“Broke a shop window, threw fireworks at a police horse and wrestled with a police constable.”
“Where is she now?”
“Next door.”
“You keeping her in?”
“For as long as we can.”
There is a knock. A familiar figure fills the doorframe. Commander Campbell Smith looks like he’s been stitched into his uniform. Every button polished. Shoe leather gleaming. Ruiz has known him for forty years-ever since they did their training together at the Police Staff College, Bramshill. He also introduced Campbell to his wife Maureen at a barbecue-having slept with her first, a fact that didn’t enamor him to either of them.
It’s been four years since Ruiz last saw him. Campbell has been promoted. He was always on the fast track. Not so much nose to the grindstone as nose between the cheeks.
“Vincent.”
“Campbell. You’re a commander now. Congratulations.”
They shake hands. Campbell smiles. He has a great smile. You can see the child in it before the wear and tear of a thirty-year marriage and a longer sentence with the Metropolitan Police.
“When they told me they had Vincent Ruiz in the interview room, I thought it must be a mistake. Had to come and see it for myself.”
Ruiz opens his arms and does a slow turn.
“You’ve put on weight.”
“Living the good life. How’s Maureen?”
“She’s gone on a cruise.”
“Mediterranean?”
“Canada.”
Campbell Smith leans closer. Motions him to do the same.
“How did you get mixed up in this?”
“I’m an accidental tourist.”
The commander nods. His hat is tucked under the crook of his left arm. “You know why this guy was killed?”
“Nope.”
He gives Ruiz a wry half smile and maybe a twitch of the eyebrow. Then he tosses his head towards the door.
“Do you know what I learned first day in this job, Vincent?”
How to brown nose, thinks Ruiz.
“I learned that the simple answer is nearly always the right one. The explanation is never that complicated. There’s no mystery. The guy was a junkie. It’s a drug deal gone wrong.”
“So that’s the official version?”
“You think there’s more than one version?”
“There’s always more than one version.”
Campbell stares at him with his head cocked to one side. Turning to leave, he adds, “I’ve told the SOCOs you won’t mind having your fingernails scraped and giving them some swabs.”
“Anything to help.”
“Maybe you could also do us another favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Make a statement and press charges against Holly Knight.”
Ruiz can see where he’s going with this. The police need a reason to hold her.
“Can I speak to her?”
“No.”
“She stole something from me-pieces of jewelry that belonged to my first wife. My daughter is getting married next weekend. The jewelry was going to be a present.”
Campbell sucks in his cheeks and puckers his lips reflectively. “If you lodged a complaint against Holly Knight, those items would be regarded as evidence.”
“And I wouldn’t get them back for months.”
The faintest trace of a smile enters Campbell’s eyes. “Sorry, old chap, I can’t get involved. No hard feelings.”
Ruiz isn’t going to forget the feelings.
Campbell wants the final word. “Listen to me, Vincent, this whole ‘don’t fuck with me’ act might have worked when you were still on the job, but you’re a civilian now.”
The commander turns and marches down the corridor, an ordered man with a disordered heart.
12
The Courier watches a skinny black-haired girl in a G-string and high heels undulate around a pole, moving like there’s an itch in her groin that she can’t quite reach. He pulls a twenty from his wallet and tucks it into her G- string, brushing his fingertips along the fabric. She dances away, waggling her finger at him.
She has a pageboy haircut. Black. Straight. A wig. Painted eyes. Red lips. The red reminds him of his first hit, the schoolgirl, the blood that seeped from the corner of her mouth as she lay in the dust, one leg folded under her, her schoolbag still in her hand.
He can’t remember if she was on her way to school or coming home, or if she was just visiting someone at another settlement. She was killed because she was there and not somewhere else. It was a test. His initiation. That was fifteen years ago on the West Bank near the city of Nablus.
He was told that the first killing would be the hardest-a leap of faith across a blood-soaked divide-but in that moment between the recoil and the bullet hitting the target, the blink of an eye, he felt nothing. Each killing since has been an exercise in trying to feel something, some sense of horror or satisfaction or completion.
The second person he killed was an Iraqi dissident, found hanging in a townhouse in San Francisco. Next came an Iranian defector who fell beneath a train in Amsterdam and a Syrian politician who died in a hit-and-run accident in Cairo. The most recent-an Iranian nuclear scientist-was killed by a booby-trapped motorbike, triggered by remote control outside his house in Tehran. State TV blamed “Zionist and American agents.” A smokescreen. Masoud Ali Mohammadi had been leaking details of Iran’s nuclear program to the US.
How many in total? More than a dozen but less than his enemies suspect. Defectors. Dissidents. Spies. Sympathizers. Rivals. Enemies. He does not judge-he carries out the judgment of others.
The girl on the pole has finished her dance. She clomps off stage, retrieving a wad of chewing gum from the edge of a glass. As she moves through the tables, a bouncer steps in to protect her. Later she emerges from her dressing room wearing a midriff top and low-slung jeans. A tattoo ripples across her lower back-the tramp stamp. Forty years from now there’ll be tens of thousands of old ladies trying to hide the ink-pricked follies of their youth.
The Courier sends her a note. Offers to buy her a drink. She signals her interest. Five minutes. He waits.
Yesterday hadn’t gone to plan. The soldier hadn’t capitulated. The Courier had shown him the long-nosed pliers, drawn attention to them, demonstrated, but it made no difference. The soldier had simply smiled at him, a mad grin-that’s what war does to a man, puts spiders in his head.
“I have no desire to kill you,” the Courier told him, “but you took information that didn’t belong to you. Now I must collect it. Just tell me what you did with the notebook.”
The soldier grinned. Died that way.
Now it’s up to the girl. He should never have let her get away. That was careless. He had underestimated her. Most women meekly surrender or go rigid with fear. This one knew how to fight. Survive. Now he can’t get her face out of his mind-her smoky blue eyes and her nice white teeth, slightly overcrowded at the bottom. He
