It’s the day of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and excitement is at fever pitch.
But a key athlete has gone missing and Detective Rafael Carvalho, on the brink of retirement, is assigned the case.
When the athlete suddenly appears at the ceremony, it seems the case is solved. But Carvalho soon discovers that he has returned with the deadliest of intentions.
JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 325 million copies worldwide and he has been the most borrowed author in UK libraries for the past nine years in a row. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers.
James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions and Maximum Ride series. James is the proud sponsor of the World Book Day Award and has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.
ALEX CROSS NOVELS
Along Came a Spider
Kiss the Girls
Jack and Jill
Cat and Mouse
Pop Goes the Weasel
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Four Blind Mice
The Big Bad Wolf
London Bridges
Mary, Mary
Cross
Double Cross
Cross Country
Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)
I, Alex Cross
Cross Fire
Kill Alex Cross
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross
Alex Cross, Run
Cross My Heart
Hope to Die
Cross Justice
THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB SERIES
1st to Die
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)
4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)
7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)
8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)
9th Judgement (with Maxine Paetro)
10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)
11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)
12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro)
Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro)
14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro)
15th Affair (with Maxine Paetro)
DETECTIVE MICHAEL BENNETT SERIES
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)
Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)
Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)
Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)
I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)
Gone (with Michael Ledwidge)
Burn (with Michael Ledwidge)
Alert (with Michael Ledwidge)
Bullseye (with Michael Ledwidge)
PRIVATE NOVELS
Private (with Maxine Paetro)
Private London (with Mark Pearson)
Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Down Under (with Michael White)
Private L.A. (with Mark Sullivan)
Private India (with Ashwin Sanghi)
Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Sydney (with Kathryn Fox)
Private Paris (with Mark Sullivan)
The Games (with Mark Sullivan)
NYPD RED SERIES
NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 3 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 4 (with Marshall Karp)
STAND-ALONE THRILLERS
Sail (with Howard Roughan)
Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)
Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)
Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)
Toys (with Neil McMahon)
Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)
Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)
Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)
Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)
Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
Mistress (with David Ellis)
Invisible (with David Ellis)
The Thomas Berryman Number
Truth or Die (with Howard Roughan)
Murder House (with David Ellis)
NON-FICTION
Torn Apart (with Hal and Cory Friedman)
The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard)
ROMANCE
Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)
First Love (with Emily Raymond)
OTHER TITLES
Miracle at Augusta (with Peter de Jonge)
BOOKSHOTS
Black & Blue (with Candice Fox)
Break Point (with Lee Stone)
Cross Kill
Private Royals (with Rees Jones)
The Hostage (with Robert Gold)
Zoo 2 (with Max DiLallo)
Heist (with Rees Jones)
Hunted (with Andrew Holmes)
Airport: Code Red (with Michael White)
The Trial (with Maxine Paetro)
Little Black Dress (with Emily Raymond)
FOR THIRTY-NINE LONG years, the telephone on Juliana’s side of the bed has rung out in the middle of the night, the same way it is ringing right now. Juliana has never complained. Not one time. Whenever it happens, she just hands me the receiver, and tells me not to get myself killed.
The phone is on Juliana’s side of the bed because there is nothing on my side except a wall. I earn a cop’s wages, and we live in a house the size of a shoebox. I roll over and press the tiny button on my black plastic Casio and it lights up. 4 a.m.
‘Carvalho?’ Vitoria Paz, my partner for the past two years, is the voice on the end of the line.
I grunt. My bones hurt.
‘I hate to wake you.’
‘Everyone hates to wake me,’ I tell her. ‘That’s why they always wake you first.’
I hear her sigh, but I know she’s smiling.
‘I’ll be at your place in five minutes.’
She’s talking out of the side of her mouth because she’s smoking. She smokes a lot. Paz is twenty-six years old and tough as nails.
‘What’s the deal?’ I ask, rolling out of bed.
‘Missing person.’
I pull on socks in the dark. I’m an expert at this.
‘Won’t they still be missing after I’ve had a decent night’s sleep?’ I hear Paz take another drag on her cigarette.
‘The missing guy is an athlete,’ she says. ‘So you know how that goes at the moment.’
I know exactly how that goes. The Olympic Games officially open in a few hours’ time, and the world’s media are in Rio. Actually, the whole world is in Rio. And everyone, from the President down, is nervous.
‘How long has this athlete been gone?’
‘Twelve hours,’ Paz says. ‘Get some coffee down your neck – you sound irritable.’
I put the phone back on the beaten-up dresser as quietly as I can, but I hear Juliana stir.
‘Rafael,’ she says. ‘Don’t get yourself killed.’
I promise her that I won’t, and I listen to her breathing soften. As Juliana slips back into her dreams, I use the blue backlight of the Casio to guide me out of the bedroom and down into the kitchen. I set the kettle on the stove and pull my badge and gun from the cupboard above the refrigerator. Soon Paz’s headlights wash through the kitchen window and I get a first glimpse of myself in the mirror. I look crumpled. My hair is longer than it should be; still mostly brown, but greying at the temples. I haven’t shaved for two days and I’m wearing yesterday’s shirt. It’s fair to say I’ve looked better.
Behind the wheel of her tiny Fiat, Paz looks fresh. The car reeks of smoke as I get in. It’s warm out, and Paz is wearing a tight black vest and jeans. Paz runs three times a week, boxes at a local gym and benches one hundred and forty pounds. She hides her strength and grit behind a perfect white smile, sparkling brown eyes and a mop of black hair, which frames her face in tight spirals.
‘Morning, Carvalho.’
‘Morning. You okay?’
‘Better than you, by the looks of things.’ I smile.
‘That’s not saying so much.’
