Dead Heat (8 page)

Her eyes narrow.

‘But athletes are dying, Galina. Maybe because of a new drug. A drug that might be hidden away in your bag while you’re butterflying between venues, for all I know.’

She looks down at her bag and back up at me.

‘The truth is that you can open your bag and prove you’re innocent right now, or you can yank my chain and I can go away and investigate you. The choice is yours. However, while you’re giving me the runaround, another athlete could be dying. And I will not kick your door down in the middle of the night, but I swear to God that I will knock courteously in the morning with an envelope full of pictures of the next person who dies while you’re jerking us around.’

She says nothing.

‘That’s a promise.’

I wait in silence for her to make a decision. Eventually she blows out a long breath and opens her bag. She pulls out her lipgloss and applies it, while holding the bag for Paz to examine. I understand that it’s humiliating and, when it’s done, I apologise.

‘I hope you will forgive us,’ I tell her. ‘And when you’re back in Russia thinking about us, remember that we were doing what we could to keep your teammates safe.’

Galina Orlov replaces the top of her lipgloss in silence and closes the bag, her pretty face suddenly Slavic and inscrutable.

‘Can I go?’

I tell her she can. Once she is gone, Paz thrusts her hands into her pockets and blows out in exasperation.

‘There goes our only lead,’ she says. ‘Now what?’

CHAPTER 18

NEXT MORNING, JULIANA
wakes me long after dawn with hot coffee and a message from work.

‘Paz called. She’s running late. She’s dropping Felipe at school this morning. I thought I’d leave you to sleep. I can drive you to meet her.’

When I arrive at the school, I wonder if Paz has been dreaming too, because she looks tired and careworn.

‘Let’s go eat,’ she says. ‘Food fixes everything.’

There’s a street vendor selling hot food halfway between Felipe’s school and the police station. Paz pulls over and I order two egg-and-meat burgers and we eat them at the side of the road.

‘This investigation is killing my diet.’

I look up from my burger.

‘Tastes good, though, right?’

We get stuck in, the egg yolk bursting as I bite into my burger. It’s impossible for my mood not to lift.

‘What’s the plan?’

I take another bite of my burger to buy some time. I have a mobile-phone number that links Gilmore to Zou, and a chain of
events that link both of them to Meyer and Witt. But I can’t trace the mobile and nobody’s picking up the phone. We had a suspect in Galina Orlov, but she’s fallen through. So the truth is: I don’t have a plan.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and take a breath, but before I get a chance to say anything, my phone rings. It’s the precinct. There’s been a report that a British athlete is threatening to jump from the Vista Chinesa, a huge bamboo pagoda up in the mountains.

‘New plan,’ I tell Paz as we head back to the car. ‘The guy’s name is Steve Lewis, and apparently he knows why Oliver Witt went crazy.’

PART 4

STEVE LEWIS

CHAPTER 19

PAZ IS STILL
eating her burger as she drives hard along the Alto da Boa Vista. We’re climbing away from the sea and into the mountains, the air getting cooler and thinner as we go.

‘Well, that explains why he’s at the Vista Chinesa,’ I say from the passenger seat as I scroll through an Internet search. ‘Steve Lewis is a British cyclist. The pagoda is on the route of the road race.’

‘Jesus!’ says Paz, glancing across at my screen. ‘Look at those thighs. They’re like tree trunks.’

Her phone rings on the dashboard. She has the steering wheel in one hand and her burger in the other, so I reach over and answer it for her. It’s bad news.

‘Meyer’s dead,’ I tell her when I hang up. ‘He picked up an infection in the hospital. Off the record, the doctors are saying it might have been the best thing for him. His liver and kidneys were ruined, and probably his brain, too. If he’d ever come round, it’s unlikely he could have told us anything.’

Another dead athlete. At the wheel, Paz is looking the same way I feel. Gutted.

‘Autopsy?’

I nod.

‘But they’re not expecting anything illuminating. The bloods have already been done, and nothing has come back from the pathologist. If he was taking an undetectable drug, then it did what it said on the tin.’

Paz is driving hard and the tyres of the Fiat slide and complain as we round a tight bend. When we straighten up, we’re driving straight into the sun. Paz squints and pulls down the visor. The Vista Chinesa comes into view moments later, a two-storey hexagonal structure clinging to the edge of the jutting mountain rock and looking out over all of Rio. A clutch of thin-wheeled bicycles are resting against the bollards, and a huddle of guys in Lycra are waiting inside the pagoda. They head towards us as we get out of the car. The first guy to reach us is the only one not wearing Lycra.

