A thought occurs to her. “Would you mind helping me, Sir?”
“How?”
“Can you lie on the deck just here?” She points to her feet. “Half on your side, with your legs stretched out, one just crossing the other.” Letting go of my crutches I let her move me into position like an artist's model.
As she leans over me I get a sudden image of another woman bending to brush her lips against mine. The air twitches and the picture is gone.
DC Simpson takes the tripod and angles it down toward my legs. A bright red beam of light reflects on my trousers above my bandaged thigh.
Pure fear rushes through me and suddenly I'm screaming at her to get down. Everyone! Get down! I remember the red light, a dancing red beam that signaled death. I lay in darkness, doubled over in pain as the beam moved back and forth across the deck, searching for me.
Nobody seems to have noticed me screaming. The sound is inside my head. They're all listening to the DC.
“The bullet came down from here, entered your thigh here, exited and lodged in the deck. It nudged against your femur and tumbled end-on-end, which is why the exit wound was so large.”
She walks several paces away and uses a tape measure to check the distance between the side rail and another bullet hole. “For years people have debated whether momentum or kinetic energy is the best means of determining the striking power of a bullet. The answer is to merge the two parameters of bodies in motion. We have software programs that can tell us—based on measurements—the distance traveled by a particular bullet. In this case we're looking at 430 yards, with a two percent margin for error. Once we know the location of the shooting we can reconstruct the trajectory and find out where the shooter was hiding.”
She looks down at me as though I should have an answer ready for her. I'm still trying to slow my heart rate.
“Are you OK, Sir?”
“I'm fine.”
Joe is crouching next to me now. “Maybe you should take it easy.”
“I'm not a fucking invalid!”
Instantly I want to take it back and apologize. Everyone is uncomfortable now.
DC Simpson helps me stand.
“How much more can you re-create of what happened?” I ask.
She seems quite pleased with the question.
“OK, this is where you were initially shot. Someone else got hit and fell on top of you. Traces of their bone and blood were found in your hair.”
She sits down and drags herself backward until her back is braced against the side rail.
“One of the main clusters of bullets is this one.” She points to the deck near her legs. “I believe you pulled yourself back here to get cover but more bullets went through the sides and hit the deck. You were too exposed, so—”
“I rolled across the deck and took cover behind the wheelhouse.”
Joe looks at me. “You remember?”
“No, but it makes sense.” Even as I answer I realize that part of it must be memory.
The DC scrambles across the deck to the far side of the wheelhouse. “This is where you lost your finger. You wanted to look inside or to see where the shooting was coming from. You were badly wounded. You hooked your fingers over the ledge around the porthole and raised yourself up. A bullet came through the glass and your finger disappeared.”
Dried blood stains the wall, leaking around exit holes in the splintered wood.
“We found twenty-four bullet holes in the vessel. The sniper fired only eight of them. He was very controlled and precise.”
“What about the others?”
“The rest were 9mm rounds.”
My Glock 17 self-loading pistol was signed out of the station armory on September 22 and still hasn't been found. Maybe Campbell is right and I shot someone.
DC Simpson continues with her hypothesis. “I think you were dragged over the railing at the stern with the help of a boat hook which tore one of your belt loops. You vomited just here.”
“So I must have been in the water first—before I was shot?”
“Yes.”
I look at Joe and shake my head. I can't remember. Blood—that's all I can see. I can taste it in my mouth and feel it throbbing in my ears.
I look at the DC and my voice catches in my throat. “You said someone died, right? You must have tested the blood. Was it . . . I mean . . . did it belong to . . . could it have been . . . ?” I can't get the words out.
Joe finishes the question and answers it all at once.
“It wasn't Mickey Carlyle.”
Back in the car, we edge through Tobacco Dock, past a gray square of water surrounded by warehouses. I can never tell if these new housing developments are gentrification or reclamation—most of them were derelict before the developers arrived. The dockside pubs have gone, replaced by fitness centers, cybercafés and juice bars selling shots of wheatgrass.
Farther from the river, squeezed between the Victorian terraces, we find a more traditional café and take a table by the window. The walls are decorated with posters of South and Central America, and the air smells of boiled milk and porridge.
Two gray plump women run the dining room—one taking orders and the other cooking.
Fried eggs stare up from my plate like large jaundiced eyes, along with a blackened sausage and a twisted mouth of bacon. Ali has a vegetarian sandwich and pours the tea from a stainless steel teapot. The brew is a dark shade of khaki, thick with floating leaves.
A local school has just broken for lunch and the street is full of Asian teenagers eating buckets of hot chips. Some of them smoke by the phone box while others swap headphones, listening to music.
Joe tries to stir his coffee with his left hand and stalls, switching to the right. His voice cuts through the sound of metal knives scraping on crockery. “Why did you think Mickey might have been on the boat?”
Ali's ears prick up. She's been asking herself the same question.
“I don't know. I was thinking about the photograph. Why would I carry it—unless I wanted to recognize her? It's been three years. She won't look the same.”
Ali glances from me to the Professor and back to me again. “You think she's alive?”
“I didn't imagine all this.” I motion to my leg. “You saw the boat. People died. I know it has something to do with Mickey.”
I haven't touched my food. I don't feel hungry anymore. Perhaps the Professor is right—I'm trying to right the wrongs of the past and ease my own conscience.
“We should get back to the hospital,” he says.
“No, not yet, I want to find Rachel Carlyle first. Maybe she knows something about Mickey.”
Joe nods in agreement. It's a good plan.
4
The autumn leaves swirl across Randolph Avenue, collecting against the steps of Dolphin Mansions. The place still looks the same, with a white-trimmed arch over the entrance and bronze letters sandblasted into the glass above the door.
Ali taps impatiently on the steering wheel with short manicured fingernails. The place unnerves her. We both remember a different time of year, the haste and noise and sullen heat, the shock and sadness. Joe doesn't understand but must sense something. Shuffling through leaves, we cross the road and climb the front steps. The bottom buzzer automatically opens the door between nine and four every day. Standing in the foyer, I glance up the central stairwell as though listening for a distant echo. Everything passes up and down these stairs—letters, furniture, food, newborn babies and missing children.
I can remember the names and faces of every resident. I can draw lines between them on a whiteboard showing relationships, contacts, employment history, movements and alibis for when Mickey disappeared. I remember it not like yesterday but like I remember the meal I just ordered and failed to eat, the fried eggs and lean bacon.