lights flare. It's now or never.
I'm out of the car. Running. My legs are stiff and wracked with cramps, making it hard to stay on my feet. Meanwhile the pavement is uneven and broken by tree roots.
A Vauxhall Vectra is pulling out ahead of me. Rachel spies me at the last minute in her rear mirror and slows down. I open the trunk and tumble heavily inside, pulling the lid closed until it jams hard on my fingers but doesn't lock shut.
We're moving again. I'm curled up in a ball, with my cheek pressed against the nylon floor mat and my heart pounding. The wheel arches amplify the sound of the tires on the road and I can hear nothing else.
I feel for the earpiece. It's fallen out and is dangling down on my chest. Putting it back into my ear, I hear Aleksei yelling in Russian. They don't know which car to follow. There are two vehicles leaving the street—a BMW turning south down Fitzjohn's Avenue and the Vectra turning north.
They're trying to contact me. The walkie-talkie is digging into my chest. I lever myself upward and pull it free. There's no response when I depress the talk button. I must have broken the two-way when I rolled into the car.
Aleksei won't know which vehicle to follow until the cars are far enough apart for the transmitter to identify which one is carrying the ransom. By then he risks losing us completely.
I can't help. Instead I concentrate on creating a mental map of north London in my head, trying to calculate which turns we make and the direction we're heading. The minutes and miles tick by.
The weight of the trunk is keeping it closed until we hit a pothole, when it tries to jump open. I raise my head and try to peer through the narrow gap. The only thing visible is the light gray tarmac and occasional flashes of headlights.
Through the earpiece I can monitor Aleksei and the Russian. The BMW has been discounted. Now they're heading toward Kilburn, relying solely on the signal from the diamonds.
Rolling onto my back, I keep one hand on the lid of the trunk and feel along the inside walls until I locate the internal light. The bulb feels smooth in my fingertips and I twist it free from the socket.
Several times the car stops and does a U-turn. Either Rachel is lost or they're still making her jump through hoops. She's driving faster now. The streets are emptier.
The car crosses a speed hump and suddenly stops. Is this it? I slide my gun from its holster and cradle it on my chest.
“Hey, Lady, you want to slow down. I almost took you for a joyrider.” It is a man's voice. He might be a security guard with too much time on his hands. “Are you lost?”
“No. I'm looking for a . . . for a friend's house.”
“I wouldn't recommend you hang around here, Lady. Best you head back the way you came.”
“You don't understand. I have to keep going.”
I can almost hear him chewing this over as if he wants to phone a friend before making a decision. “Maybe I didn't make myself clear,” he drawls.
“But I have to—”
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he says. He's walking around the car, kicking at the tires.
“Please, let me go.”
“And what's the big hurry? You in some sort of trouble?”
A wind has come up. Corrugated iron flaps on the ground and I can hear a dog barking. When the man reaches the rear of the car he notices the trunk is popped off its latch. His fingers hook under the lid.
As it opens, I slide my gun through the opening and press it into his groin. His jaw drops open and helps him take a deep breath.
“You are jeopardizing a police undercover operation,” I hiss. “Back away from the car and let the lady go.”
He blinks several times and nods, before slowly lowering the trunk. As the car pulls away I see his hand raised as if holding a salute.
Moving quickly again, we appear to be circling an industrial estate. Rachel is looking for something. She pulls off the road onto rough ground and stops, killing the engine.
In the sudden silence I can hear her voice but only one side of the conversation. “I can't see any traffic cone,” she says. “No, I can't see it.” She's growing desperate. “It's just a vacant lot . . . Wait! I see it now.”
The door opens. I feel the car gently rock. I don't want her leaving. She has to stay close to me. There is no time to weigh my options. Hopefully, Aleksei and the Russian will have caught up with us and are holding their position.
Easing open the trunk, I roll over the lip and land heavily on the ground, using the momentum to spin away from the light. Then I lie dead still with my face pressed against loose gravel and mud.
Lifting my head I spy Rachel in the beam of the headlights. Ahead of her is a discarded industrial freezer standing upright in the middle of an empty lot. The stainless steel door is pitted and dented by stones, but still reflects the light. Sitting on top of it is an orange traffic cone.
Rachel walks toward it, stumbling over the broken bricks and rubble. Her jeans snag on a coil of barbed wire, half buried in the ground. She twists her leg free.
She's there now, standing in front of the freezer. It's almost as tall as she is. Reaching forward, she grips the handle and pulls open the door. A child's body tumbles forward. Small. Almost liquid. Rachel's arms instinctively reach out and her mouth opens in a silent scream.
I'm on my feet and running toward her. It's the longest forty yards—a horizontal Everest—crossed with my arms pumping and my stomach in my boots. Rachel is on her knees cradling the body. I grab her around her waist and lift her. She's adrenaline light. There's nothing of her. A cloth head lolls backward from her arms, with crosses for eyes and tufts of wool for hair. It's a child-size rag doll with a beige torso and beige limbs and a knobbly bald face, all swollen and worn.
“Listen to me, Rachel. It's not Mickey. It's just a doll. Look! See!”
She has a strange, almost serene look on her face. Only her eyelids are moving of their own accord. Slowly, I pry her fingers loose from the doll and lean her head against my chest.
A note is tied around the doll's neck, threaded with the same blue wool as the hair. Each letter is smeared dark red. I pray to God that it's paint.
Four words—written in capitals: THIS COULD BE HER!
Wrapping my jacket around Rachel, I lead her slowly back to the car and sit her inside. She hasn't uttered a sound. Nor does she respond to my voice. Instead she stares straight ahead at a point in the distance or in the future, a hundred yards or a hundred years from here and now.
I pick up the cell phone on the front seat. Silence. Inside my head I scream in frustration.
Sliding onto the seat beside Rachel, I take her pulse and tug my jacket tighter around her shoulders. She needs a doctor. I should call this off now.
“What happened?” she asks, regaining some hold on reality.
“They hung up.”
“But they'll call back?”
I don't know how to answer her. “I'm calling an ambulance.”
“No!”
It's amazing! Although deep in shock there is still one pure, undamaged, functioning brain cell working inside her. It's like the queen bee of brain cells, being guarded by the hive . . . and it's buzzing now.
“If they have Mickey they'll call back,” she says. The statement is so forceful and clear that I can't help doing as she says.
“OK. We wait.”
She nods and wipes her nose with my sleeve. The headlights still pour white light in a path across the weeds and debris. I can just make out a line of trees, bruised purple against the ambient light.
We messed up. What else could we have done? I glance across at Rachel. Her lips are blue and trembling. With her arms hanging loosely by her sides, it seems only her skeleton is keeping her upright.
The silence amplifies the distant traffic noise . . . and then the phone!
Rachel doesn't flinch. Her mind has gone somewhere safer. I glance at the square glowing screen and take
