The Wreckage: A Thriller (8 page)

“No, real y, I couldn’t.”

The stack of notes has grown higher.

“What about these?” Hol y motions to the velvet box.

“Fourteen hundred for the lot.”

“If I change my mind?”

“By al means—come back. I am a reasonable man.”

The door opens behind her and a man enters. Hol y turns. She recognizes him but it takes a moment for her mind to put him in any sort of context. Then it dawns on her. The robbery… last night… the ex-copper!

Panic prickles on both sides of her skin and she hears a sad little squeak in the back of her throat.

“That’s stolen property! She stole those from me,” says Ruiz, pointing to the jewelry.

Hol y blinks at him, shocked, tel ing herself not to lose control.

“Is there a problem?” asks the jeweler.

“Yes, there’s a problem,” says Ruiz. “This girl is a thief.”

Hol y clutches her bag to her chest. “Stay away from me, you pervert!” She turns to the jeweler. “This man has been fol owing me. He’s a stalker. There’s a court order out against him. He’s not supposed to come within a hundred yards of me.”

The old jeweler looks alarmed. “Should I cal the police?”

“Good idea,” says Ruiz. “Let’s do that.”

Hol y doesn’t flinch. She scoops the hair-comb into her hand and jabs her finger at him. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me!” The door opens. A security guard enters. Short and muscular, he’s carrying a baton and every pie he’s ever eaten around his waist. Hol y takes one look at him and col apses in a dead faint, scythed down like a stalk of wheat.

Ruiz catches her before she hits her head on a display case. Her eyes are shut. She’s unconscious. Out cold. Her arms flung wide.

“This man has been stalking her,” says the jeweler.

“That’s not true.”

“Step back, sir,” says the guard. “Did you hit her?”

“No, you moron, I caught her as she fel .”

Hol y’s eyes open and she blinks at him.

“Did I do it again?” she asks.

“Just lie stil ,” says Ruiz. “Someone cal an ambulance.”

She shakes her head. “I just fainted.”

“You were out cold.”

“It happens sometimes.” She sits up. Pushes hair from her eyes. “Something about my blood sugar level.”

“You’re diabetic.”

“No. I just sort of fal down. It’s no big deal.”

Someone has brought her a glass of water. She needs some fresh air. The security guard walks her out on to the pavement. Hol y asks for more water. The guard takes the glass from her and turns his back. In that moment, she’s gone, sprinting down the street, dodging pedestrians and shoppers.

The guard has no chance of catching her.

9

LONDON

Holy doesn’t stop moving. Doesn’t look back. When she reaches an intersection with a red “don’t walk” sign, she turns left and heads down the road, trying to lose herself in the crowds of shoppers, tourists and commuters. Further along the street, she makes the crossing, skipping between cars and buses.

The Underground is just ahead. No, not the tube, she could be too easily cornered. She walks past the station entrance and heads south towards the Thames.

On Waterloo Bridge a jaundiced sun is setting through the haze. Final y she pauses, sweating under her clothes, cold on her face. For twenty minutes she studies the pedestrians and cars. How did he find her—the man from last night? The ex-copper. He said his name was Vincent. He looked harmless. Old. Crippled.

She cal s Zac. He’s not answering. He was the person who taught her about counter-surveil ance: how to blend in with a crowd and lose a pursuer. For the next thirty minutes she continues south, occasional y doubling back and ducking into shop doorways where she can watch the street behind her. Her feet are hurting. She’s thirsty.

The streets become shabbier as she gets closer to the Hogarth Estate. Shops give way to factories, railway yards and seventies tower blocks that rise above the rooftops like tree stumps in a nuclear winter.

It’s almost dark on the estate. Children have been summoned indoors and TV sets drown out the arguments. Pushing through the entrance, Hol y steps past old food containers and discarded Styrofoam cups.

Why isn’t Zac answering his phone?

