The Wreckage: A Thriller (25 page)

Now he’s home and the kids are asleep upstairs and his wife is outside on a pool lounger, wrapped in a silk kimono, smoking a cigarette and getting drunk. She smokes in the same hungry way that she has sex. Not with him. He doesn’t know what gym instructor or pool boy or realtor she’s screwing now.

Chalcott can’t punch a turd, but he can punch a number. He cal s Sobel in London. Apologizes for the hour.

“Don’t worry about it, Artie, sleep was so last century.”

Chalcott feels a flash of annoyance. Sobel sounds too cheerful and he should be cal ing him “sir.”

“What news on our banker?”

“He’l turn up.”

“That’s the issue, isn’t it, Brendan? Where wil he turn up? You should have pul ed him in before he went AWOL. The list would be safe by now.”

“The robbery was a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences. Someone kil ed the boyfriend.”

“Maybe it was North?”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Who then?”

“Ibrahim.”

“Ibrahim doesn’t do his own dirty work.”

“Maybe he hired someone. North was getting nervous and making threats. He made a phone cal on Friday from a cal box to a journalist.”

“Who?”

“Keith Gooding on the
Financial Herald
. He left a message.”

“Had they ever met?”

“We’re going back over his phone records.”

Chalcott has the television muted. Pictures of a building in Baghdad with shattered windows and curtains flapping through the holes. The Finance Ministry. A crowd outside being kept back by soldiers. A rol ing banner on the screen:
Missing UN auditor found dead in Iraq
.

“What about the wife?”

“North hasn’t been in touch with her.”

“And the girl?”

“MI6 are looking.”

“Six couldn’t find their ass-cheeks with both hands.” Chalcott belches. “While we’re on the subject of Ibrahim?”

“He’s dropped out of sight.”

“Christ almighty! This is a clusterfuck, Brendan. You know how much time and money have gone into this. Remember Afghanistan? Khost? We lost seven agents in one day. They trusted al-Balawi—they made him a fucking birthday cake—and the prick was playing them al along. He walked right into a secure base wearing a suicide vest and blew them al to pieces.”

“The Jordanians vouched for al-Balawi.”

“Yeah, wel , I don’t trust any of these cunts. We control that list and we’re two years ahead of the game. We’l nail every last one of the murdering scumbags.”
13

LONDON

Joe O’Loughlin is slowly crossing the concourse at Paddington Station. Ruiz recognizes the professor’s distinctive stoop and stiff-legged gait. He looks like a scientist or a doctor, more Einstein than Freud, with unkempt hair and a tweed jacket. Some weeks he forgets to shave and a salt-and-pepper stubble covers his chin and cheeks.

Ruiz takes his suitcase. Judges the weight. “You bought me a present?”

“It’s a bottle of something.”

“If I were a religious man I’d bless you.”

“If
you
were a religious man the bel s would be ringing at Westminster Abbey.”

The two men weave through the crowds. Ruiz has to wait for the professor to catch up.

“Can you move any slower?”

“We’re al slow in the West Country.”

Through the automatic doors, they reach the cab rank where Ruiz has double-parked and displayed a disabled sign in his windscreen.

“Does that stil work?”

“I got shot in the leg—there have to be some perks.”

Joe looks around. “So where is the young lady?”

“Now that’s a good question.”

Ruiz drives and talks—tel ing him about Zac Osborne’s death, the bribe and Hol y running away. The professor interrupts occasional y to ask a question, focusing on the murder scene and the injuries inflicted.

“It had to be personal,” he says. “Very few people can torture someone so directly, hands-on, inflicting injuries over a long period, ignoring their pain… you’re dealing with a sadist who was very comfortable in a strange environment. He wasn’t panicked. He didn’t rush. He took his time, looking for information or waiting for the girl. What do the police say?”

“They’re cal ing it a drug turf war.”

“You don’t agree?”

“They found no drug paraphernalia in the flat.”

“Which doesn’t prove anything.”

“I talked to the pathologist this morning. Osborne had no drugs in his system. The tox screen came back negative.” Joe leans over the seat and unzips a pocket on his suitcase.

“I had to cal in some favors at Social Services. It’s not easy getting someone’s juvenile files.”

“What did you find?”

“Both of Hol y Knight’s parents are dead. A murder suicide.”

“Domestic?”

“Her father strangled her mother and then hung himself. Hol y’s brother died the same year. Brain aneurism. Hol y must have been seven, maybe eight. She was made a ward of the court and fostered to six different families before she was fifteen. That’s when she ran away. She was found living with a man twice her age and was sent to another foster home, which she burnt down.”

“Did she give a reason?”

“Wouldn’t talk about it.”

Ruiz has seen how Hol y reacts to authority figures. Her resentment borders on hatred.

“At seventeen she spent a year as a kitchen hand. Then she took a job waitressing. She was arrested in April 2009 during a G20 protest in London and a couple of months later she made a rape al egation that wasn’t pursued by the CPS.”

Joe continues to précis the file, aware of how brutal y casual he sounds, giving a banal rendering of a terrible life. What does it do to someone, an upbringing like that? They grow up scared of the dark, scared of being alone, scared of their own dreams.

Ruiz rubs his thumb over his lips. They’re nearing the house. He makes a point of parking three blocks away.

“Forgotten where you live?”

“I like the walk.”

The professor senses another reason.

“Are you being fol owed?”

“Not sure.”

They go through a break in the buildings, past an upholstery shop, a plumbing store and a new childcare centre. Ruiz is watching the cross-streets, noting the cars.

Joe has a question. “You mentioned that Hol y Knight could tel when you were lying.”

“Yeah. Is that possible?”

“You’re a former detective. You were pretty good at tel ing when you were being fed bul shit.”

