Dead Heat: BookShots (Book Shots) Read online

  ‘Has Lucas ever gone missing before?’ I ask.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Does the name Tim Gilmore mean anything to you?’

  ‘He’s the Australian guy, isn’t he?’

  I nod.

  ‘The one who got shot.’

  I nod again.

  ‘Ever run into him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did Lucas?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  I check my ancient Casio. It’s almost 11 a.m. I decide we’ll head over to Meyer’s apartment, once Paz finishes on the phone.

  ‘One more thing,’ I ask Nel, mostly to kill the time while I’m waiting for Paz to finish up. ‘Did you notice what he was watching on the TV this morning?’

  He rolls his shoulders and scrunches his face in thought.

  ‘Same as the rest of us,’ Nel says slowly. ‘He was watching the news reports. The reports about Tim Gilmore.’

  CHAPTER 7

  IT TAKES US ten minutes to walk the purpose-built route to Lucas Meyer’s place. The sun is high in the sky and I’m sweating as we hurry towards the high-rise blocks.

  ‘Who called you?’

  ‘Vivo Movel,’ Paz says. ‘The mystery number in Tim Gilmore’s apartment is an unregistered mobile. Untraceable.’

  I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

  Meyer’s apartment block is pretty much identical to the one we visited yesterday morning. Inside, we find the building supervisor. He looks leathery, with curled nails and yellow teeth. He’s wearing a smart shirt, but his hands are gnarled and scarred, and I wonder what he did for a living before the Olympics rolled into town.

  ‘We need to get into Lucas Meyer’s room,’ I tell him. ‘He’s not opening up.’

  I’m expecting the supervisor to have a weighty bunch of keys, but instead he pulls out a single plastic card.

  ‘Access all areas,’ he says with a toothy grin.

  The world has changed, and I can feel my retirement looming.

  We take the lift to the thirteenth floor, and the doors open onto a corridor just like the one Tim Gilmore was living on. Lucas Meyer’s front door is identical, too. I don’t like the feeling of déjà vu.

  ‘Television,’ the supervisor says, as we hear the burbling noise from behind Meyer’s door. Pleased at his own helpfulness, he exposes his yellow teeth again. Paz bangs hard on the door and, when there’s no response, she kicks at it hard enough to bring Meyer’s neighbour out into the corridor. A tall, bleary-eyed man in his mid-twenties leans around his door and asks us what’s going on.

  ‘Police business,’ Paz says. ‘Go back inside.’

  The neighbour is twelve inches taller than Paz, but Paz is in full flow. Her eyes are a mix of adrenalin and authority, and the athlete does exactly what he’s told.

  We wait. I hear no movement behind Meyer’s door, and nobody opens it up. I turn to the supervisor, who pre-empts my request and leans in to swipe his card. I catch a smell of rot on his breath, and suddenly his teeth remind me of the seeds from an overripe melon. I have a primal urge to keep him at arm’s length.

  ‘Stay here,’ I tell him, as Paz and I sweep inside. There’s a short, dark corridor from the front door to the lounge, tight enough that we need to walk in single file. An alcove on the left leads to a kitchenette. There’s nothing on the stove, and a single mug is draining near the sink. I pull open the nearest cupboard. It’s packed with pasta and rice. There are eggs and meat in the humming refrigerator.

  ‘Hungry guy,’ Paz mutters, joining me in the doorway. ‘Nothing in the bathroom, by the way.’

  As we push further along the corridor, I’m vaguely aware of the supervisor’s rotten breath and I realise he’s ignored my instructions to wait outside. Paz pushes through the door at the end of the short corridor and moves slowly into the lounge. The blinds are drawn and the room is dark, except for the television that is sending flickering shadows against the far wall. Nobody is watching. I look at Paz, who looks back at me and shrugs. The television is uncomfortably loud, making it hard to think straight. I can’t find the remote and eventually pull the plug out of the wall. Paz takes a minute to breathe.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘That’s better. So where is he?’

  Sometimes you can feel the bad news coming.

  ‘He’s here, somewhere.’

  Paz nods as the silence begins to settle.

  ‘Well, there’s only the bedroom left.’

