The Mentor (5 page)

She really was every bit the bitch they all said she was, but instead of annoying him, it just made him laugh. For a moment it occurred to him that she might be saying equally unpleasant things about him to the others behind his own back, but he pushed the thought aside as quickly as he could. He didn’t care about that now. Nothing mattered except the moment.

He finished his glass. When he put it back down on the table, his aim was inexplicably off, and it wound up in pieces on the floor, earning him a cheer from the rest of the pub.

“Okay, boss. Maybe we’d better step outside for some fresh air.” Adele stood and took him by the arm, pulling him up too. But when Eric tried to stand, his head started spinning out of control, and he had to lean on the table to keep from falling over.

He found it harder and harder to keep track of what was happening around him, while his companion struggled to help him get back on his feet.

Fresh air, swollen with humidity that promised more rain to come, seemed to help pierce the fog that was muddying his thoughts.

Adele and the young man from the pub had him sit down on a low stone wall. He watched them chatting right in front of him. Every once in a while she reached out and touched his arm in an intimate manner. “Everything okay, boss?”

Eric nodded, trying to smile, but he immediately felt a wave of nausea and had to bend over to vomit. The other two grabbed him immediately to give a helping hand, keeping him from toppling over. After he’d liberated his stomach of what was left of his dinner, the nausea passed, along with most of his sense of disorientation.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” asked the young man. Now that he could see him more clearly, Eric realized he must have been around thirty years old.

Adele handed Eric a tissue. She kept her other hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture. “Thanks, but I think I can take care of him myself from here on out.”

“Okay.” The young man gave her a good-bye hug. “See you soon then.”

“Count on it.”

He winked at her and then headed back into the pub. Adele waved to him, then sat down on the wall alongside Eric.

Eric knew full well that under normal circumstances, he would have been incredibly embarrassed by what had just happened, but right now he couldn’t feel it. Despite everything, he felt filled with a warm glow of well-being.

“Are you feeling better? I mean, seriously.” She threw him an inquisitive look, the same he’d seen her use countless times before when she was concentrating on her work.

“Yes, seriously.” The words came out of his mouth clearly, a sign that perhaps his brain and his vocal cords had reestablished their connection. “You guys seemed really close. He your boyfriend?” There we go. The connection worked, but data transmission was still a little sketchy.

Adele turned in the direction her friend had headed. He could barely make out the expression of affection mixed with melancholy cross her face. “He’s my ex.”

“Oh . . .” Fortunately Eric’s brain didn’t come up with anything inconvenient to say. “Were you guys really close?” Ah, there it was.

“We’re divorced.”

Those last words stunned him for a moment. They had something else in common. Up until now, it was the only thing he’d found.

“So young and already divorced . . .” He said this with a very sincere tone of sadness. He knew full well the repercussions something like that could have on a person’s life. Eric reminisced for a moment about the way this woman had behaved ever since she’d arrived in their department, and he found himself understanding her a little better. Her standoffishness and the way she interacted with her colleagues might all have far simpler motives than the thousands of unpleasant suppositions that had crossed his mind.

“I’m old enough to have a failed marriage behind me, yes,” she said, turning back to Eric. She seemed almost annoyed that he’d said she was too young, but her eyes told another story. The tale of a woman who was poking fun at her
elderly
boss.

“But you guys stayed on good terms,” said Eric. “I wish I’d been able to do that with my ex.”

“To be honest, we still love each other, but . . .”

He waited for her to finish, staring at her lips.

Adele hesitated a little longer, apparently enjoying keeping him in suspense. “The problem is . . . he’s gay!” Then she laughed.

It wasn’t much of a laugh. The divorce must have been an incredibly upsetting experience, although perhaps over time she’d gotten over it. Or maybe she was just really good at hiding her emotions. Even now that they were alone, with Eric’s defenses lowered thanks to alcohol, Adele appeared to keep up the walls that separated her from the rest of the world, preventing anyone from getting too close to her.

She took out her cell phone for the umpteenth time. As soon as she touched the screen it lit up, casting a cold light onto her face. “You’re too drunk to take the tube,” she said, touching buttons on her screen. “I’m calling a cab.”

Ten minutes later they were sitting in the backseat of a taxi. Eric intended to rest his head for a moment on the window, but he slipped into a deep sleep. Adele watched him, a little worried, while the car took off down Oxford Street. She was concerned he’d collapse from one moment to the next.

