Dead Heat: BookShots (Book Shots) Read online

  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?’

  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.