The Wreckage: A Thriller

by Michael Robotham

  “How are things?”

  “Good.”

  “The girls?”

  “Fine.”

  “Julianne?”

  “We’re talking.”

  A posse of thin androgynous cyclists sweeps past him in a blur of latex and brightly colored helmets.

  “Claire is getting married at the weekend.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “You want to come to the wedding?”

  “Why?”

  “I can bring someone.”

  “Don’t you want to bring a date?”

  “I’m too old to bring dates.”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  “There’s someone I want you to meet. She’s nineteen. Damaged. Angry. Her boyfriend was killed two nights ago but she won’t talk to the police. Doesn’t trust them.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Holly Knight. D.O.B. twelfth December 1992. You still got any contacts in the DHSS?”

  “One or two. Where is she now?”

  “Staying with me. I’ll explain when you get here.”

  “You’re assuming I’ll come.”

  “Of course.”

  The conversation hits an air pocket and lurches into silence. The professor is an expert at reading the pauses. “Something else on your mind?”

  “She says she can tell when people are lying.”

  “Why does that bother you?”

  “I think maybe she can.”

  Ruiz walks back to his Merc and pauses for a moment, considering how he got into this. The stolen jewelry. Holly said she dropped the hair-comb when she was attacked in the flat. Maybe it’s still there.

  Crossing the river, he drives east through streets that are dotted with “For Sale” and “To Let” signs. People selling up, selling out, downsizing, belt-tightening, admitting defeat. The atmosphere in London has changed in the past two years. People are postponing retirement, driving older cars, eating out less; they’re less conspicuous in their spending, less confident in the future. The city is circumspect rather than diminished.

  Ruiz parks the Merc and squints through the windscreen at the Hogarth Estate. It looks different in daylight. Dirtier. Poorer. Some balconies are being used to dry clothes, others to store broken furniture.

  Ruiz crosses the road and climbs the stairs to Holly’s flat. Blue-and-white crime-scene tape is threaded in a zigzag pattern across a makeshift wooden door, bolted shut. Rocking back six inches, he shoulders it open.

  Crossing the threshold, he eases the door shut and steps further into the flat. The broken furniture, shredded pillows and emptied drawers are just as before, although now there is fingerprint powder on every smooth surface. SOCO have dusted, hoovered, scraped and swabbed.

  The place has a haunted quality that comes after death. It’s like seeing the twisted shell of a car being hauled on to a tow-truck and wondering if anyone survived or was badly injured.

  Ruiz goes into the bedroom, opens a wardrobe and collects some of Holly’s clothes. Jeans. Blouses. Knickers. What else might she need? In the bathroom he fills a make-up bag with small jars, lipsticks, eyeliner and a toothbrush. Everything fits in two plastic shopping bags. He sets them down near the splintered front door and goes through the flat again, searching systematically, looking for letters, bills, bank statements, photographs, anything that might give him a sense of Holly and Zac.

  There is a postcard from Ireland and a bundle of letters from Afghanistan in military-issued envelopes. The only picture of them is a shot taken on a ferry during a wild crossing to somewhere. They’re laughing and holding each other as the swell pitches them backwards and forwards across the deck.

  Standing in the living room, Ruiz tries to recreate the confrontation as Holly had described it. He pictures bodies in motion. She hit the wall. Scrambled up. Used the saucepan. Dropped it.

  Beneath a side table he spies the shoulder bag that Holly was carrying when she left the audition and visited the jewelers in Hatton Garden. The contents have spilled. The hair-comb is half hidden by lipstick tubes, tissues and a half packet of mints. He lifts it carefully. Scared it might break. Then he wraps it in tissue paper and places it inside a small wooden box, which he puts in his pocket.

  Picking up the plastic bags, he steps outside and pulls the door shut, pushing the bolt across and reattaching the police tape. Then he knocks on neighboring flats. After a long wait a door opens.

  “I’m not buying anything,” says a pale man with red hair and doleful eyes.

  “That’s good,” replies Ruiz. “Were you home the night before last?”

  “I already told the police everything.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  The neighbor looks at him nervously. “Nothing!”

  Ruiz stands motionless, letting the silence work its magic. The neighbor fidgets. Scratches. Shuffles his feet.

  “I did see this one guy run down the stairs. He almost knocked me over.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I only saw him for a second.”

  “What color?”

  “I don’t know. Muddy.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Foreign looking. I think maybe you should leave this guy alone.”

  “Why’s that?”

  The neighbor hesitates, still scratching his crotch. “He had a look, you know, like he came into the world with nothing except a name.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Hungry for something.”

  23

  BAGHDAD

  Daniela laces her fingers and stretches her arms above her head. She’s tired—her own fault—too much sex and too little sleep. She has laid out dozens of documents on her desk, placing a shoe or a lamp or a glass on them because the ceiling fan is stirring the air.

  Alfred Nilsen has come back to her. The Pentagon won’t approve her request for information regarding Bellwether Construction. Instead she has been given a brief corporate profile in which Bellwether claims to employ 25,000 Iraqis on 315 different construction projects.

