Part 7 (1/2)

'Joe, could you stick to the point?'

'I am making a point here. Everything I've said, it's to the point. The point is, I do people-work. Conspiracies, I leave to the police.'

'This is people-work, Joe. I'm looking for a child.'

'A child who was blown up. You can't separate the two, Ms Tucker. These are very muddy waters.'

'Did you find her?'

'No, I didn't find her. What I found was, she was checked in at 2.37 a.m. on the fourth. They're very precise with their records. It is, after all, a hospital. It's not a c.o.c.ktail party.'

'And what else?'

'Nothing else, Ms Tucker. That's what I mean by muddy waters. This is a place, you ask for a drink of water, it goes on your chart. They make a record, excuse me, when you fart. But a litle girl disappears in the middle of the night, n.o.body knows where she went.'

Sarah didn't say anything.

'That's not people-work, Ms Tucker. This, it took organization. I work with carrots, you know what I mean? And the nurse who took my money that time, she needed the little extra. I'm not ashamed. But this time, I'm all out of carrots. People don't want to know about carrots. It makes me wonder if somebody's been round there with a stick.'

'You're jumping to conclusions.'

'Jumping, it's allowed. You had to walk to conclusions, how far would you get?' He was pleased with this. He stopped talking to drink his coffee while Sarah received the full effect.

On the next table along a man and a woman sat, also with coffee, but too involved in argument to bother drinking. s.n.a.t.c.hes of their dialogue, intense if not yet disruptive, kept drifting into hearing. Already they were drawing glances; becoming the centre of that embarra.s.sed fascination you get when a scene threatens to erupt in a middle-cla.s.s setting. Right at the moment, Sarah had too much on her mind to eavesdrop. 'I don't understand,' she said at last. 'She can't have just gone. There has to be a record.'

'I agree.'

'But you said '

'What I said was n.o.body knows where she's gone. n.o.body I spoke to. You could call it restricted information. But there must be a record, yes. It's a hospital, it's '

'Not a c.o.c.ktail party, right. Could you get into restricted records?'

'It wouldn't be easy.'

'But you could do it.'

'Probably not.'

Sarah took a deep breath. 'That's it, then.'

'Not entirely.'

'How so?'

Joe scanned the cafe. It was filling up nicely; the lunch crowd drifting in to form a queue at the salad bar. Also, the rowing couple had adjusted their volume upwards. Leaving little chance, Sarah reckoned, of anybody overhearing what he was about to say; which didn't stop him approaching it from somewhere over the horizon. 'You get a feeling for this kind of work. You learn to trust your instincts.'

'What are they telling you, Joe?'

'When you came in the other day I thought, this isn't as simple as it sounds. Finding a missing child.'

'Not what you said at the time.'

'I didn't want to alarm you. But look at the facts, her mother's killed in an explosion, then she disappears. What does that tell you?'

'It doesn't tell me anything, Joe. Nor have you.'

'Somebody's got an enemy.'

'She's too young to have enemies. She's only a kid.'

'n.o.body's too young to have enemies. This is news to you? Some of us, we've got enemies because of the race we were born into.'

'We should discuss this some day. But not right now.'

'That's a good idea. We should meet, talk about this and that. No reason we can't be friends just because we met professionally.'

'Joe '

'It happens. Sometimes,' he said hopefully, 'the client develops romantic yearnings towards the detective.'

'Have you heard from Zoe?'

He sighed. 'I withdraw the comment.'

'Joe, what did you find out?'

'I talked to the cops.'

Sarah picked up her coffee. It was pretty cold. The couple at the next table were still bickering steadily, though the parameters of their discontent had widened. Something about him caring more for his d.a.m.n golf clubs than about her talent; something else about her only talent being for shopping. The word b.i.t.c.h was tagged invisibly on to this last complaint, or possibly Sarah imagined that.

'And?'

'And they've identified the other body. The man.'

'That's not been reported.'

'No. They're keeping it quiet for the time being.'

'So who was he?'

'They got him through his prints, and double-checked them against his dental records. Normally they'd be lucky to get one or the other, but in his case they had both.'

'Joe '

'He'd been in the services, you see. The army.'

At the next table, the woman stood and reached into her handbag.