Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

“You are not owed an explanation.”

Ruiz taps the notebook against his cheek. “You have broken into my house, you have gate-crashed my daughter’s wedding, bugged my phones, hounded my friends… I’m owed for that.”

“You must think this is feeding time at the zoo,” says Chalcott, who has folded his serviette and placed it neatly on the side of his plate. “I won’t say that it’s been a pleasure.”

“I thought the CIA might be investigating a money-laundering operation,” says Ruiz. “Or trying to track down a wanted terrorist. But then I saw Mr. Maluk arrive. You’ve known all along about the cash being laundered through Mersey Fidelity. The ghost accounts. Iraqi money. Reconstruction funds. Drug profits… Which begs the question-why would the CIA allow something like that to happen?”

“That is a question too far, Mr. Ruiz, but you are right about one thing-you are jeopardizing a major security operation.”

“Oh, I see. There’s a bigger plan. So what is Mohammed Ibrahim doing in London? Perhaps you organized his release from prison. Is he your monster?”

“Be careful, Mr. Ruiz.”

“You know what they say about lying down with dogs?… You wake up with a career in the movies. No, that’s not it. Fleas. You wake up with fleas.”

Chalcott’s eyes behind rimless glasses seem to be concentrated on burning a hole through Ruiz’s forehead. “You do us a disservice, sir. You come in here, treating us like the Bumstead crowd, making outrageous allegations, getting in my face in a public place-that’s not very intelligent behavior. We can go somewhere now and talk about this, or I can find you later.”

It is a threat. Chalcott doesn’t look like a dangerous man, but an unlined face can hide a myriad of sins. His thick brown hair is ruffled slightly by the currents from the air conditioner. Joe O’Loughlin has taught Ruiz that true narcissists become intensely angry if anyone suggests they are not perfect. They seek to destroy the messenger rather than admit their flawless image might be blemished.

“I thought you were a clever man,” says Chalcott. “Clearly, I was misinformed. You come in here looking like you fell out of a laundry bag, making threats and baseless allegations, thinking you can rattle me. You think I give a fuck what some pissant, washed-up former detective is going to do?”

Ruiz looks at his hands and feet. He was wrong to come here; foolish to think they would tell him anything. By confronting them, by humiliating them publicly, by peeling away the carefully constructed facade of their work, Ruiz has inserted broken glass into the brains of dangerous men.

The manager has arrived. He is standing three feet away, his tongue wetting his lips.

“Perhaps you gentlemen could lower your voices.”

Chalcott’s eyes are filled with a black light. “Why don’t you fuck off?”

The manager takes a step back.

“It’s all right,” says Ruiz. “I’ll be leaving in a moment.”

“Nice to hear it,” says Sobel.

The driver leans down to whisper something in Ruiz’s ear but doesn’t finish the sentence.

In that moment something breaks inside Ruiz-not a clean snap like a bone or a branch splintering, but a moist sound like wet sheets flapping on a windy day. A kaleidoscope of images tumbles through his mind-Zac Osborne’s tortured body, Elizabeth North vomiting in the gutter, Holly Knight without a family, Richard North dragged from the stinking mud.

In the pause between heartbeats, Ruiz swings his elbow back in a short arc, connecting with the driver’s throat, closing his windpipe. In the same motion, he drags him face-first on to the table sending plates and glasses crashing to the floor. The next blow is delivered with a pepper mill inside Ruiz’s fist, hooking the driver under the left eye. He doesn’t want to stop. He can feel the old wheels starting to turn and the cobwebs being blown out. It feels better than it should.

“That’s enough,” says Sobel, holding his hand inside his jacket.

Ruiz places the pepper mill back on the table and rights his upturned chair. The notebook has fallen on to the floor. Picking it up, he brushes beads of water from the cover.

“This is what you wanted. You can stop looking for Holly Knight and you can stop following me.”

He presses it against Chalcott’s chest.

“I realize that you’re not going to tell me what’s going on. Keeping secrets is how you guys get a hard-on. But just in case you think of coming after me or Holly, you should know that photographs were taken of you entering this restaurant. Time and date stamped. I might never learn the whole story, but I have enough to cause you some embarrassment.”

No reaction. Ruiz walks down the stairs and out of the restaurant, listening to the soft scuff of his shoes on the pavement, trying to make his heart beat slower. Luca and Daniela have already gone. He moves quickly, knowing that someone will most likely be trying to follow him.

Reaching the junction, he turns south and ponders whether anything has been achieved. Not a lot, he suspects, but subtlety was never one of his strengths. He has just broken all his own rules about keeping a low profile and never revealing his full knowledge. It was a conscious, culpable, willful lapse and these men could make him pay.

Heading underground, he takes the escalator into the bowels of Tower Hill Station and pauses in the walkway between the west-and eastbound platforms of the Circle Line, waiting for the first train to arrive.

He notices a man with a knapsack, a woman with a baby in a sling, a teenager carrying a skateboard with his wrist in plaster. Two men in bulky jackets and boots are jogging down the escalator, hearing the approaching train.

The carriage doors slide open. Ruiz steps inside. The men squeeze into an adjoining carriage. Ruiz squats out of sight and waits for the doors to start closing. At the last possible moment he steps off. Running up the stairs and over the tracks, he forces open the closing doors of a westbound train.

Nobody is following him.

Holly opens her eyes, awake instantly, disturbed by something. She listens to the sounds of the city. Rubber on tarmac. Trains on tracks. Car horns and sirens.

Letting her heart slow, she turns back to the bed. The digital clock is glowing red: 2:47.

Lowering her head to the pillow, she stares at the water stains above her head and the cracked plaster rosette. For just a moment she remembers the night she waited for her father to return home from the pub to see the ruined ceiling and flooded room, her younger brother Albie cowering beneath the sheets.

Her father had a strange temper-placid one moment, explosive the next, with nothing in between; no safe ground or sanctuary or flashing light to warn her of the dangers ahead. She learned to read his moods by studying his face, discovering what lay behind his eyes where a fuse was always spluttering and hissing.

She hears the sound again-soft footsteps on the metal of the fire escape. Someone trying not to be heard. Awake this time. Her heart hammering. Certain.

The professor has the room next door. She moves to the interconnecting door and presses her head against it, the wood cool against the shell of her ear. No more sounds.

Opening the bedroom door, she peers along the corridor, left and right, deserted. There is a smell, something familiar yet disturbing. It filled her nostrils when Zac died. The man can’t have found her. He doesn’t know her name. She should wake Ruiz. He’ll know what to do. Keep her safe.

She looks at her bare feet, her T-shirt and panties. She should have changed. Something moves in the corner of her eye at the far end of the corridor. It’s gone. It might have been nothing. This is crazy. She needs Ruiz.