‘Thank Christ you’re here,’ he says, and introduces himself as the team manager. ‘I’m Adam Wilson. We’re on a time trial, but something’s gone wrong.’

‘What, exactly?’

He struggles to put it into words.

‘Not sure. It’s Steve Lewis. He’s on the wrong side of the barrier.’

‘How long has he been there?’

The coach looks at his watch.

‘Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.’

I leave Paz to deal with Wilson, and head to the barrier. I’ve already made a promise: no more athletes are going to die.
Steve Lewis is not going to die
. I climb straight over the barrier, without
stopping to think. There’s a short strip of rough-hewn earth beyond the bamboo, and after that, it’s a sheer drop. Lewis is stock-still, perched right on the edge. He’s contemplating the horizon, his knees drawn close to his chest, his thin arms pulling tight across his shins.

‘Steve?’

I move slowly towards him, but he tenses and pushes out towards the edge as I approach.

‘Stay the fuck where you are,’ he says. ‘Stay the
fuck
where you are!’

He turns and looks me in the eye and I know, without doubt, that he’s not bluffing.

CHAPTER 20

I SIT DOWN
on the floor a few yards from Lewis. It feels like the right thing to do. His eyes flick between me and the terrifying drop. For a while I say nothing. I want the dust of my arrival to settle, before I start in on him.

‘I love this view,’ I say eventually.

There’s no reaction, but I know he’s listening.

‘See the church right on the horizon?’

His head turns a fraction of a degree towards me, his eyes wide and scared.

‘I married my wife there. Forty years ago. You think you’re scared sitting up here? You should have seen me at the front of that church. I couldn’t breathe, I was so scared. You know why? Because she was perfect. She still is. I couldn’t believe she’d get all the way down the aisle without changing her mind.’

Lewis turns to look at me, his hair blowing in the wind. His cheeks are tear-stained, and his watery blue eyes flick between me and the church on the horizon.

‘You still together?’

I smile.

‘We are. I still don’t know what she sees in me.’

Lewis smiles weakly. He takes a deep breath and shakes his head.

‘Am I safe?’

It strikes me as an odd question from a guy who has climbed over a safety barrier towards a sheer drop, but I nod earnestly. Reassured, he turns back to the view. The wind drops and the heat picks up, and Lewis does nothing. I loosen my collar as the still air begins to stifle me. After a long minute, the sense of time passing becomes too much for me and I force the issue by edging closer. I realise immediately that it’s a mistake. Too much, too soon. He shuffles further out, and some of the rock beneath him gives way. He scrabbles backwards, clawing frantically at the rock and the dirt, but gravity is against him and he slides hopelessly over the edge until his foot catches in a tree root. He kicks out with his powerful legs and is pushed back onto solid ground. I can see his chest pumping and the veins in his neck pulsing with adrenalin-fuelled blood. I’ve learned something: he doesn’t want to die. That’s something I can work with.

‘Are you on drugs, Steve?’

‘No.’

He looks confused by the question.

‘You’re the fifth athlete to act like this,’ I tell him. ‘The other four are dead.’

Two hawks circle on the thermals a few yards in front of us, scanning the ground far below them.

‘I know about the others.’

‘You know what, exactly?’

Lewis says nothing, his taut features struggling to settle on a single emotion. We are alone on the ledge, apart from the hawks, and the gods. Steve Lewis has a secret, and only I can unlock it.

‘When I was a rookie cop,’ I tell him, ‘I used to feel a hell of a lot of pressure. Back then, Rio was even more dangerous than it is today, if you can believe that? I lost friends, and I beat myself up for not saving them. I felt a hell of a lot of pressure, you understand?’

Lewis raises his head just enough to acknowledge what I’m saying.

‘You know what I did? I used to cry in the shower, where nobody could see me and nobody could judge me. I’m not ashamed to admit it.’

The cyclist turns his head towards me and our eyes lock.

‘Pressure is a button,’ he says.

‘Sure,’ I tell him. ‘But you can switch it on or off. That’s your choice.’

