by Jo Bannister
Liz said with a kind of restrained fierceness, ‘You risked his life for your reputation, Mr Brady. The rest of us will remember that.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ spat Brady, indignant and exasperated. ‘I’m getting stick from one copper who can’t even look after himself, and another who thinks it matters to Drugs Squad if she’s playing away with a travelling preacher. What next – the Talmudic view?’
Shapiro had suffered enough serious, vicious, deeply meant insults from fully-paid-up anti-Semites not to ruffle a feather at this one. He said mildly, ‘I’m not an authority, but I think the Talmudic view would be that none of the lives you claim to have saved, including Sergeant Donovan’s, balances the death of that child. People who take drugs and those who deal in them choose to do so despite the dangers. They don’t deserve your sympathy. And Donovan took his job, as you took yours, in the knowledge that there’d be times when he’d have to risk his neck to do it.
‘But Alice Elton was a thirteen-year-old girl riding her pony in a public park in broad daylight, and I can’t think of anything you could offer in mitigation if your actions stopped us getting to Mills before Mills got to her.’
Something his oldest friends wouldn’t have believed befell Liam Brady. He coloured, the flush working up slowly from the neck of his sweatshirt. He said tautly, ‘You can’t know that.’
‘No,’ agreed Shapiro. ‘But it’s a distinct possibility. I don’t know you well enough to know if it’ll cost you sleep, but it should do.’
Brady stumbled to his feet. ‘I don’t think we’re achieving anything. If you have a complaint, make it to my chief. As for your homilies, those you can keep.’ He left, groping for the door as if he’d momentarily lost his bearings, and Shapiro made no effort to detain him.
Donovan came to his feet like a cat uncurling. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He too was gone before anyone could call him back; had anyone wanted to.
He overtook Brady quickly enough that his superiors could eavesdrop without the indignity of putting their ears to the keyhole. ‘We’re not finished yet. There’s still some stuff I want to know.’
Brady eyed him warily. ‘Like?’
‘Your chief – did he know I was your prisoner?’
‘Yeah. He agreed the prize was worth the gamble.’
‘Did he know about Charisma?’
Brady’s eyes flared. ‘Hell, no. He’d only have worried about it. I hoped no one would know. I was unlucky Only for running down the Iron Maiden when he did Shapiro wouldn’t have known either.’
‘Jesus God,’ exclaimed Donovan in a soft explosion of anger and despair, ‘she killed five young girls. What are you saying? – you wish she’d been allowed to continue her career till a less awkward time?’
Brady began reasonably, ‘I only meant—’
‘I know what you mean. It’s the same damn attitude we get from you people all the time: that drugs is the only real game in town, everything else is kids’ play. You know something, Brady? I preferred you as a Provo. At least you didn’t pretend to be anything other than a ruthless bastard.’
‘Back in your pram, sonny,’ growled Brady. ‘You’re a long streak of grief, Cal Donovan, but you’re not so big I can’t slap you down if I have to.’
‘Sure you can,’ Donovan snapped back. ‘When I’m asleep and don’t even know you’re there. When you’ve got a gun in my back. You want a fair fight sometime, Brady, I’ll give you one – just the two of us, no witnesses, no come-back. Maybe you’ll still beat the crap out of me. But it won’t solve your problem either way.’
Brady said, soft as a tiger’s purr, ‘I’d really welcome your opinion, Cal, as to what that is.’
‘That you’ve become as big a bastard as the bastards you set out to stop. That in order to pass among them you’ve acquired the same sort of values. You haven’t beaten them, you’ve become one of them. You’re a whore, Brady. You sell yourself for money and a few cheap thrills.’
In Shapiro’s office they heard the crack of flesh on flesh and exchanged a startled glance. Still they refrained from throwing open the door.
Donovan took the blow with more dignity than Brady delivered it. His cheek flamed but he looked down with only a cold smile. ‘What does that change?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Brady’s voice was rough with anger.
Donovan’s was a sneer. ‘You and the preacher, you’re both addicts. For him it’s the adulation, for you the deceit. “They don’t know” – remember? Davey’s habit blinded him to what he was being used to cover up, and you tell yourself that you do this for the public good when a man on a galloping horse could see you do it for kicks. And that’s the story of your life.
‘You weren’t in the Provos from conviction, you did it for kicks. Then you spied on them for kicks. Now you infiltrate drug operations, and the reason’s not all those lives you reckon you’re saving, it’s still the same one. There’s nothing like it to get the adrenalin going, is there? You’re hooked. You crossed the line between pretending to be a thug and being one when you stopped seeing the difference between risking your own life and risking other people’s.’
Brady dug his clenched fists against his sides because he wanted to strike out again and was ashamed to. Fury left him helpless. He had no words, nothing left to fight with.
‘I think you’d better go now.’ With masterly disdain Donovan walked away.
In the office Shapiro turned to Liz with satisfaction in his eyes. He murmured, ‘Sometimes I see reason to hope that young man will make a police officer.’
Liz smiled. ‘So are you going to tell him what Brady’s chief said?’
‘About whether Donovan might be interested in a transfer? I don’t see that I have any choice,’ Shapiro said solemnly. ‘A young copper’s entitled to take advancement when it’s offered.’
‘Do me a favour,’ begged Liz. ‘Make sure I’m there when you tell him. I really, really want to see his face.’
By the same author:
THE MATRIX
THE WINTER PLAIN
A CACTUS GARDEN
STRIVING WITH GODS
MOSAIC
THE MASON CODEX
GILGAMESH
THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN
SHARDS
DEATH AND OTHER LOVERS
A BLEEDING OF INNOCENTS
CHARISMA. Copyright @ 1994 by Jo Bannister. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
First published as Sins of the Heart in Great Britain by Macmillan London Limited.
eISBN 9781466810228
First eBook Edition : January 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bannister, Jo.
Charisma / Jo Bannister.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PR6052.A497C48 1994
823’.914—dc20
94-12787
CIP
First U.S. Edition: September 1994
