Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

‘You want me to help you,’ she said. It was the first time such a concept had ever repulsed her.

She helped him peel away the bandages. Three puncture wounds, one in the side, two in the shoulder. The wound in his side had an exit hole at the back. A bullet. It was the ones in the shoulder that bothered him the most. The bullets were still in there. As he peeled the last of the blackened bandages away, blood began seeping from the wounds.

‘Lie down,’ she instructed, gesturing to the operating table.

He didn’t lie, but sat on the edge of the table with some dif-ficulty, the gun pinned under one hand, a finger on the trigger guard. Samantha went to the shelves and began filling a tray with tools.

‘I’ll need to administer an anaesthetic,’ she said.

‘No,’ he answered. He was panting now with pain. ‘No injections.’

‘But I can’t –’ She whirled around, gestured to his wounds. ‘I can’t perform surgery on you without a local anaesthetic at least.’

‘You’ll have to,’ he said. She waited for more, but there was none. He wasn’t willing to let her inject him with something – didn’t trust her not to administer a general anaesthetic and knock him out. But he trusted her with a scalpel. Why? She could slash him. Stab him. Then, of course, what good would that do? A nicked artery would put him down in three minutes, maybe longer. Long enough for him to fire the gun at her, or Isobel. Long enough for him to swing one of those huge fists.

The wounds were days old. He’d clearly been hiding somewhere filthy, waiting for the strength to enact his plan.

‘You’re him, aren’t you?’ she said, low enough that her daughter couldn’t hear. ‘The one they’ve been looking for. Regan Banks.’

He didn’t answer. She watched his cold eyes appraising the scalpel in her hand.

‘You’re not going to let us live, are you?’ she said.

Again, no answer came.

Five weeks later

Chapter

2

I DIDN’T SLEEP much. But when I did, my mind turned in circles, repeating their names like a mantra, connecting them end to end. When I was really tired, my lips moved. I sometimes woke to the sound of my own whispering.

Rachel Howes, Marissa Haydon, Elle Ramone, Rosetta Poelar .

Regan’s girls. The innocent lives he had taken. He had left their bodies ruined on lonely stretches of sand, horrors to be discovered by strangers.

Tox Barnes , my friend, left for dead in my own apartment.

Caitlyn McBeal , a smart young American woman reduced to skin and bones, traumatised, crawling on her belly out of Regan Banks’s grasp.

‘ Samuel Blue ,’ I whispered through my dreams.

My brother. All I’d had left in the world. The only man who would never abandon me, never judge me.

I didn’t know why Regan Banks had seized on my brother. But my research, my gut instinct, and what my friends had been able to determine, was that Regan Banks was obsessed with him. Regan, a boy from the suburbs, a foster kid like me, had spent fifteen years in prison, incarcerated for the brutal murder of a young woman when he was just seventeen. Regan had found Doctor Rachel Howes working late in a veterinary clinic and unleashed his first deadly passion on her, paying for it with hard time. Not long after his release, girls began appearing on the shores of the Georges River, beaten and strangled, sexually violated. I had wanted in on the case, but no one would approve my assignment. Soon enough, I found out why. My colleagues already had a suspect for the murders, and he was my own flesh and blood.

I knew Sam was innocent. But I was the only person making that claim. There had been evidence in my brother’s apartment, put there, he said, by someone else. While I’d fought to secure my brother’s release, I’d managed to convince two friends to help me, Tate ‘Tox’ Barnes and Edward Whittacker. Together we’d found the man we’d believed to be the real Georges River Killer. A man who’d set out to destroy my brother’s life. Tox had taken Regan on and almost got himself killed. Whitt had got achingly close to catching him, only to have him slip away, wounded and wild, into the night.

I’d thought it was over. That once we caught Regan, my brother would be set free.

But that dream was snatched away from me. My brother was stabbed in prison, and died only hours before I’d planned to visit him and tell him the good news.

I was the only one left to speak for Sam now. For him, and all of Regan’s victims. But my plan had changed. I wasn’t just going to clear my brother’s name by forcing Regan to admit to framing him. Regan deserved to die for the lives he had taken.

I, Detective Harriet Blue, needed to be the one to kill him.

A sound broke through my dreams. I snapped awake, bolted upright in the stiff motel bed. For a moment I had to orientate myself. I had been on the run for five weeks, shifting from motel room to motel room, trying to stay under the radar while I hunted my brother’s killer. I had looked for him where I knew bad men felt safe. I’d wandered homeless camps, where armies of wanted men hid their faces in shadowed hoods and blankets, huddled around campfires. I’d squinted into the corners of blackened, stinking bar rooms and drug dens, the basements and attics of city brothels. I had searched for Regan through the underworld, following whispers between depraved men, chasing rumours through the streets. In five weeks, I hadn’t found him, but I hadn’t given up.

There were no warrants for my arrest. But to my colleagues in the Sydney police, my intentions were clear. I had gone off the map so that Regan couldn’t find me, so that I could get my revenge for what he had done to my family. I had disappeared because I knew that if my colleagues in the police discovered where I was, they’d try to convince me not to commit that final devastating act. The act that would mean giving up everything. My career. My life. My freedom.

And I couldn’t let them do that.

As I sat listening in the dark, I knew someone was coming.

Chapter

3

THE ROOM WAS a strange T-shape, narrow in the stem so that the end of the bed almost touched a dresser against the opposite wall. At the rear, the room turned left to an old chipboard closet and right to a mouldy bathroom. The front window looked out into a parking lot stuffed with cars. I’d left the heavy curtains open a crack so that the red light from the motel’s NO VACANCY sign poured in through the lace. The light flickered as a figure passed before it. I heard the telltale blip of a police radio.

‘Yeah, Command, we think we’ve got her. Have that rover stand by for our call, over.’

Patrol officers. I could hear the squeak of their leather boots. Shadows moved under the door. Three men. Two cops and the motel’s owner, most likely. My backpack was zipped up, ready to go, as always. I’d slept fully dressed. I threw myself out of the bed and dragged on my shoes as a heavy fist began to beat on the door.

‘Harry, we know you’re in there. Open up!’

I slipped the backpack on and went to the end of the T-shaped room, tucked myself into the corner by the closet and waited. Before me, the open bathroom door, the shower and toilet beyond. I heard the jangle of the motel owner’s keys.

‘Harry?’ one of the officers called. ‘Go easy, alright?’ I heard a subtle tremor in his voice.

He knew my reputation.

Chapter

4

THEY’D BEEN STUPID. The patrol cops had told the backup car to hold off, wanting to be heroes. Big men who had grabbed the snarling feral cat Harriet Blue and finally shoved her in a cage where she belonged. Their first mistake.

Their second mistake had been coming into the room and leaving the lights off, thinking they’d have a tactical advantage over me in the dark. They probably expected to catch me in my underwear, still half asleep.