Dead Heat (6 page)

For a moment Witt’s body holds, balanced in the praying position, and I can see his final confused and horrified emotions playing across his undamaged face. Then gravity finds a weak spot and pulls him face-down onto the cold green floor. A second shot cracks violently through the air behind me and I hear a second body hit the floor. The dead-weight slap of skin on unforgiving concrete chills my blood. I pull myself from my seat and spin, my heart cold with fear and my head full of Vitoria Paz.

CHAPTER 12

DETECTIVE VITORIA PAZ
has been my partner for three years. Most mornings she’s outside my house before eight. There isn’t a month goes by that Juliana doesn’t invite her over for Sunday lunch. Felipe, her boy, calls me Uncle Rafa. So when I hear the second shot crack through the air in the arena, I turn fast, dreading what I’m going to see.

What I see is the back of Paz’s head. Intact. She’s still on her feet. Just behind her, in the doorway that leads back to the deserted corridor, is the slumped shell of a woman. She is Asian. Chinese, maybe. Paz is already climbing towards her and I debate for a moment whether to follow her or whether to head down towards Oliver Witt. I’m not sure who’s the hero and who’s the villain. Besides, I don’t imagine there will be much I can do for either of them.

A combination of duty and curiosity forces me up the steep steps behind Paz. I watched Witt die. I saw the back of his skull. I watched the life extinguish from his eyes as he fell. The woman who shot him had been behind me and I have no idea whether she’s alive or dead.

Paz slows up before she’s reached the shooter, which is a sure sign that she’s beyond help. I understand why when I reach Paz’s
shoulder. The Asian woman is crumpled into the doorway. Her legs are splayed out at an unnatural angle, her knees twisted. Only the door jamb has kept her from falling completely. There is a high-powered competition rifle at her feet and a long-barrelled pistol still hanging from her right hand, her finger caught in the trigger.

‘Competitor,’ Paz says, straightening an identity lanyard around the woman’s neck.

‘That figures,’ I say, looking back over my shoulder at Witt lying dead on the floor from one perfect shot. A pool of blood is gradually blooming around him.

‘Chinese,’ Paz reads. ‘Zou Jaihui. Twenty-four years old.’

Paz takes her time examining the athlete’s head. Her face is intact, but from behind it’s a different story. She’s missing a chunk from the back of her neck and the base of her skull. ‘She shot him with the rifle and killed herself with the pistol,’ Paz says. ‘That much is obvious.’

I nod.

‘So what do you think?’

Paz pauses.

‘Maybe she was competing somewhere else in the arena, heard the commotion and decided to be a hero?’

‘I don’t think so. That wouldn’t explain why she then killed herself.’

Behind the stricken body of the Chinese athlete, the sound of heavy boots begins to reverberate along the deserted corridor. The SWAT team is arriving.

‘Come on, then,’ Paz says. ‘What’s your theory?’

I look down at the girl, and the madness of it all makes me angry. Two more athletes wasted in the prime of their lives.

‘She’s either a rifle star or a pistol star. She’s not both. My guess is rifle, judging by the job she did on Witt. So why is she carrying both guns?’

Paz looks blankly at me.

‘You tell me.’

‘Because she came here to do a job. She’s come equipped. A rifle for him and a pistol for herself.’

‘A paid assassin?’

‘No, but I think she knew him. I think she knew Witt was going to kill himself. He put the gun to his head, after all. And when he couldn’t finish the job, she did it for him.’

‘And for herself,’ Paz says.

I nod. The SWAT team bursts through an entrance adjacent to ours and fans out into the arena. I’ve already pulled my badge out from my pocket, and I hold it above my head. Paz does the same.

‘Too late,’ I call to the team of black-clad officers. ‘The woman up here shot the guy down there. We saw it happen. You fill in the form and I’ll sign it.’

The corners of Paz’s mouth lift for a split second, and then she returns to her steely evaluation of the scene.

‘What makes you think she knew Witt?’

I crouch down so that my eyes are at the same level as Zou Jaihui. Paz hears both of my knees crack on the way down, but she’s kind enough to ignore it.

‘This girl was careful how she killed herself,’ I tell Paz. ‘She shot herself through the mouth. She didn’t touch her features. She looks like she’s asleep.’

Paz looks at the slack features of the slumped shooter.

‘Meaning what?’ Paz asks urgently as the SWAT team approaches.

