The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [46]
Picking up the plastic bags, he steps outside and pulls the door shut, pushing the bolt across and reattaching the police tape. Then he knocks on neighboring flats. After a long wait a door opens.
“I’m not buying anything,” says a pale man with red hair and doleful eyes.
“That’s good,” replies Ruiz. “Were you home the night before last?”
“I already told the police everything.”
“What did you tell them?”
The neighbor looks at him nervously. “Nothing!”
Ruiz stands motionless, letting the silence work its magic. The neighbor fidgets. Scratches. Shuffles his feet.
“I did see this one guy run down the stairs. He almost knocked me over.”
“What did he look like?”
“I only saw him for a second.”
“What color?”
“I don’t know. Muddy.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Foreign looking. I think maybe you should leave this guy alone.”
“Why’s that?”
The neighbor hesitates, still scratching his crotch. “He had a look, you know, like he came into the world with nothing except a name.”
“Dangerous?”
“Hungry for something.”
23
BAGHDAD
Daniela laces her fingers and stretches her arms above her head. She’s tired—her own fault—too much sex and too little sleep. She has laid out dozens of documents on her desk, placing a shoe or a lamp or a glass on them because the ceiling fan is stirring the air.
Alfred Nilsen has come back to her. The Pentagon won’t approve her request for information regarding Bellwether Construction. Instead she has been given a brief corporate profile in which Bellwether claims to employ 25,000 Iraqis on 315 different construction projects.
The work on Jawad Stadium was subcontracted to a dozen different Iraqi companies, each linked to a Syrian-based corporation called Alain al Jaria, which in Arabic means “Ever-Flowing Spring.”
Ironic, thinks Daniela, as she looks for an office address in Baghdad but can’t find one.
Glover appears at her door. He’s wearing a baseball cap with a picture of a camel riding a surfboard.
“Can you tell Shaun to stop humming?”
“Humming?”
“He hums this one song. It’s driving me crazy.”
“What are you—six years old?”
Glover looks aggrieved. Pouts. Tilts his head. “You look different today.”
“In what way?”
“Happier.”
Daniela can feel blood warming her cheeks. She changes the subject. “What did you want?”
“I found something you might want to see.”
As she follows him down the corridor, Glover keeps looking over his shoulder, uncomfortable about letting a woman walk behind him. The IT room has a bank of computers and shelves stacked with software manuals and ring binders.
Shaun is outside the door listening to an iPod and humming loudly. Daniela pulls an earphone from his ear. “Stop teasing the puppy.”
He grins at her and then at Glover, who flips him the bird, having to hold down some of his fingers.
Glover speaks. “You wanted to know about Jawad Stadium. During the invasion it became a shelter for Iraqi families and then a compound for the US Army Motor Pool.
“It’s one of the bigger football venues in the city. The Iraq Football Federation applied for the rebuild. The contract was awarded in 2005 to Bellwether.”
“Did you get a copy of the contract?”
“Take a look.”
She glances at the screen. Someone has scanned the paperwork but not before meticulously using a thick-tipped marker to black out details including names, dates, addresses, phone numbers and the signees. The file had been stamped “classified” with a Pentagon seal.
“So this is it?” asks Daniela.
“I managed to pull up a company address. It’s a post office box in the Bahamas.”
Glover adds, “There is a separate interim report from 2007. There were delays with some of the work. The wrong seats were delivered. The turf was coming from Sweden and got stuck at the border for three weeks. Died.”
Daniela looks again at the anomalies. These problems could explain some of the duplicate payments. Each amount is under $200,000. This