Paz pulls slowly off the drive and doesn’t hit the accelerator properly until we’re out of earshot of Juliana. Paz swears like a bartender and smokes like a chimney, but whenever she is around my wife, she acts like an altar girl on her way to church. Soon enough, though, she puts her foot to the floor and I’m holding on to my scalding coffee with calloused fingers, hoping to Christ that she doesn’t hit a pothole and scar me for life.
‘Do you have to drive quite so fast? I’m two weeks off retirement and I’d like to get there alive, if it’s all the same to you. It’s a missing-person case, not a shootout.’
Paz smiles. She loves it when I’m grouchy. She has one hand on the wheel and is using the other to cram a new cigarette into her mouth, before flicking a steel Zippo to light it.
‘The missing athlete is Tim Gilmore,’ she says. ‘Have you heard of him?’
‘The Australian guy?’
I have an image of Tim Gilmore in my head. He’s Australia’s poster boy, and I’ve seen the pictures of him on billboards and adverts around the city. He’s blond, tanned and tall.
‘Javelin, right?’
Paz nods as the cigarette catches. Her eyes narrow against the smoke, making her look like a Mexican bandit scanning the horizon for trouble.
‘Yeah. He’s their team captain, too,’ Paz says, taking another drag. ‘Twenty-seven years old. It’s his second Olympics. He’s got a strong chance of a medal. At least he would, if anybody knew where he was.’
We pass rows of houses as the tiny Fiat speeds across the city. My free hand, the one that isn’t holding the coffee, is holding on to the edge of the seat. The fabric has worn through over the years and exposed the foam underneath. There’s a hole where Paz’s five-year-old boy Felipe has been picking away at it with his tiny fingers. He’s the only person who sits in Paz’s passenger seat more often than me. Each time I get into her car, the hole in the foam is bigger.
‘Felipe’s like a moth in a wardrobe,’ I tell her. ‘This seat’s going to disappear eventually.’
Paz doesn’t bite.
‘Gilmore trained late yesterday afternoon,’ she says. ‘But he never showed up to eat with his team in the evening. He’s not answering his phone, either.’
‘Late afternoon?’ I push the blue backlight on my watch. ‘That’s only twelve hours ago.’
‘I know,’ Paz says as she winds down the window and flicks out her cigarette butt. ‘Makes you wonder why they’re so twitchy, doesn’t it?’
‘Get used to it,’ I tell her. ‘It’s gonna be like the World Cup all over again. Everybody is going to be watching their backs and covering their behinds for the next two weeks, and if anything goes wrong they’ll go ballistic.’
Suddenly Paz slams on the brakes and we come to a stop with a tyre screech loud enough to wake a city block. I look at her side-ways as I swill down the last of my coffee and put the cup on the dashboard.
‘Was that really necessary?’
‘Nope,’ she grins. ‘But it felt good. Anyway, we’re here.’
We park up on Rua Carioca, surrounded by thirty-one high-rise blocks full of the world’s most talented athletes. Nearly four thousand flats. New coffee shops, flower shops and post offices have sprung up on every corner. But right now, everything is closed and deserted.
‘Party central,’ Paz says. ‘Not.’
She is right. The air is still and the lights behind the thousands of windows are almost all turned off.
‘Athletes love to sleep. It’s one of the few things I have in common with them these days. Come on.’
Gilmore’s coach is waiting for us in the lobby.
‘Hunter Brown,’ he says in a broad Aussie accent. He has a firm, dry handshake and bright, attentive eyes, just the right side of furtive.
‘Carvalho,’ I say. ‘And this is Detective Paz.’
Vitoria shakes his hand.
‘Has he shown up yet?’
Brown shakes his head. I frown as we walk over to a couple of sofas at the far side of the lobby. Hunter Brown looks away, composing his thoughts.
‘I get it,’ he says. ‘You probably think I’m overreacting.’
I say nothing.
‘Listen. Tim has trained for four years for this event. He wouldn’t run out on us now. Not unless something is very wrong.’
He’s genuinely worried.
‘Has he ever gone missing before?’ Paz asks.
Brown shakes his head.
‘No way. We’ve been locked on this schedule for eighteen months. He calls me if he’s heading out for a run. He calls me if he’s thinking about eating something new. He’s petrified of WADA.’
‘The anti-doping guys?’
‘Too right,’ Brown says. ‘They can knock on your door any time, demanding urine and blood.’
‘Gilmore’s clean, though?’ Paz asks.
‘You bet. But if you’re not there when they show up, the world thinks you’re a cheat for the rest of your career. Especially when you’re as good as Tim.’
He sighs, and I wonder if he’s slept at all.
‘Can you get us into Gilmore’s room?’ I ask.
He nods.
‘He’s sharing with Oscar Ryan, the hammer-thrower. Have you heard of him?’
I shake my head.
‘You will have, by the end of these Games,’ Hunter Brown says and, for a moment, he smiles. ‘Anyway, Oscar’ll let us in.’
‘Well,’ Paz says. ‘Let’s go and wake him up.’
THE LIFT IS tight and intimate, and I get the feeling Hunter Brown wants to tell me something. Before he gets a chance, the doors open and we’re out into a long, straight corridor. The place smells of fresh paint and new carpet.
We walk down the corridor until Brown stops outside a door and says, ‘This is it.’
A brooding hulk of a guy opens the door and fills most of the frame. He looks as though he could crush a man without breaking a sweat, and without losing much sleep over it, either. I assume he’s Oscar Ryan, but I never find out because he gives the slightest nod of recognition to Hunter Brown while scowling at all three of us, and then melts back into the darkness and disappears into his room.
‘There’s something you need to know about Tim Gilmore,’ Brown says as he leads us through the gloom. ‘He is not in a great place right now.’