Lost - Michael Robotham [15]
She looks down at me as though I should have an answer ready for her. I’m still trying to slow my heart rate.
“Are you OK, Sir?”
“I’m fine.”
Joe is crouching next to me now. “Maybe you should take it easy.”
“I’m not a fucking invalid!”
Instantly I want to take it back and apologize. Everyone is uncomfortable now.
DC Simpson helps me stand.
“How much more can you re-create of what happened?” I ask.
She seems quite pleased with the question.
“OK, this is where you were initially shot. Someone else got hit and fell on top of you. Traces of their bone and blood were found in your hair.”
She sits down and drags herself backward until her back is braced against the side rail.
“One of the main clusters of bullets is this one.” She points to the deck near her legs. “I believe you pulled yourself back here to get cover but more bullets went through the sides and hit the deck. You were too exposed, so—”
“I rolled across the deck and took cover behind the wheelhouse.”
Joe looks at me. “You remember?”
“No, but it makes sense.” Even as I answer I realize that part of it must be memory.
The DC scrambles across the deck to the far side of the wheelhouse. “This is where you lost your finger. You wanted to look inside or to see where the shooting was coming from. You were badly wounded. You hooked your fingers over the ledge around the porthole and raised yourself up. A bullet came through the glass and your finger disappeared.”
Dried blood stains the wall, leaking around exit holes in the splintered wood.
“We found twenty-four bullet holes in the vessel. The sniper fired only eight of them. He was very controlled and precise.”
“What about the others?”
“The rest were 9mm rounds.”
My Glock 17 self-loading pistol was signed out of the station armory on September 22 and still hasn’t been found. Maybe Campbell is right and I shot someone.
DC Simpson continues with her hypothesis. “I think you were dragged over the railing at the stern with the help of a boat hook which tore one of your belt loops. You vomited just here.”
“So I must have been in the water first—before I was shot?”
“Yes.”
I look at Joe and shake my head. I can’t remember. Blood—that’s all I can see. I can taste it in my mouth and feel it throbbing in my ears.
I look at the DC and my voice catches in my throat. “You said someone died, right? You must have tested the blood. Was it … I mean … did it belong to … could it have been … ?” I can’t get the words out.
Joe finishes the question and answers it all at once.
“It wasn’t Mickey Carlyle.”
Back in the car, we edge through Tobacco Dock, past a gray square of water surrounded by warehouses. I can never tell if these new housing developments are gentrification or reclamation—most of them were derelict before the developers arrived. The dockside pubs have gone, replaced by fitness centers, cybercafés and juice bars selling shots of wheatgrass.
Farther from the river, squeezed between the Victorian terraces, we find a more traditional café and take a table by the window. The walls are decorated with posters of South and Central America, and the air smells of boiled milk and porridge.
Two gray plump women run the dining room—one taking orders and the other cooking.
Fried eggs stare up from my plate like large jaundiced eyes, along with a blackened sausage and a twisted mouth of bacon. Ali has a vegetarian sandwich and pours the tea from a stainless steel teapot. The brew is a dark shade of khaki, thick with floating leaves.
A local school has just broken for lunch and the street is full of Asian teenagers eating buckets of hot chips. Some of them smoke by the phone box while others swap headphones, listening to music.
Joe tries to stir his coffee with his left hand and stalls, switching