The Wreckage: A Thriller (52 page)

The guy behind the counter is black, six-two, and has granny glasses perched on the edge of his nose. It’s like seeing Mike Tyson wearing a pinafore.

“I need to look at a car,” says Ruiz.

“You got the plate number?”

“No.”

“Was it towed under your name?”

“No.”

“Registration paper or owner’s license?”

“It’s not my car.”

His eyes move from Ruiz to Luca. “Are you guys taking the piss?”

“It was towed here two days ago from Earls Court. It belonged to a Colin Hackett.”

“Are you a copper?”

“Not anymore,” says Ruiz.

“A private detective?”

“Not as such.”

“Can’t help you. You’re not authorized. Move aside. I got people in the queue.”

Ruiz can hear a scraping sound inside his head like a blade being sharpened on a stone. Hol y has been missing for nearly eight hours. Getting further away. There must be four hundred cars on the lot—each with a number and grid reference. Even if they could get past the security, it could take them hours to find Hackett’s car.

Through a reinforced window, he notices a mud-streaked truck pul up at the boom gate. The driver jumps down from his cab to sign paperwork. He tucks the pen behind his ear.

Ruiz tel s Luca to wait in the Merc. “I won’t be long.”

He leaps a low fence and walks towards the gates.

“How’s the Pekingese?”

Dave looks up from the clipboard.

“Shitting al over my carpets, but it’s stil better company than my wife. What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for a car, but the lads behind the counter aren’t being very helpful. I don’t have any paperwork.”

“Not official business.”

“Just as important.”

Dave glances across the lot where cars are lined up in neat rows. “Is this going to get me into trouble?”

“It could save someone’s life.”

He makes a decision. “Jump in the cab. Stay out of sight until we get inside.”

The truck passes beneath the raised boom and then through a sliding electronic gate. Dave takes a series of turns before stopping in a warehouse. He leads Ruiz to an outer office where the drivers have a tearoom with a jug and chest fridge. Page Three girls with arched backs and melon-like breasts gaze down from the wal s, some of them yel owed by age and aged even further by their hairstyles.

Dave makes a cal . Asks about a car towed in from Earls Court. Moments later they’re walking between rows of vehicles. Colin Hackett’s Renault is at the back of the lot parked against a brick wal . A common make, a common color, it was chosen to blend in with the traffic when Hackett was tailing unfaithful husbands or insurance cheats. There are fast-food wrappers on the floor, along with separate bottles—one for water, the other for urine—clearly marked to avoid confusion on long stakeouts.

“You got the keys?” asks Ruiz.

“It’s already unlocked.”

“Can you hotwire it?”

Dave is shaking his head, holding up his hands. “You wanted to see the car—you’ve seen it.”

“I’m not going to steal it, Dave—I need to see the satnav.”

The driver squeezes his hands against his temples, unsure of what to do next.

“A young woman was abducted a little while ago,” says Ruiz. “I was supposed to be looking after her. If I don’t find her in the next few hours I don’t know what could happen to her.”

“Abducted?”

“Yeah.”

Dave scratches his jaw and finds a pimple to squeeze. He takes a pen-torch from his pocket. “Here, hold this.” Opening the door, he leans into the footwel of the Renault and reaches beneath the dashboard, pul ing out the electrics. The engine starts on the third touching of the wires. Dave pumps the accelerator with his hand, revving the engine until it idles smoothly. Ruiz taps the screen of the satnav, which lights up with a welcome message. He looks for the last known destination. Bury Park. Luton. He jots down the street name. No number.

Dave takes him out through a side gate on to waste ground between the motorway and a set of newer factories. Fol owing the fence, Ruiz turns the corner and crosses a forecourt before reaching the Mercedes. Sliding behind the wheel, he borrows Luca’s mobile.

“Campbel ?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Ruiz. I’ve got a lead on Hol y Knight—an address in Luton. Colin Hackett had it programmed into his satnav when he was fol owing Richard North.” Campbel seems preoccupied. Ruiz wants him to listen. “Hackett and North were both kil ed by the same caliber pistol. They both went to Luton and both of them finished up dead.”

“Jesus, Ruiz, I told you to stay out of this.”

“I might need some local backup.”

“I can’t spare anyone. We’re pul ing warm bodies into London.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Counter terrorism just raised the threat level to critical. An emergency cal : a woman cal ed 999 and said something about an attack on London tonight. Pakistani accent. She hung up before we could get details.”

“A verified threat?”

“We’re tracing the cal .”

Campbel has a phone ringing in the background. “Go home, Vincent, and stop acting like some third-rate vigilante. We’l fol ow your lead tomorrow.” Ruiz hangs up and looks at the sky, the trees bending in the wind. A storm coming.

35

LUTON

The rain starts faling just north of Watford, a few spits at first, mixing with dust on the windscreen and bleeding down the wipers. Then the clouds break and sheets of rain are swept across the motorway as if the air has turned to water. Ruiz drives with both hands on the wheel; his head canted forward, wanting the traffic to part. He stays in the overtaking lane, flashing his lights at any slow vehicles.

Luca is next to him, stil trying to fathom how quickly the euphoria of yesterday has turned to this. Ruiz didn’t ask him to come, but some decisions have al the momentum and certainty of gravity. Nicola had once accused him of sitting on the sidelines, unwil ing to get involved, watching and reporting while sharing none of the pain. Maybe she was right. Maybe this is his moment.

“Do you believe in God?” asks Ruiz.

The question is so unexpected that al Luca does is stare at him. “I have a Catholic father and a Muslim mother. I cal myself confused.” Ruiz drums his fingers on the wheel and they drive another mile in silence.

