The Wreckage: A Thriller Read online

  “Don’t let them shoot anyone on their first day.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “How is the Irish route?”

  “Safer than it used to be, but I miss the old days—we could fire first and ask questions later.”

  Luca shakes his head and Shaun laughs. “Got a mate coming in. Dave Edgar. ‘Edge.’ You’ll like him. Edge was Third Infantry Division Armour, first into Baghdad in ’03. Toppled Saddam all on his own.”

  “And he wants to come back?”

  Shaun rubs his thumb and forefinger together. “It’s all about the folding stuff.”

  The SUVs are ready. He nods to his colleague.

  “Come to my drinks. You can meet him.”

  After Shaun has gone, Luca goes back to waiting. Iraqi bureaucrats operate on their own timetables and the idea of an independent media acting as a guardian of the public interest is a complete anathema to the culture.

  Minutes pass slowly. Closing his eyes, his mind floods with images from the bank—the burnt corpses and empty vault; the manager’s body, a macabre Venus de Milo dipped in tar, locked in a silent scream.

  He opens them again. A secretary is standing in front of him; her body garbed in black and her head covered in a white scarf. She does not make eye contact with him in the mirrored walls of the lift or as she holds open the doors. Falling into step behind her, Luca is taken along wood-paneled corridors hung with tapestries.

  Judge Ahmed Kuther isn’t alone. Five of his colleagues are leaning over his desk, looking at photographs.

  “Come in, Luca, come in,” he says, waving him closer. “I’m just back from Moscow. I have pictures.”

  Someone passes him a photograph. It shows Kuther in Red Square, grinning widely, with his arm around a blonde wearing a short skirt and a slash of red lipstick.

  “She had a younger sister. Another blonde.”

  “Double the fun,” says one of his friends.

  “For double the price?” jokes another.

  Luca puts the photograph on the desk. “It’s a nice souvenir. Not one for your wife to see.”

  Everyone laughs, including the judge. Kuther is wearing a well-cut suit and a blue tie rather than the traditional loose-fitting shirts and long cloaks. His only concession to his heritage is a kaffiyeh, a square scarf folded and placed over a white cap, which he wears on those rare occasions he risks appearing in public.

  Twice tortured and imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, the judge is now tasked with the most dangerous job in Iraq. The Commission of Public Integrity is the country’s anti-corruption watchdog and has issued over a thousand arrest warrants against corrupt officials in the past four years. Seven members of his staff have been killed during the same period, which is why Kuther travels with up to thirty bodyguards.

  Clapping his hands together, he sends people back to their desks. Then he slumps in a leather chair, spinning it back and forth from the window.

  “How was Moscow?”

  “It’s not Baghdad.”

  “Successful trip?”

  “How does one measure the success of such a trip? I addressed a legal conference, while the Minister asked for money, shook hands and smiled for photographs.” He circles his hand in the air. “But you didn’t come here to talk about Moscow.”

  “There was another robbery.”

  “I heard.”

  “How much money was taken?”

  “Even if I knew the exact amount, I could not comment.”

  “It was US dollars.”

  “Are you telling me or asking me?”

  “It could have been an inside job. Four security guards are missing.”

  Kuther raises his shoulders an inch. Drops them. A cigarette appears in his hand, then between his lips. He lights it with a counterfeit Dunhill lighter.

  “I cannot become too fixated on money, Luca. Do you know how many people die in this city every day?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, you don’t see all of them. You hear about the bombings, the big events that provide footage for your news bulletins.” The judge points to a report on his desk. “This is from last night: seven bodies were found in Amil, three bodies in Doura, two bodies in Ghasaliyah, one body in Khadhraa, one body in Amiriyah and one in Mahmoudiyah. There were eight more bodies in Rusafa. None have been identified.”

  Luca looks at the file. “Why are they sending this to you?”

  “Because the Interior Ministry cannot handle so many.”

  “You’re supposed to be investigating corruption.”

  “I do what is necessary.”