  She walks out into the corridor and straight into the supervisor, who is lurking in the gloom.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she says. ‘Can you wait outside, please?’

  I take the lead and push into the bedroom. The blinds are wide open, and bright daylight streams in from the opening doorway. As my pupils adjust, I begin to make out the geography. There is a large, neatly made bed in the centre and beyond it a window framing the beautiful interlocking stadia of the Barra da Tijuca Olympic Park. Silhouetted in the window is the giant frame of a colossal man. He is sitting on the floor with his back to us, leaning against the bed. He has the thickest neck of any person I have ever seen in my life. His light hair is tightly cropped, and he’s wearing a plain grey T-shirt stretched over huge slabs of muscle. What I can’t see is his face.

  ‘Lucas Meyer?’

  No response.

  Paz moves into the room beside me and draws her gun, on instinct. She covers me as I step forward. I move around the bed, slowly bringing myself into Meyer’s line of sight. I see his fingertips first. They’re blue. As I walk around in front of him, I spot the pill bottle that he is still clutching. I prise it from his cold fingers and hand it to Paz, who is already holstering her weapon.

  ‘Overdose,’ I say. ‘What are they?’

  She checks the label, as I check without much hope for a pulse in Meyer’s huge neck. I feel nothing. His skin is cold and clammy and his dull eyes are still open. It feels like he’s staring at me as I go about my grim task. His face is pallid and his lips are blue. His head has lolled slightly to one side, and an elastic thread of drool is hanging from the corner of his mouth.

  Paz looks up from the bottle.

  ‘Sleeping pills. Zopiclone.’

  As Paz begins reading through the ingredients, I notice vomit covering Meyer’s grey T-shirt and the legs of his jeans. It’s enough to make me lean in and check his pulse again, because much of what he’s swallowed hasn’t made it into his system. I thrust two fingers as hard as I can into his neck. It’s like trying to get a pulse out of a rhino. I hold my breath, and after a few seconds I look up at Paz.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ I tell her. ‘He’s still alive.’

  CHAPTER 8

  PAZ IS TAILGATING the ambulance as it speeds along the Linha Amarela towards the emergency room at the Hospital Federal de Bonsucesso.

  ‘Think you did enough?’ she asks as we plough through another set of red lights. I am drenched with sweat, after pumping Meyer’s massive chest for fifteen minutes while we waited for the ambulance to arrive.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s pretty difficult to kill yourself with modern sleeping pills. The lethality has been designed out of them. Especially if you’re the size of Lucas Meyer. And especially if your body has ejected half of what you swallowed. But if he pulls through, I’m not sure we’ll have done him any favours.’

  Paz steals a glance at me.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘His fingers were blue, Paz. The lack of oxygen will have ruined his brain, and the Zopiclone will have ruined his liver. If he lives, he’ll never wrestle again. He’ll probably never speak again.’

  The ambulance hits a pothole, and Paz swerves to avoid doing the same.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a stack of questions I’d like to ask him.’

  It takes fifteen minutes to reach the hospital, and another three to negotiate the swarm of white minibuses and the badly parked cars. Paz flashes her badge and we’re waved through the security checkpoint in time to see Meyer being pull
ed from the back of the ambulance. They’re still working on him as they wheel him into the building. Inside, we wait five minutes until a man in a smart shirt with rolled-up sleeves finds us in the waiting area.

  ‘Dr Pereyra,’ he says as he approaches.

  ‘Detectives Carvalho and Paz,’ I tell him. ‘Is he going to pull through?’

  Pereyra shows me the palms of his hands and rounds his shoulders, as if the weight of the world is on his back.

  ‘Maybe. He’s responding to treatment, but some of his organs may have shut down completely. And there’s a strong possibility of brain damage.’

  Once Pereyra has gone, Paz grabs two polystyrene cups of coffee from an ancient vending machine. We sit down and get our heads together over a chipped Formica coffee table. We talk quietly, the way anxious relatives discuss the best and worst scenarios while they wait for news to reach them.

  ‘Here’s what we know,’ Paz says. ‘Two nights ago, Gilmore phones Meyer. Gilmore disappears. Last night he reappears, attempts to throw a javelin at the President and you shoot him.’

