Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

116

I SAT IN the police wagon and looked at the cuffs on my wrists, the rubber floor beneath my sneakers. I’d been in this type of six-prisoner transport wagon before, but I’d never sat on the steel benches here, never ridden in the back while the vehicle was in motion. I was on the dark side of the moon now, existing in a bizarre place where I was the bad guy. I couldn’t decide if it was the smell of the bleach the wagons were hosed out with, motion sickness or nerves making me nauseated. There were no windows. I supposed windows were a luxury I was done with now.

The wagon had picked me up from the Prince of Wales Hospital, and I was now on my way to Stillwater Women’s Remand Centre, on the edge of the western suburbs, where I would await legal proceedings. I’d heard that Deputy Commissioner Woods was personally going to make sure I got as much jail time as possible, but the man himself hadn’t been in contact with my lawyer. That had surprised me. I’d stolen Woods’s quarry, and that had seemed like a personal insult to him the last time I’d seen him, standing at the end of my gurney at Bellbird Valley, his lip curled in disgust. I’d have thought my eternal damnation would have been first on his To Do list.

The wagon stopped and started, working its way through the traffic on Parramatta Road. I could hear the radios of cars on either side of my enclosure, one pumping rap music, another blaring out jazz. Every sensation was painfully vivid, my mind set to record these tiny realities, knowing soon they’d all be locked away from me.

I silently tried to calculate what Woods could throw at me. A common assault charge against any of the people I’d fought off in my pursuit of Regan Banks carried a maximum of two years in prison, and that’s if Woods didn’t have the charges bumped up to reckless wounding or wounding with intent. He would probably be able to get me for breaking and entering, and certainly for stealing vehicles from members of the public. I might have been able to soften the onslaught of legal proceedings that was owed to me if they had been first offences, but in my teenage years I’d been in and out of police stations frequently for the same kinds of write-ups. A good lawyer, which I couldn’t afford, might have been able to get the jail terms for all those charges to run concurrently with a charge for killing Regan. But even if I convinced the court I was remorseful (which I wasn’t) or that I had good character (which I didn’t), I figured I was looking at a minimum of six years.

I didn’t notice that the wagon had stopped at a police station until three other women climbed into the back with me. I shuffled along the bench to allow for them, but they all sat together opposite me. I kept my head down, didn’t speak as the wagon lurched into motion. In time I realised one of the women was staring hard at me.

She was a young dark-skinned woman, missing her two front teeth.

‘You that cop, huh?’ she said.

‘Excuse me?’ My stomach twisted harder into knots. I told myself there was no reason to panic. My face had been all over the news for the better part of a year. Of course the women in prison were going to recognise me. Even though I’d killed Regan Banks, a killer of women, a cop in prison was still a cop. I would be universally hated by everyone there. But that didn’t mean I was going to be in danger. Surely the remand centre’s staff would put me in segregation straight away, rather than leaving me to be ripped apart by dogs in the yard. Surely that was something that had already been organised.

As I tried to convince myself of this, the woman jutted her chin at me and repeated her question.

‘You that copper woman from the news?’

‘That’s me,’ I said.

‘Oh baby.’ She laughed, and looked at her friends. The two women in chains beside her joined in. ‘This gonna be fun.’

‘What’s gonna be fun?’ I asked.

‘Watching the girls inside fight each other to be the one who kills you,’ she said.

I sneered, brushing the comment off. But by the time the wagon stopped again all my bravado was gone.

The doors opened, and I looked up at the prison walls.

PROLOGUE

SHE LOCKED THE door, double-checked the gun was in place and took up position on the bed, drawing the laptop towards her, ready for her next customer.

She sat with her legs folded beneath her, wearing an off-white vest top and short denim skirt. Her lips were dark crimson, cheeks thick with blusher. And as she regarded herself in the tiny communication window of the laptop – dispassionately, as though it were some other twenty-four-year-old staring back at her – she remembered a time when she wouldn’t have dreamed of slathering on the make-up. Not unless it was for a student fancy-dress party. Rocky Horror theme, tarts and vicars, something like that. Uh, gross , she’d have said. How obvious .

But those days were history. She didn’t go to fancy-dress parties any more. Although she often invited men ‘to party’.

Fixed to a tripod at the foot of her bed was the camera, its impassive eye trained on her, ready to take her image to screens in hotel rooms and upstairs studies and man caves; to laptops opened furtively in back rooms or maybe in the living room if the wife and kids were out, where she’d be appraised as though she were stock options, or a good deal on beef at the supermarket, or a bargain on Amazon. Yes. No. Dunno. Maybe .

Again, it was a thought that should have disgusted her, and once upon a time it had. The thought of all those unseen eyes on her body. The mortal dread of being recognised. But not any more.

The camera light turned green, which meant that somewhere out in the world of the Internet a man was looking at her right now, assessing her, sizing her up, deciding if she was worth it.

Her laptop cursor blinked. In the office sat her supervisor, Jason. Right now he’d be peering at his own monitor through a cloud of weed smoke and wondering why she wasn’t typing, so she stitched on a smile for her audience and reached to the keyboard: Hi, I’m bored, want to play?

They hardly ever wanted to play. Mostly they came here via triple-X pop-ups and knew that ‘play’ meant ‘pay’. All they wanted to do was ogle for a few seconds and then click off in search of free porn elsewhere.

But sometimes they did want to play, and this was one of those times.

What did you have in mind? came the reply.

She smiled, licked her lips, and wrote, I can show you something you’ve never seen before .

Hidden beneath the duvet, the gun dug into her thigh.

Great , wrote the punter.

There was a pause. Payment details were entered. Plenty baulked at this stage, but not this one. He was on the clock now.

Get in! wrote Jason on the IM. He always did that. In a funny way, she was going to miss Jason.

How about we lose the top? wrote the punter, emboldened, wanting to hurry things up, knowing the score. Most likely he was an old hand at cams. They were the worst, the regulars. Treated the girls like cattle, like slaves. No manners.

She turned and dipped a shoulder, dropping a strap of her vest top. Trying to smile, she found she couldn’t. Instead her mind went elsewhere – to her parents, to whom she said a silent ‘sorry’; to the man in the hat from when she was little, her SAS man, her very own special forces, who’d protected her from the bad guys but couldn’t protect her now. Wishing she could have heard his voice one last time and told him what she knew.

Why are you crying?

She hadn’t even realised. But yes, a tear had slipped down her face.

Babe, WTF? What’s up? wrote Jason, but she ignored him, writing to the punter instead.