The Wreckage: A Thriller

by Michael Robotham

  Ruiz can hear a barge horn sounding in the background. He’s heard it before on the river, closer to home. The American is keeping Ruiz on the phone. Trying to drag out the conversation. The question is why?

  “Call me when you have the money,” says Ruiz, hanging up.

  Holly is watching television, Wife Swap USA. It’s about a woman who raises pigs in Arkansas swapping with a belly-dancing Bohemian who has the fashion sense of Tinkerbell.

  The phone rings. She presses the TV mute button and waits for the answering machine to pick it up. Ruiz’s voice: “…leave a message after the tone…”

  The beep.

  “Get out now, Holly! Not the front door. The back. Over the fence. Mrs. McAllister lives in the house behind. Tell her you know me. Don’t frighten her. Go now. They’re coming for you.”

  Holly doesn’t ask questions. She’s up, grabbing the leather satchel, her shoes, she can’t find her coat… it must be upstairs. She turns to the front door. A shadow darkens the frosted glass. Another at the window, crouching but not crouching low enough.

  She runs to the kitchen and flings open the back door, jumps down the low stairs and sprints across the garden. Behind her comes the sound of glass breaking.

  Hurry, says her inner voice, fearful and strangled. Throwing the satchel over the fence, she scrambles up and over. Her jeans catch on a climbing rose. She falls backwards, bracing herself. Soft earth. A dog barking. They’ll know where she’s gone.

  On her feet, she turns and glimpses a figure in the second-floor window. Looking at her. Dressed in black. The dog is still barking. Small and white, it bounces behind the patio doors. Holly hammers on the glass. An old lady appears with blue-rinsed hair. Overweight. Shuffling on a walking frame.

  “I’m a friend of Vincent’s,” she calls. “Somebody has broken into his house. Help me!”

  Mrs. McAllister has to find the key. She’s flustered. Forgetful. Her dog won’t shut up. The man has gone from the window.

  Key found, the glass slides open. Mrs. McAllister doesn’t step back quickly enough and Holly almost knocks her over. She apologizes and runs through the house to the front door.

  Mrs. McAllister is a hoarder. The house is full of boxes, crates and excess furniture. Holly had a grandmother who was like that. Kept every margarine container, every empty jar, every magazine and brochure.

  “Call the police. Don’t open the door.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t stay.”

  Holly pauses in the shelter of the doorway. Looks out. Left or right? The inner voice tells her to get her bearings, but there isn’t time. A car swings into the street, dark blue, heavily tinted windows, travelling at speed. Decision made. She turns and runs, her bag bouncing against her spine. A footpath appears, too narrow for a car. It leads to the river.

  Putting her head down, she pushes hard, hoping that nobody appears at the far end. Car doors slam behind her. Who are these people? Not the police. No warnings. Unmarked cars. She doesn’t want to go through this again. Too many bad things already, the bloody mess of her childhood, Albie, her mother, her father, now Zac—why can’t they leave her alone?

  Emerging from the path, she crosses Rainville Road, ignoring a “don’t walk” sign. A car brakes hard. Sounds the horn. Holly slips and falls. Grazes her knee. Scrambles up.

  Turns right into Crabtree Lane, then left, her breath rasping in her throat. Adam Walk is ahead of her, leading to the river. She swings on one of the metal poles to change direction.

  In front of her, two women pushing prams, a toddler on a tricycle, a man reading a newspaper on a long bench; so normal. Something moves from behind the screen of foliage to her left, dressed in black, an object in his hand.

  She kicks harder, dodging through the prams, hearing a cry of alarm from one of the mothers. The man on the bench seat has dropped his paper and found his feet, set himself to catch her. Confident. She has nowhere to go.

  Holly swings her bag. It’s heavy. A half brick will do that. Zac’s idea. Always have a weapon. She has all the momentum. The bag hits him in the side of the head and he goes down, the newspaper fluttering across the concrete like an injured swan.

