“Any head injuries?”
“That’s negative. Christ, look at his hands!”
“You look after the girl.”
Ruiz can’t feel anything; instead he’s floating on a cloud of opiates, still imagining himself as a young man, spinning Laura across the dance floor, her head beneath his chin, her soft hair against his lips.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“One, two, three.”
“Watch the IV lines. Watch the IV lines.”
“I got it.”
“Bag a couple of times.”
“OK.”
Laura smiles at him. She’s standing near the entrance, waiting for the buses to take guests back to London. She points and summons him with her finger. Ruiz looks over his shoulder to make sure.
“What’s your name?”
“Vincent.”
“I’m Laura. This is my phone number. If you don’t call me within two days, Vincent, you lose your chance. I’m a good girl. I don’t sleep with men on the first date or the second or the third. You have to woo me, but I’m worth the effort.”
Then she kisses him on the cheek and she’s gone.
36
Awake now. Eyelids fluttering. Ruiz turns his head. Orange dials come into focus on a machine near the bed and a green blip of light slides across a liquid crystal window.
A nurse says something to him. She’s mouthing words.
“I need to make a call,” says Ruiz.
She shakes her head.
“If I don’t call Laura she won’t go out with me.”
The nurse mouths a question. “Who’s Laura?”
She presses the button above his head. “We were very worried about you.”
“Sorry?”
“Your hands. They’re going to be fine,” she says, still mouthing words.
Ruiz notices the bandages. They look like white stumps.
He points to his ears. “I can’t hear you. What’s wrong with me?”
“Ruptured eardrums,” she mouths. “You may need surgery.”
“Holly?”
The nurse laughs. “I thought you wanted Laura. Holly is down the way.”
“What?”
“Holly is OK. She’s fine.”
Ruiz tries to get out of bed, but the nurse puts a strong hand on his chest, digging her knuckles into his breastbone.
“They warned me about you. Said you’d be a difficult patient.”
He doesn’t understand.
“Your friends.” She straightens his pillow. “They’ve been waiting outside all night.”
“Luca?”
“Oh, he’s here. They pulled a bullet out of his shoulder, but he’s out of surgery.”
Ruiz shakes his head, not understanding.
The nurse uses a pad on the bedside table and writes:
He’s fine. Bullet removed. Recuperating.
The door opens. Joe O’Loughlin is wearing a cravat and looks even more like a professor than usual. He stands beside the bed and the two men communicate wordlessly in a language that only dogs and men can understand. He takes the notepad from the nurse, who tells them both to behave as she leaves.
Joe writes: You can’t hear. I can’t speak. We’re like two of the wise monkeys.
“You’re a monkey. I’m a gorilla,” says Ruiz, shouting at him. “I want to see Holly.”
Joe writes: Can you walk?
“Yeah.”
Joe helps Ruiz to sit and then stand. He’s wearing a hospital gown with ties at the back. Ruiz can’t hold it together with his bandaged hands, so Joe does it for him, clearly not enamored of the task.
“I could get used to you not talking,” says Ruiz, as they shuffle down the corridor. Joe pinches him on the arse, making him jump.
They reach Holly’s room, which is full of flowers and get-well cards. Holly is sitting on the edge of her bed while a doctor peers into her ears with a torch-like contraption. She’s chewing gum. Looking bored. There are marks on her wrists where the handcuffs tore at her skin.
“How come you get proper pajamas?” says Ruiz. “Your legs are better than mine-you should be wearing a gown.”
Her face lights up and she’s on him in a heartbeat, throwing her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his hips.
“This is the not the way a young lady should greet a man of my age and in my condition.”
He doesn’t hear what Holly says. Maybe she says nothing at all.
37
Throughout Monday, Luca sits in the High Court listening to opposing lawyers make grand speeches about press freedom and commercial confidentiality. It has been almost a week since the thwarted terrorist attack and two days since he left hospital with his arm in a sling and the bullet in a small glass jar that is nestled in his pocket. A souvenir. Proof that he doesn’t always sit on the sidelines.
The Financial Herald is trying to overturn the High Court injunction preventing publication. Mersey Fidelity’s lawyers are doing verbal and linguistic somersaults as they argue that commercial privacy should outweigh public interest. The judge is not having a bar of it. The lawyers lodge an immediate appeal. He dismisses it. Luca steps from the court and calls Daniela with the news.
“We’re going to celebrate.”
“You’re not supposed to be drinking.”
“I’m going to watch you get drunk and then take advantage of you.”
“But you’re an invalid.”
“We’re not going to arm wrestle.”
Daniela laughs and it sounds like music. Luca ends the call and steps outside, looking for a cab. He has a story to write, but there are still questions to be answered. Dialing a new number, he listens to the call being rerouted through different internet servers until Luca’s new best friend answers.
“Capable?”
“Mr. Terracini.”
“Call me Luca.”
“Thank you, Mr. Terracini.”
“Any news?”
“They’re on the move. A van arrived this morning.”
The address in Cartwright Street is an old bank building with an ornate iron door and arched entrance. A removal van is parked in the narrow side alley in front of two identical black Pathfinders. What a world these people live in, thinks Luca, as he pays the cab driver. Taking a table across the road, he nurses a coffee and watches boxes and computers being loaded into the van.
Another Pathfinder shows up, this one disgorging a set of beefy passengers in suits and dark glasses. One of the occupants he recognizes. Older. Grey-haired. Giving orders.
Luca waits until he disappears inside. He pays for his coffee and crosses the street, following a removal man into the lift and rising through the floors. The doors open. Boxes are stacked in the corridors. A shredding machine lets out a long whine. Industrialsized. Worm-like mounds of confetti are spilling from plastic sacks.
Soft footsteps. Somebody yells at him to stop. He is gripped from behind and pushed into an office where Artie Chalcott and Brendan Sobel are deep in conversation.
Chalcott looks up. His face reddens. Luca notices that his eyes are very small. Perhaps they are the standard size and his head is overly large. Maybe they shrink when he’s angry.
“You got a nerve, coming here.”
“I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Get him out of here.”
“We’re publishing tomorrow,” says Luca. “I’m giving you a chance to comment on the story.”
“No comment.”
Brendan Sobel is walking Luca towards the lift. The journalist yells over his shoulder. “You can’t cover this one up. You can’t shred it or bury it. It’s going to come out.”
Chalcott laughs. “You really think you can make this one fly-some fatuous conspiracy theory about Iraqi robberies and a British bank? A week from now nobody is going to care.”
“You will.”
“No, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ll have moved on.”
Luca fights at Sobel’s arms. “I’m giving you a chance to explain.”
“Patriots don’t have to explain. It’s pacifists and apologists like you who need to justify what you do.”
“I took a bullet.”