“But it’s the same God, right? Muslim. Christian. Jewish.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been in two churches in the past week. I couldn’t remember a single prayer.”

“They say it’s just a conversation with God.”

“Guess I’m not much of a talker.”

Luca doesn’t doubt the statement.

Ruiz can hear the tone of his voice thickening. “I’ve never asked for much or felt entitled. Low expectations, less to be disappointed about. Some people talk about fate or karma or say that luck evens out, a little here or a little there, floating around and fal ing randomly on people like it’s a raincloud. Hol y Knight has been swimming in shit her entire life. She lost a brother, both her parents and a boyfriend—violently, pointlessly. When is Lady Luck going to smile on her?”

“Maybe today,” says Luca.

Ruiz nods. “Yeah, maybe today.”

It’s stil pouring when they arrive in Luton, the satnav directing them along Airport Way into Windmil Road, taking the Merc through a series of roundabouts that are threaded together like beads on a string.

“In two hundred yards you will have reached your destination.”

Ruiz parks across the street from an abandoned motel in a neighborhood of warehouses, factories, garages and workshops. The two-storey, red-tiled motel is a leftover from the sixties, built around an asphalt forecourt that glitters with shattered glass. Most of the windows are barred or boarded up. The doors padlocked. Raindrops are bouncing off the windscreen.

“What do you think?” asks Ruiz.

“I think maybe Norman Bates had a British cousin,” replies Luca, peering through the gloom.

Ruiz zips up his waterproof jacket and flips the hood.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a closer look.”

“That’s not a very good plan.”

“You got a better one?”

“I haven’t thought of it yet.”

Instantly wet, Ruiz stays in the shadows, moving across the road and into the forecourt, which is empty except for a van parked near the rear fence. The rooms have numbers. He counts them down and slips his right hand into his jacket. Checks the Glock.

Room 12 has light leaking from behind the curtains. Voices. Accents. For a ful minute he listens, trying to pick up the words. He’s twenty yards away without any cover. If anyone walks out of the room they’l see him immediately. Backing away, he crosses the forecourt in a crouching run and squats beside the stairs.

The door opens. Three men emerge, silhouetted by the light inside. Young. Fit. They walk towards the van and open the rear doors. Ruiz can’t see the interior, but one of the men has something in his hands: a machine pistol. He pul s back the slide mechanism and gazes down the barrel, aiming it at Ruiz, who is invisible in the darkness. More weapons are checked.

Having seen enough, Ruiz turns into a walkway that takes him behind the hotel, where he fol ows a chain-link fence back to the road. Luca sees him coming and opens the door.

“So what is it? What did you see?”

“Trouble.”

He turns on Luca’s mobile and cal s Campbel , who’s in the middle of a briefing.

“I’ve been trying to reach you. Where are you?”

“Luton.”

“Shit!”

“What’s wrong?”

“We traced that 999 cal to a Homebase store in Bury Park, Luton. One of the female employees, Aisha Iqbal, is married to a man on a watchlist. Her husband is booked on a flight to Cairo first thing tomorrow.”

Ruiz rubs a hole in the fogged glass. “I’m looking at a white van. Three up. Pakistani extraction. Heavily armed.” The van is pul ing out of the forecourt. No headlights. Luca cranes forward and reads the number plate. Ruiz relays the information.

“If the van is heading for London it’s going to reach the M1 in about fifteen minutes. You’l need to do a mobile intercept. In the meantime I need backup.”

“Don’t fuck around, Ruiz. Get out of there.”

“Hol y Knight could be inside.”

“No, no, no. You listening? Stand down.”

“You’re breaking up.”

Ruiz hears Campbel bang something hard. “Al right, I’m sending a fucking army. You sit tight. They’l be there in fifteen.”

“What about the van?”

“My problem. Don’t you move.”

The windscreen has fogged again. Ruiz wipes a circle on his side and sees a dark figure emerge from Room 12, a fourth man. He’s carrying something in his right hand—a plastic jerrycan. He crosses the forecourt and disappears from view. Several minutes later he returns.

Ruiz opens the car door.

“Where are you going?”

“Want a closer look.”

“He told us to wait.”

“You wait.”

Retracing his steps along the fence, Ruiz reaches the rear of the motel, keeping an eye on Room 12. The walkway is ahead of him, the rooms in darkness… al but one of them.

Room 17 has a padlock hanging on a latch, uncoupled. He slides the bolt and nudges the door.

Disarray inside. Broken furniture. Cardboard boxes. Larger bins of old curtains… sodden. Petrol fumes catch in his throat and he fights the urge to cough.

The door to an adjoining room is partial y open. He moves along the wal , holding the Glock at an upward angle. Peering through the opening he can see a table, a sofa spil ing foam, chairs, a bed…

He hears a sound like a trapped animal and sees a shadow across the table. Someone sitting in a chair.

The situation is al wrong. He has to move through the door without cover, with his right arm extended at an awkward angle around the doorjamb. If there is someone on the other side, he won’t have time to sight the target before firing. He should wait for backup. Al he can do from here is hold someone, he can’t take them out. He hears feet scraping on the floor.

“I’m armed. Come out now and you won’t get hurt.”

He listens. There is another muffled cry. Someone captive. He kicks open the door and crouches, pivoting and swinging the gun towards the chest of a seated figure. Muddy-eyed, he yel s at the figure to put up his hands before realizing that
she
can’t. Her arms are bound. Her legs. Her mouth covered by masking tape.

Hol y.