The Wreckage

Book 5: Joseph O'Loughlin

by Michael Robotham

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Two-time Ned Kelly Award-winning author Michael Robotham has earned an international following with intense psychological thrillers like Shatter and Lost. The Wreckage is inspired by a real-life heist at the Central Bank of Iraq—the largest such crime in history. Millions of dollars are missing from Iraqi banks, and journalist Luca Terracini will stop at nothing to find the money. But the closer he gets to the truth, the more his actions reverberate around the world.

Release date: June 16, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 448

Sample

The most important lesson Luca Terracini ever learned about being a foreign correspondent was to tell a story through the eyes of someone else. The second most important lesson was how to make spaghetti marinara with a can of tuna and a packet of ramen noodles.

There were others, of course, most of them to do with staying alive in a war zone: Do not make an appointment to see anyone you do not trust absolutely. Do not go out before checking whether any suspicious vehicles are loitering outside. Do not assume that a place that was safe yesterday will be safe today.

These security measures were followed by all western reporters in Baghdad, but Luca had added a few of his own over the years—advice that came down to possessing three vital tools for survival: a natural cowardice; several US hundred-dollar bills sewn into his trouser cuffs; and a well-developed sense of the absurd.

The first call to prayer is sounding. Sunrise. Luca had been woken by the racket of washing machines, TV sets and air conditioners coming to life simultaneously. The government can only provide electricity during certain hours, which means the appliances trigger at random times, day or night, creating a strange symphony of music and metal.

Stripping off his T-shirt, he scoops water from a bucket with a ladle, pouring it over his head. Droplets pour from his short dark beard and down his chest over his genitals. It’s already nearly ninety degrees outside and not even the shutters can keep the heat out once the sun hits the side of the building.

Drying his hair, he chooses a thin cotton shirt, something plain, cheap. He dresses like an Iraqi and tries to sound like an Iraqi. His shoes are not western. His sunglasses are not too foreign looking.

Sliding his hand beneath the mattress, he pulls out a compact semi-automatic 9mm pistol and tucks it into a holster in the small of his back. In his office, he unplugs his mobile, grabs his camera gear and opens the front door of his apartment, checking the corridor and then taking the rear stairs.

A security guard dozes behind a desk in the foyer.

“Sabah al-khair, Ahmed.”

The guard jerks awake, reaching for his rifle. Luca holds up his hands in mock fear and the guard grins at him.

“Have you made the city safe, Ahmed?”

“I have defused two dozen bombs.”

“Excellent. Just don’t recycle them.”

The guard laughs and gets to his feet. His belt is undone, his stomach bulging freely.

Luca opens his mobile and calls Jamal.

“Where are you?”

“Two minutes away.”

Glancing through the taped windows, the street view is shielded by concrete blast walls that are fifteen feet high. There are checkpoints at the two nearest intersections, giving the illusion of safety. Just like his rules for survival, Luca has developed his own conflict metabolism, attuned to the violence. His heart no longer punches through his chest when a mortar explodes and he doesn’t duck when a round zings overhead.

Most of his colleagues reside in secure hotel compounds or in the International Zone (formerly the Green Zone), seeking safety in numbers, which is another illusion. Clean sheets, cold beer, wireless broadband and satellite TV—modern tools for the modern reporter.

The bombings a month ago had provided a salutatory lesson. The first explosion targeted the Sheraton Ishtar, toppling the concrete blast walls and leaving a crater fifteen feet deep and thirty feet wide. Cars were torn apart by the spray of metal and glass, which littered the lawns and courtyards of the fish restaurants along the river.

Three minutes later, a bomb went off near the Babylon Hotel; and six minutes later at the al-Hamra, tearing off the façade. Fourteen people died at the Sheraton, seven at the Babylon and sixteen at the al-Hamra, including a policeman who once helped Luca find a new battery for his mobile.

Luca had arrived at the hotel when the plume of dust and smoke still drifted across the skyline and the scent of shorn eucalyptus trees mixed with the ugly, sweet stench of burning flesh. Two women were found beneath the rubble, one of them covered in dust with long streaks of blood running down her face. “May God kill the government,” she shouted as they pulled her free.

Another ordinary day in Baghdad.

A text message on Luca’s mobile: Thirty seconds. Out front.

Moments later a battered Skoda 130 pulls up outside the apartment block, a young man behind the wheel. A second vehicle is immediately behind—a Toyota HiLux—the “chase car.”

