He gets his answer when Proust makes a sudden dash in an attempt to get past him. It’s a pathetic maneuver. Steve grabs hold of him, spins him around, and throws him back in the direction he came from. Proust crashes into the wall, causing a mirror to fall and smash at his feet. He doubles over in apparent agony, his arms folded across his torso.
‘Please, man. I’m sick. You’re hurting me.’
Steve feels no pity. He has gone beyond the point of no return. He wants answers. He will get answers. And he will use whatever it takes.
He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. Takes out the hammer he brought with him. He told himself back in the house that it was for insurance purposes only. He wouldn’t need it. Wouldn’t use it unless absolutely necessary.
Well, now it’s necessary.
He advances on Proust, hefting the hammer in his hand. His eyes rove across Proust’s bent figure, trying to decide where to strike first. He ignores the look of abject terror on Proust’s face. He doesn’t deserve mercy. He’s asked for this. He has brought this on himself.
‘One last chance,’ says Steve. ‘My daughter. Megan. How did you meet her?’
‘I . . . I didn’t meet her.’
Thwack!
Into Proust’s shoulder. Proust lets out a high-pitched scream. He scuttles away from the wall, still bent over. Steve follows him, the hammer raised.
‘You put the tattoo on her, didn’t you? It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘No.’
Thwack!
The ribcage this time. Another shriek.
‘Please! Stop it!’
Steve closes his ears to the pleading. He realizes now that he will kill Proust. He doesn’t care about the consequences. He will beat Proust to a pulp, because he knows what Proust did. But he wants him to admit it first. As soon as the words of confession leave Proust’s lips, Steve will hammer the life out of him.
‘You killed her.’ Thwack! ‘You raped and tortured and killed my Megan.’ Thwack! ‘And then you cut her up. You carved her into pieces, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?’ Thwack!
Proust collapses onto the counter. Steve stands behind him. His chest heaves, and he can hear only his own breathing and the pounding in his ears. He can feel sweat trickling down the fingers of the hand that is clutching the hammer.
‘Look at me,’ he says. ‘Look at me, you sonofabitch.’
Slowly, Proust lifts his face from the counter and turns it toward Steve.
‘Now tell me that you didn’t kill Megan. Make me believe it.’
But the expression that Proust shows him is not what he expected or hoped for. There is no admission of guilt written there. No regret. Not even fear. It takes Steve a few seconds to realize what it is. And then he gets it.
Contempt.
Proust is practically laughing at him.
Steve’s grip on the hammer tightens. He decides he wants to mangle that face of Proust’s. He wants to crush all the bones it contains, to splash that nose across his cheek, to knock every single tooth out of his head.
And so he advances.
He moves toward the pitiful figure slouched over the counter, staring back at him, daring him to put an end to this without hearing what Proust knows of his daughter.
Because that’s what it has come to. Steve will learn no more from this man, but he knows beyond all doubt what part he played.
It is time to bring it to an end.
The roar surprises him. A last-ditch deep-throated bellow that stops him in his tracks. He watches, stunned into immobility, as the half-dead creature leaps at him and starts throwing punches. Weak, ineffectual punches that simply rebound off Steve’s chest. One, two, three.
And when Proust steps back, Steve wants to laugh at the puniness and the futility of the assault. What the fuck did he think he was doing? What was he hoping to achieve?
He raises the hammer, takes another step forward.
And then the pain.
Why am I feeling pain?
He looks down at his chest. There is blood. Lots of blood. It’s soaking his shirt. There shouldn’t be all that blood.
He looks again at Proust. Narrows his eyes at him. And then he sees it. In Proust’s hand. The knife he used to cut his toast. It had been there on the plate. On the counter.
He understands.
He moves forward again, knowing that it’s a mistake even as he does it. Proust lets out another cry and drives the knife in once more, between Steve’s ribs, deep into his chest. When Proust’s hand comes away this time, it is no longer holding the knife.
