“Sure. You want breakfast? There is cereal, bread, eggs, bacon…”
“I don’t eat bacon.”
“Eggs then?”
She doesn’t answer.
Sitting opposite him, she stares at the back of his newspaper without reading the words. He pours tea and spoons sugar. Stirs. The spoon sounds loud against the rim of the cup. Without warning, Holly begins to speak.
“Were you really a copper?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you give it up?”
“It gave me up.”
“You got fired?”
“I got retired.”
Holly has tied her hair up in a scarf, which makes her look like a 1940s aircraft worker.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“Well it doesn’t happen very often. And people who are nice to me usually end up leaving or dying.”
“Who else has died?”
“My brother… my parents.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“What happened to them?”
Holly shakes her head and changes direction. “I knew a guy at school, Scott Kernohan. He got hit by a train.” She changes direction again. “How did your wife die?”
“Cancer.”
“Did you remarry?”
“Twice.”
Holly looks at a framed montage of family photographs on the wall beside the fridge. Snapshots of weddings, dinners, holidays, children’s concerts, birthday celebrations, anniversaries.
“When is your daughter getting married?”
“On Saturday.”
“I saw the invitation.”
“When you were robbing me?”
Holly lets the comment slide. “Do you like the guy she’s marrying?”
“Sure.”
She smiles wryly.
“What’s that look for?”
“You’re lying.” She points to a photograph on the wall. “Is that him?”
“No, that’s my son Michael.”
“He’s cute.”
“He’s in Barbados.”
“But he’s coming home for the wedding, right?”
“We hope so.”
Holly loses interest and begins opening cupboards. Ruiz can’t concentrate on his newspaper because he wants to watch her. She opens a box of cereal and eats with her hand.
“I have bowls.”
“It’s OK.”
He tries to read, but can feel her eyes upon him. Silence until he can stand it no more. He folds the newspaper. “Why do you rob people?”
“To pay the rent.”
“You couldn’t find another way?”
“I’m sure you’re going to give me a list.”
“Whoever killed Zac was looking for something.”
“You don’t know that.”
Holly takes another handful of cereal.
“Who did you rob?”
“Rich horny guys, businessmen, suits, married, middle-aged.”
“How many?”
“Nine, maybe ten,” she says defensively. “We didn’t do it all the time—just when we needed the rent. Zac wasn’t getting his army pension. They lost his paperwork.”
“I need names and addresses of everyone you robbed.”
“Oh, yeah, I kept them on speed dial.”
Sarcasm scratches her pretty face.
“What did you take?”
“Phones, cameras, computers, jewelry—stuff we could carry.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Fenced it.”
“Who with?”
Holly hesitates. “I’m not a grass.”
“I just want to talk to him.”
“That’s another lie.”
“What is it with you? You keep calling people liars.”
“I can tell.”
“Sure.”
“It’s true.” Holly is staring into her mug as if reading the dregs. Tired. Wan. Resigned to being disbelieved. Ruiz thinks of his mother. Before her mind was scattered by dementia, Daj would often talk of people having “gifts” or a “third eye,” seeing things that other people don’t. A gypsy gift and a gypsy curse have little to differentiate them.
“Test me,” says Holly.
“How?”
“Tell me something true or false. Anything.”
“I’m not playing games.”
“OK, don’t do it.” Holly shrugs and pushes back her chair.
Ruiz reaches into his pocket and closes his fist.
“OK, what’s in my hand?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have a coin. Do you know which one?”
“No.”
“It’s a fifty-pence piece.”
“No it’s not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re lying.”
“What if I told you it was twenty pence?”
“You’d be a liar.”
“What about a pound?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Ruiz uncurls his fingers. The pound coin lies flat in his palm.
“Lucky guess.”
“If you say so.”
She’s challenging him. Ruiz knows he should let the subject go, but her cockiness irritates him.
“Let’s do it again.”
“Only if we play for money. I get a pound for every time I’m right.”
“OK.”
Ruiz takes a moment to plan his tactics.
“I’m going to tell you five things. Tell me which ones are true.”
“That’s five pounds.”
Holly sits opposite him, looking at his face.
“I was once arrested on suspicion of murder.”
“Wow, that’s a bummer.”
“You think it’s true?”
“Yes.”
“My middle name is William?”
“No.”
“My middle name is Yanko?”
“What sort of name is that?”
“Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“I have a brother but he doesn’t live in London.”
She hesitates. “That’s two facts.”
“So what?”
“He doesn’t live in London.”
“Are you saying I don’t have a brother?”
“No, but there’s something wrong…” Holly taps the table with her finger, thinking of the possibilities. “Is he alive?”
Ruiz’s heart seems to lurch sideways in his chest. How could she possibly know that?
“This is ridiculous. I don’t want to play anymore.”
She holds out her hand. “I want my five pounds.”
