Michael Robotham - Lost

For the first time in a long while, I have no idea of what to do next. I know I have to call the police. I also have to keep her safe. There are witness protection programs for IRA informers and organized crime witnesses but what can they offer Kirsten? She can't give them Aleksei. She can't link him to the executions or any of his many crimes.

“What if we arrange a meeting?”

“What?”

“Contact Aleksei—organize to see him.”

She puts her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear. Her skin is like metal, shining at angles in the light from the bedside lamp.

She's right. Aleksei would never agree.

“You can't save me. If I were you, I'd phone him now and tell him where I am. You might win a reprieve.”

“I'm going to call an ambulance.”

“No.”

“You can't stay here. How long before your landlady gives you up?”

“We're old friends.”

“I can see that! How much has it cost you to still be here?”

She holds up her fingers. Her jewelry is gone.

We sit in silence and after a while I hear her breathing find a steady rhythm. She's asleep. Moving to her side, I gently take the revolver from her lap before covering her with a blanket. Then I move to the landing and call “New Boy” Dave. My hands are shaking.

“I've found Kirsten Fitzroy. I need an ambulance and a police escort. Don't tell Meldrum or Campbell.”

“OK.”

Back in the room Kirsten's eyes are open.

“Are they coming?”

“Yes.”

“The cavalry or a hearse?”

“An ambulance.”

Gritting her teeth against the pain, she swings her legs off the bed and sits facing away from me. Her black shirt is stuck perfectly to her body with sweat and it looks as though someone has poured oil over her.

“You might be able to protect me today but it is just one day,” she says, managing to stand and shuffle toward the bathroom. Sensing I'm about to follow, she stops me. “I have to go potty.”

I'm expected to wait on the landing, which I do—pleased to escape from the sickroom smell and the hypocrisy. The sheer number of lies and depth of betrayal is staggering. Mickey is dead! I failed. I want to crawl back into the sewer where I belong.

There's a knock on the door downstairs. Mrs. Wilde answers. I look over the banister half expecting to see “New Boy” Dave. It's a courier. I can't make out what he's saying.

Mrs. Wilde turns away from the door holding a bunch of flowers. In that same instant I hear a blunt sound, metal on bone. She topples forward, crushing the flowers beneath her. A motorcycle courier in leathers and a gleaming black helmet steps over her body.

I hit the redial button on the cell phone. Dave's number is engaged. He must be calling the ambulance.

I can hear the courier searching downstairs—kicking open doors. I can imagine him crouching and swinging the gun in a wide arc. He's a professional. Ex-military.

Kirsten flushes the toilet and walks from the bathroom. I signal for her to get down and she drops to her knees with a groan. She sees something in my eyes that wasn't there before.

“Don't leave me,” she mouths. I hold my finger to my lips and point above my head.

The courier has heard the toilet flushing and the cistern filling. Now he's at the bottom of the stairs. Turning away from Kirsten I climb to the next landing. Again I hit the speed dial. Engaged.

A floorboard depresses and releases. The noise vibrates through me. Kirsten fired two shots. Assuming the gun is fully loaded, I have four bullets left.

I should be scared but maybe I'm beyond that. Instead I think of the past three weeks and all those times that Aleksei has toyed with me. I'm not angry or bitter. This is like one of those children's stories, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where Goldilocks gets chased out of the house for eating porridge and breaking a chair. Only in my new version she comes back with a gun and she's going to make sure she aims not too high and not too low but just right.

“New Boy” Dave answers his phone.

“Code One. Officer in trouble. Help!”

The courier is on the stairs, staying close to the wall to shield himself from above. When he turns onto the landing I should get a clean shot. I wait in darkness, trying to make myself small. A river leaks down my back.

Another step. His shadow appears. He's carrying a fully automatic machine pistol that sweeps from side to side. My finger pulls gently on the trigger, pushing the hammer backward and compressing a metal spring in the handle. A ratchet rotates the cylinder, putting a bullet in the breech chamber in line with the barrel.

He's fully in view—about to turn into the bedroom. I can't see his face behind the visor.

“Police! Put the gun down!”

He drops and rolls, firing blindly up the stairs. Bullets punch tattered holes in the wallpaper beside my head and shatter the banister. A splinter of wood slices into my neck.

The moment I shoot he'll see the muzzle flash and know where I am. I pull the trigger lever all the way back, releasing the hammer.

The bullet enters through his shoulder, angling down into his chest. His head hits the wall. The wide dark visor is staring at me. His finger closes on the trigger again. We fire together and he tumbles backward.

I can taste blood in my mouth where I've bitten my tongue and my lungs hurt like a bastard. Where has all the oxygen gone? I don't know how long I sit on the stairs. There are sirens and screeching tires in the street. “New Boy” Dave comes through the door so fast he almost trips over Mrs. Wilde.

Kneeling on the landing, I put the gun at my side and stare down at my chest. Dave is climbing the stairs, yelling my name. Ripping open the buttons, I press my fingers to my breastbone. A neat depression, still warm from the bullet, lies at the center of the vest.

Well I'll be damned! Ali saved my life.

Looking through the railings I see the courier's body crumpled at the foot of the stairs. Forty-three years in the police force, thirty-five of them as a detective, and I managed not to kill anyone. Another unwanted milestone reached.

Four hours ago a warrant was issued for Aleksei's arrest but it hasn't been served. His motor yacht left Chelsea Harbour at midnight on Saturday, only an hour after our meeting. The skipper claimed to be doing a transfer to Moody's boatyard in Hamble on the south coast but failed to arrive by midday Sunday.

Coast guards and lifeboat stations have been alerted and all vessels within a five hundred nautical mile range have been told to report any sightings. Descriptions of the vessel are also being sent to harbormasters in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain.

I didn't expect Aleksei to run. A part of me still thinks he's going to waltz into a police station with a team of lawyers looking smug and ready to rumble. He knows there is nothing but circumstantial evidence. Nobody can put him at the scene of the murders. If Kirsten dies I can't even prove he paid the first ransom.

Of course, it's not my job to prove anything, as Campbell keeps telling me, as he storms around the hospital, dressed in an overcoat of angry tweed. Every time his eyes reach me he looks away. He was right and I couldn't have been more wrong. Despite all the bloody mayhem of the past few weeks, the facts have remained unchanged—Mickey died three years ago and Howard Wavell killed her.

According to the X-rays my ribs are only bruised and the cut on my neck doesn't need stitches. Kirsten is under guard upstairs. Not even the paramedics knew her name when they delivered her into intensive care.

Tomorrow morning Eddie Barrett and the Rook will argue that Howard Wavell should be released from prison. They will claim that Mickey Carlyle was taken for a ransom and killed by her abductors. The CCTV footage from Leicester Square Underground could be of anyone. The towel found at East Finchley Cemetery was planted there to frame Howard for a murder he didn't commit.