  Kuther draws on his cigarette and exhales a stream of smoke that looks like his very spirit escaping from his chest.

  “We are tearing ourselves apart, Luca: kidnappings, executions, house by house, family by family. The same people who celebrated the toppling of Saddam would today go down on their knees and kiss his feet if they could bring him back.”

  “You’re losing hope?”

  “I’m running out of time.”

  The judge crushes the cigarette. He’s a busy man.

  “Tell me exactly what you want, Luca.”

  “I want to know who’s robbing these banks. These are US dollar robberies. Reconstruction funds.”

  “Money is money,” says Kuther. “Green, brown, blue… any color.”

  “A platoon of US Marines captured an insurgent two months ago with a wad of hundred-dollar bills that had sequential serial numbers. The bills were part of a shipment from the US Federal Reserve in 2006. They were stolen from a bank in Fallujah four months ago.”

  Kuther bows his head and places his hands together as though praying.

  “There is a war on, Luca. Perhaps you should ask the Americans where their money is going.”

  5

  LONDON

  The pawnshop is on Whitechapel High Street, squeezed between a Burger King and a clothing emporium that has “ladies, gents & children’s fashion wear” spilling from bins and racks. Bernie Levinson’s office is on the first floor, accessible via a rickety set of metal stairs at the rear of the building that are held in place by a handful of rusting bolts.

  In the basement there is a clothing factory where thirty-five workers, most of them illegal, sit crouched over sewing machines that operate day and night. Two shifts of twelve hours, Bangladeshi and Indian women earning three quid an hour. It’s another of Bernie’s business ventures.

  A dozen people are waiting on the stairs to see Bernie, mostly junkies and crackheads. They’re carrying a selection of car stereos, DVD players, laptops and GPS navigators—none of them in boxes or with instruction manuals. Holly Knight waits her turn, clutching her shoulder bag on her lap.

  Bernie sits behind a big desk next to an air-conditioning unit that takes up most of the window. A goldfish bowl rests on the corner of his desk, magnifying a lone fish that barely seems to move. Bernie is a short man with a doughy body, who favors baggy trousers and candy-colored shirts.

  “Do a twirl,” he tells Holly. “Show me what you’re wearing, such a pretty bint. My daughter is the size of a cow. Takes after her mother. Bovine family. Built to pull ploughs.”

  Holly ignores him and opens her shoulder bag, placing the contents on his desk. She has a passport, three credit cards, a mobile phone, a digital camera, four collector’s edition gold coins and some sort of medal in a case.

  “What’s this?” asks Bernie, flipping open the box.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s only a police fucking bravery medal!”

  “So?”

  “You turned over a copper, you daft cow.”

  “He said he was retired.”

  “Yeah, but he’s going to have friends, isn’t he? Colleagues. Old Bill.” Bernie is waving his hands at her. Wobbling his chins. “I don’t want any of this stuff. Get it out of here.”

  Resting her hip on the desk, Holly leans closer, letting the front of her blouse casually gape open.

  “Come on, Berni
e, we look after each other. What about that gear I brought you the other day?” She points to a dark leather briefcase sitting on top of his filing cabinet. “That’s top quality.”

  She and Zac had turned over a suit in Barnes and scored the briefcase, a laptop, two mobiles, passports and jewelry.

  Bernie grunts dismissively. “You’re getting sloppy. Taking too many risks.”

  “It won’t happen again… I promise, but I’m really short this week. My landlord is going to give me grief.”

  Bernie hesitates. Contemplates. The pawnbroker is not a soft touch. He thinks the only true sin is to surrender. He lost most of his family in the ghettos of Warsaw and at Treblinka. They meekly surrendered and were led away, a fact that Bernie despises. That’s one of the reasons he keeps a pistol in his top drawer, a shotgun downstairs and a bodyguard in the next room. Whatever happens, he’s not going to simply disappear.

  Glancing at Holly’s cleavage, Bernie wets his bottom lip. “How much you short?”

