Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

Ruiz crosses the road and climbs the stairs to Holly’s flat. Blue-and-white crime-scene tape is threaded in a zigzag pattern across a makeshift wooden door, bolted shut. Rocking back six inches, he shoulders it open.

Crossing the threshold, he eases the door shut and steps further into the flat. The broken furniture, shredded pillows and emptied drawers are just as before, although now there is fingerprint powder on every smooth surface. SOCO have dusted, hoovered, scraped and swabbed.

The place has a haunted quality that comes after death. It’s like seeing the twisted shell of a car being hauled on to a tow-truck and wondering if anyone survived or was badly injured.

Ruiz goes into the bedroom, opens a wardrobe and collects some of Holly’s clothes. Jeans. Blouses. Knickers. What else might she need? In the bathroom he fills a make-up bag with small jars, lipsticks, eyeliner and a toothbrush. Everything fits in two plastic shopping bags. He sets them down near the splintered front door and goes through the flat again, searching systematically, looking for letters, bills, bank statements, photographs, anything that might give him a sense of Holly and Zac.

There is a postcard from Ireland and a bundle of letters from Afghanistan in military-issued envelopes. The only picture of them is a shot taken on a ferry during a wild crossing to somewhere. They’re laughing and holding each other as the swell pitches them backwards and forwards across the deck.

Standing in the living room, Ruiz tries to recreate the confrontation as Holly had described it. He pictures bodies in motion. She hit the wall. Scrambled up. Used the saucepan. Dropped it.

Beneath a side table he spies the shoulder bag that Holly was carrying when she left the audition and visited the jewelers in Hatton Garden. The contents have spilled. The hair-comb is half hidden by lipstick tubes, tissues and a half packet of mints. He lifts it carefully. Scared it might break. Then he wraps it in tissue paper and places it inside a small wooden box, which he puts in his pocket.

Picking up the plastic bags, he steps outside and pulls the door shut, pushing the bolt across and reattaching the police tape. Then he knocks on neighboring flats. After a long wait a door opens.

“I’m not buying anything,” says a pale man with red hair and doleful eyes.

“That’s good,” replies Ruiz. “Were you home the night before last?”

“I already told the police everything.”

“What did you tell them?”

The neighbor looks at him nervously. “Nothing!”

Ruiz stands motionless, letting the silence work its magic. The neighbor fidgets. Scratches. Shuffles his feet.

“I did see this one guy run down the stairs. He almost knocked me over.”

“What did he look like?”

“I only saw him for a second.”

“What color?”

“I don’t know. Muddy.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Foreign looking. I think maybe you should leave this guy alone.”

“Why’s that?”

The neighbor hesitates, still scratching his crotch. “He had a look, you know, like he came into the world with nothing except a name.”

“Dangerous?”

“Hungry for something.”

Daniela laces her fingers and stretches her arms above her head. She’s tired-her own fault-too much sex and too little sleep. She has laid out dozens of documents on her desk, placing a shoe or a lamp or a glass on them because the ceiling fan is stirring the air.

Alfred Nilsen has come back to her. The Pentagon won’t approve her request for information regarding Bellwether Construction. Instead she has been given a brief corporate profile in which Bellwether claims to employ 25,000 Iraqis on 315 different construction projects.

The work on Jawad Stadium was subcontracted to a dozen different Iraqi companies, each linked to a Syrian-based corporation called Alain al Jaria, which in Arabic means “Ever-Flowing Spring.”

Ironic, thinks Daniela, as she looks for an office address in Baghdad but can’t find one.

Glover appears at her door. He’s wearing a baseball cap with a picture of a camel riding a surfboard.

“Can you tell Shaun to stop humming?”

“Humming?”

“He hums this one song. It’s driving me crazy.”

“What are you-six years old?”

Glover looks aggrieved. Pouts. Tilts his head. “You look different today.”

“In what way?”

“Happier.”

Daniela can feel blood warming her cheeks. She changes the subject. “What did you want?”

“I found something you might want to see.”

As she follows him down the corridor, Glover keeps looking over his shoulder, uncomfortable about letting a woman walk behind him. The IT room has a bank of computers and shelves stacked with software manuals and ring binders.

Shaun is outside the door listening to an iPod and humming loudly. Daniela pulls an earphone from his ear. “Stop teasing the puppy.”

He grins at her and then at Glover, who flips him the bird, having to hold down some of his fingers.

Glover speaks. “You wanted to know about Jawad Stadium. During the invasion it became a shelter for Iraqi families and then a compound for the US Army Motor Pool.

“It’s one of the bigger football venues in the city. The Iraq Football Federation applied for the rebuild. The contract was awarded in 2005 to Bellwether.”

“Did you get a copy of the contract?”

“Take a look.”

She glances at the screen. Someone has scanned the paperwork but not before meticulously using a thick-tipped marker to black out details including names, dates, addresses, phone numbers and the signees. The file had been stamped “classified” with a Pentagon seal.

“So this is it?” asks Daniela.

“I managed to pull up a company address. It’s a post office box in the Bahamas.”

Glover adds, “There is a separate interim report from 2007. There were delays with some of the work. The wrong seats were delivered. The turf was coming from Sweden and got stuck at the border for three weeks. Died.”

Daniela looks again at the anomalies. These problems could explain some of the duplicate payments. Each amount is under $200,000. This meant that a PRT commander could approve the payments without going to the next stage of review.

“Bellwether subcontracted the work to Alain al Jaria, a shelf company based in Syria. There must be local paperwork.”

“It’s probably in Arabic,” says Glover.

“Get it translated.”

Daniela knows she is overstepping her remit. Nilsen had been very clear that she should not go further back than May 2006, but this isn’t natural wastage or an oversight. Most of all she’s annoyed by the blacked-out sentences. She can picture an entire department of faceless public servants in the bowels of the Pentagon, hunched over desks, wielding black marker pens. Too lazy to actually read documents and make informed decisions, they label everything as “classified” and “top secret,” blanking out every name, address and number.

She runs her finger over the hidden text before turning away.

“I’m going out for a little while.”

“Where?”

“An excursion.”

Jawad Stadium is in a safer area of the city, but Shaun and Edge still aren’t happy. The journey will take them through Baathist strongholds, including al-Haifa Street, once known as “sniper alley.”

They spend twenty minutes plotting a route and then briefing a security team. Edge will be in charge. Two vehicles. Four bodyguards. Shaun will stay behind with Glover and the rest of the security team.

Daniela follows the instructions without complaint. She’d prefer to be with Shaun, but holds her tongue. The cars arrive. Two Ford Explorers. Armored. Fully armed. She’s escorted down the steps by Edge and Klosters, his second in command.