Michael Robotham - Lost

“So you think he was up to something?”

“I don't know.”

“But you know something, don't you? You got suspicions.”

He chases spit around his mouth with his tongue, trying to decide what to tell me. “There's a guy I used to share a cell with at Brixton nick. Gerry Brandt. We called him Grub.”

There's a name I haven't heard for a while.

Tony is still talking. “Never seen anyone sleep like Grub. Never. You'd swear he was dead half the time except his chest was moving up and down. Guys would be kicking off in their cells or getting beat up by screws but Grub would sleep through it all, drooling over himself like a baby. I'm telling you, that guy could sleep .”

Tony takes another swig of orange juice. “Grub was only in for a few months. I hadn't seen him in years, you know, but about three months ago he turned up here looking like a playboy with a suntan and a suit.”

“He had money?”

“Maybe on his back, but he was driving a heap of shit. Not worth stealing, not worth burning.”

“What did he want?”

“I dunno. He didn't come to see me. He wanted to talk to the old man. I didn't hear what they were saying but they argued about something. My old man was spitting chips. Later he said Grub was looking for a job, but I know that's bullshit. Gerry Brandt don't wash glasses. He thinks he's a player.”

“They were doing business.”

Tony shrugs. “Fuck knows. I didn't even know they knew each other.”

“When you shared a cell with this Gerry Brandt, did you ever mention your old man to him?”

“Might have said something. Cell talk, you know.”

“And when your dad went up to London, what makes you think he was going to see Gerry?”

“I dropped him outside a boozer on Pentonville Road. I remember Grub talking 'bout the place. It was his local.”

I take a photograph of Kirsten from my jacket pocket and slide it across the table. “Do you recognize her?”

Tony studies it for a moment. Lying comes easier than telling the truth, which is why he takes so long. He shakes his head. I believe him.

Back in the car I go over the details with Ali, letting her bounce questions off me. She is one of those people who reasons out loud whereas I work things out in my head.

“Do you remember someone called Gerry Brandt?”

She shrugs. “Who is he?”

“A nasty toerag with a toilet mouth and a taste for pimping.”

“Charming.”

“His name came up in the original investigation. When Howard was taking photographs outside Dolphin Mansions on the day Mickey disappeared, Gerry Brandt turned up in one of the shots—a face in the crowd. Later his name popped up again, this time on the sex offender's register. He had an early conviction for sex with a minor. Nobody read much into the sex charge. He was seventeen at the time and the girl was fourteen. They knew each other. We wanted to interview Gerry but we couldn't find him. He just seemed to vanish. Now he's turned up again. According to Tony, he came to see Ray Murphy three months back.”

“It could be just a coincidence.”

“Maybe.”

Kirsten Fitzroy and Ray Murphy are both missing. Three years ago they provided each other with alibis when Mickey disappeared. She must have walked straight past Kirsten's door on her way downstairs to meet Sarah. Meanwhile, Sir Douglas Carlyle was paying Kirsten to keep watch on Rachel and gather evidence for a custody application. Perhaps he decided to go one step further and have his granddaughter kidnapped. It doesn't explain where she's been or why a ransom demand has arrived three years later.

Maybe Ali is right and it's all a hoax. Kirsten could have collected Mickey's hair from a pillow or a brush. She might have known about the money box. She could have concocted a plan to take advantage of the situation.

A chill wades through my skin like it's five o'clock in the morning. The Professor says coincidences are just two things happening simultaneously, but I don't believe that. Nothing twists a knife quicker than fate.

The Thames Water truck is parked halfway down Priory Road, facing south into the low sun. A foreman is standing beside it, sucking on a cigarette. He straightens up and adjusts his crotch. “This is my day off, it had better be important.”

Not surprisingly, he looks like a man with nothing more important to do than play billiards with his mates at the pub.

Ali makes the introductions and the foreman grows more circumspect.

“Mr. Donovan, on September 26 you repaired a burst water main in this street.”

“Why? Is someone complaining? We did nothing wrong.”

Interrupting his excuses, I tell him I just want to know what happened.

Crushing the cigarette under his heel, he nods toward a dark stain of fresh bitumen covering thirty feet of road. “Looked like the Grand fucking Canyon, it did. Half this road got washed away. I ain't never seen a water main rupture like that one.”

“How do you mean?”

He hitches up his trousers. “Well, you see, some of these pipes have been around for a hundred years and they're wearing out. Fix one and another one goes. Bang! It's like trying to plug a dozen holes when you only got ten fingers.”

“But this one was different?”

“Yeah. Mostly they break on a join—the weakest point. This one just sort of blew apart.” He presses his hands together and springs them open. “We couldn't reseal it. We had to replace twenty feet of pipe.”

“Any idea what would have caused a break like that?” asks Ali.

He shakes his head and adjusts his crotch again. “Lew, a guy on our crew, used to be a sapper in the army. He reckoned it was some sort of explosion because of the way the metal got bent out of shape. He figured maybe a pocket of methane ignited in the sewers.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Nope. Used to happen a lot. Nowadays they vent the sewers better. I heard about something similar to this a few years back. Flooded six streets in Bayswater.”

Ali has been walking up and down the road, peering between her feet. “How do you know where the pipes are?” she asks.

“That depends,” says Donovan. “A magnetometer can pick up iron and sometimes we need ground-probing radar, but in most cases you don't need any gizmos. The mains are built alongside the sewers.”

“And how do you find those?”

“You walk downhill. The whole system is gravity fed.”

Crouching down I run my fingers over a metal grate covering a drain. The bars are about three-quarters of an inch apart. The ransom had been wrapped very carefully. Each package was waterproof and designed to float. They were 6 inches long, 21⁄2 inches wide and 3⁄4 inch deep . . . just the right size.

Whoever sent the demand must have expected a tracking device. And the one place a transmitter or a global positioning system can't operate is below ground.

“Can you get me down in the drains, Mr. Donovan?”

“You're joking, right?”

“Humor me.”

He rocks his hand back and forth. “Since 9/11 they been right edgy about the sewers. You take the Tyburn sewer—it runs right under the U.S. ambassador's residence and Buckingham Palace. The Tachbrook goes under Pimlico. You won't find 'em on maps—least not the maps they publish nowadays. And you won't even find the records in public libraries. They took 'em away.”

“But it still must be possible. I can make an application.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Might take a while.”

“How long?”

He rubs his chin. “Few weeks, I guess.”

I can see where this is going. The vast, moribund wheels of British bureaucracy will take my request and pass it between committees, subcommittees and working groups where it will be debated, deliberated upon, knocked about and run up the flagpole—and that's just to decide a form of words for the rejection.