“We’re tracing the call.”
Campbell has a phone ringing in the background. “Go home, Vincent, and stop acting like some third-rate vigilante. We’ll follow your lead tomorrow.”
Ruiz hangs up and looks at the sky, the trees bending in the wind. A storm coming.
35
The rain starts falling just north of Watford, a few spits at first, mixing with dust on the windscreen and bleeding down the wipers. Then the clouds break and sheets of rain are swept across the motorway as if the air has turned to water. Ruiz drives with both hands on the wheel; his head canted forward, wanting the traffic to part. He stays in the overtaking lane, flashing his lights at any slow vehicles.
Luca is next to him, still trying to fathom how quickly the euphoria of yesterday has turned to this. Ruiz didn’t ask him to come, but some decisions have all the momentum and certainty of gravity. Nicola had once accused him of sitting on the sidelines, unwilling to get involved, watching and reporting while sharing none of the pain. Maybe she was right. Maybe this is his moment.
“Do you believe in God?” asks Ruiz.
The question is so unexpected that all Luca does is stare at him. “I have a Catholic father and a Muslim mother. I call myself confused.”
Ruiz drums his fingers on the wheel and they drive another mile in silence.
“But it’s the same God, right? Muslim. Christian. Jewish.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been in two churches in the past week. I couldn’t remember a single prayer.”
“They say it’s just a conversation with God.”
“Guess I’m not much of a talker.”
Luca doesn’t doubt the statement.
Ruiz can hear the tone of his voice thickening. “I’ve never asked for much or felt entitled. Low expectations, less to be disappointed about. Some people talk about fate or karma or say that luck evens out, a little here or a little there, floating around and falling randomly on people like it’s a raincloud. Holly Knight has been swimming in shit her entire life. She lost a brother, both her parents and a boyfriend-violently, pointlessly. When is Lady Luck going to smile on her?”
“Maybe today,” says Luca.
Ruiz nods. “Yeah, maybe today.”
It’s still pouring when they arrive in Luton, the satnav directing them along Airport Way into Windmill Road, taking the Merc through a series of roundabouts that are threaded together like beads on a string.
“In two hundred yards you will have reached your destination.”
Ruiz parks across the street from an abandoned motel in a neighborhood of warehouses, factories, garages and workshops. The two-storey, red-tiled motel is a leftover from the sixties, built around an asphalt forecourt that glitters with shattered glass. Most of the windows are barred or boarded up. The doors padlocked. Raindrops are bouncing off the windscreen.
“What do you think?” asks Ruiz.
“I think maybe Norman Bates had a British cousin,” replies Luca, peering through the gloom.
Ruiz zips up his waterproof jacket and flips the hood.
“Where are you going?”
“To get a closer look.”
“That’s not a very good plan.”
“You got a better one?”
“I haven’t thought of it yet.”
Instantly wet, Ruiz stays in the shadows, moving across the road and into the forecourt, which is empty except for a van parked near the rear fence. The rooms have numbers. He counts them down and slips his right hand into his jacket. Checks the Glock.
Room 12 has light leaking from behind the curtains. Voices. Accents. For a full minute he listens, trying to pick up the words. He’s twenty yards away without any cover. If anyone walks out of the room they’ll see him immediately. Backing away, he crosses the forecourt in a crouching run and squats beside the stairs.
The door opens. Three men emerge, silhouetted by the light inside. Young. Fit. They walk towards the van and open the rear doors. Ruiz can’t see the interior, but one of the men has something in his hands: a machine pistol. He pulls back the slide mechanism and gazes down the barrel, aiming it at Ruiz, who is invisible in the darkness. More weapons are checked.
Having seen enough, Ruiz turns into a walkway that takes him behind the hotel, where he follows a chain-link fence back to the road. Luca sees him coming and opens the door.
“So what is it? What did you see?”
“Trouble.”
He turns on Luca’s mobile and calls Campbell, who’s in the middle of a briefing.
“I’ve been trying to reach you. Where are you?”
“Luton.”
“Shit!”
“What’s wrong?”
“We traced that 999 call to a Homebase store in Bury Park, Luton. One of the female employees, Aisha Iqbal, is married to a man on a watchlist. Her husband is booked on a flight to Cairo first thing tomorrow.”
Ruiz rubs a hole in the fogged glass. “I’m looking at a white van. Three up. Pakistani extraction. Heavily armed.”
The van is pulling out of the forecourt. No headlights. Luca cranes forward and reads the number plate. Ruiz relays the information.
“If the van is heading for London it’s going to reach the M1 in about fifteen minutes. You’ll need to do a mobile intercept. In the meantime I need backup.”
“Don’t fuck around, Ruiz. Get out of there.”
“Holly Knight could be inside.”
“No, no, no. You listening? Stand down.”
“You’re breaking up.”
Ruiz hears Campbell bang something hard. “All right, I’m sending a fucking army. You sit tight. They’ll be there in fifteen.”
“What about the van?”
“My problem. Don’t you move.”
The windscreen has fogged again. Ruiz wipes a circle on his side and sees a dark figure emerge from Room 12, a fourth man. He’s carrying something in his right hand-a plastic jerrycan. He crosses the forecourt and disappears from view. Several minutes later he returns.
Ruiz opens the car door.
“Where are you going?”
“Want a closer look.”
“He told us to wait.”
“You wait.”
Retracing his steps along the fence, Ruiz reaches the rear of the motel, keeping an eye on Room 12. The walkway is ahead of him, the rooms in darkness… all but one of them. Room 17 has a padlock hanging on a latch, uncoupled. He slides the bolt and nudges the door.
Disarray inside. Broken furniture. Cardboard boxes. Larger bins of old curtains… sodden. Petrol fumes catch in his throat and he fights the urge to cough.