  It’s low tide, the muddy bank exposed, gulls fighting over scraps. Holly is growing tired. Lactic acid building in her muscles, slowing her down. Ahead she sees a small wooden boat moving slowly. Two fishermen.

  The jetty is ten feet below the path, supported by pylons buried deep in the mud. She doesn’t wait. Slinging the satchel around her neck, she goes over the side, face to the wall, holding on to the edge and then dropping, falling, landing hard. Her knees buckle. Bones jar. She’s up, running along the pier, waving her arms at the fishermen.

  One of them nudges the other. Points. A brief discussion and he pulls on the tiller. The boat swings towards her, bouncing on the swell. Holly turns. She sees the silhouettes of three men on the path above the jetty. One of them scrambles over. The others grip his arms and let him down.

  The boat is coming in straight, spinning at the last moment, the engine in neutral. The man at the tiller has a battered cloth cap and a khaki vest. He’s about to speak. Holly jumps, clattering into the wooden shell, landing amid tackle boxes and fishing rods. The boat lurches. The propeller leaves the water and whines.

  The other fisherman catches Holly before she goes over the side, pulls her back, and she collapses between his knees. Her satchel swings loose. She tries to catch it but it lands in the water; floats for a moment before the brick takes it under.

  The man on the jetty is twenty yards away. His forearm bent. A gun held upright.

  Holly pleads, “Help me, please!”

  So many questions, too little time. The first fisherman opens the throttle. It responds with a high-pitched roar, slow at first, picking up speed. The bow rises. The jetty sways in the wake.

  Fifty yards… seventy… ninety…

  Away.

  Safe.

  25

  BAGHDAD

  Daniela can tell something is wrong long before they arrive. Black smoke rises above the rooftops like a genie being released from a bottle. Five hundred yards from the Finance Ministry and the traffic is at a standstill. Sirens are competing to destroy the silence. Police. Fire engines. Ambulances.

  The first blast destroyed the concrete safety barrier to the right of the outer checkpoint. A second vehicle tried to drive through the hole but crashed into the crater. It didn’t reach the Ministry, but the blast has shattered some of the windows on the northern side. Curtains are flapping from the gaping holes and torn scraps of paper swirl across the ground.

  Edge is out of the car and running. Daniela can’t keep up. She can only watch him.

  Avoiding the first security cordon, he uses a fire engine as cover and follows two paramedics who are carrying a stretcher. There are bodies in the foyer. One of the security guards is lying across the counter with a bullet hole in his forehead. Another is beside the X-ray machine, having dragged his body across the marble floor leaving a red smear like a snail trail. The cleaner is face down beside his polishing machine, a pool of blood beneath his chest.

  Edge leaps the metal barrier, ignoring the shouts of two policemen, who draw their guns. He shoulders them aside and reaches the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time. Already he can see what happened. The scene is played out in his mind like moving pictures behind his eyelids: a film with a soundtrack of gunfire and screaming.

  The car bombs were a decoy. The gunmen were already inside the cordon, men in Iraqi military uniforms. Two of them are lying dead in the basement corridor. Shaun’s body is ahead of them. He had lunged for the door, but was a fraction of a second too late. The muzzle of the weapon came through the opening. The first bullets hit his Kevlar vest, rocking him backwards. They expected him to be dead, but Shaun shot both of them. As one of them fell he kept firing, spraying the wall with bullets and Shaun’s brain matter.

  The rest of the security team had barric
aded the door to the IT room. That same door is now hanging off its hinges. The Hispanic girl—Edge can’t recall her name—is lying with one leg twisted beneath her. A shard of wood is sticking from her left eye. Ventura… he remembers her name.

  They must have had heavy weaponry—a mortar or maybe an RPG. The shell came through the door and exploded against the opposite wall, where it blew a gaping hole and took Anderson through it. His body is lying in the next room.

  Otis is sitting against the desk, the last to die. The legs of the chair next to him have been sheared off. They shot high and low, the vest-free zones, aiming for the groin and neck. He double-killed before he went. He also had time to get a morphine shot from the medical kit and find a vein. No pain.

