The Wreckage: A Thriller

by Michael Robotham

  Polina begins clearing up Rowan’s crumbs. Composting the eggshell. Wiping the table. Elizabeth puts two crumpets in the toaster and feels Claudia moving again. What sort of husband leaves his wife a month before their baby is due? That’s not something North would do. He’s a sticker, a keeper, one of the good guys.

  For weeks he’s been out-of-sorts, working late, leaving home early, stressed, secretive. She thought he might be having an affair. Then she discounted the possibility. Then she convinced herself. That was in the space of a few days. She hired a private detective. What a terrible wife! Faithless. Suspicious.

  Twice she canceled her appointment, the guilt gnawing away inside her like a rat in a wicker cage. I’m being paranoid, she told herself. It’s the pregnancy. The hormones. Then she changed her mind and called him again.

  Elizabeth smothers the crumpets with honey. Polina has gone to make the beds. She’s been spring-cleaning these past few days, clearing out the cupboards and drawers, airing old clothes and moving junk to the attic. Routines are important for everyone when a husband disappears.

  Rowan has to be dressed. Polina will walk him across the park to his nursery school. Elizabeth has a doctor’s appointment: her thirty-six-week check-up. Her life is about numbers. Eight months pregnant. Seven years married. Five days alone. She can picture the last time she saw North. He went to work at the normal time. Kissed her goodbye. She lingered with her lips pressed against his. She and Rowan were going up to the Lake District to spend the weekend with her best friend from university. They didn’t come back until Sunday afternoon. She had tried to call North all day, but he wasn’t answering. She caught a cab from Euston Station and found the house in darkness. Inside it looked like it had undergone a subtle alteration, as if someone had cleaned up after a party but hadn’t managed to put things back precisely where they’d been. Her jewelry was missing. Her passport. Her spare credit card, the ugly gold watch she inherited from her Aunt Catherine…

  Elizabeth kept trying to call North, sending him text messages and emails. Finally she phoned her father. Sitting on the edge of the bed, cupping her hand over the mouthpiece, she spoke in whispers so that Rowan wouldn’t hear her.

  The family swung into action, calling hospitals, clinics, homeless shelters and finally the police. Two young constables came the next day and took a statement about the robbery.

  “You’ll need this for insurance purposes,” said the constable.

  “What about my husband?”

  “I don’t think your policy covers him.”

  The officers laughed. It was a joke. Elizabeth stared numbly at them. By then her mind was full of terrible scenarios: North disturbing burglars or being abducted, or worse.

  A large drop of honey has dripped on her blouse. Elizabeth looks at the stain and wants to cry. Hormones.

  Rowan is standing at the kitchen door watching her.

  “Is you all right, Mummy?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Why is you crying?”

  “I’m having a sad day.”

  “When Daddy comes home you’ll be happy.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  2

  LONDON

  Standing outside the police station in London Road, Elizabeth gazes at the three-storey red-brick building squeezed between a hairdressing salon and the head office of the Richmond & Twickenham Times. Be polite but firm, she tells herself. Don’t be fobbed off.

  Rowan is dressed in a Spiderman T-shirt and mask. The eyeholes are slightly too wide for his head, which means that only one eye is visible at any given time. He flicks his “web finger” at passing pedestrians who are either arch-villains or super-villains. Elizabeth isn’t an expert on comic book bad guys.

  The uniformed officer at the front desk is a woman and she’s not carrying a gun. Rowan is a little disappointed. He was expecting a fellow crime-fighter who could compare weaponry with him and swap tales of saving the world. After waiting forty-five minutes they are taken upstairs through a cluttered open-plan office that looks reassuringly productive.

  The detective constable is called Carter and he’s wearing a jacket and tie. He’s quite handsome except for a buzz-cut that makes his ears look like jug handles.

  “Please sit down, Mrs. North. Tea? Coffee? Water?”

  “No, thank you.”

  DC Carter glances at her pregnancy and then smiles hesitantly at Rowan, who has crawled onto Elizabeth’s lap and is staring at him with the intensity that only young children can produce.

  “Have you heard from your husband?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I’d heard from my husband.”

  There is an awkward pause and DC Carter uses the moment to open the file on his desk.

  “It has only been forty-eight hours,” he says.

  “It has been five days.”

  “Yes, but technically we don’t class a person as missing until a certain amount of time has elapsed.”

  “How long?”

  “That depends upon the circumstances.”

  Rowan slips out of her arms and is now sitting on the floor linking paperclips together into a chain.

  Elizabeth looks back at the detective. “What are you doing to try to find him?”

  “Your husband is also over the age of eighteen and not considered vulnerable, Mrs. North.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’s not at risk of suicide or self-harm.”

  The words sound too harsh. He tries to make amends. “Your husband may have decided to spend a few days away, getting his head together. It happens sometimes.”

  “He wouldn’t do that without telling me.”

  The detective looks at her tiredly. She’s not going to make it easy for him. Consulting her statement, he goes over the details again.

  “Your husband works for a bank.”

  “He’s a compliance officer at Mersey Fidelity.”

