Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

He rode the clunking, shuddering elevator down to the darkened car park and traversed the concrete floor lined with police vehicles to another elevator down to the lowest floor of the building. Records was housed where the command centre held its armoury, and it had the added benefit of being a suitably dark, damp and cold place for insubordinate officers to be sent as punishment. Officers who stepped out of line were sent to do time either in records, where they could wither away filing paperwork, or in the armoury, where cleaning and servicing the weapons would allow them sufficient time to think about what they had done.

Whitt knew who was in the records department now – a young patrol officer named Karmichael, who had been filmed dancing suggestively in uniform with a couple of ladies in a nightclub in Kings Cross. Constable Karmichael’s movie had made it onto YouTube and, inevitably, to the top brass’s email inbox. And then there was a long-term inmate of the dungeon, Inspector Mia Fables. Fables was in her fifties, and had clawed her way to Inspector through decades of shoddy police work and bad attitude.

Whitt exited the elevator and pushed open the door of the long hall leading to the lowest floor of the building.

The lights were off. It was his first clue that something was amiss.

Chapter

9

WHITT STOOD HOLDING open the heavy door. He seemed to recall that there had been some mention of the lights and electrics on the dungeon floor playing up. He called out into the infinite blackness and received no reply. Surely Karmichael and Fables weren’t working in pure blackness? The door at the other end of the hall must have been shut. Whitt let the door close behind him, sealing him in the dark. The sound of his shoes on the concrete as he walked seemed so loud now his eardrums pulsed.

A smell. Gunpowder. Not the lingering reek of the armoury up ahead, but a whiff of it, a cloud suddenly enveloping him. Whitt felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He stopped short, his hand reaching instinctively for the gun in his shoulder holster.

‘Hello?’

No answer. Whitt wouldn’t have put it past his colleagues to try to give him a fright in the dark down here. He cleared his throat, trying to ease a little of the fear out of his words. ‘Is someone here?’

Nothing. He kept walking and, with relief, opened the door at the other end of the hall.

He would have looked back, just to check, to see if the strange sense that someone was in the hall behind him had been correct. That in the blackness someone had waited as he passed.

But he didn’t check.

He was distracted by the blood.

Chapter

10

JUST ONE DROP. A big drop, searing red in the fluorescent light.

Whitt looked back into the hall. No one. He crouched, squinted at the bloodstain. It was wet. He pulled out his weapon but didn’t call out this time.

It was only one drop of blood, but the feeling he’d experienced in the dark hall had put him on edge. His back teeth were locked, muscles tense.

Whitt walked silently to a T-intersection in the hallway and peered around the corner. To the right of him, the door to the armoury. To the left, the door to the records room. He looked down before he reached for the records room doorknob. He noticed another drop of blood on the floor.

From inside the room, a moan.

Whitt threw open the door. The small reception space before the caged records room was empty. He went to the barred door and peered in, saw a pair of legs jutting from behind a filing cabinet.

‘Karmichael?’ Whitt tried to see more, but there was only blood – not single drops of it now but smears and streaks, a dark pool. He rattled the door. There was no sign of Mia Fables. He climbed atop the counter and slid his body through the gap across which the records were usually handed, landing almost on top of Constable Karmichael.

‘Oh Jesus,’ Whitt breathed, spreading his hands instinctively on the officer’s bloodied chest, trying to stem the flow from two gaping holes. ‘Oh Jesus!’

The young man had been shot three times, twice in the chest, once in the throat. He was alive. Trying to speak. His mouth moving open and closed, a gasping fish on a riverbank.

Whitt hit the panic button under the counter, the one Karmichael had dragged himself across the floor trying to reach. A shrill electronic tone split the air.

‘I’ll be back,’ Whitt assured the dying man. ‘I’m coming back, I promise.’

He grabbed his gun from the counter and ran to the furthest aisle. Lieutenant Fables lay on her side at the very end of the row, papers fallen all around her, her mouth hanging open as though giving a pained howl. Whitt could tell, even from a distance, that she was dead.

He checked the other aisles, one at a time, sweeping his gun before him. No one. He heard running footsteps, shouting. His colleagues arriving at the distant hall.

‘I’m here!’ Whitt went back to the dying constable on the ground. ‘Karmichael, I’m –’

He was gone. The blood that had been gushing from his throat had stilled. Whitt stood, listening to the alarm, blood dripping from his fingers onto the floor, sliding down the barrel of his gun. On the ground nearby was another collection of files and papers, a heap lifted from an open drawer nearby and dumped. Whitt went to the cabinet where the drawer stood open and looked at the sign above it.

PERSONNEL: A–F.

He didn’t touch the files scattered near the body of the dead officer. He read the names he could see as though in a dream. Brummer. Brown. Blake. Billett. Benson.

He knew which file was missing.

Chapter

11

A DOUBLE SHOOTING in their own command building. Whitt couldn’t fathom it. He sat dumbfounded at the table in an interview room after giving his statement. He’d been told the CCTV had switched off ten minutes before the shooting. The concrete walls had suppressed the sound of gunfire.

‘Harry’s personnel file is missing, isn’t it?’ Whitt asked his chief.

Chief Morris and Deputy Commissioner Woods were the last detectives to interview Whitt. He had given his statement three times over. They sat across from him, reading his statement.

‘Details of the crime scene aren’t your concern right now, Detective,’ Woods said. ‘You’re signed off for the day. Go home. Walk it off. We’ll resume interviews in the morning.’

‘It was him.’ Whitt couldn’t stop the words tumbling out. ‘Banks. I think I passed him on his way out. He came to get Harry’s records. That means he’s got everything we have on her. Her childhood. Her academy results. Her disciplinary –’

‘Whitt,’ Morris said.

‘He was here. Banks. He was in the building .’

‘That’s enough, Detective.’ Woods stood, towering above the men still sitting at the table, his bulk casting a shadow over Whitt. ‘Shut up, and go home. That’s an order.’

In the men’s change room, while collecting his belongings, Whitt jumped at the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

It was a female detective he’d not met before, her black cotton top cinched at the underarms by her holster.

‘Edward Whittacker?’ she said.

‘Oh, yes, hi.’ He closed his locker. ‘Sorry – you’re from Forensics? Is there more I need to –’

‘No, I’m Detective Vada Reskit.’ She put out a hand. ‘I’m your new partner on the Banks case.’

A partner. That made sense. Someone to lean on while he dealt with the events of the morning, someone to keep an eye on him for the top brass as he carried on with the case. Leave time was not in abundance right now. He’d be expected to suck it up and keep looking for Banks and Harry.

Whitt shook the offered hand. Vada’s grip was firm, warm. The first comforting thing he’d felt in hours. He focused on her bright white teeth. Her red hair. Her ponytail. ‘I see. Chief Morris assigned you, did he? Or was it Woods?’