‘Remember, you have no real idea what’s happened to Esme in her past, the experiences that shaped her. You only ever know about yourself, and most people don’t know that much, and it’s in a constantly shifting state, rarely still for long enough to be analysed.’
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Mercy. ‘I didn’t really want it to be you and I think you know why.’
‘I saw it from the beginning,’ said Isabel. ‘You’re still in love with Charlie.’
Mercy shook her head as they crawled in traffic up Warwick Road.
‘I don’t know whether I am still in love with him,’ said Mercy. ‘All I know is that there’s never been anybody else who’s come close.’
‘He was there at a crucial moment in your life,’ said Isabel. ‘He helped you escape from your father, installed you in England and you had a child together. That’s a deeply connecting history. You don’t extricate yourself from that very easily. In the same way it took me the rest of my life to get away from my ex, Chico.’
They finally got through the lights and headed up to the Cromwell Road.
‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you haven’t said what you think of me,’ said Mercy. ‘I’m a cop. We’ve got a memory for dialogue.’
‘Back in your office you seemed scared, which was a bit confusing,’ said Isabel. ‘I’d have expected you to be scared or worried if you didn’t know what had happened to Amy. But in finding out, however terrible it is, at least the fear of the unknown is over. There’s all sorts of other emotions going on, but not fear. As soon as I knew Alyshia was safe, the fear finished. My terror had no limits and then it was gone. Yours was still there. Was it me? Could I fill you with such dread because I might take Charlie away from you?’
‘No, it wasn’t you,’ said Mercy. ‘As always, it was me. The fear of being found out.’
13
8:10 P.M., WEDNESDAY 21ST MARCH 2012
Hampstead Heath, London
The Pryors were a couple of very large Edwardian mansion blocks built in the first decade of the twentieth century on the edge of Hampstead Heath. They were flanked on one side by the open space of Pryor’s Field, and on the other by the tree-lined Lime Avenue and the woodland beyond. Someone answering the description of Esme Boxer had been seen by a group of smokers outside the Well’s Tavern making her way towards the Heath. Papadopoulos had taken the initiative of setting up a command post in the Pryors car park from where volunteers were dispatched to help in the search for the missing woman.
Thirty people had responded to Papadopoulos’s Twitter call and twenty of the porter’s dog-walking rambler friends had turned up. They had been dispersed mostly through the dense woodland between the Pryors and Kenwood House. At around half past eight police dog handlers arrived with a couple of German shepherds. Papadopoulos produced the scarf and hat taken from Esme Boxer’s flat for the dogs to get the scent.
The female handler, Kirsty, took Esme’s hat and went up the path towards the Vale of Health. Reg, the other handler, took the scarf. Papadopoulos joined him going down Lime Avenue. The volunteers’ torches flickered in the blackness of the Heath. They moved forward in a vague line, the dry leaves rustling under their feet. There were other, untrained, dogs—golden retrievers, Labradors, various terriers, spaniels and a rather haughty standard poodle which seemed wary of leaving the main path to pursue this possibly dangerous work in the dark. Voices called out for Esme amid the barking of dogs and the distant thunder of overhead jets banking south to follow the Thames and land at Heathrow.
It was a clear, cold night and, with no rain for a couple of weeks, hard underfoot and good going for the volunteers. This made the task of finding a lone woman, dressed in black, in a large, heavily wooded, undulating area full of ditches and streams and the occasional lake only marginally easier.
Once beyond Pryor’s Field the volunteers split into two groups, the larger heading north while the smaller group went south in the direction of Hampstead Ponds. Papadopoulos and Reg stayed with the larger group with the German shepherd roaming the woodland.
‘This is a business,’ said Reg. ‘When they’ve made up their mind they don’t make it easy, do they? You related?’
Papadopoulos explained the relationships and the murder in Madrid.
‘Vicki!’ roared Reg. ‘You there?’
Two barks came back from the woods.
‘That means yes,’ said Reg. ‘You getting anything, Vicki?’
