Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

The rolling banner gives his name: Richard North. Missing millions, it reads. Is this why Zac died? Is this why people are chasing her?

A shop assistant is standing next to her in a pressed white shirt and narrow tie. Indian. Early twenties.

“Can I help with something?”

“Do you have a phone?”

“Our phone section is over there?”

“I don’t want to buy one-I want to borrow one.”

The sales assistant takes out his own mobile. Emptying her pockets, Holly finds a worn square of white cardboard: Ruiz’s name and his home phone number. She punches the keys, tucking the phone between her shoulder and ear. There’s no answer. She starts to leave a message, but pauses, turning to the assistant.

“What day is it today?”

“August twenty-eighth.”

Holly looks at her watch and remembers the wedding.

Chalcott is on the sideline, watching his teenage son play football. His phone is ringing: Sobel from London.

“I tried you in the office.”

“It’s my day off.”

“You’re outside.”

“My boy has a game.”

“Who’s winning?”

“Forty minutes and no score-foreplay shouldn’t last that long.”

A whistle blows. Chalcott shouts at the referee, “The kid dived-are you blind?”

“What position does your boy play?”

“There are positions?” Chalcott finishes his takeaway coffee and crushes the paper mug. “What news?”

“According to the bank Richard North ran off with fifty-four million.”

“Dollars?”

“Pounds. All sorts of theories are being bandied about.”

“ ‘Bandied’? You’ve been in Blighty too long. You’re starting to sound like a Limey shirt-lifter.”

Sobel laughs hollowly. “We’ve intercepted a phone call from Holly Knight to the ex-detective. She left half a message on his answering machine. The call was traced to a shopping mall in Richmond.”

“Did you pick her up?”

“She was gone by the time we arrived, but we’ve managed to get CCTV footage of her talking to some guy. The Brits may have an ID. He’s a tramp. No fixed address.”

“What about the ex-detective?”

“Ruiz says he’ll do a deal for the girl if we back off.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No.”

“How much do the Brits know?”

“Green shoots.”

Chalcott is walking along the sideline, ignoring the crowd noises. He pauses. “We may have a problem from another quarter.”

“What’s that?”

“Someone is asking about Ibrahim.”

“Who?”

“A journalist called Luca Terracini, based in Baghdad. He’s like Osama’s Lord Haw Haw.”

“Didn’t he win a Pulitzer?”

“That’s him. Sometimes I wish we were still in the fifties. We could haul guys like Terracini up before the Anti-American Committee and get them labeled communists and traitors. Instead we give the cunts prizes. If it weren’t for us, Terracini would be picking through the rubble of the next Ground Zero.”

“How did he trace Ibrahim?”

“He hasn’t, but he’s sniffing around. He’s with a woman-a UN auditor. She likely made the connection.”

“How are we playing it?”

“I don’t want Ibrahim spooked. The Iraqis are kicking Terracini out of the country.”

“That should solve our immediate problem.”

“You just worry about the girl.”

The wedding is over, the rice has been thrown and photographs are being posed until the smiles look painted on. Ruiz slips away from the guests and well-wishers, taking a gravel path around the side of the church. He walks to the edge of the Grand Central Canal where brightly painted canal boats look like children’s toys left behind after a summer picnic. A group of eager ducks navigates within range, expecting bread to be thrown, bored with the daily grind of paddling.

Ruiz takes out the tin of sweets and puts one in his mouth, rolling it over his tongue. There is something quite melancholy about seeing a daughter married, walking her down the aisle and handing her on to another man. Claire has not been his little girl for twenty-five years, but for a brief instant in the church the past and present had collapsed into a single moment and he saw her as a child, turning to him, saying, “Look at me, Daddy. Look at me.”

Ruiz glances over his shoulder. The photographer is waving his arms, trying to marshal everyone on to the front steps, the bride and groom at the centre. He might be directing aircraft or sending semaphore messages. Phillip’s family are standing together-charming sociopaths with top-drawer accents and expensive clothes. His mother, Patricia, is wearing a fur coat that is totally out of season and cost the lives of countless small mammals.

Ruiz takes out the mobile he borrowed from the professor and punches a number. He listens to the call being redirected electronically… once… twice… Finally, he hears it ringing.

“Hello, Capable.”

“Mr. Ruiz.”

“You should call me Vincent.”

“I’ll remember that, Mr. Ruiz. How’s your mother?”

“Still complaining.”

“Mine too.”

Henry Jones, otherwise known as “Capable,” is one of those individuals that people sometimes call unlucky but really believe are somehow jinxed. Awkward and anxious, things break when he’s around. Vases topple. Light bulbs pop. Motors burn out. Fuses short. Doors lock with keys inside. The only exception is with computers, which seem to respond to Capable like a violin in the hands of a virtuoso.

In his callow and foolish youth, Capable had been an expert hacker-famous for penetrating one of the biggest UK banks and giving Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, a zero account balance. He didn’t steal the money, he simply transferred it to the Inland Revenue with a note from Brown saying, “Merry Christmas, have a drink on me.”

Ruiz came across Capable a few years later, when the poacher had turned gamekeeper, advising banks on cyber security. He had been arrested after a misunderstanding with an undercover copper in a public toilet in Green Park that had resulted in a broken jaw and a public indecency charge. Ruiz gave Capable a character reference and saved him from being passed around by the cellblock sisters at Wormwood Scrubs like a party bong.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Ruiz?”

“I need you to trace a mobile phone.”

“Stolen?”

“Mislaid.”

“What was the last location?”

“I dropped it on the back seat of a dark blue Audi in Primrose Hill.”

“Turned on.”

“Of course.”

Capable is already tapping on a keyboard, listening to some techno beat on his sound system. Ruiz can picture him in his pokey flat in Hounslow, surrounded by computer screens and hard drives; dressed in jogging gear and sporting one of those droopy Mexican bandit moustaches that nobody-not even Mexican bandits-sport any more.

Most of his “security” work is done on the wrong side of midnight when internet speeds are faster and less people are monitoring their machines. He can piggyback off other systems, working through proxy computers, leaving no electronic trace.

Ruiz has a limited understanding of the technology, but he knows that mobile phones can be tracked because they constantly send out a signal looking for the nearest phone towers. Signal strength and direction can be triangulated to pinpoint the location of a handset down to as little as fifty yards.

“I need one more favor,” says Ruiz. “I want you to reroute my calls.”

“What number?”

“Use this one.”

Ruiz hangs up and wanders back towards the wedding party. Claire and Phillip are being photographed beneath a fig tree with the canal in the background. Miranda drags him into the next picture: The bride and her father. Smiling stiffly, Ruiz looks past the camera to the main doors of the church. That’s when he sees her in the shadows, her arms wrapped around herself and her feet splayed slightly inwards.