Lost (16 page)

There used to be a real y good comedian who cal ed himself Nosmo King. I watched this guy for years and didn't realize where the name came from. NO SMOKING. Nosmo King. That's why you have to keep your eyes open. The answer can be right in front of you.

The Professor has opened his briefcase and pul ed out a photograph album. The cover is frayed and silverfish have given it a mottled finish along the spine. I recognize it from somewhere.

“I went to see your mother,” he says.

“You did what!”

“I went to see her.”

My teeth are clenched. “You had no right.”

Ignoring me, he runs his fingers over the album cover. Here it comes—the search backward, the probing of my childhood, my family and my relationships. What does it prove?

Nothing. How can another human being have any appreciation of my life and the things that shaped me?

“You don't want to talk about this.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you're poking your nose into my business—you're screwing with my head.”

It takes me a moment to realize that I'm shouting at him. Thankful y, there's nobody around except the barman and the sleeping drunk.

“She doesn't seem very happy in the nursing home.”

“It's a fucking retirement vil age.”

He opens the album. The first photograph is of my stepfather, John Francis Ruiz. A farmer's son from Lancashire, he's dressed in his RAF uniform, standing on the wing of a Lancaster bomber. Already losing his hair, his high forehead makes his eyes seem bigger and more alive.

I remember that photograph. For twenty years it stood on the mantelpiece beside a silver jubilee picture frame and one of those tacky snowbal s of St. Paul's Cathedral.

John Ruiz went missing over Belgium on July 15, 1943, while on his way to bomb a bridge in Ghent. The Lancaster was hit by German fighters and exploded in midair, dropping like a fiery comet.

“Missing in action. Presumed dead,” the telegram said. Only he wasn't dead. He survived a German POW camp and came home to discover that the “future” he had fought so hard to protect had run off and married an American catering corps sergeant and moved to Texas. Nobody blamed her, least of al him.

And then he met Sofia Eisner (or Germile Purrum), a “Jewish” seamstress with a newborn son. She was striding down the hil from Golders Green, between two young friends, their arms locked together, laughing.

“Don't forget now,” shouted the eldest of them. “We're going to meet the men we're going to marry tonight.” At the cinema at the bottom of the hil they came across a group of young men waiting in the queue. One of them wore a single-breasted jacket with notched lapels and three buttons.

Germile whispered to her friends, “Which one's mine?”

John Ruiz smiled at her. A year later they were married.

Joe turns another page of the album. The sepia images seem to have soaked into the paper. There is a photograph of the farm—a plowman's cottage with smal leadlight windows and doors so low my stepfather had to duck his head to get through them. My mother fil ed the rooms with bric-a-brac and souvenirs, managing to convince herself they were heirlooms of her vanished family.

Outside the plowed fields were milk-chocolate brown and smoke fluttered like a ragged white flag from the chimney. In late summer wheels of hay dotted the hil sides like spil ed lozenges.

I can stil smel the mornings sometimes—the burned toast, strong tea and the talcum powder my stepfather sprinkled between his toes before pul ing on his socks. As he closed the door the dogs barking excitedly, dancing around his feet.

I learned al about life and death on the farm. I snipped the scrotums of newborn lambs and pul ed out the testes with my teeth. I put my forearm deep in a mare, feeling for the dilation of the cervix. I kil ed 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 fal 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 smal 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 tel me to keep an eye on him and at the same time she'd tel Luke to stop bugging me because he constantly wanted to play Old Maid and to look at my footbal cards.

In the depths of winter when it snowed I used to go tobogganing down Hil 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 hil ocks 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 wil 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 fal en 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 footbal 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 al 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 stil 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 hil 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 hol ow—mirrored in his eyes. The anger leaks away. My cel phone is rattling on the table.

“Are you OK?” asks Ali. “I heard about what happened at the station.”

Bile blocks my throat. I final y 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 Hil about a fortnight ago. Now it's at a car pound on Regis Road. You want me to check it out?”

“No, I'l go.”

I look at my watch. It's nearly six. Car pounds stay open al night. It's not about the revenue, of course, it's about keeping the city moving. If you believe that I could sel 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 tel him. “You can drive, just keep your mouth shut.”

12

Camden Car Pound looks like a World War I 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 smal 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 Hil two weeks ago.” His eyes flick up and down, sizing me up. “You here to col ect 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?”

“We're not taking the vehicle. We're just looking at it.”

Something stirs behind him. An Alsatian uncurls and seems to self-inflate until it stands as high as the desk. The dog growls and the guard hisses a command.

“Don't mind him. He won't hurt you.”

“You'l make sure of it.”

There must be a hundred cars on the lot, each with a number and grid reference. It takes the guard several minutes to find the details of Rachel's Renault Estate.

The reference says the car was found on Lyndhurst Road with the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. Someone had stolen the stereo and one of the seats.

He directs us across the pound, which is divided into painted squares.

Rachel's car is beaded with rain and the internal light doesn't work when I open the door. I reach inside and trigger it manual y.

There is no front passenger seat. The space is empty except for a dark blanket bundled on the floor. Careful y lifting the blanket I find a bottle of water, chocolate bars and a hand-held periscope.

“Someone was meant to lie on the floor, out of sight,” says Joe.

“Rachel must have delivered the ransom. Someone went with her.”

We're both thinking the same thing—was it me? Campbel cal ed me a vigilante. Aleksei said no police, which means there were no surveil ance teams in cars, on motorbikes or in the air.

“If I were delivering a ransom, what would I make sure of?”

“Proof of life!” says Joe.

“Yes, but apart from that—when I was physical y carrying the ransom, what would I be sure of?”

Joe shrugs. I answer for him. “Backup. I would have wanted someone fol owing me, at least from a distance. And I would have made sure they didn't lose me.”

“How?”

“A tracking device.” I would have put one in the car and another with the ransom.

The universe suddenly shrinks to one thought. That's how Aleksei found me at the prison. And that's why Keebal wanted to search the house. One of the bundles of diamonds must have a transmitter.

Ali!

One ring, two rings, three rings . . .

“Pick up the phone. Pick it up now!” I wait several seconds. She's not answering.

I try her home number. Pick up the phone, Ali. Please.

“Hel o.” (Thank God.)

“What did you do with my coat?”

“It's here.”

“Stay right there! Lock the door. Stay away from the windows.”

“What's wrong?”

“Please, Ali, just do as I say. There's a tracking device with the diamonds. That's how Aleksei found me.” The traffic suddenly melts away. Joe has his foot down, weaving through backstreets, taking shortcuts across garage forecourts and parking lots. God knows where he learned to drive like this. He's either an expert or a complete amateur who's going to put us through a plate-glass window.