Luca hitches a ride to the Republican Palace, which has been renamed the Freedom Building. Within the walls it is like a small city with tree-lined boulevards, shops and offices-a small corner of Iraq that will be forever American.
After changing some money, he gets a haircut. Then he calls Daniela Garner. This time she picks up.
“It’s me,” he says.
“Hello.”
“About last night-”
“I’ve never done that before.”
“No you haven’t, I would have remembered.”
“It was a random act.”
“Of kindness?”
“Of lust.”
“Which you now regret?”
“I always regret things. It’s my automatic response to almost every decision I make.”
“You’ve come to the right place. This is a country full of regrets.”
Silence. He should say something.
“Well, I don’t regret a single moment of it. I was sort of hoping it might happen again some time… in the future… which could mean tonight.”
“ That soon?”
“Strike while the iron is hot.”
“Is it that hard.”
“Like a crowbar.”
“Now you’re just boasting.”
She feels her face flush and blood rush to other places.
“I have a question and it’s not about the thing you do with your pelvic floor muscles.”
“The thing?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your question?”
“You remember the story I was following up.”
“The bank robberies.”
“There was another one a couple of days ago in the financial district of Baghdad. Seven people are dead including six bank guards. They took US dollars in aluminum boxes, larger than briefcases.”
“How many cases?”
“At least sixteen.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Cases like that can hold up to four million US dollars each, depending on the denominations.”
There is a pause. Both of them have done the calculation.
“No bank branch should hold that sort of cash. There’s no need,” she says.
“Iraq is still a cash economy.”
“Even so.”
“It was the eighteenth bank robbery this year.”
“You’re going to ask me to do something.”
“The cash must have been provided by the Central Bank. There must be a record of the transfers.”
“I don’t know if I can help,” says Daniela, typing as she speaks. She calls up information on cash deliveries to banks. The list runs to six pages. She narrows the search by including only US dollar deliveries.
“What were the dates of the robberies?”
“I can text them to you.”
“No promises.”
“I understand. I still want to see you later.”
“You want my body.”
“We could eat first… or not.”
She laughs. “You know that second dates are trickier.”
“How so?”
“Traditionally, they’re about getting to know each other better. You might discover I’m a selfish, controlling, overbearing and difficult woman.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. And I think you’ve seen enough of me already.”
“There are places I haven’t seen yet.”
“Now you’re just being dirty.”
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?”
