Joe kicks at the ground as though trying to make it even. I can almost see his mind moving forward and backward as he tries to reconstruct what happened.
Out loud now, he says, “He knew his way around the hospital but he didn't know which room you were in. Once he evacuated the floors there was nobody to ask.”
Joe turns and strides down the corridor. I struggle to keep up without overbalancing. He stops beneath a CCTV camera and reaches toward it as if holding a spray can. “He must have been about six two.”
“Yeah.”
He continues to the nursing station, eyes darting over the long narrow counter and kitchenette. There are clipboards hanging on a wall. Each one corresponds to a patient.
“Where did you find Maggie?”
“On the floor.”
Joe drops to his knees and then lies down, with his head toward the sink.
“No, she was lying this way, with her head almost under the desk.”
Jumping to his feet, he stands facing the clipboards and half closes his eyes. “He was looking at the clipboards to find your room number.”
“How do you know?”
Joe crouches and I follow his outstretched finger. There are two black smudges on the baseboard made by the heels of the fireman's boots. “Maggie came up the corridor. She was coming back to get you. He heard her coming and he stepped back to hide . . .”
I can picture Maggie bustling up the corridor, admonishing herself for being late.
“As she passed the doorway, she turned her head. He struck her with his elbow across the bridge of her nose.” Joe tumbles to the floor and lies where she fell. “Then he went to your room but you had already gone.”
All this sounds reasonable.
“There is something I don't understand. He could have killed me right away, here in the corridor, but he collected a wheelchair and tried to push me down the lift shaft.”
Still lying on the floor, Joe points past my shoulder at the CCTV camera. “It's the only one he didn't black out.”
“It didn't matter, he wore a mask.”
“Psychologically it made a big difference. Even with his face hidden, he didn't want to star in a home movie. The footage was evidence against him.”
“So he took me out of view.”
“Yes.”
Joe is thinking out loud now, unaware of his twitches and trembles. I follow him down the corridor to the stairs. He pauses, puzzled by something.
“The gas leak was part of both plans,” he announces.
“Both plans?”
“One for outside and one for inside . . .”
I don't understand. Joe motions for me to follow him and waits for me to climb two flights of stairs. We reach a heavy fire door and emerge onto a barren rectangle of bitumen, the rooftop of the hospital. A gust of wind slaps me in the face and Joe grabs my shirtfront to steady me. A big-bellied gray sky hangs overhead.
Circular ducts and metal air-conditioning plants punctuate the bitumen. A low brick wall with white capping stones marks the outside edge of the building. A wire security fence is attached, curling inward before being topped with barbed wire.
Joe slowly walks the perimeter, occasionally glancing at surrounding buildings as though adjusting his internal compass. When he reaches the northeast corner of the building, he leans close to the fence. “You see that park down there—the one with the fountain?” I follow his gaze. “That's the evacuation meeting point. Everyone was supposed to meet there when they emptied the hospital. You were supposed to be with them. There is no way they could have known you were going to be left inside.”
We are both on the same page now. “Perhaps he was supposed to hide in my room and kill me when I came back.”
“Or they were going to kill you outside.”
Joe drops onto his haunches, studying the thin layer of soot on the capping stones. It's the same black film that settles on everything in London until the next shower. Three penny-size circles smudge the surface. Joe swings his eyes to the ground where two larger smudges appear beneath the wall.
Someone knelt here and rested a tripod on the wall—a lone sniper with a finger on the trigger and his eyelashes brushing the lens, studying the park below. The hair on my forearms is standing on end.
Fifteen minutes later the rooftop has been sealed off and a SOCO team is at work, searching for clues. Campbell is smarting about being shown up by a clinical psychologist.
Joe takes me downstairs to the canteen—one of those sterile food halls with tiles on the floor and stainless steel counters. Cedric, the guy in charge, is a Jamaican with impossibly tight curls and a laugh that sounds like someone cracking nuts with a brick.
He brings us coffee and pulls a half bottle of Scotch from the pocket of his apron. He pours me a slug. Joe doesn't seem to notice. He's too busy trying to fill in the missing pieces.
“Snipers have very little emotional investment in their victims. It's like playing a computer game.”
“So he could be young?”
“And isolated.”
True to form, the Professor is more interested in why than who; he wants an explanation while I want a face for my empty picture frame, someone to catch and punish.
“Aleksei Kuznet visited me last night. I think I know why I was in the river. I was following a ransom.”
Joe doesn't bat an eyelid.
“He wouldn't tell me the details, but there must have been proof of life. I must have believed Mickey was still alive.”
“Or wished it.”
I know what he's saying. He doesn't think I'm being rational.
“OK, let's ask ourselves some questions,” he says. “If Mickey is alive, where has she been for the past three years?”
“I don't know.”
“And why would anyone wait three years to post a ransom demand?”
“Maybe they didn't kidnap her for ransom, not at first.”
“OK. If not for ransom, why?”
I'm struggling now. I don't know. “Maybe they wanted to punish Aleksei.”
It doesn't sound convincing.
“It sounds like a hoax to me. Someone close to the family or to the original investigation knew enough to convince desperate people that Mickey might still be alive.”
“And the shootings?”
“They had a falling out or someone got greedy.”
It sounds so much more rational than my theory.
Joe takes out his notebook and starts drawing lines on the page as if playing hangman.
“You grew up in Lancashire, didn't you?”
“What's that got to do with anything?”
“I'm just asking a question. Your stepfather was an RAF pilot in the war.”
“How do you know that?”
“I remember you telling me.”
“Bullshit!”
A ball of anger forms in my throat. “You're just itching to get inside my head, aren't you? The Human Condition—isn't that what you call it? You got to watch out for that bastard.”
“Why do you keep dreaming about missing children?”
“Fuck you!”
“Maybe you feel guilty.”
