Lost

“Time to wake them up.”

Rachel has fallen asleep on the sofa in the waiting room. I gently shake her awake. “Come on, I'll take you home.”

“But what about Mickey?”

“We'll find her. First you need to sleep. Where do you want to go?”

“Dolphin Mansions.”

“Take my car,” says Joe. “I've called a cab.”

He's still on the phone to Phuket talking to a waitress who doesn't understand English, trying to get a description of Peter Brannigan.

Outside the streets are empty except for a council sweeping machine with twirling brushes and jets of water. I open the car door and Rachel slips inside. The interior smells of pine air freshener and ancient tobacco.

Using a borrowed overcoat as a blanket, she covers her knees. I know she has questions. She wants reassurance. Maybe we're both deluding ourselves.

Headlights sweep across the interior of the car as we drive toward Maida Vale. She rests her head against the seat, watching me.

“Do you have children, Inspector?”

“I'm not a policeman anymore. Please call me Vincent.”

She waits for an answer.

“Twins. They're grown up now.”

“Do you see much of them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It's a long story.”

“How long can it be? They're your children.”

I'm caught now. No matter what I say to her she won't understand. She desperately wants to find her child and I don't even talk to mine. Where's the fairness in that?

She tucks her hair behind her ears. “Do you know that sometimes I think I made Mickey frightened of the world.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I kept telling her to be careful.”

“All parents do that.”

“Yes, but it wasn't just the normal stuff like not patting stray dogs or talking to strangers. I made her frightened of what can happen if you love something too much and it disappoints you or gets taken away. She wasn't always scared to go outside. It only started when she was about four.”

“What happened?”

In a forlorn voice she describes a Saturday afternoon at a local park, where she and Mickey would often go to feed the ducks. This one particular Saturday there was an old-fashioned fair, with a steam-powered carousel, cotton candy and whirligigs. Mickey rode all by herself on a gaily painted horse, proud of the fact that she didn't need her mother to sit behind her. When the ride finished, she was on the far side of the carousel. Rachel had been drawn into conversation with a woman from her mothers' group and didn't notice the ride ending.

Mickey stepped off. Instead of circling, she wandered through the forest of legs thinking that surely one of the hands belonged to her mother.

She walked back toward the pond where the ducks had gathered in the skirts of a willow tree. Peering over the low railing fence she watched two boys, no older than eleven, throwing stones. The ducks huddled together. Mickey wondered why they didn't fly away. Then she noticed the ducklings, sheltering beneath a feathered breast and muddy tail feathers.

One duckling—a dark ball of down against the darkness of the shade—separated from the others. It took the full force of a stone and disappeared beneath the surface. Seconds later it reappeared, floating lifelessly on the green scum in that corner of the pond.

Mickey burst into hysterical wailing. Tears streamed down her cheeks into the wide corners of her mouth. Her crying made the boys drop their stones and edge away, not wanting to be blamed for whatever had made her cry.

The howls from the edge of the pond created a strange dichotomy of reactions. Some people almost fell over each other to ignore them. Others watched and waited for someone else to intervene.

The pigeon man was nearest. Grizzled and yellow-toothed, he raised himself up from his bench, brushing pigeons off his lap as though they were spilled crumbs. Shuffling across to Mickey, he hitched up his trousers so that he could kneel beside her.

“You got a problem, Missy?”

“Make them stop,” she wailed, with her hands clamped over her ears.

He didn't seem to hear her. “You want to feed the birds?”

“The ducks,” she sobbed.

“You want to feed the ducks?”

Mickey howled again and the pigeon man raised his eyebrows. He could never understand children. Taking her hand, he went in search of a park attendant or the girl's mother.

A policeman was already approaching. He pushed through the crowd and took in the scene. “I want you to let her go,” he demanded.

“I'm looking for her mother,” explained the pigeon man. Spittle clung to his tangled beard.

“Just let the girl go and step away.”

By then Rachel had arrived. She swept Mickey up, held her tightly, and the two of them tried to out-hug each other. Meanwhile, the pigeon man had his arms stretched wide on the back of a park bench, while the policeman patted him down and searched his pockets, spilling birdseed onto the grass.

Mickey didn't ask to feed the ducks again. She didn't go to the park and soon she stopped going outside Dolphin Mansions. A year later she saw her first therapist.

The children's book that Timothy found in Mickey's cubbyhole in the basement was about five little ducks who go out in the world and return home again. Mickey knew from experience that not all little ducks come back.

32

Weatherman Pete brushes milk foam from his mustache and motions toward the river with his paper cup. “Sewers are no place for little girls.”

His van is parked up on a boat ramp in the shadow of Putney Bridge where eight-oared shells skim the surface of the river like gigantic water beetles. Moley is asleep in the back of the van, curled up with one eye open.

“Where could they have kept her?”

Pete exhales slowly, making his lips vibrate. “There are hundreds of places—disused tube stations, service tunnels, bomb shelters, aqueducts, drains . . . What makes you think he's hiding down there?”

“He's scared. People are looking for him.”

Pete hums. “Takes a unique sort of individual to live down there.”

“He is unique.”

“No, you don't get me. You take Moley. If he disappeared down there you wouldn't find him in a hundred years. You see he likes the dark, just like some people prefer the cold. You know what I mean?”

“This guy isn't like that.”

“So how does he know his way down there?”

“He's going from memory. Someone showed him where to hide and how to move around. A former flusher called Ray Murphy.”

“Saccharine Ray! The boxer.”