When the taxi driver took a right turn into Portman Street a little too quickly, she put her arms around her boss to hold him upright. The last thing she needed was for him to knock his head on something. Then she would have to take him to the emergency room, and the news that the most famous squad leader in the scientific investigations department of Scotland Yard had wound up at the hospital, too drunk to function, would make its way around London in a heartbeat. It would deal quite a blow to his reputation, and Adele didn’t want to be the least bit responsible for that.

The car came to a brusque stop. She realized they’d already reached Dorset Street, right outside the building where she lived. She tried to shake Eric gently.

“Boss, this is my stop. Can you hear me?”

He mumbled something incomprehensible in response.

“I have to get out here. We have to tell the taxi driver where to take you, so that he can get you home,” she said, raising her voice a little.

This time Eric didn’t even try to respond. He’d fallen asleep again.

The taxi driver turned around and opened the little window that separated the front from the back of the car. “Hey, your buddy’s good and drunk, isn’t he?” There was a certain element of commiseration in his eyes. “I don’t think the evening’s gone quite as planned, has it?”

The man seemed to have developed very clear ideas about the two passengers in the back. Maybe he thought they were a classic pair: the boss with his young secretary. He’d invited her out for drinks in the hope of taking her to bed, and she’d accepted in the hope of getting a raise or a promotion, but things had gotten out of hand, and now all they’d have left were hangovers and hazy memories. The driver’s laughter seemed to confirm that was his opinion of the events.

“Listen,” said Adele, turning to face the taxi driver. “I’ll give you twenty quid on top of the fare if you’ll help me get him up to my place.”

“Hmm,” said the man, and nothing more. Maybe he was thinking this request didn’t fit well with the story he’d imagined. Or maybe he just wanted to barter his way to a bigger bonus.

“Have you gotten any tickets lately, by any chance?” Adele asked. Perhaps there was another way they could work out a deal.

“What do you care?” replied the taxi driver, and not politely.

At this point Adele pulled out her badge and showed it to him. The driver’s face turned serious, then melted into a timid smile. There was no doubt that if she checked the vehicle’s paperwork she’d find something out of order. She wasn’t a street cop, but this man didn’t know that.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want a thing, miss. I’m happy to give you a hand.” The way he said it, it almost seemed true.

“Where are we going to put him?” asked the driver as soon as they were in Adele’s apartment. “Wow! Nice flat you’ve got here!”

Adele’s home may have been small, but it was very modern. Even she stopped to take an admiring look around when they came into the flat. The entrance opened straight into the living room, separated from the small corner kitchen by a low wall with counter space. Most of the apartment was painted white, with gray trim here and there. The walls, furniture, and other decor followed the same scheme, while the floor was paved with small lead-colored bricks. Two doors opened into the room: the bedroom and a large walk-in closet. When she’d bought the place, the closet had been a smaller, second bedroom. She’d had it converted. Between these two rooms, and connected to both, was the bathroom.

Adele had no intention of letting the man ogle the rest of her home. “On the couch,” she said, and the two of them stretched Eric out on the sofa. More than asleep, her boss was now passed out. She lifted his legs to make sure he didn’t fall to the floor, then put a pillow underneath his head.

The taxi driver snorted. “Bad thing that is, getting drunk like that. Happened to me once too. I can’t even remember how I made it back home.” Then he laughed, setting his broad belly jiggling.

Adele had no desire to entertain a conversation with the man. She took a twenty-pound note from her pocket. The other hand was inside her purse, fingering her gun. Better safe than sorry. “Here, please take this,” she said, holding out the money.

The man looked at the bill, wavering. “No, no,” he said, shaking his hands. “No need, miss.”

“I insist,” she said. “You were very kind to help.” She accompanied these last words with the sincerest smile she could muster. Better to be very courteous to people who give you a helping hand. Her father had said as much a thousand times when she was growing up.

“Okay,” said the man, taking the money reluctantly. “But . . .” He took a business card from the back pocket of his pants and handed it to Adele. “If you ever need to reserve a taxi, call me directly. That way you won’t have to pay the company for the reservation.”

Oh yes. There was always something to be gained from being courteous.

As soon as the taxi driver left, Adele turned all four locks on the door. She took off her jacket, hung it on a hook inside the closet, and picked up a blanket she kept folded on a shelf.

She went over to Eric, who was still sleeping peacefully on the couch, and covered him up with it. Even though it was late June, the nights could still be quite chilly. She didn’t want him to catch cold. She took off his shoes, one after the other. Looking at him now, like this, he seemed truly fragile. Nothing like the powerful, self-assured man she saw walking around the department. The great Eric Shaw, a boss feared as much by his subordinates as by the criminals he hunted.

