Sobel whispers something to the driver, who has gone quiet, touching nervously at his mouth with a napkin.
“Oh, and I’m sorry about your car. That broken window. Just to prove there are no hard feelings, I’ll pay for the damage.”
Ruiz pulls an envelope of cash from his jacket, tossing it on to the table where banknotes spill across the white linen. “You left that on the front seat of my car. It’s all there—count it if you like.”
Yahya Maluk pushes back his chair. “I didn’t come here for this sideshow. Who is this man? What’s he doing here?”
Chalcott tells Sobel to get Maluk out of the restaurant.
“You’re leaving so soon? We’ve hardly had a chance to talk,” says Ruiz. “I was going to ask you about Mohammed Ibrahim. He’s looking very healthy for a man who died a few years ago and then escaped from jail. How was Ramsay’s restaurant in Maida Vale? I’ve heard good reports. The man has a potty mouth, but he can cook up a storm.”
Blood has pooled in Maluk’s cheeks like pink flowers. He wipes a film of perspiration from his top lip, stammering, “How does he know about Ibrahim? You said nobody…”
“Shut the fuck up!” says Chalcott.
The driver leads Maluk down the stairs. Luca and Daniela get another set of pictures as they leave.
The upstairs waitress has come to the table with Ruiz’s beer. She is staring at the money.
“Don’t get too excited,” he tells her. “It’s not your tip. This is what you call a bribe.”
She hesitates and walks back to the kitchen.
Ruiz shakes out his serviette. “You’re probably wondering how I found you, Brendan. You’ll find my mobile phone on the floor of the car that you sent to my daughter’s house. It was tracked to the garage beneath your offices. While on this subject—I’d like the phone back.”
Chalcott is staring at Sobel, who is altering the position of his body, trying to disassociate himself from the conversation or to disappear sideways.
“What do you want, Mr. Ruiz?”
“Call me Vincent, please. And you are…?”
“I don’t think that’s important.”
“No need to be so formal—I know all about Brendan and that office of yours. No listed telephone numbers or company tax returns.”
“We’re a communications company,” says Chalcott.
“Not the CIA then?”
Chalcott is trying hard to look relaxed and sound perfectly natural. He doesn’t like being embarrassed.
“Perhaps we could talk about this somewhere more private?”
“This is a private dining room.”
“Just you and me.”
“I’m happy if you want to invite Yahya. We can bring Ibrahim along. We can play twenty questions.”
Ruiz slides his hand into his pocket again. This time he produces a small black notebook.
“That bribe was very clumsy. I thought you guys had moved beyond trying to buy people off with beads and trinkets. This is what you wanted: Richard North’s notebook. Is this why you killed Zac Osborne?”
“We were not complicit in the murder of Zac Osborne,” says Sobel.
“Complicit: such an old-fashioned term. What about Richard North and Colin Hackett?”
“Please keep your voice down, Mr. Ruiz.”
“Explain it to me.”
“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 façade 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.
31
LONDON
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.
Moving in the opposite direction, towards the stairs, she can feel the worn carpet, the pattern faded long ago beneath her bare feet.
She knocks on his door. No answer. Knocks again.
It opens suddenly, pulling her inwards and she bounces off his chest. He grabs her by the hair and puts his hand over her mouth and nose. Not Ruiz, but a ghost who walks through locked doors. His lips brush against her ear. “Do you remember me?”
She inhales a breath.
“I am going to take my hand away. If you scream I shall kill you. Do you understand?”
He pushes her towards the bed and chains the door. He’s wearing a suit and white shirt without a tie and his hair is shaved at the edges, longer on top. The only light is from the window, a faint glow that paints the contours of his face in monotones, but not with detail or depth.
Words have turned to bubbles in Holly’s throat. She looks around the room, searching for Ruiz.
“Your friend is not here. He seems to have abandoned you.”
His eyes drift down her body, hunger in them.
“Why did you kill Zac?” she asks defiantly. “He never did anything to you.”
“He would not communicate.”
“That’s not a crime. He fought for his country.”
“Maybe I am fighting for mine.”
Holly looks at the bed. “Are you going to rape me?”
“I don’t rape women unless they’re whores. Are you a whore?”
“No.”
“Are you a virgin?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He smiles. “You think I’m evil, but it was a woman who betrayed the first man. Women are the sinful sex. You come to a man’s room in the middle of the night. Look at how you dress. You are like uncovered meat, and then you wonder why the dogs come and feed upon you.”
