Lost - Michael Robotham [88]
“I got dozens of them,” he explains, rather sheepishly. “Come on, I’ll show you what you want to see.”
Shedding the overalls and waders, we seal them into plastic sacks and load up the van. Moley has changed into his camouflage uniform and blinks into the sunlight as though frightened it might do him permanent damage. The others are drinking tea from a flask and recounting the night’s journey.
Piling into the van, I lean over the seat as Weatherman Pete drives along the narrow tarmac paths and waves at a trio of Chelsea pensioners on their morning walk. Pulling through the front gate, we circle the outer walls of the gardens until we reach the Thames.
Parking in the Embankment Gardens, I cross the road to Riverside Walk, overlooking the river. The Thames, caught between tides, smells like perfume after where I’ve been.
Pete joins me and glances across the brown slick of water. Clambering onto the wall, he hooks his arm around an iron lamppost and leans out over the muddy bank.
“There it is.”
I follow his outstretched arm and notice a depression in the stone bank. A round metal door seals the entrance of a pipe that disappears underground. Water dribbles from the edge, forming a puddle in the mud.
“That’s the Ranelagh Storm Relief Sewer. The door opens when it floods and closes again to stop the tide washing back into the sewer.”
He turns and points past the hospital. “You were directly north of here. You followed the fall of the Westbourne River.”
“Where does it come from?”
“It rises in West Hampstead and gets fed by five streams that join near Kilburn. Then it crosses Maida Vale and Paddington before flowing into Hyde Park where it fills the Serpentine. After that it disappears underground again, down William Street, under Cadogan Lane and Kings Road, past Sloane Square and finally beneath Chelsea Barracks.”
“I can’t see any water flowing.”
“Most of it gets used by the sewer. You won’t see this gate open unless they get surplus water in the system.”
I don’t hear the rest of his explanation. Instead I think of a story my stepfather told me about an old blind horse that fell into a dried-up well. The horse wasn’t worth saving, so the farmer started shoveling earth into the well. But the old horse just shook off the dirt and stamped it down. More earth fell, and the old horse went right on stamping it down, slowly rising out of the darkness.
People have been trying to bury me but I keep stamping it down. Now I’m close to climbing out and, I promise you this, anyone holding a shovel will get a kick in the head.
I think I know what happened that night. I built a valuable boat and it floated away, sealed in plastic and buoyed by foam. The diamonds washed through Ranelagh sewer, pushed along by water from a busted main. Someone was waiting for the ransom; someone who knew his or her way around the sewers; someone like Ray Murphy.
Only now am I beginning to realize how angry I’ve been ever since I woke in the hospital with a gunshot wound, dreaming of Mickey Carlyle. This is far bigger than the sum of its parts. Clever, driven, cunning people have manipulated the emotions of a desperate mother and taken advantage of my own blinkered desire. Where has Mickey been all this time? I know she’s alive. I can’t explain why or point to the proof; I just know she belongs in the world on a morning like this.
Moley is taking batteries from the gas monitors and checking the harnesses. Angus and Barry have already gone—walking to the Underground station. It is almost seven in the morning.
“Can I drop you somewhere, DI?”
I think for a moment. I’m due in court at midday. I also want to visit Ali in the hospital. At the same time, having come this far, I don’t want to stop searching. Facts not memories solve cases. I have to keep going.
“Maida Vale.”
“Sure. Jump in.”
The traffic seems to grow lighter as I get closer to Dolphin Mansions. My shoulders