Steve stares at the length of metal protruding from his chest. He feels suddenly giddy and unable to function. His mind has stopped working. He’s not sure what to do. What do you do when there’s a knife in your heart? What do you do when you’re about to die?
He is dimly aware of something thudding to the floor. The hammer he has just dropped. He raises his hand and touches the hilt of the knife. It shines brightly. Stainless steel. It’s pretty well stuck in there, all right.
He turns and starts to head for the door. He’s not sure why, or where he’s going. He just knows it’s time to leave now. This little meeting is over. Time to go.
It hurts, though. To walk, I mean. Just to take a step really hurts. Here, in my chest. It really . . .
He collapses then. Drops onto the tiled floor as though his legs have just disappeared from beneath him.
He lies there, staring up at the bright ceiling light. It’s ever so bright. So bright it hurts.
He’s grateful when a cloud obscures the sun. No, not the sun. Not a cloud either. A face. Proust’s face. Staring down at him.
Steve thinks everything is going to be all right now.
Because the face is smiling at him.
TWENTY-THREE
Doyle is in the washroom, drying his hands on a paper towel, when LeBlanc walks in. LeBlanc takes one look at Doyle, then turns to walk out again.
‘What?’ says Doyle. ‘Your bladder suddenly empty again? You don’t need to go no more?’
‘I don’t need to have an argument with you, is what I don’t need. My bladder can wait till you’re done.’
Doyle is not letting him off that easy. He tosses the paper towel into the trashcan and follows LeBlanc out into the hallway. ‘So, is this how it’s gonna be from now on? Every time I come into a room, you walk out? That’s real mature.’
LeBlanc stops and turns. ‘I’m not a kid, Cal, even though you treat me like one. I can be adult about this. But right now I can’t be in the same room as you. I can’t be anywhere in your vicinity.’
‘Okay, fine. Be mad at me. Yell at me. Take a pop at me if you want. Whatever you do, at least have the balls to do it in person. Don’t go crawling to others to do your dirty work for you.’
‘I didn’t go crawling to anyone. I’m not afraid of you, Cal. I just don’t wanna work with you.’
‘Then how come you felt the need to bring in the rat squad? You prefer to work with them over me? Is that it?’
‘What?’
‘IAB. Somebody got their little whiskers twitching, and they paid me a little visit yesterday.’
LeBlanc is silent for a while, and there’s a look of surprise and dismay on his face. ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t call IAB.’
‘Oh, really? Well, somebody did. And you know what they were interested in? Me and Proust, that’s what. Putting that together with the people who are mighty upset with me right now doesn’t leave a whole lot of suspects, Tommy.’
LeBlanc rubs his forehead. ‘Shit. Look, it wasn’t me, okay? I didn’t talk to IAB.’
‘So who did you talk to?’
‘I . . . I might’ve talked to one or two of the guys here.’
Doyle throws up his hands. ‘Great. So now you’re bringing the rest of the squad into this. Wonderful. You’ve been here long enough to learn the background, Tommy. You know there are people here just itching for a chance to burn me. Some of ’em have probably got IAB on spe
ed-dial for moments like this.’
LeBlanc flares up again. ‘Yeah, well, maybe if you didn’t go around handing out ammunition like you do, you wouldn’t be such a walking target. Maybe it’s about time you learned a lesson the hard way. You know what, maybe IAB should take another look at you.’
He turns and storms off again. Doyle chases him along the hallway.
‘What? Where is this coming from? I thought we straightened all this out yesterday. What the fuck is eating you?’
But LeBlanc just keeps on walking. At the entrance to the squadroom, Doyle grabs LeBlanc’s arm. LeBlanc whirls on him.
‘Stay away from me, Cal. I’m sick of the way you operate. I’m sick of your lies.’
‘What lies? What are you talking about?’
‘I know, Cal. I know about you and Proust. About why you hate him so much. I know what happened with you and your partner.’
‘My partner? Which partner?’
‘Do I have to spell it out? You really want to air this in front of everybody else here?’
Doyle is suddenly aware that every eye and every ear in the squadroom is tuned in to this argument. He’s not sure that he wants LeBlanc to answer his own question, but he can do nothing to stop him now.