‘Meaning she didn’t want to put her relatives through the pain of identifying a disfigured face.’

‘Same as most suicides, probably.’

I smile for a moment.

‘Sure,’ I tell her. ‘But Zou did the same for Witt. Perfect aim. Perfect shot. Straight through the back of his throat, without a speck of blood on his face. She didn’t want to damage him any more than she wanted to damage herself. Makes me think she cared about him.’

‘
She cared about him?
Carvalho, the back of his skull is missing.’

‘Yeah, but she never saw that, did she? The simplest job would have been three rifle shots, dead centre. She’d have taken out everything from the neck up. But she didn’t do that. She went to the trouble of aiming through his mouth with a single shot. Maybe she didn’t want to see him broken. My guess is: whatever was driving Oliver Witt crazy, I’ll bet you that Zou Jaihui knew all about it.’

CHAPTER 13

THREE PARAMEDICS RUSH
towards us as we head wearily out of the arena. They’re moving fast, pumped with adrenalin.

‘No rush,’ I tell them.

As we walk back through the exit, I flash back to the blonde woman who had been pushing past us as we arrived.

‘Yeah, I saw her,’ Paz says. ‘A coincidence?’

I scowl.

‘We ruled out coincidence, remember?’

Before Paz can apologise, her phone rings.

‘Meyer’s bloods,’ she says when the call ends. ‘Nothing unusual, apart from the sleeping pills.’

‘Well, if he was hooked on an undetectable drug, I guess it wouldn’t show up. His body could be pumped full of something and we wouldn’t know.’

We drive back across town without saying much, both of us turning over the shootings in our minds. I watch the mid-morning sun warming the waters of Guanabara Bay, the huge expanse of sea lapping against Rio’s golden shore. The sun warms the water, and the sand, and the concrete, and the lush vegetation, and finally the
soaring rock of Sugarloaf, and Christ the Redeemer as he reaches out to gather in the day.

I think about the split second when I shot Tim Gilmore. The confusion of the scene. I think about Meyer’s lonely apartment and his mottled blue skin. I think of Witt, angry and afraid like a wounded animal. And of Zou, and the terrible sound her body made when it slumped to the floor.

‘No more,’ I say to myself as much as to Paz. And I mean it.

Twenty minutes later, I’m still pulling at threads and trying to make connections between the four athletes, as Paz drives the Fiat through the grey corrugated fortress gates to the police compound. The car park is surrounded by a ten-foot-high white brick wall, and the building itself is low-slung, with windows made of iron slats.

‘Our little Tent of Miracles,’ I say to Paz and she looks at me blankly. ‘Come on,’ I tell her. ‘Jorge Amado. Born 1912. Brazil’s greatest writer?’

No reaction. I roll my eyes. This is our thing. I tell her about the great writers and our country’s history. She tells me about soap operas and reality TV.

‘Oh yeah,’ she says suddenly. ‘
Jorge Amado. 1912
. Didn’t you go to school with him, Carvalho?’

I swipe my badge across the security door and hear the heavy lock clunk open as Paz grins and pushes past me into the building. Inside there is a long, dreary corridor that aims for the heart of the station. It’s all walls and ceilings. No doors. No windows. No natural light. Nothing but stale air.

‘Find out what you can about Witt,’ I say as we walk. ‘If there’s anything in this drugs theory, then he was showing all the right signs. See if you can find a connection with Gilmore.’

‘Sure. Am I investigating him as a perpetrator or a victim?’

Our feet thud on the worn carpet and the muffled sound bounces off the stark grey walls.

‘Not sure.’

‘And Zou Jaihui?’

That’s an even tougher call.

‘Perp for now. But let’s see what comes out in the wash. I can’t help thinking they’re all in something together.’

We emerge into the main processing area. I call it ‘the bear pit’. In the centre are a handful of desks covered by a mountain of files. The files are surrounded by coffee cups and evidence bags, and every phone is ringing off the hook. Cases are being discussed, people are shouting. Criminals are being processed. We pause in the doorway, preparing, as if we’re about to jump from the back of a plane.

‘Find a connection, Paz.’

‘Okay.’

‘And the blonde girl. Try to find out who she is.’

Paz turns to look at me.

‘You think she knows something?’

I take a long breath and think about it, trying to block out the bedlam.

‘Maybe.’

Paz smiles her light-bulb smile.

‘What are you going to do, exactly?’

I look across the room through the crowd and lock eyes with the Captain, who looks like he’s spoiling for a fight.