Luca stays low as he runs. The moment the car door closes, Jamal jams down on the accelerator, swerving around the flat-faced concrete barricades. The HiLux is close behind, ready to intervene in case of an ambush.

The Skoda is a classic Baghdadi car with a windshield crisscrossed with cracks and a dash covered in an old strip of carpet and faded pictures of Shia martyrs. Beneath the bonnet is a V8 engine from a Chrysler 340 and slabs of iron welded inside the doors, bullet-proofing Iraqi style.

Jamal drives like he’s at Le Mans and dresses like he’s a gay cowboy in plaid shirts and western-style jeans. He was studying to be a doctor before the invasion. In the chaos that followed, the university’s computers were stolen and the files destroyed by fire. Now he can’t prove he has a science degree or three years of medical training.

Jamal’s cousin Abu is driving the HiLux. He’s older and built like a battering ram, with a semi-automatic pistol beneath his shirt and a sawn-off shotgun on his lap. In the four years they have worked together, Luca has exchanged little more than a dozen words with Abu. Jamal does the talking. On a busy thoroughfare, the vehicles travel bumper to bumper, weaving between groaning trucks, vans, mopeds and cyclists.

“There was another robbery,” says Jamal.

“When?”

“Overnight. They set the bank on fire.”

“Where?”

“In Karrada.”

“I want to go there.”

“What about the media conference?”

“They still won’t have formed a government.” Luca mimics the voice of the former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. “Today we are a step closer to agreement. Old hatreds are being put aside and we are talking in good faith. I am committed to the constitution and believe Iraq will get the government it deserves.”

Jamal laughs. “One day they’re going to kick you out of Iraq.”

“Promises, promises.”

He calls Abu in the HiLux. “We’re going to Karrada.”

“What address?”

“Follow the smoke.”

The two vehicles circumnavigate Firdos Square and head south along the dusty dual carriageway past mud buildings and footpaths lined in places with drums and razor wire.

Baghdad used to feel foreign to Luca but he’s no longer spooked by the strangeness of the place—the jangle of tongues, the confusion of smells and the thick honey-colored light. A bus has broken down. Passengers are standing on the pavement, arguing with the driver. The men draw on cigarettes, forming wraiths of smoke that are whisked away on the breeze. The women are delicate, unknown creatures swathed in black, with non-descript bodies and dancing eyes.

Jamal takes a stick of chewing gum from his pocket and turns on the radio, beating out a rhythm on the steering wheel as he listens to a local pop song. He and Luca have become friends over the years, but that friendship has boundaries. Luca has never been to Jamal’s house, or met his wife or his two young sons. There are people who cannot know that Jamal and Abu are working for an American journalist. Sunnis. Shiites. Insurgents. That’s where death lurks. Grudges are a national sport in Iraq.

A black plume of smoke rises into the white sky ahead of them. Normally Karrada is one of the havens, thrumming with street traders and gaudy shouts of greenery. Now police and fire engines have sealed off an intersection and hoses like black pythons twist across the asphalt, bulging and squirming. Some are so perished and worn they are spraying the concrete instead of the smoldering building.

The Zewiya branch of the al-Rafidain Bank has been gutted and the windows are ringed with dark shadows of soot that leak like a beauty queen’s tears down the pale walls.

Jamal parks the Skoda and Luca takes his camera from his rucksack. He signals Abu, who waits with the cars, keeping watch from a distance.

“How many is that?”

“Six in the past two months.”

“And this year?”

“Eighteen.”

“Soon there will be no banks left to rob.”

Across the street, a group of teenage boys are laughing and shoving each other, frantic to be noticed. They are admonished by older men and told to show some respect.

A siren. A convoy. Four military vehicles weave between the fire engines, escorting a white police car with blue doors. The car pulls on to the curb, scraping metal beneath the chassis. Luca recognizes the man in the passenger seat: General Khalid al-Uzri, Commander of the National Police. Two uniformed officers wrestle each other to reach his door.

Al-Uzri stands and stretches, cracking his vertebrae and rolling his head from side to side. Cigarette smoke hangs over him like a personal cloud. Dressed in black-and-blue camouflage with a beret and epaulettes of a crossed wreath and star, he waves dismissively at the offer of an umbrella and walks through the spray, pausing to appraise the bank building as though considering making an offer.

A senior fireman emerges from within. His uniform looks too large for him, like he’s wearing his father’s clothes. He shakes al-Uzri by the hand and kisses each cheek.

