Say You're Sorry Part 60

"Careful, you might shoot someone," he says, smiling.

"Let Piper go?"

"Shoot me and you can have her."

I point the gun at his head.

"That's the way."

"I'm not going to shoot you. n.o.body has to die."

He smiles. He smells almost perfumed, as though he's showered and shaved and doused himself in cologne.

"You weren't in the service, were you?" he asks.

"Neither were you."

"I got close."

"That's like saying you nearly had s.e.x, Grievous. You either did or you didn't-anything else is w.a.n.king."

Anger lights up his eyes. I haven't seen his temper before. He's learned to hide it well.

"Should I call you Gerald or George?"

"Call me what you like."

"Piper and Natasha called you George. It suits you." I take a step closer. "I'm going to undo the handcuffs."

He shows me the knife again. "I can flick my wrist and reach her heart before you take another step. How good a doctor are you? Can you patch a broken heart?"

I step back and find a straight-backed chair. I straddle it, resting my outstretched forearms on the top spar. I can hold the gun steadier now.

"This crime of mine," says Grievous. "Kidnapping the girls, raping them-in the grand scheme of things it doesn't mean very much. A thousand years from now n.o.body is going to care about the Bingham Girls or what I did to them. Not in a hundred years. Let's face it, Professor, men have been penetrating women since our species began. It's how we survive. So what if we don't say please beforehand and thank you afterwards. It doesn't alter the act. We penetrate. We procreate."

"That's an interesting philosophy, George. Your mother would be very proud."

"Leave my mother out of it."

"Is that who you're trying to punish?"

"Oh, dear me, how disappointing," he sighs. "Is that the best you can do-Freudian hostility, a mummy fixation? Please. I expected more."

"You don't have a fiancee, Grievous. She's another fiction. That's your problem, isn't it? You can't find anyone to love. It's always been that way, ever since p.u.b.erty when all those hormones were playing havoc with your thinking. You wanted a girlfriend, but you had a problem. You were deaf in one ear and couldn't quite tune into what people were saying. n.o.body knew about the brain tumor slowly growing, benign.

"You refused to wear a hearing aid or to sit up front in cla.s.s. You didn't want anyone to know, particularly the girls. You wanted to be one of the cool group sitting up the back, pa.s.sing notes to each other.

"Do you know, Grievous, there is a correlation between deafness and paranoid thinking? If you can't hear particularly well, it's easy to think people might be talking about you, laughing and joking at your expense, putting you down. Isn't that true?"

He doesn't answer me, but seems to be pressing the knife tighter against Piper's chest.

"Even the teachers thought you were slow and stupid, even your family. And every time someone laughed or behaved a little differently, you were sure they were making fun of you, whispering behind your back, sharing a private joke.

"You wanted a girlfriend, you were desperate for one, but girls rejected your pathetic attempts to woo them. I'm not criticizing you or being patronizing. It wasn't your fault. You adored those girls. You would have treated them like G.o.ddesses. Showered them with love. Written them poetry. Sung them love songs. But they didn't choose you, did they? They chose the arm-candy, the boys who made them look good and gave them status, the ones they swooned over.

"You fantasized about those unattainable girls. You pictured them as you worked out in weight rooms, shedding those pounds. You starved yourself. And then one day they discovered the tumor in your head and the surgeons cut it out and suddenly you could hear. You were whole. Nothing would stop you now."

I pause, watching him, sensing how close I am to the truth. He has a lock of Piper's hair in his mouth.

"So what happened?" I ask.

He doesn't answer.

"Let me guess. You asked one of the unattainable girls to go out with you and she said yes. She was nice. Friendly. Pretty. She didn't tease you. She didn't call you names. She didn't make fun of your hearing problems. You were over the moon. You walked on air. You had never been happier in your entire life.

"It's not that you wanted to have s.e.x with this girl-not straight away-you wanted to talk, to romance her, to show her what you had to offer. But then you froze. You got tongue-tied. Being able to hear didn't make any difference because you'd grown up being nervous and slow. You didn't know how to relax and just be yourself. Instead of being a new man, you were the same old Gerald-the slow Gerald, the paranoid Gerald.

"Did she laugh at your first crude attempt to kiss her? Or was the whole date a joke? Maybe her pretty friends put her up to it. Is that why you chose Natasha? She reminded you of those girls who laughed at you. She was provocative, flirtatious, vain, out of your league..."

His eyes flash open, full of hatred. Violence. "You think I cared about that s.l.u.t?"

"I think that answers my question."

"She got what she deserved."

"That's why you mutilated Natasha. It was hatred, not love. Your desire had become twisted. Corrupted. Violent. It demanded you step aside. It negated the rights of others. It cleansed. It poisoned. It dictated your beliefs. You must have dragged that hatred around with you for years. It was gnawing away inside you while you watched other lads get the pretty girls, walking them home, getting invited inside, despoiling those sweet young bodies and then boasting about it afterwards."

"Keep talking, Professor, it's her time you're wasting."

I glance at Piper. Her breathing has grown ragged. The sedatives are being absorbed into her bloodstream.

"Why is it so important that I kill you?" I ask.

"It's over for me. There's nowhere else to go."

"Give me Piper and I'll leave you the gun."

He shakes his head. "I want you to pull the trigger."

"Why?"

He smiles. "It's like I told you that first day I drove you to Bingham-killers and kidnappers know when they cross a line. They can't expect sympathy or understanding. Gideon Tyler took your wife and child. He did terrible things to them, but you said you wouldn't have pulled the trigger to stop him."

"I lied."

"Show me. Shoot me now. Prove you can do it, Professor. Learn how it feels."

