The Wreckage: A Thriller

by Michael Robotham

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s called Platt’s Eyot.”

  “It’s an island?”

  “Used to be an old boat yard. Hasn’t been used since the sixties.”

  “And you live here?”

  “This is my weekender.”

  “It’s not the weekend.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I stay here during the week.”

  Pete stores his fishing gear beneath the wheel arch and retrieves a key on a piece of string that is hanging from a secret hiding place. He opens the door of the caravan and pulls out two canvas stools, placing them beneath the awning.

  Holly looks around the caravan. It has a bunk bed with a sleeping bag, a small TV, a gas stove and sink. Beyond the awning, just visible in the fading light, an abandoned building seems to crumble under the weight of vines and weeds. Rusting metal stanchions rise into the darkening sky to where the roof has partially collapsed and tin sheets hang from the frame. Oily water laps against a slipway and a sign strung across the entrance says, HAZARDOUS AREA: KEEP OUT.

  “Are we allowed to be here?”

  “I sort of look after the place… unofficially.”

  “What about the other guy?” she asks.

  “Marty is a mate of mine. He lives in Sunbury. I take him fishing sometimes.”

  Pete sits on a stool and smokes a roll-up cigarette out of the corner of his mouth. Next to the caravan are empty fuel drums, gas cylinders and a hammock slung beneath the branches.

  Holly’s jeans are torn and a small patch of blood stains the left knee. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she watches him pour boiling water into cups.

  “Are you cold?” he asks.

  “No.”

  Pete rummages through a cupboard. Then he searches a duffel bag. Finally he hands her an old stained sweater that is so long in the arms Holly has to fold up the sleeves and push them up to her elbows.

  Pete opens a can of beans and puts it in a metal saucepan, firing up a gas ring.

  “What do you do?”

  “I used to be a printer. Lost my job. Wife left me.”

  “When was that?”

  “Ninety-six.”

  “So what do you do for money?”

  “I got a disability pension. I catch fish. I salvage stuff.”

  The beans are bubbling. He spoons them into his mouth straight from the saucepan. Blowing on each one.

  He hands Holly an extra spoon.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You should eat.”

  Her stomach is rumbling. The beans are warm and good.

  “Don’t you have any plates?”

  “This saves on washing up.”

  Pete’s dog whimpers, looking at them expectantly.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Dog.”

  “That’s original.”

  “Somebody dumped him on the island when he was just a puppy. Stupid animal can’t swim.”

  “What breed is he?”

  “The non-swimming kind.”

  Pete opens a can of dog food and bangs the base, up-ending a turd-colored log into a plastic bowl and breaking it with the sharp edge of the can. Dog eats noisily and licks the bowl clean with a slavering tongue.

  Pete hasn’t asked her why the men were chasing her. He seems to accept that she’ll tell him when she’s ready or she won’t. Privacy is something he understands. Holly has been going backwards and forwards over the details of the day. Ruiz had called to warn her. He told her to get out. Does that mean she can trust him? Maybe it’s best if she stays on her own. People tend to die when they get too close to her.

  A rim of storm clouds has swallowed the stars and the air is thick with the smell of rain. They sit for a long time in the dying firelight, until fat drops sizzle as they hit the coals.

  Holly wants a bath. The most Pete can offer is to boil a kettle and she can mix it with a bucket of water from the river. He collects the water before the rain gets any heavier and carries it to a wooden block beneath the awning. Once the kettle has boiled, he turns away, tidying the caravan.

  Holly takes off her blouse and washes her upper body with a warm cloth, feeling how quickly her skin grows cold. Pete might be watching her through the window. She doesn’t care. A lone kerosene lantern hangs from the branch of a tree above her, attracting insects that bounce off the globe and come back again.

  Buttoning her blouse, she lifts the bucket to the ground and washes her feet before pulling on her jeans.

  “You can stay here tonight,” he says, pointing to the bed.

  “Where will you sleep?”

  “I got a hammock.”

  She’s in no position to argue. Pete takes a sleeping bag from a cupboard and lights a second kerosene lantern. He passes her window, throwing shadows on the ground as he walks. Dog looks at Holly and then at Pete before following him into the night.

  7

  LONDON

  The Courier carries his breakfast in a brown paper bag with paper handles. It contains a sweet pastry, cheese, fresh dates and a boiled egg. He orders a double espresso laced with sugar and takes it to a table outside, sitting with his back to the wall so he can feel the weak sunshine on his face.

  He has a wedge-shaped body, narrow at the hips, broad across his shoulders. Wide eyes. Oddly sensual lips. His lips embarrass him. They are not manly enough. Taking out a napkin, he places it on the table, setting out his breakfast as though making an offering.

  Three women pushing oversized prams are watching him. He ignores them and taps the boiled egg against the table, peeling it slowly, prying off the shell in big pieces so as not to tear the albumen. Taking a pinch of sea salt, he dusts the crown of the egg and bites it in half.