“What has been lost?” asks the general.

“Three dead.”

“The money?”

“Gone.”

The general brushes water from his jacket sleeve and glances at Luca.

“You’re a photographer?”

“Yes, General,” he answers in Arabic.

“Today you work for the police.”

Luca exchanges a glance with Jamal, who shakes his head. Luca ignores him. He follows the general and the fireman down the ramp, stepping through oily black puddles and around piles of smoldering debris.

The large roller door has buckled and twisted in the heat. Two bodies lie inside. Security guards. They look like discarded mannequins with melted and blackened flesh. The smell pries open Luca’s senses. Vomit rises. He swallows hard, coffee chewing at his stomach.

Al-Uzri crouches beside the corpses. “It’s the protein,” he explains. “When it burns it sticks to your clothes and the inside of your lungs.”

Holding a skull, he turns it as if he’s testing the firmness of melons at a market stall.

One of his aides speaks. “There were six guards rostered on last night.”

“Where are the others?”

“We’re looking for them.”

“These men were shot. Take photographs of this.”

The general stands and walks onwards, wiping his hands on the coat of the nearest fireman.

The concrete vault has a heavy metal door that has barely been singed by the blaze. It opens easily. Nothing remains inside except a single aluminum case, smashed open. A handful of US banknotes are floating in a grimy puddle.

The general leaves the vault, moving towards the internal stairs. Firefighters have erected ladders to the upper floors.

“Is that going to take my weight?” asks al-Uzri.

“Yes, sir.”

He points at Luca. “You go first.”

The journalist climbs the ladder and steps over a collapsed section of the floor. A toilet has come through the ceiling and landed vertically across a doorway. Glancing past it, he can see a long corridor with offices on either side. The desktop computers have melted into modern sculptures.

The senior fireman stops at one of the offices. It takes a moment for Luca to realize what he’s supposed to photograph. A blackened corpse is seated at a metal desk with stiffened half limbs reaching towards the blown-out window. Charred beyond recognition, the skin of the face is shrunken and leathery, gripping the skull, and the mouth is wide open in a scream. A swollen tongue protrudes from between teeth that seem unnaturally white.

Al-Uzri circles the body, examining it from all sides, his wet brown eyes full of wonder but not horror. Luca is taking short breaths through his mouth.

“This is one of the ignition points,” says the fireman. “Someone doused the body with petrol and poured a trail along the hallway to the door.”

Al-Uzri has moved behind the carbonized body. He pulls a small Swiss army knife from his coat, unsheathing the blade. His hand steady, he holds the sharp edge against the corpse’s neck and pulls something away, a wire thread embedded in the skin. A garrote.

He nods to Luca. More pictures are taken.

Closing the knife, he lights a cigarette, blowing smoke towards the ceiling.

Nothing shows in his eyes. Not surprise or sadness. Luca has seen that look before in soldiers who have witnessed such horrors that nothing is new under the sun or moon.

“A bad business,” says the fireman. “Have you seen enough?”

The general nods. He addresses Luca. “Deliver the photographs to my office. They are the property of the Iraqi police.”

Descending the ladders, he retraces his steps through the puddles and up the ramp, pausing only to blow cotton wool from his nostrils. Luca follows him outside where drivers scramble into cars, preparing to depart.

“Excuse me, General, I have a question about the robbery.”

The commander turns.

“Your name?”

“Luca Terracini—I’m an American journalist.”

“Your Arabic is very proficient, Mr. Terracini.”

“My mother was Iraqi.”

Al-Uzri lights another cigarette, shielding it from the spray. He takes a moment to study the journalist.

“Most of your colleagues wear Kevlar vests and travel in numbers. Do you think having an Iraqi mother will protect you?”

“No, sir.”

“Perhaps you are very brave?”

“No, sir.”

Water trickles down Luca’s back. It might be sweat. “The bank manager was tortured.”

“It appears so.”

“Do you know how much money was taken?”

“No.”

“What happened to the other security guards?”

“Perhaps they chased after the robbers.”

“Perhaps they ran off with the money.”

The leaking hoses have doused the general’s cigarette. He stares at the soggy offering. “It is not a good idea to make accusations like that.”

“This is the eighteenth bank robbery in Baghdad this year. Does that concern you?”

The general smiles, but the corners of his mouth barely move. “I find it reassuring that somebody is keeping count.”

