Joe is waiting for me to say something. His dark brown eyes are staring at me with a vague sadness and the certainty that he can't help me. Meanwhile, I keep considering what should have happened. Campbell should have set up a task force. There should be two dozen detectives looking for Kirsten and Gerry Brandt. We should have Aleksei under surveillance and be searching his boat.
For one cool precise hour I want to know what to do. I want every decision to be the right one.
We're driving along Euston Road, past Regent's Park.
“So what are you going to do?” he asks.
“Find them.”
“You can't do it alone.”
“I have no choice.”
Joe looks like a man with a plan. “What if we got some volunteers? We could call friends and family. How many people do you need?”
“I don't know. We need to contact the hospitals and doctors' surgeries and clinics. One of them must have treated Kirsten.”
“We can use my office,” says Joe. “It's not very big but there's the waiting room and the storeroom and a kitchen. There are six phone lines and a fax. We could get some more handsets. I'll get my secretary, Philippa, to start calling people.”
We pull up outside his office. “What are you going to do?”
There's a small invisible shock in the air. A decision is made.
“One way or another I'm going to see Rachel Carlyle.”
There will be no tennis today. Puddles cover the court and fat drops hang on the net like glass beads. It must be autumn—the rain is colder.
Parked in front of the Carlyle house, I watch the driveway and listen to the radio. Ray Murphy's name has been released but there's no mention of Kirsten during the news bulletin. Campbell won't allow it.
Glancing up at the house, I watch a dark Mercedes glide through the front gates and pause before turning left. Sir Douglas and Tottie are going out.
I give them a few minutes and then approach the house. Soggy mounds of leaves have gathered along the drive, trapped by the hedges. Some have clogged the fountain and the water spills over the side, flooding the footings.
Avoiding the front door, I skirt the building and use a set of stone steps at the right-hand side of the house. I knock four times before it opens. Thomas stands there.
“I need to speak to Rachel.”
“Miss Rachel isn't here, Sir.”
He's lying.
“You don't have to protect her. I don't want to cause any trouble. If she doesn't want to speak to me I'll leave.”
He looks past me into the garden. “I don't think Sir Douglas would approve.”
“Just ask her.”
He contemplates this and agrees, leaving me waiting on the steps. A fire is smoldering somewhere, turning the air the color of dirty water.
Thomas appears again. “Miss Carlyle will see you in the kitchen.”
He leads the way. We pass along hallways lined with paintings of foxhounds, horses and pheasants. The frames are so dark they blend into the walls and the animals appear to be suspended, set in aspic. Above the stairs there are English landscapes of lakes and rivers.
At first I don't realize that Rachel is already in the kitchen. She stands with the stillness of a photograph, tall and dark, with her hair drawn back.
“Your father said I couldn't see you,” I say.
“He didn't ask me.”
She is wearing jeans and a raw-silk shirt. Her wedge-shaped face is softened by the cut of her hair, which is shorter than I remember, loosely brushing her shoulders.
“I hear you couldn't remember what happened that night.”
“Yes, for a while.”
She bites her bottom lip and weighs whether to believe me. “You didn't forget about me.”
“No. I didn't know what happened to you. I only discovered a few days ago.”
Urgency fills her eyes. “Did you see Mickey? Was she there?”
“No, I'm sorry.”
She purses her lips and turns her face away. “Losing your memory, forgetting everything, must be nice. All the terrible things in your life, the guilt, the regret, gone, washed away. Sometimes I wish . . .” She doesn't finish. Leaning over the sink, she fills a glass of water from the tap and empties it into a row of African violets on the windowsill. “You never asked me why I married Aleksei.”
“It's none of my business.”
“I met my ex-husband at a fund-raising dinner for Bosnian orphans. He wrote a very large check. He wrote a lot of very large checks in those days. Whenever I took him to lectures and documentaries about deforestation or animal cruelty or the plight of the homeless—he pulled out his checkbook.”
“He was buying your affection.”
“I thought he believed in the same things.”
“Your parents didn't like him?”
“They were horrified. Aleksei had no equal—anybody would have been better than a Russian emigre with a murdering father.”
“Did you love him?”
She ponders this. “Yes. I think so.”
“What happened?”
She shrugs. “We got married. For the first three years we lived in Holland. Mickey was born in Amsterdam: Aleksei was building up the business.”
Rachel's voice is low and introspective. “In spite of what my father says, I'm not a foolish person. I knew something was going on. Mostly it was just rumors and nervous glances in restaurants. I used to ask Aleksei but he told me people were jealous of him. I knew he was involved in something illegal. I kept asking questions and he grew irritated. He told me that a wife should not question her husband. She must obey.
“Then one day the wife of a Dutch flower grower visited me at home. I don't know how she found my address. She showed me a photograph of her husband. His face was so scarred by acid that his skin looked like melted wax.
“‘Tell me why a woman would stay with a man who looks like this?' she asked me. I shook my head. Then she said, ‘Because it cannot be as bad as staying with the man who would do such a thing.'
“From then on I began to discover things. I eavesdropped on conversations, read e-mails and kept copies of letters. I learned things—”
“Enough to get you killed.”
“Enough to keep me safe,” she corrects. “I learned how Aleksei does business. It is simple and brutal. First he offers to buy a business. If a price cannot be agreed he burns it down. If they set up again he burns their houses down. And if the message still fails to be heard, he burns down the houses of their relatives and the schools of their children.”
“What did Aleksei do when you left him?”
“First he begged me to come back. Then he tried to bribe me with grand gestures. Finally he tried to bully me.”
“You didn't go back to your family.”
Pushing hair behind her ears with both hands, she shakes her head. “I've been running away from them my whole life.”
We sit in silence. The warm air rising from the stove lifts loose strands of her hair, suspending them in
