The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [146]
“Where’s Noonan?”
“On his way.”
23
LONDON
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.
24
LUTON
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,