  Eggs had been a luxury when he was growing up. Food had been a luxury, to be queued for, haggled over and eaten with reverence. Every day had been a struggle for his mother, who raised six children on the West Bank, earning a few shekels by sewing for neighbors. His father was a man in a photograph; a stranger who spent eighteen years in an Israeli prison before dying of a heart attack at fifty-two. The Israelis wouldn’t return his body to be buried in Ramallah.

  The Courier finishes eating and brushes the crumbs from the table. He folds the paper bag, putting it into his pocket. Then he crosses the street, pausing to put on his gloves, tugging at the cuffs and smoothing the soft leather on his fingers.

  Taking the stairs he climbs three floors and knocks on the door.

  “Come in.”

  A voice summons him inside. The receptionist is a lank-haired blonde, barely twenty. Her hips and thighs are pushing against her skirt and her breath reeks of mentholated cough drops.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Hackett,” he says in a perfect London accent.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “We’re old friends.”

  The receptionist sneezes into a tissue. Blows her nose.

  “That’s a nasty cold. You should be home in bed.”

  “Uncle Colin doesn’t believe in sick days.”

  “Mr. Hackett is your uncle.”

  The Courier sits on the edge of her desk, toying with her pencil holder. His nearness makes her feel uncomfortable.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Janice.”

  He repeats the name out loud. She doesn’t like how it sounds coming from his mouth.

  “Perhaps you should come back later.”

  “No, I’ll wait.”

  His eyes slowly drop down to her chest, then to the hem of her skirt and her crossed legs. She checks the top button of her blouse self-consciously.

  “Where do you live, Janice?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You should go home. Crawl into bed. Stay warm.”

  “Someone has to look after the office.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Like I said, I’m an old friend.”

  The C
ourier has opened his wallet. He pulls out a handful of banknotes and begins placing them one by one on the desk blotter.

  “How much do you earn?”

  “Why?”

  “Ten pounds an hour… twenty?”

  “It’s not really any of your business.”

  “What if I offered to cover your missed wages?”

  A hundred pounds is sitting on the blotter. Janice looks at the money and trembles, a pool of heat burning on her forehead as though her hairdryer has been left on the same spot for too long.

  She stands, picks up her coat, not making eye contact.

  “Wait!” he says.

  Janice stops. Trembling. She can feel the contents of her stomach liquefying and rushing through her colon. The visitor picks up the banknotes and pushes them into the pocket of her coat.

  “Take yourself off to bed,” he says. “I’ll tell Mr. Hackett you went home.”

  He touches her shoulder. Opens the door. She wants to run but can’t move quickly in her heels.

  Outside on the street, not stopping, she calls Colin Hackett on his mobile.

  “Where are you?” she asks.

  “In Luton.”

  “There’s a man in your office. He sent me home.”

  “What do you mean he sent you home?”

  “He told me to leave.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know, but he says he knows you.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  She swallows. “I don’t think he’s a nice man, Uncle Colin. I don’t think he’s your friend.”

  8

  BAGHDAD

  Even in the muddy half-light, Luca can see the dark liquid stains running down the brick walls and smell the ageing feces and sweat. The damp eight-foot-by-ten-foot cell has no window or furniture, just a soiled pillow and blanket on the floor.

  There are six cells side by side in the basement of the al-Amariyah police station. Luca knows this building. He came here once to investigate the deaths of six prisoners who were handcuffed and blindfolded before being lined up against a wall in a courtyard and shot. Witnesses claimed the man who pulled the trigger was a senior Iraqi politician in the interim government. One described it as an unintended act of mercy because the men had been beaten for so long they simply wanted to die.

  The corpses were removed by the Prime Minister’s bodyguards and driven off in a Nissan utility. Another witness said they were buried west of Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib. Luca imagines these men, naked and still, garlanded with bruises, lying in unmarked graves.

  He dreams. He wakes. Reality is such a hazy, shallow state and his nightmares, the recurring ones, are full of the speaking dead and bones bursting out of the ground. How many days have passed since his arrest? They took away his watch, along with his belt and shoelaces. They took away his gun. They had laughed at the size of it. A woman’s gun, they said. One bullet.

  For the first few hours he had bellowed through the meal hatch, demanding to contact the American Embassy. When his voice grew hoarse he saved his strength, concentrating on small details like the chain hanging from the ceiling and the discarded length of hosepipe in the corner. He didn’t want to imagine what they were for.

  They came for him eventually. He was handcuffed and dragged along an unventilated corridor. A guard slapped the heel of his hand three times against the steel door, which creaked partway open, revealing the apprehensive face of a young soldier. Shoved forward, hard against a wall, Luca felt a stabbing sensation in his forearm. A man in white. A needle in his hand. The room began to dip and sway, rolling like the deck of a ship in a storm. Someone was speaking to him, but he couldn’t focus on the face. What big eyes… such a big mouth… so many questions.

  At some point he had fallen asleep or lost consciousness and woken back in the cell. He can hear people outside now… a key rattling in the lock… the hinges groan. The same guards pull him upright, pushing him along the passageway. He needs to pee. The desire borders on torment.