His car door is being held open, the engine running. He slides into the passenger seat and waves the driver onwards with a flick of his hand. The convoy moves off, weaving between fire engines, adding one more siren to a city that sings with them.

Being measured for a new suit was not something Vincent Ruiz expected to happen until he was lying cold and stiff on an undertaker’s slab. And if that were the case, he didn’t suppose he’d care about an effeminate stranger nudging a tape measure against his balls. Maybe he’s weighing them. Every other measurement has been taken.

Emile drapes the tape measure around his neck and jots down another set of numbers.

“Does sir want the trousers to touch his uppers or the top of the soles?”

“Call me Vincent.”

“Yes, sir.”

He holds the tape measure against Ruiz’s hip and lets it fall before tugging it tight again. “Has sir considered cuffs?”

“Are they extra?”

“No. You have the height to wear cuffs. Short men should avoid them. I’d recommend about one and a half inches.”

“Fine.”

Next the tape measure is wrapped around Ruiz’s upper thigh. “Does sir dress to the left or the right?”

“I like to swing both ways.”

Emile’s eyebrows arch like inflection marks.

“Just give me loads of room,” says Ruiz. “I want to be able to hide a hard-on. My ex-wife is coming to the wedding and she’s a lot hotter since we divorced.”

“Very good, sir.”

Ruiz sighs and gives up trying to get a smile out of Emile. Instead he ponders his daughter’s wedding. Claire is getting married in just under a week and he is supposed to walk her down the aisle and “give her away.” She rang him last night and threatened to ask someone else if he didn’t start following instructions.

“That’s just it,” he told her. “I don’t want to give you away. I want to keep you.”

“Very droll, Dad.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I’m getting married whether you like it or not.”

“I could have Phillip arrested.”

“He’s a lawyer, Dad, not a criminal.”

“Is there a difference?”

Emile picks up his brocade cushion and retreats from the fitting room. Ruiz pulls on his worn corduroy trousers and heavy cotton shirt. As he buttons the front, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Turning sideways and sucking in his stomach, he straightens his shoulders and examines his physique. Not bad for a man who has hurdled sixty. Some mileage on the clock, but that’s to be expected. His doctor wouldn’t agree, of course, but his doctor is the sort of idiot who thinks people should live to be a hundred and fifty.

Slipping on a jacket, he pats the pockets and takes out a metal tin of boiled sweets. Unscrewing the lid he pops one into his mouth where it rattles against his teeth. He gave up smoking six years ago. Sugar is the substitute; calories as opposed to cancer.

As he steps out of the menswear shop, a hand slips through his left arm, pulling him close. He accepts Claire’s kiss on the cheek, bending slightly so she can reach.

“Is it done?”

“It’s done.”

“That wasn’t so hard?”

“A strange man has been weighing my balls.”

“Emile is lovely.”

“He’s gayer than a handbag full of rainbows.”

She giggles and skips to keep up with him. Dark-haired and pretty, she walks on her toes like a ballet dancer—her former career. Now she teaches at the Royal Academy, crippling prepubescent girls who look pregnant if they eat an apple.

“OK, now remember we have a dinner with Phillip’s folks tomorrow night. They’re catching the train from Brighton. Mr. Seidlitz has invited us to his club.”

Ruiz’s heart sinks. “What sort of club?”

“Don’t worry, Daddy, he doesn’t play golf.”

Seidlitz is a Ukrainian name. Maybe golf isn’t big in the Ukraine. Ruiz isn’t looking forward to it—a table for six, small talk. Miranda will be his date. His ex-wife. Number three. She’s the one who acts like they’re still married. Ruiz knows there is something fundamentally amiss about this fact, but Miranda is the sort of ex-wife that most men dream about. Low maintenance. Self-sufficient. Classy. When they divorced she asked him for nothing except for a few souvenirs from the marriage and to be allowed to stay in touch with Michael and Claire. They still needed a mother, she said.

Over the past few years Ruiz and Miranda have periodically fallen into bed together—a perfectly satisfactory “friends with benefits” arrangement, offering companionship, a pinch of romance and the sort of sex that can fog the windows. Not love, it’s true… not exactly—but closer to love than most relationships Ruiz had known.

Claire looks at her watch. “I’m meeting Phillip. He’ll be early.”

“Why?”

“He always is.”

“That’s another reason not to marry him.”

“Oh, stop!”

Blowing him a kiss, she skips across the road, leaving him on the corner. He wants to call after her, to hear her sweet voice again.