How can she… it’s impossible… is he that transparent? Then he remembers that Holly has been in his house. She looked through his things. There are photo albums upstairs, marriage and birth certificates, pictures of Claire and Michael, Laura’s letters…
“You really are a piece of work,” he says, glaring at her, pushing up from the table.
Holly cringes as he passes, waiting for the blow to fall. The front door slams.
She has glimpsed the monster. There’s one inside every man.
21
BAGHDAD
Luca has a long wait at the checkpoint into the International Zone. A soldier wearing reflective sunglasses examines his papers, while another walks around the Skoda and seems to be counting the bullet holes.
“You were lucky,” he says.
“That’s exactly what I thought at the time,” replies the journalist. “I was dodging those bullets and thinking, How lucky am I?”
The sarcasm is lost on the guards, who are mostly Latinos or Nepalese working for private security companies.
The boom gate rises and Luca enters a different world—four square miles of air-conditioned, fully supplied comfort in the middle of a bombed city. There are juice bars, ice-cream parlors,
beauty shops, cafeterias, clothing stores, swimming pools, gyms, a Pizza Hut, a Subway and a giant PX store.
Iraq took control of the zone in 2009 but little has changed in the fortified compound. The only difference is that now it’s home to dozens of Iraqi politicians bickering with one another, oblivious to what’s happening on the other side of the wire. They don’t have to queue for petrol or worry about roadblocks, or suicide bombers or sniper attacks. They don’t live in the same fear, which is the dangerous disconnect that skews all decision-making in the new Iraq.
Luca drives to the eastern edge of the zone and stops outside a gated compound protected by ten-foot-high electric fences, topped with razor wire. Inside, baking in the heat, are dozens of gleaming SUVs parked in rows.
He sounds the horn. Jimmy Dessai looks up from a deconstructed truck engine. Six foot plus, overweight, with a fringe of greasy black hair, Jimmy has a wide arse that causes him to waddle when he walks. Every time he sees Luca his face lights up like he’s surprised that the journalist is still alive. Then he immediately starts working the angles, quizzing Luca on what he needs and what he’d pay to get. Jimmy is a fixer, a King Rat, a man who can source things that are hard to find.
He came to Iraq with the US Army Motor Pool, but later resigned his commission and opened up his own transport business. Now he’s the Hertz, Avis and Budget of Baghdad, all rolled into one.
He glimpses the Skoda and walks around it slowly. Impressed.
“What happened?”
“We got shot at.”
“No shit!”
Luca glances into the lot. “I need another set of wheels.”
“I got nothing to spare.”
“What about them?” He points to the SUVs.
“They cost two grand a day.”
“I’m a freelance journalist.”
“And I’m a businessman.”
Jimmy takes him to the office where Johnny Cash is singing “Ring of Fire” from an iPod speaker and a dog is sleeping beneath his desk. Pitted with scars and eczema, the animal reacts to every visitor as though expecting a boot.
“You want a drink, Scoop?”
“No thanks.”
Jimmy hammers a soft drink machine in the corner and a can drops into the tray. The dog jumps and then slinks into a corner, looking at him with rheumy, half-closed eyes.
Vehicles aren’t Jimmy’s only business. He also provides armed bodyguards and drivers. Armor plating is extra. The full package comes in at four thousand dollars a day, but he still bleats that insurance is killing him.
His two regular mechanics are Iraqis, half his size. Brothers. Jimmy calls them sand niggers, camel jockeys and ragheads, but the mechanics seem totally unfazed.
“You can still drive the Skoda,” he suggests.
“It’s rather conspicuous.”
“I could swap a few door panels.”
“It’s leaking oil.”
“Might need a new engine.”
“How much will that cost?”
“Seven grand.”
“Three.”
“You got to be kidding. Six.”
“We’re mates.”
“Mates are going to send me broke.”
“Make it five and we’re done.”
They shake hands. “That’s how to do a deal,” says Jimmy. “These camel jockeys want to serve you tea and fondle their worry beads, telling you how poor they are and how you’re stealing food from their children’s mouths.”
A helicopter thumps the air overhead. Luca has to wait for the noise to pass.
“I have a question about trucking.”
“Stick to journalism.”
“If someone had a large amount of cash they wanted to smuggle out of Iraq, where would they take it?”
“So we’re talking hypothetically?”
“Of course.”
Jimmy crushes the can and sends it arcing over Luca’s head where it rattles into a bin. “Take your pick—Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Saudi, maybe not Iran—they’re all within reach and porous as hell. I’ve never met a border guard who couldn’t be bought.”
“What about the Syrian border, by way of Mosul?”
“That’s a pretty busy crossing. On any given day maybe a thousand trucks go through carrying everything from sheep to shit-rolls.”
“Who are the drivers?”
