Joe was right all along. If I kept gathering details and following the trail, something would eventually trigger my memories and the trickle would become a torrent.
I take a sip of water from a plastic bottle and try to sit up. He lets me lean on his shoulder. Somewhere overhead I see a passenger jet on its final approach to Heathrow.
An ambulance officer kneels next to me.
“Any chest pains?”
“No.”
“Shortness of breath?”
“No.”
The guy has a really thick mustache and pizza breath. I recognize him from somewhere. His fingers are undoing the buttons of my shirt.
“I'm just going to check your heart rate,” he says.
My hands shoot out and grip him by the wrist. His eyes widen and he gets a strange look on his face. Slowly, he shifts his gaze to my leg and then to the river.
“I remember you,” I tell him.
“That's impossible. You were unconscious.”
I'm still holding his wrist, squeezing it hard. “You saved my life.”
“I didn't think you'd make it.”
“Put paddles on my chest and I'll rip your heart out.”
He nods and laughs nervously.
I take a belt of oxygen from a mask, while he takes my blood pressure. The clatter and crash of remembering has ceased for a moment like a held breath. I don't know if I should exhale.
In the spotlights I can see the Thames sliding across the rocks like a black tide. “New Boy” Dave has sealed off the dock with crime-scene tape. The divers are coming back in the morning to continue searching. How many more secrets lie in the silt?
“Let's go home,” says Joe.
I don't answer him but I can feel my head shaking from side to side. I'm so close to remembering it all. I have to keep going. It can't wait for another day or be slept on overnight.
Joe calls Julianne and tells her he'll be home late. Her secondhand voice sounds tinny through the cell phone. It's a voice from the kitchen. She has children to feed. We have a child to find.
On the drive away from the river, I tell Joe about what I've remembered—describing the phone calls, the rag doll and the cold finality of the last phone call. Everything had a meaning, a function; a place in the pattern, the diamonds, the tracking devices, the pizza box . . .
We park on the same plot of waste ground, opposite the abandoned industrial freezer. Headlights reflect from the pitted silver door. The rag doll has gone but the witch's hat traffic cone lies among the weeds.
I get out of the car and move gingerly toward the freezer. Joe does his royal consort trick of walking four paces behind me. He's wearing a crumpled-looking linen jacket as if he's going on safari.
“Where was Rachel?”
“She stayed with the car. She couldn't go on.”
“What happened next?”
I rack my brains, trying to trigger the memories again.
“He must have called back. The man who hung up the phone—he called again.”
“What did he say?”
“I don't know. I can't remember. Wait!”
I look down at my clothes. “He wanted me to take my shoes off, but I didn't do it. I figured he couldn't be watching me—not all this time. He told me to walk straight ahead, past the freezer.”
I'm moving as I talk. Ahead of us is a wire fence and beyond that the Bakerloo line. “I heard a young girl crying on the phone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, in the background.”
The glow of the headlights is fainter now as we move farther from Joe's car. My eyes grow accustomed to the dark but my mind plays tricks. I keep seeing figures in the shadows, crouching in hollows and hiding behind trees.
The purple sky has no stars. That's one of the things I miss about living in the country—the stars and the silence and the frost on winter mornings like a freshly laundered sheet.
“There is a chain-link fence up ahead. I turned left and followed it until I reached the footbridge. He was giving me instructions on the phone.”
“You didn't recognize his voice?”
“No.”
The fence appears, dividing the darkness into black diamonds with silver frames. We turn and follow it to an arched footbridge above the railway line. A generator rumbles and repair crews are working beneath spotlights.
In the middle of the footbridge, I peer over the side at the silver ribbons curving to the north. “I can't remember what happened next.”
“Did you drop the ransom off the bridge?”
“No. This is where the phone rang again. I was traveling too slowly. They were tracking me. The cell phone must have had a GPS device. Someone was sitting in front of a computer screen plotting my exact position.”
We both peer down at the tracks as though looking for the answer. The breeze carries the smell of burning coal and detergent. I can't hear the voice in my head anymore.
“Give it time,” says Joe.
“No. I can't give it any more. I have to remember.”
He takes out his cell phone and punches a number. My pocket vibrates. I flip it open and he turns away from me.
“Why have you stopped? KEEP MOVING! I told you where to go.”
The knowledge rises up and breaks soundlessly through the surface. Joe has done it again—helped me to go back.
“Will Mickey be there?” I yell into the phone.
“Shut up and keep moving!”
Where? It's close by. The parking lot on the far side of the station! Move!
Running now, I quickly descend the stairs. Joe has trouble keeping up. I can barely see where I'm going but I remember the path. It curves alongside the railway line, above the cutting. Rigid steel gantries flank the tracks carrying the overhead wires.
A wind has sprung up, rattling fences and sending rubbish swirling past my legs. There are lights along the path, making it easier to see. Abruptly, the footpath opens into a deserted parking lot. A solitary lamppost at the center paints a dome of yellow on the tarmac. I remember a traffic cone sitting under the light. I ran toward it, holding the pizza box under one arm. It seemed an odd place to bring me. It was too open.
Joe has caught up with me. We're standing beneath the lamppost. At my feet is a barred metal grate.
“He wanted me to push the packages into the drain.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I wanted to see Mickey. He threatened to hang up again. His voice was very calm. He said she was close.”
“Where?”
I turn my head. Thirty yards away is the dark outline of a storm-water drain. “He said she was waiting for me . . . down there.”
Walking to the edge, we peer over the side. The steep concrete walls are sprayed with graffiti.
“I couldn't see her. It was too dark. I shouted her name. ‘Mickey! Can you hear me?' I was yelling into the phone. ‘I can't see her. Where is she?' ‘She's in the pipe,' he said. ‘Where?' I shouted: ‘Mickey. Are you in there?'”
Joe has hold of me now. He's frightened I might fall over the edge. At the same time he wants me to go on. “Show me,” he says.
Set into the wall of the drain is a steel ladder. The rungs feel cold against my fingers. Joe is following me down. I couldn't hold the Glock and carry the pizza box at the same time. I left the gun in its holster and tucked the pizza box under my arm.
“‘Mickey! Can you hear me?' ”
My feet touch the bottom. Against the nearside wall I can just make out the deeper shadow of an access pipe.
She must have been in the pipe. It was the only place to hide.
“‘Michaela?'”
There was a muffled rumble, like distant thunder. I could feel it through my shoes. I reached for my gun but left it there.