Джеймс Паттерсон - Revenge

Sergei nodded. He looked at his boss, seeing gears shift.

“This changes things,” said Dmitry.

“Should we close the studio, Dmitry?” proposed Sergei.

Dmitry looked at him sharply, both knowing that “the studio” was an idea beloved of Alexander in Grozny, who would not take kindly to its closure. Alexander liked things to run smoothly. As Dmitry often said, his least favorite word was “complication.”

“Are you really suggesting we close the studio, Sergei?” asked Dmitry carefully.

“I’m saying we should take such measures into consideration, Dmitry.”

“Could they connect it to the dead girl?”

“If they do, nobody will talk. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Good,” said Dmitry, “then let’s keep business as usual. Perhaps this rich microchip man will realize no amount of asking questions can bring his junkie daughter back. What do you think?”

Sergei thought that a father’s grief might not recede quite so easily, but said nothing. Instead he bid Dmitry farewell, turned, and left the office.

On his way out he passed the doorway to the front room, where Grandfather sat watching television. For a moment he considered simply not paying his respects. After all, if the old man’s behavior the other day was anything to go by, then he was already touched by dementia.

Then again, it wasn’t worth the risk. What if the old bastard was to have a sudden attack of lucidity and report back to Dmitry?

“Good day to you, Ded ,” said Sergei, hand on the door handle about to let himself out.

Grandfather remained immobile, but his eyes swiveled slowly, as though unsticking themselves from the television screen in order to regard Sergei in the doorway.

“He squealed, you know,” said the old man in a sandpaper voice.

Sergei had been about to open the door but he stopped, rendered statue-like by a feeling that ran through him like fingers of ice. “Who squealed, Ded ?”

The malevolent smile returned.

“Your brother,” said Grandfather.

CHAPTER 16

SHELLEY STOOD INSIDE the gates of the Drake house in the cold night. He crossed the grounds at the rear of the house, careful not to activate any of the security lights. The house had a basement gym and swimming pool area, and he took a chance that a window there remained the possible entry point it had always been.

It was. He hunkered down, hearing cartilage in his knees crackle, a sound like snapping tinder in the silence of the night. Old man , he thought. Too old for all this.

Through the glass he saw the blue shimmer of the swimming pool and skeletal shapes of gym equipment in an otherwise empty room. The window was the double-glazed type with an internal sliding door. In thirty seconds’ time he was standing by the indoor pool.

Noiseless. The water still, like a mirror, glimmering at him. Almost eerie.

He left the room and climbed the stairs that led up to the ground floor. There he glanced in an open door and saw that the Drakes had redecorated one of the downstairs bathrooms. In the reception hall a grand staircase led up to the first floor. For a moment or so he stood and allowed the shadow to claim him, eyes adjusting as he reacquainted himself with the house, fixing the layout in his head.

Next he trod the stairs to the first-floor landing and took stock. If Bennett had a man on duty then he wasn’t alerted. Nor was he making rounds of the house.

A second or so later Shelley was slipping into the master bedroom which, like the downstairs bathroom, had been given a makeover in the intervening years: the dressing table was new, the sofa, easy chairs, a huge television the size of a snooker table that looked like part of the wall. All were new.

In the bed slept Guy Drake, alone, fitfully, a prisoner of his nightmares. Shelley watched him for a moment or so until it became uncomfortable, gazing at this rich, powerful man in a state of such profound vulnerability. He cleared his throat. “Guy,” he whispered, steeling himself for Drake waking up alarmed and grateful when that didn’t happen. Instead, Drake sat up slowly and blinked hard, absorbing the sight of Shelley standing in his darkened bedroom at 3 a.m. and taking it in his stride, as though compared to his fortune lately, this was the least life could throw at him.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” he asked, even more woozy than Shelley might have expected. His eyes went to the bedside table but he saw no medication. Or was it just that Guy had been duffed up by events? He looked jowlier than Shelley remembered. The whole lower half of his face seemed to wobble when he moved his head. There were dark bags beneath his eyes, the skin hanging loose, almost as though the flesh on his face had begun to melt. Was this what a nervous breakdown looked like modeled by a recently bereaved CEO?

Not for the first time, Shelley thought gratefully of the fact that he’d never had kids and never planned to. All that worry. The knowledge that life might snatch out your heart just when you were least expecting it. I’ll pass, thanks.

“I wanted to say again how sorry I was to hear about Emma,” he said. Here and now, as a night-time intruder, his words sounded ridiculous, but he thought they needed saying all the same.

“Didn’t you already say that, pal?” drawled Drake. “Didn’t you say that at the funeral?”

“There’s something else.”

“Oh yeah?” Drake picked sleep from his eyes. You had to give it to him, he’d handled it well, the fact that he’d woken up to find Shelley standing in his bedroom. Who knows, perhaps he’d been half expecting it.

“I’d like to know why you’ve hired Bennett,” said Shelley quietly, the dark and silent bedroom making each utterance significant.

“That’s why you felt the need to break in, was it, chief ?” growled Drake.

“The normal approach didn’t work. You’ve been avoiding me.”

Drake’s mouth was set. “I’ve been avoiding the fucking gardener, but that doesn’t give him the right to break into my house.”

Fooking was how he pronounced it.

“What if you had some new gardeners? And the first gardener thought the new gardeners were going to kill your lawn and destroy all your flower beds. Wouldn’t you expect him to say something?”

“Oh, bugger off, Shelley, clever dick. Fucking gardeners.”

“At least tell me what’s going on. Better still, let me see Susie. Let her tell me what’s going on. Where is she?”

Drake looked up at him with dark-ringed eyes. “I’ll show you,” he said.

CHAPTER 17

DRAKE WIPED HIS face with his hands and then swung his legs out of bed, reaching for an old gray sweatshirt that he pulled on over his pajama top. Wordlessly he beckoned Shelley to follow, looking baggy and ancient as he led the way to the landing and then along to Emma’s old bedroom.

At the door he stood for a moment, gathering himself, and then they both went inside.

Pony Club rosettes, that’s what Shelley remembered. She used to have them all over the walls. Pony Club rosettes and pictures of pop bands.

But there were no rosettes now. The bedroom belonged to a young lady. Or had. There was an Apple Mac on a desk and a TV on the wall. The Destiny’s Child posters had been replaced by collages of club flyers. Shelley found himself wondering what age she’d been when she left home. When did the heroin take hold? he thought. How long was she an addict? Did she smoke or shoot up in this very room?

All questions that would have to wait. For now his attention went to Susie Drake, who sat on the edge of Emma’s bed.

Her head was raised and she stared emptily, at nothing in particular, hands fretting in her lap. She didn’t acknowledge the fact that Guy and Shelley had entered. She just sat, in her dead daughter’s room, staring at nothing.