“TCN’s mostly.” Third Country Nationals, the bottom of the food chain. Pakistanis, Indians, Filipinos, Afghans, Sri Lankans… most of them working for less than ten dollars a day. “It’s a rat run.”
“Meaning?”
“Some of them are running passengers, six at a time in SUVs, charging about twenty bucks per person. They take people out and come back with boxes of stuff that’s hard to get in Iraq—laundry powder, dishwashing liquid, that kind of thing.
“Others are still smuggling oil. They take old station wagons and turn them into fuel tankers carrying five hundred liters of diesel. Mad fuckers.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The TCNS travel without protection, unlike the military convoys. One stray bullet or errant spark and boom, they’re decorating the desert with body parts.”
“If I wanted to talk to some of these drivers, where would I go?”
“The trucking camps,” says Jimmy. “That’s where they live when they’re not driving. They get food and water; live behind barbed wire; compare bullet holes.”
Luca asks Jimmy if he can make a few enquiries—ask about drivers who might be prepared to make a border run carrying cash.
“And if I find someone?”
“Let me know.”
Luca hitches a ride to the Republican Palace, which has been renamed the Freedom Building. Within the walls it is like a small city with tree-lined boulevards, shops and offices—a small corner of Iraq that will be forever American.
After changing some money, he gets a haircut. Then he calls Daniela Garner. This time she picks up.
“It’s me,” he says.
“Hello.”
“About last night—”
“I’ve never done that before.”
“No you haven’t, I would have remembered.”
“It was a random act.”
“Of kindness?”
“Of lust.”
“Which you now regret?”
“I always regret things. It’s my automatic response to almost every decision I make.”
“You’ve come to the right place. This is a country full of regrets.”
Silence. He should say something.
“Well, I don’t regret a single moment of it. I was sort of hoping it might happen again some time… in the future… which could mean tonight.”
“That soon?”
“Strike while the iron is hot.”
“Is it that hard.”
“Like a crowbar.”
“Now you’re just boasting.”
She feels her face flush and blood rush to other places.
“I have a question and it’s not about the thing you do with your pelvic floor muscles.”
“The thing?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your question?”
“You remember the story I was following up.”
“The bank robberies.”
“There was another one a couple of days ago in the financial district of Baghdad. Seven people are dead including six bank guards. They took US dollars in aluminum boxes, larger than briefcases.”
“How many cases?”
“At least sixteen.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Cases like that can hold up to four million US dollars each, depending on the denominations.”
There is a pause. Both of them have done the calculation.
“No bank branch should hold that sort of cash. There’s no need,” she says.
“Iraq is still a cash economy.”
“Even so.”
“It was the eighteenth bank robbery t
his year.”
“You’re going to ask me to do something.”
“The cash must have been provided by the Central Bank. There must be a record of the transfers.”
“I don’t know if I can help,” says Daniela, typing as she speaks. She calls up information on cash deliveries to banks. The list runs to six pages. She narrows the search by including only US dollar deliveries.
“What were the dates of the robberies?”
“I can text them to you.”
“No promises.”
“I understand. I still want to see you later.”
“You want my body.”
“We could eat first… or not.”
She laughs. “You know that second dates are trickier.”
“How so?”
“Traditionally, they’re about getting to know each other better. You might discover I’m a selfish, controlling, overbearing and difficult woman.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. And I think you’ve seen enough of me already.”
“There are places I haven’t seen yet.”
“Now you’re just being dirty.”
22
LONDON
Ruiz walks alongside the river, smelling the briny stink of low tide. Fat-bellied boats, canted drunkenly to starboard, are stuck fast in the mud. When he first came down to London from Lancashire he was posted with the Thames River Police. On average they pulled two bodies a week from the river, mostly suicides. Rivers seem to draw people to them, cleansing souls, christening them, or dragging them to the bottom.
Holly Knight fascinates and appalls him. Full of fuck-you apathy and repressed anger, she lies almost compulsively yet recognizes when people are deceiving her. An actress. Intense. Volatile. Disconcerting. She trusts nobody and treats every question like it’s wired to go off.
Taking out his mobile, he searches for a familiar name in the directory. Calls. Waits. Joe O’Loughlin answers.
“Hey, Professor, how does a cow know it’s not a butterfly dreaming of being a cow?”
“It can’t fly.”
“Makes sense.”
The professor is a clinical psychologist who spends too much time in other people’s heads. He looks exactly like you’d expect an academic to look—slightly disheveled, unkempt, undernourished—only he has Parkinson’s which means he shakes it like Shakira when he’s not medicated.
Ruiz met him eight years ago, when he was investigating the murder of a young woman in London, one of O’Loughlin’s former patients. The professor was a prime suspect until he proved that another patient was setting him up. That’s what happens when you deal with psychopaths and sociopaths; it’s like trying to hand-feed sharks.
The Wreckage: A Thriller Page 11