The Wreckage: A Thriller (43 page)

Next he searches for articles on Mohammed Ibrahim. There is a reference to his arrest in 2003, just prior to the capture of Saddam Hussein, but no mention of his accidental release from Abu Ghraib. Luca finds a black-and-white photograph taken at a military parade in Baghdad in the mid-nineties. There are three men in military uniform standing behind Saddam Hussein. The caption indicates the man on the far right is Ibrahim. He has a round face, the ubiquitous moustache and is wearing a beret at a jaunty angle.

The photo library has a dozen pictures of Yahya Maluk taken at society events: a polo tournament at Cowdray Park, a fundraiser for Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Opera at Covent Garden. Luca prints out one of the images and cal s up information on Richard North, reading the various accounts of his disappearance and looking at a vodcast of a media statement made by his wife.

North’s career trajectory had been a steep curve—from public school and a third-class degree, to marrying the chairman’s daughter and heading the compliance department at Mersey Fidelity.

A new window opens on screen, headed, “News Alert.” A breaking story from Associated Press:

The search for missing banker Richard North took a new twist last night when his car was discovered in the River Lea in Hackney, East London. Police were last night examining the BMW for clues to the banker’s whereabouts. Police divers are expected to search the river at first light.

Luca looks up from the screen. Keith Gooding is dozing with his feet on the desk and his chair tilted back. Luca throws a bal ed-up piece of paper.

“What?”

“They just pul ed Richard North’s car out of the river.”

A nerve twitches in Gooding’s jaw and something passes across his eyes that Luca can’t read. It’s the same reaction he saw at the wine bar. Gooding leans back in his chair and stares vexedly at the ceiling.

“What aren’t you tel ing me?”

Gooding contemplates a lie. Something sways him.

“About a month ago I cal ed Richard North. I thought he might be a source for the book but he said he wasn’t interested. Then out of the blue, nine days ago I got a cal from him. It was a Friday afternoon. He was in North London. Upset. Rambling. Saying we had to meet. I was in the middle of the afternoon news conference. We were putting the pages together for Saturday’s edition. I told him that I’d cal him back, but he said it wasn’t safe to use his mobile and he wouldn’t come to the office.

“I gave him the name of a bar in Kensington High Street and told him that I’d try to meet him there by ten. I couldn’t make any promises. We were doing a special report on the last US combat troops being pul ed out of Iraq.”

“Did you go to the bar?”

Gooding shakes his head. “I didn’t get away from the office until midnight. I had no way of contacting him. I figured he’d cal me back. I didn’t think… you know. I phoned his office the fol owing Monday, but he hadn’t shown up. Then his wife reported him missing.”

Gooding fal s silent, glancing at Luca from the corner of his eye. Each time he blinks his eyelashes rest for an instant on his cheeks.

“Did you cal the police?” asks Luca.

“What would I tel them?”

“What about his wife?”

“I left a message on her answering machine. She’s the daughter of the former chairman, Alistair Bach. Nobody can get close to her.”

“You didn’t want to get involved?”

“That’s unfair.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Luca tries to think it through. Richard North’s job was to investigate suspicious transactions and approve new accounts at Mersey Fidelity. If the bank was involved in laundering il egal funds, he should have known about it.

“We need someone at the bank who’l talk.”

“Good luck with that.”

“North must have had a secretary.”

“Why would she speak to us?”

“Her boss is missing. His car has just been found. She’l be worried or scared or angry. It can go a lot of different ways.”

“I’l get you a name and address.”

15

LONDON

The only access to this stretch of the river is via a strip of waste ground behind a row of factories that are crumbling from neglect. The padlocked gates have been opened and two police cars block the entrance.

“Jesus wept,” says Campbel Smith as TV cameras and photographers surround his car. Questions are shouted through the closed windows. Bodies are jostled aside. Bleached of color by the bright lights, Campbel ’s face looks like a white bal oon bobbing on his shoulders, ready to drift loose and float into the night.

