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Chapters (45)
  1. The Man With No Face
  2. Also by
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Contents
  8. INTRODUCTION
  9. CHAPTER ONE
  10. CHAPTER TWO
  11. CHAPTER THREE
  12. CHAPTER FOUR
  13. CHAPTER FIVE
  14. CHAPTER SIX
  15. CHAPTER SEVEN
  16. CHAPTER EIGHT
  17. CHAPTER NINE
  18. CHAPTER TEN
  19. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  20. CHAPTER TWELVE
  21. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  22. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  23. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  24. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  25. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  26. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  27. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Kale panicked. Suddenly the prison door had slammed shut and he was still on the inside. The screaming went on and on, and yet it must only have been seconds. Everything was happening in slow motion. It wasn’t a conscious decision to draw the gun from his holster, but the instincts that had kept him alive all these years. He was aware of the gun trembling in his hand as he raised it with the speed and efficiency of training and practice. And for just one more second there was an enormous battle between will and instinct, before he squeezed the trigger and saw the child thrown backwards.

Now there was screaming all around him and he glanced to either side, still unable to move. The elderly American was advancing slowly towards him, his wife yelling at him hysterically. ‘Henry . . .!’

‘Okay, son, give me the gun,’ the American was saying. ‘You’ve done what you came to do. No need for anyone else to get hurt now. Just give me the gun.’ The voice was soothing, relaxing, its effect almost hypnotic. Kale felt his gun hand dropping.

Then there was a voice shouting at him above the noise of all the others. He looked round and saw the dark uniform of a security policeman. He looked back helplessly at the American, and for a second Schumacher thought he saw the hint of a tear in the man’s eye.

Kale ran, bodies scurrying to either side, squealing like rats in a panic. Again he heard the voice of the security officer and he seemed to be running into a vast emptiness. The guard levelled his pistol and fired one, two, three times.

Kale’s head hit the tiles with a smack and his body slithered on for several metres across their shiny surface, carried by its own momentum, spraying blood in its wake. He came to rest, twisted and ugly, with a pool of blood spreading rapidly around him. His eyes were open and staring through the walls of glass across the runway. But he saw nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I

The sound of voices echoed mechanically along the corridor, footsteps on a hard floor, unseen doors opening and closing. They seemed remote, disconnected. A nurse in white uniform wheeling a trolley from one ward to the next, the sound of an orderly laughing, cut short by doors swinging shut.

Bannerman stood in the emptiness of the glass-walled reception hall. The lights above reflected off the polished floor. He glanced across at the bowed head of Henry Schumacher sitting on one of the red vinyl seats, and thought of the man’s courage in stepping forward to face the gunman. He thought, too, of the child’s blood on his own hands, and he glanced at them now. They were pale and white, the blood all washed away.