"I don't want to know how it feels."

He runs his finger along Piper's cheek. "Maybe if she were your daughter, you'd think differently. Perhaps Piper doesn't mean enough to you."

"That's not true."

He smiles. "You think you can read people, Professor. You pick apart their motives and peer inside their heads, but I wonder if you ever look at yourself. I think you're a coward. I'm going to make you brave."

"I live with a disease that makes me brave."

"It gives you an excuse." He spits the words. "You couldn't stop the man who kidnapped your wife and daughter and now you're balking at this. You're making excuses. Stop me. She's dying. Just do it!"

He lifts Piper's eyelids. Her pupils have rolled back into her head and white foam is leaking from one corner of her mouth. Every minute gives the pills longer to dissolve in her stomach and enter her bloodstream. Five minutes after ingestion she has a 90 per cent chance of survival. By sixty minutes it falls to less than 15 per cent.

The pistol has grown hot in my hands. I stare along the barrel with a mixture of loathing and awe.

"Let her go."

"Shoot me. It's not difficult. You walk over here. Point the gun at my head and pull the trigger. Don't go trying to miss. I don't want to be left a vegetable. And don't try shooting me in the leg or shoulder. This knife is very sharp. It won't take much to slice into her chest."

The pistol is growing heavier. I look at Piper and imagine her heartbeat slowing and her organs failing. In the next breath I can picture Charlie lying on a filthy mattress, chained to a radiator with masking tape wrapped around her head, breathing through a hose. I would have pulled a trigger a dozen times over to save her and Julianne. I would have emptied the magazine and reloaded. I would have done anything... given anything... if only...

"If I hear sirens, I will kill her, Professor. You're running out of time." He is rocking Piper in his arms. "Pull the trigger. People take lives all the time. You might even enjoy it. It could be cathartic. I mean, you're separated, your wife left you, you're riddled with disease, so much for 'in sickness and in health.' "

"That's not why she left me."

"You must really hate her."

"No."

"Liar!"

I scream at him then. Aiming the gun at his head. Stepping closer.

"PUT DOWN THE KNIFE!"

"No."

"LET HER GO!"

"Shoot me."

"NO!"

"Tick tock, tick tock."

"LET HER GO!"

"Pull the trigger."

"SHE'S DYING!"

Grievous begins screaming back at me. "SAVE HER! JUST DO IT! PULL THE TRIGGER! DO IT. SHOOT ME! PULL THE f.u.c.kING TRIG-"

The gun recoils and a noise seems to detonate directly inside my head. Echoing. Drawn out. Groaning like a turntable on the wrong speed. I stare at the gun and smell the cordite.

My finger is still on the trigger. I'm locked in place as though turned to stone, while the Earth has turned ten thousand revolutions. Nothing stirs or s.h.i.+fts until Piper slides sideways, her hair plastered to the back of her head, slick with blood.

For a moment I think I must have shot her. Somehow the bullet must have ricocheted off the wall. I put my hand over the back of her head and discover the blood isn't hers.

Grievous is staring at me with his lips peeled back and mouth open, his last sentence cut short. The entry wound in his forehead is smaller than a five pence piece, while the exit wound has sprayed blood and brain matter across the painted wall.

Fumbling with the key, I remove the handcuffs and reach under Piper, lifting her easily and carrying her to the door and down two flights of stairs.

Adrenalin is still surging through me like the ba.s.s beat at a rock concert. Setting her down in the hallway near the front door, I put my ear to her mouth and nose and my hand on her lower chest. She's breathing, but her eyes are fixed. Dilated. I turn her on her side, putting her in the recovery position.

Where are the paramedics? I call 999 again, yelling at the operator, telling them to hurry. The sedative has been in Piper's system for nearly thirty minutes.

I have to act now. Gastric lavage. Pump her stomach. I remember my medical training-three years of studying to be a doctor, doing my filial duty because G.o.d's-personal-physician-in-waiting wanted me to carry on the family tradition.

I rip open kitchen cupboards and grab a container of salt and run the hot tap until the water is warm. Mixing the water and salt in a clean plastic container, I create a saline solution. Next I need a tube: something about the width of my pinkie and three feet long.

Beneath the sink is a water filter with a flexible blue plastic pipe. I tear it away from the fittings and cut off the ends, hoping it's long enough. Crouching next to Piper, I turn her head to one side and lubricate the end of the tube with soap, before inserting it through her nose, pus.h.i.+ng it gently until it reaches the pharynx. I feel the slight resistance and turn the tube 180 degrees. It continues sliding towards her stomach.

I put my head on her chest and blow a puff of air through the tube, listening for the telltale bubbles from the fluid in her stomach. Holding the plastic container of saline solution above her head, I punch a hole through the base and insert the tube, letting about 300 ml of the warm fluid flow into her stomach.

Then I suction, letting the mixture of saline and her stomach contents flow out onto the floor. Repeating the process, I keep going until the liquid runs clearer. My mobile has been ringing. I've been too busy to answer it.

Drury's name appears on screen.

"What's happened in there? Neighbors reported a gunshot."

"Where are the paramedics?"

"Outside. They're waiting for the all clear."

"It's clear. Tell them to hurry."

"Where's Grievous?"

"Dead."

"Casey?"

"I'm sorry."

Moments later the door jerks open and the DCI's eyes meet mine. He's wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet, like a modern-day warrior. In the dim light the scar on his cheek looks like a birthmark.

A dozen police officers surge into the house. Behind them I see two ambulances, their lights beating with color, sirens muted. Four paramedics follow. Two of them crouch beside Piper. The younger one has a farm girl face.

"What did she take?"