Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

When there was one car in the parking lot, I stood and flicked open the blade on my pocketknife.

I was about to commit my worst crime yet.

Chapter

14

THE REMAINING CAR was a brand new Toyota Corolla, rose-red and shining in the light of the moon. I snuck up to the side of it and punctured the front passenger-side tyre with my blade before dashing behind a row of bushes.

Only minutes passed before a plump woman in a long denim skirt came wandering out of the back doors of the building, locking the glass door behind her and shouldering a heavy handbag. She was typical of the child services women I’d traipsed after for most of my childhood in foster care. The long skirt was good for a little kid to hide behind, and the handbag, if squeezed, would crackle with the sound of lolly bags. I waited while the woman crossed the lot and slid into the car, dumping her handbag on the seat beside her with the crackle I’d expected. For a moment or two she appreciated the new feel of the car, the strange slant towards the front left side. When she exited the vehicle and walked around the front of it, I crouched, ready.

‘Oh shit,’ she wailed, looking around the empty lot. ‘ Shiiiiiit! ’

I waited. She grabbed her phone and dialled while she popped the boot and went around the back. As she began speaking I snuck forward and went for the driver’s-side door.

‘It’s me,’ I heard her saying. ‘I’ve got a flat tyre. Can you believe it? No, I’m just gonna change it myself. But stay on the line with me, will you? I’m all alone out here. I’ll put you on speaker.’

I squatted in the doorway as the car shifted all around me, the FACS woman unloading the tyre from the boot. The keys were in her handbag on the passenger seat. I snuck away as the sound of another female voice came from the phone’s speaker.

‘Just call roadside service! There’s a serial killer running around out there, haven’t you heard?’

‘Why do you think I called you, Mum?’ the FACS woman sighed. ‘If you hear me scream, you’ll know he’s got me. Hang up and call the police.’

‘Maria, if I hear you scream I’m gonna have a stroke!’

The key to the back door of the FACS building was the biggest and thickest on the keyring. I closed the door quietly behind me and stood in the dark, listening. It had been nearly two decades since I had been here, but it smelled the same. Baby powder and sterilised plastic toys, soiled nappies and sour milk. In the hall were posters with happy smiling teddy bears and elaborate illustrated dinosaurs giving advice on how to be brave if you’re feeling scared. How nobody should ever make you keep a secret. How the police and your care workers were to be trusted above all others, how they would always keep you safe.

Bullshit.

I passed a wall displaying domestic violence pamphlets and rounded the corner of a service desk.

Behind it I found the computer still turned on and gritted my teeth at the password system, until I found a Post-it note on a nearby shelf with the login details helpfully written out. I logged in and went straight to a record search. I realised how sweaty my hands were when I began to type in Regan’s name.

The sound of my phone ringing in the silence made me yelp. I looked instinctively back towards the hall that led to the rear door, expecting to see Maria the FACS worker standing there, drawn by the noise. No one had the number of this phone. I’d never heard it ring, never bothered to turn the sound off. I assured myself it was some kind of mistake and rejected the call. But as I was switching the phone to silent it rang again.

‘Hello?’ I answered.

‘It’s me,’ Regan said.

Chapter

15

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE that it was him. This number was unlisted, untraceable, unobtainable by anyone but the man in Kings Cross who I’d bought it from.

It was impossible that he would call to speak to me, after everything he had done to me and my brother and my friends. Impossible that I would know it was him, having never heard his voice.

But I did know. It was him. Every cell in my body confirmed it. I couldn’t speak. My hands shaking, tears already rising, I threw the phone from my ear as though it were red hot and scrabbled with it on the counter, fumbling for the button to hang up.

I was panting. Making faint whimpering sounds. Regan’s name was on the computer screen in front of me, his voice still in my brain, searing itself into my memory.

It’s me. I’m back. I’ve found you, Harry .

The phone rang again. The computer screen went dark, timed out. I caught a glimpse of my own horrified face, lips trembling.

‘Get a grip, bitch,’ I snarled at my reflection.

I grabbed the phone and answered.

Chapter

16

I DIDN’T LET him speak this time. I hadn’t known I had anything I wanted to say to Regan Banks, but apparently there was plenty. I squeezed the phone so that the plastic creaked with the pressure, and I spewed vitriol at him down the line. I called him every name I could think of, trying with each new sentence to make him understand how much I hated him, what a vile and worthless creature he was. Slowly I realised that the words were weak. Nothing I said came close to expressing what I felt. I gasped for breath at the end of my tirade, rounding it off in the only way I knew how.

‘So fuck you ,’ I said. ‘Fuck. You. Regan. Banks.’

‘Harriet,’ he said, after giving me time to regain my compo-sure, which I failed to do. ‘That was some impressive speech.’

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to take his bait, acknowledge a compliment from the man who had ruined my life. I woke the computer, hit the search button and started running through the findings, the phone wedged between my ear and shoulder.

‘Your brother called you Harry,’ Regan said. His voice was heavy, slow. Unflappable. ‘Can I call you that?’

‘You better call me the Grim Reaper, arsehole,’ I said. ‘Because I’m going to find you, and I’m going to end you . I’m gonna put you in the ground . And I’m gonna come back to visit you every year on the anniversary just so I can tell your rotting, worm-riddled corpse to go fuck itself.’

I glanced towards the doorway, hearing my own voice rising and being unable to stop it. I’d bitten the inside of my cheek in my fury. The hatred was intoxicating.

He was laughing softly. I felt something wild inside me throwing itself about inside its cage, yanking painfully hard on its chains.

‘I believe you, Harry,’ Regan said. ‘There’s not an instance here in your personnel file that makes me believe you’re not a woman of your word.’

My file. I’d been right. He’d killed two cops to get what he could on me. I ground my teeth, selected his record on the screen and hit print.

‘I see you’ve been questioned multiple times about revenge attacks on the men you’ve dealt with on the job,’ he said. I heard papers being shuffled. ‘You were questioned after a luxury Mercedes belonging to a man who was accused of molesting his teenage daughter was set on fire.’

I remembered the case. The daughter had been too scared to testify. I recalled the warmth of the flames as I stood in the dark across the street. The man was trying to put out the fire with a blanket as his neighbours slowly emerged from their houses.

‘Here’s another one,’ he said. He was having fun with this now. ‘A couple of teenage boys accused of raping a girl at a high school party. You did your best, but there was not enough evidence to convict. Three weeks after the charges were dropped the two were found naked, bound to a tree on the school grounds. Neither would identify their attacker.’