Dead Heat: BookShots (Book Shots) Read online

  ‘Felipe is out of hospital.’

  ‘That’s good. No lasting problems?’

  ‘He’s fine. He doesn’t remember any of it.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, too. Where is he?’

  ‘With Grandma. She won’t let him out of her sight.’

  The TV screen in the corner of the bar is showing reruns of the Brazilian volleyball team taking the Copacabana beach by storm. Paz seems more interested in the feijoada than the sport.

  ‘It’s good,’ she says. ‘But how the hell have you made it to retirement, eating this every day?’

  ‘I haven’t made it yet,’ I say. ‘A few days left.’

  Paz laughs and takes a mouthful of the stew, the juice of it coating her lips and the rich flavour adding a sparkle to her eyes. She’s still chewing when her phone rings, so I pick it up for her.

  ‘Hello?’

  I can feel the colour draining from my face as I listen. Paz studies my greying features with a look of concern.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We’re on our way.’

  Two minutes later, the pork feijoada is a distant memory and we’re weaving through the traffic to make it to the Maracanã for the closing ceremony.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Paz says as she drives hard towards the stadium. She’s absently patting her pockets down as she drives, and eventually I find a battered packet of cigarettes in the glove box and hand them to her. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We made a mistake,’ I tell her. ‘It’s not over.’

  ‘How can it not be over? Jaffari is dead.’

  She brings both hands together at the top of the wheel and taps the bottom of the cigarette packet, waiting for me to make sense of it all.

  ‘Remember Galina Orlov? The blonde? She’s been missing all day. They’ve just spotted her at the stadium.’

  Paz looks confused.

  ‘We discounted Galina Orlov already.’

  ‘Yes, because we thought we were looking for a drug-dealer. But we weren’t. We were looking for someone who had been programmed to do Jaffari’s dirty work. She fits the bill perfectly. She had access to all of Jaffari’s clients, and she was the trigger for what happened in the favela.’

  A lone cigarette flicks free from the box and Paz’s practised fingers pull it free and to her lips. She glances across at me.

  ‘How do you figure that, Carvalho?’

  ‘Well, Jaffari manipulated people from the shadows. So what made him suddenly tempt us into the favela to find him? Why did he suddenly decide to put himself in the frame, when we were nowhere near him?’

  Paz glances across at me.

  ‘We must have been closer than we thought,’ she says from the corner of her mouth. The urgency of the situation is dawning on her, and she pushes the tiny Fiat even harder.

  ‘Exactly. Jaffari would have expected us to find the cyclist, so that wasn’t what forced him to act. Besides, he’d already taken Felipe by the time we reached the Vista Chinesa. So maybe he had plans for Galina Orlov.’

  ‘Looks that way now,’ Paz agrees.

  We reach the Maracanã five minutes later. Ever since we found Jaffari, I have been treated as the hero who saved the President, rather than the person who shot Tim Gilmore. The stadium manager greets us as we arrive, with the last of the latecomers struggling to get to the final spectacular.

  ‘We found her,’ he says as we push inside. He’s a beanpole of a man wearing a T-shirt and chinos. He’s clutching a radio and walks swiftly alongside us as we head towards the stadium communications room. ‘We’ve picked her up on CCTV. She’s on the roof.’

  An explosion of sound reverberates through the concrete structure and a rhythmic pulse follows. Outside, the closing ceremony has begun.

  CHAPTER 24

  THERE IS NO time for a long briefing.

  ‘Follow me,’ the skinny stadium manager says, and we head through the rabbit warren of restricted corridors until we arrive at a service staircase.

  ‘What’s she planning?’ Paz asks as we head up the concrete steps. ‘Why the roof?’

  ‘Because it’s what she does. Gilmore used his javelin. Witt and Zou used their competition pistols. Orlov is a diver, so one way or another, my guess is she’s planning to jump.’

  ‘To achieve what?’

  Before I can answer, I realise we’re not alone. The Policia Militar SWAT team is in position at the top of the stairs, waiting for a command to go. They’re headed up by the guy I put on the floor, after I shot Gilmore. He looks contrite, but not exactly pleased to see us.

