The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [159]
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 over 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.
Using his hands, he tries to relieve the pressure on his neck, but eventually he gets tired and his legs drop, cutting off his air supply.
He endures on the edge of consciousness, picturing his own funeral, imagining the eulogies, putting words in people’s mouths. Julianne inconsolable. Wanting him back.
“You will not see the morning,” the man had said when he pressed the gun to Joe’s forehead, waking him from a dream. A good dream, Julianne had been in it. They were reconciled. Getting physical. Oxygen deprivation is supposed to heighten sexual pleasure.
Joe rolls on to his stomach feeling four gospels and two testaments of pain. He rolls again, resting his head against the inside of the door. If he loses consciousness he’ll suffocate. Raising his head an inch, he takes a breath and brings it down against the door. It rattles with a dull thunk. Back and forth he rolls, his bruises like burning charcoal.
The night manager is complained to. Summoned. The door unlocked. Ropes untied. Tape cut away. An ambulance called. The journey to the hospital made in a haze of opiates and questions. His voice box has been bruised. He can’t make them understand.
Later he wakes in hospital, his neck smothered in ointment where the nylon rope chaffed and broke