Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

“I know.”

He blinks back tears, looking like a man whose life has undergone a violent decompression, a diver returning to the surface too quickly.

Jamal taps his chest. “They could not change who I am. They could not touch me inside.”

Daniela joins them, bringing a jug of rose-scented water and a tray of sweet pastries. Luca takes one and feels the sugar melting on his tongue. They speak in English for her benefit.

Jamal remembers something else. “There was an American… when they were interrogating me. I saw him just once, but I remember his voice. He was feeding them the questions.”

Daniela interrupts. “What did he look like?”

“Like an American,” says Jamal. “He asked me if I was scared. I told him no. He laughed and said I was too stupid to be scared.”

Daniela: “Did he have a side-parting?”

“Yes.”

“What about his voice?” Luca asks. “Did it sound cracked or broken?”

Jamal nods and all three of them are staring at each other, wondering how they could know the same man.

“His name is Jennings,” explains Daniela. “He was assigned to us by the US Embassy as our local liaison officer.”

“I was told he works for the State Department,” says Luca. “I met him this morning.”

Luca takes a moment to consider the ramifications. US involvement in the arrest and torture of an Iraqi civilian doesn’t come as a complete surprise to him, but normally such operations don’t feature personnel from the State Department or the CIA as eyewitnesses. The US government prefers to remain in the background, promoting the culture of deniability.

“When did you last talk to Jennings?” he asks Daniela.

“After the attack on the Finance Ministry. He wanted to know what files had been taken. He also wanted my laptop and whatever results we’d obtained. I told him the program had only been running forty-eight hours, but he still wanted the records.”

“Did you tell him about the double payments?”

“Yes.”

“What about the cash deliveries to the banks that were robbed?”

“He knew that too.”

They fall silent and watch Jamal’s two boys drawing pictures on butcher’s paper, sharing colored pencils between them. What sort of future awaits them, wonders Luca. Jamal has been identified and labeled as a collaborator. He and Abu will be targets from now on. Friendless. Never safe.

Reaching into his pocket, Luca places the keys to the Skoda on the tea tray.

“These are yours now.”

Jamal looks at him. “Why?”

“You can be a taxi driver-until you become a doctor.”

“You do not owe me anything.”

“I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

Jamal drives them to the al-Hamra Hotel and drops them inside the security perimeter. They say goodbye with the engine running.

“I will come back one day,” says Luca.

Jamal shakes his head. “Iraq is a place to leave, not to live.”

“What will you do?”

“I have family in the south.”

Daniela turns away as the two men embrace wordlessly. She takes Luca’s hand as they watch the Skoda leave, waving one last time before going upstairs to their room where they undress each other.

Luca can’t find the clasp of her bra.

“Try the other side.”

“I never say no to the other side.”

Unhooking the clasp, he reaches for her breasts. “These are nice.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Firm.”

“They hold my bra up.”

She turns, expecting a kiss, but Luca avoids her lips.

“I thought you were going to kiss me.”

“Not yet.”

He wants to change the rhythm of her breathing. He wants to make her skin flush and her toes curl. He wants to see her self-control dissolve and for Daniela to exist on the same plane he does.

Afterwards, they lie together. She takes his hand and can feel it beating softly as if it contains its own tiny heart.

“Who’s Nicola?” she asks. “Nadia mentioned her.”

“A woman I knew.”

“You were close?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I lost her.”

Daniela looks at him steadily and for a moment the intelligence in her eyes seems to be absolute and unshakable.

“Why did you take me to meet Jamal and his family?”

“To show you why I do this.”

Elizabeth is leaning out of the top-floor window, puffing on a cigarette but not inhaling. The last time she remembers doing something like this she was fourteen. It was a Pall Mall and she was hiding from her parents. Now she’s thirty-two and hiding from her son’s nanny. Age doesn’t make us any wiser or less prone to guilt.

She found an old packet of cigarettes when she was searching North’s study, looking for clues, trying to piece together his last days, checking his credit card statements, mobile phone bills and emails; lipstick on his shirt collars; or another woman’s scent on his clothes.

Suddenly nauseous, she breaks the cigarette in half, wrapping the butt in a tissue before flushing it down the loo. The tissue dissolves but the dog-end is still there, bobbing in the bowl, mocking her.

She brushes her teeth and goes back to the study, sitting at North’s desk, feeling the contours in the old leather chair, worn shiny in places. She found the chair in a second-hand shop in Camden just after they bought the house in Barnes. North had wanted a new chair, but she told him this one was a classic. It reminded her of something you see in old movies about newspaper offices where reporters hammer on manual typewriters and yell at copyboys to run their words to the subs desk.

Her personal dreams of journalism had made this image seem romantic. At university she imagined herself as a famous columnist-the next Julie Burchill or Zoe Heller or Lynn Barber. Instead she’d presented a “lifestyle” program, as forgettable as a phone number.

Elizabeth opens the report from the private detective. Her husband’s days are broken down into hours and minutes: times, dates and places. Tucked into the front sleeve of the folder is a USB stick. Using a directional microphone, Colin Hackett had recorded some of the conversation between North and the two men he met at The Warrington in Maida Vale.

Plugging the stick into her laptop, Elizabeth opens the audio file and presses “play.” There are background voices, car sounds, wind rustling the leaves. Three voices, one of them North’s, another speaks a guttural-sounding English, his words like gravel rolling in a drum. The other accent is almost too perfect, like listening to someone mimicking Roger Moore.

Voice 1:… you should stop saying these things and calm down…

North: Don’t tell me to calm down… I approved the transfers. I signed off on the details…

Voice 1: You did your job… due diligence… nobody is suggesting otherwise…

North:… it’s a bad sign… the money came from somewhere… it’s going somewhere… tell me.

Voice 1: These are not questions you need to ask. Worry about life, worry about your wife and family…

North: Leave my family out of this.

Voice 1: These things will pass…

Voice 2: We have a proverb where I come from, Mr. North. If you have done nothing wrong, don’t worry about the devil knocking at your door…

North: But I am doing something wrong…

Voice 1: You’re exaggerating… nothing has changed.

There is a garbled section of the recording. North appears to have walked away from the table, but the men are still talking.

Voice 2:… he’s rattled…

Voice 1:… I will call our friend. Tell him we’re concerned…

Voice 2: The time for talking is over… this is what happens when you deal with amateurs…