Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

Grimacing slightly at the intrusion, she stares at the ceiling, letting her left hand reach across the gap and take hold of Ruiz’s fingers.

“You’re six centimeters,” announces the midwife. “Call who you have to call-this baby is coming today.”

Fifteen minutes later Ruiz watches as they wheel Elizabeth along the corridor and into the lift. Her father and brother are on their way. They’re going to welcome a new addition to the Bach family-another limb to the family tree, a dynasty in progress.

Ruiz uses a payphone in the visitor’s lounge.

“Capable.”

“Mr. Ruiz. Sorry. Shit! No names. Stupid of me.”

“Relax.”

“OK. Yeah.”

“Any messages?”

“Your friend called. Is he really a professor? I’ve never met a proper professor.”

“What did he want, Capable?”

“Ah, I wrote it down, he said, ‘Holly remembers the notebook’ and he gave me an address.”

Ruiz jots it down on the back of his hand. “Another favor, Capable, I want you to find someone for me. Polina Dulsanya. She might be working as a nanny. You could try the agencies.”

“What do you need?”

“An address.”

As the last rays of token sunlight strike the towers of Canary Wharf, four divers tumble backwards from the Zodiacs. Slick as seals, they disappear beneath the surface leaving barely a trace save for the brown bubbles that fill and pop.

The officer in charge is short and barrel-chested, clad in a wetsuit that makes him look as if he’s carved from ebony. He swings an air tank into a boat and uses a towel to wipe his face and neck before washing out his mouth with bottled water.

Campbell Smith is standing on a narrow strip of beach that bleeds back to a stand of willow trees.

“We found the body about eighty yards from here,” says the senior diver. “You can see the orange marker buoy. They weighted the body with chains and breezeblocks.”

Campbell glances at his shoes, which are sinking into the fetid ooze. Paul Smith brogues. Unsalvageable.

“How?”

“One bullet. Back of the head. Execution style.”

“We likely to recover a shell?”

“Entry and exit wounds. We’ll keep looking for the murder weapon but it’s blacker than black down there. Visibility nil. We’re working a circular search pattern from a single anchor chain, moving further and further out, working by touch.”

Behind him, a white tent has been raised around a bloated and discolored torso, strung with weed and wrack. The body is curled in an embryonic position, with drying mud giving it the color and texture of desiccated leather.

“Where’s Noonan?”

“On his way.”

The lockup is one of a dozen single garages in the laneway, each with double doors that are scrawled with graffiti signatures, crude diagrams and territorial markings. Streetlights barely shift the gloom and trains clatter past on the main line from Waterloo.

Joe watches the faces in the brightly lit carriages, passive and incurious about the world outside their windows.

There is a car parked at an angle halfway along the lane. The door opens, but no light comes on. Even in silhouette Joe can recognize Ruiz. He walks like a bear, rocking from side to side, the legacy of a bullet that tore through his thigh six years ago.

Holly lets out a squeak of excitement and runs to Ruiz, stopping suddenly when she seems certain to hug him. Instead Ruiz takes hold of her shoulders. It’s strangely intimate, like watching a grandfather admonish his granddaughter for running in the house.

“Have you been avoiding me?” she asks.

“I’ve been busy.”

“I’ve been crazy bored.” She glances back at Joe. “I mean, no offence, but he’s got this creepy way of looking inside your head.”

“Yeah, I know, but you two are made for each other. You’re a human lie detector and he’s a professional mind reader.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Quite the contrary.”

He nods to Joe. “I got your message. Which one is it?”

Holly points. “Zac has the only key.”

Ruiz goes to the boot of the car and pulls out bolt cutters along with a torch. Running his fingers over the padlock, he notices the gleam of scratched metal. Someone has tried to pick the lock.

The teeth of the cutters slice through the padlock. Lifting the floor bolt, Ruiz swings the doors open and runs his hand along the wall at chest height, feeling for a switch. A tube light blinks and blazes.

Holly’s shoulders sag under another defeat.

The floor is swept clean except for a pile of rubbish that includes old clothes, oil bottles, paint tins, polish, leather protector and a sponge. An old bicycle frame hangs from one wall, along with the wheels of a pram.

“It’s gone then,” says Holly.

“Who knew about the lockup?” asks Joe.

“Locals. Kids mainly. They play football in the lane. They were always pleading with Zac to give them a ride of the bike. He used to pay them to keep an eye on the place.”

Ruiz crouches and begins sorting through the large pile of rubbish on the floor. Pulling at a strap, he drags a scarred leather pannier across the oil-stained concrete, into the light. It belongs to a motorbike. Inside the pannier is a plastic bag. Inside the bag is a jacket. Inside the jacket is a notebook.

The three men get off the bus at Dunstable Road and walk beneath the railway underpass and along Leagrave Road. Syd and Rafiq are kicking a squashed Coke can along the pavement while Taj listens to music on his headphones.

Syd is puffing hard, unfit and overweight. He’s hungry. They stop at a chippy opposite the Britannia Estates and buy five quid’s worth of chips with curry sauce, sharing a feast on butcher’s paper. Afterwards they throw rocks at an abandoned bus propped on bricks and push a supermarket trolley into the stormwater drain, where it bounces end over end and settles in the mud.

When they reach the Traveller’s Rest, they follow a side path along the chain-link fence, out of sight from the main road. The air smells of exhaust fumes and chemicals that blow across the industrial lots and freight yard. Syd goes first because he knows how to work the lights. As he puts the key in the lock he hears something behind him, beyond the fence in the freight yard. Maybe it’s a dog scavenging for food, he thinks, peering through the fence. There are shipping containers stacked in neat rows and freight cars rusting on the sidings.

Stepping inside the room, he kicks aside a crumpled cardboard box and closes the curtains, before turning on the lights.

The others follow him. Taj sniffs the air. “What’s that stink? Smells like somebody rubbed shit on the walls. Did you take a dump, Syd?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“It’s always you,” says Rafiq.

Syd is banging on the top of an old TV that has never worked, trying to get a signal. Taj is sitting on a sofa that is spilling foam. Rafiq keeps watch at the window. Through a half-inch gap in the curtains, he sees the Courier coming, moving along the walkway.

“He’s here.”

The young men take their places. Standing. Showing respect. Aware of how the atmosphere in the room changes whenever this man appears.

The Courier looks from face to face, stopping at Syd.

“Have you been talking to anyone?”

“No, not me, not a soul, nobody.”

“I heard you were bragging to your mates.”

“No fucking way.”

“The next time you come in here, lock the door.”

The Courier paces the room, checking the light fittings, power sockets, running his fingers under the edge of tables and along the underside of the windowsills. His lips are flat and thin against his teeth.