Broken Dolls (A Jefferson Winter Thriller) (37 page)

Templeton was unconscious. The only reason she was upright was because Adam was holding her up. Blood seeped from the wound in her stomach, but it looked worse than it was, superficial rather than anything life-threatening. I stepped to the left and Adam matched my move, twisting around so Templeton’s body was between us.

‘Drop the knife, Adam.’

‘You drop the gun.’

I held the gun steady, left hand supporting the right. Beyond the gun sight, all I could see was Templeton. Wherever I moved, there she was. I told myself I was back on the shooting range at Quantico, that this was a cardboard target rather than flesh and blood. Told myself to chill. Willed my heart rate back to a more manageable level.

‘Not going to happen.’

‘Drop the gun or I’ll kill her.’

‘If I drop the gun you’re going to kill her anyway, and then you’re going to try to kill me.’

‘Drop the gun.’

‘Why did you do it, Adam?’ I needed to buy some time to think. I’d already played through all the scenarios in my head, every single last one of them. It didn’t matter what move I made, Templeton always ended up dead.

‘Why did I do what?’

‘Why did you lobotomise those women? Killing them would have been so much easier.’

‘Mother told me not to kill them.’

‘But it was you who came up with the idea to lobotomise them, wasn’t it?’ My brain was working overtime. There had to be an answer, a way to unravel this mess that left Templeton alive. There was always a solution. Always.

‘That was my favourite part.’ There was a smile in Adam’s voice. ‘For a moment the lights were on, the next second, nothing. It was bizarre. They looked like people but they weren’t, they were empty. They were like ghosts.’

‘That wasn’t the real reason it was your favourite part, though, was it?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘There was another reason, wasn’t there?’

‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me what that was.’

‘You didn’t have to hurt them any more,’ I said. ‘You didn’t really want to hurt them, did you, Adam? You only did it because your mother told you to. Because she made you angry and you needed someone to take that anger out on.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

I could hear from his voice that I’d got that one right. I could also hear that we were done talking. For a moment the world stopped turning and time ground to a halt. Everything went still. Adam’s fingers tightened on the knife handle. Any second now he was going to drag the blade across Templeton’s throat, opening her carotid artery and killing her within seconds. Once that was done he’d drop her body and wait for me to shoot him. I’d seen this before and that was how most of them chose to go.

The solution came to me in a single bright flash of inspiration. I was thinking so far outside the box, the box had ceased to exist. I went through the moves in my head, over and over, making sure there were no errors. Just like shooting pool, I told myself.

My finger tightened on the trigger and I thought about Sarah Flight staring blankly out of a window for the next fifty years. I thought about everything she could have been and everything she would never be, all that lost potential. I thought about her mother going to visit her every day. I thought about her mother getting older and I thought about the day when her mother wouldn’t visit any more. I thought about how close Templeton had come to the same fate.

Just like shooting pool, I told myself.

Cardboard rather than flesh and blood.

Alive is always better than dead.

My first bullet hit Templeton in the shoulder. By the time it reached her it was travelling somewhere in the region of 1‚000 feet per second. I’d aimed for bone and hit bone, which meant that Templeton absorbed most of the energy from the bullet, a vicious punch that made her jerk back violently and sent her tumbling to the floor. The rest of the energy had to go somewhere. That somewhere was Adam. The punch that hit him wasn’t as hard as the one that hit Templeton, but it was still enough to send him spinning and loosen his grip on the knife. Metal clattered on ceramic, the sound dulled by the boom of the Colt.

I dropped to my knees and counted off one and a half seconds. During that one and a half seconds Adam rotated through a full 180 degrees, just like I’d calculated. More importantly, he spun away from Templeton. It was like two billiard balls colliding, Newtonian physics in action.

My second bullet smashed upwards through the thin bone at the back of Adam’s skull. Because of the angle of entry, the bullet hit the prefrontal bone, the thickest part of the skull. Rather than exit the skull, the bullet bounced around inside Adam’s brain, tearing apart his prefrontal cortex, the same part of the brain that had been destroyed when he performed his lobotomies. Adam dropped like a rock and was dead before he hit the floor.