  The work on Jawad Stadium was subcontracted to a dozen different Iraqi companies, each linked to a Syrian-based corporation called Alain al Jaria, which in Arabic means “Ever-Flowing Spring.”

  Ironic, thinks Daniela, as she looks for an office address in Baghdad but can’t find one.

  Glover appears at her door. He’s wearing a baseball cap with a picture of a camel riding a surfboard.

  “Can you tell Shaun to stop humming?”

  “Humming?”

  “He hums this one song. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “What are you—six years old?”

  Glover looks aggrieved. Pouts. Tilts his head. “You look different today.”

  “In what way?”

  “Happier.”

  Daniela can feel blood warming her cheeks. She changes the subject. “What did you want?”

  “I found something you might want to see.”

  As she follows him down the corridor, Glover keeps looking over his shoulder, uncomfortable about letting a woman walk behind him. The IT room has a bank of computers and shelves stacked with software manuals and ring binders.

  Shaun is outside the door listening to an iPod and humming loudly. Daniela pulls an earphone from his ear. “Stop teasing the puppy.”

  He grins at her and then at Glover, who flips him the bird, having to hold down some of his fingers.

  Glover speaks. “You wanted to know about Jawad Stadium. During the invasion it became a shelter for Iraqi families and then a compound for the US Army Motor Pool.

  “It’s one of the bigger football venues in the city. The Iraq Football Federation applied for the rebuild. The contract was awarded in 2005 to Bellwether.”

  “Did you get a copy of the contract?”

  “Take a look.”

  She glances at the screen. Someone has scanned the paperwork but not before meticulously using a thick-tipped marker to black out details including na
mes, dates, addresses, phone numbers and the signees. The file had been stamped “classified” with a Pentagon seal.

  “So this is it?” asks Daniela.

  “I managed to pull up a company address. It’s a post office box in the Bahamas.”

  Glover adds, “There is a separate interim report from 2007. There were delays with some of the work. The wrong seats were delivered. The turf was coming from Sweden and got stuck at the border for three weeks. Died.”

  Daniela looks again at the anomalies. These problems could explain some of the duplicate payments. Each amount is under $200,000. This meant that a PRT commander could approve the payments without going to the next stage of review.

  “Bellwether subcontracted the work to Alain al Jaria, a shelf company based in Syria. There must be local paperwork.”

  “It’s probably in Arabic,” says Glover.

  “Get it translated.”

  Daniela knows she is overstepping her remit. Nilsen had been very clear that she should not go further back than May 2006, but this isn’t natural wastage or an oversight. Most of all she’s annoyed by the blacked-out sentences. She can picture an entire department of faceless public servants in the bowels of the Pentagon, hunched over desks, wielding black marker pens. Too lazy to actually read documents and make informed decisions, they label everything as “classified” and “top secret,” blanking out every name, address and number.

  She runs her finger over the hidden text before turning away.

  “I’m going out for a little while.”

  “Where?”

  “An excursion.”

  Jawad Stadium is in a safer area of the city, but Shaun and Edge still aren’t happy. The journey will take them through Baathist strongholds, including al-Haifa Street, once known as “sniper alley.”

  They spend twenty minutes plotting a route and then briefing a security team. Edge will be in charge. Two vehicles. Four bodyguards. Shaun will stay behind with Glover and the rest of the security team.

  Daniela follows the instructions without complaint. She’d prefer to be with Shaun, but holds her tongue. The cars arrive. Two Ford Explorers. Armored. Fully armed. She’s escorted down the steps by Edge and Klosters, his second in command.

  The doors shut and the cars are moving, weaving between barricades and joining the main road heading east along the river. The vehicles rarely pause, taking detours rather than risk getting stuck at bottlenecks or at checkpoints. Some of the side roads are dusty tracks between houses and apartment blocks.

  The stadium is visible from half a mile away. First the lighting towers, then the covered stands that look like a series of arches, giving the impression of a sporting cathedral. Built in the 1960s, the stadium was a gift to the Iraqi government from a rich oil family. In the 1980s Saddam told architects he wanted it redesigned as a possible Olympic venue.

  They reach the main gate. A grizzled Iraqi with a woolen hat and yellowing teeth emerges from a prefabricated hut. Behind him, the parking lot is littered with debris, broken concrete, discarded tires, drums and plastic bags. Weeds are growing through cracks in the tarmac and a broken water pipe has created a lake of oily black water.

  Edge offers the caretaker a dinar note. He pockets the money like a conjurer and leans on the counterbalance, raising the boom gate. As the cars roll past he salutes Daniela, lifting his right arm and revealing a stump where his fingers used to be.

  They park in the shade of the southern stand and climb a filthy stairwell to the top tier. Emerging on to a concrete ramp, there are banks of seats on each side and tiers that spread around the stadium. The playing surface is a muddy field, churned up by tank tracks and truck tires. The bleachers are pockmarked by bullet holes and riddled with cavities where the seats have been torn out, burned or broken. One of the light towers has crumpled over the players’ entrances.

  Edge looks at Daniela.

  “Is this what you expected?”

  “No.”