Lewis visibly relaxes, his back slumping slightly and his breathing slowing. I smile, because I get the feeling those few words just saved Steve Lewis’s life. Behind me, Lewis’s coach calls to him, and I realise for the first time that we have an audience.

‘Time to come back over, Steve,’ he says. ‘We’re all waiting for you, fella. You’re scaring the shit out of us.’

On the edge of the cliff, Steve Lewis starts to cry. He drops his head and weeps as he watches the hawks riding the thermals. His Lycra-clad ribs shake as he sobs.

‘Take it easy,’ I tell him.

I move towards him and get an arm under him. It’s the point of no return. If he decides to go over the edge now, then I’m going over, too. I clasp his hand in mine, and he leans into me. We both breathe a sigh of relief. I drag him back from the precipice, and he scrambles to his feet. I put an arm around his waist and guide him back to the bamboo barrier, where his coach gets an arm around his neck and grabs a hold of him as if he’s never going to let go.

Once I’m on the other side of the barrier, it takes me five seconds to register that Paz has gone.

‘She left in a hurry,’ Wilson says, as I give Steve Lewis a bear hug and tell him everything’s going to be fine. ‘She told me to tell you she was heading for Vila Cruzeiro.’

I stop short. Vila Cruzeiro is not a good place to visit alone.

‘Did she say why?’

‘Something about her boy,’ Wilson says apologetically. ‘She seemed panicked. She wasn’t very clear.’

I have to go. Right now. I turn back to Lewis and look him straight in the eye. I mention a name that has been rattling around my head for the last five minutes, and watch his face for a reaction. He looks at me blankly, and then slowly but surely he nods. And all of my suspicions are confirmed.

CHAPTER 21

I PULL OUT
my mobile as I walk away from the cyclists, scrolling to Paz’s number and hitting green. A single bleep.
No damn signal
. There is a slow stream of traffic rolling past the Vista Chinesa, and I hold my badge aloft and head out into the road. The first car to stop is a Mercedes SUV.

The driver – a woman in her late twenties – looks relieved that I’m a cop and not a carjacker and, within seconds, I’m powering the SUV back down the asphalt towards the city. I try Paz’s number again, but there’s still no signal. I put my foot down hard and the SUV lurches forward. I cut corners. I slam into pavements. I’m heading for a street in the Vila Cruzeiro, a slum built on a rubbish dump outside Rio de Janeiro. As I drive, I find myself thinking about Paz’s car, and the tiny holes in the foam in her passenger seat, and Felipe’s tiny fingers. Every image gets me pushing harder on the accelerator.

Vila Cruzeiro is a grim place, full of red-brick huts holding each other up, and kids playing football in the dusty streets. Bathtubs on the roofs slowly collect rainwater for residents below. The place feels lawless, and I know I should wait for backup, but I can’t. Paz
is already charging headlong into trouble and I’m her partner. I’m not waiting for anyone.

I pass the garish Haas & Hahn block, painted in vivid carnival colours by crazy Dutch artists, then I plunge back into the redbrick and grey-slab concrete. I watch small children – the eyes and ears of the favela – receding into alleyways. If feels like the clock is already ticking.

I cruise for two minutes before I spot Paz’s car, parked outside a dilapidated place with a barbed-wire roof and a crumbling façade. There is movement behind the grimy first-floor windows and I waste no time getting inside. I slam through the rotten wooden front door – peeling paint exploding as I kick. Pain shoots through my knee and I recall the long list of doors I’ve smashed through during my career. How easy it used to be. How worn I have become. I wonder if this will be the very last time.

‘Police!’

Upstairs there is movement on bare floorboards. People moving into position. I pull my gun and take the creaking stairs two at a time. I emerge into the half light of the dirty upstairs room and find a man sitting in an easy chair. It’s Rahim Jaffari, Lucas Meyer’s psychologist. His cropped white hair and taut olive skin are unmistakable, even in the gloom.

Jaffari is smiling because he knows I can’t shoot him. He is holding Felipe in front of him, drawing the small boy up by grabbing a fistful of his hair, using his tiny body as a human shield. His own gun is pressed against Felipe’s delicate temple.

‘You are the link between all of the athletes.’

He nods, and his lips curl into a satisfied smile. I want to hammer it right off his smug face, but he’s holding a gun to Paz’s boy’s head. So I take a breath.