Lost (25 page)

Fine. I'l make sure you're sharing a cel with the biggest, meanest faggot in the place. You won't have to get out of bed at al , Tony. He'l let you stay there
all
day.” I can see him eyeing a butter knife on the table but it's only a fleeting thought.

“It was about three weeks ago. I gave him a lift into South London and picked him up that afternoon.”

“What was he doing?”

“I dunno. He wouldn't talk about it.” Tony's voice rises. “None of this involves me, you know. Not a fucking thing.”

“So you think he was up to something?”

“I don't know.”

“But you know something, don't you? You got suspicions.”

He chases spit around his mouth with his tongue, trying to decide what to tel me. “There's a guy I used to share a cel with at Brixton nick. Gerry Brandt. We cal ed him Grub.” There's a name I haven't heard for a while.

Tony is stil talking. “Never seen anyone sleep like Grub. Never. You'd swear he was dead half the time except his chest was moving up and down. Guys would be kicking off in their cel s or getting beat up by screws but Grub would sleep through it al , drooling over himself like a baby. I'm tel ing you, that guy could
sleep
.” Tony takes another swig of orange juice. “Grub was only in for a few months. I hadn't seen him in years, you know, but about three months ago he turned up here looking like a playboy with a suntan and a suit.”

“He had money?”

“Maybe on his back, but he was driving a heap of shit. Not worth stealing, not worth burning.”

“What did he want?”

“I dunno. He didn't come to see me. He wanted to talk to the old man. I didn't hear what they were saying but they argued about something. My old man was spitting chips. Later he said Grub was looking for a job, but I know that's bul shit. Gerry Brandt don't wash glasses. He thinks he's a player.”

“They were doing business.”

Tony shrugs. “Fuck knows. I didn't even know they knew each other.”

“When you shared a cel with this Gerry Brandt, did you ever mention your old man to him?”

“Might have said something. Cel talk, you know.”

“And when your dad went up to London, what makes you think he was going to see Gerry?”

“I dropped him outside a boozer on Pentonvil e Road. I remember Grub talking 'bout the place. It was his local.” I take a photograph of Kirsten from my jacket pocket and slide it across the table. “Do you recognize her?” Tony studies it for a moment. Lying comes easier than tel ing the truth, which is why he takes so long. He shakes his head. I believe him.

Back in the car I go over the details with Ali, letting her bounce questions off me. She is one of those people who reasons out loud whereas I work things out in my head.

“Do you remember someone cal ed Gerry Brandt?”

She shrugs. “Who is he?”

“A nasty toerag with a toilet mouth and a taste for pimping.”

“Charming.”

“His name came up in the original investigation. When Howard was taking photographs outside Dolphin Mansions on the day Mickey disappeared, Gerry Brandt turned up in one of the shots—a face in the crowd. Later his name popped up again, this time on the sex offender's register. He had an early conviction for sex with a minor. Nobody read much into the sex charge. He was seventeen at the time and the girl was fourteen. They knew each other. We wanted to interview Gerry but we couldn't find him. He just seemed to vanish. Now he's turned up again. According to Tony, he came to see Ray Murphy three months back.”

“It could be just a coincidence.”

“Maybe.”

Kirsten Fitzroy and Ray Murphy are both missing. Three years ago they provided each other with alibis when Mickey disappeared. She must have walked straight past Kirsten's door on her way downstairs to meet Sarah. Meanwhile, Sir Douglas Carlyle was paying Kirsten to keep watch on Rachel and gather evidence for a custody application.

Perhaps he decided to go one step further and have his granddaughter kidnapped. It doesn't explain where she's been or why a ransom demand has arrived three years later.

Maybe Ali is right and it's al a hoax. Kirsten could have col ected Mickey's hair from a pil ow or a brush. She might have known about the money box. She could have concocted a plan to take advantage of the situation.

A chil wades through my skin like it's five o'clock in the morning. The Professor says coincidences are just two things happening simultaneously, but I don't believe that. Nothing twists a knife quicker than fate.

19

The Thames Water truck is parked halfway down Priory Road, facing south into the low sun. A foreman is standing beside it, sucking on a cigarette. He straightens up and adjusts his crotch. “This is my day off, it had better be important.”

Not surprisingly, he looks like a man with nothing more important to do than play bil iards with his mates at the pub.

Ali makes the introductions and the foreman grows more circumspect.

“Mr. Donovan, on September 26 you repaired a burst water main in this street.”

“Why? Is someone complaining? We did nothing wrong.”

Interrupting his excuses, I tel him I just want to know what happened.

Crushing the cigarette under his heel, he nods toward a dark stain of fresh bitumen covering thirty feet of road. “Looked like the Grand fucking Canyon, it did. Half this road got washed away. I ain't never seen a water main rupture like that one.”

“How do you mean?”

He hitches up his trousers. “Wel , you see, some of these pipes have been around for a hundred years and they're wearing out. Fix one and another one goes. Bang! It's like trying to plug a dozen holes when you only got ten fingers.”

“But this one was different?”

“Yeah. Mostly they break on a join—the weakest point. This one just sort of blew apart.” He presses his hands together and springs them open. “We couldn't reseal it. We had to replace twenty feet of pipe.”

“Any idea what would have caused a break like that?” asks Ali.

He shakes his head and adjusts his crotch again. “Lew, a guy on our crew, used to be a sapper in the army. He reckoned it was some sort of explosion because of the way the metal got bent out of shape. He figured maybe a pocket of methane ignited in the sewers.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Nope. Used to happen a lot. Nowadays they vent the sewers better. I heard about something similar to this a few years back. Flooded six streets in Bayswater.” Ali has been walking up and down the road, peering between her feet. “How do you know where the pipes are?” she asks.

