Lost

“The best customers are.”

I push aside a colorful baby rug and take a seat on the sofa bed. “About Gerry.”

“I ain't seen him.”

“Maybe he's hiding in the bedroom.”

“Please don't wake the baby.”

She's quite a pretty-looking thing, except for her crooked nose and the junkie hollows beneath her eyes.

“Gerry ran out on me three years ago. I thought he was probably dead until he turned up again during the summer with a suntan and lots of big-shot stories about owning a bar in Thailand.”

“A bar?”

“Yeah. He had a passport and a driver's license in the name of some other geezer. I figured he must have pinched it.”

“You remember the name?”

“Peter Brannigan.”

“Why did he come back?”

“Dunno. He said he had a big payday coming.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Three days ago—must have been Tuesday night.” She stubs out her cigarette and lights another. “He came busting in here, sweating and yelling. He was scared. I ain't never seen anybody that scared. He looked like the devil himself was chasing him.”

That must have been after he crippled Ali. I remember how terrified he looked when he took off. He thought Aleksei had sent someone to kill him.

Theresa dabs at the lipstick in the corners of her mouth. “He wanted money. Said he had to get out of the country. He was crazy, I tell you. I let him stay but as soon as he fell asleep I got a knife. I put it right under here.” She points to her septum, pushing up her nostrils. “I told him to get out. If he comes back I'll kill him.”

“And that was Tuesday night.”

“Early hours of Wednesday.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Nope. And I don't care. He's a bloody nutcase.”

The packet of cigarettes is crushed in her hand. Glossy eyes slide over the sofa and the toys before resting on me. “I got something good going here. I don't need Grub, or Peter Brannigan or whoever else he calls himself, to mess it up.”

Three hours ago it was midnight. The desk lamp in Joe's office casts a circular glow, harsh in the center and soft at the edges. My eyes are so full of grit I can only look at the shadows.

I bought pizzas at nine and the coffee ran out at eleven. The rest of the volunteers have gone home except for Joe and Rachel, who are still hard at work. A large corkboard in the waiting room is plastered with phone messages and notes. Nearby there are box files stacked five abreast beneath the window forming a makeshift shelf for leftover pizza and bottles of water.

Rachel is still on the phone.

“Hello, is that St. Catherine's? I'm sorry to call so late. I'm looking for a friend of mine who has gone missing. Her name is Kirsten Fitzroy. She's thirty-three, with brown hair, green eyes and a birthmark on her neck.”

Rachel waits. “OK, she's not there now but she may have needed medical help in the past few weeks. You have a clinic. Is it possible you could check your files? Yes, I know it's late but it's very important.” She refuses to lose this battle. “She's actually my sister. My parents are worried sick about her. We think she might have hurt herself . . .”

Again she waits. “No record. OK. Thank you so much. I'm sorry to have troubled you.”

They have all worked so hard. Roger and Dicko took a magical mystery tour of London's underbelly, visiting pubs, illegal casinos and strip joints looking for Gerry. Meanwhile, Margaret proved to be a genius at getting passenger manifests out of airlines, ferry and train operators. So far we've established that Kirsten hasn't left the country on any regular transport service.

London's major hospitals and twenty-four-hour clinics have no record of a female shooting victim in the week after the ransom drop. Now we're ringing individual doctors and hospices.

We know more about Kirsten than we did six hours ago. She was born in Exeter in 1972, the daughter of a postman and a teaching assistant. Her two brothers still live in Devon. In 1984 she won a scholarship to Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset. She excelled in art and history. One of her sculptures was accepted in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. In her final year she left the school under a cloud, along with two other students. Drugs were mentioned but nothing went on file.

A year later Kirsten sat A levels and won a place to read art and history at Bristol University. After several false starts, she graduated with a first in 1995. That same year she was photographed at a polo match in Windsor by Tatler magazine with the son of a Saudi Minister. Then she seemed to disappear, surfacing again six years later as the manager of the employment agency.

“I spoke to a few people at Sotheby's,” says Rachel. “Kirsten was well known among the dealers and salesroom staff. She always wore black to auctions and talked constantly on a cell phone.”

“She was bidding for someone else?”

“Four months ago she bid £170,000 for a Turner watercolor.”

“Who was the real buyer?”

“Sotheby's wouldn't say but faxed me a photograph of the painting. I've seen it hanging in my father's study.”