Dead Heat (7 page)

I can tell she is pleased with herself. This is the kind of information I usually push on her while we’re driving, but today she has the upper hand.

‘Fifty-three billion US dollars,’ she says. ‘Can you believe that?’

I think about the miles of new tarmac and the soaring new buildings all over town.

‘I guess I can.’

I’m distracted by three boys playing in the dust at the side of the road ahead. Just like I used to play when I was a kid.

‘There’s another two hundred and fifty billion dollars on the way. I saw it on the news. You know that’s why Zou is going to matter, right?’

A football rolls into the road in front of us and one of the boys bolts after it. My foot slams at an imaginary brake pedal as Paz swerves, but the boy stays on the kerb and we sail on past.

‘They all matter, Paz.’

She turns her head and looks at me longer than she should while she’s driving, before eventually turning back to the road. She blows out smoke and says, ‘I know, Carvalho.’

When we arrive, the Chinese camp is a hive of activity. Six gleaming coaches are snaked along the kerb outside the highrise athletes’ block, and the entire Chinese team appears to be surrounding them. We spend five minutes asking after Zou’s coach. Eventually Paz finds her on the other side of the crowd. I force my way through and Paz introduces me.

‘This is Chao Ling.’

The woman next to Paz is compact and hard; paper-thin skin stretches over her taut muscles and thin blue veins. She looks through me and around me all at once, her clear eyes suggesting a smart brain.

‘What’s happening?’

She tilts her angular face to meet my question, and lingers on my features for a moment before she draws breath to answer.

‘We’re all moving out.’

‘I can see that.’

I remember what Paz said in the car:
That’s why Zou is going to matter
.

Chao says, ‘We’re moving out because you cannot protect us.’

Her lips seal tightly together and she seems hostile. She studies me, waiting to see how I’ll respond to her accusation. The crowd continues to mill around us. Full retreat. Confused athletes ship holdalls and equipment into the yawning underbellies of the coaches.

I don’t know whether I trust Chao. Maybe it’s true that her federation is protecting its athletes from harm. But from years of chasing criminals, I’ve learned that people who run away are usually guilty of something. Maybe Zou was doping. Maybe she wasn’t alone in the Chinese camp. That would be a reason for the team to run.

‘The Games are cursed,’ Chao says drily.

I glance at Paz.
That’s a theory we haven’t considered
. I hold Chao Ling’s gaze a little longer, but she gives nothing away.

‘We need to see Zou Jaihui’s room.’

Zou Jaihui’s apartment is eight floors up and is just like Gilmore’s place, and Meyer’s. The scene is becoming depressingly familiar. Paz moves around, noting anything that might be of interest, and ends up in the bathroom where she finds a clutch of medications, which she starts bagging up for testing. Chao Ling stares from the doorway as if we’re grave-robbers. The news is flickering from a tiny television on the wall in the open-plan kitchen. The screen is showing grainy mobile-phone coverage of Oliver Witt opening fire in the shooting arena. Paz emerges from the bathroom and watches the report over my shoulder.

‘You think she saw the first reports and headed down to the arena?’

I shake my head.

‘She was there too soon. She must have been nearby.’

Unwashed crockery waits by the sink and there’s a half-finished game of mah-jong on the kitchen table. Life, interrupted. Zou has turned the windowsill into a temporary bookshelf and, beyond the
books, there’s a breathtaking view of the Olympic Village and the city beyond. I run a finger across the spines of the books. I’m three-quarters along when I stop. One of them is out of place. It’s written in Portuguese and the rest are Chinese. Curious, I pull it out. It’s Paolo Coelho.

‘
O Alquimista
,’ Paz says.

I leaf through it and a bookmark falls from its page. I pick it up and on it is a telephone number. My heart skips. It’s the same number that we found in Tim Gilmore’s apartment. On this paper, in black and white, is concrete proof that all of this is connected.

CHAPTER 16

‘IT’S PROBABLY THEIR
dealer’s number,’ Paz says as we walk back to the car. ‘Chao Ling was pretty quiet when you told her it matched the one in Gilmore’s apartment.’

‘That doesn’t mean she knows anything. She’s probably scared to death.’

