Bombproof (28 page)

The pathologist is wearing a white coat and has eczema on his hands. It’s allergic reaction to latex gloves, he explains, calling it an occupational hazard. Cutting open bodies is an occupational hazard, thinks Ruiz. A skin rash is a skin rash.

Phil Baxter pushes through the swing doors with an urgency that is designed to impress. He’s a busy man. Don’t stand in his way. Ruiz remembers Baxter as a young DC working the drug squad back in the days when good crack was conversation rather than a Class-A narcotic. Now he’s a Detective Chief Inspector - a higher rank than Ruiz ever managed.

Baxter has put on weight, cut his hair shorter, but his wardrobe is the same - the black brogues, dark slacks and a sports jacket.

He offers his hand. Ruiz shakes it. The DCI grips it tightly and turns it over, examining Ruiz’s knuckles. He lets him go.

‘Sorry to drag you away from your hot cocoa.’

‘Get to it, Phil, you’re wasting my time.’

The pathologist examines the paperwork and pulls open a stainless steel drawer. The sound is like someone exhaling.

Toby Streak isn’t pretty any more. Most of his teeth are broken and his right eye socket no longer has an eye.

Baxter studies Ruiz’s face instead of the cadaver. Ruiz tries not to react, but the sheer ferocity of the attack leaves a mark on his lips and in the corners of his eyes.

‘Would you like to know how your friend here died?’ asks Baxter.

‘He wasn’t my friend.’

‘You were in his flat.’

‘He had information I needed.’

‘You beat it out of him.’

‘He tripped as I came through the door.’

The pathologist is watching this exchange as though viewing a tennis match, turning back and forth as sentences are volleyed. Baxter interrupts the exchange.

‘Tell us how Toby Streak met his maker.’

The pathologist picks up the autopsy report.

‘Initially, it seemed as though he died when a rib punctured his heart but he was already on the way. A brain haemorrhage caused by multiple blows to the head.

‘We believe they used a tyre iron or a metal bar of some sort. Both his hands and his kneecaps were broken early in the assault. They were held against a hard surface and smashed …’

Baxter interrupts to paraphrase. ‘He went every round. They propped him up and kept hitting him. See the marks on his neck. Someone held him by the throat to stop him sliding down a wall. He had brick dust in his hair.’

Ruiz has heard enough. He pushes open the door and walks back down the long neon-lit corridor, past the autopsy suites and the dirty body room. Baxter has to jog to catch up and demands that he stop.

Ruiz spins to face him. ‘You think I’m good for this? You think I broke that boy’s bones in there; that I ripped out his eye, you really believe that?’

Baxter is stunned by the ferocity of Ruiz’s anger.

‘I think you spent too long in the job, Vincent, mixing with these people, believing they were just like us but without the same advantages or upbringing. Only you’re wrong. People don’t choose the world they’re born into, but some escape it and some embrace it and some get buried by it. I think you know who killed Toby Streak. Maybe you even tried to warn him.’

‘I was looking for a girl.’

‘Oh, that’s right, the sister of a terrorist.’

‘Sami Macbeth is no more a terrorist than I am.’

‘Is that an admission?’

‘Fuck off!’

Ruiz walks down the concrete ramp and across the loading dock. It has started to rain. Exploding raindrops have misted around the security lights and turned the street outside into a neon-coloured pool.

Ruiz stands on the corner looking for a cab. Three of them pass, already occupied. Water leaks beneath the collar of his overcoat, but he’s too angry to care. He’s working through the details of Toby Streak’s last hours like it’s a Twelve-Step Programme inside his head.

A police car pulls up. Through the windshield and beating wipers he sees Phil Baxter in the back seat. He leans over and opens the passenger door.

‘I don’t need a lift home,’ says Ruiz.

‘Oh, we’re not going home,’ replies Baxter.

57

Sami’s suit has been dry-cleaned and his shirt pressed. He brushes his teeth, rinses his mouth and spits into the sink. His gums are bleeding. A prison diet. Stress.

Two large black Landcruisers with tinted windows are waiting downstairs. Engines idling. Occupants unknown. There is a knock on the door. It’s time.

Ray Garza is standing in the foyer. Sami counts six men, dressed in black. One of them has a hand like a withered claw with the fingers compressed together and curled inward towards his wrist. He has to raise his cigarette above his eyes to put the filter in his mouth.

