Lost

Someone knelt here and rested a tripod on the wall—a lone sniper with a finger on the trigger and his eyelashes brushing the lens, studying the park below. The hair on my forearms is standing on end.

Fifteen minutes later the rooftop has been sealed off and a SOCO team is at work, searching for clues. Campbell is smarting about being shown up by a clinical psychologist.

Joe takes me downstairs to the canteen—one of those sterile food halls with tiles on the floor and stainless steel counters. Cedric, the guy in charge, is a Jamaican with impossibly tight curls and a laugh that sounds like someone cracking nuts with a brick.

He brings us coffee and pulls a half bottle of Scotch from the pocket of his apron. He pours me a slug. Joe doesn't seem to notice. He's too busy trying to fill in the missing pieces.

“Snipers have very little emotional investment in their victims. It's like playing a computer game.”

“So he could be young?”

“And isolated.”

True to form, the Professor is more interested in why than who; he wants an explanation while I want a face for my empty picture frame, someone to catch and punish.

“Aleksei Kuznet visited me last night. I think I know why I was in the river. I was following a ransom.”

Joe doesn't bat an eyelid.

“He wouldn't tell me the details, but there must have been proof of life. I must have believed Mickey was still alive.”

“Or wished it.”

I know what he's saying. He doesn't think I'm being rational.

“OK, let's ask ourselves some questions,” he says. “If Mickey is alive, where has she been for the past three years?”

“I don't know.”

“And why would anyone wait three years to post a ransom demand?”

“Maybe they didn't kidnap her for ransom, not at first.”

“OK. If not for ransom, why?”

I'm struggling now. I don't know. “Maybe they wanted to punish Aleksei.”

It doesn't sound convincing.

“It sounds like a hoax to me. Someone close to the family or to the original investigation knew enough to convince desperate people that Mickey might still be alive.”

“And the shootings?”

“They had a falling out or someone got greedy.”

It sounds so much more rational than my theory.

Joe takes out his notebook and starts drawing lines on the page as if playing hangman.

“You grew up in Lancashire, didn't you?”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“I'm just asking a question. Your stepfather was an RAF pilot in the war.”

“How do you know that?”

“I remember you telling me.”

“Bullshit!”

A ball of anger forms in my throat. “You're just itching to get inside my head, aren't you? The Human Condition—isn't that what you call it? You got to watch out for that bastard.”

“Why do you keep dreaming about missing children?”

“Fuck you!”

“Maybe you feel guilty.”

I don't answer.

“Maybe you blocked it out.”

“I don't block things out.”

“Did you ever meet your real father?”

“You're going to have trouble asking questions with your jaw wired shut.”

“A lot of people don't know their fathers. You must wonder what he's like; whether you look like him or sound like him.”

“You're wrong. I don't care.”

“If you don't care, why won't you talk about it? You were probably a war baby—born just afterward. A lot of fathers didn't come home. Others were stationed overseas. Children get lost . . .”

I hate that word “lost.” My father didn't go missing. He isn't lying in some small part of France that will forever be England. I don't even know his name.

Joe is still waiting. He's sitting there, twirling his pen, waiting for Godot. I don't want to be psychoanalyzed or have my past explored. I don't want to talk about my childhood.

I was fourteen years old the first time my mother sat down and told me about where I came from. She was drunk, of course, curled up on the end of my bed, wanting me to massage her feet. She told me the story of Germile Purrum, a Gypsy girl, with a “Z” tattooed on her left arm and a black triangle sewn into her rags.

“We looked like bowling balls with sticky-out ears and frightened eyes,” she said, nursing a drink between her breasts.

The prettiest and the strongest Gypsy girls were sent to the homes of the officers in the SS. The next group were used in camp brothels, gang-raped to break them in and often sterilized because the Roma were considered unclean.

My mother was fifteen when she arrived at Ravensbrück, the largest concentration camp for women in the Reich. She was put to work in the camp brothel, working twelve hours a day.

She didn't go into details but I know she remembered every one of them.

“I think I'm pregnant,” she slurred.

“That's not possible, Daj.”

“I haven't had my monthly days.”

“Have you been to see the doctor?”

She looked at me crossly. “Esther tried to make me bleed.”

“Who is Esther?”

“A Jewish angel . . . but you clung to my insides. You didn't want to leave. You wanted so much to live.”

Daj was talking about me. I knew this part of the story.

She was three months pregnant when the war ended. She spent another two months looking for her family, but they were all gone—her twin brothers, her mother, her father, aunts, uncles, cousins . . .