The Wreckage

19

Ruiz can’t find his shoes. A man can’t go to his daughter’s wedding without a decent pair of shoes. He should have looked earlier. He should have polished them. The polish is somewhere under the stairs with dozens of other things he won’t be able to put his hands on when he needs them.

“When did you last wear them?” asks Joe O’Loughlin.

“I can’t remember.”

“Try.”

“A funeral maybe…”

“When?”

“In March.”

Ruiz looks at his full-length profile in the mirror, sucking in his stomach, his chin up, not too shabby, he thinks. He’s been working out for the past few days, curling sixty-pound barbells and doing push-ups. His trousers are too loose and he needs a haircut.

Claire has been on the phone twice already and it’s only ten o’clock. She and the bridesmaids are getting ready at Phillip’s house. The groom has been banished to a hotel in Hampstead so he doesn’t see the bride in her dress.

“It’s supposed to be the biggest day of her life,” the professor reminds him.

Ruiz grunts. “One day she’ll get pregnant, she’ll have a child, then she’ll know a big day.”

“A wedding is still in the top three.”

“None of mine were top three.”

“What about the first?”

“Yeah, well, maybe the first.”

“You’re such a romantic.”

Ruiz hooks a finger inside his collar, trying to make it stretch, feeling as comfortable as a penguin in a microwave.

“Let me tell you about romance in this day and age, Professor. You might appreciate the lesson since your Charlie is going to be dating some time soon. My daughter’s fiance has been putting his Ukrainian Kovbasa into my Claire’s vagina for the past two years-which is a sentence I wish I had never uttered out loud or in my head. Where is the romance in that? Whatever she had to give away, she’s given away… pretty frequently.”

“Kovbasa?”

“It’s a sausage.”

“Oh. You didn’t sleep with Laura before you married?”

“Nope.”

Joe stares at him in disbelief.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason.”

Ruiz gets annoyed. “I mean, I wasn’t a virgin, but Laura had this thing about waiting.”

Joe has found Ruiz’s shoes beneath the laundry sink. He wets a dishcloth and wipes the dust from the leather. Ruiz breaks a lace and curses. He steals one from another pair of shoes and checks the street before they leave. In a house on the far side of the road he sees a figure silhouetted in a window. He wants to believe it is an ordinary person, a good one: a mother putting a baby down for a nap or a shift worker going to bed after a long night.

That’s the thing about trying to protect someone-or failing to-you start to think that danger lurks around every corner and that shadows hold secrets. Holly Knight needed his protection but he let her down. Now he has no way of finding her unless she contacts him.

The wedding is at a church in Primrose Hill, opposite Regent’s Park. Ruiz has to pick up his mother from the retirement home in Streatham and then go to Claire’s house.

Daj could be a problem. Some days her dementia is so profound that she refuses to believe Ruiz is her son. Either that or she mistakes him for Luke, the brother he lost as a child. At other times she remembers every single detail of her past, which is almost as tragic.

Somewhere in her rambling mind is the riddle of Ruiz’s existence. Daj fell pregnant in a concentration camp. She was a teenage gypsy girl used as “recreation” by the SS officers and guards. One of the officers took her out of the camp brothel and had her cleaning his house and warming his bed. Ruiz had never discovered the officer’s name. Daj claimed to have forgotten. Instead she talked about an attempted abortion and how the “bastard child” had “clung to my insides, not wanting to leave, wanting so much to live.”

She was three months pregnant when the war ended and the camps were liberated. She spent another two months looking for her family but they were all gone-her twin brother, her parents, aunts, uncles, cousins… No countries were accepting gypsies as refugees. Daj lied on her application form at the displaced persons’ camp. She took the identity of a young Jewish seamstress who was nineteen, instead of sixteen.

Ruiz was born in a county hospital in Hertfordshire that still had blackout curtains and tape across the windows. They bulldozed it in the seventies-did what the Luftwaffe couldn’t do. Progress marches in jackboots.

Parking the Mercedes outside the retirement home, Ruiz and the professor go through the reception and find Daj in her room. She is watching a daytime chat show where people seem to be shouting at each other and throwing chairs.

“Hello, Daj, do you remember Joe?”

“Are you a doctor?” she asks suspiciously.

“No, I’m a friend of Vincent’s.”

“I have a son called Vincent.”

“That’s me, Daj,” says Ruiz.

She looks at him suspiciously. The skin of her face seems to be covered in finely lined tissue paper and her hands are bony branches. She’s wearing a floral dress and a short jacket. The nurses have helped her put on lipstick.

“Are you ready, Daj?”

“Where are we going?”

“To the church.”

“I don’t like churches.”

