the Third Twin (1996)

He froze, clenching his fists at his sides. Don’t do it, he said to himself, don’t fight back. It was hard. Detective Allaston was overweight and out of condition, and Steve knew he could lay the bastard out in no time. But he had to control himself. All he had to hold on to was his innocence. If he beat up a cop, no matter how he had been provoked, he would be guilty of a crime. And then he might as well give up. He would lose heart if he did not have that sense of righteous indignation to buoy him up. So he stood there, rigid, his teeth clenched, while Allaston pulled him off the wall and slammed him back twice, three times, four times.

“Don’t ever speak to me like that again, you punk,” Allaston said.

Steve felt his rage ebb away. Allaston was not even hurting him. This was theater, he realized. Allaston was acting a part and doing it badly. He was the tough guy and Mish was the nice one. In a while she would come in and offer him coffee and pretend to be his friend. But she would have the same aim as Allaston: to persuade Steve to confess to the rape of a woman he had never met called Lisa Margaret Hoxton. “Let’s cut the crap, Detective,” he said. “I know you’re a tough son of a bitch with hairs growing out of your nostrils, and you know that if we were somewhere else and you didn’t have that gun on your belt I could beat the shit out of you, so let’s stop trying to prove ourselves.”

Allaston looked surprised. No doubt he had expected Steve to be too scared to speak. He let go of Steve’s shirtfront and walked to the door.

“They told me you were a smart-ass,” he said. “Well, let me tell you what I’m going to do for your education. You’re going back to the cells for a while, but this time you’ll have company. You see, all the forty-one empty cells down there are somehow out of commission, so you’re going to have to share with a guy called Rupert Butcher, known as Porky. You think you’re a big motherfucker, but he’s bigger. He’s coming down from a three-day crack party, so he has a headache. Last night, around the time you were setting fire to the gymnasium and sticking your nasty dick into poor Lisa Hoxton, Porky Butcher was stabbing his lover to death with a gardening fork. You should enjoy one another. Let’s go.”

Steve was scared. All his courage ebbed away as if a plug had been pulled, and he felt defenseless and defeated. The detective had humiliated him without really threatening to hurt him badly; but a night with a psychopath was seriously dangerous. This Butcher character had already committed a murder: if he were capable of rational thought he would know that he had little to lose by committing another.

“Wait a minute,” Steve said shakily.

Allaston turned back slowly. “Well?”

“If I confess, I get a cell to myself.”

Relief showed in the detective’s expression. “Sure,” he said. His voice had suddenly become friendly.

The change of tone caused Steve to burn with resentment. “But if I don’t, I get murdered by Porky Butcher.”

Allaston spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

Steve felt his fear turn to hatred. “In that case, Detective,” he said, “fuck you.”

The surprised look came back into Allaston’s face. “You bastard,” he said. “We’ll see if you’re so goddamn feisty in another couple of hours. Come on.”

He took Steve to the elevator and escorted him to the cell block. Spike was still there. “Put this creep in with Porky,” Allaston told him.

Spike raised his eyebrows. “That bad, huh?”

“Yeah. And by the way—Steve here has nightmares.”

“That so?”

“If you hear him cry out—don’t worry about it, he’s just dreaming.”

“I get you,” Spike said.

Allaston left and Spike took Steve to his cell.

Porky was lying on the bunk. He was about Steve’s height but a lot heavier. He looked like a bodybuilder who had been in a car wreck: his bloodstained T-shirt was stretched tight over bulging muscles. He lay on his back, head toward the rear of the cell, feet hanging over the end of the bunk. He opened his eyes when Spike unlocked the gate and let Steve in.

It crashed shut and Spike locked it.

Porky opened his eyes and stared at Steve.

Steve stared back for a moment.

“Sweet dreams,” Spike said.

Porky closed his eyes again.

Steve sat on the floor, with his back to the wall, and watched Porky sleep.

14

BERRINGTON JONES DROVE HOME SLOWLY. HE FELT DISAPPOINTED and relieved at the same time. Like a dieter who wrestles with temptation all the way to the ice-cream parlor, then finds it closed, he had been saved from something he knew he ought not to do.

He was no closer to solving the problem of Jeannie’s project and what it might uncover, however. Maybe he should have spent more time questioning her and less having fun. He frowned in perplexity as he parked outside the house and went in.

The place was quiet: Marianne, the housekeeper, must have gone to bed. He went into the den and checked his answering machine. There was one message.