‘Laura Marino,’ says LeBlanc. ‘There. I said it. You happy now?’
Somebody in the room draws a loud breath. A recognition of the force that their ex-colleague’s name is still capable of exerting.
‘Laura Marino? What about her?’
But LeBlanc is already walking away again. Heading back to his desk.
‘Hey!’ says Doyle. ‘Hey! What about Laura Marino? You don’t just toss her name in like that and run off. What the fuck—’
‘ENOUGH!’
The single word explodes into the room, and after it there is only deathly silence, as though a teacher has just announced his arrival in a classroom of unruly pupils. All heads turn to locate the source – the dark, solemn figure of Lieutenant Cesario.
He says, ‘I don’t know what this squabbling is about, and frankly I’m not interested. I’ve got more important things on my mind, and so should you. Like the Megan Hamlyn case, for example. Because maybe if you were on top of things like you’re supposed to be, you would know what’s going on out there. You would know that while you’re fighting your pathetic little battle here, there’s a much bigger war taking place between some of the other people tied up in this case.’
He pauses to let his words sink in, then continues. ‘Stanley Proust, the tattoo guy, has just been attacked at his place of work. The man who assaulted him is Steve Hamlyn, the murdered girl’s father, but Hamlyn came off worst. He’s in hospital, situation critical. I have no idea how these two managed to hook up – I think I’ve got some serious butt-kicking to do on that score – but right now I want this mess cleared up. So get out there and do your jobs.’
Doyle stares at his boss while he tries to absorb what he’s just been told. Proust attacked by Hamlyn? How the hell did that happen? And how did a puny streak of piss like Proust manage to whup Hamlyn’s ass?
Behind him he hears LeBlanc getting up from his chair and moving toward the door. Doyle turns to follow him, and it’s as if Cesario has been waiting for him to do so.
‘LeBlanc, take Schneider with you to see Proust. Doyle, get yourself to the ER at Bellevue.’
Doyle looks round at the lieutenant. ‘Lou . . .’ he begins, but what he sees on Cesario’s face warns him not to continue with his objection. There is something in Cesario’s features that tells Doyle his boss has heard things. About him and about Proust. Which isn’t that surprising. Tell one guy something in this squad and you tell everyone, the boss included.
Biting his lip, Doyle collects his jacket and heads for the door.
Nicole is there already. Alone in a small waiting room off one of the corridors. They use this room for close family of trauma patients. Sometimes they use it to relate the worst news possible. It’s a little quieter here, away from the scary chaos of the main waiting area. But it’s not quite an oasis of calm. Even as Doyle heads for the open doorway, a man is wheeled past him on a gurney, screaming that his feet have disappeared, and then laughing maniacally.
In the room, Nicole is staring at the floor. A wad of tissues is balled tightly in her clasped hands. When Doyle approaches, she looks up. Her eyeballs are bloodshot, the lids pink and raw.
‘Detective,’ she says.
He takes a seat next to her. ‘How is he?’
She looks into Doyle’s eyes. ‘I don’t know. Alive, but . . . I don’t know. I don’t think it’s good. He was stabbed several times in the chest. He’s lost a lot of blood.’
‘Do you know how it happened?’
A slight shake of the head. ‘He went out early this morning. He didn’t even tell me he was going, or where. But later the police called me and told me he’d been in a fight. They asked me what he might be doing in a tattoo parlor on Avenue B. They asked me what I knew about a man called Stanley Proust.’
She starts crying again. She dabs at her face with the damp tissues. Doyle waits.
She says, ‘I can’t go through this again, Detective. Not again.’
‘I’m sure the doctors are doing all they can,’ he answers. He knows it’s just one of those pat phrases, that it means nothing, but he feels he has to offer some kind of response.
Nicole raises her watery eyes, and they are filled with questions. ‘This man Proust. Is he the one? Is he the one who put the tattoo on Megan? Could he be the one who . . . who killed her?’
