . . I'm not sure . . .”

I know what she's going to say. She's going to ask for some official identification or a letter of authority. I no longer have a badge.

Then I notice her staring at my hands, in particular my Gypsy ring. It's fourteen-karat yel ow gold, mounted with a champagne colored diamond. According to Daj it belonged to my grandfather, although I don't know how she knows this or how she managed to recover it from Auschwitz.

People are superstitious about Gypsies. My mother used to play on it. At school fetes and local fairs she would set down her cloth-covered table and shuffle the tarot cards, tel ing fortunes at a few quid a time. Private readings were conducted in the cottage parlor, with the curtains drawn and incense stinking the air.

“The dead come back through children,” Daj would say. “They steal their souls.”

None of this crap about Gypsy curses and fortune-tel ing impressed me but sometimes when I interview a suspect, I notice them grow suddenly anxious when they see my ring.

They look just like Joanne does now.

Her eyes move to my left hand—the one missing a finger.

“A bul et did that,” I say, holding it up for her. “Sometimes I think the finger is stil there. It itches. You were going to give me the address.” She shudders slightly. “I think her father might have signed her out. Sir Douglas Carlyle.”

“Don't bother about the address. I know where he lives.”

Sir Douglas Carlyle is a retired banker and a descendant of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. I interviewed him during the original investigation and he didn't seem to like me very much. Then again, he didn't have much time for Rachel either. The two of them hadn't spoken in eleven years—ever since she dropped out of university, embraced the politics of the left, and disowned him for being rich and titled.

Rachel did everything she could to provoke him, working part-time for homeless shelters, housing cooperatives and environmental groups, saving the world one tree at a time.

However, the real sword in her father's side was marrying Aleksei Kuznet, a foreigner and a flower sel er.

The thing that struck me about Sir Douglas was his equanimity and patience. He remained convinced that one day Rachel would come back to him. Now it seems he may have been right.

Parking out front of the large house in Henley, I self-consciously check my appearance in the side mirror. Titled people make me feel uncomfortable. I could never be a class warrior. A large white fountain dominates the garden, surrounded by paths that radiate between flower beds and angular patches of lawn.

I can hear laughter coming from outside and the gentle
thwack
of bal on racquet. There are wild cries of exultation and breathless moans of despair. Either someone is playing tennis or it's the soundtrack to a sixties blue movie.

The tennis court at the side of the house is hidden behind fences draped with ivy. We fol ow a path and emerge at a pagoda beside the courts, where trays of cold drinks have been set out on the table. Two couples are on court. The men are my age, sporting expensive suntans and muscled forearms. The women are younger and prettier, wearing miniskirts and midriff tops that show off their flat stomachs.

Sir Douglas is about to serve. With his aggressive countenance and eagle nose, he makes a social game look serious.

“Can I help you?” he asks, irritated by the interruption. Then he recognizes me.

“I am sorry to trouble you, Sir Douglas, I am looking for Rachel.”

Angrily, he slams the bal into the side fence. “I real y can't be dealing with this now.”

“It's important.”

He troops off the court with his playing partner, who brushes past me as she reaches for a zip-up jacket to stay warm. She towels her face and neck. It's a very long neck. I read about Sir Douglas's divorce from Rachel's mother.

“This is Charlotte,” he says.

She beams. “You can cal me Tottie. Everyone does. I've been Tottie forever.”

I can see that.

Sir Douglas waves to the far end of the court. “And those are friends of ours.” He shouts to them: “Why don't you go and get ready for lunch? We'l meet you inside.” The couple wave back.

Sir Douglas looks even fitter than I remember, with one of those deep suntans you see on sailing types and Australians. You could cut off his arm and the tan would go al the way through.

“Is Rachel here?”

“What makes you think that?” He's testing me.

“You col ected her from the hospital ten days ago.”

He plays an imaginary backhand. “I don't know if you recal , Inspector, but my daughter has never liked me very much. She thinks the Establishment is some sort of criminal society like the Mafia and that I am the Godfather. She doesn't believe in titles or privilege or the education that I paid for. She thinks there is only dignity in being poor and has swal owed the popular mythology of the working class being ful of decent hardworking people possessed of piety and common sense. Breeding, however, is a curse.”