  ‘Do you know her?’

  I nod.

  ‘Galina Orlov. Russian diver. She’s injured. We spoke to her at one point during our investigation into Jaffari, but there was nothing to pin on her.’

  Orlov has left the door to the roof swinging open and the cool night air is blowing in. The sound of the expectant crowd rises to greet us, and the Russian is out on the far edge of the roof, a subtle silhouette against an ink-black sky. She is perfectly balanced and her palms are outstretched to meet the wind, like Christ the Redeemer on the top of Corcovado Mountain.

  ‘She’s holding a banner between her hands,’ the commander of the SWAT team says, pulling night-vision goggles away from his eyes. ‘It looks like a web address. I can’t read exactly what it says, though.’

  ‘What’s she waiting for?’ Paz asks nervously.

  ‘She’s waiting for the lights to come up.’

  The commander looks at me.

  ‘Then what?’

  I can see the moment unravelling in my mind.

  ‘Then she’ll jump. She’ll jump when almost everybody in the world is watching. We’re directly above the burning Olympic cauldron, and my guess is that Jaffari has convinced her to aim for that.’

  ‘What the hell reason would she have for doing that?’

  ‘The banner,’ Paz tells him. ‘The website. It’s probably Jaffari’s research, ready for global exposure.’

  I sigh. ‘A message from beyond the grave.’

  The commander puts his goggles back to his eyes.

  ‘How long until the lights come up?’ he growls into his radio.

  ‘Forty seconds,’ the crackled reply comes back. ‘A firework spectacular, right behind where you’re situated.’

  ‘I can take her out from here,’ he suggests, ‘while it’s still dark.’

  Paz looks horrified at the suggestion, and I shake my head.

  ‘Even if you get a clean shot, she’s still going to tumble forward and into the flames.’

  The commander raises an eyebrow as if to say, What’s your plan then, old-timer?

  I stand up and my knees click, and I head stiffly towards the door.

  ‘Let me go. If I fail, you might as well shoot us both.’

  I grab an earpiece from the nearest Policia Militar, and before the SWAT commander can argue, I’m past him and out onto the roof. It’s made of a translucent plastic and I’m aware there’s nothing beneath my feet except a hell of a drop and a mass of people. The wind almost blows me off my feet as I step away from the shelter of the stairwell. My mouth instantly dries, but I keep walking, closer and closer to the athlete on the edge. I remember Steve Lewis, and how I talked him back from the brink. Somehow this feels very different. I’m on edge, and I jump as my earpiece crackles into life.

  ‘We’ve checked out the web address,’ a female voice says. ‘You’re right, it’s psychological research of some kind. We’re trying to get it shut down right now.’

  Then the voice disappears, and I’m back on my own on the roof.

  ‘Fifteen seconds, Rafael.’

  It’s Paz.

  I take a breath. I have one shot at this. One sentence. Focus.

  ‘Galina?’

  My voice echoes out into the dark sky, and Orlov turns round. She looks as if she’s in a trance, and I think about what Jaffari has done to her. How he must have chosen her because she was susceptible to his programming. And I wonder if I can u
se that suggestibility to save her life. It’s my only hope. It’s her only hope.

  Paz crackles in my ear: ‘Five seconds.’

  I stand five yards from Orlov, and I make no attempt to move towards her. It would only push her over the edge. Her blonde hair is whipping across her face in the wind, but I can see in her eyes that I’ve engaged her. She’s listening to me. I spread my arms wide to her, mirroring her Christ-pose.

  ‘Change of plan,’ I say calmly and authoritatively. ‘Don’t think about it. Just come to me.’

  Galina Orlov’s split second of indecision feels like a lifetime. Then suddenly she blazes white, as a thousand fireworks set the sky alight. Below us, fierce white stage lighting burns through the opaque plastic roof. We are the centre of the world’s attention. Orlov takes all of this as some kind of sign, and does exactly what I have told her to do. I can feel the SWAT team’s weapons trained on her as she walks slowly into my arms, and I wrap them around her so that she is completely safe. Below, the crowd go wild, imagining that the whole scene on the roof is an orchestrated part of the show.

