Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

“How did you do that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Holly tilts the soft-drink can, draining the remainder. She toys with the can, running her finger around the rim.

“What’s the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist?”

“Psychiatrists can medicate.”

“Just my luck.”

“Why wouldn’t you talk to the police?”

“Same reason I don’t want to talk to you.”

“But you are talking to me. You don’t trust them, do you? You’ve spent time in custody. Did something happen to you?”

She’s not looking at him now. Her lips are thin lines.

“Can you really tell when someone is lying?” he asks.

“You don’t believe it.”

“I keep an open mind.”

“Things get polluted if you leave them open. They collect rainwater. Litter. Leaves.”

Joe has had people like Holly in his consulting room. Patients unwilling to trust or frightened of what their thoughts and words might reveal about them. Sometimes Holly acts as though she has all the self-awareness of a hairdryer, but she’s picking up on every detail of their conversation, his unspoken signals, mannerisms and micro-expressions.

Holly asks him what time it is.

“Does it matter?” he asks.

“Is everything with you a question?” She bounces off the bed and walks to the window, her bare feet making the floor creak. “I need to get out of here.”

“Vincent said you should stay put.”

“Nobody knows I’m here. Just for half an hour. A walk.”

He agrees. They stop at a cafe on Edgware Road with metal tables and chairs on the pavement. Holly is hungry again. She orders a muffin and a cappuccino. Joe pays. He’s still trying to fathom this girl, whose piercings seem to multiply in her ears, three in her left ear, four in her right; another in her navel, which he glimpses when she yawns and stretches her arms above her head.

“Get a good look?” she says. She flips up her T-shirt, showing her bra. Her breasts. He looks away. Wrongly accused. Within moments, Holly acts as though the entire incident never happened. She flicks through magazines on a wooden rack. A newspaper lies open on a table. The headline: ROGUE BANKER FLIGHT RISK. Holly turns to the full story and reads about Richard North, her lips forming the words.

“How does somebody spend that much money?” she asks. “He could buy an island or his own plane. If I had fifty-four million quid I’d go to Jamaica and spend the rest of my life on a beach.”

“Do you remember him?”

“I guess.”

“What do you remember?”

“He was married. His wife was away for the weekend. They had a small boy.” Holly breaks her muffin into pieces, picking at the crumbs with her fingertips. “He asked me if I had ever done something wrong. He meant illegal. I thought maybe he knew we were going to rob him.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“He picked me up.”

“Just like that?”

Holly fixes him with a pitying look. “That’s what married men do-they look at someone like me and they want to know what I’m like in bed, what I look like naked, what I’ll do with my pretty little mouth. You’re doing it now.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. All men are the same. They either hit me or hit on me or do both.”

“That’s a very sad view of life.”

“It’s the truth.”

Joe doesn’t want to argue with her. He sticks to his questions, asking what she stole.

“The usual stuff-phones, laptops, cameras, jewelry-things we could carry in the saddle bags of Zac’s bike.”

“What did you do then?”

“We fenced it.”

“Where?”

Holly rolls her eyes. “There’s a guy I know in the East End. Bernie Levinson. He owns a pawnshop. Bernie bought the stuff from me. He’s tighter than a duck’s arse but sometimes he lends me money when I’m short of the rent.”

Holly brushes the crumbs from her lap and looks around for something else to do. She’s sick of answering questions. “Now it’s my turn,” she says. “Are you married?”

“Technically.”

What does that mean?”

“I’m not divorced.”

“Separated?”

“Presently.”

“Why is your hand shaking?”

“I have Parkinson’s.”

She remains silent.

“Is that it?”

Holly shrugs. “It’s no fun unless you lie to me.”

The hotel in Istanbul is in a filthy side street between a Chinese wholesalers and a factory where African workers make knock-offs of European labels for Russian tourists. Globalization in a microcosm; profit as god.

Inside the arched gateway, along a narrow passage, there is a courtyard filled with apricot and orange trees around a rectangular pool with water the color of green moss.

Daniela emerges from the bathroom, dressed in a robe, her hair dripping and the ragged curls falling around her neck. Luca is still toweling off.

“I’m probably going to regret this,” she says.

“What happened to the post-coital glow?”

“I’m not talking about the sex.”

Luca holds out his arms and she comes to him, tucking her head beneath his chin, her breasts against his ribs. He can feel the warmth of her breath against his neck.

“Are you really going to London?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to ask Yahya Maluk why one of his companies is smuggling stolen money from Iraq. I’m also going to ask him if he knows Mohammed Ibrahim-a man who helped Saddam steal billions of dollars from his own people.”

“Just like that?”

“Yep.”

“And I suppose he’s going to throw up his hands and confess everything.”

“That would be nice.”

“You have the word of a one-armed former truck driver and a series of coincidences.”

“They’re more than just coincidences.”

“Yahya Maluk has unlimited funds and an army of lawyers. He’ll get injunctions to stop any story. He’ll sue you for defamation.”

“I know that.”

“Why then?”

“Sometimes the only way to rattle someone like Maluk is to shake his gilded cage.”

“That’s a dangerous game.”

“I’m just following the money.”

“You could stop.”

“What if it’s funding the insurgency?”

“Nobody is going to be surprised.”

Luca feels like a mediocre gambler trying to bluff an expert. Daniela has slipped away and gone to the latticed window. It has grown dark outside. The courtyard is strung with fairy lights that follow the contours of tree trunks and branches. Over the rooftops, the dome of Santa Sophia is bathed in gold.

“Come to London with me,” he says.

“Why?”

“I don’t want you lose you.”

“We’re different people, Luca. I deal in numbers and balance sheets. You deal in hunches and hearsay.”

“I search for the facts.”

“But you never have them all. You gather just enough, write a story and move on.”

“You make me sound like a gigolo.”

“No, you’re not that good.”

Luca can see what she’s like-her father’s daughter, practical to the point of impracticality. He leans forward, brushing his lips against hers, holding the kiss.

Later, lying naked in the air-conditioned room, his heartbeat returning to normal, Luca wonders what it’s like for a woman, that moment when pleasure overcomes self-control and the wave breaks inside her.

“Do you still want me to come to London?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll come to London.”

Rowan has to shake Elizabeth awake. She is twisted in the sheets, lying on a bed shaped like a racing car with a Green Goblin toy wedged under her hip.