  I wince at the memory.

  ‘This morning Meyer watches the news reports about Gilmore at breakfast, and we find him in his room having swallowed enough sedatives to knock out an elephant. Coincidence?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘No chance.’ I take a sip of my coffee and scald my top lip.

  ‘Why set the machine so hot?’ I complain. Paz watches me over the rim of her cup as she blows to cool her own drink. ‘One thing’s for sure: Lucas Meyer knows something. He spoke to Gilmore before the attack, and he tried to kill himself after.’

  ‘Meyer’s not going to be talking any time soon,’ Paz says.

  ‘True. But it means there’s something worth knowing. We just need to find out what it is.’

  A receptionist calls out to us across the lobby. Paz and I turn to see a nervous-looking woman holding two fingers in the air.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she says, beckoning us towards her. We walk closer and she lowers her voice. She puts the hand that was in the air over the mouthpiece of her telephone. ‘Are you the police?’

  I nod.

  ‘Here about Lucas Meyer?’

  I nod again and show her my badge.

  ‘Someone on the phone is asking for him,’ she almost whispers. ‘What should I say?’

  I take the phone from her and hold it to my ear. No background noise. No clues.

  ‘Hello?’ I say.

  The voice on the line says, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘You first.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘My name is Dr Rahim Jaffari. I am Lucas Meyer’s psychologist. I insist on speaking with him. Are you a doctor?’

  He sounds suave and sophisticated. His Middle Eastern accent is rich and complex in tone.

  ‘No. I’m Detective Rafael Carvalho. Can we talk?’

  Paz watches me intently, trying to guess what I am hearing on the line.

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘Lucas has swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jaffari says. ‘Well, I didn’t prescribe them.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you did. But if he’s your client, maybe you can tell me something about his state of mind?’

  ‘I never discuss my clients.’

  His tone is uncompromising.

  ‘I’d hate to have to arrest you.’

  Jaffari laughs.

  ‘You’re a very persuasive man, Detective Carvalho.’

  ‘This is not a game,’ I tell him. ‘Your client tried to take his own life. If you know why, you need to tell me.’

  He adjusts his tone to something more conciliatory.

  ‘It’s not a game to me, either,’ he says. ‘But you have to understand that I provide very private assistance to very public people. What they tell me is confidential.’

  I clear my throat.

  ‘There’s a good chance Lucas Meyer is going to die.’

  There’s a pause as the psychologist assesses his position.

  ‘Okay, I’ll talk to you,’ he says after a minute. ‘But not over the phone.’

  CHAPTER 9

  BY THE TIME we arrive at the Belmond Copacabana Palace, Rahim Jaffari is already taking lunch on the terrace next to a shimmering pool. The hotel is a white Art Deco block, with the name wrought in huge copper letters above the sixth-floor windows.

  ‘Dr Jaffari?’

  Jaffari smiles and invites me to sit. He’s a good-looking man in his mid-fifties. He has olive skin that retains a youthful quality and striking white hair that is fashionably cut.

  ‘Detective Carvalho,’ he says. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  I introduce Paz, and Jaffari nods politely. His smile vanishes as we sit, and I figure he wants to get down to business. The table, which overlooks the Guanabara Bay, is covered with a crisp white cotton tablecloth and furnished with fine china plates. A prim waitress stands nearby, wearing a crisp white shirt and a patterned sarong. Jaffari beckons her over and asks her to bring a fresh pot of coffee.

  ‘Can you imagine competing in this heat?’ he asks, watching the waitress swish off in her sarong. I say nothing. I don’t know exactly what Jaffari can tell me, but I haven’t come here to talk about the weather. Jaffari is comfortable with the silence, and for a while we both stare out towards the horizon, our eyes narrowed slightly against the breeze coming in off the water. After a moment, the coffee arrives.

  ‘What is it that you could not tell me over the phone?’ I ask Jaffari as he pours.

  ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘I figured as much. You didn’t want to talk to me at all, earlier.’

