Read Online Lost by Michael Robotham - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Robotham
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Psychological, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Police, England, London, Police Procedural, London (England), Crimes against, Missing Children, Boys, Amnesia, Recovered Memory
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Charterhouse, where he lost his Russian accent. None of his classmates were ever invited home and the food parcels his mother sent—with their chocolate dates, gingerbread and milk candy—were kept hidden. How do I know these things? I walked in his shoes.
Aleksei's father, Dimitri Kuznet, was a Russian émigré who started with a single flower barrow in Soho and cultivated a smal empire of pitches around the West End. The turf war left three people dead and five unaccounted for.
On Valentine's Day in 1987 a flower sel er in Covent Garden was nailed to his barrow, doused in kerosene and set alight. We arrested Dimitri the fol owing day. Aleksei watched from his upstairs bedroom as we led his father away. His mother wailed and screamed, waking half the neighborhood.
Three weeks before the trial Aleksei left school and took over the family business alongside Sacha, his older brother. Within five years Kuznet Brothers control ed every flower barrow in central London. Within a decade it held sway over the entire cut-flower industry in Britain with more influence over prices and availability than Mother Nature herself.
I don't believe the urban myths or bogeyman stories about Aleksei Kuznet but he stil frightens me. His brutality and violence are by-products of his upbringing; an ongoing act of defiance against the genetic hand that God dealt him.
We might have both started off the same, suffering the same taunts and humiliation, but I didn't let it lodge like a bal of phlegm in my throat and cut off oxygen to my brain.
Even his brother disappointed him. Perhaps Sacha was too Russian and not English enough. More likely Aleksei disapproved of his cocaine parties and glamour-model girlfriends. A teenage waitress was found floating facedown in the swimming pool after one such party, with semen in her stomach and traces of heroin in her blood.
Sacha didn't face a jury of twelve. Only four men were needed. Dressed in balaclavas they broke into his house one night, smothered his wife, and took Sacha away. Some say Aleksei had him strung up by his wrists and lowered into an acid bath. Others say he took off his head with a wood-splitting ax. For al anyone knows Sacha's stil alive, living abroad under a different name.
For Aleksei there are only two proven categories of people in the world—not the rich and the poor or the good and the evil or the talkers and the doers. There are winners and losers. Heads or tails. His universal truth.
Under normal circumstances, better circumstances, I try not to dwel on the past. I don't want to envisage what might have happened to a child like Mickey Carlyle or to the other missing children in my life.
But ever since I woke up in the hospital I can't stop myself going back there, fil ing in the missing hours with horrible scenarios. I see the Thames littered with corpses that bob along beneath the bridges and tumble in the wake of passing tourist boats. I see blood in the water and guns sinking into the silt.
I look at my watch. It's 5:00 a.m. That's when predators do their hunting and police come knocking. Human beings are more vulnerable at that hour. They wake and wonder, pul ing the covers close around them.
Aleksei mentioned a ransom. He and Keebal both knew about the diamonds. I must have been there—on the ransom drop. I wouldn't have gone ahead without proof of life. I must have been sure.
Against the quietness comes commotion—people running and shouting. I can hear a fire alarm.
Maggie appears in the door. “There's been a gas leak. We're evacuating the hospital. I'l get a wheelchair—I don't know how many are left.”
“I can walk.”
She nods approval. “We're taking the sickest patients first. Wait for me. I'l come back.”
In the same breath she has gone. Police and fire sirens wail against the glass. The sound is soon masked by gurneys rattling down the corridors and people shouting instructions.
After twenty minutes the noise level abates and the minutes
Aleksei's father, Dimitri Kuznet, was a Russian émigré who started with a single flower barrow in Soho and cultivated a smal empire of pitches around the West End. The turf war left three people dead and five unaccounted for.
On Valentine's Day in 1987 a flower sel er in Covent Garden was nailed to his barrow, doused in kerosene and set alight. We arrested Dimitri the fol owing day. Aleksei watched from his upstairs bedroom as we led his father away. His mother wailed and screamed, waking half the neighborhood.
Three weeks before the trial Aleksei left school and took over the family business alongside Sacha, his older brother. Within five years Kuznet Brothers control ed every flower barrow in central London. Within a decade it held sway over the entire cut-flower industry in Britain with more influence over prices and availability than Mother Nature herself.
I don't believe the urban myths or bogeyman stories about Aleksei Kuznet but he stil frightens me. His brutality and violence are by-products of his upbringing; an ongoing act of defiance against the genetic hand that God dealt him.
We might have both started off the same, suffering the same taunts and humiliation, but I didn't let it lodge like a bal of phlegm in my throat and cut off oxygen to my brain.
Even his brother disappointed him. Perhaps Sacha was too Russian and not English enough. More likely Aleksei disapproved of his cocaine parties and glamour-model girlfriends. A teenage waitress was found floating facedown in the swimming pool after one such party, with semen in her stomach and traces of heroin in her blood.
Sacha didn't face a jury of twelve. Only four men were needed. Dressed in balaclavas they broke into his house one night, smothered his wife, and took Sacha away. Some say Aleksei had him strung up by his wrists and lowered into an acid bath. Others say he took off his head with a wood-splitting ax. For al anyone knows Sacha's stil alive, living abroad under a different name.
For Aleksei there are only two proven categories of people in the world—not the rich and the poor or the good and the evil or the talkers and the doers. There are winners and losers. Heads or tails. His universal truth.
Under normal circumstances, better circumstances, I try not to dwel on the past. I don't want to envisage what might have happened to a child like Mickey Carlyle or to the other missing children in my life.
But ever since I woke up in the hospital I can't stop myself going back there, fil ing in the missing hours with horrible scenarios. I see the Thames littered with corpses that bob along beneath the bridges and tumble in the wake of passing tourist boats. I see blood in the water and guns sinking into the silt.
I look at my watch. It's 5:00 a.m. That's when predators do their hunting and police come knocking. Human beings are more vulnerable at that hour. They wake and wonder, pul ing the covers close around them.
Aleksei mentioned a ransom. He and Keebal both knew about the diamonds. I must have been there—on the ransom drop. I wouldn't have gone ahead without proof of life. I must have been sure.
Against the quietness comes commotion—people running and shouting. I can hear a fire alarm.
Maggie appears in the door. “There's been a gas leak. We're evacuating the hospital. I'l get a wheelchair—I don't know how many are left.”
“I can walk.”
She nods approval. “We're taking the sickest patients first. Wait for me. I'l come back.”
In the same breath she has gone. Police and fire sirens wail against the glass. The sound is soon masked by gurneys rattling down the corridors and people shouting instructions.
After twenty minutes the noise level abates and the minutes
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