She laughed a little to herself at that thought, then went into the kitchen to boil some water. After that she went into her bedroom, got slowly undressed, and put on a pair of light pajamas, yawning as she went. She was more tired than she’d realized.

A little later, just as she was dropping her used bag of chamomile tea into the trash, her attention was drawn to some movement in the living room. She tiptoed over to the couch, abandoning her teacup on the table for the moment.

Eric had moved, uncovering himself a little, and now part of the blanket had slid down onto the floor.

Adele picked it up and spread it back over him. She ran her fingers through his hair, almost as if he were a child. His hair was thick and soft, a very light brown with just a faint dusting of white at the temples. She bent her head and gave his forehead the lightest of kisses.

Then she went and sat at the little table, taking back up her cup of tea while she watched her boss sleep on her couch.

He was a good-looking man. Apart from a little paunch and his tendency to neglect himself, he didn’t seem at all like a fifty-year-old. She’d always had a thing for older men, but in reality she knew that he was too old for her. He could have been her father.

She took another sip, staring at him.

CHAPTER 4

He woke up with a terrible headache, accompanied by a firm willingness to kill himself in order to make it stop. The pleasant smell of coffee reached his nostrils, bringing him halfway back to reality. He felt disoriented. He couldn’t figure out where he was; nothing around him seemed familiar. He could hear water running, but he couldn’t tell if it was rain or faucet water.

A brief flash of people walking around Leicester Square leapt across his mind.

Where the hell was he?

He tried to pull himself upright, but the effort made him so dizzy that he gave up immediately.

“Good morning, boss.”

Struggling, Eric recognized Adele’s voice. Suddenly he realized he was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on last night, and that he was stretched out on a couch, half-covered with a blanket.

He tried to raise himself up again, this time more slowly.

The sound of running water stopped, and when Eric finally managed to sit upright, he could see that it came from a small corner kitchen at the end of the room. Standing in front of the sink, an enormous smile spread across her face, was Adele. She was wearing a white shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Sunlight flooded in through the window beside her and lit her up like a theater spotlight.

It was already daytime!

“Wh-what time is it?” stammered Eric. “Where am I?” he asked, even though he thought he already knew the answer. What he was really wondering was why he was there, how he had gotten there, and, most important of all, what had happened last night. He couldn’t remember a thing. At least he’d woken up on a couch. That made him feel better.

“Don’t worry, boss,” said Adele, walking over to him and setting a mug of steaming coffee down on the table in front of the couch. “It’s Sunday. You’ve got all the time you need to recover from your night on the town.”

He wanted to say something witty in return, but he didn’t know what to say and probably didn’t have the strength to say it anyway.

In the meantime, Adele had disappeared again. He was so out of sorts that he didn’t even see where she’d gone.

Eric reached out and took the mug. The smell of coffee was exhilarating, but there was no guarantee it would be enough to set him right again.

Adele reappeared at one of the two doors just as he was taking his first timid sips. She held up a packet of pills in one hand, then set it down on the little table in front of him without saying a word. Then she went back to the corner kitchen and filled a glass with water and brought that back as well. “Migraine, I assume,” she said. Her tone of voice lay halfway between chastising and entertained.

He didn’t need to answer. No doubt one good look at his face made it clear he had a hammering headache.

He swallowed a pill without even checking to see what it was. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to read the fine print. He drank the entire glass of water, realizing his mouth was dry and racked by thirst. “Thanks,” he muttered.

Adele was standing in front of the mirror, fixing her hair. “I’m sorry I brought you here. I tried to ask you where you live, but you weren’t answering.” She opened her purse and rummaged around in it.

“Goodness gracious,” said Eric, rubbing his face with one hand. He was extremely embarrassed. “I hope I didn’t do anything . . . anything that was . . .” Then he stopped, unsure how to proceed.

“Inopportune?” said Adele, laughing.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Don’t worry, boss. You were a perfect gentleman.” She appeared to really be enjoying herself. She grabbed a linen jacket and put it on. “But now I’ve got to go. My sister-in-law is waiting for me so that she can give me the keys to her car.” She headed for the door.

Eric was dumbfounded. He didn’t know what she was expecting from him. Maybe he should get up and head home. Unfortunately, he was not at all sure he’d be able to stand.

