The Wreckage

30

Standing beneath the colonnaded arches, Ruiz watches the lift doors open and three men emerge. One of them is the driver of the blue Audi; the others are slightly older, dressed in suits, one with a black umbrella and the other wearing a light overcoat. Staying out of sight, Ruiz lets them pass.

They cross Fenchurch Street and turn into Mark Lane. Once they’re around the corner, Ruiz doesn’t alter his pace. He knows where they’re going.

The restaurant is modern Italian with Polish waitresses, French kitchen staff and an English chef: a microcosm of the New Europe. The private dining room is in a mezzanine area, overlooking the main restaurant. Earlier Ruiz had watched two other men arrive and sweep the room for listening devices.

Luca and Daniela are sitting at a table by the window. Luca hands a camera to a waitress. It’s their anniversary, he says. They pose. Behind them the door opens and the three men enter. The shutter blinks. Take another one just to be sure. It blinks again.

Moments later a cab pulls up outside. A fourth man has arrived, this one more surprising. Yahya Maluk hands his hat and coat to a waitress.

Ruiz enters a few minutes later, not making eye contact with Luca or Daniela.

“I’m with Mr. Sobel’s party,” he tells the maitre d’. “A late addition. Did someone call? No, not to worry.”

Taking the narrow stairs, he arrives at the lone table.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen. Bloody traffic. Grind to a standstill one day.”

Bernard Sobel looks up from the menu. Ruiz takes a chair and shrugs off his coat.

Sobel: “Hey buddy, you’re in the wrong place.”

“This is a private dining room,” echoes Artie Chalcott.

“But you guys know me.” Ruiz opens his arms. Then he motions to the driver. “We’re old friends. How’s your mate? Sorry about his nose. Didn’t know he was a bleeder.”

The driver’s first instinct is to reach inside his jacket. Ruiz fixes him with a stare. “I had you pegged as stupid, but not that stupid. Are we really going to compare weapons in a public place like this? Is yours bigger than mine? Is mine bigger than yours? I don’t like to boast, but I think size does count and now isn’t the time for you to grow a pair.”

Ruiz reaches across the table to Brendan Sobel. “Brendan, nice to finally meet.”

Sobel is so stunned he shakes his hand.

“And you must be Yahya Maluk. We haven’t met,” says Ruiz, “but I know you by reputation.”

The banker looks completely nonplussed. He glances from face to face, waiting for an explanation.

Ruiz turns to Chalcott. “Another American. Welcome to our shores.”

A waitress offers to take Ruiz’s coat.

“Thanks, love, but I’ll hold on to it. Can’t be too careful. Thieves about. Don’t want to put temptation in their way.”

She looks at his shabby coat and frowns.

“I’ll have a Peroni,” he says, giving her a wink.

Chalcott is glaring at Sobel. “Who is this clown?”

“Vincent Ruiz.”

“There you go-you do remember me,” says Ruiz. He pours himself fizzy water from a green bottle. Sips. Then he picks up the menu. “I’m ravenous. Any recommendations?”

Sobel whispers something to the driver, who has gone quiet, touching nervously at his mouth with a napkin.

“Oh, and I’m sorry about your car. That broken window. Just to prove there are no hard feelings, I’ll pay for the damage.”

Ruiz pulls an envelope of cash from his jacket, tossing it on to the table where banknotes spill across the white linen. “You left that on the front seat of my car. It’s all there-count it if you like.”

Yahya Maluk pushes back his chair. “I didn’t come here for this sideshow. Who is this man? What’s he doing here?”

Chalcott tells Sobel to get Maluk out of the restaurant.

“You’re leaving so soon? We’ve hardly had a chance to talk,” says Ruiz. “I was going to ask you about Mohammed Ibrahim. He’s looking very healthy for a man who died a few years ago and then escaped from jail. How was Ramsay’s restaurant in Maida Vale? I’ve heard good reports. The man has a potty mouth, but he can cook up a storm.”

Blood has pooled in Maluk’s cheeks like pink flowers. He wipes a film of perspiration from his top lip, stammering, “How does he know about Ibrahim? You said nobody…”

“Shut the fuck up!” says Chalcott.

The driver leads Maluk down the stairs. Luca and Daniela get another set of pictures as they leave.

The upstairs waitress has come to the table with Ruiz’s beer. She is staring at the money.

“Don’t get too excited,” he tells her. “It’s not your tip. This is what you call a bribe.”

She hesitates and walks back to the kitchen.

Ruiz shakes out his serviette. “You’re probably wondering how I found you, Brendan. You’ll find my mobile phone on the floor of the car that you sent to my daughter’s house. It was tracked to the garage beneath your offices. While on this subject-I’d like the phone back.”

Chalcott is staring at Sobel, who is altering the position of his body, trying to disassociate himself from the conversation or to disappear sideways.

“What do you want, Mr. Ruiz?”

“Call me Vincent, please. And you are…?”

“I don’t think that’s important.”

“No need to be so formal-I know all about Brendan and that office of yours. No listed telephone numbers or company tax returns.”

“We’re a communications company,” says Chalcott.

“Not the CIA then?”

Chalcott is trying hard to look relaxed and sound perfectly natural. He doesn’t like being embarrassed.

“Perhaps we could talk about this somewhere more private?”

“This is a private dining room.”

“Just you and me.”

“I’m happy if you want to invite Yahya. We can bring Ibrahim along. We can play twenty questions.”

Ruiz slides his hand into his pocket again. This time he produces a small black notebook.

“That bribe was very clumsy. I thought you guys had moved beyond trying to buy people off with beads and trinkets. This is what you wanted: Richard North’s notebook. Is this why you killed Zac Osborne?”

