Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

“I’m telling the truth.” Her eyes float.

“So you’re saying Zac wasn’t using.”

“Not for a long time.”

Ruiz raises his voice but remains composed. “Why should I believe you?”

She doesn’t answer. She’s staring at the passing parade of Londoners.

“Are you using?”

“No.”

“I saw you sniffling and snuffling.”

“I got a cold.” She tugs her hair back from her face, glaring at him. “You’re not my father, so don’t start lecturing me. Just drop me on the next corner. I don’t have to put up with this shit.”

“Why won’t you talk to the police?”

“Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.”

“That bad?”

“Nothing good.”

The Courier wakes in a bed and breakfast hotel in Lancaster Gate. There is a girl sleeping next to him, snoring softly, hair a mess, eyes smudged.

He kicks her.

“What was that for?”

“Your wake-up call.”

“You paid for the night.”

“And now it’s morning.”

Scowling, she slips out of bed and pulls on a G-string, stuffing her bra in the pocket of her long black coat. She bends to buckle her sandals and notices a prayer mat in the corner.

“Are you one of those?”

“What would that be?” There’s a jagged edge to his voice.

“Nothing.”

“I’m a Muslim-does that bother you?”

“No.”

He smiles and rolls on to his feet. She backs away, holding her jacket to her chest. He raises his hand slowly, palm spread, reaching for her face, tracing two fingers down her throat. Stops. Her windpipe pulses beneath his thumb. Rocking forward imperceptibly, adding pressure, he seals off her airway.

“Do you ever pray?”

She shakes her head.

“Maybe you should.”

Hoarsely, “Please let go.”

Releasing his fingers, he laughs. She ducks under his arm and out the door. He can hear her running down the hall and hammering the button on the lift.

Out the window he can see the Tai Chi class on a patch of ground in the park. People in tracksuits, moving like puppets in slow motion. Stopping. Moving again. Ignorant people. Fearful people. People who wake up every morning of their lives scared about something.

Chewing on a hangnail, he removes a piece of skin and spits it on to the floor. Then he looks into the mirror and fingers the bruise on the side of his head. The girl left it there. He thinks of her again, her dark hair and the pinkness of her lips.

His mobile rings. He listens rather than talks, letting his fingers slide over the tautness of his stomach. He closes the phone and goes to the bathroom, where he wets a towel and washes the smell of sex from his genitals, before splashing water over his face and neck. He will pray before he eats. He will eat before he kills.

Luca Terracini orders a beer and a whisky chaser. He downs the shot-glass in a swallow, feeling the alcohol hollow out his cheeks and scour his throat. He orders another whisky.

The TV is on above the bar. CNN. Footage of a US Senate hearing; Carl Levin, the committee chair, has wire-framed glasses perched on the end of his nose. He stabs his finger at an executive from Goldman Sachs, saying the firm’s own documents show the bank was promoting investment products it knew would fail while at the same time betting against them.

Luca orders another drink and takes it outside. Most of the journalists are upstairs on their satellite phones, filing the story of the day: the US Ambassador in Baghdad, Christopher Hill, has finally commented on the fact that Iraq doesn’t have a government five months after the elections. He called it the “growing pains of a nascent democracy,” making Iraq sound like a pimply teenager whose voice would break soon.

Luca’s hands have stopped shaking, but he can feel the gun oil between his thumb and forefinger when he rubs them together. Men died in the burning pickup; men who had wanted to see him dead; men with no reason to hate him, yet who did so completely and irrationally. Men with families; men who woke this morning and ate breakfast and washed and prayed and did all the normal things… yet before the day had ended their lungs were full of fire instead of air. What a waste.

Right now Luca’s life doesn’t seem worth very much. At some point in the evening he decides to go home, but changes his mind. He doesn’t remember getting upstairs. He must have asked reception for her room number.

Now she is standing in front of him, wearing a bathrobe cinched tightly at her waist.

“Well?”

“Do you want a drink?”

“I think you’ve had enough already.”

She doesn’t shut the door. She doesn’t open it any wider.

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

“We’re in Baghdad. I don’t think it’s very wise to go walking.”

“No, you’re right.” He sways slightly. “We could walk around the pool.”

“That’s a very short walk.”

“We could do it more than once.”

Daniela hasn’t taken her eyes off him. Her head tilts to one side, her face smooth as porcelain. He wonders how warm it would be to touch.

“What happened today?” she asks.

He doesn’t want to lie. He’s told too many lies to women. Instead he changes the subject and asks about that drink again. She should tell him to get lost. Sober up. Call her next time.

“Let me get changed. I won’t be a minute.”

He waits in the hallway, leaning on a wall, watching the lights on the ceiling blur and separate into pairs.

When she appears she’s wearing a fitted blouse and jeans. They take the stairs. Luca uses the handrail.

It’s a clear night, quiet except for the diesel generators. They walk in silence for a time, gravel crunching underfoot, along a path lit by garden lights hidden within the foliage. Each time they circle the garden they reach a point where the path narrows and Luca steps back to let Daniela go first. She knows he’s checking out her figure.

“So you’re an accountant.”

“You make it sound like a disease.”

She tells him the story of her father, a brilliant mathematician, David Garner, famous for his work on probability and risk.

“I always thought that was quite ironic because he’s never taken a risk in his life.”

“He doesn’t gamble?”

“Never. Anybody who knows the slightest bit about probability would never gamble.”

She describes him as a big, shambolic man, dressed in tweed or gabardine, with a New York Yankees cap that he wears everywhere. Constantly lost in thought. Living with numbers.

“He forgets appointments, anniversaries, shopping lists…Sometimes he interrupts dinner and begins jotting down notes on the tablecloth. One day he gave me a lovely china tea set for my birthday before realizing it wasn’t my birthday at all, but my brother’s.”

“How does your mother cope?”

“She accepts his foibles. That’s what she called them. She can’t understand his work, but consoles herself with the knowledge that few people can, perhaps only a handful in history.”

“Where is he now?”

“In a home. Once or twice a year the children get summoned and he changes his instructions about his will and his funeral and threatens to leave us nothing. He has only debts, of course. For a math genius he was always lousy with money.”

Without being asked, Daniela mentions a husband, estranged, living in Detroit.

“How long were you married?”

“Eight years.”

“Another woman?”

“That’s normally how it happens.”

Beyond the perimeter walls, between the strands of razor wire, Luca can see a half moon hanging in the night sky.