One bark.
‘That means no.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Yeah, I am. I like to think dogs can talk and understand, but they can’t—I mean, not really. But I know what her bark means. I’ve been with her longer than my last girlfriend—and I didn’t understand a word she said and she was English and of the same species. At least, I think she was.’
‘Did she react badly to being brought to heel?’
Reg laughed.
‘She couldn’t cope with the fact that I spent up to ten hours a day with a complete bitch and loved every minute of it,’ said Reg. ‘Then I’d get home and she wouldn’t do what I told her to and she was bloody useless at catching biscuits.’
‘I thought dogs were supposed to be a great intro to women.’
‘Not police German shepherds, mate,’ said Reg. ‘That’s why I’ve got my eye on that Kirsty, but then she’s only got eyes for Dougal. We’re a lost cause, us dog handlers.’
They were crossing Bird Bridge on the way up to the Hampstead Gate when Vicki crossed their path and stayed on it for forty metres before heading off into the woodland on the left with three sharp barks.
‘She’s on to something,’ said Reg.
They plunged into the woodland after the dog. Reg kept calling out and the dog would respond, sometimes trotting back to make sure she was being followed. After fifteen minutes they came into a clearing where, on the far side, there was a carved wooden seat that looked like a miniature whale.
Vicki was up on this carving looking down the other side and barking repeatedly. From the left side of the clearing came the other police dog, Dougal, travelling at full speed, followed by Kirsty. They met at the seat. The dogs piped down. Esme was lying on her back in the grass, wrapped in her coat, the contents of her handbag all around and an empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka which looked as if it had been flung from the bench.
Papadopoulos put a call through to Central to send for an ambulance. Reg felt for a neck pulse. Kirsty searched for any pills that might have been taken. Other volunteers came into the clearing.
‘We’ve got a pulse, but her breathing is shallow,’ said Reg.
‘Temazepam,’ said Kirsty. ‘There’s two empty twenty-mil bottles here.’
‘That’s bad news with the Grey Goose,’ said Papadopoulos. ‘I’ll get the volunteers organised to direct the ambulance here from Spaniards Road.’
Reg and Kirsty moved Esme into the recovery position while Papadopoulos jogged back to the radio mast leaving a string of torch bearers behind him. The ambulance whooped up the hill and ten minutes later Esme was under oxygen and on her way to the Royal Free Hospital, with Papadopoulos by her side holding the empty Grey Goose and the temazepam bottles.
The paramedics took her straight into A & E, where a team was waiting. Papadopoulos gave them a probable ingestion time of somewhere between 19:15 and 19:30. The team glanced at the clock, which showed it was close to 21:00, said nothing and went into action.
‘So what were you afraid of?’ asked Isabel.
Mercy didn’t answer. She needed more time, more trust. This wasn’t something to tell another person lightly, especially if that other person was going to be deeply involved with Charles Boxer.
‘Amazingly enough, the one thing I was never afraid of was Amy getting . . . ’
She stalled, couldn’t get the word out.
‘You know
how it is these days. The media whips us up into a frenzy of panic about the imminence of all sorts of horrors. Not . . . not murder, strangely enough, unless you’re a fifteen-year-old black kid in a gang or . . . not,’ said Mercy, things spilling out as they came into her head. ‘Terrible how ruthless children can be, isn’t it? Only life can teach them how to behave, and yet they feel this great need to overtake it. To have an experience before they’re ready.’
‘Charlie said he’d always been worried about Amy getting ahead of herself.’
‘Which isn’t a bad thing—being independent, I mean, given that some kids like to hang around at home until they’re thirty or more,’ said Mercy, running out of steam, knowing that there’d have been no chance of Amy doing that.
‘Somehow they’ve got to learn to make choices and understand consequences,’ said Isabel. ‘You can’t be with them all the time. I thought the difficulty with Alyshia would be to get her to understand failure. I thought she’d never known it. It was only during the kidnap that I realised how much she’d shielded me from her disappointments and failures.’
