Lost

Nowadays she works with the DPG (Diplomatic Protection Group), looking after ambassadors and diplomats, and protecting witnesses. Perhaps that's why she's here now—to protect me.

As we drive out of the parking lot, she glances at me in the mirror, waiting for some sign of recognition.

“So tell me about yourself, Detective Constable.”

A furrow forms just above her nose. “My name is Alisha Barba. I'm in the Diplomatic Protection Group.”

“Have we met before?”

“Ah—well—yes, Sir, you used to be my boss.”

“Fancy that! That's one of the three great things about having amnesia: apart from being able to hide my own Easter eggs, I get to meet new people every day.”

After a long pause, Ali asks, “What's the third thing, Sir?”

“I get to hide my own Easter eggs.”

She starts to laugh and I flick her on the ear. “Of course I remember you. Ali Baba, the catcher of thieves.”

She grins at me sheepishly.

Beneath her short jacket I notice a shoulder holster. She's carrying a gun—an MP5 A2 carbine, with a solid stock. It's strange seeing her carrying a firearm because so few officers in the Met are authorized to have one.

Driving south past Victoria through Whitehall, we skirt parks and gardens that are dotted with office workers eating lunch on the grass—healthy girls with skirts full of autumn sunshine and fresh air and men dozing with their jackets under their heads. Turning along Victoria Embankment, I glimpse the Thames, sliding along the smooth stone banks. Waxing and waning beneath lion-head gargoyles, it rolls beneath the bridges past the Tower of London and on toward Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe.

Ali parks the car in a small lane alongside Cannon Street Station. There are seventeen stone steps leading down to a narrow gravel beach slowly being exposed by the tide. On closer inspection the beach is not gravel but broken pottery, bricks, rubble and shards of glass worn smooth by the water.

“This is where they found you,” Joe says, sliding his hand across the horizon until it rests on a yellow navigation buoy, streaked with rust.

“Marilyn Monroe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It's nothing.”

Above our heads the trains accelerate and brake as they leave and enter the station across a railway bridge.

“They say you lost about four pints of blood. The cold water slowed down your metabolism, which probably saved your life. You also had the presence of mind to use your belt as a tourniquet.”

“What about the boat?”

“That wasn't found until later that morning, drifting east of Tower Bridge. Any of this coming back?”

I shake my head.

“There was a tide running that night. The water level was about six feet higher than it is now. And the tide was running at about five knots an hour. Given your blood loss and body temperature that puts the shooting about three miles upstream . . .”

Give or take about a thousand different variables, I think to myself, but I see where he's coming from. He is trying to work backward.

“You had blood on your trousers, along with a mixture of clay, sediment and traces of benzene and ammonia.”

“Was the boat engine running?”

“It had run out of fuel.”

“Did anyone report shots being fired on the river?”

“No.”

I stare across the shit-brown water, slick with leaves and debris. This was once the busiest thoroughfare in the city, a source of wealth, cliques, clubs, boundary disputes, ancient jealousies, salvage battles and folklore. Nowadays, three people can get shot within a few miles of Tower Bridge and nobody sees a thing.

A blue-and-white police launch pulls into view. The sergeant is wearing orange overalls and a baseball cap, along with a life vest that makes his chest look barrel shaped. He offers his hand as I negotiate the gangway. Ali has donned a sun hat as though we're off for a spot of fishing.

A tourist boat cruises past, sending us rocking in its wake. Camcorders and digital cameras record the moment as though we're part of London's rich tapestry. The sergeant pushes back on the throttle and we turn against the current and head upstream beneath Southwark Bridge.

The river runs faster on the inside of each bend, rushing along smooth stone walls, pulling at boats on their moorings, creating pressure waves against the pylons.

A young girl with long black hair rows under the bridge in a single scull. Her back is curved and her forearms slick with perspiration. I follow her wake and then raise my eyes to the buildings and the sky above them. High white clouds are like chalk marks against the blue.

The Millennium Wheel looks like something that should be floating in space instead of scooping up tourists. Nearby a class of schoolchildren sit on benches, the girls dressed in tartan skirts and blue stockings. Joggers ghost past them along Albert Embankment.