  Otis was first Gulf War, big and black, from somewhere down south. Edge had never asked where. The south was a different America. Otis was a different American.

  Glover is missing. He was the target. Daniela Garner was meant to be with him.

  Shaun. Vanessa. Anderson. Otis. Weigh it, dice it, julienne it—makes no difference—they were carved up and cooked. Outnumbered. Outgunned. How many of the shifty cocksuckers did it take?

  Edge should feel like crying. Instead he feels like getting even. He wants to tear down the world until he finds them. Then he’ll bury them under the rubble of whatever’s left.

  As the taxi turns into his street, Luca senses something is wrong. The checkpoint is deserted. Normally the guards would be playing cards or tossing coins against the wall.

  He tells the driver to stop. Pays. Walks forward, crouching behind a blast barrier. There are three police cars parked in front of his apartment block. Two officers stand outside the vehicles in green uniforms with berets and sunglasses. They light cigarettes and lean on the Land Cruiser, heavy boots resting on the tarmac.

  Police are often not police. Not real. Imposters in stolen uniforms. He glances to his right and left, considering his options.

  Cutting through a pathway between buildings and then along an alley, he tries to get closer without being seen. The pistol pressed against his spine feels as though it’s wrapped in barbed wire.

  Creeping along the backs of houses, he cuts the distance. Faces become clearer. He recognizes one of them—the flunky who was with General al-Uzri at the burnt-out bank.

  Decision time. Fight, flee or stay.

  A policeman steps on to Luca’s balcony. He glances over the railing and takes a moment to realize that the journalist is below him. He yells to his colleagues and guns are drawn. Luca steps from his hiding place. His eyes go to the open car door, darkness inside.

  “You must come with us,” says the senior officer.

  “Why?”

  “The Commander of Police wishes to speak with you.”

  “Did General al-Uzri give a reason?”

  “He gives orders, not reasons.”

  Luca is listening to an internal dialogue. He should run. Let them shoot. Better to fight than surrender. Better to die on the street than in some stage-managed execution. He glances up at his apartment. The barrel of an Uzi is pointed at him, the hole gaping blackly.

  “I have an American passport. I want to call the US Embassy.”

  The policeman gives a rumbling chuckle.

  “Why do people like you criticize America until you’re in trouble and then all of a sudden you become patriots?”

  BOOK TWO

  A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

  ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

  1

  LONDON

  For the past five days Elizabeth North has woken early and reached across the sheets to the space where her husband used to be. Each time her fingers have relayed the message and her eyes have stayed closed. Missing. Lost. Misplaced. She won’t go any darker in her thoughts than this. Instead she picks up her mobile phone from the bedside table and checks it again.

  North has never been away this long—not since Rowan was born, not since they married. Five days. No calls or notes or text messages. No warning.

  He should be waking up next to her in his Jermyn Street pajamas with his messed up hair and his morning breath. The selfish bastard! Why isn’t he here with his family?

  Elizabeth swings her feet to the floor and pauses, perched on the edge of the mattress, caught between getting out of bed or curling up and crying. She cups her pregnancy in both hands. She has to pee. Claudia is pressing on her bladder.

  It’s a girl, according to the ultrasound. Both she and North had said they didn’t care, but secretly they did. Elizabeth’s grandmother was called Claudia, which was one of six possible names they considered until they began using Claudia all the time and it just sort of stuck.

  Rowan had complained, of course. Four-year-old boys want baby brothers and don’t understand why swaps aren’t possible; a change of order just like when they get Friday night takeaway from the Bombay Palace on The Green and want extra poppadoms.

  Now he’s getting used to the idea. Yesterday morning he brought his trains into Elizabeth’s bed because he wanted to show them to Claudia. He pushed them up and over Elizabeth’s stomach, through the mountain pass of her breasts, making the sound effects.

  “Don’t move, Mummy.”

