Lost

Back in the car, we edge through Tobacco Dock, past a gray square of water surrounded by warehouses. I can never tell if these new housing developments are gentrification or reclamation—most of them were derelict before the developers arrived. The dockside pubs have gone, replaced by fitness centers, cybercafés and juice bars selling shots of wheatgrass.

Farther from the river, squeezed between the Victorian terraces, we find a more traditional café and take a table by the window. The walls are decorated with posters of South and Central America, and the air smells of boiled milk and porridge.

Two gray plump women run the dining room—one taking orders and the other cooking.

Fried eggs stare up from my plate like large jaundiced eyes, along with a blackened sausage and a twisted mouth of bacon. Ali has a vegetarian sandwich and pours the tea from a stainless steel teapot. The brew is a dark shade of khaki, thick with floating leaves.

A local school has just broken for lunch and the street is full of Asian teenagers eating buckets of hot chips. Some of them smoke by the phone box while others swap headphones, listening to music.

Joe tries to stir his coffee with his left hand and stalls, switching to the right. His voice cuts through the sound of metal knives scraping on crockery. “Why did you think Mickey might have been on the boat?”

Ali's ears prick up. She's been asking herself the same question.

“I don't know. I was thinking about the photograph. Why would I carry it—unless I wanted to recognize her? It's been three years. She won't look the same.”

Ali glances from me to the Professor and back to me again. “You think she's alive?”

“I didn't imagine all this.” I motion to my leg. “You saw the boat. People died. I know it has something to do with Mickey.”

I haven't touched my food. I don't feel hungry anymore. Perhaps the Professor is right—I'm trying to right the wrongs of the past and ease my own conscience.

“We should get back to the hospital,” he says.

“No, not yet, I want to find Rachel Carlyle first. Maybe she knows something about Mickey.”

Joe nods in agreement. It's a good plan.

4

The autumn leaves swirl across Randolph Avenue, collecting against the steps of Dolphin Mansions. The place still looks the same, with a white-trimmed arch over the entrance and bronze letters sandblasted into the glass above the door.

Ali taps impatiently on the steering wheel with short manicured fingernails. The place unnerves her. We both remember a different time of year, the haste and noise and sullen heat, the shock and sadness. Joe doesn't understand but must sense something. Shuffling through leaves, we cross the road and climb the front steps. The bottom buzzer automatically opens the door between nine and four every day. Standing in the foyer, I glance up the central stairwell as though listening for a distant echo. Everything passes up and down these stairs—letters, furniture, food, newborn babies and missing children.

I can remember the names and faces of every resident. I can draw lines between them on a whiteboard showing relationships, contacts, employment history, movements and alibis for when Mickey disappeared. I remember it not like yesterday but like I remember the meal I just ordered and failed to eat, the fried eggs and lean bacon.

Take Rachel Carlyle, for instance. The last time I saw her was at the memorial service for Mickey a few months after the trial.

I arrived late and sat at the back, feeling like I was intruding. Rachel's soft, drugged sobs filled the chapel and she looked devoid of hope and tired of living.

Some of the neighbors from Dolphin Mansions were there, including Mrs. Swingler, the cat lady, whose hairdo resembled one of her tabbies curled on top of her head. Kirsten Fitzroy had her arm over Rachel's shoulders. Next to her was S. K. Dravid, the piano teacher. Ray Murphy, the caretaker, and his wife were a few seats back. Their son Stevie sat between them, twitching and mumbling. Tourette's had hard-wired his movements to be quicker than a light switch.

I didn't stay for the whole service. I slipped outside, pausing to look at the plaque waiting to be blessed.

MICHAELA LOUISE CARLYLE

1995–2002

We didn't have time to say goodbye, my Angel, but you're

only a thought away.

There were no lessons to be learned, no logic or plot to be raked over, no moral comfort to be gained. According to the trial judge, her death had been pointless, violent and put into context.

I interviewed Howard Wavell a dozen times after that, hoping he might give up Mickey's burial place, but he said nothing. Periodically, we investigated new leads, excavating a garden in Pimlico and dredging the pond in Ravenscourt Park.

I haven't talked to Rachel since then but sometimes, secretly, I have found myself parked outside Dolphin Mansions, staring out the windshield, wondering how a child disappears in five stories and eleven flats.