The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [81]
“Did you tell him about the double payments?”
“Yes.”
“What about the cash deliveries to the banks that were robbed?”
“He knew that too.”
They fall silent and watch Jamal’s two boys drawing pictures on butcher’s paper, sharing colored pencils between them. What sort of future awaits them, wonders Luca. Jamal has been identified and labeled as a collaborator. He and Abu will be targets from now on. Friendless. Never safe.
Reaching into his pocket, Luca places the keys to the Skoda on the tea tray.
“These are yours now.”
Jamal looks at him. “Why?”
“You can be a taxi driver—until you become a doctor.”
“You do not owe me anything.”
“I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
Jamal drives them to the al-Hamra Hotel and drops them inside the security perimeter. They say goodbye with the engine running.
“I will come back one day,” says Luca.
Jamal shakes his head. “Iraq is a place to leave, not to live.”
“What will you do?”
“I have family in the south.”
Daniela turns away as the two men embrace wordlessly. She takes Luca’s hand as they watch the Skoda leave, waving one last time before going upstairs to their room where they undress each other.
Luca can’t find the clasp of her bra.
“Try the other side.”
“I never say no to the other side.”
Unhooking the clasp, he reaches for her breasts. “These are nice.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Firm.”
“They hold my bra up.”
She turns, expecting a kiss, but Luca avoids her lips.
“I thought you were going to kiss me.”
“Not yet.”
He wants to change the rhythm of her breathing. He wants to make her skin flush and her toes curl. He wants to see her self-control dissolve and for Daniela to exist on the same plane he does.
Afterwards, they lie together. She takes his hand and can feel it beating softly as if it contains its own tiny heart.
“Who’s Nicola?” she asks. “Nadia mentioned her.”
“A woman I knew.”
“You were close?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I lost her.”
Daniela looks at him steadily and for a moment the intelligence in her eyes seems to be absolute and unshakable.
“Why did you take me to meet Jamal and his family?”
“To show you why I do this.”
15
LONDON
Elizabeth is leaning out of the top-floor window, puffing on a cigarette but not inhaling. The last time she remembers doing something like this she was fourteen. It was a Pall Mall and she was hiding from her parents. Now she’s thirty-two and hiding from her son’s nanny. Age doesn’t make us any wiser or less prone to guilt.
She found an old packet of cigarettes when she was searching North’s study, looking for clues, trying to piece together his last days, checking his credit card statements, mobile phone bills and emails; lipstick on his shirt collars; or another woman’s scent on his clothes.
Suddenly nauseous, she breaks the cigarette in half, wrapping the butt in a tissue before flushing it down the loo. The tissue dissolves but the dog-end is still there, bobbing in the bowl, mocking her.
She brushes her teeth and goes back to the study, sitting at North’s desk, feeling the contours in the old leather chair, worn shiny in places. She found the chair in a second-hand shop in Camden just after they bought the house in Barnes. North had wanted a new chair, but she told him this one was a classic. It reminded her of something you see in old movies about newspaper offices where reporters hammer on manual typewriters and yell at copyboys to run their words to the subs desk.
Her personal dreams of journalism had made this image seem romantic. At university she imagined herself as a famous columnist—the next Julie Burchill or Zoë Heller or Lynn Barber. Instead she’d presented a “lifestyle” program, as forgettable as a phone number.
Elizabeth opens the report from the private detective. Her husband’s days are broken down into hours and minutes: times, dates and places. Tucked into the front sleeve of the folder