“I'm just making a pot of tea.”
“That really won't be necessary.”
She doesn't hear me. “I have a cake.”
Brian Bird hobbles into view, a slow-motion cadaver who has a completely bald head and a face as wrinkled as crushed cellophane. He rocks forward on a walking stick and takes what seems like an hour to lower himself into a chair.
Nothing is said as the tea is brewed, poured, strained and sweetened. Slices of cake are offered around.
“Do you remember when I last came to see you?”
“Yes. It was about that missing girl—the one we saw on the station platform.”
Rachel looks from Mrs. Bird's face to mine and back again.
“That's right. You thought you saw Michaela Carlyle. This is her mother, Rachel.”
The couple give her sad smiles.
“I want you to tell Mrs. Carlyle what you saw that night.”
“Yes, of course,” says Mrs. Bird, “but I think we must have been mistaken. That dreadful man went to prison. I can't think of his name.” She looks to her husband who stares at her blankly.
Rachel finds her voice. “Please tell me what you saw.”
“On the platform, yes . . . let me see. It was . . . a Wednesday evening. We'd been to see Les Miserables at the Queens Theatre. I've been to see Les Miz more than thirty times. Brian missed out on some shows because of his heart bypass operation. Isn't that right, Brian?”
Brian nods.
“What makes you think it was Mickey?” I ask.
“Her picture had been in all the papers. We were just going down the escalator. She was loitering at the bottom.”
“Loitering?”
“Yes. She seemed a little lost.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Well, let me think. It's so long ago now, dear. What did I tell you then?”
“Trousers and a jacket,” I prompt.
“Oh, yes, although Brian thought she was wearing a pair of those tracksuit bottoms that zipped up over her shoes. And she definitely had a hood.”
“And this hood was up?”
“Up.”
“So you didn't see her hair—if it was long or short?”
“I couldn't tell.”
“What about the color?”
“Light brown.”
“How close did you get to her?”
“Brian couldn't move very quickly on account of his legs. I was ahead of him. We were maybe ten feet away. I didn't recognize her at first. I said to her, ‘Can I help you, dear? Are you lost?' But she just ran off.”
“Where?”
“Along the platform.” Her hand points the way, past Rachel's shoulder, and she nods resolutely. Then she leans forward with her teacup, using her other hand to find the saucer and bring both together.
“I think I talked to you back then about your glasses, do you remember?”
She touches the bridge of her nose self-consciously. “Yes.”
“You weren't wearing them?”
“No. I normally don't forget.”
“Did she have pierced ears?”
“I can't remember. She ran off too quickly.”
“But you did say she had a gap in her teeth and freckles. She was also carrying something. Could it have been a towel?”
“Oh dear, I don't know. I didn't look that closely. There were other people on the platform. They must have seen her.”
“We looked for them. Nobody came forward.”
“Oh dear.”
A teacup rattles against a saucer. Rachel's hands are shaking. “Do you have grandchildren, Mrs. Bird?”
“Oh, yes, dear. Six of them.”
“How old are they?”
“They're aged between eight and eighteen.”
“And the girl you saw on the platform, she was about the same age as your youngest grandchild is now?”
“Yes.”
“Did she seem frightened?”
“Lost. She seemed lost.”
Rachel's eyes are fixed with an almost ecstatic intensity.
“I'm sorry I can't remember any more. It's so long ago.” Mrs. Bird glances at her hands. “It did look like her but when the police arrested that chap . . . well . . . I thought I must have been mistaken. When you get old your eyes play tricks. I'm very sorry for your loss. Another cup of tea?”
Back in the car Rachel is full of questions, most of which I can't answer. There were dozens of reported sightings of Mickey in the weeks after she disappeared. Without any independent corroboration and given that Mrs. Bird wasn't wearing her glasses, I couldn't rely on her account.
“There must have been cameras at the station,” says Rachel.
“The footage is useless. We couldn't even tell if it was a child.”
Rachel is adamant. “I want to see it.”
“Good. That's where we're going now.”
The headquarters of London Underground is on Broadway, around the corner from New Scotland Yard. The Area Commander of the Transport Police, Chief Superintendent Paul Magee, is an old friend. I've known him for thirty years. Back in those days the IRA kept him awake at night. Now it's a different type of terrorist.
His face is thin and shaved. He looks almost youthful, despite his gray hair, which seems whiter every time I see him. Soon he'll pass for blond.
“You look like shit, Vince.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“I hear you're getting divorced again. What happened?”
“I forgot to put sugar in her tea.”
He laughs. Paul is married to a girl he met in grammar school. Shirley is a real keeper, who thinks I'm a bad influence but still made me godfather to her eldest boy.
We're sitting in Paul's office, which has a view over Wellington Barracks. He can watch the “new guard” march out every morning along Birdcage Walk to Buckingham Palace. Rachel is hanging back, waiting for an introduction. He doesn't recognize her name. I tell him we need to see a CCTV tape from three years ago.
“We don't keep them that long.”
“This one you kept. I asked you to.”
He suddenly puts two and two together and glances back at Rachel. Without another word, he takes us out of his office and down the corridor, tapping security codes into consoles and leading us deeper into the building.
Eventually, we're sitting in a small room, waiting for a video player to rewind a tape. Rachel watches motionless, even her breathing seems suspended. Grainy black-and-white images appear on the screen. They show a figure near the bottom of the escalators at Leicester Square Underground. Assuming it's a girl, she is wearing a dark blue tracksuit and carrying something in her arms. It might be a beach towel. It could be anything.
There were twelve security cameras at the station, each mounted above platforms and escalators. The angles were wrong because they didn't pick up faces. No amount of computer enhancement could make someone look up into the lens.
She pauses at the bottom of the escalator, as though momentarily unsure of where to go. Mrs. Bird comes into view and then Mr. Bird a few moments later, planting his walker and shuffling behind her. Mrs. Bird can be seen saying something to the girl, who turns away, disappearing through an arch onto the southbound platform.
The time and date are displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen: 22:14, July 24, Wednesday evening.
A second camera on the platform picked up the girl again, but from much farther away. She appeared to be alone. A plump, dark-haired woman dressed in a nurse's uniform walked past her.
“So what do you think?” I ask Rachel.
She doesn't answer. I turn to face her and see tears welling up in her eyes. She blinks and they fall.
“Are you sure?”
She nods, still silent.
“But she could be seven or seventeen. You can't even see her face.”