He tried to open his mouth and say something, but she turned around and shushed him with a movement of her hand. “No, no . . . You take it easy. Make yourself at home.” She pointed to one of the doors. “That’s the bathroom. I left you a clean set of towels. The white ones, on the little cabinet.” She took a key out of a drawer and set it by the telephone near the door. “When you leave, use this key to lock up,” she said, pointing to one of the four locks on the door. “You can give it back to me when we see each other at the Yard, okay?”

After wading through that wave of instructions, which he’d tried to follow as closely as possible, it took him a few moments to realize that Adele was waiting for him to say something in return. “Oh . . . okay,” was all he could muster. He must seem like a total idiot. “Thanks again,” he managed at last.

“Don’t worry about it, boss. See you soon.” Then she winked at him, turned around, and left.

As soon as she was out of sight, Eric felt as if the enormous bubble he’d been sitting in burst open with no warning. The sounds of the morning flooding in through the partially open window overwhelmed him. He took another sip of coffee to clear his head and get a grip.

He had a hazy memory of the conversation they’d had while sitting on the little wall outside the pub. He’d asked her some very personal questions, perhaps too personal. He gave a little groan of disappointment with himself. Good God, how much had he had to drink? He remembered the first couple of beers. The third beer, which Adele had ordered, seemed to have opened a sort of chasm in his mind, one he’d tumbled into headfirst. It must have been spiked with something stronger. Maybe he should have asked what it was as soon as he’d realized it wasn’t just beer, but something had stopped him. He didn’t want to seem like an old man who was afraid of drinking something strong, or, even worse, someone who didn’t know anything about the latest drink trends.

The point was he should have eaten something more. But it had been so exciting sitting there with her that he’d wound up spending more time talking than chewing.

Ridiculous, that’s what it was. A man like him, in his position, losing his head over a young lady who, for all intents and purposes, was thoroughly entertained by the chance to torture him. Oh yes. That was convenient. Lay all the blame for his precocious midlife crisis on Adele. Pathetic. There were so many beautiful fortysomethings wandering around, and he had to go gaga over a twenty-seven-year-old. Sure, she was intelligent, and she seemed genuinely mature—she was just getting over a divorce too, after all. Most of all, she was extremely beautiful. But even all that couldn’t justify his inability to maintain control.

He slapped his knees in an attempt to rise up out of his disappointment. Finally he managed to stand up.

He set the mug and the empty glass in the sink. It would be polite to wash and dry them, but he had no idea where things were in that kitchen and wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to start digging around there anyway. Meanwhile, his swollen bladder woke up and started complaining, forcing him to head for the bathroom.

Unfamiliar with the flat, he opened the first door and found himself looking into the bedroom. The walls were peach colored, and the bed was covered with a similar, slightly darker-colored blanket. White curtains did little to block the sunlight flooding into the room, making it warm and welcoming. He immediately noticed the absence of any bureau or dresser. The room extended beyond the queen-sized bed, and he could see a desk with a portable computer on it. Its fan was blowing, telling him she’d left it turned on.

Curious, Eric went over to the computer. A video loop showing a storm-tossed sea ran across the screen over and over. The waves crashed on the beach, and surfers glided back and forth in the background, searching for the perfect wave.

Eric glanced around as if frightened at the prospect of being caught in the act of snooping on his colleague’s computer; then he reached out to the mouse. The screen-saver video froze, and a little window popped up, requesting the password.

He wasn’t really going to dig around in Adele’s computer files, was he?

He was relieved he couldn’t look any further. One less temptation.

Eric went back to looking around the room. There was something strange here, something he couldn’t quite decipher, but he’d felt it back in the living room as well. A sense of the impersonal. Everything was beautiful, but on the whole it felt more like a hotel room than someone’s personal living space. Maybe she’d only been here for a short time?

There was a photograph of Adele on almost every wall. They weren’t traditional amateur photographs; they looked professional. There were close-ups, landscapes, and cityscapes. In one portrait of her, he could see the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Did she used to work as a model? That wouldn’t surprise him.

Other than the photographs, there was nothing else that told him about the apartment’s occupant. There were no images of her with other people—no friends, nothing of her ex-husband. No pictures of family or relatives. Everything seemed focused entirely, uniquely, on Adele. Beyond her, nothing. In a certain sense it fit with the image of herself she projected to others. Yet last night, for just a short while, Eric had begun to believe he was catching a glimpse of an entirely different woman. Now he was surprised to find he couldn’t locate any trace of that woman here.