“Who leaked this?” he barks. “I want to know. And get someone down here from the media unit.”

White spots float behind Ruiz’s closed lids as he shields his face from the flashguns. The car pul s up next to an old railway line, the silver ribbons disappearing into the darkness.

Above the factories and warehouses, the Olympic stadium is a white exoskeleton rising in concentric circles like a giant spaceship descending from the night sky. The River Lea ripples in the breeze, black as ink in the shadows. Spotlights have been set up on gantries and a portable generator provides a droning soundtrack. The only other noise comes from a news chopper flying above them, aiming a spotlight on to a floating dredger moored in the center of the river.

“I want them out of here!” bel ows Campbel . “This is a fucking crime scene, not a reality show.”

A security guard is waiting on the edge of the light. Dressed in heavy boots, Levi’s and a company shirt, he stands with his legs spread like a man who enjoys being the center of attention. A tattooed serpent curls along his forearm and around his wrist.

“Dredger came through today,” he tel s Campbel . “I thought the car was going to be an old wreck, until they lifted it out of the water. Looks like a brand-new Beemer. Fucked now.

“You can see the tire tracks across the way,” he motions to the far bank. “The fence is down. Tree fel on it. Council never bothered sending out a work crew.”

“Jesus, what’s that smel ?” asks Campbel , wadding his handkerchief and holding it over his nose.

“The Deepham Sewage Works is north of here,” says the security guard. “Pumps out a quarter of a mil ion cubic meters of treated sewage every day.”

“Is that why they’re dredging?” asks Ruiz.

“That’s the theory. This whole area is being done up for the Olympics. Dredging the river, re-vegetation, new towpaths… They don’t want any of them IOC dignitaries coming here and having to smel London’s shit.”

Two police divers are standing on the deck of the dredger, peering into the water. Neither looks keen to get wet. They’l wait til morning when the sediment has settled.

Gerard Noonan is already at work lifting aluminum boxes from the van. “Whatever happened to Sunday being a day of rest?” he says.

“I didn’t take you for a religious man,” says Ruiz.

“Oh, yeah, I do my praying on my sofa watching
Match of the Day
.”

“Who are you praying for?”

“Birmingham City.”

“And you
still
think there’s a God?”

The BMW is on the towpath. The roof crushed. Mud on the wheels and bumpers, a fine layer of silt covering the bodywork. Ruiz fol ows Noonan. Leaning through an open car door, he notices the keys in the ignition and the automatic shift in drive. The windows were left open so that it would sink more quickly.

Something moves near his knee. He leaps backwards and lets out an expletive. Noonan reaches into the car and pul s out an eel that twists and squirms in his hands, black as sump oil.

“Didn’t you ever catch eels as a kid?”

“When I was a kid they came in jel y with mashed potato.”

The eel splashes into the river, leaving no trace on the surface.

Campbel has finished talking to the security guard. “What have you got?” he asks Noonan.

“Traces of blood in the boot—enough to be worried.”

Ruiz walks along the tracks until he reaches an overhead bridge. Crossing the river, he fol ows a cyclone fence separating a freight yard from the water. The muddy hinterland is littered with drums, broken palettes, dumped tires and a crippled shopping trol ey. Bits of broken glass glint in the dirt.

A black woman is watching him from the doorway of a flat-fronted terrace, one of the few left in the street. This area of London was hit hard during the Blitz and bombed terraces were like broken teeth, fil ed with something concrete and ugly.

Ruiz wishes her good evening.

“When are they gonna turn off them generators?” she demands.

“I can’t tel you that,” he replies.

“I know what they found. I saw it go in there.”

The woman is in her fifties, with a pink dressing gown cinched tight around her waist. Hair trapped in a net.

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Mrs. Abigail Westin.”

“What did you see, Mrs. Westin?”

“I saw them fel as push a car into the river.”

“What did they look like?”

“Pakis or Indians—can’t tel the difference, me.”

“When was this?”

