Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

‘Do you think your mother’s in danger?’ Melina asked.

‘No.’ I handed back the phone. ‘He knows me better than that. Regan hates my mother, and he expects me to as well. He’ll go after people who mean something to me.’

‘That’s why you thought he’d come here,’ Melina said. ‘Because of us. My case.’

I struggled to find the words. ‘Melina, being there for you … for people like you in my job … It’s the only thing I’ve ever really been proud of. I’m a cop. That’s all I am. There’s nothing else to me. I don’t have a life outside this, I …’

This was pathetic. I straightened, took my cap from the counter beside me, where it had been sitting, freshly washed and dried. I tried to move away, but Melina had my arm.

‘You know that’s bullshit, right?’ Melina said. ‘Harry, you should be proud of so many things in your life. You’re a good woman. I can tell.’

I didn’t look at Melina as she spoke. She didn’t know what was inside me. She didn’t know the furious hatred that burned there, the vengeful fantasies, the dark memories of what I had endured in my childhood.

She couldn’t be so sure of what I was.

Even I didn’t know.

As I retrieved the bike from the bushes behind the house, the boy I’d almost killed appeared, head down, hands in his pockets, making like he’d been freed from the house and just happened to have decided to go the back way only seconds after I’d left Melina and her daughter. I swung my leg over the bike and waited for him to tell me whatever he wanted to tell me, but he just stood there admiring the Harley, nodding appreciatively.

‘I really, um …’ the boy said, staring off at the suburban horizon, his chest filled with air but his teenage brain empty of words. I sighed, dragged my pistol out of my back pocket, ejected the clip and the chamber round and handed it to him.

‘Oh man,’ he whispered, weighing the gun in his hand. He pointed it at a nearby tree, looked down the sight, pulled the trigger a couple of times, listening to its impotent click. ‘Oh, this is fucking sweet.’

‘ You’re fucking sweet,’ I laughed, taking the weapon back.

I tightened the straps of my bag and prepared to go. I glanced at my phone as it buzzed.

A single word. Bombala . A town an hour and a half south.

Chapter

61

POPS EXITED THE elevators on the third floor of the command building, jangling his car keys in his hand as he moved between the desks. It was uncharacteristically quiet on the floor. Usually almost every desk would be manned by detectives, heads down, phones to ears, chasing up leads or tapping away at computers. Instead many of the officers were hanging around the central conference room, where a series of screens showed live streamed footage from the Bristol Gardens Hotel.

Detective Nigel Spader was seated at a bank of computers, his attention fixed on the screens. It was just like Woods to be at the hotel somewhere standing by, ready to jump in front of the cameras if Regan was captured, leading the killer to a car and posing just outside the door. Pops had seen such a photograph in Woods’s office once, framed, the demoralised suspect staring bewildered into the camera’s flash.

Nigel Spader looked right at home manning the command side of the operation, coffee at his elbow and a healthy audience of enraptured junior detectives at his back. On the screens, Pops could see the grand hotel hallways and the sprawling bar room were stocked with undercover officers talking, laughing, pretending to drink. A select crew of very nervous hotel staff appeared on screens showing a view over the concierge desk.

‘No sign of the quarry?’ Pops asked as he approached. Nigel turned towards him, his face inked with contempt.

‘Chief Morris.’ Detective Spader smiled without warmth. ‘This is a surprise. I thought you were taking leave, sir.’

‘Oh, believe me –’ Pops held his hands up ‘– I want nothing to do with such an egregious waste of police time and resources.’

‘What do you want, then?’ Nigel bristled.

‘Banks’s Care Initiation Report, the file from the Department of Community Services detailing why he was taken into foster care as a child. It was sealed back when Regan was seven and the state took custody of him. Did Deputy Commissioner Woods apply to have that information unsealed?’

‘He did.’

Pops waited. Spader watched the screens, his thick arms folded.

‘I’m sure you, as Woods’s acting 2IC, would have been privy to the contents of that report?’ Pops stifled an irritated sigh.

‘As a matter of fact, I was.’

‘And what did it tell you about Banks’s parents?’

‘That they’re deceased.’

Pops drew and released a slow breath.

‘And the circumstances under which Banks was taken into care?’

‘Chief Morris.’ Nigel Spader’s eyes wandered back to the chief’s, exhausted. ‘With all due respect, we’re trying to catch a very dangerous fugitive here. We’re not researching him for an episode of This Is Your Life .’

Someone from the group of officers nearby snorted a laugh.

‘Was there anything at all relevant in the file?’ Pops asked.

‘Like what, exactly?’

‘Any important locations or dates?’ Pops said. ‘Anything emotionally meaningful to Banks? We know that fugitives are very family-focused when they’re under the pressure of pursuit.’

‘His parents are dead,’ Nigel said. ‘His family home, the one they owned when he was born, is a factory site now.’ Pops noted Nigel’s contemptuous tone had softened. Behind his eyes, Pops could almost see wheels turning.

‘Maybe there was somewhere else,’ Pops offered. ‘Somewhere further south. We know Regan went out of the city for a reason.’

‘He went out of the city to target one of Harriet Blue’s past victims,’ Nigel said. ‘We believe it’s likely he chose somewhere non-metropolitan because he could access Bonnie Risdale easily. She lived alone. Her property was in a rural location. We’ve now provided Regan with a plum target here in Harriet’s mother. He’s going to double back to the city, and we’re going to catch him.’

Pops didn’t answer. Detective Spader cleared his throat and spoke louder, as though Pops couldn’t hear him.

‘We’re taking a two-pronged approach. One of the mothers of the Georges River victims has agreed to speak publicly, addressing Harriet, asking her to come in. That was my initiative. Harriet can’t possibly justify her vigilante mission if the mother of one of the victims doesn’t support her. She has to understand she’s not the only person grieving for someone Regan killed, and not all of the other victims’ families want to see Regan dead. Some of them want him to languish behind bars. It’s not her choice alone to make. When Blue hears the message and turns up, Regan will follow, if we haven’t already got him in custody from the hotel sting. Deputy Commissioner Woods and I are very confident in our plan.’

Pops chewed the inside of his lip. The detective’s eyes were following an officer across the hotel lobby on the screen. Pops hadn’t wanted to be put into the position he was in now, having to ask a junior officer in front of all the officers present something he already knew the answer to. But he was left with no other choice.

‘You sound like you have everything under control,’ Pops said. ‘My viewing of the Banks file shouldn’t disrupt your plans.’

Spader didn’t even look at him.

‘You may not view the file,’ Spader said after a long, humiliating moment of silence.

‘Detective Spader,’ Pops managed. ‘Do I need to remind you of the rank structure in the New South Wales Police Force?’