“It’s the Catholics you don’t like,” says Ruiz, and then to Joe, “A priest comes round once a week and Daj tries to convert him to atheism.” He looks back at his mother. “Claire is getting married.”

“Claire?”

“Your granddaughter.”

“She’s too young.”

“She’s thirty-two.”

“Nonsense. I want to talk to Michael.”

“Michael’s not here.”

“Is he coming to the wedding?”

“We’re not sure.”

Ruiz feels a pang of guilt. He hasn’t seen his son in nearly four years. They talk every three or four months, snatched conversations from whatever port Michael has washed up into after a month at sea. Duty phone calls, he calls them, but every time Ruiz feels aggrieved, he remembers his own youth, working as a young police officer in London, rarely phoning home, visiting even less often.

“Bring a cardigan-it gets cool of an evening.”

“Where are we going?”

“The church.”

“I hate churches.”

“I know that, Daj, but Claire is getting married.”

This is how the conversation doubles back on itself and loops into elaborate knots that confuse Daj even more as they drive across the Thames, heading north to Primrose Hill.

Claire and Phillip have a large terraced house with glimpses of the park. It’s only a short walk to the church. One of Claire’s girlfriends opens the door. A bridesmaid. Gina. She’s an old school friend, now married. Ruiz can picture her being eight years old, dancing around Claire’s bedroom to Madonna songs.

The other bridesmaids are in various stages of dress, being fawned over by a hairdresser, a beautician and a stylist. There are yards of lace and flashes of bare shoulder.

Women in groups have always intimidated Ruiz. Their mystery increases exponentially when they’re together, laughing and exchanging news. Champagne can also be a factor. Perhaps his anxiety dates back to his youth when girls would congregate in groups on the far side of the dance floor and necessitate the “longest walk” and a mumbled request to dance. Success meant a few minutes of touching a female waist and hand. Failure meant public humiliation.

“Can I see Claire?” he asks.

“She’s still getting ready.”

Gina knocks on the bedroom door. “It’s your dad.”

“Is he drunk?” comes a voice from inside.

Gina addresses Ruiz. “You’re not drunk, are you?”

“No.”

“I don’t think he’s drunk,” she yells back.

The door opens. A breath catches in Ruiz’s throat. For a split second his mind flashes back and he sees Laura standing in their hotel room, breathless and giggling, having been carried across the threshold.

“Well?” asks Claire. She completes a twirl. “It’s Mummy’s wedding dress. I had them copy the design.”

“You look beautiful,” he says, struggling to find words.

“And you’re very handsome.”

She kisses his cheek. Behind her in the room is another vision from his past. Miranda Louise Mills. Ex-wife number three. Dressed all in black.

Miranda straightens his tie and Ruiz glances at her delicate hands and past them to her cleavage. Ex-wives should be fat and frumpy. Not like this.

“Have you heard from Michael?” she asks.

Ruiz shakes his head.

“Maybe he’ll surprise us.”

Claire gives him a pained smile that says, I’m not a child any more, Daddy, you don’t have to lie to me.

Ruiz reaches into his pocket and pulls out a creased envelope and a small wooden box with a hinged lid.

“I have something for you,” he says. “It was given to me a long while ago with very specific instructions that I was to give it to you on your wedding day.”

Claire can hear the slight tremor in his voice. “It was your mother who gave it to me. It belonged to her mother and her grandmother, so it goes a long way back, and now it’s yours.” He opens the box. Claire’s hand flutters to her mouth.

Ruiz continues, “I think she thought maybe you might wear it today… as the something old, you know, but maybe you have the dress now, so you don’t need anything else.”

Claire shakes her head and holds the envelope in trembling hands. She looks at Miranda and back to her father and then at the envelope. Opening it nervously, she unfolds the handwritten page and turns away as she reads the letter.

When she finishes, she folds it again, holding it against her heart.

“Now look what you’ve done,” she says. “I’m going to cry and my make-up is going to run. I’ll look like a panda.”

“Pandas are very cute,” says Ruiz.

Miranda takes the hair-comb and slides it in Claire’s hair, tucking it beneath the veil. Then she ushers Ruiz into the hallway and gives him a kiss on the lips, before rubbing the lipstick away with her thumb.

“You haven’t returned any of my calls.”

“Were they urgent?”

“It’s called being polite.”

“I took you to dinner a fortnight ago.”

“To that tacky fish restaurant-the meal left me faster than a fire drill.”

“I thought you’d lost weight.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” She punches his shoulder. “Go outside. We’re not ready.”