“Not like she can. Some people sweat too much, or look to the left or start shaking, or mumbling their answers. This girl just knows.”

“Highly unlikely.”

“But not impossible?”

Joe fal s silent, unwil ing to make such a leap of the imagination.

“What is it?” asks Ruiz.

“Nothing.”

“Tel me.”

“I remember once reading about a police officer in Los Angeles who pul ed over a sports car late one night in a rough area of the city. As he walked towards the vehicle with his gun drawn, a teenager jumped from the passenger seat and pointed a semi-automatic directly at him. They were yards apart. The officer held fire. For some reason, in that instant, he knew the teenager wasn’t a threat. He cal ed it a hunch. The teenager surrendered.”

“So the guy got lucky?”

“A while later, a team of psychologists tested the officer; showed him a series of videotapes of people who were either lying or tel ing the truth. One tape showed people talking about their views on the death penalty or smoking in public. The same test had been given to hundreds of judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, police sharpshooters and Customs officers.

On average they scored fifty per cent.”

“Which means they could have been guessing?”

“Exactly, but this police officer—the same one who had the gun pul ed on him—he had a success rate of over ninety per cent.”

“So you’re saying some people are good at spotting liars.”

“Not just good, he was a virtuoso.”

“How did he do it?”

“Nobody knows for certain. I mean, there are studies on face-reading. Some people train themselves to look for micro-expressions, tiny tel tale indicators of stress or deceit. There is a university professor in America, Paul Ekman, who has spent his whole career studying face-reading.”

“But you’re not convinced?”

Joe doesn’t respond. There are things about the human brain that he can’t explain: freakish feats of memory, or people with the ability to calculate prime numbers into the tril ions.

Autistic savants. Geniuses. Brain-injured patients with unique abilities… Neuropsychology is one of the last great frontiers of science.

Inside the house, Ruiz dumps Joe’s suitcase and pul s a tray of ice-cubes from the freezer.

“You going to join me?”

“No.”

The professor’s thumb and forefinger are rubbing together as if rol ing a pil between them. He threads his fingers together as if in prayer and the twitching stops. He’s not embarrassed or disappointed. He long ago made his peace with the “other” that inhabits his body. Mr. Parkinson.

“So what do we do now?” he asks.

“We wait.”

“You think she’l cal ?”

“Somebody wil .”

14

BAGHDAD

Luca steps gingerly over the debris in his apartment, trying not to break the unbroken. Bottles and plates are shattered on the floor, amid the contents of his pantry. His furniture lies in pieces and water leaks from a toilet cistern, torn from the wal .

On the floor of the bedroom he finds the photograph of Nicola. He picks it up and brushes the broken glass away. Removing it from the frame, he folds the photo and slips it into his shirt pocket.

In the kitchen, he picks up a chair and sits down. Dirty, unshaven and two days without sleep, he drinks bottled water and takes a moment to feel sorry for himself.

Where to now? America seems like a foreign country he visited a long time ago, like a childhood book he remembers reading. Over the years, moving from war to war, from coups to independence struggles, he has come to realize the arbitrary nature of nationality. There are places in Europe where four or five different countries are separated by just a few miles.

One man’s country is another man’s prison. One man’s coup is another man’s dispossession. The dead always look the same.

He unhooks a gas cylinder beneath the stove; the lower half twists off to reveal a hidden compartment. A satel ite phone is tucked inside. He cal s the news desk of the
Financial
Herald
in London and asks for Keith Gooding, the chief reporter.

The two men met in Afghanistan in 2002, which seems like a lifetime ago. They both traveled to Kabul via the Khyber Pass, escorted by forty Afghan fighters, men and boys, crowded into pickup trucks, clutching grenade launchers and belts of ammunition.

Four years later Luca was best man at Gooding’s wedding in Surrey when he married his childhood sweetheart Lucy, whose father worked in the Foreign Office.

Gooding answers the phone abruptly.

“How’s Lucy?”

“She’s stil beautiful.”

“Tel me something—how did a man like you get a woman like that to touch your dick?”

“She grabbed it with both hands.”

Luca laughs. His chest hurts. He’s out of practice.

“So tel me, Mr. Terracini, how are things with you?”

“Been better.”

“What have you done this time?”

“I upset the chief of police.”

“Other people fish for minnows, you harpoon whales.”

Luca can hear phones ringing in the background and can picture Gooding at his desk, spinning in his chair, feet off the ground like a child on a roundabout. Luca has never been comfortable in an office environment. Never lingered. Gooding is different, a political animal with eyes on the editorship.

“They’re kicking me out of the country, revoking my visa.”

“Maybe it’s not a bad thing.”

“I’m getting close to something.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Stolen cash smuggled out of Iraq into Syria and possibly Jordan.”

“How much?”

“Tens, maybe hundreds of mil ions.”

“Reconstruction funds?”

“And banking assets. Mostly US dol ars.”

“What can I do?”

“Find out who monitors international currency transfers. There must be some international body that investigates big movements of cash.” Luca is about to go on, but stops. Someone is at the door. He glances at the intercom. Bare wires hang from a hole in the wal .

“I have to go.”

“Stay in touch.”

Walking to the window, he peers through a crack in the curtains. An SUV is parked out front along with the Skoda, which is now a muddy green color. One of Jimmy Dessai’s mechanics is leaning on the hood.

Jimmy is sweating from the stairs. He’s wearing a cut-off Levi’s jacket, showing off his tattoos. “I got your wheels.”

“I saw. What’s with the color?”

“I had a job lot of green paint. Bought it from a company that paints oil pipelines.”

“I’m not paying extra.”

“I know.”

Jimmy looks at the state of the apartment.

“Some housewarming.”

“I wasn’t even here.”