I watch Paz trying to summon up sympathy for Chao, without much success, as we fight our way through the bottleneck of departing athletes. The mid-morning sun is hot on the side of my face and the feeling of bodies crushing in on us is unwelcome. I check my Casio: 11.30 a.m.

‘Fancy a Coke?’

Paz nods, and we muscle through the rest of the crowd and duck into a brand-new cafeteria on the corner of the block. The walls are painted in the same calm magnolia as the athletes’ apartments, and the owner has compensated by scattering garish beanbags across the polished-concrete floor. The counter is dominated by a chrome coffee machine. I order the soda and head back to Paz. She’s settled in the corner of the room and has the good grace not to laugh as I slump into a lurid green beanbag that matches hers.

‘Some people will think this is Brazil,’ Paz says sadly. Her eyes scan the walls, which feature overblown prints of iconic Rio scenes. One is a sunrise over Sugarloaf, and another features bathers on the Copacabana sands. Between the prints, TV screens are showing the latest action from the Games.

‘What do you think about Zou now?’

I shrug.

‘Well, she’s the connection that we didn’t have before. Gilmore led to Meyer, Meyer led to Witt, and Witt gave us Zou. The phone number connects the start and the end. It tells us that none of this is a coincidence.’

Paz pulls out her mobile phone and hits redial. She’s been calling the number every couple of hours since we found it in Gilmore’s apartment. It rings out, as it has every time.

‘Well, that tells us nothing.’

I’m not so sure.

‘It tells us that whoever’s at the end of the phone is very cautious.’

‘Or dead,’ Paz says, throwing up her hands hopelessly. I smile, because we both know Paz doesn’t give up as easily as that.

‘They can’t be dead, because the phone isn’t dead. It’s ringing out. Someone’s charging it. They’re charging it because they’re expecting someone to call.’

Paz is halfway down her Coke, chewing on her straw as she thinks.

‘Got to be a dealer,’ she says. ‘But how are we going to find them?’

I look at her, sprawled out on the bright-green beanbag like a kid. She’s drinking soda and twisting to get comfortable. If I were
twenty years younger, I’d enjoy sticking around and watching Paz grow. She’s tenacious and restless, and she’s going to be a very good cop.

‘I don’t know how we’re going to find them, Paz.’

The TV screen on the wall catches my eye. It’s showing the early session of the boxing at the Riocentro Pavilion. Two women are toe-to-toe when the bell rings, and they turn and head back to their corners. The TV station replays the biggest shots of the round, and super-slo-mo pictures show sweat exploding from the women’s contorted faces. Then the camera pans out and takes in the crowd, hundreds of faces in the dark. In the front row, conspicuous between the muscle-bound boxing coaches, is the tiny blonde girl in a white tracksuit. Paz spots her, too.

‘Who
is
that woman?’

I hold up Zou’s bookmark.

‘I don’t know. But I wonder if this is her number?’

CHAPTER 17

THE RIOCENTRO IS
humming when we arrive almost thirty minutes later, the roar of the crowd crashing over us like an ebbing tide. There are new fighters in the ring, but the woman in the white tracksuit is still in the front row, watching the action on the canvas square in the centre of the arena.

Paz pulls out her phone and dials the number we found in Zou’s apartment. I watch the blonde-haired woman, waiting for the moment when she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone. The moment she hangs herself. But it doesn’t happen. She sits watching the fight without moving, and Paz looks forlorn as her phone rings out.

‘Let’s talk to her anyway.’

We make our way down the stairs towards the ring. The noise is building to a crescendo as the fight reaches its most critical phase. Indian and Irish flags hang above the ring as the two fighters circle below in perpetual motion, their bodies slick with endeavour. We reach the front just as the timekeeper’s bell rings shrilly above the noise of the crowd. The crowd howls as the women’s scores light up on the giant central display, and the fighters move back to their corners to be patched up.

We make our way along the front row until we reach the woman in white.

‘Detectives Carvalho and Paz,’ I say. ‘Can we have a word, please?’

The woman looks at me blankly, and as I lean in so that she can hear me better above the crowd, the guy next to her decides to intervene. He’s bigger than me. A lot bigger. So I don’t let him up. I poke two stern fingers where his chest meets his throat and push him straight back down into his seat. With my other hand, I show him my badge. The combination of physical and psychological pressure does the job. Which is good because he’s a colossus. I lead the blonde out of the arena, and Paz brings up the rear. We head through doors and out into a brightly lit service corridor. I slow up and turn to face her, Paz arriving at my elbow.