71

I shut my suitcase and carried it to the door. My plane wasn’t scheduled to leave Heathrow for another four hours, then there would be the inevitable delays due to the snow. The runways were clear but there was still a backlog of flights to work through, so there was plenty of time to get to the airport and get checked in and go through all the security protocols that had been implemented after 9/11.

Two days had passed since I killed Adam. Two days of questions and speculation. The ducks were now neatly lined up, asses were suitably covered, and I had my escape to a sunnier place all planned. This storm would blow on for a while before it blew itself out. But that was Hatcher’s problem, not mine. The bad guy had been taken down. Dead or in prison, it didn’t make much difference to me. I’d still sleep as well as I ever did.

I headed to the balcony for a last smoke, my mind already on the next case. That was the way I’d always done things. Once the bad guys had been stopped they ceased to be interesting. The interesting ones were the ones who were still out there, and there would never be a shortage of those.

Someone knocked on the door. This wasn’t the firm knock used by room service the world over, it was more tentative, someone seeking an invitation to enter rather than someone demanding entry because it was their job. I opened the door and Templeton stood there smiling that great smile, her arm strapped across her chest to keep it still. The surgery had gone well, but she’d be setting off airport metal detectors for the rest of her life. She looked over my shoulder at the suitcase.

‘Going somewhere?’

I stood aside to let her in. ‘Shouldn’t you be in hospital?’

She walked over to the sofa and sat down heavily, her discomfort obvious from the stiff way she moved.

‘How bad is the pain?’ I asked.

She made a
so-so
gesture with her good hand. ‘Right now the drugs are doing their thing so it’s just about manageable. Another hour and a half or so and I’ll be coming down the other side, and then it won’t be so manageable.’

‘You weren’t supposed to be discharged until tomorrow.’

‘I snuck out when the nurses’ backs were turned.’ She paused and her face turned serious. She glanced away and when she looked back the seriousness was gone, replaced by an expression that contained a touch of uncertainty. It was an expression that didn’t sit comfortably on Templeton. ‘I didn’t want your last memory of me to be in a hospital. That wouldn’t be right.’ She paused again and cracked a lopsided grin. ‘I wanted to say goodbye properly.’

‘And,’ I prompted.

‘And I thought that maybe we should talk about what happened. You know, clear the air.’

I kept quiet. Always the best policy when a woman says she wants to talk.

‘In his final report, Hatcher said Adam Grosvenor committed suicide by cop.’

Templeton was watching me carefully, her expression serious again. This time I kept quiet because we’d just stepped into a minefield. Hatcher had run his report by me before he submitted it. That report had become the final word on the subject. Everyone was happy. Hatcher’s superiors were happy because the bad guys had been stopped and that made them look good, and the media was happy because they had a great story, and the relatives of the victims were as happy as they could be because they’d got something they could rationalise as justice.

The sole voice of dissent belonged to Catherine Grosvenor, who was telling anyone who listened that her son had been murdered, but nobody was listening too hard. In the end it was her word against Hatcher’s.

And that was the problem, because things hadn’t quite gone down the way Hatcher described them in his report. Most of what he wrote was an accurate and true account of events, but there were a couple of things that weren’t. First off, he said we found the Colts in the house. And secondly, he said I warned Adam Grosvenor before I pulled the trigger. Blatant lies whose only purpose was to cover my ass.

Not that I was going to lose any sleep. Whatever happened, however things had gone down, it was a good shooting. Adam Grosvenor deserved to die and Templeton deserved to live. It was that simple. From the way Templeton was staring she obviously had her suspicions, but because she’d been unconscious at the time, that’s all they were, suspicions. She nodded once to herself, an indication that she’d come to some sort of decision. Her eyes softened and the seriousness slid away and she was back to being someone I recognised.

‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ Templeton said, and the tension between us eased.

‘And I’m glad you’re alive.’

‘Thanks to you. Did you really have to shoot me, though?’

I grimaced. ‘Believe me, I wish there’d been another way.’

