Lost by Michael Robotham

down again.
    “Could someone have wanted to take her?”
    She shook her head.
    “What about her father?”
    “No.”
    “You're divorced?”
    “Three years.”
    “Does he see Mickey?”
    She squeezed a bal of soggy tissues in her fist and again shook her head.
    My marbled notebook rested open on my knee. “I need a name.”
    She didn't reply.
    I waited for the silence to wear her down but it didn't seem to affect her. She had no nervous habits like touching her hair or biting her bottom lip. She was total y enclosed.
    “He would never hurt her,” she pronounced suddenly. “And he's not sil y enough to take her.”
    My pen was poised over the page.
    “Aleksei Kuznet,” she whispered.
    I thought she was joking. I almost laughed.
    Here was a name to conjure with; a name to tighten the throat and loosen the bowels; a name to speak softly in quiet corners with fingers crossed and knuckles rapping on wood.
    “When did you last see your ex-husband?”
    “On the day we divorced.”
    “And what makes you so sure he didn't take Mickey?”
    She didn't miss a beat. “My husband has a reputation as a violent and dangerous man, Inspector, but he is not stupid. He wil never touch Mickey or me. He knows I can destroy him.”
    “And how exactly can you do that?”
    She didn't have to answer. I could see my reflection in her unblinking stare. She believed this. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind.
    “There's something else you should know,” she said. “Mickey has a panic disorder. She won't go outside by herself. Her psychologist says she is agoraphobic.”
    “But she's only a—”
    “Child? Yes. People don't expect it, but it happens. Even the thought of going to school used to make her sick. Chest pains, palpitations, nausea, shortness of breath . . . Most days I had to walk her right to the classroom and pick her up from the same place.”
    The tears almost came again, but she found a place to put them. Women and tears—I'm no good with them. Some men can just wrap their arms around a woman and soak up the hurt, but that's not me. I wish it were different.
    Rachel seemed too damaged to hold herself together but she wasn't going to break in front of me. She was going to show me how strong she could be. I didn't doubt it. Any woman who walked away from Aleksei Kuznet needed courage beyond words.

    “Have you remembered something?” asks Joe, close to me now.
    “No. I'm just daydreaming.”
    Ali looks over the banister. “Maybe one of the neighbors knows where Rachel is. What about the one with the cats?”
    “Mrs. Swingler.”
    A lot of the neighbors have moved on since the tragedy. The Murphys were managing a pub in Dartford and Kirsten Fitzroy, Rachel's best friend, had moved to Notting Hil .
    Perhaps tragedy permeates a place like a smel you can't get rid of.

    Taking the lift to the first floor, I knock on Mrs. Swingler's door. Resting on my crutches, I hear her coming down her hal way. Long strings of colored beads threaded into her hair gently clack as she moves. The door opens a crack.
    “Hel o, Mrs. Swingler, do you remember me?”
    She peers at me aggressively. She thinks I'm a health inspector from the local council, come to take away her cats.
    “I was here a few years ago—when Mickey Carlyle disappeared. I'm looking for Rachel Carlyle. Have you seen her?” The smel coming from inside is a fetid stench, part feline and part human. She finds her voice. “No.”
    “When did you last see her?”
    She shrugs. “Weeks back. She must have gone on holidays.”
    “Did she tel you that?”
    “No.”
    “Have you seen her car parked outside?”
    “What sort of car does she drive?”
    I think hard. I don't know why I remember. “A Renault Estate.”
    Mrs. Swingler shakes her head, making the beads clack.
    The hal way behind her is crammed with boxes and chests. I notice a smal movement, then another, as though the shadows are shifting. Cats. Everywhere. Crawling out of boxes and drawers, from