FaceOff

by Lee Child

  “Retired?” Rebus snorted. “Most of them are younger than me.” He looked around at the hundred or so faces.

  “Full pension after thirty years,” Grace commented.

  “It’s the same in Scotland,” Clarke explained. “But John isn’t having it.”

  “Why not?” Grace sounded genuinely curious.

  Clarke was watching Rebus head to the bar, Potting hot on his heels. “It’s gone beyond being a job to him,” she offered. “If you can understand that.”

  Grace thought for a moment, then nodded. “Completely.”

  By the time they got to the bar, Potting was explaining to Rebus that Harveys was the best local pint.

  “Just so long as it’s not the sherry,” Rebus joked.

  Once they had their drinks, Potting led them over to the retired inspector Jim Hopper, who had attended the badly injured Ollie Starr on that Saturday afternoon in 1964. Hopper was a giant of a man, with a shaven head rising from apparently neckless shoulders, giving him the appearance of an American football player. But his eyes were sympathetic, his demeanor gentle. Potting handed him a drink. He took a sip before speaking.

  “I told Ollie you might be coming to speak to him. He seemed hellish relieved. Ever since that assault, his life’s turned to a bucket of turds.”

  “You’ve kept in touch with him?” Rebus nudged.

  “I have, yes. To tell the truth, I’ve always felt partways responsible. If we’d had more men on the ground that day, or we’d spotted him being chased.” Hopper winced at the memory. “I was with him in the ambulance. He thought he was dying, poured out his whole story to me, as if I was the last friend he’d ever have.”

  “Do you think he’d be able to identify the assailant after all this time?” Clarke asked quietly.

  “No doubt about it. Couldn’t happen now, of course, with CCTV and DNA. Nobody’d get away with it.”

  “It was half a century back,” Rebus reminded Hopper. “You sure his memory’s up to it?”

  A grim smile broke across the retired officer’s face. “You need to see for yourselves.”

  “See what?”

  “Visit him and you’ll find out.”

  “Is he married?” Clarke asked.

  Hopper shook his head. “Far as he’s concerned, his life ended that day. Stabbed in the chest, then the cowards just walked away.”

  There was silence for a moment. They were in a bubble, far from the chatter and gossip around them.

  “Give us his address,” Rebus ordered, breaking the spell.

  · · ·

  Roy Grace had been in some shitholes in his time, and Ollie Starr’s ground-floor flat, on the other side of the wall from the Brighton and Hove refuse tip, was down there with the worst of them. It was dank, with dark mold blotches on one wall of the tiny hall. As they strode through into the sitting room, there were empty beer bottles littering the place, an ashtray overflowing with butts, soiled clothing strewn haphazardly on the floor, and an ancient, fuzzy television screen displaying a football match.

  But none of the detectives looked at the football. All of them stared, with puzzled faces, at the pencil sketches that papered almost every inch of the otherwise bare walls. From each of them an expressionless man stared out. He was the same man in every drawing, Grace realized, but he was aged progressively, from late teens to mid-sixties. At every stage he was portrayed with different hairstyles, with and without beard or moustache. They reminded Roy Grace of police Identi-Kit drawings.

  “Bloody hell,” Rebus muttered, stepping farther into the room. “It’s James King.” He turned to Ollie Starr. “Where did these—?”

  “My memory,” Starr said, flatly.

  “You’ve not seen him?”

  “Not since the day he stuck a knife in me.”

  “The likeness is amazing.”

  “Meaning you’ve got the bastard.” The muscles in Starr’s face seemed to relax a fraction. “Never forgot his face,” he continued. “And I was a student at Hornsey School of Art. Promising future, they said, maybe doing adverts and stuff. Instead of which, I’ve just been drawing him, year after year, hoping one day I’d see him.”

  Siobhan Clarke cleared her throat. “We think the man who attacked you is critically ill in hospital.”

  “Good.”

  “That answers my first question.”

  Starr’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that, then?”

