Lost - Michael Robotham [27]
I look up at Joe and blink away the past. I’ve been talking all this time.
His voice is softer than mine. “You’re not responsible for your father’s sins.”
Yeah, right! I’m angry now. Why did he start me out on this? I don’t want any of his airy-fairy, touchy-feely, Pollyanna-pass-the-tissues psychological crap.
We sit in silence. I’m through with talking. My nightmares march in jackboots and are best left alone.
Joe stands suddenly and begins to pack his briefcase. I don’t want him to go now.
“Aren’t we going to talk about the ransom?”
“You’re tired. I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”
“But I remembered some of the details.”
“That’s good.”
“Isn’t there something you can tell me; something I should be doing?”
He looks at me quizzically. “You want some advice?”
“Yes.”
“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”
Then he’s gone.
7
When Mickey disappeared I didn’t sleep for the first forty-eight hours. If a missing child isn’t found within the first two days the chances of her being found alive diminishes by forty percent. Within two weeks it is down to less than ten percent.
I hate statistics. I read somewhere that the average person uses 5.9 sheets of toilet tissue when they wipe their arse. It proves nothing and helps no one.
Here are some more figures. There were six hundred volunteers scouring the streets and eighty officers going door to door. The sense of urgency bordered on violence. I wanted to kick open doors, shake trees and chase every child from the parks and pavements.
We checked alibis, stopped motorists, interviewed tradesmen and tracked down visitors to Dolphin Mansions in the previous month. Every resident was interviewed. I knew which of them beat his spouse, slept with prostitutes, lied about sickies, owed money to bookies and cultivated marijuana in a box under her bed.
There had been sixty-five unconfirmed sightings of Mickey and four confessions (including someone claiming to have sacrificed her to the pagan god of the forest). We had also been offered the services of twelve psychics, two palm readers and a guy calling himself the Wizard of Little Milton.
The closest we came to a confirmed sighting was by an elderly couple at Leicester Square tube station on Wednesday evening. Mrs. Esmerelda Bird wasn’t wearing her glasses and her husband, Brian, didn’t get close enough to see the girl clearly. There were twelve CCTV cameras at the station but the angles were wrong and the footage such poor quality it resolved nothing and risked derailing the entire investigation if we made it public.
Already the search had become a media event. TV vans blocked Randolph Avenue, beaming pictures to boxes within boxes, so that people who had never met Mickey could look up from their breakfast cereal and fleetingly adopt her.
Purple ribbons were tied to the railings outside Dolphin Mansions. Some were threaded with flowers and photographs of Mickey. There were pictures of her displayed on building sites, lampposts and shop windows.
The sex offenders’ register threw up 359 names for Greater London. Two dozen of them either lived in or had some link to the area. Every name was cross-checked, every detail compared and contrasted, looking for those ley lines of human connection that thread the world together.
Unfortunately, this took time and the tyranny of the clock was absolute. It ticked away with a mechanical heart. A minute doesn’t become any longer just because a child is missing. It only feels that way.
After two days I went home for just long enough to shower and change my clothes. I found Daj snoring at the kitchen table with her head between her arms and a Siamese cat curled up on her lap. A glass of vodka was wedged between her fingers. Her first drink every day was always a revelation, she said, the