Married… in a week. She seems too young. Thirty-two on her last birthday, yet Ruiz can still picture her in pigtails and braces. Her fiancé is a lawyer who works for an investment bank. Does that make him a lawyer or a banker? He votes Tory, but everybody does these days.

Ruiz wishes Laura were here. She would have loved all this—preparing menus, choosing flowers, sending out invitations—weddings are about mothers and daughters. The father of the bride just has to turn up, walk down the aisle and hand his daughter over like she’s part of a prisoner swap.

Ruiz isn’t even expected to pick up the tab. Phillip has everything covered. He earns more in a month than Ruiz used to make in a year as a detective inspector. He didn’t even melt a little during the global meltdown, while Ruiz’s retirement funds have halved. His investment advisor isn’t answering his calls, which is always a bad sign.

Office workers are spilling out of buildings, their day ending, the commute ahead. Ruiz tries to avoid public transport during the peak hours. Lust, greed, sloth, envy, pride… the full pathology of human behavior is played out on the tube every morning and evening. It’s like an experiment in overcrowding using humans instead of rats. Ruiz prefers to conduct his own scientific study, which involves a pint of Guinness and a table by the window where he can watch the office girls walk by in their tight skirts and summer blouses. Not a dirty old man but a lover of the feminine form.

The Coach & Horses in Greek Street used to be one of his favorite pubs, back in the days when Norman “You’re Barred” Balon was still in charge. Norman was London’s grumpiest publican, famous for abusing patrons. He retired a few years back. Regulars gave him a standing ovation and three cheers. Norman told them to shut up and “spend more fucking money.”

Setting his pint on a table, Ruiz pulls out a notebook and reads over the sentences he wrote this morning. Stories. Anecdotes. Descriptions. Ever since he retired he’s been making notes and trying to remember things. He doesn’t see himself as a writer. He has no desire to be one. It’s about finding the right words and sorting out his memories, rather than justifying his actions or leaving something behind.

Forty-three years as a copper, thirty-five as a detective, all he has left are the stories: triumphs, tragedies, mistakes and missed opportunities. Some may be worth reading. Most are best left alone.

Ruiz misses the camaraderie of the Met, the sense of purpose, the smell of cigarette smoke and wet overcoats. It was an unreal world, yet it was more real than real, if that makes sense. Important. Frustrating. Over.

Three empty pint glasses are sitting in front of him. It’s growing dark outside, but the streets are still teeming with tourists and diners. London seems more foreign to him every summer—not just because of the influx of visitors, who are mainly Japanese, American and a generic kind of East European. The city is changing. Old haunts disappear. Safe streets become less safe. The heart beats to a different rhythm.

Ruiz notices a girl sitting on her own at a corner table. Her eyes are faded, almost transparent blue like his own and somehow even worldlier. Sullen-faced and pretty, she’s wearing leopard-print leggings, lace-up boots and a white peasant blouse. Her coal-black hair is cut short and curled where it brushes her shoulders and swings when she turns her head, waiting for someone to arrive.

She’s reading a newspaper with a pen in her hand. It’s a copy of The Stage—the theater magazine, the auditions page, looking for work. Checking her watch, she folds the magazine and goes to the bar for another drink.

Her eyes, unnaturally wide, flick from face to face as if rapidly collecting details or assembling a jigsaw puzzle. There are two suits on stools at the bar, junior executive types with their ties at half-mast. They offer to buy her a drink. She declines. One of them motions to her with his forefinger. She steps closer.

“You see that,” he says. “I just made you come with one finger—imagine what I can do with the rest of them.”

A flush of embarrassment colors her cheeks, quickly replaced by anger.

Back at her table, she tries to ignore them, but they follow.

“Why won’t you have a drink with us?”

“I’m waiting for a friend.”

“Is she as pretty as you?”

“No, but he’s bigger than you are.”

One of them snatches the magazine from her and holds it out of her reach. She knows they want her to humiliate herself by trying to retrieve it but she simply waits until they grow bored and give it back to her.

Ruiz is watching, impressed. The little actress is a no-nonsense sort of girl.

Ordering another pint, he goes back to his notes and doesn’t look up again until much later. A man has arrived and is talking to the actress. Perhaps he’s her boyfriend. Tall and loosely strung, he’s wearing a frayed turtleneck, dirty jeans and boots.