‘Me? I’m going to buy us some time.’

CHAPTER 14

IT IS NOT
an easy thing to accept the authority of a younger man. However, the older I’ve become, the more I’ve had to get used to it. Silva is not a bad captain. But he is young. And right now he’s nervous.

‘You know this department is being watched?’ he says.

He’s trying to stay level, and I guess I appreciate the effort.

‘Let me ask you a question,’ I say. ‘Would you rather I’d let Gilmore smash his javelin through the President?’

‘That doesn’t change the fact, Carvalho. You shot an athlete.’

‘Gilmore killed himself, when he took aim at the President. What I’m doing is trying to work out why.’

‘And in the meantime two more athletes are dead, and another one is barely alive.’

‘They’re connected.’

‘I don’t doubt it, Carvalho,’ Silva tells me. ‘But what’s the deal? Why’s it happening? How many more are going to die?’

‘None.’

Captain Silva scowls.

‘How do you know?’

I stare through the glass. Paz has taken a seat at one of the desks in the pit, and I watch her as Silva closes his office door.

‘I need something solid,’ Silva says. ‘I trust you, Carvalho, but there is a wave of shit heading your way. My boss.
His
boss. They’re gunning for someone, and right now you’re in the cross-hairs.’

‘Nothing new.’

‘Help me to help you. What do you have?’

I pull up a chair and fall gracelessly into it. I’m tired and I’m beyond trying to hide my years from my younger boss.

‘I don’t know, Marcelo. It might be drugs.’

‘It might be drugs?’

‘Maybe. Lucas Meyer’s psychologist is in town. He says Meyer was taking something that was making him paranoid.’

‘Was there anything in the tox report?’

I shake my head.

‘But there wouldn’t be, according to the psychologist. He says it’s untraceable.’

‘You buy that?’

‘Well, they all showed signs of paranoia.’

‘And the Chinese girl?’

I raise my palms.

‘Who knows? Paz is digging up some background.’

Silva looks hard at me.

‘She needs to dig fast, understand?’

‘She’s digging right now.’

Silva stays quiet for a moment.

‘What if it’s something else?’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, terrorism, for example. The Mayor’s office is on the phone every hour asking about security.’

‘If Gilmore was a terrorist, he wasn’t a very good one. He was never going to succeed. If I hadn’t shot him, somebody else would have. Witt didn’t seem as if he actually wanted to shoot anyone. Zou shot Witt, and Meyer tried to kill himself. Do they sound like terrorists to you?’

‘Okay,’ Silva concedes. ‘So it’s drugs?’

‘I don’t know for sure, Marcelo. I’m working on it.’ The Captain sighs.

‘Well, as I say . . . work fast.’

Paz is behind a stack of files and an ancient computer screen when I get back to the bear pit. She puts the phone down as I approach. She looks stressed.

‘Bad news?’

‘What?’

‘The phone call. Was it bad news?’

‘Oh – no, it was Hunter Brown. Gilmore’s trainer. I told him what Jaffari said about performance-enhancing drugs, but Brown’s convinced Gilmore wasn’t taking anything.’

‘Well, as a coach he’s hardly going to want to admit something like that.’

‘True, but I pushed him hard. I put him out of the frame, asked him if Gilmore could have been taking something without him knowing. But he’s pretty sure Gilmore was clean.’

I call Meyer’s coach while Paz talks to Oliver Witt’s team. We both get the same answer. No drugs. No clues. They’re sure their athletes were clean.

‘Do you believe them?’ Paz asks, once we’ve compared notes.

I shrug.

‘Do you?’

I call the Chinese camp, hoping to talk to Zou’s coach. The phone rings for ever, and when someone eventually answers, they’re no help at all. The woman at the Chinese camp claims she doesn’t know Zou’s coach. Claims she doesn’t know Zou. Her answers are slippery and evasive. She says she doesn’t understand many of my questions, and when she does understand, she doesn’t have any authority to answer. I don’t like her, and she makes it obvious that she doesn’t like me.

‘First job tomorrow,’ I tell Paz as I put the phone down, ‘let’s go and turn the Chinese camp upside down.’

CHAPTER 15

TWELVE HOURS LATER
, Paz is sucking on another early-morning cigarette as her Fiat speeds towards the Olympic Village. From the corner of her mouth she says, ‘Do you know how much money China has invested in Brazil since we got the Olympic Games?’