  Another room. A table. Two chairs. A single light bulb. A window. A familiar figure. General al-Uzri takes off his jacket. His forearms bulge below the short sleeves of a cotton shirt. His jacket is folded and placed neatly on a spare chair.

  “I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” he says. “I trust you have been treated well.”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps our prisons aren’t quite up to American standards.”

  He uses the word “American” like it belongs to a lesser life form.

  “Why am I here?”

  “You have been accused of killing two unarmed civilians in a village near Mosul.”

  “We were fired upon by insurgents.”

  “Not according to our witnesses.”

  “What witnesses?”

  “The men you murdered had wives and families.”

  “They were insurgents.”

  “You targeted the pickup. You shot out the nearside tires causing the vehicle to roll. Then you stopped and poured petrol over the occupants and set them alight.”

  “That’s bullshit! We were fired upon. I can show you the bullet holes.”

  “Your driver has given us a statement.”

  Luca struggles to breathe. He’s talking about Jamal.

  “I don’t have a driver.”

  The general laughs. “Such loyalty is commendable, but you have left it rather late to be so protective of your accomplices.”

  Luca half rises from his seat, but strong hands shove him down.

  Al-Uzri takes a matchstick from a box on the table and chews the end to a fibrous tail, painting spit across his teeth.

  “What were you doing in the village?”

  “Researching a story.”

  “What story?”

  “The murder of four bank guards.”

  “A falling out among thieves.”

  “No, it was more than that.”

  Al-Uzri touches his chin with his index finger.

  “Vigilante justice. Innocent people dying. Nobody ever held to account. Do you think that Iraqi law doesn’t apply to you because you carry a foreign passport?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you’re better than we are?”

  Luca shakes his head. The general has taken a knife from the scabbard on his belt. It has one serrated edge and the other one smooth, sharp, tapering to a point. He splays one hand on the table and places the tip of the blade between his thumb and forefinger, holding the knife vertically.

  “This country is old. My ancestors created writing and philosophy and religion when yours were painting drawings on rock walls. This was the cradle of civilization, but still you treat us like savages and barbarians.”

  In a blur of speed, the knife rises and falls, spearing the table between each of his fingers, back and forth, tracing his hand. He stops and raises his fingers. Not a scratch.

  He signals a young officer to come closer. “Would you die for me?”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Put your hand on the table. Spread your fingers. Would you lose a finger for me?”

  He hesitates. Al-Uzri laughs.

  “What is the more realistic fear—dying or losing a finger, eh? Perhaps you would like to try it, Mr. Terracini?”

  “I’m not a fan of party tricks.”

  “No? I saw the result of your party near Mosul. Your visa has been canceled. You have two days to leave Iraq.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Undesirable activities.”

  “Bogus grounds.”

  The general chuckles wetly. “Complain to your embassy. See if anyone listens. You are not the most popular journalist in Iraq, Mr. Terracini. Messengers are not valued when they bring nothing but bad news.”

  Al-Uzri has a thin trickle of blood dripping from the end of his index finger. A nick. He slides the knife into a scabbard and adjusts his beret. Luca is dragged to his feet and pushed against the wall. Handcuffed and hooded, he i
s taken up the stairs, into the daylight. A gust of wind brings the familiar stink of the city beneath the fabric.

  The car journey has none of the menace and uncertainty as when he was arrested. The police officers are talking about football and their favorite pastry shops. Anger replaces the fear. He’s alive. Resentful. Worried about Jamal.

  The hood is lifted. Brightness stabs at his eyes. They’re moving through a checkpoint into the International Zone. A policeman leans across the seat and gives him a plastic bag containing his mobile phone, his wallet, but not his pistol.

  He is handed over to a military attaché at the US Embassy. Two uniformed guards escort him along marbled corridors, past triumphant arches and iron busts of Saddam Hussein. He is taken to a waiting room with a view across the sluggish brown river. Downstream, two bridges, bombed and rebuilt, are bowing under the weight of traffic. Beyond them, flat-bottomed skiffs ferry passengers between the banks.

  On a table there are copies of the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, fanned in a perfect circle. A TV monitor is playing Bloomberg, with market quotes streaming under a woman who is speaking from half a world away.

  Moments later an inner door opens and a man in his mid-forties ushers Luca inside, pointing to a chair. His eyes seem to radiate earnestness and goodwill.

  His name is Jennings. He doesn’t give a first one. The State Department seems to have dispensed with given names. He looks like a former college football star or a future politician, with one of those preppy hair partings that have been fashionable since John Kennedy was in the White House. Dressed in casual trousers, a shirt and tie, he has ink smudges on his fingers. He opens a briefcase and takes out a file, a stapler and a selection of pens. Props.

  In a cracked-sounding voice, like he’s hoarse from shouting, he begins listing charges.

  “The Iraqis have withdrawn your visa. You have forty-eight hours in which to leave the country.”

  “I want to appeal.”

  “There is no process of appeal.”

  “You can make a request—government to government.”

  Jennings laughs. “This country doesn’t have a government.”