“We were not complicit in the murder of Zac Osborne,” says Sobel.

“Complicit: such an old-fashioned term. What about Richard North and Colin Hackett?”

“Please keep your voice down, Mr. Ruiz.”

“Explain it to me.”

“You are not owed an explanation.”

Ruiz taps the notebook against his cheek. “You have broken into my house, you have gate-crashed my daughter’s wedding, bugged my phones, hounded my friends… I’m owed for that.”

“You must think this is feeding time at the zoo,” says Chalcott, who has folded his serviette and placed it neatly on the side of his plate. “I won’t say that it’s been a pleasure.”

“I thought the CIA might be investigating a money-laundering operation,” says Ruiz. “Or trying to track down a wanted terrorist. But then I saw Mr. Maluk arrive. You’ve known all along about the cash being laundered through Mersey Fidelity. The ghost accounts. Iraqi money. Reconstruction funds. Drug profits… Which begs the question-why would the CIA allow something like that to happen?”

“That is a question too far, Mr. Ruiz, but you are right about one thing-you are jeopardizing a major security operation.”

“Oh, I see. There’s a bigger plan. So what is Mohammed Ibrahim doing in London? Perhaps you organized his release from prison. Is he your monster?”

“Be careful, Mr. Ruiz.”

“You know what they say about lying down with dogs?… You wake up with a career in the movies. No, that’s not it. Fleas. You wake up with fleas.”

Chalcott’s eyes behind rimless glasses seem to be concentrated on burning a hole through Ruiz’s forehead. “You do us a disservice, sir. You come in here, treating us like the Bumstead crowd, making outrageous allegations, getting in my face in a public place-that’s not very intelligent behavior. We can go somewhere now and talk about this, or I can find you later.”

It is a threat. Chalcott doesn’t look like a dangerous man, but an unlined face can hide a myriad of sins. His thick brown hair is ruffled slightly by the currents from the air conditioner. Joe O’Loughlin has taught Ruiz that true narcissists become intensely angry if anyone suggests they are not perfect. They seek to destroy the messenger rather than admit their flawless image might be blemished.

“I thought you were a clever man,” says Chalcott. “Clearly, I was misinformed. You come in here looking like you fell out of a laundry bag, making threats and baseless allegations, thinking you can rattle me. You think I give a fuck what some pissant, washed-up former detective is going to do?”

Ruiz looks at his hands and feet. He was wrong to come here; foolish to think they would tell him anything. By confronting them, by humiliating them publicly, by peeling away the carefully constructed facade of their work, Ruiz has inserted broken glass into the brains of dangerous men.

The manager has arrived. He is standing three feet away, his tongue wetting his lips.

“Perhaps you gentlemen could lower your voices.”

Chalcott’s eyes are filled with a black light. “Why don’t you fuck off?”

The manager takes a step back.

“It’s all right,” says Ruiz. “I’ll be leaving in a moment.”

“Nice to hear it,” says Sobel.

The driver leans down to whisper something in Ruiz’s ear but doesn’t finish the sentence.

In that moment something breaks inside Ruiz-not a clean snap like a bone or a branch splintering, but a moist sound like wet sheets flapping on a windy day. A kaleidoscope of images tumbles through his mind-Zac Osborne’s tortured body, Elizabeth North vomiting in the gutter, Holly Knight without a family, Richard North dragged from the stinking mud.

In the pause between heartbeats, Ruiz swings his elbow back in a short arc, connecting with the driver’s throat, closing his windpipe. In the same motion, he drags him face-first on to the table sending plates and glasses crashing to the floor. The next blow is delivered with a pepper mill inside Ruiz’s fist, hooking the driver under the left eye. He doesn’t want to stop. He can feel the old wheels starting to turn and the cobwebs being blown out. It feels better than it should.

“That’s enough,” says Sobel, holding his hand inside his jacket.

Ruiz places the pepper mill back on the table and rights his upturned chair. The notebook has fallen on to the floor. Picking it up, he brushes beads of water from the cover.

“This is what you wanted. You can stop looking for Holly Knight and you can stop following me.”

He presses it against Chalcott’s chest.

“I realize that you’re not going to tell me what’s going on. Keeping secrets is how you guys get a hard-on. But just in case you think of coming after me or Holly, you should know that photographs were taken of you entering this restaurant. Time and date stamped. I might never learn the whole story, but I have enough to cause you some embarrassment.”

No reaction. Ruiz walks down the stairs and out of the restaurant, listening to the soft scuff of his shoes on the pavement, trying to make his heart beat slower. Luca and Daniela have already gone. He moves quickly, knowing that someone will most likely be trying to follow him.

Reaching the junction, he turns south and ponders whether anything has been achieved. Not a lot, he suspects, but subtlety was never one of his strengths. He has just broken all his own rules about keeping a low profile and never revealing his full knowledge. It was a conscious, culpable, willful lapse and these men could make him pay.

Heading underground, he takes the escalator into the bowels of Tower Hill Station and pauses in the walkway between the west-and eastbound platforms of the Circle Line, waiting for the first train to arrive.

He notices a man with a knapsack, a woman with a baby in a sling, a teenager carrying a skateboard with his wrist in plaster. Two men in bulky jackets and boots are jogging down the escalator, hearing the approaching train.

The carriage doors slide open. Ruiz steps inside. The men squeeze into an adjoining carriage. Ruiz squats out of sight and waits for the doors to start closing. At the last possible moment he steps off. Running up the stairs and over the tracks, he forces open the closing doors of a westbound train.

Nobody is following him.