Lost - Michael Robotham [107]
It’s almost ten o’clock when we reach Primrose Hill. Yellow light paints the edges of the curtains and a coal fire warms the sitting room.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” says Joe, opening the door.
I want to say no, but I’m too tired to argue. I can’t go home or to Ali’s parents’ place. I’m like an infectious disease—poisoning those around me. I won’t stay long. Just tonight.
I keep getting flashbacks of being under water, unable to breathe. I smell the foulness of the sewers and see the white-green water boiling at my feet. Each time it happens I take a ragged urgent breath. Joe looks at me. He thinks I’m having a heart attack.
“I should take you to the hospital. They could run some tests.”
“No. I need to talk.” I have to tell him what I remember in case I forget again.
Joe pours me a drink and then moves to sit down. He suddenly freezes. For a split second he looks like a statue, trapped between sitting and standing. Just as suddenly, he moves again as the signals reach his limbs. He smiles at me apologetically.
The mantelpiece is decorated with photographs of his family. The new baby has a moon face and a tangle of blond hair. She looks more like Joe than Julianne.
“Where is your lovely wife?”
“Tucked up in bed. She’s an early riser.”
Joe rocks forward with his hands between his thighs. I tell him about being washed through the sewers and what happened on the boat. I remember Kirsten Fitzroy wiping vomit from my lips and feeling the dead weight of Ray Murphy slumped across me. His blood leaked down my neck, pooling in the depression beneath my Adam’s apple. I remember the sound of high-velocity bullets and seeing Kirsten spinning across the deck, clutching her side.
Memories carry more memories—fleeting images captured before they fade. Gerry Brandt going over the stern, the silhouette of a gunman, my finger disappearing … These things have all become substance now and nothing else is real except what happened that night. Even as I try to explain this to Joe I have the horrors of hindsight and regret to contend with. If only I could change what happened. If only I could go back.
Ray Murphy worked for Thames Water. He knew his way through the storm-water drains and sewers because he used to be a flusher and a flood planner. He knew what water main to sabotage to create a flood. The explosion would be blamed on methane or a gas leak and nobody would bother investigating further.
Radio transmitters and satellite tracking devices are useless underground and nobody was likely to make such a journey. Ray Murphy would also have known about the underground river beneath Dolphin Mansions. He and Kirsten provided each other with an alibi on the morning Mickey disappeared. But where did Gerry Brandt come into the operation? Perhaps they needed a third person for the plan.
“You still can’t be sure they kidnapped Mickey,” says Joe. “There’s no direct evidence.” A sudden spastic movement of his arm flicks up at my face. “It could still be a hoax. Kirsten had access to Rachel’s flat. She could have taken strands of Mickey’s hair and counted the money in her money box. If they kidnapped her three years ago, why wait until now to send a ransom demand?”
“Perhaps it was never about a ransom—not at first. Sir Douglas Carlyle said he would do almost anything to safeguard his granddaughter. We know he hired Kirsten to spy on Rachel. He was gathering evidence for a custody battle, but his lawyers told him he couldn’t succeed. He might have taken the law into his own hands.”
“What about Mickey’s towel—how did it get to the cemetery?”
My brain is caught in a vague, desperate pause. Maybe they framed Howard. They put Mickey’s blood on a towel and planted it in the cemetery. The police and the courts did the rest.
“You still have no proof that Mickey is alive.”
“I know.”
Bending toward the fire, Joe asks a question of the flames instead of me. “Why send the ransom demand now?”
“Greed.”
At least it’s a motive I understand. Joe can have his psychopaths