The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [9]
One of the letters was for Claire on her wedding day. It contained the rings and the hair-comb. Now the torn envelope lies discarded on the floor. The letter screwed into a ball. The small drawstring bag with the jewelry has gone.
Ruiz picks up the crumpled letter and tries to smooth out the creases. Laura’s handwriting had grown spidery as the chemo robbed her of energy, but none of her sentences are crossed out or corrected. Perhaps a person knows exactly what to write when the sand is trickling away.
Ruiz stops himself reading. The letter is meant for Claire. His eyes drift to the bottom of the page where Laura finished with hugs and kisses. A small circular stain has marked the porous paper—a fallen tear as a punctuation mark.
Anger rises. Burns. Most of the missing items can be replaced—the camera, the iPod and the money—but not the jewelry. He wanted Claire to wear the hair-comb on her wedding day. It was the “something old” to go with something new and borrowed and blue—just like the rhyme says. But it’s more than that. The hair-comb is something that Ruiz has cherished. Laura was wearing it when they first met at a twilight ball in Hertfordshire in 1968. She looked like a proverbial sixties flower child with her hair braided and pinned high on her head.
Early in the evening she danced with him but then Ruiz lost her in the crowd and spent four hours trying to find her. It was after midnight. People were starting to leave. Buses were waiting to ferry them back to London. Ruiz saw Laura standing near the entrance. She pointed to him and summoned him with her finger. Ruiz looked over his shoulder to make sure she wanted him.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Vincent.”
“I’m Laura. This is my phone number. If you don’t call me within two days, Vincent, you lose your chance. I’m a good girl. I don’t sleep with men on the first date or the second or the third. You have to woo me, but I’m worth the effort.”
Then she kissed him on the cheek and was gone. He called her within two hours. The rest is, as they say…
Picking up a notebook, Ruiz makes a list. First he contacts his bank and reports his cards stolen. The recorded messages give him six options and then another six. Eventually, a girl with an Indian accent takes the details. Checks his account. There was a cash withdrawal just before midnight and another one just after; a thousand pounds in total. There were two other online purchases. She won’t give him the details.
“Someone from our fraud department will call you, sir.”
Sunlight makes his head throb. He considers his options. How can he find the girl? The actress. The boyfriend either followed them home or Holly must have called him. Maybe both.
Ruiz picks up his phone and hits redial. The last number she dialed was a mobile—the boyfriend perhaps.
A man answers with a grunt.
“Listen, I don’t know who you are. I don’t care. But you took something of mine last night, something of great sentimental value. You can have the rest of my stuff. I don’t care about that. But I need the jewelry—the rings and the hair-comb—they belonged to my wife. Give them back to me and I won’t come looking for you. You have my word on that. If you don’t give them back, I will find you and I will punish you. You have my word on that too.”
He pauses. Listens to the breathing. The boyfriend clears his throat.
“Fuck off!”
Ruiz listens to the dead air.
“Who was that, babe?”
“Nobody.”
Holly Knight is awake now. She won’t go back to sleep.
“He sounded angry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Zac rolls over and squashes a pillow beneath his head. Within half a minute he’s asleep again, his nostrils