Lost - Michael Robotham [31]
Garden. Short drive from Florence. Sept/Oct. Two-month booking.
I paid for the advertisement by credit card four days before the shooting. Why would I want to rent a Tuscan villa?
I don’t recognize the cell-phone number printed at the bottom. Picking up the receiver, I punch the numbers. A metallic voice tells me the number is unavailable. I can leave a message. It beeps. I don’t know what to say and I don’t want to leave my name. It might not be safe.
I hang up and flick backward through the diary, skimming over final reminders for unpaid bills and dental appointments. There must be other clues. One name stands out—Rachel Carlyle. I met her six times in the ten days prior to the shooting. Hope rises in me like a wave.
Going farther back through the pages, I look at the previous month. On the second Thursday in August I wrote a name: Sarah Jordan—the girl who waited on the front steps for Mickey to arrive. I don’t remember meeting Sarah. How old would she be now—twelve, maybe thirteen?
Ali is upstairs trying to pack some clothes for me. “Do you have any spare sheets?” she calls.
“Yeah. I’ll get them.”
The linen cupboard is in the hallway near the laundry. I lean my walking stick against the door and reach up with both hands.
A sports bag is jammed at the back of the shelf. I pull it out and drop it to the floor until I find the sheets. Only then does it dawn on me. I stare down at the bag. I know there’s a lot I have forgotten but I can’t recall owning such a bag.
Easing myself onto one knee, I peel back the zipper. Inside there are four bright-orange packages. My hands are steady as I tear open the tape and peel back the plastic. A second layer is underneath and inside there is a black velvet pouch. Diamonds spill out onto my hand, tumbling into the crevices between my fingers.
Ali is coming down the stairs. “Did you find those sheets?”
There’s no time to react. I look up at her, unable to explain. My voice sounds hoarse.
“Diamonds! It must be the ransom!”
Ali’s hands are steady as she breaks ice from the freezer and drops it into my glass of whiskey. She makes herself a cup of coffee and slides onto the bench seat opposite me, waiting for an explanation.
I don’t have one. I feel as if I’m lost in a strange place, surrounded by countries on the map I can’t even name.
“They must be worth a fortune.”
“Two million pounds,” I whisper.
“How do you know that?”
“I have no idea. They belong to Aleksei Kuznet.”
Fear clouds her eyes like the onset of fever. She knows the stories. I can imagine them being told after lights-out at probationer training.
Again I notice the scraps of plastic on the floor and dusting of foam. I wrapped the packages here; four identical bundles, each lined with polystyrene and wrapped in fluorescent plastic. They were meant to float.
Diamonds are easy to smuggle and hard to trace. They can’t be picked up by sniffer dogs or tracked with serial numbers. Selling them isn’t a problem. There are plenty of buyers in Antwerp or New York who deal in “blood” diamonds from dubious places like Angola, Sierra Leone and the Congo.
Ali leans forward, resting her forearms on the table. “What’s the ransom doing here?”
“I don’t know.” What was it that Aleksei said to me at the hospital: “I want my daughter or I want my diamonds.”
“We have to hand them in,” insists Ali.
The trailing silence goes on too long.
“You can’t be serious! You’re not going to keep them!”
“Of course not.”
Ali is staring at me. I hate the way I look in her eyes—diminished, undermined. She turns her head away, as though she doesn’t want to see the mess I’ve made of my life. Is this why Keebal wanted a search warrant and the “fireman” tried to kill me?
The doorbell rings. Both of us jump.
Ali is on her feet. “Quick! Hide them! Hide them!”
“Calm down, you get the door.”
There are certain rules in policing that I learned very early on. The first is never to search a dark warehouse with an armed cop whose nickname is “Boom-Boom.” And the second is to take your own pulse first.
Using my forearm I scoop