“That depends,” says Donovan. “A magnetometer can pick up iron and sometimes we need ground-probing radar, but in most cases you don't need any gizmos. The mains are built alongside the sewers.”

“And how do you find those?”

“You walk downhil . The whole system is gravity fed.”

Crouching down I run my fingers over a metal grate covering a drain. The bars are about three-quarters of an inch apart. The ransom had been wrapped very careful y. Each package was waterproof and designed to float. They were 6 inches long, 21⁄2 inches wide and 3⁄4 inch deep . . . just the right size.

Whoever sent the demand must have expected a tracking device. And the one place a transmitter or a global positioning system can't operate is below ground.

“Can you get me down in the drains, Mr. Donovan?”

“You're joking, right?”

“Humor me.”

He rocks his hand back and forth. “Since 9/11 they been right edgy about the sewers. You take the Tyburn sewer—it runs right under the U.S. ambassador's residence and Buckingham Palace. The Tachbrook goes under Pimlico. You won't find 'em on maps—least not the maps they publish nowadays. And you won't even find the records in public libraries.

They took 'em away.”

“But it stil must be possible. I can make an application.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Might take a while.”

“How long?”

He rubs his chin. “Few weeks, I guess.”

I can see where this is going. The vast, moribund wheels of British bureaucracy wil take my request and pass it between committees, subcommittees and working groups where it wil be debated, deliberated upon, knocked about and run up the flagpole—and that's just to decide a form of words for the rejection.

Wel , there is more than one way to skin a cat. There are three according to the Professor and he should know—he's been to medical school.

Nearly a decade ago in the battle over the Newbury bypass a man lived in a hole no wider than his shoulders for sixteen days. We had to dig him out but he could tunnel faster with his bare hands than a dozen men with picks and shovels.

Back then he cal ed himself an eco-warrior, fighting the “earth rapists.” The tabloids nicknamed him “Moley.” It takes Ali three hours and fifty quid in bribes to find his last known address—an abandoned warehouse in Hackney in one of those run-down areas that are hard to find unless you have a can of spray paint or need a “fix.”

Driving slowly between soot-blackened factories and boarded-up shops, we pul up opposite a wasteland where kids have marked out footbal goals with their puffer jackets.

Our arrival is noted. The message wil be telegraphed through the neighborhood on whatever grapevine reaches under rocks and into holes.

“Maybe I should stay with the car,” suggests Ali, “while it stil has four wheels.”

Ahead of us, a disused factory has soaked up layers of graffiti until one forms an undercoat for the next. To the right is a raised loading dock and large shutters. It includes a regulation doorway that has been covered with a sheet of corrugated iron. Levering it open, I step inside. Shafts of light slant through windows high up on the wal s turning floating cobwebs into silver threads.

The ground floor is mostly empty, apart from discarded crates and boxes. Climbing to the second floor, I find a series of former offices, with broken plasterboard panels and exposed wires. One particular room, barely six feet square, has a narrow shelf with a blanket and a mattress stuffed with clothes. A pair of trousers hangs from a nail and cans of food are lined up on a beam. Resting on a box in the center of the room is a tin plate and a mug with a Batman logo.

I trip over an oil lamp on the floor and catch it before it breaks. The glass is warm. He must have heard me coming.

Around me the wal s are plastered with sheets of newspaper and old election posters, forming a col age of faces from the news—Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair, Yasser Arafat and David Beckham. George W. Bush is dressed in desert fatigues holding a Thanksgiving turkey.

Another page has a picture of Art Carney along with an obituary. I didn't know Art Carney had died. I always remember him in
The Honeymooners
with Jackie Gleason. He was the neighbor upstairs. In this one episode he and Jackie are trying to learn golf from a book and Jackie says to him, “First you must address the bal .” So Art gives it a wave and says, “Hel oooo bal !”

At precisely that moment my fist punches through the newspaper and closes around a clump of filthy, matted hair. Dragging my arm forward, the paper shreds and a squealing, feral creature squirms at my feet.

“I didn't do it! It wasn't me!” cries Moley, as he rol s into a bal . “Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!”

“Nobody is going to hurt you. I'm the police.”

“Trespassing. You're trespassing. You got no right! You can't just come in here—you can't.”

“You're squatting il egal y, Moley, I don't think you have many rights.”

He looks up at me with pale eyes in a paler face. His hair has been twisted into dreadlocks that hang down his neck like rattails. He's wearing cargo pants and a camouflage jacket with metal buckles and handles that look like ripcords for a nonexistent parachute.

Having coaxed him to sit on a packing case, he watches me suspiciously. I marvel at his makeshift furniture.

“I like your place.”

“Keeps the rain off,” he says, with no hint of sarcasm. His sideburns make him look like a badger. He scratches his neck and under his arms. Christ, I hope it's not contagious.

“I need to go into the sewers.”

“Not al owed.”

“But you can show me.”

He shakes his head and nods at the same time. “No. No. No. Not al owed.”

“I told you, Moley, I'm a police officer.”

I light the oil lamp and set it on a box. Then I spread a map on the floor, smoothing the creases. “Do you know this place?” I point to Priory Road but Moley stares at it blankly.

“It's near the corner of Abbot's Place,” I explain. “I'm looking for a storm-water drain or a sewer.”

Moley scratches his neck.

Suddenly, it dawns on me—he can't read a map. Al his points of reference are below ground and he can't equate them to crossroads or landmarks above ground.

I take an orange from my pocket and put it on the map. It rol s several times and rocks to a stop. “You can show me.” Moley watches it intensely. “Fol ow the fal . Water finds the way.”

“Yes, exactly, but I need your help.”

Moley is stil fixated by the orange. I hand it to him and he puts it into his pocket, zipping it closed. “You want to see where the devil lives.”