  “Was he having any problems?”

  “He was very busy.”

  “There is evidence that he used his ATM card at a machine in Regent Street early on Saturday morning. He also bought clothes in Oxford Street on Sunday.”

  “North never buys clothes—he hates shopping.”

  “Somebody used his cards.”

  “I told you we were robbed. It’s in my statement. My jewelry is missing… our passports.”

  “Perhaps your husband was planning a trip.”

  “We were planning a baby.”

  DC Carter smiles at her as though she’s being feeble and irrational. It’s the same look her father used to give Elizabeth when they argued during her childhood.

  “Is there anyone your husband could be staying with?”

  “No.”

  “What about the other woman?”

  “What other woman?”

  “You hired a private detective because you thought your husband might be having an affair.”

  Elizabeth looks at Rowan, who is playing with a stapler and a piece of paper.

  “I was worried about North. I knew something was bothering him.”

  “So you hired someone to follow him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask him?”

  Elizabeth can feel her features becoming squashed and color rising in her cheeks.

  “Don’t patronize me, Detective. Of course I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me. We argued. I got upset. Nothing changed.”

  “Something made you suspicious.”

  “I didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t have any evidence. North said he loved me. I had a friend who recommended an agency. She’d been through a divorce.”

  “Were you considering divorcing your husband?”

  “No, not at all! Never.”

  There is a cry of pain. Rowan has punched a staple through the webbing of his hand. One tooth of the staple is sticking from his skin. Elizabeth holds him tightly and pulls the barb free, kissing away his pain and his tears.

  3

&
nbsp; LONDON

  Ruiz walks the surrounding streets, interviewing neighbors and passers-by, asking questions the police should have asked. Did anyone see a young woman? She was running. Which way did she go? What sort of boat? Two fishermen. Where did they take her? Upriver.

  The men who came looking for Holly were professionals. They drove all-wheel-drive vehicles with heavily tinted windows. They wore dark clothing. Soft shoes. They were trained for this. How does someone train for this? Drowning kittens? Torturing animals?

  She managed to get away, but where would she go? Out of London, if she has any sense. Somewhere safe. She needs a friend with a spare room or a sofa bed, someone who doesn’t appear on her phone records or in her address book. How long can she stay hidden? If she doesn’t use her mobile, if she doesn’t call family or friends, if she doesn’t break the law and get caught, if she doesn’t visit a doctor, or withdraw money, or apply for a job…

  She’s not going to call him. She probably blames him for what happened.

  Ruiz thinks of his own children and how he abandoned them after Laura died. Fled the memories. Replaced one horror with another. He lost himself in Bosnia, Sarajevo under siege, where snipers gunned down people as they queued for bread and collected water. He can remember flowers in the flower boxes, climbing roses that clung to the whitewashed walls like living tapestries.

  He was gone for so long that he lost touch with Claire and Michael. One night, as he lay in bed, listening to distant gunfire, he tried to picture the twins but could only see holes in his mind, blank spaces. He had forgotten what they looked like. That’s when he realized that he had to get out of that terrible place where blood ran in the gutters and bullets tore through children. If he didn’t escape he’d be swallowed by the blank spaces, the black holes.

  That was nearly twenty years ago. Water under the bridge. Blood. Washed away.

  Sitting on a bench, Ruiz makes a phone call. He leaves a voicemail message for Vorland asking him to trace the number plate on the dark blue Audi and the mobile phone number left beneath his windscreen. He hangs up and notices a rowing eight skim past him with oars dripping, facing backwards but going forwards. His life feels like that—as though he’s looking into the past, seeking answers to old questions, but getting further and further from them.

  Back at the house, the locks have been changed and the broken glass replaced with plywood sheets. The uniformed police have been and gone, taking statements but showing little interest. Campbell Smith arrives unexpectedly to survey the damage, walking through the house like a bailiff deciding what furniture is worth seizing.

  Ruiz tells him about the envelope of cash and his conversation with the mysterious American who said that Holly Knight had the key.

  “Could be a key of heroin,” says Campbell.

  “I don’t think he was talking about drugs. He offered me twenty-five grand if I gave her up.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I’d think about it.”

  Campbell smirks. “Maybe that’s why you wouldn’t press charges and invited her home.”

  Ruiz doesn’t react. He knows Campbell is trying to wind him up.

  The commander fills the silence. “Money, narcotics and violence—ticks all the boxes for me. Holly Knight was a junkie’s girlfriend.”

  “She’s a victim.”

  “She’s a liar.”

  “She needs protection.”

  “We tried to protect her, remember? But you got her released. Now if she wants our help, she can come and ask for it. She can start by telling us the truth about Zac Osborne. You tell her that.”

  Campbell tears a kitchen towel from a roll and wipes his hands, folding the paper into a neat square before placing it on the sink. He leaves without shaking Ruiz’s hand, pausing at the makeshift front door to examine the damage.

  One parting comment: “Enjoy your retirement.”