  I sip the coffee. It tastes a world better than the stuff from the vending machine in the hospital. Jaffari sighs and takes a moment to rearrange the cutlery until it is perfectly symmetrical.

  ‘Lucas Meyer is my client,’ he says slowly. ‘I owe him my confidentiality.’

  I look back from the sea and stare at him.

  ‘This is not the time for secrets. I’ve got one athlete in hospital and another in the morgue.’

  ‘It wasn’t me who shot him,’ Jaffari says bluntly, and for a second I think I see a smile play on the corners of his lips.

  Paz puts her cup down a little harder than she intended and the spoon rattles on the china saucer.

  ‘You have to understand that my clients only come to me in secret,’ Jaffari continues. ‘Publically I won’t admit to even knowing my patients, let alone revealing what we’ve worked on together. If I speak to you, my reputation will be ruined.’

  I resist the urge to tell him that two lives have been ruined in the past twenty-four hours, and that I don’t give a damn about his career.

  ‘Dr Jaffari, I assure you this is a privileged conversation. But I am investigating the death of Tim Gilmore and the attempted suicide of your client, and I need to know what you can tell me.’

  The breeze whips up one corner of the white tablecloth and topples a wine glass towards the floor. On impulse, my hand springs forward and catches it. I smooth down the tablecloth and put the glass back on top. I’m two weeks away from retirement, but there’s nothing wrong with my reflexes.

  ‘Last year I had a call from a guy called Aiden Nel,’ Jaffari says. I look up, remembering the man with the sandpaper-handshake who met us backstage at the Carioca Arena. ‘Meyer’s coach. He was worried about one of his athletes. He tells me Meyer is struggling with the pressure, ahead of the Olympics.’

  ‘It’s the biggest moment of an athlete’s life. It’s bound to come with pressure.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jaffari says. ‘But you have to understand that pressure is like a button, or a switch that can be turned on or off. You think you’ve got it under control, and then suddenly it can change. Sometimes you don’t realise you’re losing control of it until the button is pressed and you do something . . . spectacular. It can happen in any walk of life. Not just sport.’

  His tone is patronising
.

  ‘So why did Aiden Nel call you? Had Meyer’s button been pressed?’

  I try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  ‘Coaches come to me with all sorts of issues. Athletes who need to find an edge somewhere. Better focus in training, more aggression in competition – that kind of thing. Sometimes they’re suffering from a problem. Drugs. Addiction. Anger issues. Sexual deviances. Gambling. You name it.’

  ‘What about Meyer?’

  ‘Meyer couldn’t cope with the media schedule, the sponsor meetings and the photo shoots. He’s wasn’t that kind of guy. So Aiden Nel wanted my help.’

  Jaffari looks back out to the horizon.

  ‘The coach told me he was worried about how Meyer was acting. He said Meyer had anger issues and personality problems.’

  For a second time I remember Oscar Ryan, and the glowering way he looked at me in the Maracanã after I had shot Gilmore. Ryan was another athlete with anger issues, but according to Paz, his statement checked out. Oscar Ryan was a dead end.

  ‘The coach arranged for Lucas to take a holiday for a fortnight. I just happened to take a holiday at the same time. In the same hotel. And we met up. Every day.’

  ‘Is that how it works?’ I ask.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  I imagine Meyer and Jaffari sitting at a table like this, in the sunshine near a pool.

  ‘Where?’

  Jaffari looks at me. In the sunlight, his brown eyes look almost amber, calm and calculating.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  I shrug. I guess it probably doesn’t.

  ‘Nairobi,’ Jaffari says after a minute. ‘In Kenya. I met him halfway.’

  In my mind, I calculate the distance between Johannesburg and Nairobi, and begin to wonder where Jaffari himself might have been flying from. I decide not to ask. I have other, more pressing questions and Jaffari looks like he could clam up at any time he liked.

  ‘We met every day and processed some of the things that were bothering him. He just wanted to be the best in his field.’

  ‘I thought he was the best?’

  Jaffari smiles wryly.

  ‘The human animal is not programmed to be satisfied,’ he says. ‘I bet you celebrated becoming a detective, back in the day, but you’ve probably spent the past few years asking yourself why you never made Chief, right?’