Car doors open. Close. Seat belts, please. The convoy moves off into a night made darker in the countryside, lit periodically by streaks of lightning that tremble in the clouds.

Sami is in the back seat of the first Landcruiser, sitting next to ‘The Claw’. The driver is wearing leather gloves and dark glasses, but his most notable apparel is a shoulder holster with a machine pistol. They’re going to start a war, thinks Sami.

The car doors aren’t locked. Perhaps he could shove the door open and roll out. He’d bounce along the road. He might even survive. What then?

No, this has to end now. Garza had been right about that much. The rest of his spiel was a self-pitying whine about his unfaithful wife and ungrateful son, as he tried to unload his moral guilt on others, but it didn’t take long for his ego to reassert itself and he became the same man. Not just the same man - worse because he was angry.

Sami had witnessed Garza’s moment of weakness and become his confessor, which then made him an embarrassment. That’s why Garza hadn’t spoken another word to him since. Sami was persona non grata, surplus to requirements, a waste of space.

Fuck him. Murphy and Garza could kill each other a dozen times over for all Sami cared. He just wants to get Nadia and to get away; to clean her up and say he’s sorry. After that he’ll tell the police everything. He’ll give himself up and throw himself on the mercy of the court. Unmerciful as it is.

Then his imagination really goes into overdrive. He starts fantasising about arresting Garza and Murphy and bringing down their operations. He can see the headlines spinning into focus: TERROR SUSPECT PARDONED and WANTED MAN TURNS HERO. Next he’s meeting the Prime Minister at Downing Street and watching him weep with gratitude. He gets a book deal, Guy Ritchie directs the movie and Sami walks Kate Tierney up the red carpet while she’s wearing one of those backless evening dresses that have the paparazzi shouldering each other out of the way and screaming her name. Charlie Cox plays Sami and Sienna Miller plays Kate. (As long as they don’t get Jude Law - any guy who’s engaged to Sienna Miller and gets caught shagging the nanny is a complete tosser.) All of this is flashing through Sami’s head like a badly cut rap video.

Meanwhile, the Landcruisers have crossed the Thames and are heading along Cheyne Walk and the Embankment. Five minutes later they pull up outside the Savoy. The door opens. Sami steps out and the coolness of the air makes him realise he’s been sweating.

The hotel doorman ushers Sami inside. He crosses the foyer. The Claw is smelling distance behind him. The knot in Sami’s bowels won’t go away.

They enter the lift. Sami presses
9
. He glances at his minder and gets nothing back. The geezer has ice in his veins and a tumour the size of a football up his arse.

It’s not until they reach the corridor that Sami considers how he’s going to get in the suite. They’re outside the door. He doesn’t have an entry card.

‘I gave the key back to reception,’ explains Sami. ‘Should I knock?’

The Claw stares at him blankly. Maybe Sami should ask him one on sport.

Sami knocks. Nobody answers. A black housekeeper is further down the corridor. Shaped like a duck in a blue uniform, she gives Sami a flat stare as he explains that he’s locked himself out of his room. She takes a key card from her apron pocket. Slides it into the slot. The door clicks open.

‘Thank you, very much,’ says Sami. ‘Nice talking to you.’

She’s already waddling away.

The Claw is inside, checking out the room. Not touching anything. This guy is a professional, SAS most likely. The British Government trains these people and then lets them loose on society.

Sami takes a chair from the desk and sets it down near the wall. Steps up. Unclips the air-conditioning vent and reaches inside. The Beretta is wrapped tightly in a handtowel. He leaves the bags of cocaine and banknotes.

Sami tucks the semi-automatic into his belt, nestling against the small of his back. He checks his reflection in the mirror to make sure the bulge doesn’t show.

They take the lift back down to the foyer, not saying a word. Sami wants to ask The Claw about his hand. How did it happen? Was he wounded in Crap-istan? Did they torture him with a deep fat fryer?

The lift doors slide open. Kate is standing at the reception desk, talking on a phone. She’s dressed in her usual work clothes, looking every inch the hostess and hotel manager. Sami knows that body. He knows the colour of her underwear, the hollow between elastic and thigh, the small butterfly tattoo on her left ankle. He can smell her Pantene-scented hair. He can hear the mewling sound she makes when she’s nearing nirvana. Please don’t look up, he prays.

