Michael Robotham - Lost

There's a promising start!

Joe has spent the morning calling in favors. So far we have thirteen volunteers including two of my old rugby mates and a snitch called “Dicko” who has a nose for trouble and no sense of smell at all, which unfortunately means his personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired.

Over the next hour the rest of the “team” arrives. Joe has managed to recruit his brother-in-law Eric and his younger sister, Rebecca, who works for the United Nations. Julianne is coming after she picks up Charlie from school. There are also several patients, including Margaret, who is nursing a torpedo-shaped life preserver, and another woman, Jean, who keeps disinfecting the phones with wet wipes.

Margaret sidles up to me. “I hear you almost drowned. Don't trust bridges.” She taps her orange torpedo reassuringly.

When the last of the stragglers arrive, I gather them in the waiting room. It is the strangest collection of “detectives” I have ever commanded.

Pinning two photographs to a corkboard, I clear my throat and introduce myself—not as a Detective Inspector but as a member of the public.

“The two people in these photographs are missing. Their names are Kirsten Fitzroy and Gerry Brandt. We hope to find them.”

“What did they do?” asks Margaret.

“I believe they kidnapped a young girl.”

A murmur goes around the room.

“We need to discover how they're linked—when they met, where they talked, what they have in common—but most importantly we have to locate them. Each of you will be given a task. You won't be asked to do anything illegal, but this is detective work and has to remain confidential.”

“Why don't we just ask the police to find them?” asks Eric, perched on the edge of a desk.

“The police aren't looking hard enough.”

“But you're a policeman!”

“Not anymore.”

Moving on, I explain that Kirsten was last seen going over the side of the Charmaine . “She suffered a stomach wound and may not have survived her injuries or the river but we're going to assume she's still alive. Gerry Brandt is a known drug dealer, pimp and armed robber. Nobody is to approach him.”

I glance at Dicko. The flesh around his mouth seems to be moving but no sound comes out.

Addressing him directly, I say, “I want you to talk to anyone who knows him—suppliers, junkies, mules, friends . . . He used to hang out in a pub on Pentonville Road. See if anyone remembers him.”

After a few seconds of clicking his teeth, he says, “Might need some readies.”

“If I catch you drinking I'll drill a hole in your head.”

The women peel their eyebrows off their hairlines.

“Maybe I should go with him,” suggests Roger.

“Fine. Remember what I said. Under no circumstances do you approach Gerry Brandt.”

Roger gives me a casual salute.

“Philippa, Margaret and Jean, I want you to ring the hospitals, clinics and doctors' surgeries. Make up a story. Say you're looking for a missing friend. Rachel and the Professor will contact Kirsten's family and any former employers. She grew up in the West Country.”

“What are you going to do?” asks Joe.

“Gerry Brandt had a former girlfriend, a skinny thing with bleeding gums and blond streaks. I'm hoping she might know where he's hiding.”

Hell's Half Mile is a road behind Kings Cross Station where the curbs get crawled and prostitutes hunt in packs. Some of these girls are barely sixteen but there's no way of telling. Even without the scars and bruises, a year on the streets adds five years to the faces.

Very few prostitutes work the streets anymore because the police have chased them indoors. Now they work for escort agencies and massage parlors, or they move around following the political conferences, trade shows and exhibitions. Become a prostitute and see the world!

The walk-up places are open doorways leading to upstairs flats with signs in the windows announcing BUSTY YOUNG MODEL or something similar. Most have a maid, usually an older woman, who takes the money and a small tip.

Apart from the passing trade, they advertise with cards in phone boxes or rely on the patron saint of the horny—the London cabbie.

Cruising the street slowly I try to recognize any of the girls. A pixie with a pageboy cut and a padded bra saunters over.

“You want to ask me something?”

“Yeah, what was on Sesame Street this morning?”

Her face flushes. “Piss off!”

“I'm looking for a particular girl. Her name is Theresa. She's about five foot six. Blond. Comes from Harrogate. And she has a tattoo on her shoulder of a butterfly.”

“What's this girl got that I ain't?”

“Boobs. Cut the crap. Have you seen her?”

“Nah.”

“OK, here's the deal. I got a fifty here. You walk down the street, knock on the doors and ask if any of the girls know this Theresa. You get me the right answer and you get the fifty.”

“Are you a copper?”

“No.” For once I'm telling the truth.

“Why you want her?”

“She won the bloody lottery. What does it matter to you?”

“I'll do it for a ton.”

“You get fifty. It's the easiest money you ever made.”

“You reckon! Some of these guys blow just looking at me.”

“Sure.”

I watch her leave. She doesn't even know how to walk like a woman yet. Maybe it's an occupational trait.

The streetlights are beginning to glow purple as they blink into life. I take a table at a delicatessen on the corner which is doing a roaring trade in takeout coffee and homemade soup served by Czech girls with heavy accents and tight tops. I'm old enough to be their grandfather but that doesn't make me feel as guilty as it should. One of them brings me coffee and a muffin that looks half-cooked inside.

The place is full of pimps and working girls, counting the wages of sin. A couple of them regard me suspiciously, sitting still and very straight like a pair of magistrates.

Pimps don't look the same in real life as they do in films. They're not snappy dressers in long leather coats and lots of gold jewelry. Mostly they're dealers and boyfriends who'd spread their own legs if anyone would pay for the privilege.

The pixie with the pageboy cut has come back. She eyes the large pot of soup steaming on a burner. I buy her a bowl. An older black girl is looking at us nervously through the window. She's dressed in a microskirt and lace-up boots. Her hair is twisted into bangs that run back from her forehead between paler strips of scalp.

“She says she knows Theresa.”

“What's her name?”

“Brittany.”

“Why won't she come inside?”

“Her pimp might be watching. He don't like her slacking. Where's my fifty?”

She reaches to snatch it out of my fingers. I pin her wrist to the table and turn it over, pulling her sleeve up her arm. Her skin is pale and unblemished.

“I'm not using,” she sniffles.

“Good. Go home.”

“Yeah, sure—you should see where I live.”

Brittany talks to me outside. She has ants in her pants about something and can't stand still. Her jaw works constantly on gum, punctuating sentences with a sucking noise.

“What's Theresa done?”

“Nothing, I just want to talk to her.”

Brittany glances down the street, trying to decide if she believes me. Eventually, she surrenders to apathy and a twenty quid note.

“She lives in a tower block in Finsbury Park. She's got a kid now.”

“Is she still on the game?”

“Only a few regulars.”

Fifteen minutes later I'm climbing to the fourteenth floor of a tower block because the lift is out of order. Various cooking smells mingle in the stairwell, along with the noise from dueling TVs and domestic disputes.