“Sarah won't be long,” she says. “She's just gone to pick up a few things from the supermarket. Is everything all right?”
“Fine.”
“But you talked to Sarah a few weeks ago.”
“It's just a follow-up.”
The supermarket is only around the corner. I leave Ali at the house and go looking for Sarah, happy to stretch my legs. The brightly lit aisles are stacked with cartons and half-empty boxes creating an obstacle course for shopping carts.
On my second circuit, I see a young girl in a long coat lurking at the far end of the aisle. She glances in both directions and then stuffs chocolate bars into her pockets. Her right arm is pressed against her side, holding something else beneath her coat.
I recognize Sarah. She's taller, of course, having lost her puppy fat. Light brown bangs fall across her forehead and her fine straight nose is dusted with freckles.
I glance up at the surveillance camera bolted to the ceiling. It is pointing down the aisle away from her. Sarah knows the blind spots.
Wrapping the coat around her, she walks toward the checkout and puts a box of breakfast cereal and a bag of marshmallows on the conveyor belt. Then she picks up a magazine and flicks through the pages, looking disinterested as the cashier deals with the customer ahead of her.
A young mother and toddler join the queue. Sarah looks up and notices me staring at her. Immediately she looks away and counts the loose change in her hand.
The store security guard, a Sikh wearing a bright blue turban, has been watching her through the window, hiding behind the posters for “red spot” specials. He marches through the automatic doors with one hand on his hip as though reaching for a nonexistent gun. The light behind him creates a halo around his turbaned head: the Sikh Terminator.
Sarah doesn't realize until he grabs hold of her arm and bends it behind her back. Two magazines tumble from beneath her coat. She twists from side to side and screams. Everything stops—the cashier chewing her pink bubble gum, a shelf stacker on a stepladder, the butcher slicing ham . . .
A frozen chicken korma is burning my fingers. I can't remember picking it out of the freezer. I push past the queue and hand it to the cashier. “Sarah, I told you to wait for me.”
The security guard hesitates.
“I'm sorry about this. We didn't have a basket.” I reach into Sarah's pockets and take out the chocolate bars, placing them on the conveyor belt. Then I pick up the magazines from the floor and find a packet of biscuits tucked into the waistband of her jeans.
“She was trying to steal those,” protests the guard.
“She was holding them. Take your hands off her.”
“And who the fuck are you?”
My badge flips open. “I'm the guy who's going to charge you with assault if you don't let her go.”
Sarah reaches inside her coat and takes a box of tea bags from an inner pocket. Then she waits while the cashier scans each item and packs them into a plastic bag.
I take hold of the shopping bag and she follows me through the automatic doors. The manager intercepts us. “She's not welcome here. I don't want her coming back.”
“She pays, she comes,” I say, as I pass him and walk into the bright sunshine.
For a fleeting moment I think Sarah might run, but instead she turns and holds out her hand for her groceries.
“Not so fast.”
She shrugs off her overcoat revealing khaki jeans and a T-shirt.
“It's a bit of a giveaway.” I motion to the coat.
“Thanks for the advice.” Her voice is full of fake toughness.
“You want a cold drink?”
She balks. She's waiting for a lecture on the evils of shoplifting.
I hold up the shopping bag. “You want this stuff, you have a cold drink.”
We go to a juice bar on the corner and take a table outside. Sarah orders a banana smoothie before eyeing up the muffins. I get hungry watching her eat.
“You saw me a few weeks ago.”
She nods.
“What did we talk about?”
She gives me an odd look.
“I had an accident. I've forgotten a few things. I was hoping you could help me remember them.”
Sarah glances at my leg. “You mean like amnesia?”
“Something like that.”
She takes another mouthful of muffin.
“Why did I come and see you?”
“You wanted to know if I ever cut Mickey's hair or counted the coins in her money box.”
“Did I say why?”
“No.”
“What else did we talk about?”
“I dunno. Stuff, I guess.”
Sarah glances down at her shoes, stubbing the toe against the legs of the chair. The sun is pitched high and sharp, like the last hurrah before winter.
“Do you ever think about Mickey?” I ask.
“Sometimes.”
“So do I. I guess you have lots of new friends now.”
“Yeah, some, but Mickey was different. She was like an . . . a . . . a . . . appendix.”
“You mean appendage.”
“Yeah—like a heart.”
“That's not really an appendage.”
“OK, like an arm, real important.” She drains her smoothie.
“You ever see Mrs. Carlyle?”
Sarah runs her fingers around the rim of her glass, collecting froth. “She still lives in the same place. My mum says it'd give her the creeps living where someone got killed but I reckon Mrs. Carlyle stays for a reason.”
“Why's that?”
“She's waiting for Mickey. I'm not saying that Mickey is gonna come home, you know. I just figure Mrs. Carlyle wants to know where she is. That's why she goes to prison every month and visits him.”
“Visits who?”
“Mr. Wavell.”
“She visits him!”
“Every month. My mum says there's something sick about that. Gives her the creeps.”
Sarah reaches across the table and turns my wrist so she can read the time. “I'm in heaps of trouble. Can I have my stuff now?”
I hand her the plastic shopping bag and a ten-quid note. “If I catch you shoplifting again, I'll make you mop supermarket floors for a month.”
She rolls her eyes and is gone, pedalling furiously on her bicycle, carrying her coat, the bag of groceries and my frozen chicken korma.
The idea of Rachel Carlyle visiting Howard Wavell in prison sends chills through me. A grooming pedophile and a grieving parent—it's wrong, it's sick, but I know what she's doing. Rachel wants to find Mickey. She wants to bring her home.
I remember something she said to me a long while ago. Her fingers were tumbling over and over in her lap as she described a little routine she had with Mickey. “Even to the post office,” they would say to each other, as they said goodbye and hugged.
“Sometimes people don't come back,” said Rachel. “That's why you should always make your goodbyes count.”
She was trying to hold on to every detail of Mickey—the clothes she wore, the games she played, the songs she sang; the way she frowned when she talked about something serious or a hiccupping laugh that made milk spurt out of her nose at the dinner table. She wanted to remember the thousands of tiny details and trivia that give light and shade to every life—even one as short as Mickey's.
Ali meets me at the juice bar and I tell her what Sarah said.
“You're going to go and see Howard, aren't you, Sir?”
“Yes.”
“Could he have sent the ransom demand?”
“Not without help.”
I know what she's thinking, although she won't say anything. She agrees with Campbell. Every likely explanation has the word “hoax” attached, including the one where Howard uses a ransom demand to win his appeal.
On the drive to Wormwood Scrubs we cross under the Westway into Scrubs Lane. Teenage girls are playing hockey on the playing fields, while teenage boys sit and watch, captivated by the blue pleated skirts that swirl and dip against muddy knees and moss-smooth thighs.