I can still smell the mornings sometimes—the burned toast, strong tea and the talcum powder my stepfather sprinkled between his toes before pulling on his socks. As he closed the door the dogs barking excitedly, dancing around his feet.
I learned all about life and death on the farm. I snipped the scrotums of newborn lambs and pulled out the testes with my teeth. I put my forearm deep in a mare, feeling for the dilation of the cervix. I killed calves for the freezer and buried dogs that were more like siblings than working animals.
There aren't any photographs of everyday workings on the farm. The album records only special occasions —weddings, births, christenings and anniversaries.
“Who's this?” Joe points to a picture of Luke, who is wearing a sailor's suit and sitting on the front stairs. His blond cowlick stands up like a flag fall on an old-fashioned taxicab meter.
The lump forming in my throat feels like a tumor. Covering my mouth with my fingers, I try to stop the alcohol and morphine from talking but words leak out through my open pores.
Luke was always small for his age but he compensated for it by being loud and annoying. Most of the time I was at boarding school so I only saw him during the holidays. Daj would tell me to keep an eye on him and at the same time she'd tell Luke to stop bugging me because he constantly wanted to play Old Maid and to look at my football cards.
In the depths of winter when it snowed I used to go tobogganing down Hill Field, starting off near the front door and finishing at the pond. Luke was too young so he rode on a toboggan with me. Several hillocks along the way would throw us in the air and he squealed with laughter, clinging to my knees.
The track leveled off toward the end and a mesh fence sagged between posts having been hit so many times by braced feet.
My stepfather had gone into town to get a thermostat for the boiler. Daj was trying to hand dye my bedsheets a darker color to hide the semen stains. I can't remember what I was doing. Isn't that strange? I can remember every other detail with the clarity of a home movie.
At bath time we noticed him missing. We used a spotlight powered by the tractor engine to search the pond but the hole in the ice had closed over.
I lay awake that night, trying to will Luke into being. I wanted him to be lying in his bed, snuffling in his sleep and twitching like a dog dreaming of fleas.
They found him in the morning beneath the ice. His face was blue, his lips bluer. He was wearing hand-me- down trousers and hand-me-down shoes.
I watched from my bedroom window as they laid him on a sheet and tucked another beneath his chin. The ambulance had mud-streaked arches and open doors. As they lifted the stretcher I went flying out of the front door, screaming at them to leave my brother alone. My stepfather caught me at the gate. He picked me up and hugged me so hard I could barely breathe. His face was gray and prickly. His eyes were blurred with tears.
“He's gone, Vince.”
“I want him back.”
“We've lost him.”
“Let me see.”
“Go back inside.”
“Let me see.”
His chin was pressing into my hair. Daj had fallen to her knees beside Luke. She screamed and rocked back and forth, rubbing her fingers through his hair and kissing his closed lids.
She would hate me now. I knew that. She would hate me forever. It was my fault. I should have been looking after him. I should have helped him count his football cards and played his childish games. Nobody ever blamed me; nobody except me. I knew the truth. It had been my fault. I was responsible.
“We lost him,” my stepfather had said.
Lost? You lose something down the back of the sofa or through a hole in your pocket; you lose your train of thought or you lose track of time. You don't lose a child.
I wipe the wetness from my eyes and look at the Professor. I've been talking all this time. Why did he start me on this? What does he know about guilt? He doesn't have to look at it every day in the mirror or scrape whiskers off its soapy skin or see it reflected in his mother's eyes. I turned Daj into an alcoholic. She drank with the ghosts of her dead family and her dead son. She drank until her hands shook and her world smeared like lipstick on the edge of a glass. Alcoholics don't have relationships—they take hostages.
“Please leave this alone,” I whisper, wanting him to stop.
Joe closes the photograph album. “Your memory loss was the result of psychological trauma.”
“I was shot.”
“The scans showed no injuries or bruising or internal bleeding. You didn't get a bump on the head. You didn't lose particular memories; you blocked them out. I want to know why.”
“Luke died more than forty years ago.”
“But you think about him every day. You still wonder if you could have saved him just like you wonder if you could have saved Mickey.”
I don't answer. I want him to stop talking.
“It's like having a film inside your head, isn't it, eh? Playing on a continuous loop, over and over—”
“That's enough.”
“You want to be riding down the icy hill with Luke sitting between your knees. You want to hold on tightly to him and drive your boots into the snow, making sure the toboggan stops in time—”
“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!”
On my feet now, I'm standing over him. My finger is pointed between his eyes. The barman reaches behind the counter for a phone or a metal pipe.
Joe hasn't moved. Christ, he's cool. I can see my reflection—desolate and hollow—mirrored in his eyes. The anger leaks away. My cell phone is rattling on the table.
“Are you OK?” asks Ali. “I heard about what happened at the station.”
Bile blocks my throat. I finally get the words out. “Have you found Rachel?”
“No, but I think I've found her car.”
“Where?”
“Someone reported it abandoned. It was towed away from Haverstock Hill about a fortnight ago. Now it's at a car pound on Regis Road. You want me to check it out?”
“No, I'll go.”
I look at my watch. It's nearly six. Car pounds stay open all night. It's not about the revenue, of course, it's about keeping the city moving. If you believe that I could sell you the Tower of London.
Finishing my beer, I grab my things. The Professor looks ready to wave me off.
“You're coming, too,” I tell him. “You can drive, just keep your mouth shut.”
12
Camden Car Pound looks like a World War II prison camp with razor wire on the fences and spotlights around the perimeter. It even has a wooden hut where a lone security guard has his polished boots propped on a desk with a small TV perched between his knees. I hammer on the window and his head snaps around. Swinging his feet to the floor, he hoists his trousers. He has a baby face and spiked hair. A nightstick in a leather pouch sways on his belt.
“My name is Detective Inspector Ruiz. You have a vehicle here that was towed from a street on Haverstock Hill two weeks ago.”
His eyes flick up and down, sizing me up. “You here to collect it?”
“No. I'm here to inspect it.”
He glances at the Professor, wondering why his left arm is trembling. What a pair we make—Hopalong Cassidy and Pegleg Pete.
“Nobody told me you was coming. I should have been told. You gonna pay the towing fee?”
