The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [55]
“We were planning a baby.”
DC Carter smiles at her as though she’s being feeble and irrational. It’s the same look her father used to give Elizabeth when they argued during her childhood.
“Is there anyone your husband could be staying with?”
“No.”
“What about the other woman?”
“What other woman?”
“You hired a private detective because you thought your husband might be having an affair.”
Elizabeth looks at Rowan, who is playing with a stapler and a piece of paper.
“I was worried about North. I knew something was bothering him.”
“So you hired someone to follow him?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just ask him?”
Elizabeth can feel her features becoming squashed and color rising in her cheeks.
“Don’t patronize me, Detective. Of course I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me. We argued. I got upset. Nothing changed.”
“Something made you suspicious.”
“I didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t have any evidence. North said he loved me. I had a friend who recommended an agency. She’d been through a divorce.”
“Were you considering divorcing your husband?”
“No, not at all! Never.”
There is a cry of pain. Rowan has punched a staple through the webbing of his hand. One tooth of the staple is sticking from his skin. Elizabeth holds him tightly and pulls the barb free, kissing away his pain and his tears.
3
LONDON
Ruiz walks the surrounding streets, interviewing neighbors and passers-by, asking questions the police should have asked. Did anyone see a young woman? She was running. Which way did she go? What sort of boat? Two fishermen. Where did they take her? Upriver.
The men who came looking for Holly were professionals. They drove all-wheel-drive vehicles with heavily tinted windows. They wore dark clothing. Soft shoes. They were trained for this. How does someone train for this? Drowning kittens? Torturing animals?
She managed to get away, but where would she go? Out of London, if she has any sense. Somewhere safe. She needs a friend with a spare room or a sofa bed, someone who doesn’t appear on her phone records or in her address book. How long can she stay hidden? If she doesn’t use her mobile, if she doesn’t call family or friends, if she doesn’t break the law and get caught, if she doesn’t visit a doctor, or withdraw money, or apply for a job…
She’s not going to call him. She probably blames him for what happened.
Ruiz thinks of his own children and how he abandoned them after Laura died. Fled the memories. Replaced one horror with another. He lost himself in Bosnia, Sarajevo under siege, where snipers gunned down people as they queued for bread and collected water. He can remember flowers in the flower boxes, climbing roses that clung to the whitewashed walls like living tapestries.
He was gone for so long that he lost touch with Claire and Michael. One night, as he lay in bed, listening to distant gunfire, he tried to picture the twins but could only see holes in his mind, blank spaces. He had forgotten what they looked like. That’s when he realized that he had to get out of that terrible place where blood ran in the gutters and bullets tore through children. If he didn’t escape he’d be swallowed by the blank spaces, the black holes.
That was nearly twenty years ago. Water under the bridge. Blood. Washed away.
Sitting on a bench, Ruiz makes a phone call. He leaves a voicemail message for Vorland asking him to trace the number plate on the dark blue Audi and the mobile phone number left beneath his windscreen. He hangs up and notices a rowing eight skim past him with oars dripping, facing backwards but going forwards. His life feels like that—as though he’s looking into the past, seeking answers to old questions, but getting further and further from them.
Back at the house, the locks have been changed and the broken glass replaced with plywood sheets. The uniformed police have been and gone, taking statements but showing little interest. Campbell Smith arrives unexpectedly to survey the damage, walking through the house like a bailiff deciding what furniture is worth seizing.
Ruiz tells him about