Kate puts down the phone. Her eyes latch on to his. She’s confused. Angry. She wants to walk towards him but Sami’s stare makes her hesitate. She looks past him at the minder. Sami steps through the turning door, crosses the footpath, doesn’t look back.

Kate’s hands are shaking. She opens her handbag and rummages through it, looking for Ruiz’s business card. She can’t find it. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Upending the bag, she spills the contents onto the counter - lipstick, car keys, breath mints, tissues, a compact …

‘Are you OK?’ asks her colleague.

‘Get the number of that car.’

‘Which car?’

‘The one that’s leaving now.’

Kate finds the card and scoops her belongings into her handbag. ‘I have to go.’

‘Where?’

‘Tell Magna I’m not feeling well.’

She runs for the door, stumbling as her left heel slips on the polished marble. The four-wheel drive carrying Sami has stopped at traffic lights in Savoy Lane, fifty yards away.

‘Follow that car,’ Kate tells a cab driver, as she opens the car door. The driver looks at her through the glass partition, thinking it’s a wind-up.

‘Are you going to take me or do I get another cab?’

‘No problem, love.’

She punches Ruiz’s number into her mobile. He’s not answering. She sends a text, using both thumbs to punch the letters.

Sami at Savoy 2nite. Fubar. Following him now. Call ASAP.

58

It’s almost stopped raining. The police car splashes through puddles and Ruiz watches headlights flaring on the wet windows. Even in darkness he can recognise the location. He’s been here before.

Crime scene tape bulges in the breeze as it twirls from posts on either side of a lane. A group of black teenagers are watching from a pizza place across the road, acting like they own the neighbourhood and resent any trespassers.

Ruiz gets out of the car, ducks under the tape. He can smell curry cooking. A fat woman in a pink sari is watching from a balcony. She shields her face with a veil and turns away from his eyes.

They are a few blocks from the river. The last time Ruiz was here he entered on the other side of the building. The place used to be a furniture factory, according to Baxter, until it was turned into council flats and then sold off to a developer who had plans to bulldoze the place and erect luxury flats. He ran into liquidity problems - namely, water in the lungs. They found him floating in the river near the Thames Barrier.

Thirty yards ahead a bright pool of light has bleached the cobblestones and thrown warped shadows against the brick walls. A car is parked at the centre of the light - a Fiat Panda. As they get closer, Ruiz notices the car has no roof. Closer still he realises that the roof has been pressed in by the weight of an object falling from above.

Beside it now, the object has become a body - a Rastafarian with beaded hair, who has hit the car with such force it has turned it into a bathtub full of blood. Most people travel a good distance and take a lifetime to reach hell. Puffa managed it in seventy feet and less than five seconds.

Baxter’s second in command is a Detective Sergeant Frome. Pale, tall, blade-faced, he looks like an undertaker touting for business. Tonight he’s been lucky.

‘Two witnesses say he took a hit of Ice, climbed onto the roof and did a swan dive from the fifth floor,’ he tells Baxter.

‘Anyone else on the roof with him?’

‘That’s the only thing they agree upon - perhaps a little too strenuously.’

Ruiz glances up to the roof and back to the car. Twenty feet separate the nearside tyres from the edge of the building.

‘Either Puffa was the lovechild of Bob Beaman or someone threw him,’ he says.

‘Bob who?’ asks Frome.

‘Mexico. 1968. The Olympics. Beaman set a world record for the long jump and it was twenty-three years before anybody broke it. They called it the greatest leap in history.’

‘Before my time,’ says Frome dismissively.

‘So were the dinosaurs but it doesn’t stop people digging them up. Can I talk to the witnesses?’

‘You’re here to answer questions, not ask them,’ replies Baxter.

‘You want to blame me for this as well?’

‘Two men are dead. You visited both of them on Saturday. Witnesses claim you assaulted and threatened them. I’d say that makes you a suspect. And you might want to tell me why Crim Intel put your car at Tony Murphy’s house today; a known villain.’

Ruiz can feel his mobile vibrating and tries to ignore it.

‘The problem with you, Baxter, is that you’re like the blind man who touches the elephant’s trunk and thinks he’s holding a snake.’

‘And you’re the elephant.’