Yes, Doyle wants to say. He tattooed her. He invaded her. He tortured her. He murdered her. He cut her up into little pieces. Yes to all the above.
‘We got no reason to think it was Proust,’ Doyle says, and he almost chokes as the words leave him. ‘Maybe . . . maybe Steve just decided to do a little investigating of his own and he got a little too . . . well . . .’
She’s nodding at this. ‘I had a feeling he would do something stupid. I tried to tell him he shouldn’t get involved, he should leave it to the cops. But I knew he had to do something. It was eating him up inside. He couldn’t just hang around, knowing Megan’s killer was out there somewhere. He needed to feel he was doing something useful.’
‘I understand,’ says Doyle. And he does. He understands completely. He’s not sure he would have acted any differently.
‘He’s not a bad man, Detective. I know he didn’t give you a very warm reception that last time at our house. And things between me and him . . . well, they haven’t been so good either. But it’s only because his head is all messed up. You should have met him before all this happened. Before Megan disappeared. You would have liked him. He’s a guy you might have wanted to have a drink with, you know? Just a regular guy, with a good sense of humor. He hasn’t laughed for a while now. Maybe he never will again.’
She starts sobbing again, and buries her face in her wad of tissues. Doyle sighs and closes his eyes. There was a time, long ago, when he might have prayed in a situation like this. Now he just lets the pain and hopelessness wash over him. What will be will be, and there’s nothing he can do to make it otherwise.
‘Would you wait?’ she asks.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I mean, would you mind waiting here with me? Just for a while. I don’t want to be alone right now.’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I’ll stay as long as you want.’
He means it too. A part of him is desperate to get back out there and put every ounce of his energy into nailing Proust for the devastation he has wrought on this family. And that will come. He will do that for the Hamlyns and because it’s right. But right now it’s not what Mrs Hamlyn wants. What she wants is for someone to be here for her. Doyle can spare some time for that.
And so he settles back in his chair, clasps his hands in his lap, and watches the human traffic go by.
Proust can wait a while.
But his time is coming.
TWENTY
-FOUR
Doyle gets to the second floor of the precinct station house just as two uniforms come out of one of the interview rooms. Shuffling between them is Stanley Proust.
‘Look who it is,’ says Doyle. ‘I thought I could smell something bad up here. What, Stanley, the daughter wasn’t enough for you? You had to get the father too? You working your way through the whole fucking family?’
Proust tries to hide behind the unis. ‘You’re crazy. I didn’t do nothing. He attacked me. I was just defending myself.’
‘Uh-huh? Well, how about you showing me some of those wonderful self-defense skills you got there? How about it, Stan? How about I make a move, and you show me what you got?’
‘Cal,’ says one of the uniforms.
‘What do you say, Stan? One on one. Just you and me, putting on a little show for the guys here.’
‘Cal!’
Doyle looks at the officer. Sees the man’s eyeballs flick to the right, signaling something of interest along the hallway. Doyle turns his head in that direction. What he sees there is the figure of Lieutenant Cesario, his arms crossed, his expression as rigid as his stance.
‘My office,’ says Cesario, and then he vanishes.
Doyle gets the impression that Cesario wasn’t merely announcing his destination in case Doyle should happen to be interested, nor that any follow-up action on Doyle’s part should be taken at his leisure. But he makes the time to turn a final withering stare on Proust.
‘Later, Stan. You better get practicing on those prison tats. You know, swastikas and shit. Those Aryan cons like that kind of thing.’
He winks at Proust, and then goes to see what’s biting Cesario.
The first thing Cesario says when Doyle enters is ‘Close the door.’ Which in Doyle’s experience is not the best start to any conversation with your boss.
He moves toward Cesario’s desk, noticing how uncluttered and impersonal it is. No photos, no memorabilia, no personal shit of any kind. The man’s an enigma. The only items in this whole office that are in any way reflective of personal taste are the two huge cactus plants standing guard behind him, and even they were put there by the man’s predecessor.
Marked (Callum Doyle 3) Page 21