Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

He ached for the same kind of certainty, any certainty at all, in fact. Their stationary position, waiting for the approach of the killer, meant the animals and birds in the blackness around them had relaxed in their presence, and every twitch of a branch gave him the shivers. Stephen knew from talk within the crew that target Blue was just a psycho-bitch running loose, trying to stick her nose into a manhunt where it wasn’t appreciated. His only fear was that she might punch him out, as she was apparently wont to do. That wouldn’t go down well with the boys. It was Banks that Stephen was really scared of. No one really knew what the guy looked like. Some of the boys had sent around photos from the crime scenes on their phones, and it looked to Stephen like the work of an animal. There were reports Banks was working with a woman.

‘Hey, Steve,’ Shona murmured, and he took his eye from his scope to look at her. ‘You think if we catch Blue we still get the reward?’

‘You don’t get a police reward for doing your job,’ Stephen said.

‘It’s not a police reward, it’s private.’

‘Then maybe.’

‘I see Blue and Banks out there, I know who I’m gonna run for,’ she said, pushing her cap up so that the peak didn’t rest on the rifle scope. ‘Hundred grand? Worth a shot.’

An animal moved in the bush near them. Both officers lifted their heads, listened. Stephen felt every muscle in his body tense. After thirty seconds, when no sound came, they went back to their rifle scopes.

‘I gotta piss,’ Stephen said.

‘Real snipers piss in their pants.’

‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ He nudged her as he got to his feet. ‘Everybody thinking I pissed myself, scared of the dark out here.’

He walked a few metres, within sight of his partner lying prone like a black log in the moonlight, and unzipped his fly.

At first he thought he’d walked into a low-hanging branch, grabbing at the sharp, sideways tug across his throat. But when his fingers pressed to the flesh, they came away wet. Very wet.

Stephen stopped in his tracks and clutched at the wound, just as a shadow passed before his vision, blocking his path back to Shona.

It all happened in absolute silence. A hand gripped his hair, slashed again at the base of his throat. He didn’t even have time to grab at the knife on his belt, or the pistol tucked into the holster on his ankle.

As he hit the ground, he heard his partner’s voice. The rustle of her clothes as she got to her feet.

‘Steve?’ she asked. Her voice was small.

Chapter

94

THIS WASN’T RIGHT. I sat on the edge of an embankment, watching the charred house at the bottom of the valley in the moonlight, seeing nothing. I watched the moon cross the sky and guessed a couple of hours had passed since I first walked off the road towards the valley. The tension in my chest was tightening, a hard ball of pain pushing up towards my throat. Regan had said to look for a lighthouse. The only house here was a blackened pile of sticks and sandstone.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to avoid the temptation to sleep. The helicopter on the horizon was still tracking back and forth. As it crossed the slope of the highest point of the valley wall, I felt a ripple of electricity in my body.

There was a rock formation on the eastern side of the valley, a sharp slope of sandstone just visible beyond the trees. The rock sloped down almost at a forty-five degree angle, then jutted in and went straight down. The shape was unmistake-able; the sloping roof and side wall of a house made from stone. As the chopper doubled back, it disappeared for an instant behind the rock, and then its light flashed for no more than a second as it passed across a hole in the house-shaped silhouette.

A house. A light. A lighthouse .

I shot to my feet and started making my way through the dark.

Chapter

95

AN HOUR MIGHT have passed as I crept through the bush around the rim of the valley. As I approached the jagged sandstone ledge jutting out from the hillside where the house formation stood, I drew my weapon, pausing, not wanting to confront Regan while wheezing and struggling my way up the incline. My whole body had begun to tremble lightly with terror. I walked with aching care towards the rock and swept my gun across and above it, my heart twisting as the shapes of trees and rocks and branches became the ominous figure of a broad-shouldered man. The lighthouse formation was narrow, punctured by ancient winds right through the middle, the rock hole forming a window through which I’d seen the helicopter’s light. In time, my pulse slowed, and I stood in the wind, waiting for what would happen next.

Nothing happened. Another hour. I crouched in the bush, cold sweat pouring down my sides. As my mind wandered, the shape of the sandstone house wavering in my exhausted vision, I ached with regret about the young tactical guy I had subdued and probably humiliated.

Twenty-two years old. Jesus. They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for –

My breath caught in my chest. I rose to my feet, the realisation rocketing through me. I gripped my hair as I frantically counted off the days.

Tomorrow was my birthday.

I understood.

This is about me and you, Harry. About my gift to you .

Regan wanted to strip me down, show me myself, facilitate my sick rebirth into what he’d hoped I was always going to be, my potential fulfilled. In the weeks since my brother’s death, I’d forgotten all about my birthday. It wasn’t something I celebrated even when I remembered it. My childhood had been full of forgotten birthdays. He would have known that from my files. The story about my mother showing up high on my fourteenth birthday – he’d relived that terrible incident with me over the phone.

Regan wasn’t going to turn up tonight. He was going to turn up on my birthday. But did that mean midnight, when the date rolled over? Or the following evening, under the cover of darkness? I had no way of telling the time without lighting the screen on my phone and potentially giving away my position. I stared up at the moon, followed its pale blue glow into the woods.

And then I saw it. Another flicker of light. Not in the valley in which the charred house stood, but to the east, where the land dipped away again, thick forest receding to flat moonlit fields. A wider valley, right next to the one Regan had been leading me to. In a clearing below me, someone was walking, shining a red torch to light their way through the tall grass.

I headed down the other side of the ridge.

Chapter

96

ON THE VALLEY floor, approaching through the blackness with my gun drawn, I realised the torch-carrier was another tactical team member, probably assigned to the valley adjacent to the one where the trap had been set. I looked up the incline behind me towards the stone house, wondering if I should return there so that I could see the activity in both valleys at the same time. But the radio the figure was carrying would likely have access to the tactical channel, and hearing what the police team was up to would be advantageous to me.

The figure had the shape and movement of a woman. I thought I could see a bun poking out from the back of her ball cap. She had walked to an ancient sandstone structure in the middle of the field and now sat heavily on the stones, wiping her brow and setting her rifle on the surface beside her. As I crept forward, low enough that my silhouette wouldn’t be visible across the top of the grass, I saw that the structure she was resting on was the remnants of an old well.

She was peeling off her black gloves as I emerged from the grass.

‘Freeze,’ I said.

She gave a little yelp of surprise and threw her hands up, one palm gloved, the other bare.