The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [76]
Joe continues to précis the file, aware of how brutally casual he sounds, giving a banal rendering of a terrible life. What does it do to someone, an upbringing like that? They grow up scared of the dark, scared of being alone, scared of their own dreams.
Ruiz rubs his thumb over his lips. They’re nearing the house. He makes a point of parking three blocks away.
“Forgotten where you live?”
“I like the walk.”
The professor senses another reason.
“Are you being followed?”
“Not sure.”
They go through a break in the buildings, past an upholstery shop, a plumbing store and a new childcare centre. Ruiz is watching the cross-streets, noting the cars.
Joe has a question. “You mentioned that Holly Knight could tell when you were lying.”
“Yeah. Is that possible?”
“You’re a former detective. You were pretty good at telling when you were being fed bullshit.”
“Not like she can. Some people sweat too much, or look to the left or start shaking, or mumbling their answers. This girl just knows.”
“Highly unlikely.”
“But not impossible?”
Joe falls silent, unwilling to make such a leap of the imagination.
“What is it?” asks Ruiz.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I remember once reading about a police officer in Los Angeles who pulled over a sports car late one night in a rough area of the city. As he walked towards the vehicle with his gun drawn, a teenager jumped from the passenger seat and pointed a semi-automatic directly at him. They were yards apart. The officer held fire. For some reason, in that instant, he knew the teenager wasn’t a threat. He called it a hunch. The teenager surrendered.”
“So the guy got lucky?”
“A while later, a team of psychologists tested the officer; showed him a series of videotapes of people who were either lying or telling the truth. One tape showed people talking about their views on the death penalty or smoking in public. The same test had been given to hundreds of judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, police sharpshooters and Customs officers. On average they scored fifty per cent.”
“Which means they could have been guessing?”
“Exactly, but this police officer—the same one who had the gun pulled on him—he had a success rate of over ninety per cent.”
“So you’re saying some people are good at spotting liars.”
“Not just good, he was a virtuoso.”
“How did he do it?”
“Nobody knows for certain. I mean, there are studies on face-reading. Some people train themselves to look for micro-expressions, tiny telltale indicators of stress or deceit. There is a university professor in America, Paul Ekman, who has spent his whole career studying face-reading.”
“But you’re not convinced?”
Joe doesn’t respond. There are things about the human brain that he can’t explain: freakish feats of memory, or people with the ability to calculate prime numbers into the trillions. Autistic savants. Geniuses. Brain-injured patients with unique abilities… Neuropsychology is one of the last great frontiers of science.
Inside the house, Ruiz dumps Joe’s suitcase and pulls a tray of ice-cubes from the freezer.
“You going to join me?”
“No.”
The professor’s thumb and forefinger are rubbing together as if rolling a pill between them. He threads his fingers together as if in prayer and the twitching stops. He’s not embarrassed or disappointed. He long ago made his peace with the “other” that inhabits his body. Mr. Parkinson.
“So what do we do now?” he asks.
“We wait.”
“You think she’ll call?”
“Somebody will.”
14
BAGHDAD
Luca steps gingerly over the debris in his apartment, trying not to break the unbroken. Bottles and plates are shattered on the floor, amid the contents of his pantry. His furniture lies in pieces and water leaks from a toilet cistern, torn from the wall.
On the floor of the bedroom he finds the photograph of Nicola. He picks it up and brushes the broken glass away. Removing it from the frame, he folds the photo and slips it into his shirt pocket.
In the kitchen,