  “Whether you’d want to go ahead with a prosecution after all this time.” She paused. “Against a man with not long to live.”

  “I want to see him,” Starr growled. “I need to see him, face-to-face, the closer the better. He has to be shown what he did. Ruined my life, and the only thing that kept me going was the dream.”

  “What dream?” Grace asked.

  “The dream of you lot coming here, delivering the news.” Starr blinked back a tear. We all have our dreams, eh?” His voice cracked a little. “But a man’s reach should exceed his grasp / Or what’s a heaven for?”

  Grace was moved that the man had read Browning. He lived in a tip, yet clutched at beauty. How different might his life have been if . . . ?

  If.

  He caught John Rebus’s eye, and then Siobhan Clarke’s, and knew they were thinking the same thing—while Potting tried to examine Clarke’s legs without her noticing.

  “We’d need to bring you to Edinburgh quickly,” Rebus was saying. “Could you fly up Monday?”

  “Train might be less hassle,” Starr said. “Give me time to decide whether to spit in his face first or go straight for a punch.”

  · · ·

  Hospitals always made Roy Grace feel uncomfortable. Too many memories of visiting his dying father and, later, his dying mother. Late on Monday afternoon he followed Rebus and Clarke along the corridor of the Royal Infirmary. It looked new, no smells of boiled cabbage or disinfectant. Transport had been awaiting the group at Waverley Station, Clarke making sure the visitors glimpsed the famous castle before they headed to the outskirts of the city. As Rebus pushed open the doors to the ward, Grace glanced back in the direction of Potting and Starr. Neither man showed any emotion.

  “Okay?” Grace checked, receiving two separate nods in reply.

  Rebus, however, had come to a sudden stop, Grace almost colliding with him. The bed in the corner was empty, the table next to it bare.

  “Shit,” Rebus muttered, eyes scanning the room. Plenty of patients, but no sign of the only one that mattered.

  “Can I help?” a nurse asked, her face arranged into a professional smile.

  “James King,” Rebus informed her. “Looks like we’re too late.”

  “Oh dear, yes.”

  “How long ago did he die?”

  The smile was replaced with something more quizzical. “He’s not dead,” she explained. “He went into remission. It happens sometimes, and if I were the religious sort . . .” She shrugged. “Spontaneous and inexplicable, but there you are. Mr. King’s back home in the bosom of his family, happy as the proverbial Larry!”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, REBUS KNOCKED on the door of the bungalow on Liberton Brae. Ella King answered, then stared stonily at the small entourage outside.

  “My husband’s changed his mind,” she blurted out. “It was the drugs he was taking. They got him hallucinating.”

  “Fine, then,” Rebus said, holding up his hands as if in surrender. “But could we come in a minute?”

  She didn’t seem at all sure, but Rebus was already barging past her, stalking down the hall toward the living room, Grace and Clarke right behind him. James King was seated in a large armchair, horse-racing on the television. He was dressed in slacks and a polo shirt, a newspaper on his lap and a mug of tea by his side.

  “You’ve heard the news?” he boomed. “They’re calling it a miracle, for want of any better explanation. And has Ella explained about the drugs? I must have been rambling, the time I talked to you.”

  “Is that a fact, sir? Well, is ther
e any chance you could ramble your way to the front door? There’s an old friend of yours waiting to see you.”

  King’s face creased in confusion, but Rebus was gesturing for him to get up, and get up he did, shuffling toward the front door.

  Norman Potting stood on the path outside, hands resting against the handles of Ollie Starr’s wheelchair.

  “James King,” Rebus said, “meet Oliver Starr.”

  “But we’ve never met. I . . . I don’t know him. What’s this all about?”

  “You know me, all right,” Starr snarled, his whole body writhing as if a current were passing through it. “Your bread knife’s still in an evidence locker in Brighton. Did your mum never ask you what happened to it?”

  Grace watched King’s face. It was as if the man had been slapped.

  “What’s going on?” his wife asked, voice trembling.

  “A man did die that day,” Clarke explained. “But not the man your husband attacked. When he saw it reported, he jumped to conclusions.”

