Lost (34 page)

A wind has sprung up, rattling fences and sending rubbish swirling past my legs. There are lights along the path, making it easier to see. Abruptly, the footpath opens into a deserted parking lot. A solitary lamppost at the center paints a dome of yel ow on the tarmac. I remember a traffic cone sitting under the light. I ran toward it, holding the pizza box under one arm. It seemed an odd place to bring me. It was too open.

Joe has caught up with me. We're standing beneath the lamppost. At my feet is a barred metal grate.

“He wanted me to push the packages into the drain.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him I wanted to see Mickey. He threatened to hang up again. His voice was very calm. He said she was close.”

“Where?”

I turn my head. Thirty yards away is the dark outline of a storm-water drain. “He said she was waiting for me . . . down there.” Walking to the edge, we peer over the side. The steep concrete wal s are sprayed with graffiti.

“I couldn't see her. It was too dark. I shouted her name. ‘
Mickey! Can you hear me?
' I was yel ing into the phone. ‘I can't see her. Where is she?' ‘She's in the pipe,' he said.

‘
Where?
' I shouted: ‘
Mickey. Are you in there?
'”

Joe has hold of me now. He's frightened I might fal over the edge. At the same time he wants me to go on. “Show me,” he says.

Set into the wal of the drain is a steel ladder. The rungs feel cold against my fingers. Joe is fol owing me down. I couldn't hold the Glock and carry the pizza box at the same time. I left the gun in its holster and tucked the pizza box under my arm.

“‘
Mickey! Can you hear me?
' ”

My feet touch the bottom. Against the nearside wal I can just make out the deeper shadow of an access pipe.

She must have been in the pipe. It was the only place to hide.

“‘
Michaela?
'”

There was a muffled rumble, like distant thunder. I could feel it through my shoes. I reached for my gun but left it there.

“‘
Mickey?
'”

Wind ruffled my hair and I heard a rushing sound, like a train in a tunnel or the thunder of hooves on a loading ramp. My head jerked left and right, looking for her. The sound grew louder. It was coming toward me, coming out of the darkness . . . a wave.

Again the door opens and the world dissolves into noise and movement. Gravity is no more. I am flying, tumbling over and over, as an ocean roars past my ears. Head up, half a breath and I'm underwater, plunging into blackness.

Total y disoriented, I can't find the surface. I'm dragged sideways by the current and carried down a pipe or tunnel. My fingernails are torn and broken as they claw at the slick sides.

Seconds later I tumble into another vertical shaft. Snatching half a breath, I suck in silt and shit and detritus. I'm in a flooded sewer, ful of reeking gases and decomposing turds.

I'm going to die down here.

There are flashes of light above me. Iron grates. I reach out and my fingers close around the metal bars. The pressure of the water surges against my chest and neck, fil ing my mouth with foulness.

Holding my mouth and nose above the water, I try to push the grate upward. It won't budge. The force of the water pul s me horizontal y.

Through the grate I see lights. Moving shapes. Pedestrians. Traffic. I try to scream something. They can't hear me. Someone steps off the pavement and tosses a cigarette into the gutter. Red sparks shower into my eyes.

“Help me! Help me!”

Something is crawling on my shoulder. A rat digs its claws into my shirt, dragging its sodden body from the current. I can smel wet fur and see sharp teeth, reflected in the square of light. My whole body shudders. Rats are al around me clinging to crevices.

Finger by finger, my hands surrender. I can't hold on much longer. The current is too strong. I think of Luke. He had such great lungs; air-sucking bags. He could hold his breath for much longer than I could, but not beneath the ice.

He was a stubborn little tyke. I used to give him Chinese burns. “Give up?” I'd say.

Tears would be wel ing in his eyes. “Never!”

“You just have to give up and I won't hurt you anymore.”

“No.”

In awe of him I'd offer a truce, but he'd refuse.

“OK, OK, you win,” I'd say, sick of the game and embarrassed at hurting him.

My last finger surrenders. I rol faceup in the current and take a deep sulfurous breath. Washed into darkness, I tumble over a waterfal and get dragged into a larger pipe.