  “But it tickles.”

  Then he frowned. “I’m worried, Mummy.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “What if Claudia doesn’t like me?”

  “She’s going to love you.”

  The baby’s room is only half done. Elizabeth is supposed to be making new curtains but has only finished measuring the windows and buying the fabric. She started with great plans for creating the perfect little girl’s room—an echo of her own childhood—but nothing ever turns out quite like she imagines. She’s not a finisher, that’s her problem.

  Making her way to the bathroom, she sits on the toilet and stares at herself in the mirror, frowning. She hasn’t gained much weight in her face and her extremities, but God has seen fit to give her a huge arse, balancing out her belly.

  Downstairs she can hear Polina unloading the dishwasher and filling the kettle. Polina is the nanny and she comes from one of those “istan” countries that Elizabeth can never remember because they all sound so similar.

  Rowan is downstairs too. He and Polina tend to have very earnest, grown-up discussions about trains and superheroes and aspects of the world that puzzle him. Why do his fingers go wrinkly in the bath? How does he know when to wake up? Why can’t he remember being born? Who would win out of Batman and Spiderman? Important questions when you’re four years old.

  One day in the park he asked Elizabeth if he could go and kick a ball with some of the older boys. “Those boys look a bit rough,” she told him and Rowan said, “If I can find a smooth one, can I play with him?”

  She should write these things down. One day she’ll forget them and she’ll have lost a precious memory like a first word or a first smile.

  Back in the bedroom she opens the curtains and watches the sun struggle up beyond the rooftops. It’s a view that normally soothes Elizabeth—the grass, the trees, the slice of moon suspended above the spire of St. Mary’s Church—but today she feels nothing but irritation and foreboding. What if something terrible has happened? North might be hurt. He could be lying in a ditch or unconscious in a hospital. He could have lost his memory or be in a coma.

  Squeezing into her maternity trousers, Elizabeth brushes her hair, puts on lip balm and goes downstairs to confront another day. Polina has made Rowan a boiled egg and put it in a ceramic eggcup shaped like a train. His buttered toast soldiers are lined up on either side of the cup. He marches them along the spoon, dunking them in the soft yolk. When Elizabeth boils eggs they are either too runny or too hard. Polina has told her the timings but Elizabeth can never seem to get them right.

  Kissing Rowan’s head, she lingers with her nose in his hair, which smells of apple shampoo.

  “Did Daddy come home?”

  “Not yet.”


  “You said today.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Working.”

  “At the bank?”

  “Yes.”

  Through the window she can see Polina hanging washing on the line. She’s wearing tight jeans and a blouse that looks too small for her. Her straight short black hair in a pixie cut and narrow neck make her look like a Russian gymnast or a child who has run away to the circus.

  Elizabeth inherited her from her sister-in-law, although she could never understand why Inga had been so insistent. Yes, she’d been looking for a new nanny, but wouldn’t normally have chosen someone as pretty as Polina. It was something her mother had always told her—never hire pretty cleaners or nannies. Why put temptation in your husband’s way?

  There were plenty of women, including some of Elizabeth’s own girlfriends, who would happily have slipped into North’s bed if she let the sheets grow cold. These were the same women who complained about their own husband’s sexual demands or their inattentiveness—getting either too much sex or not enough. That’s why Elizabeth made a conscious effort in that department, even during her pregnancy when she was “fugly,” as she called it. It was a maintenance thing: 1) Change batteries in the smoke alarms. 2) Check the air in the tires. 3) Have sex with North…

  “Can I watch TV, Mummy?” asks Rowan.

  “Have you finished your egg?”

  “I only like the runny stuff.”

  “That’s called the yolk.”

  Elizabeth lifts him down from the chair and turns on the TV in the lounge. Polina has come inside, her cheeks pink with the cold.

  “Good morning,” she says, “did you sleep well?” Her English sounds as if she is reading it from a phrase book.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Can I get you breakfast?”

  “I can sort myself out.”