‘It’s only after her . . . her death that we’re finding out how removed Amy had become,’ said Mercy. ‘And . . . cruel too. The punishment she’s meted out . . . to me especially. Why are kids so cruel?’
‘They don’t know what it’s like to have a person’s love, hope and expectations wrapped up in another human being.’
‘The more I sought it, the more I wanted it, the more I demanded it . . . the crueller she became.’
‘I was the same with Alyshia when she came back from Mumbai,’ said Isabel. ‘She was living with me and I thought I deserved some intimacy. She didn’t want to talk because, well . . . it was too complicated. The more I wanted something from her, the nastier she got.’
But even as Mercy was talking and listening, she didn’t quite believe it—not of all kids. She thought about Sasha, the kidnapped boy: the way he’d looked after his mother, protected her from the world, which would have taken him away from her. He must have known he was everything to her and built the ideal fiction around her so the worst wouldn’t happen. His case had gripped Mercy and she needed to go back to it precisely because of what had happened to Amy. Sasha must not go down on her watch.
‘You’re thinking.’
Mercy told her about Sasha, not his case, just his life. Isabel stared out of the fogging window as they arrived at her house in Aubrey Walk.
Isabel installed Mercy in a bedroom, gave her some pyjamas. Mercy took a shower, let the water pummel her shoulders while she stared, mesmerised, at the vortex in the plughole. She hung on to the glass walls and wept with her head jammed into the corner and wondered if she’d ever be able to stop because it had just hit her with a terrible force that this was not finite. This was for ever. They were never going to able to repair the complex damage done between them because Amy was never coming back.
Esme Boxer was not in good shape. Her breathing was fast, her heart rate rapid, pulse thready and her blood pressure low. The doctors and nurses working on her knew that time was against them. The drug and alcohol were already in her system. They were battling against coma and death.
They administered large volumes of intravenous fluids in the hope of stabilising her condition. They intubated her using a ventilator to maintain her breathing. Finally they gave her kidney dialysis to remove substances already absorbed into her system. During these procedures her heart stopped beating twice. The crash team stepped in to revive her.
Papadopoulos saw nothing of this. He paced the waiting room taking calls from Boxer, who’d been given his number by Makepeace, every five minutes.
‘Still nothing,’ said Papadopoulos. ‘No news is good news at this stage.’
‘But she was definitely alive when the ambulance brought her in?’
‘I was with her. She was breathing. The paramedics handed her over in that state. I’ll call you as soon as there’s news.’
And five minutes later Boxer would call again.
‘I’m bored,’ said Sasha tentatively.
‘Shut up,’ said the voice, a third one. They were taking it in turns to be with him after the business in the toilet.
‘Why won’t you talk to me? I could practise my Russian.’
No answer. Sasha heard the pages of a magazine turning.
‘What are you reading?’
Still no answer.
‘Can I have a football? You won’t have to talk to me and I won’t be bored.’
‘No,’ said the voice. ‘Shut up.’
‘You play chess?’
A sigh from the corner of the room.
‘I play chess. I’m good. I could beat you,’ said Sasha.
‘I doubt it.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re a kid. I’ve been playing chess longer than you’ve been alive,’ said the voice. ‘And anyway, you can’t see.’
‘I play from memory. I do that with my dad all the time. You make the moves, and I’ll still beat you.’
Silence and he knew he’d got to him.
‘Wait.’
The man cuffed Sasha’s wrists and left the room, came back minutes later with a chessboard, set out the pieces. Sasha played white. The man quickly realised that Sasha was no novice, found himself in trouble.
‘My bishop takes your knight,’ said the man.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sasha.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve only got one bishop and it’s on white; both my knights are on black squares.’
‘You’re not thinking straight.’
‘I am,’ said Sasha. ‘You’ve seen that you’re checkmate in two moves and now you’re trying to cheat.’
The man hit him hard on the side of the head, knocking him off the wooden slatted bench.