I don't know where the ransom has gone. Washed away, along with my shoes. And what of Mickey—is she drowning somewhere ahead of me or behind me? I heard a soft cry when I peered into the pipe. Perhaps it was the wind or the rats.

So this is how it ends! I am going to drown in stinking slime water, which is pretty much how I've lived—in a putrid soup of thieves, liars, murderers and victims. I'm a rat catcher and a sewer hunter, a bone grubber and a muck dredger. Poverty, ignorance and inequality create criminals, and I lock them away so that polite society doesn't have to smel them or fear them.

My shoulder strikes something hard and the pressure of the water rol s me over. Gulping a mouthful of air, I flay from side to side, trying to find a handhold as I tumble down a sloping ramp or weir.

Blindly, I plunge into a deep pool. I don't know which way is up. I could be swimming away from safety. My hand breaks the surface but the current won't let me go. A whirlpool drags me around and around, sucking me under. I want the air but the water wins.

The end is close now. I'm inside a narrow pipe, barely wide enough for my shoulders. There is no air pocket. My chest feels like it is wrapped in cables pul ed tight with a ratchet.

I need to breathe. Carbon dioxide is building up in my blood. I'm being poisoned from within. The instinct not to breathe is being overcome by the agony of airlessness. My mouth opens. The first involuntary breath fil s my windpipe with water. My throat contracts but can't stop water flooding into my lungs. I'm as helpless as the day I was born.

My shoulders are no longer scraping along the wal s. A different, slower current has picked me up, turning me over and over like a leaf caught in a gust of wind.

I'm dying but I can't accept it. Above me—or maybe it's below—there is a solid gray light. I feel myself rising, fighting for the surface; climbing one hand at a time as if trying to pul the light toward me like it's a candelabrum at the end of a long table. The last few strokes are impossibly hard.

Breaking free, I vomit water and phlegm, making room for that first breath. A floodlight is blinding me. Something hard hooks my belt from behind and hauls me upward, dragging me onto a wooden deck. My lungs are heaving in their cage like bloated battery hens. Strong hands pump my stomach. Someone leans over me and wipes my chin and neck.

It's Kirsten Fitzroy!

I lol back against her arm. She strokes my head, pushing wet hair across my forehead.

“Jesus, you're a crazy bastard!” she mutters, wiping my mouth again.

My stomach is stil contracting and I can't speak.

The boat engine is idling in neutral. I can smel the fumes and see a dul light shining in the cockpit. Taking ragged, greedy gulps of air I turn my head and recognize Ray Murphy kneeling next to me, dressed al in black. “We should have let him drown,” he says.

“Nobody is supposed to get hurt,” replies Kirsten.

They argue with each other but Kirsten refuses to listen.

“Where's Mickey?” I whisper.

“Sshhh, just relax,” she says.

“Is she OK?”

“Don't tel him a fucking thing!” threatens Murphy.

A tiny red dot is dancing on his forehead as though bouncing over the lyrics of a song. A fraction of a second later he makes a noise like a popped water bal oon and half his head disappears in a spray of fine red mist and shattered bone. One eye, one cheek, half a jaw are suddenly erased from his face.

The sound of the bul et comes a heartbeat later.
Zip!

Kirsten screams. Her eyes are as wide as a child's. Blood has splattered her cheeks.

Murphy's body is lying across me with his head on my chest. I rol him off me, kicking my legs to get away, sliding on the wet and bloody deck.

Kirsten stil hasn't moved, immobilized by the shock. I turn and crawl back toward her.

A bul et enters my thigh. It's only a smal hole, no bigger than my little finger, but as it exits it vaporizes skin, muscle and flesh, leaving a wound the size of a pie tin. Part of me is impressed. It's like watching a building getting blown up or a car crash.

Another bul et passes close to my ear and hits the deck near my right knee. Whoever is shooting is above us. I rol sideways, sliding through blood, until I reach Kirsten and pul her below the level of the wooden railings.

A section of the polished wood above our heads disintegrates and a splinter slices into her neck. She screams again.

Unbuckling my belt I lever myself upward and pul it around my upper thigh. I hold one end of the belt between my teeth and pul it tightly, trying to stem the flow of blood. I tie it off with sticky fingers.