She doesn’t trust the lift. Takes the stairs. A smel she can’t place in the stairwel mingles with other odors that she doesn’t want to name.

The door is open. The frame splintered. At first she thinks Zac has locked himself out and broken into the flat. She looks into the living room. The sofas have been disemboweled.

Drawers pul ed out. Furniture broken. Clothing scattered. A pressure band tightens around her skul .

Stepping across the threshold she can see through the partial y opened door of the bedroom. The mattress is no longer on the bed.

Then she sees the chair. Zac sitting upright, his skin slick with blood, his arms bound behind him, his feet tethered together at his ankles. His eyes open at the sound of her cry. She wants to go to him, but he mouths a word through broken lips.

She stops.

He says it again.

“Run!”

As Hol y turns she catches a glimpse of a hand reaching for her. She ducks, fal ing, scrambling on her knees. The hand comes again. She knocks it away, scuttling backwards, kicking with her legs.

“I don’t like hurting a woman, but I have made exceptions,” says the shadow.

Hol y tries to scream. No sound comes out.

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“You took something that wasn’t yours.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He grabs her by the hair with both his hands and begins to spin, forcing Hol y to run in circles. She grabs at his wrists to take pressure off her scalp. Faster and faster he spins, final y letting go, flinging her across the room where she ricochets off a wal and crumples. She tries to crawl away. He keeps coming. Amid the debris her fingers close around something cold and heavy. A saucepan. Cast-iron.

He grips her ankle and tries to drag her back to the bedroom. She kicks. He has her hair again. Lifting her. She swings the saucepan into his face. Blood sprays from his mouth. The man picks a broken tooth from inside his cheek and stares at it like he’s found a penny in a Christmas pudding.

Twisting her wrist he forces Hol y to her knees and the saucepan drops from her fingers. Hol y bunches her fist and swings, driving her knuckles into his groin. He doubles over and groans. It’s an animalist sound. Picking up the saucepan she hits him again across the side of the head. He staggers and raises his gun hand. Tries to focus. Pul s the trigger. The bul et hits the wal behind her.

Hol y runs. She’s smal and agile. Four years of gymnastics. Seven years of running from her father. At the door, along the walkway, at the top of the stairs, letting gravity carry her down. Almost out of control. Zac’s face in her mind, his body broken.

Reaching the ground floor, she hurls herself at the fire door, which bangs open. She’s almost to the road. There are cars. Lights. People. Somebody steps in front of her. She can’t stop. Her arms fold across her head, bracing for a col ision.

“Gotcha!”

The girl is screaming hysterical y, fighting at his arms, scratching at his face; her cheeks streaked with tears and snot.

Nothing Ruiz says seems to make any difference. Holding her firmly, he tel s her to settle down. Getting rougher. He slaps her hard across the face and then holds her tightly, his arms around her chest, her feet off the ground.

“What’s wrong? What are you so frightened of?”

Her eyes shoot behind him, looking over his shoulder.

“He’s got a gun! Run!”

“Who’s got a gun?”

She sucks in a breath. “Him. Upstairs. Please, let me go.”

“Your boyfriend?”

She shakes her head and tries to pul away from him again. This is not another performance. She’s terrified. Shaking.

Ruiz takes her to his car and puts her in the front seat.

“OK. Stay here.”

“Don’t leave me!”

“You’re safe.”

Ruiz crosses the road at a jog and pushes through the fire doors. Looks at the lift. It’s on the third floor. He peers up the central staircase. Concrete. Cold. It’s hard to move quietly.

He climbs slowly. Counting the floors.

There is a long walkway, open at one side, overlooking a quadrangle. More concrete. Another set of stairs is at the far end. The flats are numbered, al beginning with “3.” Glancing over the railing, he peers into the darkness. The lights in the quadrangle float like yel ow bal s suspended from above. Something moves in the shadows, a hooded figure, head down, walking quickly. It could be anyone.

