The Wreckage

22

Ruiz walks alongside the river, smelling the briny stink of low tide. Fat-bellied boats, canted drunkenly to starboard, are stuck fast in the mud. When he first came down to London from Lancashire he was posted with the Thames River Police. On average they pulled two bodies a week from the river, mostly suicides. Rivers seem to draw people to them, cleansing souls, christening them, or dragging them to the bottom.

Holly Knight fascinates and appalls him. Full of fuck-you apathy and repressed anger, she lies almost compulsively yet recognizes when people are deceiving her. An actress. Intense. Volatile. Disconcerting. She trusts nobody and treats every question like it’s wired to go off.

Taking out his mobile, he searches for a familiar name in the directory. Calls. Waits. Joe O’Loughlin answers.

“Hey, Professor, how does a cow know it’s not a butterfly dreaming of being a cow?”

“It can’t fly.”

“Makes sense.”

The professor is a clinical psychologist who spends too much time in other people’s heads. He looks exactly like you’d expect an academic to look-slightly disheveled, unkempt, undernourished-only he has Parkinson’s which means he shakes it like Shakira when he’s not medicated.

Ruiz met him eight years ago, when he was investigating the murder of a young woman in London, one of O’Loughlin’s former patients. The professor was a prime suspect until he proved that another patient was setting him up. That’s what happens when you deal with psychopaths and sociopaths; it’s like trying to hand-feed sharks.

“How are things?”

“Good.”

“The girls?”

“Fine.”

“Julianne?”

“We’re talking.”

A posse of thin androgynous cyclists sweeps past him in a blur of latex and brightly colored helmets.

“Claire is getting married at the weekend.”

“Congratulations.”

“You want to come to the wedding?”

“Why?”

“I can bring someone.”

“Don’t you want to bring a date?”

“I’m too old to bring dates.”

“What’s the real reason?”

“There’s someone I want you to meet. She’s nineteen. Damaged. Angry. Her boyfriend was killed two nights ago but she won’t talk to the police. Doesn’t trust them.”

“What’s her name?”

“Holly Knight. D.O.B. twelfth December 1992. You still got any contacts in the DHSS?”

“One or two. Where is she now?”

“Staying with me. I’ll explain when you get here.”

“You’re assuming I’ll come.”

“Of course.”

The conversation hits an air pocket and lurches into silence. The professor is an expert at reading the pauses. “Something else on your mind?”

“She says she can tell when people are lying.”

“Why does that bother you?”

“I think maybe she can.”

Ruiz walks back to his Merc and pauses for a moment, considering how he got into this. The stolen jewelry. Holly said she dropped the hair-comb when she was attacked in the flat. Maybe it’s still there.

Crossing the river, he drives east through streets that are dotted with “For Sale” and “To Let” signs. People selling up, selling out, downsizing, belt-tightening, admitting defeat. The atmosphere in London has changed in the past two years. People are postponing retirement, driving older cars, eating out less; they’re less conspicuous in their spending, less confident in the future. The city is circumspect rather than diminished.

Ruiz parks the Merc and squints through the windscreen at the Hogarth Estate. It looks different in daylight. Dirtier. Poorer. Some balconies are being used to dry clothes, others to store broken furniture.

Ruiz crosses the road and climbs the stairs to Holly’s flat. Blue-and-white crime-scene tape is threaded in a zigzag pattern across a makeshift wooden door, bolted shut. Rocking back six inches, he shoulders it open.

Crossing the threshold, he eases the door shut and steps further into the flat. The broken furniture, shredded pillows and emptied drawers are just as before, although now there is fingerprint powder on every smooth surface. SOCO have dusted, hoovered, scraped and swabbed.

The place has a haunted quality that comes after death. It’s like seeing the twisted shell of a car being hauled on to a tow-truck and wondering if anyone survived or was badly injured.

Ruiz goes into the bedroom, opens a wardrobe and collects some of Holly’s clothes. Jeans. Blouses. Knickers. What else might she need? In the bathroom he fills a make-up bag with small jars, lipsticks, eyeliner and a toothbrush. Everything fits in two plastic shopping bags. He sets them down near the splintered front door and goes through the flat again, searching systematically, looking for letters, bills, bank statements, photographs, anything that might give him a sense of Holly and Zac.

There is a postcard from Ireland and a bundle of letters from Afghanistan in military-issued envelopes. The only picture of them is a shot taken on a ferry during a wild crossing to somewhere. They’re laughing and holding each other as the swell pitches them backwards and forwards across the deck.

Standing in the living room, Ruiz tries to recreate the confrontation as Holly had described it. He pictures bodies in motion. She hit the wall. Scrambled up. Used the saucepan. Dropped it.

Beneath a side table he spies the shoulder bag that Holly was carrying when she left the audition and visited the jewelers in Hatton Garden. The contents have spilled. The hair-comb is half hidden by lipstick tubes, tissues and a half packet of mints. He lifts it carefully. Scared it might break. Then he wraps it in tissue paper and places it inside a small wooden box, which he puts in his pocket.

Picking up the plastic bags, he steps outside and pulls the door shut, pushing the bolt across and reattaching the police tape. Then he knocks on neighboring flats. After a long wait a door opens.

“I’m not buying anything,” says a pale man with red hair and doleful eyes.

“That’s good,” replies Ruiz. “Were you home the night before last?”

“I already told the police everything.”

“What did you tell them?”

The neighbor looks at him nervously. “Nothing!”

Ruiz stands motionless, letting the silence work its magic. The neighbor fidgets. Scratches. Shuffles his feet.

“I did see this one guy run down the stairs. He almost knocked me over.”

“What did he look like?”

“I only saw him for a second.”

“What color?”

“I don’t know. Muddy.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Foreign looking. I think maybe you should leave this guy alone.”

“Why’s that?”

The neighbor hesitates, still scratching his crotch. “He had a look, you know, like he came into the world with nothing except a name.”

“Dangerous?”

“Hungry for something.”