Second Shot полностью

Young checked her notebook again. “I don’t recall there being any damage to the property apart from a couple of fresh bullet holes in the basement,” she said carefully. “And Mr. and Mrs. Lucas didn’t mention anything about a break-in.”

“Simone didn’t want anything getting into the papers. She’d had a rough time with the tabloids before she left home.”

“Wait a minute,” Bartholemew said, sitting more upright in his chair. ‘Are you telling us you failed to report a serious crime because Miss Kerse didn’t want it getting into the newspapers?”

His voice had started to harden and Sean sliced across him instantly. “Simone had just come into money,” he said. “Charlie felt the break-in was possibly a kidnap attempt on the child. Any kind of publicity would have only increased the danger to Ella.”

“Money?” Bartholemew said. “What kind of money?”

“Several million,” Sean said shortly, severely playing it down and still provoking a jerked reaction from the cop. “According to her banker, Simone made a will just before she left England. If anything happened to her, then everything went to Ella,” he went on. His eyes flicked to me. “I spoke to Harrington yesterday about it. There are plenty of strings attached, but if they become her legal guardians, the money will probably end up under the control of Ella’s grandparents.”

I knew Lucas was aware of Simone’s money-had been practically from the start. But if his motive in contacting her had been financial gain, why did he come to the hotel that day and almost beg me to take her back to England? Why did he refuse Simone’s offer? Unless he knew things were about to turn nasty. …

I remembered Vaughan’s words in the restaurant, just before I left. He’d asked if Simone had found out the truth about Greg Lucas. What truth? What had he done?

“We caught one of the guys who broke in, but he got away from Lucas,” I said, trying to drag myself back on track. “Maybe if Simone found out- I’ve no idea how- that Lucas was in any way responsible, she would have flipped. What happened to Jakes, by the way?” I asked. My mind was starting to disconnect now, and coherent speech was becoming noticeably more difficult. I had to fight to stay with Bartholemew’s answer.

“His neck was broken.”

“Lucas is supposed to be ex-SAS,” I managed. My eyes had drifted shut without my realizing it and I forced them open. The effort made my vision quiver. “One of the first things they teach you is how to break someone’s neck. Practically the first lesson, huh, Sean?”

The two cops exchanged a look I didn’t catch the meaning of. “The pathologist seems of the opinion that his injuries were consistent with a fall,” Young said at last, carefully.

“O-K,” I said slowly, slurring badly now, “but what if Lucas wasn’t her father? His partner knows something-Felix Vaughan. Have you spoken to him? Only-”

Young cut me short. “Mr. Vaughan was polite but unhelpful,” she said, and I remembered Vaughan laughing when I’d asked him the same question about Lucas.

It wasn’t that simple, Vaughan had said. Why?

“If Lucas wasn’t her father, that would be a pretty good reason for a massive falling-out between them. Simone was already pretty convinced, but they were supposed to have had a DNA test to settle it,” I mumbled. “If she found out he wasn’t who he said he was, she might well have reacted badly. I’ve never been entirely happy that he — “

“The tests came back,” Bartholemew cut in. “They were positive- and our own lab has run their own independently, just to be sure.” He paused, looking almost disappointed that I’d come up with such feeble reasons for Simone to turn psycho. “As close as the science can call it, Greg Lucas was definitely Simone’s father.”

I dreamed of Ella. It was Simone who’d died, but it was her daughter who haunted my sleep. Constantly. A jumbled-up barrage of splintered reflections, always anchored in that frozen forest. So cold it woke me shivering, my fingers numb with the psychosomatic effect.

Sometimes it was Simone who was holding the child. Or Matt, dressed as I remembered him from that first day at the restaurant, with that damned stuffed rabbit he’d been clutching sitting on his shoulder, egging him on. Or Rosalind, her face and clothing dusted with flour. Or sometimes it was Lucas again, and the dream was more vivid for the ghosted image of reality overlaid on top of it.

It never made a difference to the outcome. Sometimes I took the shot and watched in slow motion as the mist beaded outwards from the exit wound in the skull, Ella’s screams reverberating inside my own head.

And sometimes I stayed my hand but the mist splayed out anyway. I saw the body tumble, but I could never reach them before they both fell. Didn’t know for certain who’d been hit. I kept trying to turn and look behind me, to see who had fired the shot when I knew it wasn’t me, but the shooter always moved too fast for me to focus on them, slipping away like a shadow into the trees.