Mercy was sitting on the sofa in a white towelling dressing gown and slippers. She stared into space and sipped sweet tea while Isabel made some mushroom risotto in the kitchen. The phone rang several times. Her own mobile was upstairs. She didn’t want to talk to anybody, couldn’t face calling her family in Ghana. Uncle David’s funeral was starting tomorrow and news of another death would be too dreadful. At least, that was how she rationalised it to herself.
Isabel called her in for supper. She wasn’t hungry but knew she had to eat. They drank red wine from Portugal. Mercy had to hold herself back, tamp down that real need to get blotto.
‘The phone’s been going,’ said Mercy.
‘The first time it was Alyshia from Paris. The other times it was Charlie making sure you’re all right. He wants to talk to you. I told him to wait.’
‘I just don’t know what to say,’ said Mercy. ‘I’ve never been any good at translating feelings into words. Nothing seems . . . adequate.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Nobody is expecting anything. People just want to hear your voice. It places you in their world.’
‘I’ll talk to him if he calls again.’
‘What about your family?’
‘They’re in Africa. They forget the UK when they’re there. There’s no time. The days fill, especially with a funeral. It’s more important to lay someone to rest than it is to get married. That’s when you become an ancestor.’
‘Did they all know Amy?’
‘They all looked after her at one time or another when I was working and Charlie was away,’ said Mercy. ‘But, you know, I’m not quite trusted.’
‘Why not?’
‘I ran away. They all knew what my father was like and what it was like for us to be in his house. The darkness. The fear. But you never run away from your family. That is suspect behaviour.’
‘Is that why you’re not there?’
‘I use work as an excuse. I know I should go, especially for this particular man, who is very important. I jus
t don’t want to get involved. I was the eldest daughter. My mother died so I was mother to the others. And I ran away. When I go over there people can hardly bear to look at me, although it’s got better since my father died.’
‘Did you go into the police force to . . . make amends with your father?’
She’d never thought of it like that.
‘That’s probably true,’ she said. ‘Although I’m not sure how I’d disentangle that from the family mess inside me. The awful truth is that I’m very like my father. I’m strict, demanding, thorough, self-disciplined . . . In a word, I’m hard. Being here in the UK I’ve learned to cover it up. I make jokes. But my colleagues know what I’m like underneath.’
‘You’re not hard, Mercy,’ said Isabel. ‘I’ve been with someone very hard. My ex-husband wasn’t an actor when I met him—at least, I didn’t think so. Then I realised he’d been one all the time. He understood what people wanted to see. You’re just using humour to soften your edges. My ex pretended so that nobody could see the real horror underneath. When you say you have trouble putting feelings into words, to me that means you’re not sentimental, which is what we’ve all become now. You’re not hard, Mercy. You’re admirable.’
‘Amy didn’t think so,’ said Mercy and she started crying.
The leader of the A & E team treating Esme Boxer came into the waiting room in greens, a mask hanging off one ear. He looked weary, as if he was coming to the end of a long shift. The doctor beckoned to Papadopoulos and they went into an office behind the reception area.
‘Are you next of kin?’
‘No. I brought her in but I can get her son on the phone for you. He’s in Madrid,’ said Papadopoulos. ‘She’s O.K., isn’t she?’
The doctor cocked his head from side to side as if there was something sixty-forty about it and the wrong way.
Boxer was sitting on the edge of the bed back in the same room that Amy had booked in the Hotel Moderno. It had taken him time to extricate himself from the care of Inspector Jefe Luís Zorrita, who was determined that he should not spend the night alone. The Spaniard had given him a cheek swab for DNA purposes and confirmed that Mercy’s DNA details had arrived by email. Zorrita assured him that his home was open to him any time, day or night. They’d hugged, a manly Spanish hug which didn’t mind cheek-to-cheek contact. It felt like a small betrayal to Boxer as he left the detective in the Jefatura and got into the police car Zorrita had arranged for him.