Lost

I don't know what Aleksei thought would happen then. Maybe one day, after enough years had passed, he planned to bring Mickey back to Britain with a new identity or perhaps he always intended to join her overseas.

The plan might have been flawless but for Gerry Brandt, a washed-up, drug-addled chancer, who thought he could steal apples from the same tree all over again. Having squandered the first ransom, he came back to Britain with a plan to do it all again. Mickey's body had never been found and he still had a few strands of her hair and her swimsuit. Kirsten knew immediately that Gerry was back in the country. She talked to Ray Murphy. Gerry's greed and stupidity threatened to expose them.

Unbeknownst to them, he also threatened to destroy Aleksei's grand design. The world believed Mickey was dead. A second ransom demand called this into question. It must also have created a separate, more dangerous doubt in Aleksei's mind. Did these people know?

The only way to safeguard his secret completely was to silence them. He would pay the ransom, follow the trail and have everyone killed. I gave him the perfect alibi; he was following me.

These thoughts are coming almost too quickly to put in any order or chronology but like Sarah, Mickey's friend, on that first morning at Dolphin Mansions—“I know what I know.”

“New Boy” Dave is on the other end of the phone.

“Have you found Aleksei?”

“His motor yacht arrived in Oostende in Belgium at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning.”

“Who was on board?”

“Still no word.”

I can hear the rasp of my own breathing. “You have to listen to me! I know I've made a lot of mistakes but this time I'm right. You have to find Aleksei. You can't let him disappear.”

I pause. He's still on the phone. The only thing we have in common now is Ali. Maybe that's enough. “You have to check the passenger manifests of every ferry and hovercraft and the Eurostar train services out of Waterloo. You can forget about the airlines. Aleksei doesn't fly. You'll need warrants for his house, office, cars, lockups, boatsheds . . . And you'll want his phone records and details of bank transactions going back three years.”

Dave is starting to lose patience with me. He doesn't have the authority to do half of these things and Campbell and Meldrum won't listen to anything I say.

Leaning back, I stare out of the window of the cab not actually seeing anything but I'm turning pages in my head full of notes, diagrams and figures; searching through the past for a clue.

When I did my detective training a guy called Donald Kinsella took me under his wing. Donald had spent years working undercover and wore his hair long, tied back in a ponytail and he had a bushy mustache, which was a trademark for coppers in the seventies until the Village People made it a different sort of trademark.

“Keep it simple,” was his motto. “Don't believe in conspiracy theories. Listen to them, work out the odds, and then file them in the same drawer as you put stuff you read in the Socialist Worker or on the Daily Telegraph editorial pages.”

Donald believed the truth lay somewhere in the middle. He was a pragmatist. When Diana, Princess of Wales, died in Paris he rang me. He'd retired by then.

“A year from now there will be a dozen books about this,” he said. “People will be blaming the CIA, MI5, the PLO, the Mafia, Osama bin Laden, another shooter on the grassy knoll—you name it. There will be secret witnesses, missing evidence, mystery vehicles, stolen reports, tire marks, poisonings and pregnancies . . . Let me tell you the one thing I can guarantee won't be in any of these books—the most likely answer. People want to believe conspiracies. They eat them up and say, ‘Please can I have some more?' They don't want to think that someone close to them or someone famous could die a mundane, ordinary, kitchen- sink sort of death.”

What Donald was trying to say is that lives are complicated but most deaths aren't. People are complicated but not their crimes. Prosecutors and psychologists care about motives. I care about facts—the how, where, what and when, rather than the why. My favorite is “who,” the perpetrator—the face that fills my empty picture frame.

Eddie Barrett is wrong. All truth isn't a lie. I'm not naive enough to believe the opposite, but facts I can hold on to. Facts I can write up in a report. Facts are more reliable than memories.

The cabdriver is staring at me in his mirror. I'm talking to myself.

“The second sign of madness,” I explain.

“What's the first one?”

“Killing lots of people and eating their genitals.”

He laughs and sneaks another look at me.

38

Three hours ago I learned that Mickey Carlyle might still be alive. Twenty-four hours ago Aleksei's boat arrived in Oostende. He has a head start but will only travel overland. He might already be there. Where?

The Netherlands is a possibility. He and Rachel lived there and Mickey was born in Amsterdam. Eastern Europe is more likely. He has connections and maybe even family.

I glance around the Professor's office at the dozen people who are manning phones and staring at screens. They have all answered the call again—leaving work or taking time off. It almost feels like a proper incident room, full of energy and expectation.

Roger is talking to the harbormaster at Oostende. There were six adults on board the motor yacht, including Aleksei, but no sign of a child. The launch is now moored at the Royal Yacht Club, the largest marina in Oostende, in the heart of the city. We have a list of names for the crew. Margaret and Jean are ringing the local hotels. Others are calling car rental companies, travel agents and ticket offices for rail and ferry services. Unfortunately, the possibilities appear endless. Aleksei could already have disappeared into Europe.

Without a warrant or a court order, we can't access his bank accounts, post boxes or telephone records. There is no way of tracing regular overseas payments and I doubt if the money would lead us to Mickey. Aleksei is too clever for that. His fortune will be spread around the world in offshore tax havens like the Caymans, Bermuda and Gibraltar. Experts could spend the next twenty years trying to follow that paper trail.

I look at my watch. Every minute puts him farther away.

Grabbing my coat, I give Joe a nod. “Come on, let's go.”

“Where to?”

“We're going to look at a house.”

Contrary to popular belief, the most powerful man in the cut-flower industry doesn't possess a green thumb or even a greenhouse. The gardens surrounding Aleksei's mansion are rather rustic and overgrown with cedar trees and an orchard.

The electronic gates are open and we pull directly into the driveway, gravel snapping under the tires. The house looks closed up. Turrets of dark slate stand out solidly against the sky as though turning their backs on the city and choosing to gaze instead across Hampstead Heath.

Stepping out of the car, I try to take in the building, swiveling my head upward through the floors.

“OK, we're not doing anything illegal, are we?” asks Joe.

“Not yet.”

“I'm serious.”

“So am I.”

Walking slowly around the house, I marvel at the security. There are bars on the windows, security lights and sensor alarms attached to the exterior walls. A large converted stable block is garage to a dozen cars covered by cloth sheets.

At the back of the house, I notice smoke rising from an incinerator. A gardener with a solid build and a mustache like a hula skirt above his top lip looks up as we approach. He's wearing a tweed coat and trousers tucked into Wellingtons.

“Good afternoon.”