  I look across at Paz and our eyes lock. In the fierce light, I can see tears begin to spill from her eyes – not for Galina Orlov, but for me. Because Paz knows what I know: this is the end. The end of a lifetime of work, and the last moment in a case that we have won. We saved the ones we could, and that’s enough for me. Paz nods, and braves a smile. I feel Orlov slacken in my arms, as if she has finally understood the danger she was in. I hold her up and begin to guide her back to the stairwell, where the SWAT team is hanging out of the door, beckoning us towards them.

  For the first time, a wave of vertigo crashes over me as the wind picks up again, whipping something away from Orlov’s slack hand. It’s the banner, the thin white strip of paper with Jaffari’s web address written boldly across it. The one that was supposed to be seen by every TV station in the world. Instead, it snakes across the translucent plastic roof and falls like ticker tape, burning up as it reaches the Olympic flame far below.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE CELEBRATIONS CONTINUE around the stadium as I climb back through the access door and into the stairwell, with Galina Orlov clinging to me like a child.

  ‘What was I doing?’

  ‘Just what you’d been told,’ I say, as the SWAT team peels her away from me and guides her down the concrete stairs to safety. Only the commander remains, but before he says anything, Paz bear-hugs me and slaps me hard on the back.

  ‘You’re a brave guy, Carvalho,’ she tells me. ‘Christ knows, I’m going to miss you when you’re gone.’

  I close the rooftop door, sliding a heavy bolt into place behind me. When I’m gone. Despite my aching bones, I know I’m going to miss moments like this. As I turn, Paz’s phone rings, and the SWAT commander takes his chance to grab my hand. His grip is firm and honest.

  ‘Look after Galina Orlov,’ I tell him. ‘She’s been through a lot.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Look after yourself as well.’

  He turns to leave, but only gets a couple of steps before stopping and heading back to me.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I was out of order when we first met. You’re a hell of a brave guy, and I wish I’d shown you a bit more respect.’

  ‘No, you were right. I’m an old-timer. But so will you be, one day. And then you’ll realise that life’s not about the rank on your shoulders, it’s about what’s in here.’

  I push my fist onto his chest, the same place he pushed me when we first met. He doesn’t yield any more than I did.

  ‘Well, good luck, old-timer,’ he says with an open smile.

  I wish him the same, as he heads down to join his unit. Beside me, Paz is cradling her phone under her chin and looking like a scolded child.

  ‘It’s Juliana. She’s just seen you on TV. She wants to know what you’re doing on the roof?’

  ‘Tell her I’m coming down.’

  Whatever Juliana says to Paz, it makes her smile.

  ‘She says she’s not happy.’

  ‘Tell her I promise I won’t do it again.’

  The promise hangs in the air, because we both know it’s true. I am days away from the end. In the quiet stairwell, we can hear the crowd cheering behind the bolted door, and I suddenly feel like the party is a million miles away.

  ‘What’s the world record for getting from the Maracanã to Casas Pedro?’

  Paz smiles a Mona Lisa smile.

  ‘You fancy a cold beer, Detective Carvalho?’

  For a moment, I think of the athletes we saved, and the athletes we lost, and the justice we gave them in the Vila Cruzeiro favela.

  ‘A beer sounds like a good plan, Detective Paz. Let’s go and raise a glass.’

  A man plunges to his death from the roof of a Manhattan hotel. It looks like a suicide – but why does the victim have someone else’s fingerprints?

  Read on for an extract

  AT THE END of the dark, crowded bar, a man in black twirled an e-cigarette through his fingers and over his thumb like a little baton, again and again as he watched and waited.

  It was an aggravating, fidgety habit, he knew. But when he was anxious, it was harder to resist than smoking the damn thing.

  The bar was in a hip industrial-chic hotel on 67th and Broadway called Index House, with a cutting-edge meets Roaring Twenties vibe. Charging stations blended into a décor of exposed brick and tufted chairs. With his downtown black silk suit and dark GQ looks, the man belonged there.

