Lost - Michael Robotham [53]
Somehow I doubt that.
“You are very welcome. Sit. Eat. I must apologize for leaving.”
He takes a lunch box and thermos from the kitchen bench. Mrs. Barba walks him to the front door and kisses his cheek. Whistling steam billows from the kettle and Ali begins making a fresh pot of tea.
“You’ll have to forgive my parents,” she says. “And I should warn you about the questions.”
“Questions?”
“My mother is very nosey.”
A voice answers from the hallway. “I heard that.”
“She also has ears like a bat,” whispers Ali.
“I heard that, too.” Mrs. Barba appears again. “I’m sure you don’t talk to your mother like this, Inspector.”
I feel a stab of guilt. “She’s in a retirement home.”
“And I’m sure it’s very nice.”
Does that mean expensive?
Mrs. Barba puts her arms around Ali’s waist. “My daughter thinks I spy on her just because I come to clean her house once a week.”
“I don’t need you to clean.”
“Oh, yes! And if you are Queen and I am Queen, who is to fetch the water?”
Ali rolls her eyes. Mrs. Barba directs a question at me. “Do you have any children, Inspector?”
“Two.”
“You’re divorced, aren’t you?”
“Twice. I’m trying for third time lucky.”
“That is sad for you. Do you miss your wife?”
“Yes, but my aim is improving.”
The joke doesn’t make her smile. She puts a fresh cup of tea in front of me. “Why didn’t your marriage work out?”
Ali looks horrified. “You don’t ask questions like that, Mama!”
“That’s all right,” I say. “I don’t really know the answer.”
“Why not? My daughter says you are very clever.”
“Not in matters of the heart.”
“It’s not hard to love a wife.”
“I could love one, I just couldn’t hold on to her.”
Without realizing how it happens, I’m telling her how my first wife, Laura, died of breast cancer at thirty-eight and my second wife, Jessie, left me when she realized that marriage wasn’t just for the weekend. Now she’s in Argentina filming a documentary about polo players and most likely shagging one of them. And my current wife, Miranda, packed her bags because I spent more time in the office than I did at home. It sounds like a soap opera.
Mrs. Barba picks up on the melancholy note in my voice when I talk about Laura, who should have been my childhood sweetheart because then I would have known her longer than fifteen years. We deserved more. She deserved more.
One thing leads to another and soon I’m telling her about the twins—how Claire is dancing in New York and every time I see her disfigured toes I feel like arresting everyone at the New York City Ballet; and the last I heard from Michael he was crewing on charter yachts in the Caribbean.
“You don’t see much of them.”
“No.”
She shakes her head and I wait for a lecture on parental responsibility. Instead, she pours another cup of tea and begins talking about her children and her faith. She doesn’t see any difference between races or genders or religions. Humanity is all the same except in some countries where life is held more lightly and hatred gets a hearing.
Ali apologizes again for her mother when we get outside.
“I thought she was very nice.”
“She drives me crazy.”
“Wanna swap?”
We have changed vehicles since yesterday. Ali has borrowed a car from one of her brothers. I know it is part of her training—never using the same vehicle or driving the same route two days in a row. People spend years learning this stuff. I wonder what happens to them afterward. Are they frightened of the world just like Mickey Carlyle?
Edging through the traffic, north along the Edgware Road, I feel a sense of expectation. The uncertainty could end today. Once I find Rachel she’ll tell me what happened. I might not remember but I’ll know.
We cross a railway bridge and turn right into an industrial area, full of car-repair shops, wrecker yards, spray painters and engineering workshops. Pigeons pick at the trash behind a café.
The road runs out and we pull up on a patch of wasteland littered with rusting drums, broken chimney pots, fence posts and scaffolding. An abandoned freezer, pockmarked by stones, rises above the weeds.
“This