Spook Street полностью

Guns didn’t worry Patrice much, or not ones he could see, anyway. Ones he could see were there for effect; they were for pointing while people shouted, and they always shouted the same thing: hands up, on the ground, assume the position. But there was no fallback. The people who wanted you to lie on the ground weren’t going to shoot you if you didn’t, because if they were the type to shoot you, they wouldn’t be telling you to lie on the ground. They’d be shooting you.

So the woman wasn’t a bother, but the man was. Because he wasn’t Bertrand, but in that first moment, Patrice thought he was: they had the same features, almost; the same hair. Eyes. Something was going on; crawling under the skin, like a worm inside an apple.

The sky growled, and rain kept raining.

From somewhere not far away, a siren wailed.

The woman was out of the car now; had her feet planted firmly the correct distance apart, arms outstretched, her left hand steadying her right wrist. Which might mean she’d used guns before, or just that she’d seen some movies.

“I told you to get on the ground.”

“What’s going on here?”

Patrice didn’t need to turn to know this was a civilian.

Without taking her eyes off Patrice, the woman said, “Sir, I need you to get back in your car. Everything’s under control.”

“Are you sure about that?” Patrice asked.

“Shut up. And get on the ground.” Then, to the interfering stranger, she repeated, “Sir, get back in your car!”

“I’m going to call the police.”

“Fine. Do that. From your car.”

Patrice said, “This is getting complicated. You’ve got civilians butting in. The rain makes things worse. And the police are going to have trouble getting through all this traffic.”

“I told you to get on the ground.”

“It’s wet. And I need to talk to your prisoner. He is your prisoner, right?”

Whether he was or not, he was emerging from the car too, one hand on the roof to steady himself: it was surprising, Patrice thought, how shook up the human body could be by something as trivial as a car wreck. But it all depended on whether you were expecting it or not.

“On. The. Ground.”

The woman again, trying for the air of someone who didn’t intend repeating herself, though, as Patrice could have pointed out, she’d already done so several times, and hadn’t shot him yet.

He took a step nearer, hands still at shoulder height. From behind him a voice, the same one as before, shouted something about the police, though most of his words were washed away by the noise of rain on car roofs. There was a pleasant hissing sound, too, from the engine of the car Patrice had stolen, which now required medical attention. On the pavements umbrellas huddled together in protective formation. It looked like a musical was about to break out.

The woman said, “I’m not going to—”

And at the same moment, the man said, “Patrice.”

“—tell you again.”

“Patrice.”

This from behind her, the man she knew as Adam Lockhead, and a puzzle-piece slotted into place: they knew each other; this was a rescue. She moved to one side so she could cover both. Devon was still in the car. Emma hoped he wasn’t hurt, because she could really use back-up.

That spark fizzed in her brain again, you’re gunna need a pair of tweezers and a sieve, and it was Jackson Lamb, the grubby spook who smelled like booze and fags and a million sins. And who’d misidentified a body as River Cartwright, because this was him here now, a mole on his lip.

And still the car-crash man wasn’t lying down; had in fact moved closer. If he thought she wouldn’t shoot, he was dead wrong, and might any moment just be dead, because this was three scant days since the Westacres bomb had killed all those kids, and if it wasn’t precisely open season on wrongdoers, the tabloids wouldn’t be making a fuss.

“Patrice? I’m just back from Les Arbres.”

“Shut up,” she said, her eyes on Patrice. “And get back in the car.”

“It burned down, Patrice. There’s nothing there any more.”

“I know,” said Patrice, and Emma opened her mouth to tell him one last time to get on the ground before she shot him, and never mind this was probably being uploaded to YouTube as she spoke—except she didn’t speak, because Patrice wasn’t a yard away, he was touching distance, and her outstretched arms were pointing skywards. The gun fired, and there was mayhem.

On the pavements, umbrellas scattered. On the roads, cars moved again, despite having nowhere to go.

The gun was no longer hers. Patrice had it, and was pointing it at her face.

If Patrice said anything, River thought—if he threw her words back at her, get on the ground—it would feel safer, somehow; as if control had shifted, but was still an issue.

As it was, he thought Patrice was about to shoot the woman dead.

Partly it was the gunshot, still echoing overhead. A loose bullet rips a hole in normality, through which more violence might slip.