Ruiz doesn’t need a second invitation. Retreating to the front steps, he takes a boiled sweet from a round metal tin in his pocket and sucks on it thoughtfully. Michael should be at his sister’s wedding. What excuse will he give this time? Bad weather. Missed flights. Forgotten dates. Michael is his father’s son. Ruiz wishes that he could warn him that one day he’ll regret spending so much time away from his family. Maybe that’s wishful thinking.

There are no bridal cars. They’re going to walk to St. Mark’s, which is just around the corner; a true wedding procession through the streets of Primrose Hill.

Joe takes the step next to him and they sit comfortably in silence, listening to the champagne corks being popped inside. Ruiz notices a car parked on the corner. It’s the same dark blue Audi that was outside Holly’s flat in South London. Two figures are visible behind the dark-tinted windows. Ruiz feels a pain in his chest like someone has placed a fist against his breastbone and is twisting knuckles into the cartilage. This is his daughter’s wedding day.

Without a word, he stands, walks down the steps and crosses the road. He taps on the driver’s window. After a long pause it glides down. The man behind the wheel has close-cropped hair and a three-day growth. His shirt is rolled up revealing a long pink scar running down the inside of his forearm.

Ruiz can smell the new leather of the seats. “Can I help you?” he asks.

“No, sirree.”

He’s American. A southerner.

“Are you waiting for me?”

“We’re just waiting.”

His passenger is younger, also unshaven, with blond highlights. His sunglasses are hinged on the frames and flipped upwards like wiper blades. His left hand is tucked out of sight below the level of his thigh.

The driver motions to the house.

“Fine day for a wedding,” he drawls. “Who’s getting married?”

“The bride and groom.”

“Well, you make sure you pass on our good wishes.”

“I’ll do that,” says Ruiz, who can feel his molars grinding saliva. He tucks his hands into his pockets. “Maybe we can come to an arrangement.”

“What would that be?”

“How about we agree to meet up tomorrow? I can make myself available all day. I’ll even come to the office… meet your boss. That way you guys can go home and gel each other’s hair and my daughter can get married.”

The skin tightens around the driver’s eyes. “You’re a funny guy. Is that what you Brits call irony?”

“You want me to explain irony?”

The driver closes his fingers, all except the longest, and pushes his sunglasses up his nose. That’s his answer.

Ruiz walks away. Twenty yards down the street he pauses at a builder’s skip full of debris and broken bricks. The red-black color is rising from his chest to his face and he can hear a tearing sound behind his eyes like fabric shredding. Picking up a half brick, he weighs it in his hand.

The driver and passenger of the Audi are laughing about something. The side window shatters with the sound and fury of a shotgun. Ruiz reaches through the window and bounces the passenger’s head off the dashboard, making his nose bloom. He’s a bleeder.

The driver reaches below the seat, but Ruiz has already taken a gun from his partner’s hand. Now he’s aiming it across his crumpled body with one eye closed, the other looking along the barrel, his hand steady as a barber with a cutthroat razor.

A thought passes across the driver’s face. Ruiz has always referred to it as the Dirty Harry moment-that fleeting instant when a person wonders: Am I fast enough or lucky enough?

Something tells him no.

Ruiz takes out his mobile and punches the number that was left beneath the wiper blades of the Merc, along with the envelope of cash. It’s ringing… being answered. There are five seconds of dead air.

“Mr. Ruiz?”

“You still want the girl?”

“That was our deal.”

“Don’t talk to me about deals. You kicked in my front door.”

“A mistake, I admit.”

Another long pause, a low rumble in the background-aircraft noise.

“The price has doubled.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m pissed off.”

The American mulls this over. “How can I be sure that you’ve got her?”

“You can’t.”

“Where do we meet?”

“I choose the location, but it won’t be today. In the meantime, call off your dogs. One of them might need a vet.”

Ruiz hangs up and turns the phone to silent. Blood is pouring from the passenger’s nose and across his lips and chin, staining his shirtfront. Tiny cubes of glass decorate his lap like diamonds on a jeweler’s cloth.

“You hear that, ladies? You get off early today.”

He leans through the window and presses the release on the ammunition clip, letting it drop into the lap of the passenger, who has his hand cupped under his nose.

As the pistol falls to the floor, Ruiz simultaneously drops his mobile behind the bucket seat. Then he turns away, joining the professor on the footpath. The entire wedding party is standing on the steps of the house-Claire, her bridesmaids, Miranda and Daj. Claire looks ready to throw the first punch, but Miranda has a dangerous left hook.

“Very smooth,” says Joe.

“I was being diplomatic.”

“I’d hate to see you go to war.”

Ruiz gives him a smile that means nothing.

“Can I borrow your mobile?”

“What happened to yours?”

“I must have left it somewhere.”