Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

The rest of the security team had barricaded the door to the IT room. That same door is now hanging off its hinges. The Hispanic girl-Edge can’t recall her name-is lying with one leg twisted beneath her. A shard of wood is sticking from her left eye. Ventura… he remembers her name.

They must have had heavy weaponry-a mortar or maybe an RPG. The shell came through the door and exploded against the opposite wall, where it blew a gaping hole and took Anderson through it. His body is lying in the next room.

Otis is sitting against the desk, the last to die. The legs of the chair next to him have been sheared off. They shot high and low, the vest-free zones, aiming for the groin and neck. He double-killed before he went. He also had time to get a morphine shot from the medical kit and find a vein. No pain.

Otis was first Gulf War, big and black, from somewhere down south. Edge had never asked where. The south was a different America. Otis was a different American.

Glover is missing. He was the target. Daniela Garner was meant to be with him.

Shaun. Vanessa. Anderson. Otis. Weigh it, dice it, julienne it-makes no difference-they were carved up and cooked. Outnumbered. Outgunned. How many of the shifty cocksuckers did it take?

Edge should feel like crying. Instead he feels like getting even. He wants to tear down the world until he finds them. Then he’ll bury them under the rubble of whatever’s left.

As the taxi turns into his street, Luca senses something is wrong. The checkpoint is deserted. Normally the guards would be playing cards or tossing coins against the wall.

He tells the driver to stop. Pays. Walks forward, crouching behind a blast barrier. There are three police cars parked in front of his apartment block. Two officers stand outside the vehicles in green uniforms with berets and sunglasses. They light cigarettes and lean on the Land Cruiser, heavy boots resting on the tarmac.

Police are often not police. Not real. Imposters in stolen uniforms. He glances to his right and left, considering his options.

Cutting through a pathway between buildings and then along an alley, he tries to get closer without being seen. The pistol pressed against his spine feels as though it’s wrapped in barbed wire.

Creeping along the backs of houses, he cuts the distance. Faces become clearer. He recognizes one of them-the flunky who was with General al-Uzri at the burnt-out bank.

Decision time. Fight, flee or stay.

A policeman steps on to Luca’s balcony. He glances over the railing and takes a moment to realize that the journalist is below him. He yells to his colleagues and guns are drawn. Luca steps from his hiding place. His eyes go to the open car door, darkness inside.

“You must come with us,” says the senior officer.

“Why?”

“The Commander of Police wishes to speak with you.”

“Did General al-Uzri give a reason?”

“He gives orders, not reasons.”

Luca is listening to an internal dialogue. He should run. Let them shoot. Better to fight than surrender. Better to die on the street than in some stage-managed execution. He glances up at his apartment. The barrel of an Uzi is pointed at him, the hole gaping blackly.

“I have an American passport. I want to call the US Embassy.”

The policeman gives a rumbling chuckle.

“Why do people like you criticize America until you’re in trouble and then all of a sudden you become patriots?”

For the past five days Elizabeth North has woken early and reached across the sheets to the space where her husband used to be. Each time her fingers have relayed the message and her eyes have stayed closed. Missing. Lost. Misplaced. She won’t go any darker in her thoughts than this. Instead she picks up her mobile phone from the bedside table and checks it again.

North has never been away this long-not since Rowan was born, not since they married. Five days. No calls or notes or text messages. No warning.

He should be waking up next to her in his Jermyn Street pajamas with his messed up hair and his morning breath. The selfish bastard! Why isn’t he here with his family?

Elizabeth swings her feet to the floor and pauses, perched on the edge of the mattress, caught between getting out of bed or curling up and crying. She cups her pregnancy in both hands. She has to pee. Claudia is pressing on her bladder.

It’s a girl, according to the ultrasound. Both she and North had said they didn’t care, but secretly they did. Elizabeth’s grandmother was called Claudia, which was one of six possible names they considered until they began using Claudia all the time and it just sort of stuck.

Rowan had complained, of course. Four-year-old boys want baby brothers and don’t understand why swaps aren’t possible; a change of order just like when they get Friday night takeaway from the Bombay Palace on The Green and want extra poppadoms.

Now he’s getting used to the idea. Yesterday morning he brought his trains into Elizabeth’s bed because he wanted to show them to Claudia. He pushed them up and over Elizabeth’s stomach, through the mountain pass of her breasts, making the sound effects.

“Don’t move, Mummy.”

“But it tickles.”

Then he frowned. “I’m worried, Mummy.”

“Why’s that?”

“What if Claudia doesn’t like me?”

“She’s going to love you.”

The baby’s room is only half done. Elizabeth is supposed to be making new curtains but has only finished measuring the windows and buying the fabric. She started with great plans for creating the perfect little girl’s room-an echo of her own childhood-but nothing ever turns out quite like she imagines. She’s not a finisher, that’s her problem.

Making her way to the bathroom, she sits on the toilet and stares at herself in the mirror, frowning. She hasn’t gained much weight in her face and her extremities, but God has seen fit to give her a huge arse, balancing out her belly.

Downstairs she can hear Polina unloading the dishwasher and filling the kettle. Polina is the nanny and she comes from one of those “istan” countries that Elizabeth can never remember because they all sound so similar.

Rowan is downstairs too. He and Polina tend to have very earnest, grown-up discussions about trains and superheroes and aspects of the world that puzzle him. Why do his fingers go wrinkly in the bath? How does he know when to wake up? Why can’t he remember being born? Who would win out of Batman and Spiderman? Important questions when you’re four years old.

One day in the park he asked Elizabeth if he could go and kick a ball with some of the older boys. “Those boys look a bit rough,” she told him and Rowan said, “If I can find a smooth one, can I play with him?”

She should write these things down. One day she’ll forget them and she’ll have lost a precious memory like a first word or a first smile.

Back in the bedroom she opens the curtains and watches the sun struggle up beyond the rooftops. It’s a view that normally soothes Elizabeth-the grass, the trees, the slice of moon suspended above the spire of St. Mary’s Church-but today she feels nothing but irritation and foreboding. What if something terrible has happened? North might be hurt. He could be lying in a ditch or unconscious in a hospital. He could have lost his memory or be in a coma.

Squeezing into her maternity trousers, Elizabeth brushes her hair, puts on lip balm and goes downstairs to confront another day. Polina has made Rowan a boiled egg and put it in a ceramic eggcup shaped like a train. His buttered toast soldiers are lined up on either side of the cup. He marches them along the spoon, dunking them in the soft yolk. When Elizabeth boils eggs they are either too runny or too hard. Polina has told her the timings but Elizabeth can never seem to get them right.