  “Is this the man who stabbed you, Mr. Starr?” Grace asked.

  “I’d know him anywhere,” Ollie Starr replied, eyes burning into King’s.

  “You old fool,” Ella King yelped at her husband. “I told you to leave it alone, take it to the grave with you. Why did you have to bring it all up?”

  “James Ronald King,” Grace was intoning, “I have a warrant issued for your arrest. I’m arresting you on suspicion of the attempted murder of Oliver Starr. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?”

  “I’m in remission,” King gasped. “The rest of my life ahead of me . . .”

  “Had a good life so far, have you?” Starr snarled. “Better than mine, at any rate. All the years I’ve spent in a bloody wheelchair! No wife, no kids!”

  “You can’t do this,” Ella King was pleading. “He’s a very sick man.” Her hand was gripping her husband’s arm.

  Rebus shook his head. “He’s not ill, Mrs. King. We heard it from his own mouth.”

  “But he is sick,” Potting interjected. “Takes a sick mind to shove a knife so deep into someone it breaks their spine.”

  “So far in the past, though,” Ella King persisted. “Everything’s different now.”

  “Not so different,” Rebus replied, looking toward Clarke and Grace. “Besides which, I’d say we got here just in the nick of time.”

  Roy Grace nodded his agreement.

  Different cities, different cultures, different generations, even, but he knew he shared one thing above all else with John Rebus—pleasure in each and every result.

  R. L. STINE

  VS. DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD

  Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child created their character, FBI agent A. X. L. Pendergast, almost by accident. Lincoln was an editor at St. Martin’s Press and had just edited Doug’s first nonfiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, a history of the American Museum of Natural History. After that experience, the two decided to write a thriller set in a museum. Doug wrote the first few chapters—involving the investigation of a double murder—and sent them to Lincoln for his opinion. Lincoln read the pages and had one objection. He felt the two cops on the investigation were essentially identical. So he suggested they fold both into the same character (who became Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta). But then he added, “We need a new kind of detective for the second investigator. A person who’s unusual—and who’ll be like a fish out of water in New York City.”

  Doug, already irritated at this criticism of his prose, responded sarcastically, “Yeah, right. You mean, like an albino FBI agent from New Orleans?”

  Silence passed for a few moments between them.

  Then Lincoln said, “I think that could work.”

  Over the next fifteen minutes Special Agent Pendergast was formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus.

  And the rest, they say, is history.

  Over the course of many books Agent Pendergast has faced some unusual adversaries, including cannibalistic serial killers, arsonists, a murderous surgeon, a mutant assassin, and even his own mad-genius brother. But never has he confronted an adversary like Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy.

  Slappy is one of R. L. Stine’s creepiest creations. Bob is one of the best-selling authors of all time, with over 400 million books sold around the world. He is the creator of the amazing Goosebumps series of novels. Millions of kids began reading thanks to Bob’s imagination. Within the Goosebumps series Bob introduced Slappy, through such memorable tales as Night of the Living Dummy, Bride of the Living Dummy, and Son of Slappy. Carved from coffin wood, when brought to life by a certain spoken phrase, Slappy is sarcastic, rude, sadistic, and threatening, with a raspy voice and enormous physical strength. He usually seeks to enslave the luckless child who brought him back to life. He’s so popular that he’s the model for an actual ventriloquist’s dummy sold by many retailers to this day.

  Bob tells the story of how Slappy was inspired by a 1945 anthology film called Dead of Night. One segment of the movie told the story of a terrifying and murderous ventriloquist’s dummy that eventually took possession of his owner’s mind. Bob saw the film when he was young and it scared the daylights out of him. Interestingly, as a child, Bob owned a Jerry Mahoney dummy of his own. Eventually, he became fascinated by the idea that something so human-looking and seemingly harmless could turn so completely evil.