Oh, that’s right. The bathroom. He’d gotten sidetracked, but his bladder brought him abruptly back to the here and now.

There was another door to the bedroom besides the one he’d come through. He opened it. Darkness. He tried flipping the switch alongside the doorway, and suddenly a dozen little halogen lights running around the ceiling lit the room up bright as day. The bathroom was embellished with tiles in all different shades of pastel green. It had a large bathtub and a shower, both very particular. They smacked of something
technological
. The entire room felt somehow projected into the future.

A large wall of mirrors facing him reproduced his own image, and he leaned in for a closer look. My God, he looked horrible. His face was shiny and pasty, dirtied with a five-o’clock shadow from the night before and sporting two deep, dark cavities where his eyes were supposed to be. His hair was mussed up. Who knew what absurd positions he’d tossed and turned into while asleep.

Eric went to the toilet. He required a few extra moments to focus on his next move, but finally the valves opened and he managed to empty his bladder, and with it the world seemed like a better place.

A large white towel lay on the cabinet, carefully folded. He picked it up and looked around the shower. It was large enough to fit two people comfortably and looked inviting enough. She’d told him to make himself at home, hadn’t she?

The pungent odor of chemicals mixed with decomposing flesh invaded Eric’s nose and mouth the moment he walked into the morgue, making him cough.

“Good morning, Detective,” said Dr. Dawson, who was busy filling out a file. He said this without so much as glancing up from his paperwork. The body of Nicholas Thompson was stretched out on the autopsy table. His clothes had been removed, but the examination hadn’t started yet. Two red plastic batons were sticking out of the body. One was sticking up perpendicular from his groin; the other ran out from the side of his neck.

“Richard,” said Shaw, returning the doctor’s salutations.

A flash illuminated the body for a split second, revealing the presence of a third person in the room with them. Eric stiffened a little, recognizing Adele. She, on the other hand, appeared to be entirely focused on her work and uninterested in his arrival.

“Good morning,” murmured Eric. Adele nodded to him and flashed a small smile. She always behaved this way; it was nothing new, save for the fact that the previous morning he’d woken up in her apartment, on her couch, instead of in his own home, and that made him embarrassed. “What can you tell me about the victim?” he asked, turning back to the doctor, thinking it best to focus on the case.

“First of all, as you can see, the guesswork conducted at the crime scene was mostly inaccurate.”

“What do you mean?” Eric went to the table to look at the body up close.

“We thought the assassin shot the victim in the neck first, then in the groin in order to leave him to die from blood loss.” The doctor set his file down on a little cart, then finally turned to look the head of the scientific investigations department squarely in the eye. “But the direction of the two bullets tells us a different story.” He pointed to the baton in the victim’s neck. “As you can see, this baton is pointing downward with respect to the rest of the body.”

“That means the assassin was shorter than the victim and had to raise his arm to shoot. Although . . .” Eric paused for a moment, noting the size of the cadaver. “The victim can’t be more than a little over five tall, if that.”

“The bullet wound is less than sixty degrees. That tells us the shot was taken from below. Things get more complicated when we look at the groin.”

Eric’s attention moved to the red baton sticking straight up out of Thompson’s groin. “It’s at a ninety-degree angle!”

“Exactly. Either our assassin is a dwarf, or a child. Or he was sitting much lower when he shot the victim.” The doctor had the air of someone who loved to puzzle over riddles.

Another flash from the camera lit up the room.

“Maybe there was a fight,” Shaw said. “The assassin fell on . . . the couch, and shot from there.” It was an acceptable theory.

Thompson wasn’t very tall, but he was relatively beefy. He would have had the strength to push away another person, even someone bigger than he was.

While they thought about this, Eric noticed from the corner of his eye that Adele had set down the camera and picked up a tablet computer. She was moving her left index finger around the screen.

“I don’t know what your team will find on the scene or in the victim’s clothing,” said Dawson. “But I can tell you this: there are no signs of injuries or struggle on the body. It doesn’t look like he fought with anyone before he died.”

“Then how do you think it went down?” Eric asked.

“Hell if I know!” exclaimed the doctor, lifting up both arms. “I’m just your simple, everyday pathologist.” That made Eric smile. He’d heard Dawson say the same thing at least a hundred times. “You criminologists are the wizards of reconstruction. But before we get to that, there’s one other thing I didn’t tell you.” He stooped down to pick up something from one of the lower trays on the cart. A moment later he was holding a clear plastic bag in front of Eric’s face, smiling with satisfaction.