him. He takes the manuscript and tries to stuff it into an old briefcase. Then he sits back at the table, nursing his cup of tea.
I let a decent interval go by. “So what’s it about?”
“What?”
“Your book.”
“It’s not a book. It’s just some notes.”
“Like a journal.”
“No. Like
I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Ruiz offers to make me something. Pasta puttanesca. It is perfect—far too subtle for me to describe and far better than anything I could have cooked. He puts shavings of Parmesan on slices of sourdough and toasts them under the griller.
“This is very good, DI.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I
“Not all men are useless in the kitchen.”
“And not all women are domestic goddesses.” I talk to my local Indian takeout more often than I do my mother. It’s called the tandoori diet.
Ruiz was there the day my spine was crushed. We have never really spoken about what happened. It’s like an undeclared pact. I know he feels responsible but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t force me to be there and he can’t make the Met give me my old job back.
The dishes are washed and packed away.
“I am going to tell you a story,” I tell him. “It’s the sort of story you like because it has a puzzle at the center. I don’t want you to interrupt and I won’t tell you if it’s real or invented. Just sit quietly. I need to put all the details in order to see how it sounds. When I’m finished I will ask you a question and you can tell me if I’m totally mistaken. Then I will let you ask me one question.”
“Just one?”
“Yes. I don’t want you to tear apart my logic or pick holes in my story. Not now. Tomorrow maybe. Is it a deal?”
He nods.
Carefully, I set out the details, telling him about Cate, Donavon and Earl Blake. Like a tangle in a fishing line, if I pull too tightly the story knots together and it becomes harder to separate fact from supposition.
“What if Cate arranged a surrogacy and something went wrong? Could there be a baby out there somewhere—Cate’s baby?”
“Commercial surrogacy is illegal,” he says.
“It still happens. Women volunteer. They get their expenses paid, which is allowed, but they cannot profit from the birth.”
“Usually they’re related in some way—a sister or a cousin.”
I show him the photograph of Samira. He searches her face for a long time as though she might tell him something. Turning it over he notices the numbers.
“The first four digits could be a mobile phone prefix but not in the U.K.,” he says. “You need the exact country code or you won’t be able to call it.”
It’s my turn to be surprised again.
“I’m not a complete technophobe,” he protests.
“You’re typing your
He glances at the old typewriter. “Yeah, well, it has sentimental value.”
The clouds have parted just long enough to give us a sunset. The last golden rays settle on the river. In a few minutes they’ll be gone, leaving behind a raw, damp cold.
“You promised me a question,” he says.
“One.”
“Do you want a lift home?”
“Is that it?”
“I thought maybe we could swing by Oaklands and you could show me where it happened.”
The DI drives an old Mercedes with white leather seats and soft suspension. It must guzzle petrol and makes him look like a lawn bowler, but Ruiz has never been one to worry about the environment or what people think of him.
I feel strange sitting in the passenger seat instead of behind the wheel. For years it was the other way around. I don’t know why he chose me to be his driver, but I heard the gossip about the DI liking pretty faces. He’s really not like that.
When I first moved out of uniform into the Serious Crime Group, the DI showed me respect and gave me a chance to prove myself. He didn’t treat me any differently because of my color or my age or my being a woman.
I told him I wanted to become a detective. He said I had to be better, faster and cleverer than any man who wanted the same position. Yes, it was unfair. He wasn’t defending the system—he was teaching me the facts of life.
Ruiz was already a legend when I did my training. The instructors at Hendon used to tell stories about him. In 1963, as a probationary constable, he arrested one of the Great Train Robbers, Roger Cordrey, and recovered ?141,000 of the stolen money. Later, as a detective, he helped capture the Kilburn rapist, who had terrorized North London for eight months.
I know he’s not the sort to reminisce or talk about the good old days but I sense he misses a time when it was easier to tell the villains from the constabulary and the general public respected those who tried to keep them safe.
He parks the car in Mansford Street and we walk toward the school. The Victorian buildings are tall and dark against the ambient light. Fairy lights still drip from the windows of the hall. In my imagination I can see the dark stain on the tarmac where Cate fell. Someone has pinned a posy to the nearest lamppost.
“It’s a straight line of sight,” he says. “They can’t have looked.”
“Cate turned her head.”
“Well she can’t have seen the minicab. Either that or he pulled out suddenly.”
“Two cabdrivers say they saw the minicab farther along the street, barely moving. They thought he was looking for an address.”
I think back, mentally replaying events. “There’s something else. I think Cate recognized the driver.”
“She knew him?”
“He might have picked her up earlier as a fare.”
“Or followed her.”
“She was frightened of him. I could see it in her eyes.”
I mention the driver’s tattoo. The Crucifixion. It covered his entire chest.
“A tattoo like that might be traceable,” says the DI. “We need a friend on the inside.”
I know where he’s going with this.
“How is ‘New Boy’ Dave?” he asks. “You two still bumping uglies?”
“That would be none of your business.”
Sikh girls blush on the inside.
Dave King is a detective with the Serious Crime Group (Western Division), Ruiz’s old squad. He’s in his early thirties with a tangle of gingery hair that he cuts short so it doesn’t escape. He earned the nickname “New Boy” when he was the newest member of the SCG, but that was five years ago. He’s now a detective sergeant.
Dave lives in a flat in West Acton, just off the Uxbridge Road, where gas towers dominate the skyline and trains on the Paddington line rattle him awake every morning.
It is a typical bachelor pad in progress, with a king-size bed, a wide-screen TV, a sofa, and precious little else. The walls are half stripped and the carpet has been ripped up but not replaced.
“Like what you’ve done to the place,” observes Ruiz sardonically.
“Yeah, well, I been sort of busy,” says Dave. He looks at me as if to say,
