For the next two hours we practice, going through the various scenarios. Realistically, I can only instill a handful of ideas. Over and over I repeat the same question. “What are you going to ask?”
“To see Mickey.”
“When are you going to hand over the ransom?”
“When I have Mickey.”
“That's right. When you're holding her by the hand.”
I look into her eyes, hoping to see the same resolve that I witnessed at the first press conference after Mickey had gone missing when Rachel refused to break down or cry. I saw the same determination on the courthouse steps after the verdict when she read from a prepared statement.
“You don't have to go through with this,” I remind her. Rachel doesn't blink or even breathe. Her fingers flutter against the buckles of the satchel.
On the edge of consciousness I hear a phone ringing. Joe leans across his desk and diverts the call. He looks at me expectantly, his left arm jerking like a broken fire hose.
“You remembered something.”
I feel my stomach heave and settle again. “Not enough.”
His arm has stopped shaking. His face assumes a pale blankness except for the brightness in his eyes. Life is one big mystery to him, an ever-shifting puzzle. Most people don't stop to think. Joe can't stop himself from thinking.
21
Ali has had her phone turned off all evening. Finally she calls me.
“Where have you been?”
“Working. I'm coming home now.”
“Not on my account.”
“I've been working.”
Twenty minutes later she comes through the door, looking different. They say you can tell when a woman has had sex. Maybe I never did it well enough.
Ali has something for me. The Police National Computer confirmed that Gerry Brandt shared a prison cell with Tony Murphy four years ago. Brandt was released on parole two months before Mickey disappeared.
“And how's this for another coincidence,” she says. “Tony Murphy got paroled six months ago—just in time to be involved in all this.”
“How is ‘New Boy' Dave?”
With just a hint of a smile: “He's a very happy bunny.”
Although tired, she sits and goes through her notes. Gerry Brandt disappeared off radar screens the same month that Mickey went missing. Since then there have been no tax returns, social security payments, traffic fines, police cautions or overdue library books . . . He popped up again three months ago when he applied for welfare.
“So tell me, my clever young thing, does Mr. Brandt have a current location?”
“As a matter of fact he does,” she says, holding up her hand. Between her fingers is a small piece of folded paper—an address in South London.
Bermondsey is one of those areas that has been raped twice—once by the Luftwaffe and then by architects in the seventies who put up Stalinesque tower blocks and concrete council estates. It's like seeing a set of healthy teeth riddled with fillings.
We pull up outside a big old white place, veiled in foliage. Beneath a pelmet of ivy, I see a small balcony supported by ornate brackets and above that a steep slate roof as dark and wet as a washed blackboard.
I look at my watch. It's just gone seven in the morning.
“Rise and shine, Princess.”
A girl of about nineteen with tousled hair peers from the partially opened door. She's wearing a rugby sweater and a pair of cotton briefs. A tattoo peeps from beneath the waistband.
She looks at Ali's badge and unlocks the chain. Then we follow her down the hallway to the living room. Ali admonishes me silently for checking out the swaying arse.
Two more girls are asleep on the floor wrapped in each other's arms. Someone else of indeterminate sex is cocooned in a bedspread on the sofa. The air stinks of hash and stale cigarette smoke.
“Heavy night?”
“Not me, I don't drink,” she says.
“We're looking for Gerry Brandt.”
“He's upstairs.”
She sits on a dining chair and rests her bare foot on the table to pick at a scab on her knee.
“Well maybe you'd like to go and tell him that we'd like a word,” Ali replies.
The girl ponders this and then slides her foot off the table. She makes the stairs seem very steep. The dining room is plastered with cheap flyers for pub bands and there is a padded bench in the corner beneath a bar and weights. Through the door in the kitchen I see last night's takeout curry spilling out of the trash can.
The girl has returned. “Grub says he'll be a minute.”
She goes into the bathroom and without bothering to fully close the door, sits on the toilet and urinates. After finishing, she brushes her teeth, watching me in the mirror. Another toilet flushes upstairs followed by the sound of a window opening. A few seconds later a figure drops past the kitchen window and lands in the yard.
I get a glimpse of his face and see pure unadulterated fear in his eyes.
By the time I reach the back door he has vaulted the fence and is sprinting up the rear lane. He is barefoot, wearing a cotton undershirt and faded track pants.
I do a stomach roll over the fence and land heavily on cobblestones. He's thirty yards in front of me, heading for a gate. I figure Ali has gone out the front, trying to cut him off.
The bastard leaps the gate almost without breaking his stride. My approach is to demolish it because it's slippery underfoot and I can't stop in time. He turns left, dodges an overflowing Dumpster and crosses the road, leaping a hedge as he cuts the corner into an adjoining road.
Give me twenty years and two good legs and I still couldn't catch this guy. I'm dropping farther behind, coughing up phlegm and seeing dots dance in front of my eyes.
A British Gas crew is digging a trench down one side of the street. The red clay is piled up next to the open pit. I make the jump easily enough, but I haven't looked for traffic. The silence of the electric motor is what deceives me. The milk truck has pulled out of a parking space and is only traveling a few miles per hour, but I'm in full flight and still in midair. I clip the front corner nearside mudguard and it feels like the entire New Zealand rugby team has driven me into the tarmac.
Rolling half a dozen times, I collide with the gutter and know my thigh is corked. What is it about my legs? People are just picking on me now!
Gerry is at the end of the road. He turns his head to look over his shoulder and at that moment is upended. Ali has driven her shoulder into his stomach, wrapped her arms around his waist and used his momentum to lift him up and throw him down. She drops her knees into his back and I can almost feel the air leaving his lungs.
She is sitting on him, trying to drag his arms behind his back to handcuff them. As she reaches to her belt for the cuffs, Gerry snaps his head back slamming into her chin. She almost loses her balance but she keeps her knees locked to his sides, trying to hold him down.
I'm on my feet, loping toward them. My leg is numb and next to useless.
Ahead of me Gerry has dragged himself up on all fours. Ali has her thighs locked around his waist and is riding him like a kid playing horsey with her father. She wraps her forearm around his neck, trying to compress his windpipe. Gerry is on his haunches, trying to stand. Now he's up. He's six one and more than two hundred pounds.
I can see what's going to happen. I can hear myself screaming at Ali to let go, but she's clinging tight. There is a low brick wall fronting the yard. It's only a foot high, with a straight edge.
He lines Ali up, holding her legs now. Then he looks directly at me. A strange noise, an animal sound comes from inside him. Then he falls backward. Every bit of their combined weight comes to bear across Ali's spine and the edge of the wall. She bends and she breaks.