  “Eighty quid.”

  “And what does Uncle Bernie get?”

  Holly thinks, if Zac were here he’d reach across the table and squeeze your head until your eyes pop out. But she needs the money and she’d rather owe Bernie than Floyd, who charges interest with a silver knuckleduster.

  Holly walks to the door and locks it. Then she pushes back Bernie’s leather chair and sits astride him, her knees on either side of his thighs, grinding her pubic bone into his groin. Her hand slides down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt so her fingers can slide across his chest.

  Leaning forward she whispers something into his ear. Then she straightens and slowly undoes the buttons on her blouse, opening it a few inches. She’s wearing a black lace bra. Bernie takes a wheezing breath, lust painted all over his face.

  Motioning to the cashbox, Holly waits while Bernie fumbles with the key. She takes four twenties and slips the notes into her shoulder bag. Bernie begins to unbuckle his trousers but Holly starts moving again, bumping and grinding. She increases the pressure, whispering in his ear, letting her tongue trace the outline of his earlobe. He tries to stop her, to lift her off, but Holly keeps moving.

  Bernie groans. “No, no, nooooo…!”

  His eyes roll back into his head and his molars grind together, shuddering.

  Holly buttons her shirt and swings her body off his lap. The wet spot on his trousers is starting to spread.

  “I want my money back,” he bleats.

  Holly scoops the stolen goods into her bag and swings it onto her shoulder. Unlocking the door, she turns. “Here’s what I’ll do, Bernie, I’ll sign you up for membership of the Premature Ejaculation Society. They got a strict dress code. You got to come in your pants.”

  She opens the door. Tommy Boyle, Bernie’s bodyguard, is outside. “Everything OK, boss?”

  Bernie has a tissue in his hand. “Just shut the fucking door.”

  6

  LONDON

  Late morning in Central London: Ruiz is waiting downstairs at Scotland Yard. He still has a few contacts in the Met—colleagues who have survived the shake-ups, shake-outs and new brooms. Some adapt. Some pucker up. Some bend over and brace themselves.

  Detective Superintendent Peter Vorland is one of the good guys. Snowy headed, thinning on top, he has a powerful handshake and an Afrikaans accent. He came to the UK in the late seventies, escaping apartheid. Thirty-five years later and he’s never been back—not even for a holiday.

  Ruiz once asked him why, but Vorland wouldn’t talk about it. Later, when they got drunk after a Twickenham test match, Vorland said he couldn’t forgive Mandela for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  “It’s not in my nature to exonerate torturers and murderers,” he said.

  A few years back Vorland had a heart attack. Thought he was dying. He told Ruiz he saw fireworks exploding above Table Mountain and heard a black gospel choir singing. The crash cart and 300 volts brought him back.

  Everyone thought Vorland should have retired but he wanted to come back. After six months recuperating, he was leaner, fitter, no longer drinking. Ten years younger and twice as miserable.

  His office is on the fourteenth floor with a view across the rooftops of Whitehall to Westminster Cathedral.

  “You want some crap coffee?”

  “I’m good.”

  They spend the first few minutes talking about rugby, more out of habit than need. Finally Ruiz elaborates on a phone call he made earlier, telling the DS about “a friend” who was robbed after playing the Good Samaritan.

  “Why didn’t your friend report this crime?” asks Vorland.

  “He thinks his wife might misinterpret what happened.”

  “Where did your friend meet this girl?”

  “The Coach & Horses in Greek Street.”

  Vorland glances down at a yellow legal pad by his elbow. “I did a computer search and came up with five robberies in the past six months, same MO, two perps, one female, one male.”

  “Descriptions?”

  “The girl is eighteen to twenty-five, Caucasian, five-five, blue eyes, dark hair, cut short, but it could be a wig. She’s also been a blonde and a redhead. The boyfriend is six foot, close cropped hair and a northern accent.”