Holly sits on the edge of the bed, her knees close together, one foot on top of the other. The Courier takes the chair by the window. When he turns his head the light catches one side of his face. His eye is like an amber bead pressed into teak.
“Can you imagine all the germs that collect in a place like this,” he says. “The acts that have been committed on that bed by women like you.”
His eyes drop to Holly’s loins as though drawn there.
“Come here.”
“No.”
“You need to, Holly. Sometimes in life we are given a choice. This isn’t one of those times.”
Holly crosses the room.
“Kneel.”
“Please.”
“Don’t beg. Did you find the notebook?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where is it?”
“The journalists have it.”
Dropping to her knees in front of him, she can smell his strange odor. He takes the back of her head, pulling her closer. Running his fingers through her hair, he lets them trail down her face until his thumb brushes her lips and he pushes it against her teeth, smearing saliva across her cheek. Her eyes go in and out of focus.
His thumb passes her lips again and she opens them, taking his thumb inside her mouth, sucking it gently. He jerks his hand away.
“An offer like that is so typical of a woman like you. A manipulator. You claim victimhood, but you use your body and a man’s desire to get what you want. You think that if you can get me between your lips or your thighs that you can take control.”
“No.”
He pushes her away. “Get dressed, my little liar.”
“I don’t have any clothes.”
“I was going to wait here and kill your friend, but he has obviously found someone else to keep his feet warm.”
“Where are you taking me?”
The Courier stands and checks the corridor. “First we are going to get your clothes. I am not going to tie your hands and cover your mouth, but this gun will be pressed against your back when we walk from the hotel. If you say anything, if you smile or nod or alert anyone, I will kill them first and you will be responsible for their death.”
32
LONDON
Ruiz walks across the empty supermarket car park to a dark-colored limousine that soaks up the light from an overhead lamppost. The driver, young, begloved, opens a door for him. Douglas Evans is sitting in the back seat, his trouser cuffs rising up to reveal his pale ankles and black socks.
“This is an interesting choice of time and place, Mr. Ruiz, very cloak and dagger. We could have met at a more sociable hour.”
“At your club, perhaps?”
“I doubt if my club would have allowed you in.” His cultured accent is effortlessly condescending. “What can I do for you, Mr. Ruiz?”
“There is a man in this country—a wanted Iraqi war criminal called Mohammed Ibrahim Omar al-Muslit. He escaped from a prison outside of Baghdad four years ago. The Americans have him listed as having died in custody, but the Iraqis say he was accidentally released.”
Evans blinks his droopy eyelids and runs a hand ov
er his forehead, pale as a cue ball.
“What makes you think he’s in the UK?”
“Elizabeth North identified him from a photograph. She saw him with Yahya Maluk, a banker on the board of Mersey Fidelity.”
“I know who Mr. Maluk is. Is Mrs. North certain of who she saw?”
“Yes.”
Evans tugs at his shirt-cuffs as though his arms have grown longer during the course of their conversation.
“You asked about the Americans,” says Ruiz. “You wanted to know what they were up to. They know about Ibrahim and Maluk.”
There is a flicker in the corner of Evans’ mouth. Just as quickly, he resumes his requiem mode, a marvelous silence that borders on deafness.
Ruiz hands him a file.
“What’s this?”
“A copy of a notebook belonging to Richard North and a file he collected. A forensic accountant will be able to explain what it means.”
“Perhaps you could précis it for me.”
“A banking scandal.”
“Another one.”
“This one is special. Iraq reconstruction funds, the proceeds of crime, tax avoidance, the sponsoring of terrorism—money that shouldn’t be in a UK bank. I’m assuming that you’ll pass this information on to the relevant authorities.”
Evans rolls the information around in his cheeks as if sipping sherry. He opens the envelope and leafs through the pages.
“Where are the originals?”
“Safe.”
“In the hands of your journalist friends?”
Ruiz has already reached for the door handle.
“They cannot publish,” says Evans. “We need time to study this.”
“Your problem, not mine.”
33
LONDON
Arched like a bent bow, Joe O’Loughlin’s head is pulled backwards by the noose around his neck that leads to his bound wrists and ankles. Curled on the floor of the hotel room, he cannot straighten his legs without tightening the noose.
The Wreckage: A Thriller Page 39
