Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(76)

‘Harry.’ Kash’s eyes were desperate. I thought of him in the hospital in White Cliffs. His broken look. He put a hand out. ‘Don’t. Don’t do anything.’

‘I’m going to give you this mobile phone,’ Bella said. She reached around and put it into my hand. My fingers were numb. I didn’t know if I was gripping it too tightly, or not tightly enough. I imagined myself squeezing the phone wrongly, setting off the bomb at my throat before I had time to think. Bella smoothed my arm with her warm hand, stroking my bicep softly. ‘There’s only one button you need to press. The big one. Twice. I’ve programmed the number of your device into it. It’s the only number it has. Push twice, and you die.’

Bella looked at the people cowering below us, their stricken faces. This was what she’d wanted. Complete power. Complete control. This was her vengeance. They were listening to her now. And it was too late. Gloriously, hideously too late.

‘If you don’t push the button, I’ll push mine.’ She lifted another mobile phone and made it do a little dance in the air. ‘And someone else, maybe many people, will die.’

‘Harry, listen to me,’ Kash was saying. ‘You don’t have to do anything right now. We need more time. Bella, you need to give us more time. We need to talk about this.’

‘ The time for talking is over,’ she said again. Bella stood and stepped back out of the blast zone. I looked at the phone in her hand. Her thumb was poised over the rubber button just below the screen, the biggest button on the phone. Her eyes searched mine. Exhilarated. ‘What are you going to do?’

I looked at her and pushed the button.





Chapter 122


WHITT STOOD IN the doorway of the boatshed, looking at the man on the pier. For a moment he tried to convince himself that the figure sitting there was a pile of ropes, a large barrel with some buoys lying beside it. Anything other than the shape of a man. It was impossible. But as he blinked his vision adjusted to the dark, and he looked at the bright outline of the shaved head, the gentle slope of the broad shoulders beneath the damp T-shirt. He was sitting with his legs crossed under him, his hands on his lap, looking at the water.

Whitt slid his mobile phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. No reception.

‘It’s the power station,’ the man said without turning.

Whitt jolted at the sound of his voice. Around him, ropes hanging from beams shifted gently as the wind raced up the river. He took out his gun and actioned it. The man on the pier breathed in once, then out, coughed a little. He was wounded. Whitt could see that now. He was slightly crooked, favouring his right side.

‘ The power station,’ the man went on, waving a hand, ‘up on the hill. It interferes with phone reception down here on the water sometimes.’

‘You’re Regan Banks,’ Whitt said. ‘Sam’s … Sam’s partner.’

Regan turned and stood. He was much bigger than Whitt. The detective couldn’t know if he was imagining or genuinely remembering it, but he saw a flash of this man in his mind coming up behind him in the car park of his apartment building. The smeared reflection of him in the stainless-steel doors of the elevator. His face was long, pointed. Expressionless. This was the man who had taken those girls. Whitt could smell it on him. The taint of dead dreams. He had none of Samuel Jacob Blue’s vitality, his nervous innocence. This was a being who snuffed out of lives.

‘We’re not partners,’ Regan said.





Chapter 123


IF I HAD to make the decision, I wanted it to be quick. Not two-pushes quick, but one-push quick, something I could do before I thought too much about the pain that was coming. Everything I would lose. The phone beeped. In my hand, I knew, the phone number for the bomb at my throat was listed on the screen, called up from the ‘Last dialled’ list. All I had to do was confirm the call. Send the electrical impulse through the machine, up to a tower, back to the receiver in the bottle at my throat. The people around me were watching, their jaws set, hands covering trembling mouths. My victims, if I wanted it so, if I deemed their lives less important than mine.

The strange thing was, I could see it. I could see me making the decision to save myself. No one is a hero in situations like this. The brain is trained to preserve the body, and as I sat there it was flooded with all the rage I needed to resist the temptation to take my own life in place of theirs. These were people who ignored the helpless in their midst, the man on the edge of their town who lived as though in exile. These were people who refused to believe that a predator walked among them, who ignored or misunderstood a desperate girl when she tried to confide in them. Nothing stays secret in places like these. In small towns, secrets are shared about, held close to hearts. This was a family. They protected their own, no matter how bad the blood.

Bella wanted to make a mark. To be remembered, the way Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were remembered after the Columbine shooting, monsters on a rampage, cutting through young lives like butter. The way Seung-Hui Cho was remembered by every student who walked onto the Virginia Tech campus. If only one person ever remembered what Elliot Rodger did and altered their behaviour because of it, he’d have been happy with that. Bella had said that the time for talking was over. I would be her manifesto.

‘I can’t do it,’ I said. Kash was at the edge of the stage now, mere metres from me. If he came any closer, he’d be in my blast zone. ‘I have to push the button, Elliott. I have to.’