home.”
“I don't understand. What are you talking about?”
A painful smile steals across her face but doesn't part her lips. “Poor Inspector, you haven't worked it out yet, have you?”
The truth grows in me like a tumor with the cells doubling and dividing, invading the empty spaces and the gaps in my memory. Gerry Brandt said he let her go. They were his last words.
“We only had her for a few days,” says Kirsten, gnawing at a fingernail. “Then he paid the ransom.”
“What ransom?”
“The first one.”
“What do you mean, a first ransom?”
“We were never going to hurt her. Once we got the ransom, we told Gerry to take her home. He was supposed to drop her at the end of her street but he panicked and left her at an Underground station. The fucking idiot! He was always a loose cannon. Right from the first day he jeopardized everything. He was supposed to be looking after Mickey but he couldn't resist going back to Randolph Avenue to see the TV crews and police.
“We would never have included him except we needed someone to look after Mickey who she couldn't identify. Like I said, we were always going to let her go. She told Gerry she knew the way home. She said she'd change trains at Piccadilly Circus and catch the Bakerloo line.”
This information seeps into my stomach and joins forces with the tepid nausea. My mind is tallying the details. Mr. and Mrs. Bird saw Mickey at Leicester Square. It's one stop from Piccadilly Circus.
“But if you let her go, what happened?”
Her misery is complete. “Howard Wavell!”
I don't understand.
“Howard happened,” she says again. “Mickey made it home but she ran into Howard.”
God, no! Surely not! It was a Wednesday night. Rachel wasn't home. She was on
“I tell you we didn't mean to hurt her. We let her go. Then you found her bloodstained towel and arrested Howard. I wanted to die.”
An image presents itself. I picture a small, terrified child with a fear of being outside, crossing a city alone. She almost made it. Only steps away—not even eighty-five of them. Howard found her on the front steps.
My legs go weak and I struggle to stand. It's as though my insides have become liquid and want to flood out, throbbing and glistening on the floor. My God, what have I done? I couldn't have been more wrong. Ali, Rachel, Mickey—I let them all down.
“You don't know how many times I have wanted to change things,” says Kirsten. “I would have brought Mickey home myself. I would have walked her right to her door. Believe me!”
“You were
For a fleeting moment her sadness turns to anger, but takes too much energy to sustain. She whispers, “I never meant to hurt them . . . not Mickey or Rachel.”
“Why then?”
“We were stealing from the ultimate thief—taking money from Aleksei Kuznet, a monster. He murdered his own brother, for God's sake.”
“You wanted to take on the biggest bully in the playground.”
“We live in a new feudal age, Inspector. We fight wars over oil and we hand out reconstruction contracts in return for political donations. We have more parking wardens than we do police officers—”
“Oh for pity's sake, spare me the speeches!”
“We didn't want to hurt anyone.”
“Rachel was always going to be hurt.”
She looks at me with wet eyes. I can almost taste the salt in them.
“I didn't mean . . . we let Mickey go. I would never have . . .” She lowers the gun between her knees and her head follows, rocking back and forth. “I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry . . .”
Her self-pity irritates me. I keep pressing for the rest of the story. Kirsten doesn't look at me as she describes the cesspit in the basement and the underground river. Ray Murphy inflated a boat below ground and drew a map for Gerry to follow. He only had to travel a few hundred feet before bringing Mickey up through a storm-water drain.
“Ray knew a place to keep her. I never went there. My job was to send the ransom letter.”
“Where did you send it?”
“Directly to Aleksei.”
“What about the bikini?”
“Gerry held on to it.”
“What was she wearing when he let her go?”
“I don't know exactly.”
“Did she have her beach towel?”
“Gerry said it was like her security blanket. She wouldn't let it go.”
I'm struggling now. Of all the scenarios to contemplate I had left Howard out, convinced of his innocence. I had weighed up the evidence and the odds and decided he had been wrongly accused and convicted. Campbell said I was blind to the obvious. I thought he couldn't see anything except his own prejudices.
“Why in God's name did you try for a second ransom? How could you put Rachel through it again? You convinced her Mickey was still alive.”
Her face creases as she sucks back the pain. “I didn't want to. You don't understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“When you arrested Howard for Mickey's murder Gerry went off his head. He kept saying we helped kill her. He said he couldn't go back inside—not for killing a child. He knew what they did to child murderers in prison. Right away I knew we had a problem. We either had to silence Gerry or help him disappear.”
“So you got him out of the country.”
“We gave him double what he deserved—four hundred grand. He was supposed to stay away but he poured his money down slot machines or shot it up his arm.”
“He bought a bar in Thailand.”
“Whatever.”
“And then he came back.”
“The first I knew about the second ransom was when Rachel received the postcard. Gerry came up with the idea all by himself. Mickey's body had never been found. He still had her swimsuit and strands of her hair. I went ballistic. His greed and stupidity threatened us all. Ray said he was going to stop Gerry before he gave us away . . .”
“You could have walked away then. Nobody would have known.”
“I wanted to kill him—I really did.”
“What changed your mind?”
“None of us thought Aleksei would say yes—not after paying one ransom—but then straight off he agreed. I almost felt sorry for him then. He must have really wanted to believe Mickey was still alive.”
“He didn't have a choice. Fathers are meant to believe.”
“No, he wanted revenge. He didn't care what it cost. He didn't care about Mickey or Rachel. He wanted us dead—that's the only reason.”
Maybe she's right. Aleksei has always preferred to dispense his own brand of justice.
Outside Wormwood Scrubs Prison and again at the police station, Aleksei had said, “I don't pay for things twice.” This is what he meant. He had already paid a ransom for Mickey and wouldn't easily surrender another one.
“You must have used the same drop procedure. That's how Aleksei found you.”
“We didn't have time to come up with a new one. Aleksei figured it out. It's like I said, we didn't expect him to go through with it. We had to scramble to get everything ready. I didn't want to go ahead but Ray needed the money and he said it would be easier second time around.”
