FaceOff by Dennis Lehane, James Rollins, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, R. L. Stine, Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, Peter James, Steve Martini, Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Joseph Finder, Lee Child, Raymond Khoury, Linwood Barclay, Steve Berry, John Sandford, M. J. Rose, Lisa Gardner, F. Paul Wilson, T. Jefferson Parker, John Lescroart, Linda Fairstein Read Free Book Online Page B

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 withhim 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 theman 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