Templeton laughed. ‘Lighten up for Christ’s sake. I’m making fun of you. At the end of the day you did what you had to do.’

‘So you say.’

‘I do say. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here now. Thanks for saving my life.’

‘Any time,’ I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t. It was one of those things that sounded way cooler in my head. Out loud, it made me sound like a dork. We fell into a short silence. Templeton had said what she’d come here to say and now the heavy stuff was out the way neither of us was sure where to go next.

‘Can I talk you into staying a couple of extra days?’ Templeton said, breaking the silence. ‘At least until after Christmas. You can crash at my place. Nobody should be alone at Christmas.’

‘I won’t be alone.’

‘The staff at the next hotel you end up in doesn’t count.’

That was worth a smile. ‘I’m not a big fan of Christmas. It’s all about family and I’d rather forget about mine. I prefer to keep busy.’

‘I won’t push it, Winter, but if you change your mind you know where I am.’

‘Thanks.’

We went downstairs and I asked the concierge to order a couple of cabs. He made the call then told me to wait a second and disappeared into the back office. The aluminium Samsonite case he brought back with him was the same design as the one the Colt 45s had come in. The only difference was that it was larger and heavier. I handed the case to Templeton.

‘You can have this,’ I said. ‘Think of it as a goodbye gift.’

‘What is it?’

‘Open it and find out.’

Templeton walked over to a table and put the case down. She popped the catches with her good hand and lifted the lid. Her eyes widened and she took a sharp intake of breath, swore to herself, then banged the lid down. She was tempted. Maybe just for a second, but she was definitely tempted.

‘A million pounds?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know if it’s a million, but it’s a ton of cash. Used banknotes if I’m not mistaken.’

‘It’s a million. It’s the reward for getting Rachel Morris back. Use it to pay off your mortgage, buy a new car. Take a holiday.’

‘I can’t keep this. It’s from Donald Cole. I need to hand it in.’

‘Hand it in and it’ll end up disappearing into the system,’ I said. ‘You know how these things work. The best thing you can do is split it four ways and arrange for anonymous donations to be made to the families of the Grosvenors’ victims. They’re going to need the money. You can do that, can’t you?’

‘Yeah, I can do that.’

The concierge called over to tell us the cabs had arrived. We headed out through the revolving doors and hugged at the kerb. For a second I thought that hug might morph into something more. I hoped it would, but was enough of a realist to know that it probably wouldn’t. Cheerleaders and straight-A students. It was never going to happen.

And that was before I shot her.

The moment passed and Templeton got into her cab. She gave me one last smile through the window then the car pulled away. The brake lights flared red, the cab slowed then swung right, and she was gone.

I heaved my suitcase into the trunk of my cab, then climbed into the back and told the driver to take me to Heathrow. I had a plane to catch.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My agent, Camilla Wray, has been truly inspirational. Her enthusiasm, professionalism and sharp eye for detail has been invaluable in bringing Jefferson Winter to life. I really do count myself fortunate to have the best agent in the business.

I’d also like to thank Katherine Armstrong at Faber for her superb editing skills. Her sense of humour and love of books is infectious‚ and this makes her a joy to work with.

My good friend Nick Tubby has been fantastic. In addition to critiquing early drafts of my work‚ he has tirelessly answered questions on all things related to guns‚ technology and websites.

In addition I’d like to thank Clare Wallace and Mary Darby at the Darley Anderson Agency, Detective Sergeant Gabriel Chrystal of the Metropolitan Police‚ Kate O’Hearn‚ KC O’Hearn‚ Rosie Goodwin‚ Ruth Jackson‚ and‚ of course‚ the irrepressible Wayne Brookes.

Last‚ but not least‚ my love and thanks go out to Karen‚ Niamh and Finn. You guys make this all worthwhile.

About James Carol

James Carol is the creator of eccentric genius Jefferson Winter, a former FBI profiler who travels the world hunting serial criminals.

When he’s not writing, James spends his time training horses and riders. An accomplished guitarist, he relaxes by writing and recording music. James lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and two children.