I stare at the signet ring on his pinkie and think of Orwell's Animal Farm.
Keebal is on a roll. “We don't live in a perfect world and we don't have perfect police officers, eh? But what do they expect? We have no fucking resources and we're fighting a system that lets criminals out quicker than we can catch them. And all this new-age touchy-feely waa-waa bullshit they pass off as crime prevention has done nothing for you and me. And it's done nothing for the poor misguided kids who get caught up in crime.
“A while back I went to a conference and some lard-arse criminologist with an American accent told us that police officers had no enemies. ‘Criminals are not the enemy, crime is,' he said. Jesus wept! Have you ever heard anything so stupid? I had to stop myself giving this guy a slap.”
Keebal leans in a little closer. I smell peanuts on his breath.
“I don't blame coppers for being pissed off. And I can understand when they pocket a little for themselves, as long as they're not dealing drugs or hurting children, eh?” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “I can help you. Just tell me what happened that night.”
“I don't remember.”
“Am I correct in assuming, therefore, you cannot identify the person who shot you?”
“You would be correct in that assumption.”
My sarcasm seems to light a fire under Keebal. He knows I'm not buying his we're-all-alone-in-the-trenches bullshit.
“Where are the diamonds?”
“What diamonds?”
He tries to change the subject.
“No. No. Stop! What diamonds?”
He shouts over me. “The decks of that boat were swimming in blood. People died but we haven't found any bodies and nobody has been reported missing. What does that suggest to you?”
He makes me think. The victims probably had no close ties or they were engaged in something illegal. I want to go back to the diamonds, but Keebal has his own agenda.
“I read an interesting statistic the other day. Thirty-five percent of offenders found guilty of homicide claim amnesia of the event.”
More bloody statistics. “You think I'm lying.”
“I think you're bent.”
I reach for my crutches and swing onto my feet. “Since you know all the answers, Keebal, you tell me what happened. Oh, that's right—you weren't there. Then again—you never are. When real coppers are out risking their lives, you're at home tucked up in bed watching reruns of The Bill. You risk nothing and you persecute honest coppers for standards that you couldn't piss over. Get out of here. And next time you want to talk to me you better come armed with an arrest warrant and a set of handcuffs.”
Keebal's face turns a slapped-red color. He does lots of preening and flexing as he walks away, yelling over his shoulder. “The only person you got fooled is that neurologist. Nobody else believes you. You're gonna wish that bullet did the job.”
I try to chase them down the corridor, hopping on one crutch, and screaming my head off. Two black orderlies hold me back, pinning my arms behind me.
Finally, I calm down and they take me back to my room. Maggie gives me a small plastic cup of syrupy liquid and soon I'm like Alice in Wonderland shrinking into the room. The white folds of the bedclothes are an arctic wasteland.
The dream has a whiff of strawberry lip gloss and spearmint breath—a missing girl in a pink-and-orange bikini. Her name is Mickey Carlyle and she's wedged in the rocks in my mind like a spar of driftwood, bleached white by the sun—as white as her skin and the fine hairs on her forearms. She is four feet tall, tugging at my sleeve, saying, “Why didn't you ever find me? You promised my friend Sarah that you'd find me.”
She even says it in the same voice that Sarah used when she asked me for an ice-cream cone. “You promised me. You said I could have one if I told you what happened.”
Mickey disappeared not far from here. You might even be able to see Randolph Avenue from the window. It's a solid, redbrick canyon of mansion blocks built as cheap Victorian housing, but now the flats cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. I could save for ten years or two hundred and never afford to buy one.
I can still picture the lift, an old-fashioned metal cage that rattled and twanged between the landings. The stairs wrapped around the lift shaft, turning back and forth as they rose. Mickey grew up playing on those stairs, holding impromptu concerts after school because the acoustics were so good. She sang with a lisp because of the gap in her front teeth.
Three years have passed since then. The world has tuned out her story because there are other crimes to titillate and horrify—dead beauty queens, the war on terror, sportsmen behaving badly . . . Mickey hasn't gone away. She is still here. She is like the ghost who sits opposite me at every feast and the voice inside my head when I fall asleep. I know she's alive. I know it deep down inside, where my guts are tied in knots. I know it but I can't prove it.
It was the first week of the summer holidays, three years ago when she entered my life. Eighty-five steps and then darkness; she vanished. How can a child disappear in a building with only five floors and eleven flats?
We searched every one of them—every room, cupboard and crawl space. I even checked the same places over and over again, somehow expecting her to suddenly be there, despite all the other searches.
Mickey was seven years old with blond hair, blue eyes and a gap-toothed smile. She was last seen wearing a bikini, a white headband, red canvas shoes, and carrying a striped beach towel.
Police cars had blocked the street outside and the neighbors were organizing searches. Someone had set up a trestle table with jugs of ice water and bottles of cordial. The temperature reached 30°C at nine o'clock that morning and the air smelled of hot bitumen and exhaust fumes.
A fat guy in baggy green shorts was taking photographs. I didn't recognize him at first but I knew him from somewhere. Where?
Then it came back to me, like it always does. Cottesloe Park—an Anglican boarding school in Warrington. His name was Howard Wavell, a baffling, unfortunate figure, who was three years behind me. My memory triumphs again.
I knew Mickey hadn't left the building. I had a witness. Her name was Sarah Jordan and she was only nine years old but she knew what she knew. Sitting on the bottom stair, sipping from a can of lemonade, she brushed mousy brown hair from her eyes. Tiny crosses clung to her earlobes like pieces of silver foil.
Sarah wore a blue-and-yellow swimsuit, with white shorts, brown sandals and a baseball cap. Her legs were pale and spotted with insect bites pink from her scratching. Too young to be body conscious, she swung her knees open and closed, resting her cheek against the coolness of the banister.
“My name is Detective Inspector Ruiz,” I said, sitting next to her. “Tell me what happened again.”
She sighed and straightened her legs. “I pressed the buzzer, like I said.”
“Which buzzer?”
“Eleven. Where Mickey lives.”
“Show me which button you pressed.”
She sighed again and walked across the foyer through the large front door. The intercom was just outside. She pointed to the top button. Pink nail varnish had been chipped off her fingernails.
“See! I know what number eleven is.”
“Of course, you do. What happened then?”
“Mickey's mum said Mickey would be right down.”
“Is that exactly what she said? Word for word?”
Her brow furrowed in concentration. “No. First she said hello and I said hello. And I asked if Mickey could come and play. We were going to sunbathe in the garden and play under the hose. Mr. Murphy lets us use the sprinkler. He says we're helping him water the lawn at the same time.”