The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [151]
“They are coming too. We’ll be together. In a few months I’ll send word to you. Money. Passports. You can join us.”
“In Pakistan?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to live in Pakistan. I want to live here.”
Taj pushes back his chair and goes to the bedroom where he takes an old suitcase from the top of a wardrobe and begins packing.
“What is it, Taj? We have to talk about this.”
“You’ll do as I say because I’m your husband.”
“Why can’t you get a job here?”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’m sick of this country, sick of begging, sick of being made to feel like a scrounger or a criminal.”
“Most people don’t treat us like that.”
“We’re discriminated against.”
“We’re just poor.”
“What about my father, eh? He died because they discriminated against him.”
“He died of heart disease.”
“He was more than a year on that waiting list. He could have had a new heart, but they gave it to some white woman.”
“She had three young children.”
“She wasn’t on the list as long as he was.”
Taj is throwing socks and underwear into the bag, T-shirts, an extra pair of jeans. Aisha is standing in the doorway, her apron bunched in her fists. She can see his muscles flexing on either side of his spine.
“You don’t have to go. You can pull out. Tell Syd and Rafiq.”
“I’m committed.”
“What about me… the baby?”
“You’re going to wait for me.”
Taj reaches into his pocket and produces a roll of cash in a rubber band. Aisha blinks twice, moves her mouth. She has never seen so much money. It scares her.
“What have you done?” she whispers, trembling now.
A silence. Taj isn’t going to tell her. It’s not what he’s done but what’s expected of him…
27
LONDON
Summer leaving. Autumn coming. On an ordinary morning full of ordinary things, Ruiz walks to clear his head, following the river, watching the sun ascend. He passes old Billingsgate Market and HMS Belfast reaching the shadows of Tower Bridge.
Six years ago, not far from here, he was pulled from the Thames with a bullet in his thigh and a missing ring finger. They found him clinging to a navigation buoy east of Tower Bridge. Less than a mile away, drifting on the tide, a boat looked like a floating abattoir. At first Ruiz had no memory of what had happened, but then it came back slowly in snapshots, dreams and shivers. He had been washed through London’s famous sewers and been spat out into the Thames as he followed the ransom for a missing girl. He survived the river and the bullets, but his career couldn’t be saved.
Richard North had been fished from a different river—a bullet hole in his head. He won’t be coming home to meet his new daughter or watch his son grow up. Ruiz had almost surrendered that same chance with his own children.
At that moment a bird, black as polished onyx, tumbles from the sky and lands with a dull thud on the footpath. Neck broken and blood on its beak. Ruiz looks up and contemplates which window it dashed itself upon. In a split second shining air had turned to solid glass and the world had snapped shut. Not fair or unfair. Life.
He turns and begins retracing his steps. Joe O’Loughlin appears ahead of him.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
“Why?”
“The river.”
He has a large white envelope. “Luca wanted me to give you this. He said you’d know what to do with it.”
“Where’s Holly?”
“She’s gone shopping. That girl can make twenty quid go a long way.”
“Has she ever shown you the receipts?”
Joe’s face drops. “Am I aiding and abetting a shoplifter?”
“Holly is a little more subtle than that.”
The two men walk in silence, feeling a chill breeze blowing down the river, moving into the heart of the city.
“You want to tell me what’s wrong?”
Ruiz takes his tin of boiled sweets from his pocket. Offers one. Makes his own selection.
“I still don’t know who killed Zac Osborne and Colin Hackett. One died for the notebook, the other for the photographs. Same shooter. Same MO.”
“You have a theory.”
“Not really, but I keep coming back to the Americans. They’ve known about the notebook all along.”
“Maybe they’re investigating the money-laundering.”