‘What’s your name?’

She looks from me to Paz and back again.

‘Galina Orlov.’

She pulls her official credentials from around her neck and hands them to me for examination. The name on her ID card matches, as does the picture of her looking dispassionately into the camera. When I look up, she’s gazing at me with the exact same stare. Paz studies her credentials for a moment and then looks up at the woman in front of us.

‘Russian?’

The girl nods. In the bright light, she looks young and vital. Her grey eyes are alive and alert, her skin is almost pearlescent and her prominent cheekbones are helped by subtle rouge.

‘You’re a diver?’

‘Yes. Can I ask what this is about?’

Paz hands her official pass back, and the girl pulls the lanyard over her head without breaking eye contact.

‘Why are you at the boxing, if you’re a diver? Shouldn’t you be at the pool?’

‘I’m injured,’ she says, turning back to face me. ‘I’ll be at the pool later.’

‘We saw you in the shooting centre yesterday. And at the wrestling. We’ve been investigating athletes in those sports.’

‘There are nine thousand people back there,’ Orlov says, pointing over my shoulder and back into the Riocentro Pavilion. ‘I’m sure some of them were at the wrestling, too. Is that a crime now?’

Her voice is earnest.

‘It’s no crime. But I’m investigating the deaths of Zou Jaihui and Oliver Witt, and the injury to Lucas Meyer. You’ve seen all three of them in the past few days. I’m wondering if that’s just a coincidence?’

‘It’s very sad.’

I agree with her.

‘But, as I told you, I’m injured,’ she continues. ‘I trained for four years to be here, and last month I tore a muscle in my leg. So now I can’t dive. Understand?’

Suddenly her passive features are alive, her eyes welling and her pale brow furrowing. She takes a breath, straightens her back and blinks away the threat of tears.

‘The Russian team asked me to travel to Brazil anyway. Asked me to look after our team’s welfare. So now I make sure someone
fixes their dripping taps, and I make sure they have spare shoelaces. Glamorous stuff. It’s not really much of a job, but they wanted to soften the blow.’

Her pale lips break into a brave smile, and for a moment I can feel her pain.

‘So you’ve been everywhere because . . .?’

‘Because I’m checking up on my teammates. Are they happy? Are they stressed? I flutter between them to find out. I’m a butterfly.’

She flutters her eyelashes and even Paz smiles. It strikes me that she’s young, and she’s worked hard, and she’s had a hell of a dream taken away from her.

‘We think Tim Gilmore, Lucas Meyer, Oliver Witt and Zou Jaihui might have been experiencing side-effects from a performance-enhancing drug. Did you hear anything about that?’

Orlov doesn’t look too keen to help.

‘Three of them are dead,’ I push. ‘One of them is never going to be the same again. If you know something, you should say.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘You didn’t hear anything?’

She shakes her head.

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘See anything?’

‘Nope.’

Suddenly she’s standing square-on to me, her arms folded and her guard up.

Paz steps between us.

‘Can I check your bag?’

Orlov’s brow lowers again.

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Have you got something to hide?’

The blonde athlete misses a beat, as if what she really wants to say is
Fuck you
, but after a moment she looks from Paz to me and shrugs.

‘I don’t have anything to hide,’ she says. ‘But, also, this isn’t a police state. So no, you cannot check my bag.’

She cocks her head slightly to one side, waiting to see what will happen next. Like it’s a game. I sigh, long and hard.

‘Let me explain to you what’s going to happen next—’

She rolls her eyes and cuts me off.

‘I know what’s going to happen. You’ll get a warrant, you’ll seize my bag and you’ll break down my door in the night. I know this stuff. It doesn’t scare me, Detective Carvalho.’

‘No,’ I say wearily. ‘That’s not what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is that you’ll make our lives difficult, because you think that’s what we’re doing to you. I’m guessing your parents lived through the worst years of the KGB, so you probably don’t like cops much. You’ll go home tonight and smile, because you’ll think you gave two officious cops the runaround and stood up to authority, right?’