Beside me, Ray Murphy flinches as a bul et tears through his thigh and enters the deck beneath him. On the far side, almost touching his leg, is a fisherman's net on a long pole.

Lodged within the mesh are four plastic packages. The ransom.

Someone is in the wheelhouse trying desperately to engage the throttle but the mooring rope is stil looped through a large silver cleat on the stern. Reaching under my armpit I feel for the Glock and pul it out of the holster. I look at Kirsten. She's deep in shock but listening.

“We can't stay here! You have to get to the wheelhouse. Quickly! Now!”

Kirsten nods.

I push her across the deck, watching her slip and slide through the blood. At the same time I spin around and aim the Glock blindly into the night sky. Nothing happens when I pul the trigger.

Kirsten's body spins and she clutches her side. A fraction of a second later I hear the bul et. Blood flows over her fingers but she keeps moving.

The choice of two targets has distracted the shooter but I have to do something about the floodlight. It's made of brass and chrome and fixed to a pil ar in the center of the deck.

I spin the Glock until I'm holding it like a hammer. Using Ray Murphy's body as a shield, I slide across the deck until I'm beneath the light. Reaching up I smash the glass. The bulb flares and dies.

A shadow passes in front of me, tripping over my feet and sprawling on the deck. Gerry Brandt scrambles to his feet and tries to reach the diamonds. Launching a kick at his groin, I send him in the opposite direction. A bul et detonates in the space he left behind. He yowls and gives me a murderous look. I save the arsehole's life and this is the thanks I get.

His face is a pale blankness of shock. A red dot appears in the center of his chest. Even without the spotlight the sniper can stil see us. He must have an infrared scope.

Gerry looks at his chest and then at me. He's about to die.

He rol s and the deck splinters beneath him. Over and over, he tumbles, past the netting and the packages. He disappears off the stern but the splash is muffled by the sound of the engine revving at ful throttle. I have visions of him fal ing directly onto the spinning propel er.

Kirsten is in the wheelhouse, opening the throttle. A mooring rope is stil looped through a cleat on the stern. The boat dips and sways, going nowhere. The dual engines are pul ing us under. Rol ing across the deck, I reach up and uncoil the last loop of rope from the cleat, feeling it whip through my fingers. The boat pitches forward but instead of turning away from the bank we steer toward it, col iding heavily against the stonework.

For fuck's sake, what's she doing!

The boat col ides with a sunken pylon or another boat, before spinning into open water. There's nobody at the wheel. Where's she gone?

The boat is going around in circles. The shooter is waiting to get another clean shot at me.

Half crawling and half dragging myself across the deck toward the wheelhouse, I brace my back against the outside wal . Reaching up, I hook my fingers over the edge of the porthole, pul ing myself upward until my eyes reach the glass window.

There's nobody there. In that same instant a dark stain fil s my vision, a spray of blood. My finger disappears along with my wedding ring. It's a neat, clean amputation by a high-velocity bul et. I slide backward, landing heavily on the deck.

The shooter is somewhere high up on a bridge or a building. Now he's aiming at the engines or the fuel tanks. The current is turning the rudder and we're drifting on the tide.

Soon we'l be out of range.

I suck the stump of my missing finger. There's surprisingly little blood. Where's Mickey? Was she in the pipe? Is she down below? I can't leave her behind.

I hear another sound—a different engine. With my back against the wal , I lever myself upward again, peering through the shattered porthole. I can't see any navigation lights.

Instead I make out the silhouette of a boat. There is someone standing on the bow holding a gun.

I can either stay here or take my chances in the river. It takes less than a fraction of a second to decide.

Then I see Kirsten lying under a tarpaulin against the bow. I don't see her face, just her outline as she tries to stand and fal s. She tries again and rol s over the side. I hear the splash fol owed by the sound of men yel ing and bul ets hitting the water.

The boat is getting closer. I have one good leg and one leaking. Pushing off the wal , I take two stumbling steps and rol over the railing. The cold comes as a shock. I don't know why. I'm stil wet from before.

Kicking with one good leg and whipping my arms across my body, I swim down into the darkness where I'm going to drown or bleed to death. I'l let the river decide.