The flat is fifteen yards along the walkway. Edging along the wal , Ruiz stoops in a crouch and looks through the splintered door. He can only see one half of the entrance hal .

Keeping his back to the wal , he steps inside. A darkened bedroom is off to the right. The place has been searched. Ransacked. Drawers pried open, yanked out, emptied. Wardrobes pil aged, clothes ripped from hangers and tossed on the floor.

The sitting room is another disaster. The sofa slashed, a bookcase overturned, the back smashed in. Dishes and cups have been raked from kitchen shelves and lie broken on the linoleum.

The boyfriend is sitting in a chair in the main bedroom. Naked. Rail thin. Covered in wounds. His forearms and wrists are thick and corded with muscles and veins; his thighs are slick with blood.

Ruiz tilts Zac’s head, looking for signs of life. His eyes are open. The neat hole punched through his forehead is like a red bindi on an Indian bride.

Standing frozen for a moment, Ruiz drops his hands to his sides, his senses dul ed, his mind deafened by the sound in his head like pounding surf. He backs out the door, not touching anything.

10

BAGHDAD

Luca works late. His body has an internal clock that wil not let him sleep before the early hours. He sits at the kitchen table working on his laptop, answering emails and making notes for a story. On the wal above the table there is a map of Baghdad, already out of date because the areas of control have changed, along with the locations of the checkpoints.

Nothing about his apartment real y belongs to Luca or couldn’t be left behind if he had to evacuate, except for the photographs. Only one of them is of Nicola. The rest he gave to her family with her clothes and mementos.

Eight months have passed, yet he stil imagines seeing her face in crowds or in cafés as he drives by. Once or twice he’s caught a glimpse of someone with the same dark eyes or feminine walk and has wanted to shout out and wave and run to her. Luca doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he understands how the dead haunt the living.

He looks at his emails. There are messages from commissioning editors and his publisher. The latest chapters of his book are due. He’s also late delivering a feature for
The
Economist
.

His mother has left six messages, most of them indecipherable. When Luca was last home he instal ed voice recognition software on her computer because she couldn’t type. Now she just yel s at the screen and the words get jumbled.

Her latest missive could be about his great-aunt Sophia or about his mother’s cat Sophocles. One of them is dead. Run over. There’s mention of a funeral. He’s none the wiser.

Opening the paper cartridge on his printer, he takes out the sheets of blank paper and pinches one corner, flicking through the pages. Several printed sheets flash amid the white.

Hidden notes. Retrieving them, he looks at the first page.

050707 Bank of Baghdad:

US$1.6m

062207 Rasheed Bank:

US$3.8m

070107 Dar Al-Salam Bank:

US$28.2m

081107 Middle East Investment Bank:

US$1.32m

030208 al-Warka Bank:

US$1.2m

061808 Industry Bank (ransom payment): US$6m

072909 al-Rafidain Bank:

US$6.9m

092709 Bank of Iraq:

US$5.3m

020710 Rasheed Bank:

US$15.6m

021210 Iraqi Trade Bank:

US$1.8m

Luca adds another robbery to the list:

082310 al-Rafidain Bank: Amount Unknown

Half a bil ion US dol ars stolen in four years. This is on top of dozens of smal er robberies that netted Iraqi dinars. The amounts seem almost inconceivable, but so many things in Iraq defy belief. Bil ions have washed through the country since the invasion, funding reconstruction, repairing infrastructure, paying for security. The robberies have become so commonplace that banks have stopped using armored vans because they draw too much attention. Instead they use private couriers in ordinary cars loaded with sacks of cash, making high-speed dashes across the city.

Opening a file on the laptop, Luca continues writing a story, using two fingers to type.

IRAQ: Three bank employees are dead and four are missing after the latest armed robbery to rock Baghdad—the eighteenth this year in a city that has become the bank robbery capital of the world. The robberies and ransom demands in Iraq are escalating but nobody can say if this is the work of insurgents, criminal gangs or sections of the Iraqi security services…