Michael Robotham - Lost

“They say it was worn by Toyotomi Hideyoshi,” Kirsten explained. “He was the daimyo who unified Japan in the sixteenth century: the ‘Age of Battles.' Are you interested in history, Detective Inspector?”

“No.”

“So you don't believe we can learn from our mistakes?”

“We haven't so far.”

She acknowledged my opinion without agreeing with it. Ali was moving through the flat, admiring the artifacts.

“What did you say you did?” she asked Kirsten.

“I didn't.” Her eyes were smiling at the edges. “I manage an employment agency in Soho. We provide cooks, waitresses, hostesses, that sort of thing.”

“Business must be good.”

“I work hard.”

Kirsten prepared us tea in a hand-painted Japanese teapot and ceramic bowls. We had to kneel at a table while she dipped a ladle into simmering water and beat the powdered tea like scrambled eggs. I didn't understand the elaborate ceremony. Ali seemed more in tune with the idea of meditation and “the One Mind.”

Kirsten had lived at Dolphin Mansions for three years, moving in just a few weeks after Rachel and Mickey. She and Rachel became friends. Coffee buddies. They shopped together and borrowed each other's clothes. Yet apparently Rachel didn't confide in Kirsten about Aleksei or her famous family. It was one secret too far.

“Who would have thought . . . talk about Beauty and the Beast,” Kirsten told me, when she learned the news. “All that money and she's living here.”

“What would you have done?”

“I would have taken my share and gone to live in Patagonia—as far away as possible—and slept with a gun under my pillow for the rest of my life.”

“You have a vivid imagination.”

“Like I said, I've heard the stories about Aleksei. Everyone's got one, right? It's like the one about him playing blackjack in Las Vegas and this Californian dot-com millionaire comes over and tells him that he's sitting in his chair. Aleksei ignores him, so the Californian says, ‘Listen, you limey faggot, I'm worth sixty million dollars and this is my goddamn chair.' So Aleksei takes a coin out of his pocket and says, ‘Sixty million? I'll toss you for it.'”

She didn't expect anyone to laugh. Instead she let the silence stretch out. I wish my legs could have done the same.

She had an alibi for when Mickey disappeared. The caretaker, Ray Murphy, was fixing her shower. It had only taken him three attempts, she said.

“What did you do afterward?”

“I went back to sleep.” She looked at me quizzically and then added: “Alone.”

Twenty years ago I would have said she was flirting, but I knew she was making fun of me. Being older and wiser doesn't help the ego. Youth and beauty rule the world.

Returning to the sitting room, I find Ali going through the contents of the toppled bookcase. Whoever did this opened every book, box file and photograph album. Diaries, address books, computer disks and photographs were taken. This wasn't a robbery, it was a search. They were looking for Kirsten. They wanted the names of friends and contacts—anyone who might know her.

“We should call this in, Sir.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell them the truth. We found a break-in.”

We wait downstairs for the uniforms to arrive, sitting on the front steps and going over possible scenarios. Misty rain has started falling. It settles on Ali's hair and the weave of her coat.

Across the road a handful of muddy boys spill from a Range Rover with football boots hanging from laces and socks pushed down around their ankles.

Farther along the street, someone is waiting in a car. I wouldn't have noticed except for the flare of a cigarette lighter. It crosses my mind that Keebal has had me followed but almost immediately I consider another explanation. Maybe someone is waiting for Kirsten to come home.

I step out onto the pavement and stretch. The sun is trying to break through but keeps getting swallowed by fat putty-gray clouds. I begin to walk around the square. At first I'm heading away from the suspicious car but at the corner I turn and cross the street. I pause to read the plaque beneath a statue of a bronze horseman.

I turn again and set off. A pigeon takes flight in an awkward flurry. I'm walking toward the car now. I can just make out the silhouette of someone at the wheel.

I stay close to the gutter, keeping the line of vehicles between us. At the last possible moment I step alongside the Audi. Resting on the passenger seat is a photograph of Kirsten Fitzroy.

A burly, gray-haired man, gapes at me dumbfounded. I can see two bloated versions of myself in his sunglasses. I try to open the door. He reaches for the ignition and I yell at him to stop.

At that moment Ali arrives, slewing her car across the road to block his getaway. Finding reverse, he plants his foot and rubber shrieks on pavement. He slams into the car behind and then lurches forward, pushing the cars apart. Tires screech and smoke as he fires into reverse again.

Ali is out of the door with a hand on her holster. The driver sees her first. He raises a pistol, aiming at her chest.

Instinctively, I smash my walking stick across the windshield, where it explodes into shards of lacquered wood. The sound is enough to make him hesitate. Ali drops and rolls into the gutter. I spin the other way, falling fast and nowhere near as gracefully.

In the adjacent house, barely eighteen feet away, the door opens. Two teenage girls appear, one of them pushing a bicycle. The pistol swings toward them.

I yell a warning, but they stop and stare. He won't miss from this range.

I glance across at Ali. She has her feet planted and arms outstretched, with the Glock in her right hand and her left hand cupped underneath.

“I can take him, Sir.”

“Let him go.”

She drops her arms between her thighs. The driver accelerates backward along the road, doing a handbrake turn at the end of the square, before swinging north into Ladbroke Grove.

Ali sits next to me in the gutter. The air stinks of burning clutch and rubber. The teenage girls have gone but curtains have opened and anxious faces are pressed to windows.

Ali wipes a smudge of gun oil from her fingers. “I could have taken him.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Because when they teach you how to shoot people, they don't teach you how to live with it.”

She nods and a puff of breeze pushes hair across her eyes. She brushes it away.

“Did you recognize him?”

I shake my head. “He was waiting for Kirsten. Someone wants her very badly.”

A Panda car rounds the corner and cruises slowly up the street. Two kids in uniform peer from side to side, looking for house numbers. Five minutes earlier they would have shat themselves or been shot. Thank heavens for small mercies.

Interviews must be conducted and statements taken. Ali fields most of the questions, giving a description of the car and driver. According to the computer the license plates belong to a builder's van in Newcastle. Someone has either stolen or copied them.

Under normal circumstances, the local CID would label the whole incident as road rage or call it a fail-to-stop accident. By normal circumstances, I mean if ordinary members of the public were involved instead of two police officers.

The Detective Sergeant, Mike Drury, is one of the young Turks from Paddington Green, who cut his teeth interviewing IRA and now Al Qaeda suspects. He looks up and down the street burying both hands in his pockets. His long nose sniffs the air as though he doesn't like the smell of it.

“So tell me again, why did you want to see Kirsten Fitzroy?”

“I'm trying to find a friend of hers—Rachel Carlyle.”