‘Who told you that?’
The hesitation is enough evidence. Charlie makes it worse by turning and burrowing into an open cardboard box full of doll’s clothes. She won’t look at me.
‘Have you talked to Darcy?’
She chooses not to answer rather than tell a lie.
‘When did you talk to her?’
Charlie looks at me as though it’s my fault that she can’t keep a secret.
‘Please, sweetheart. I’ve been worried. I need to know where she is.’
‘In London.’
‘You’ve talked to her?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘She told me not to. She said that you’d come looking for her. She said you’d make her go to Spain with her aunt, the one who smokes and smells like a donkey.’
I’m more relieved than angry. It’s been five days since Darcy went missing and she hasn’t returned any of my calls or messages. Charlie comes clean. She and Darcy have been talking most days and sending text messages. Darcy is living in London and hanging out with an older girl who used to dance with the Royal Ballet.
‘I want you to call her for me.’
Charlie hesitates. ‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if she won’t be my friend any more?’
‘This is more important.’
Charlie takes her mobile from her jeans and punches the number.
‘She’s not there,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to leave a message?’
I think for a moment. I’ll be in London four hours from now.
‘Tell her to call you.’
Charlie leaves a message. Afterwards, I take the mobile from her hand and give her mine.
‘We’re swapping, just for today. Darcy won’t answer my calls, but she’ll answer yours.’
Charlie frowns crossly. She has the cutest twin creases above the bridge of her nose.
‘If you read my text messages, I’ll never talk to you again!’
50
Ruiz leans against a park bench, eating a sandwich and drinking coffee. He’s watching a delivery truck trying to reverse down a narrow driveway. Someone is directing the driver, signalling left or right. A hand slaps the roller door.
‘You know one of the hard things about being retired?’ says Ruiz.
‘What’s that?’
‘You never get a day off. No holidays or long weekends.’
‘My heart bleeds.’
The park bench overlooks the Thames. Pale afternoon sunlight barely raises a gleam on the heavy brown water. Rowing crews and tourist launches leave white wakes that slide across the surface and wash up against the glistening mud exposed by an ebbing tide.
The old Barn Elms Water Works is across the river. South London could be another country. That’s the thing about London. It’s not so much a metropolis as a collection of villages. Chelsea is different from Clapham, Clapham is different from Hammersmith is different from Barnes is different from a dozen other places. The dividing line may only be as wide as a river yet the ambience changes completely once you cross from one place to the next.
Julianne is back from Rome. I wanted to meet her at Heathrow, but she said the company had sent a car and she had to go to the office. We’ve arranged to meet later at the hotel and go to the party together.
‘You want another coffee?’ asks Ruiz.
‘No thanks.’
Ruiz’s house is across the road. He treats the Thames like a water feature in his front garden or his own private stretch of river. This particular park bench is his outdoor furniture and he spends several hours a day here, fishing and reading the morning papers. Rumour has it that he’s never actually caught a fish and this has nothing to do with the water quality of the river or the fish population. He doesn’t use bait. I haven’t asked if it’s true. Some questions are best left unspoken.
We take our empty mugs back to the house and the kitchen. The door to the utilities room is open. Clothes spew from a dryer, light, pretty, women’s things; a tartan skirt, a mauve bra and ankle socks. Something about the scene is familiar yet oddly unsettling. I don’t picture Ruiz having women in his life even though he’s been married three times.
‘Is there something you want to share with me?’ I ask.
He looks at the basket. ‘I don’t think they’d fit.’
‘You have someone staying.’
‘My daughter.’
‘When did she get home?’
‘A while back.’ He shuts the door, trying to close off the conversation.
Ruiz’s daughter Claire has been dancing in New York. Her troubled relationship with her father has been akin to global warming- a melting of the icecaps, a rise in the oceans and a refloating of the boat- none of it achieved without sceptical voices questioning the outcome.
We move to the lounge. Papers and folders relating to the sinking of the Argo Hellas are spread across a coffee table. Ruiz takes a seat and pulls out his battered notebook.
‘I talked to the chief investigator as well as the coroner and the local police commander.’ Loose pages threaten to spill out from the broken spine as he turns them. ‘It was a thorough investigation. These are statements from witnesses and a transcript of the inquiry. They arrived by courier yesterday and I read them last night. Found nothing out of the ordinary.
‘Three people gave evidence that Helen and Chloe Tyler were on the ferry. One of them was a navy diver who was part of the recovery team.’
Ruiz hands me his statement and waits while I read it. The diver describes recovering four bodies that day. The visibility was less than ten yards and a treacherous current made the job more difficult.
On the fifth dive of the day, he found the body of a young girl snagged on the metal rungs of a ladder near a lifeboat winch, starboard side, nearest the stern. The diver cut the straps from the girl’s lifejacket, but the current ripped her body from his hands. He didn’t have enough air left in his tanks to swim after her.
‘He identified Chloe from a photograph,’ says Ruiz. ‘The girl had a cast on her arm. It matches what her grandfather said happened.’
Despite the statement, I sense that Ruiz isn’t completely convinced.
‘I did some checking on this diver. He’s a ten-year veteran, one of the most experienced divers they have.’
‘And?’
‘The navy suspended him for six months last year when he failed to check gear properly and almost drowned a trainee. Word is- well, it’s more a whisper- that he’s a drunk.’
Ruiz hands me a second statement. It belongs to a Canadian gap-year student who said he spoke to Helen and Chloe just after the ferry sailed. They were sitting in a passenger lounge, starboard side. Chloe was seasick and the backpacker offered her a pill.
‘I talked to his folks in Vancouver. They flew to Greece after the sinking and tried to talk him into coming home, but he wanted to continue. The kid is still travelling.’
‘Shouldn’t he have started uni by now?’
‘His gap year is turning into two.’