  The idea of pairing the elegant, urbane FBI agent Pendergast against an evil dummy seemed so incongruous—so impossible—that Doug, Lincoln, and Bob were immediately captivated by the challenge. The result is a psychological thriller where both the dummy and Agent Pendergast play against form, assuming roles that familiar readers may find strange and unsettling.

  One thing is certain—this story is not intended for children.

  Gaslighted

  THERE WAS A TAP-TAPPING sound. That was all. Was it a clock? No: it was too loud, too irregular. Was it the creaking of an old house? The ticking of a radiator?

  The man listened to the sound. Gradually he became aware of certain things—or rather, the absence of things. The absence of light. Of sensation. Of a name.

  That was unusual, was it not? He was a man with no name. He had no memory. He was a tabula rasa, an empty vessel. And yet he sensed that he knew many things. This was a paradox.

  The ticking sound grew louder. The man struggled to understand. Sensation began to return. He was blind—hooded. His hands and feet were immobilized. Not bound, but strapped. He was lying on a bed. He tried to move. The restraints were soft, comfortable, and effective.

  He was not hungry. He was not tired. He was neither hot nor cold. He was not frightened; he felt calm.

  Tap, tap, tap-tap. He listened. A thought came into his head: if he could understand what made that sound, perhaps all else would come back.

  He tried to speak, and a sound emerged. The hiss of breath.

  The tap-tapping stopped. Silence.

  Then he heard a creaking sound. This he recognized: footfalls on a wooden floor. They were growing closer. A hand grasped the hood, and he heard the sound of Velcro parting. The hood was gently removed and he saw a face drawing toward him. He realized, from the movement of air over his scalp, that his own head had been shaved. He had once had hair—at least he knew that much about himself.

  And then the face moved into his field of view. The light was dim but he could make out the face quite distinctly. It was a man in his forties, wearing a gray flannel suit. The face was sharp. It had high cheekbones, an aquiline nose. Bony ridges around the eyes gave it a skull-like, asymmetric quality. His hair was ginger-colored and he sported a thick, neatly trimmed beard. But the most startling effect was in his eyes: one was a rich hazel-green, clear and deep, the pupil dilated. The other was a milky blue, opaque, dead, the pupil contracted to a tiny black point.

  The
sight of the eyes triggered something—something massive. A Niagara of memory came thundering back, all at once, leaving the man on the bed almost paralyzed with the crushing weight of it. He stared at the man bending over him.

  “Diogenes,” he whispered.

  “Aloysius,” the man said, his brow furrowed with concern. “Thank God you’re awake.”

  Aloysius. Aloysius Pendergast. That was his name: Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.

  “You’re dead,” he said. “This is a dream.”

  “No,” said Diogenes, almost tenderly. “You’ve awakened from a dream. Now you’re on the road to healing—at long last.” As he said this, he leaned over and unstrapped his brother’s wrists from their leather restraints. He leaned over to fluff and adjust Pendergast’s pillow, smooth the sheets. “You can sit up if you feel able.”

  “You’ve done this to me. This is one of your schemes.”

  “Come now, please. Not this again.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Aloysius saw movement. He turned his head. The door to his room had opened and a woman was walking in. It was a woman he recognized instantly: Helen Esterhazy, his wife.

  His dead wife.

  He stared in horror as she approached. She reached out to take his hand and he pulled it away. “This is a hallucination,” he said.

  “This is very real,” she said gently.

  “Impossible.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed. “We’re alive—both of us. We’re here to assist in your recovery.”

  Aloysius Pendergast mutely shook his head. If this wasn’t a dream, then he must be under the influence of drugs. He would not cooperate in whatever was happening to him, whatever they were doing. He closed his eyes and tried to remember how he had gotten to this place; what events led up to this . . . imprisonment. But his short-term memory was a blank. What, then, was his last memory? He struggled to find it. But there was nothing—just a long, black road going back as far as his memory would travel.

  “We’re here to help you,” Diogenes added.

  Pendergast opened his eyes and stared into the heterochromic eyes of his brother. “You? Help me? You’re my worst enemy. And besides, you’re not here. You’re dead.”