“PC Christine Foster.This is Detective Paul Gray.We’reinvestigating your sister’s disappearance.”
Laurie tried to take this in.It was one thing for Gibson tolook at him through her tears and saygone.That could almost have been anextension of the unreal life of this household, where hothousegames played themselves out behind sealed doors.But this woman wasso real that he could smell cold air in the serge of heruniform.Gonewassomehow less thandisappearance; Gibson could notterrify him the way Christine Foster could, with her formality andher careful choice of words.For a moment he couldn’t find any ofhis own.Then they came out—weird, barely voluntary.“Please tellme not just the two of you.”
Fosteralmost smiled.“No.No, not at all.There’s a citywide alert out,and children’s services all over the country have been informed.Don’t you watch the news?”
“Not lately.”Laurie looked at his hand.It was still clutchedaround hers, and its knuckles were white.He must be hurting her.Quickly he disengaged.“Sorry,” he said.Then once more, roughly,“Sorry.This isn’t true.It can’t be.”
“Well, we’re very concerned.To be honest, we didn’t think thiswould come as such a shock to you.We wondered if that was whyyou’d come home.You’ve been away this week, haven’tyou?”
“Yes.But I didn’t… I hadn’t heard a thing…”
“Okay.Try not to be too frightened.Most kids turn up aliveand well.But we’ll need to talk to you, obviously, and…” She fellsilent, looking at him more closely.“You’re very pale, Mr.Fitzroy.You look underweight, and you have facial injuries.Whodid this to you?”
Laurie opened his mouth.Then he closed it again.Brought upnot to tell tales, schooled in the doctrine that it was better tosuffer in silence than expose even the worst of bullies, he foundhe could not speak.Her question slipped away from himanyway.She’s been gone for three days.Three days.Clara.Gone… “No,” hewhispered, vision clouding.“Christ, no.”
A shadowfell.At first Laurie could not bring himself to notice it or toput it together with the banging door, the heavy footsteps that hadpreceded it.Then his nostrils prickled with the scent of familiaraftershave and expensive scotch, and he jerked up in time to seehis father, an inexorable bulk arising between the two officers.Hetensed, ready to hear the old man add his lies to his ownsilence…
But SirWilliam said, to Laurie’s astonishment, “I’m afraid that was me.Idid it to him, Officer Foster.”
Theadmission broke Laurie’s restraint like a well-placed hammer on aneggshell.He sprang to his feet.The old man’s smell was a pressurein his lungs, threatening to crack his healing ribs anew.The voicehit him like a big hand.He lurched past PC Foster’s grip.He couldbarely understand himself.He thought his instinctive movement uponseeing his father again would be away, away, not this scrambletoward him, to do when he got there who knew what.
“You bastard,” he heard himself yell, his voice cracking up outof its register as it had used to do when he was just a kid and itwas breaking.“Next time you lay a hand on me you better finish thejob and kill me, or—”
“All right, Mr.Fitzroy!”His shoulder was caught.When hetried to free himself, he felt his arm tugged up his back.Theother officer had not moved, so he could assume it was Foster whowas holding him back from his father in an efficient restraintgrip.Incongruously, once she had stilled him and could spare ahand, she began to rub his other shoulder, her touch unfazed andsoothing.“All right,” she said.“He admitted he did it.You canpress charges for assault if you want, but you have to be calm.Okay?”
SirWilliam, watching his son’s struggle dispassionately, said, “As Irecall, I punched him in the ribs, as well.How arethey?”
Fostergave him a look, then nodded to her partner, who came forward andunfastened Laurie’s coat.When Gray reached for the hem of hisT-shirt, Laurie tried to flinch back, but the woman’s solid bulkbehind him held him still.The detective leaned down and examinedLaurie’s side in silence, without touching, then straightened up.“They’ve been treated,” he said grimly.“But in my opinion, SirWilliam, your son could bring a charge of assault if he wantedto.”
Laurielooked from one to the other of them.These were not the usualcoppers—the cronies—with whom his father liked to surround himselfwhen he had dealings with the commissioners’ board.The sense ofbeing seen and heard took the edge off his rage, and feeling Fosterease her grip, he swallowed and began to catch hisbreath.
“I know he could,” Sir William said.He took a step towardLaurie, and Gray shot out a warning hand.“We…haven’t been friends,my son and I.It’s my fault.I have a hot temper, and I drink toomuch.But I need him to help me now.Laurence, I’m verysorry.”
