The London Project (Portal Book 1) by Maxwell Mark J

Author:Maxwell, Mark J [Maxwell, Mark J]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Louisa trudged up the ramp out of the car park. She heard the wailing siren of an approaching ambulance. Her hands were still covered in Rick’s blood. She wiped them absently on her suit trousers.

Why aren’t you more upset? The thought almost made her stumble. Rick had just died in her arms. She should be feeling…something. Instead all she felt was numb.

Time for tears later. Louisa hoped it was true. Bottling things up didn’t help anyone in the long run. She’d end up taking it out on the kids and she sure as hell wasn’t going to become that stereotype. A workaholic on the job and an alcoholic at home—that’s where bottling things up got you.

At the top of the ramp two of the TST squad stood over Ouza’s body, cradling their carbines and clad in body armour, helmets, and goggles. The bastard’s dead, then. If he were still alive the squad members would be attempting to stabilise him.

They both noticed her approach at the same time and as one their weapons trained on her. Louisa froze and kept her hands out to her sides, well away from her body. The DI’s pistol was shoved into the waistband of her suit pants in the small of her back. She knew better than to approach a squad of heavily armed men with a weapon in hand.

‘Stand down!’

The shout came from behind the two men. Another member of the squad ran over. Sergeant Brooks, she assumed, noticing the stripes on his upper arm.

‘Detective Drachman?’ Brooks enquired.

Louisa shook her head. ‘He’s dead.’

Brooks winced, then nodded to the two officers who set off down the ramp at a jog.

Louisa walked over to stand beside Ouza. It’s brightening up. Morning already, the kids will need to get ready for school. Such strange, everyday thoughts to be having whilst staring at the body of a man who had killed so many people.

Ouza’s chest was riddled with bullet wounds. The pistol the DI had given Rick was in his right hand. You should have stuck with the knives. His face was still covered in the slick gel-like substance. Louisa crouched to get a better look but she kept her hands by her sides. It looked like the kind of thick ointment you might apply to a bad burn. There was nothing indicating it was anything out of the ordinary.

‘Do you know what the shit is on his face?’ Sergeant Brooks asked.

Louisa shook her head.

‘We tried to scan him, but it was the damnedest thing. He came up as a different person on the sense capture.’

*

Louisa accompanied the DI as he was wheeled out of her apartment on a trolley down to the waiting ambulance. The paramedics had left the knife in place, worried that extracting it would cause too much damage to the surrounding tissue.

The support team was still loitering beside their ARVs, parked in the middle of the street outside the apartment block. The cars hadn’t been moved since they’d pulled up and jumped out to confront Ouza.

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