  Ruiz sits at the kitchen table, staring at the twisted grain in the wood. His stepfather made the table after the 1987 storms brought down dozens of oak trees on the farm. Sturdy, heavy, solid, it reminds him of the man.

  He kneels in front of the sink and opens a cupboard, pushing aside bottles of floor cleaner, brass polish and old rags. There is a loose brick at the very back, with worn edges. Wedging his fingers at the corners he pulls out a stained rag with something heavy wrapped inside. A Glock 17, oiled, gleaming. Unused since he last took it to the range three, no four, years ago.

  Setting it on the table he goes to the freezer and has to move ice trays and a leg of lamb to reach the frozen peas. Opening the packet, he takes out a zip-loc plastic bag with two boxes of ammunition.

  He weighs the Glock in his hand, enjoying the way it fits into his palm. It’s his old service pistol. He thought about getting rid of it when he retired, but there were too many skeletons rattling in his cupboards to feel completely safe. He doesn’t like guns, but they serve a purpose. They speed things up and spell things out and they win arguments without words.

  Carefully loading the ammunition clip, he snaps it into place and slides the pistol into a leather holster that fits over his shoulder. He tries it on. Adjusting the straps.

  Picking up his car keys, he puts in another call to Vorland. He’s gone for the day. Ruiz knows where to find him.

  South of the river, opposite Battersea Park, a fitness center full of mirrors and narcissists; men with no necks and bulging forearms, women with hard bodies and little left that is feminine.

  Vorland steps off a running machine. Ever since his heart attack he’s been exercising as though death were only one step behind him, walking in his shadow. He slides along a weight bench, legs apart, arms braced beneath a bar carrying close to his body weight. Blowing out his cheeks, he starts his next set, sucking in air, grunting. Eight… nine… ten. Slowing down. The veins on the back of his neck are poking out, blue and hard.

  “You want me to spot you?” asks Ruiz.

  “I’m good.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Vorland does another four reps and drops the weight bar into the cradle.

  “You didn’t return my call.”

  “So you came looking.”

  “I couldn’t wait.”

  Vorland wipes sweat from his eyes. “How did you find me?”

  “You’re a creature of habit.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to get back to you.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “That number you wanted me to run—the dark blue Audi—drew a blank.”

  “It’s unregistered?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a lock on the information. I don’t have the security clearance.”

  “There’s hardly anyone above you.”

  “There’s always someone with a higher clearance.”

  Vorland drapes the towel around his neck. “So I rang a mate of mine who works for Special Branch. I asked him if they were running an op in Hammersmith this morning.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me he couldn’t talk. Then he told me not to call him again. About an hour later I had a visit from a grey suit. Said he was from the police complaints commission. He wanted to know why I was accessing the DVLA computer. I said I was following up a tip-off. He wanted to know the details.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. I told him your house got broken into and you wanted to know if it was a special ops—MI5 or MI6.”

  “Did he react?”

  “No.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I think you should tread softly on this one.”

  “I’m very light on my feet.”

  “I’m being serious, Vincent. Don’t cross these people. I’ve seen how they operate. In South Africa, during the independence struggle, they simply made people disappear—and I’m not talking about the blacks. They were targeting the white journalists, sympathetic judges, social wo
rkers, doctors… You don’t just lose a career if you cross these guys.”

  “That was South Africa.”

  “You remember Nick Maher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He worked undercover for SOCA investigating people-smuggling. He arrested one of the ringleaders, had him bang to rights, but MI5 came in and said the guy was one of their informants, so this guy walked. Maher decided to leak the story. Big spread in the Sunday Times, an Insight Team investigation.”

  “What happened?”

  “A month later someone found a kilo of heroin in Maher’s garden shed and sixty grand in his wife’s bank account. Nick denied any knowledge. Two weeks later he jumped in front of a train at Clapham Junction.”

  Ruiz and Vorland look at each other, something knowing and sad in both their eyes.

  “Don’t contact me again,” says Vorland. “Not for a long while…”

  4

  LONDON

  From an office overlooking Tower Bridge, above the grey, grey river, the only signs of vegetation are smudges of green between the buildings. Brendan Sobel looks at his wristwatch and then at the row of whisky glasses gleaming on the shelf above the drinks cabinet.

  It’s too late for lunch, too early for sundowners. In Washington it is mid-morning. They’ll have finished their egg white omelets and skinny lattes, ready to make decisions about current wars and future conflicts, discussing “ops,” “intel” and “assets.”

  They must be drinking somewhere in the world, thinks Sobel. What time is it in Australia? Aussies like a drink. He pours two fingers of bourbon and drops in a handful of melting ice. Why can’t the Brits make a decent ice-cube? How difficult is it to freeze water? Their pipes freeze all the time.

  His secretary appears in the doorway, head to the side, noticing the glass in his hand. Sobel feels a pulse of embarrassment. Anita is twenty-four, fresh out of training, too young for him, but keen to learn the ropes.

  “Mr. Chalcott is on line two.”

  “Thank you, Anita.”

  Sobel watches her calves as she leaves, wondering if she’s wearing tights. Women don’t wear stockings any more—not unless they’re hookers or getting married.