Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

I had to know whose life Regan had taken. What he had done. I decided to wait.

The hours passed by with agonising slowness. I knelt in the bush, huddling against a tree.

It was dark when three officers wheeled a stretcher from the house. I stood, resisting the urge to move closer. There was no telling who was dead – but the figure in the body bag looked to be female. Whitt and the red-haired woman he was with followed the body out, got into their car and disappeared. If it was possible, Whitt looked even more awful as he walked towards the car, his head down, eyes searching the ground. I thought I saw a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, despite the chill.

As night fell, the Forensics staff left the house one at a time, taking with them their various envelopes and packages of samples. The lights flicked off. A pair of officers took up stations in the concrete driveway, visible from where I hid. The smoke from their cigarettes curled in the orange light of a streetlamp. As I expected, one of them walked away from their position at the front of the house and did a lap of the property every fifteen minutes, squinting into the dark, shining a torch over the bushes, causing me to duck. I counted off three of these patrol rounds and then crept forward into the yard to see what Regan had left for me.

Chapter

34

I WAS SHAKING as I entered the house. I paused in front of the crime scene tape over the back doorway to the kitchen, telling myself I needed to be calm before I carried on, but already I could see signs of what had happened here. Everything had been left as the Forensics team found it, the debris on the floor scattered around stainless-steel steppers the officers had placed to preserve any footprints. I trod carefully across the little platforms, a tourist taking a path through a macabre art installation.

The fight had begun here.

There was no blood yet. But the dish rack had been upended from beside the sink, spilling a couple of plates and glasses and some cutlery on the floor. There had been a knife in the fray. A big one, probably taken from the block that sat overturned on the counter. A stab mark punctured the centre of the fridge door, another wayward slash carving a chunk out of the door-frame that led into the living room.

I looked about desperately for some sign of who lived here, but there were no pictures on the walls. They had probably been taken down for release to the media.

I walked carefully into the living room.

His victim had been hit here for the first time. Blood on the wall, a small spray, then a handprint on the carpet as she tried to get up. He’d stabbed her, maybe a couple of times, just to take the wind out of her. Upwards drip-marks, flung up on the ceiling as the knife went up and came down. Drag marks in the hall. He’d taken her into the bedroom. I followed the invisible couple writhing and fighting before me, saw him shove her onto the bed. He’d made the effort to get her up onto the mattress, to do it there, to leave the sheets twisted and torn. So that I would know. So that we would all know what she had endured.

It hadn’t ended there. I followed the blood trail back into the living room. Had she gotten up? Tried to get away? Or had he simply let her go, let her run for her life for a few paces, the cat playing with the half-chewed mouse? The television was lying flat on the carpet. Cushions off the couch. Broken glass. The blood pools here were bigger, the drag marks shorter and thicker. A big handprint on the wall, the fingers spread wide. A man’s hand.

There was no sound. Only my own frantic breathing, the air struggling to squeeze through my throat into my lungs. I crouched in the doorway and closed my eyes. In my terror, the questions kept coming. Who was this person, and how was she connected to me? How was this ‘personal’? Was this what Regan had planned for me when we finally came together? Was he giving me a preview of my suffering, or an insight into the last moments of the girls he had already taken?

I went back into the kitchen, retching, almost collapsing at the sink. I ran the tap and put a hand under the cold fount, washed my face. There was a collection of unopened pieces of mail on the counter, laid out for photography by the Forensics specialist. I looked at the nearest one in the dim light from the streetlamps outside.

Bonnie Risdale.

One of my old case victims.

Chapter

35

THE MEMORIES CROWDED forward, bursting into my mind through an unlocked door. Bonnie Risdale, a slim brunette, a website designer or tech support person, I recalled – something with computers. Nerdy, sweet, naive. I’d been assigned to her case and called up to the Prince of Wales Hospital, where I’d found her sitting upright in a clean hospital bed looking broken and empty, the way victims often do. I’d sat by her bed and taken down her story.

She’d been out on a girls’ night with a group of friends, got drunk, misinterpreted where they were all supposed to meet when she got back from the bathroom. She’d gone looking for her group in an alleyway behind the back of the nightclub, having spotted the taillights of a car through one of the windows. She’d thought it was a taxi waiting for her.

The man raped two other women before I caught him. I didn’t kill him. But I’d wanted to.

Bonnie Risdale. A woman who had come into my life wanting justice. I’d assured her that I would find her attacker.And I had. I’d told her then that she was safe. That nothing like this was ever going to happen to her again.

She’d obviously believed me, moved here to Nowra, set up this beautiful home, lived in some semblance of the peace and happiness she’d known before her ordeal.

But I’d been wrong.

Because of me, she’d once again known the horror of a man’s hand clasping her wrist, dragging her down. She’d once again fought in vain as he tore at her clothes. I found myself crouching in the corner of her kitchen, gripping my skull, trying to drive out the images. My brain pounded with the terrible truth.

This happened because of me.

Because of me. Because of me. Because of me .

When Regan called, I answered immediately. But I couldn’t speak.

‘She told me some things about you,’ he said.

I gripped the phone, shaking, my eyes wide in the dark kitchen.

‘She said you’d been fierce.’ Regan’s voice was soft. Almost apologetic. ‘That’s a good word for you, I think. Fierce . Bonnie told me that almost as soon as she met you, Harry, she felt like she was going to be taken care of. That meeting you was like taking an outstretched hand. You rescued her from the fear.’

‘You bastard,’ I managed. My voice was weak. ‘You … evil … bastard.’

‘I told her that I’d chosen her because she was one of your cases,’ Regan said. ‘So she knew, at the end, that what I did was all because of you.’

I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was hold on to the phone.

‘I’m not trying to torture you,’ Regan said. ‘I’m trying to unravel you. Do you understand?’

I bit my lips.

‘Harry, you being a cop – it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Yes it does,’ I breathed.

‘Liar,’ Regan said. ‘Listen to yourself. You’re lying. Deep down, you know it. Being a cop is just a protective layer of bullshit you wrap around yourself. When I killed Bonnie, I undid all your good work on her case. I destroyed one person’s positive memories of you. They’re gone now. It was that easy to erase the goodness you’d done in the world, Harry.’

Outside, one of the patrol officers was making another round. I didn’t know if he’d notice my presence. In the moment, I didn’t care. I almost wanted to be discovered. To give up, to be taken away from the awful voice on the phone.