The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [64]
There are six cells side by side in the basement of the al-Amariyah police station. Luca knows this building. He came here once to investigate the deaths of six prisoners who were handcuffed and blindfolded before being lined up against a wall in a courtyard and shot. Witnesses claimed the man who pulled the trigger was a senior Iraqi politician in the interim government. One described it as an unintended act of mercy because the men had been beaten for so long they simply wanted to die.
The corpses were removed by the Prime Minister’s bodyguards and driven off in a Nissan utility. Another witness said they were buried west of Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib. Luca imagines these men, naked and still, garlanded with bruises, lying in unmarked graves.
He dreams. He wakes. Reality is such a hazy, shallow state and his nightmares, the recurring ones, are full of the speaking dead and bones bursting out of the ground. How many days have passed since his arrest? They took away his watch, along with his belt and shoelaces. They took away his gun. They had laughed at the size of it. A woman’s gun, they said. One bullet.
For the first few hours he had bellowed through the meal hatch, demanding to contact the American Embassy. When his voice grew hoarse he saved his strength, concentrating on small details like the chain hanging from the ceiling and the discarded length of hosepipe in the corner. He didn’t want to imagine what they were for.
They came for him eventually. He was handcuffed and dragged along an unventilated corridor. A guard slapped the heel of his hand three times against the steel door, which creaked partway open, revealing the apprehensive face of a young soldier. Shoved forward, hard against a wall, Luca felt a stabbing sensation in his forearm. A man in white. A needle in his hand. The room began to dip and sway, rolling like the deck of a ship in a storm. Someone was speaking to him, but he couldn’t focus on the face. What big eyes… such a big mouth… so many questions.
At some point he had fallen asleep or lost consciousness and woken back in the cell. He can hear people outside now… a key rattling in the lock… the hinges groan. The same guards pull him upright, pushing him along the passageway. He needs to pee. The desire borders on torment.
Another room. A table. Two chairs. A single light bulb. A window. A familiar figure. General al-Uzri takes off his jacket. His forearms bulge below the short sleeves of a cotton shirt. His jacket is folded and placed neatly on a spare chair.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” he says. “I trust you have been treated well.”
“No.”
“Perhaps our prisons aren’t quite up to American standards.”
He uses the word “American” like it belongs to a lesser life form.
“Why am I here?”
“You have been accused of killing two unarmed civilians in a village near Mosul.”
“We were fired upon by insurgents.”
“Not according to our witnesses.”
“What witnesses?”
“The men you murdered had wives and families.”
“They were insurgents.”
“You targeted the pickup. You shot out the nearside tires causing the vehicle to roll. Then you stopped and poured petrol over the occupants and set them alight.”
“That’s bullshit! We were fired upon. I can show you the bullet holes.”
“Your driver has given us a statement.”
Luca struggles to breathe. He’s talking about Jamal.
“I don’t have a driver.”
The general laughs. “Such loyalty is commendable, but you have left it rather late to be so protective of your accomplices.”
Luca half rises from his seat, but strong hands shove him down.
Al-Uzri takes a matchstick from a box on the table and chews the end to a fibrous tail, painting spit across his teeth.
“What were you doing in the village?”
“Researching a story.”
“What story?”
“The murder of four bank guards.”
“A falling out among thieves.”
“No, it was more than that.”
Al-Uzri touches his chin with his