  She takes a small digital camera from her shoulder bag and begins taking photographs. Edge lights up a cigarette and watches her move between seats to get better angles.

  “Why are you so interested?” he calls out from behind her.

  “Does this stadium look rebuilt to you?”

  Edge blows out a stream of smoke. “Iraqis don’t go in so much for finishing things.”

  “It was an American company.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe they’re running behind schedule.”

  “Work was supposed to have finished two years ago.”

  Edge spits into a puddle. “Well, I’m glad someone is making money.”

  Daniela glances at him with undisguised loathing.

  “Hey, lady, don’t go giving me that look. Let me tell you another story. An army buddy of mine got a bullet in his back, lodged in his spine. Paralyzed from the waist down. They flew him back on a C141 to Andrews, lying on a stretcher, surrounded by amputees and invalids and guys who were pissing, puking and dying. Even the healthy ones were fucked. Stateside they spent a week getting debriefed. Then their CO told them to go home, kiss their girlfriend and walk the dog. Walk the fucking dog—do you believe that?”

  “They signed up to fight.”

  “Most of them couldn’t piss straight with a hard-on. They were recruited straight out of school from Buttfuck, Idaho, where the only jobs were working in the local chicken factory. So these kids get to thinking, if they join the army, they get to go on this big adventure overseas and shoot at shit, which has got to be better than pulling chicken guts out of a carcass for the rest of their sorry fucking lives.”

  Edge spits again. Wipes his lips.

  “I was one of them. I did more than a hundred patrols in this shithole country. I rode on tanks and flew in choppers and got rocked by roadside bombs. I lifted bodies on to trucks and built boxes to send them home. Now I’m here to make money. I’m here to kill or be killed, but I’m not going home poor. I’m going to suckle on the nipple until the milk runs dry.”

  Daniela lowers her gaze, still appalled by his uncouthness, but with a better understanding of his motives.

  A distant explosion thumps the air, rattling the metal pipes and roofing iron. It’s followed by an exchange of gunfire that lasts almost five minutes, punctuated by the wail of sirens. Ambulances. Fire engines.

  They listen in silence, picturing the chaos.

  Edge slings his weapon across his chest.

  “Time to go.”

  24

  LONDON

  A note flutters beneath the wiper blades of the Mercedes. Not a parking ticket. The doors are unlocked. Ruiz glances inside and sees a large orange envelope on the passenger seat.

  Walking slowly around the car, he crouches to peer beneath the chassis, checking the wheel arches and drive shaft. Four years in Northern Ireland taught him to be careful. Standing upright, he studies the street. Opposite there is a school with an asphalt playground. Boys kick a ball between painted posts on a brick wall and girls sit in groups on the benches. A dark blue Audi is parked on the corner. Engine running. Ruiz is no expert on cars. He doesn’t watch Top Gear because Jeremy Clarkson is further right than Donald Rumsfeld and only half as funny.

  The car is too bright and shiny and new. Out of place. Stepping on to the road, Ruiz walks towards it, but the Audi begins rolling further away from him. As he speeds up, so does the car. Cutting a corner, he tries to close the gap. Twenty feet away, the Audi accelerates. Gone.

  He chastises himself. Dogs chase cars. His knees are hurting, a dull thudding pain, muscle memory from the rugby field, old injuries. Holly’s clothes have spilled from the plastic bags he dropped. He gathers them together and tosses them on to the back seat. Then he pulls the note from beneath the wiper blade; a single page. Handwritten.

  Dear Mr. Ruiz,

  We think this was stolen from you recently. You should have it back. This should pay for your daughter’s wedding and make up for any losses. It’s an intelligent alternative to poking your
nose into somebody else’s business. We think you have something of ours. If you return it promptly you can double your reward.

  The envelope contains two neat bundles of banknotes: four, maybe five thousand pounds. It’s not the money that worries him. It’s the fact that these people know about Claire and the wedding. It’s less a bribe than a warning.

  Flipping open his mobile, he dials the number at the bottom of the note.

  “Nice of you to call,” says a voice. American. Educated.

  “Have we met?”

  “I know you by reputation.”

  “You left me a package.”

  “Money owed.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It can be a down-payment for services rendered.”

  Ruiz turns full circle, surveying the street. Something tells him he’s still being watched.

  “Pardon me for saying this, but you’re making as much sense as a kosher pork chop.”

  The American chuckles. The guy won’t be laughing when he gets bounced off a few walls, thinks Ruiz. He has memorized the number plate of the Audi. He’s going to find him and they’ll talk properly, face to fist.

  “The girl has the key.”

  “What key?”

  “I would like to talk to her personally.”

  “My person will call your person. We’ll do lunch.”

  “You’re not taking me seriously, Mr. Ruiz.”

  “Did you kill Zac Osborne?”

  The question warrants a pause. “We’re not animals, Mr. Ruiz. Your young lady friend is in danger. I can protect her.”

  “That’s very gallant of you. The price is twenty-five thousand.”

  “That’s more expensive than I expected.”

  “Inflation.”

  “I’m sure we can agree on a price when we meet. I’ll give you an address. You can bring the girl.”