  He deftly flipped the cigarette into his inside jacket pocket as the bartender finally approached with his drink. It was a Zombie, four or five different rums and some cognac with a splash of pineapple and mango juice. One of the rums was 151-proof, and flammable. He’d seen drinks lit on fire many times over the last seven years, in many places, from Jamaica to Jakarta.

  Too damn many, he thought.

  “So are you a Walking Dead fanatic, or do you just like the demon rum?” the doe-eyed bartender asked, over the crowd murmur and slow jazz piano playing from the lobby.

  There were two bartenders, a guy and a girl, but he had ordered from the guy.

  “Entschuldigen Sie?” he said, staring at her like he’d just stepped off a flying saucer. It meant “excuse me” in German. The one and only phrase he’d picked up in three useless months in Munich four years ago.

  That did the trick. She went away with his two twenties, and quick. Lovely as she was, he didn’t need any distractions. Not now. He began rubbing his thighs nervously as he scanned the hotel lobby. He looked out at the dark of Broadway through the plate glass behind him, a clear moonless October evening in New York, bright lights twinkling.

  At this critical juncture, he needed to stay on his damn toes.

  Where the hell is this guy? he thought, taking out his phone to check his messages. It was 9:25. Almost a half hour late and still no call. Did this joker’s phone die? He just wasn’t coming? No way to know. Great. He’d just sit here on his ass some more.

  He placed his phone on the zinc bar top and reached for the drink. Then he stopped himself and instead took out the e-cigarette again. Back and forth, and back and forth, over and through his fingers faster and faster, he twirled the metal cigarette until it was just a black blur across his knuckles.

  IN THE CROWDED library off the hotel bar, Devine sat listening to the boss man on the phone.

  “What’s Pretty Boy doing now?”

  “Nothing,” Devine said. “Just sitting at the bar, playing with a pen or something. Got himself a tropical drink. He’s looking a little melancholy. And nervous.”

  “That right?” the boss said.

  Devine, who was from Tennessee, loved the boss’s hard-ass southern voice, the power in it. It reminded him of a backwoods Baptist minister, perpetually on the verge of going all fire-and-brimstone on his congregation.

  “Well, he’s going to be singing the blues all right. You just make sure you don’t join him for a few. He slips away again, it’
s your ass.”

  Devine winced. He didn’t take criticism well. Especially from one of the few people he respected.

  “So, plan is still in place?” Devine said. “Hit him when he goes back to his room?”

  “Yes, Devine. You remembered from five minutes ago. Bravo,” said the boss. “But if a chance comes up right there in the bar, if you can be discreet, you take it. That’s why I sent you in instead of Toporski. You know how to improvise.”

  Devine shook his head as the boss hung up. He’d never heard the man so tense, so—dare he say it—nervous. Pretty Boy had him rattled. Had them all rattled.

  That’s why they were up in New York now, all of them. There was a team a short block west in front of a gym on 67th and Amsterdam, and another outside the hotel.

  They had Pretty Boy boxed in once and for all.

  “El Jefe still got his boxers in a wad, eh?” said Therkelson.

  “Yep,” Devine said as he glanced over at the blond, middle linebacker–sized Therkelson. His big iron Swede thumbs were flying on his Galaxy, playing some game. “You know, Therk, you got a real funny way of conducting surveillance with your face in that phone.”

  “Ah,” Therkelson said, not even glancing up. “You got it covered. I’m the muscle here in our little partnership, Timmy. Be wrong not to let you do anything. I want to make sure a little guy like you feels like you’re contributing.”

  DEVINE MUNCHED A handful of complimentary jalapeño peanuts as he kept his eyes trained on the target.

  He didn’t know how they’d tracked Pretty Boy down. A few of the guys were saying the boss man had an old friend in the NSA, which seemed valid. With access to phone and credit card tracking, you could pinpoint any old Tom, Dick, or Harry in the civilized part of the planet in half an hour.

  And what Pretty Boy was doing, they didn’t know that, either. All they knew was that it wasn’t part of the playbook. He’d bugged out for a little R&R for the long weekend like the rest of them, but then come Tuesday, he didn’t show up. No word.