NowLaurie was quite frozen: Foster did not need so much to hold himstill as prop him up.A huge sense of unreality descended upon him.Any second now he would wake in Sasha’s arms, tell him about thishideous dream, and feel his kisses, sweet and clean as daylight,melt it all away.The hallway began a slow rotation around him.Hallway, stairs, upper floors, Clara’s empty room… He said faintly,“Where’s my mother?”
“Upstairs, heavily sedated.She can’t withstand this, Laurence.You know she can’t.Please help us.”
“I…” Laurie shuddered.He wiped his eyes, unsure when the tearshad come to them.“Yes, okay.Anything.What do need me todo?”
SirWilliam, unexpectedly, looked at the ground.After a moment, it wasDetective Gray who cleared his throat and held out a hand to him.“We need you to look at some documents,” he said.“Through here.Come on.”
Theother source of voices and radio crackle was his father’s study.Laurie had not even noticed until now that the door was open.Theblinds were drawn, blue-white light emanating from three computersscreens that had sprung up around the old man’s desk.A thirdofficer, this one also in plain clothes, got to his feet as Fosterled Laurie into the room.He put out a hand, and once more Lauriefound himself taking it, as if they were meeting at a cocktailparty.“Is this…”
“This is my boy, Laurence.”
Thevoice came from an inch off Laurie’s ear.An involuntary spasm offright seized him—muscle and bone still reacting to the hurt hethought his mind had assimilated—and he pulled away from Foster,almost falling, grabbing at a chair for support.Gray reached tosteady him.“All right, son,” he said, then turned on Sir William.“Could you back off, please, sir?Give him some space.Laurence,this is Detective Sergeant John Kucharski.He works with us and forInterpol.”
Interpol.Now I know I’m bloody dreaming.Laurie subsided into the chair that Gray had pulled out forhim.Distractedly he decided he liked the look of DS Kucharski.Notmuch older than himself, but Laurie guessed he’d turned the yearsto better account than prancing about on a stage.His gaze wasbroad and kind with experience, and he had what looked like aknife-wound scar to the side of his neck.He said, “Okay, Laurence.I’m the Interpol liaison for the central Met.These other officersand I have just been looking through records for anyone who mighthave had contact with your family recently, anyone who could giveus a lead to your sister.”
Laurienodded.This seemed reasonable enough.Kucharski was handing him asheaf of papers.He did his best to concentrate, though his brainfelt like a balloon, drifting near the ceiling somewhere, attachedto him by the most fragile of strings.He wanted to help.He wantedto look as if he did, and he tried for the expression of respectfulattention with which he often convinced his tutor he was actuallythere in the room with him.Contact with my family, he thought, aripple of shocky amusement clenching his stomach muscles as hismemory picked through the parade of music teachers, Mayfair societydoyennes and charity workers who made their way into his mother’sliving room.“Sorry,” he said, pressing a hand to his cold lowerlip to keep the quake of laughter from his voice.“I…I can’t thinkof anyone who’d…”
“All right,” Kucharski said.“But I believe you know a youngman called Alexandru Petrica.”
Lauriehardly liked to contradict him.Obediently he read through the dataand statistics on the first of the printouts Kucharski had handedhim, with its impressive Scotland Yard watermark.He didn’t.Heknew Sasha, of course, whose black-and-white photograph was paperclipped to the sheet, as if there were some connection.He knewSasha.
Lauriedidn’t have a picture of him.This was the first thought thatstruck him, followed by an absurd desire to ask Kucharski if hecould keep this one.He smiled.Sasha could not be other thanbeautiful, even on a police mug shot.His dark gaze sought Laurie’sacross time, circumstance, celluloid.He looked calm and unafraid,unconcerned by the alien name he was being forced to hold acrosshis chest for the camera.Alexandru Petrica… Gently Laurieunfastened the photograph, drew it toward him.He ran his fingersover its surface.“No,” he said, softly.“No, I don’t knowhim.”
Kucharski took the photo carefully back from him.He put ahand on Laurie’s wrist.The grasp was compassionate but firm.Hewaited till Laurie looked up, and then he said, “He’ll have calledhimself Sasha or maybe Sandru.He’ll have told you that his fatherwas a poet, driven out of Bucharest during the Ceausescu regime.Some of that’s even true.But Alexandru’s father, Stefan Petrica,is alive, Laurence.He’s the lynchpin of a massive drugs andfirearms cartel that runs out of the Roma ghettos in Sofia.Interpol wants Alexandru in connection with its operations in thewest.Drugs, guns, and…human trafficking.Do you know what thatis?”