“Early hours. I don’t sleep so good, me. I was in the bathroom. I heard them boys arguing. One of them was saying how it was such a waste, ditching a motor like that. Like he wanted to keep it.”

“How many voices?”

“Two.”

“Would you recognize them again?”

“Their voices maybe. I didn’t get such a good look at their faces.”

Ruiz tel s Mrs. Westin that the police wil want to interview her and wishes her good night.

“It’l be a good night when I can sleep til dawn,” she says, switching off the outside light.

Ruiz turns back to the river where the BMW is a broken silhouette against the spotlights, like a sea monster dragged from the depths in a fisherman’s net. A flat-bed truck has arrived to take it away to a police impound. The driver is slinging cables beneath the chassis.

Retracing his steps across the bridge, Ruiz passes on the information to Campbel and asks if he can go now.

“That thing we talked about earlier. Do you think they fol owed me out here?”

The commander glances at the gates. “They’re like shit on your shoes.”

The BMW has been winched on to the truck. The driver has grey mutton-chop sideburns and hair growing from his nostrils.

“I need a ride,” says Ruiz.

“Do I know you?”

“I used to be on the job. Vincent Ruiz.”

“Thought you looked familiar.” He waves a clipboard. “Climb on board.”

Minutes later, the truck is rocking over the railway lines, springs groaning. At the main gate Ruiz slides sideways on the seat, below the level of the dashboard.

“Who you trying to avoid?”

“I’m just camera shy.”

They travel in silence for another mile.

“I remember you,” says the driver.

“Have we met?”

“Name’s Dave,” he takes one hand off the wheel to shake. “My wife’s younger brother used to be a boxer, beautiful to watch, fists like bricks. He detached a retina just before the Sydney Olympics. Crying shame. Got a job as a bouncer in Acton. One night he threw a drunk out. The guy came back with a gun and tried to shoot my brother-in-law but he shot a girl instead. Innocent bystander. Almost kil ed her. Remember the case?”

Ruiz nods.

“Anyway, this girl gets out of hospital and decides to sue the nightclub and sue my brother-in-law. You sorted that out for us. Made her see sense. I appreciate that.”

“How is your wife?” asks Ruiz.

“She left me for a dog breeder.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I got a Pekingese in the divorce settlement.”

Fifteen minutes later the truck drops him at West Ham Station and Ruiz catches a tube to Earls Court. He goes to a twenty-four-hour convenience store and buys a toothbrush, toothpaste and mouthwash. He passes a nightclub. A drunken girl dances on the pavement clutching a miniature bottle of champagne. She’s wearing a tiny black dress and high heels, impervious to the cold or the hungry stares of passing men.

Sitting on the steps of a terrace house, Ruiz watches the Mercedes for half an hour, making sure that it’s not under surveil ance. Satisfied, he runs his fingers under the wheel arches and the bumpers, looking for tracking devices. Then he gets behind the wheel and drives away, heading east along Old Brompton Road, running the first red light just to make sure.

At Lancaster Gate he wakes the hotel night manager by leaning on the buzzer. Pays extra for a room. He slips a note under the professor’s door, not wanting to wake him. Opening the window, he undresses and lies down on top of the sheets, with one arm across his eyes. The curtains, printed with smal pink flowers, are lifting and settling in the breeze. He can hear cars and horns in the street. A party. People fighting on the pavement. Glass breaking.

Sleep never comes on its own terms. Insomnia is part of his metabolism, lying awake in the dark of the night, his breath loud in his chest. He used to rage against it, medicate, drink too much, exercise to exhaustion, but now he’s learned to survive upon less, tasting the ash in his mouth each morning and feeling the grit in his eyes.

When he final y dozes, he remembers the American with his southern drawl, wishing Claire a happy wedding. He can stil feel the weight of the gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger. He can picture putting a neat hole in the American’s forehead, red mist on the window behind. He had contemplated pul ing the trigger. Wished for an excuse. Not a good state of mind.