They’re arguing. He grabs her by the wrist and tries to make her stand. In the next instant, his fist swings into the side of her head. The blow is so short, sharp and unexpected that nobody in the bar reacts. The girl is holding her face. Wide-eyed. Shocked. The boyfriend is standing over her with his fist clenched, ready to hit her again. Ruiz doesn’t let it happen. Grabbing the upraised hand, he wrenches it backwards, twisting it up the boyfriend’s spine.

“Maybe you should pick on someone your own size.”

“What’s your fucking problem?”

“Honestly? If she weighed another hundred pounds I’d call it even and watch her kick your arse.”

“Fuck you!”

Ruiz twists the arm higher. The boyfriend grunts and rises on to his toes. The main door is only three paces away. Cool air. A wet pavement. Ruiz shoves the boyfriend against a parked car and waits for him to spin, knowing he’s going to fight. At that same moment, one of the barmen makes an appearance, gripping a metal bar. The boyfriend steps aside. Mumbles something. A threat. An insult. Ruiz can’t hear the words but he knows the odds have altered; the chemistry changed. The boyfriend points his finger at Ruiz as though marking him for future reference and then slinks off. Inside the pub someone has filled a towel with ice, which the actress has pressed to the side of her face. Ruiz buys her a drink. Scotch. Neat.

“This will settle your nerves.”

He watches her throat move as she swallows.

“My name is Vincent.”

“Holly.”

“You want to call the police, Holly?”

She shakes her head.

“Show me your cheek.”

She lowers the towel. One side of her face is a little swollen. There’ll be a bruise. Her eyes shift past him, searching the floor.

“My bag!”

“What did it look like?”

“It’s black… with buckles.”

Ruiz helps her search. “What did it have in it?”

“Money. My phone.” She groans. “My keys.”

“Does anyone have a spare set?”

“My boyfriend.”

Ruiz makes her put the ice-towel back on her cheek.

“Is there someone you can call?”

“I don’t have any numbers.”

“Maybe your boyfriend has cooled off by now.”

Holly borrows Ruiz’s mobile. The call goes straight to voicemail. She leaves a message. Apologizing. She shouldn’t have to apologize.

Ruiz gets her another drink. She pushes the hair off her face, hooking it behind her ears. Her accent is from the north.

“So you’re an actress.”

Holly eyes him nervously over the rim of her glass. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw you reading The Stage.”

She shrugs. “Someone left it behind.”

Ruiz wonders why she would lie to him.

“I’ve been all sorts of things—a waitress, a receptionist, a dishwasher, a barmaid—I was even a badger.”

“A badger?”

“I was supposed to be a beaver, but they couldn’t find a beaver costume. It was for a building company at a trade fair. Beavers make stuff in wood, you know, like dams.”

“I can see the connection.”

“Good. You can explain it to me.”

She smiles for the first time. Ruiz notices a small silver teddy bear on a chain around her neck; her piercings, one through her nose, more in her ears.

“Has your boyfriend ever hit you before?”

She shrugs ambivalently. “It’s what unites all men.”

“What does?”

“Violence.”

“Not all men are violent.”

She shrugs again and changes the subject.

“What happened to your finger?”

She points to his missing digit, severed just below the first knuckle on his ring finger, a pale stump where the flesh seems to have folded in on itself.

“It was bitten off by a crocodile.”

“You’re not a very good liar.”

“It was shot off.”

“How did it happen?”

“You believe me then?”

“Yes.”

“Is being shot more believable than being attacked by a crocodile?”

“We live in England. There aren’t many crocodiles.”

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“It doesn’t sound very boring.”

“It was a high-velocity bullet. I took one in the leg and one in the hand.”

“You were a soldier?”

“A detective.”

Concern flashes across her eyes and just as quickly disappears. She starts a new conversation, jumping subjects. Ruiz feels as though he’s being dragged behind a speedboat bumping over the swells. It’s getting late. He has to make a decision.

“What are you going to do, Holly?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you have anywhere to stay?”

“No.”

“You could come back to my place. Make some calls.”

Holly ponders this for a moment. “You live alone?”

“Yes.”

“You’re divorced.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes.”

Outside the temperature has dropped and a breeze sprung up. Holly pulls on a distinctive red jacket with wooden pegs as fasteners and a hood. Pulling it tight around herself, she waits while Ruiz hails a cab and then slides across the seat.

The driver is listening to the radio. Evening talkback with Brian Noble: “The Voice of the Lord.”

Mersey Fidelity today announced a record profit while the rest