  Vorland taps a fountain pen on the pad. “I also checked out that phone number. The SIM card is registered to a fake address in Wimbledon. Pay-as-you-go. The police won’t track the handset unless your friend reports the crime…” He raises an eyebrow. “Maybe you could convince him…”

  Ruiz gives a non-committal shrug. “I’ll have a word.”

  Vorland remembers something else.

  “You could talk to the CCTV Control Centre at Westminster Council. They’ve got a hundred and sixty cameras in the West End.”

  “Big Brother is watching.”

  “They do a job.”

  “I preferred the cowardly old world to the brave new one.”

  Ruiz rises slowly and makes his way downstairs, dropping his visitor’s badge at the security desk. When he steps outside the revolving door he exhales as though he’s been holding his breath this entire time. Sometimes he needs a reminder that retirement was the right decision.

  City Watch Security is in Coventry Street, up a narrow stairway from street level without any signage on the door. The reception area is a small windowless room with posters on the wall urging people to be eternally vigilant. The control centre is registered as a charitable trust, funded by Westminster City Council, the Metropolitan Police and private businesses.

  The woman in charge, Helen Carlson, has white-grey hair and a head that looks slightly too large for her body, giving her a doll-like quality. Ruiz follows her to a separate building, around the corner in Wardour Street, where they enter a dark sub-basement with industrial bins and a caged lift. Ms. Carlson taps a number into a panel. The door opens. They wait for it to close behind them. Another panel, a different code and a second door opens into a large room where dozens of men and women watch the streets of London on vast screens, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.

  There are images of pedestrians in Oxford Street, couples embracing on a park bench in Leicester Square, a bicycle courier weaving between buses at Piccadilly Circus, a tramp going through bins in Green Park, a delivery van blocking a street in Soho, three teenagers kicking a can outside Euston Station. Snapshots of London, viewed from swivel chairs in a darkened room—Orwell’s imaginary world, twenty-five years later than expected.

  Ms. Carlson taps a keyboard. Her pink nail polish stands out brightly against the keys.

  “What time?”

  “Between eight p.m. and ten p.m.”

  She swivels a joystick control. Fast forwards through archival footage. There are four views of Greek Street. One of them shows the Coach & Horses. The screen has a red square box in the top right corner.

  “That signifies the street is an area of suspicion,” explains Ms. Carlson. “We focus on hotels, nightclubs an
d alleyways.”

  “Must be riveting.”

  “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

  “Did Stalin write that?”

  The time code is running along the bottom of the screen. It slows as the footage decelerates. Ruiz sees the boyfriend walking towards the camera carrying two motorcycle helmets. He must have stashed them somewhere.

  Fast-forwarding again, the time code says 21.24. Ruiz sees himself emerging from the pub and shoving the boyfriend into a parked car. The barman appears. The boyfriend walks away from the camera. At 22.08 Ruiz leaves the pub and hails a cab. The actress is wearing her red coat. The door closes and the cab pulls into the traffic. Moments later a motorbike passes the camera. The number plate has been obscured.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” asks Ms. Carlson, clearly proud of the technology.

  “Tell me something,” asks Ruiz. “If your cameras see a crime being committed, what do you do?”

  “We alert the police.”

  “And you keep filming?”

  “Of course.”

  Ruiz grunts dismissively.

  “We’re fighting crime,” she says defensively.

  “No, you’re recording crime. Your cameras can’t intervene to stop a rape or a murder or a robbery, which makes you just another bystander, sitting on the sidelines, watching it happen.”

  The Coach & Horses is busy with a lunchtime crowd. Ruiz recognizes the Aussie barman. His name is Craig and he has freckles on his eyelids.

  “You remember me?”

  He nods and keeps stacking drinks.

  “The girl who was in here last night, the one who wore a fist from her boyfriend; ever seen her before?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about her charming fella?”

  “You should have hit him harder.”

  “She was reading a copy of The Stage. You must get a lot of actors in here.”

  Craig grins. “You want to see my show-reel?”

  “Maybe never.”