Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

In a cracked-sounding voice, like he’s hoarse from shouting, he begins listing charges.

“The Iraqis have withdrawn your visa. You have forty-eight hours in which to leave the country.”

“I want to appeal.”

“There is no process of appeal.”

“You can make a request-government to government.”

Jennings laughs. “This country doesn’t have a government.”

“I was drugged by the Iraqi police.”

“So you say.”

“I’m a journalist.”

Jennings shrugs dismissively. “What do you think that means? Special privileges? The law doesn’t apply? You think you understand this place, Mr. Terracini, just because you speak the language, but you’re no different to the other hacks and glory hounds who turn up here wanting to put gloss on a new career or resurrect a fading one. You look at this country and think you’re going to sum it up in a thousand crisp words, but you wind up in the bar of the al-Hamra trying to make sense of the horror. Nobody understands this place.”

“They can’t just kick me out.”

“Yes they can.”

Jennings forces himself to relax, pulling his neck from side to side until the vertebrae pop.

“What if I take my chances?” asks Luca.

“We won’t allow that. Should you be arrested, or imprisoned or kidnapped, the American government would be expected to negotiate your release. We would prefer not to have that situation arise.”

Jennings repacks his briefcase, putting each pen in the allotted place. It closes and he spins the combination lock.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have five bodies to repatriate.”

“American soldiers?”

“Civilians. Four Americans. One German. The attack on the Finance Ministry.”

“What attack?”

Jennings straightens his jacket and opens the door. “Oh, that’s right, you were in custody. There was an attack on the Finance Ministry. Four security contractors died and a UN auditor was abducted.”

Luca croaks, “Who?”

“Their names haven’t been released.”

“The auditor?”

“They found his body this morning in the river. Tortured. Executed. I had to call his parents in Hamburg.”

“There was a woman…?”

“Safe. The United Nations is pulling out all non-essential staff. You should get yourself on the same flight, Luca. Nobody spends any longer in Iraq than necessary. Your time is up.”

Elizabeth North sleeps on her side with one knee exposed and an arm dangling over the side of the bed. She dreams that she’s naked in a dark tunnel, breathless and blind.

The phone is ringing. She rolls over too quickly and almost topples out of bed. Her fingers find the receiver.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“North? Is that you?”

Someone is breathing.

“What’s going on? Who is this?”

She waits.

“I’m going to hang up now… Hello?… If you’re not going to answer you can… can… you can get lost!”

Slamming down the receiver, she traps her finger between the handset and the cradle. The pain makes her eyes water. Sucking her finger, she sits on the edge of the bed. Once she owned a lap. Now she’s full of baby. She can’t see her pubic hair unless she looks in the mirror and she hasn’t bothered waxing since they took their summer holiday to Jordan.

It was a strange choice, but North had business in Amman and Damascus. Afterwards they went to a resort on the Red Sea with bungalows and swimming pools and a kids’ club. Elizabeth and North had fought because he spent so much time on his BlackBerry answering emails instead of playing with Rowan. They had make-up sex afterwards. Angry. Passionate.

Standing at the bedroom window, she watches a jet pass overhead on its way to Heathrow, flashing silver. The noise penetrates the double-glazing. Pressing her fingertips to the glass, she can feel it vibrating and the sensation seems to reach into her chest and shake something inside her like a wine glass resonating at the perfect frequency of sound. Her marriage used to be like that-resonating with a perfect frequency. Now it has the discordant ring of a dropped sword.

She and North had met at Cambridge when she was studying politics and he was doing his masters in economics and sleeping with every impressionable undergraduate he could charm out of her knickers. His car had broken down-an old Citroen C5-and he was standing by the road with his collar pulled up and a sodden newspaper over his head. Elizabeth had pulled over in her Peugeot.

“Want any help?”

“How are you with engines?”

“Terrible.”

“Can you stop the rain?”

“Afraid not.”

His hair was plastered to his forehead and he looked like a little boy.

“Get in.”

“I’m all wet.”

“It’s only water.”

North seemed too big for her car. His knees touched the dashboard and his head brushed the roof. She took him to his digs and he asked her out for a drink.

“I don’t go out with strangers.”

“You just picked me up.”

“I saved you from drowning.”

“Then let me say thank you.”

“You have.”

A week later North called her. He had tracked her down, found her number and done a little research. A bunch of flowers arrived five minutes before his phone call.

“About that drink?”

“I’m busy.”

“Did you get my flowers?”

“They’re very nice. Thank you.”

“One drink.”

“I’m seeing someone else.”

A few weeks later Elizabeth bumped into North in the university library. He smiled and said hello, but didn’t hassle her. She felt slightly disappointed. The following Saturday she went out with her girlfriends and they kicked on to a karaoke club in Cambridge Street. North arrived with six of his mates, none of them too drunk to be charming. Again North ignored her. One of Elizabeth’s girlfriends began flirting with him and Elizabeth felt herself getting jealous. On the spur of the moment, she pulled North on to the stage for a duet and whispered in his ear, “I don’t know what I hate most-you following me or you ignoring me.”

“You’re seeing someone.”

“That was a lie.”

That Mother’s Day, Elizabeth went home to London for the weekend and found North sitting in the kitchen of the house in Hampstead, eating her mother’s fruitcake and regaling her with stories of Cambridge.

“Oh, hello, dear,” her mother said. “Look who’s here! Richard has been telling me all about himself. Why didn’t you tell us you had a new boyfriend? Look at the lovely flowers he brought. My favorite. Isn’t that sweet?”

Elizabeth should have been annoyed. Instead she was amused. She didn’t even mind when North laughed uproariously through the home videos-including the one of her naked in the bath and the ballet recital that she brought to a halt by tumbling off the stage.

Later that night, her mother showed North to his room and whispered, “I’ve put you next door to Lizzie in case you get lonely.” She actually winked.

And so that’s how it happened. North knocked. Elizabeth let him in. They made love more than once. In the morning she could barely sit down without wincing.

After they finished college they lived together in London before they married. Elizabeth got a job as a researcher at ITV and later was offered a presenting role on a health and lifestyle show called What’s Good For You. The first summer after they married they took a holiday to her father’s hunting lodge outside of Aberdeen. North arranged it. It might have been quite romantic except that her father came too, along with his new girlfriend Jacinta.

North and Alistair Bach spent every day stalking deer together in the Highlands and their evenings discussing the merits of the international exchange rate mechanism and deregulation of the banking system. Elizabeth felt like a banking widow even though her new husband didn’t work for a bank.