‘SIT HERE, HARRY.’ Bella smiled, drawing a chair from the edge of the stage. I all but fell into it. My legs were weak, my mind spinning. It wasn’t just the bomb strapped to my throat. It was the stage, its height above the people cowering under tables and huddling in corners, unable to look away from me and my captor. We were a grotesque pantomime, a Punch and Judy show. It was all playing out exactly as she had intended it – better, in fact. Her spectacle was drawing people in from the street to the front windows, crowded at the glass, talking to each other, relaying events inside to those behind who couldn’t see. She drew another chair close to me, so that our knees were almost touching. I thought about the bomb, and how if it detonated now it would probably injure her grievously, maybe kill her. But like the spree killers she idolised, the girl beside me was probably suicidal. All her mental effort over the last few months, or years, had gone into the planning of this event. There was nothing beyond today, Day Zero, that really mattered. Everything had to go perfectly now.
‘ It’s like we’re putting on a show, isn’t it?’ Bella said, rubbing my leg absurdly. I gripped the back of the chair with my bound hands. ‘A kind of interview. Harry, why don’t you ask me what’s going to happen next?’
‘What’s …’ I swallowed. My mouth was bone dry. Kash had cleared a path between the tables and the stage. He’d rush here when he had the chance. But for now he could only hold Bella in the sight of his gun. ‘What’s …?’
‘Well, you’re going to make a choice,’ Bella said. She only had eyes for me. ‘I’ve chosen you because I think you’re the best person to demonstrate my point. I’ve told you what the people of Last Chance Valley have done. What they’ve allowed to happen. You know what kind of people they are. I want you to really consider that. Weigh it objectively in your mind. Kind of like a jury member would, you know?’ She tapped my temple hard with her index finger, almost knocking me off balance.
‘We haven’t done anything!’ someone yelled from the back of the room. An older woman. ‘She’s crazy! Bella, don’t do this!’
‘Help!’ A young man was crying by the base of the bar, his hands wrapped around his head. ‘Please! Let us out of here!’
‘Stay calm.’ Kash was inching towards the stage. ‘Everybody just stay calm.’
‘There’s another bomb,’ Bella said, ignoring them. ‘It’s somewhere near. Maybe it’s here, in this building.’ She gestured to the audience below us. ‘Maybe it’s out there somewhere. Under someone’s house. In someone’s kitchen.’
‘Maybe it’s nowhere.’ I licked my lips. ‘And you’re lying.’
She nodded. ‘I guess you’ve got to consider that as an option. Look, trust me, it’s there. It’s the biggest one I’ve made. I used all my leftovers. All the fertiliser I ground up to make these.’ She tapped the bottle at my throat, making the liquid slosh against my windpipe. I winced, Dez’s death flashing again across the backs of my eyelids. ‘I’m going to give you a choice. You can save these people. Or you can save yourself.’
‘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.