The Mentor Read Online Free PDF

very well, and I never forget a face.”
    He seemed curious to hear what I was saying, but at the same time his expression darkened, as if somewhere in the back of his head unpleasant thoughts were starting to push their way up through his memories.
    I smiled. “My father was thirty-four, my mother was thirty-one, and my brother was just nine years old.”
    Thompson’s brow furrowed.
    I stopped smiling, and the tone of my voice grew hard. “And the safe was upstairs.”
    The man’s eyes turned enormous, and it seemed like some faint thread of recognition appeared there. His mouth dropped open. “Oh, fuck me,” he whispered, standing up in a rush, knocking over the chair behind him.
    I stood up as well, pointing the pistol with the long silencer straight at him. “Behave, Nick. Lie down on the floor.” I started laughing. “You’ll like it; you’ll see.”

CHAPTER 3
    He yawned in front of the papers spread out across his desk, then checked the time on his computer screen. It was after nine already. Saturday night, and he had been working nonstop since eight that morning. After having pored over the Thompson murder scene, he began dusting off old cases together with Miriam, searching for leads. They hadn’t found anything noteworthy. Nowadays all the information and proof collected in each case was archived in the Metropolitan Police’s main server and was available for review with a click of the mouse, but the farther back you looked, the more fragmented and incomplete the data became. The process by which material evidence was transferred to digital storage continued nonstop, but it privileged the crimes people believed to be more important than others. Minor theft or charges that were brought and then later dropped, as often happened with sexual abuse charges, wound up at the bottom of the list. You had to go back to the old paper files, which were full of irrelevant information, yellowed photographs, and barely legible handwritten notes.
    Eric took off his reading glasses and pressed two fingers into his forehead, as if to drive away the ache that had been twisting its way through his head for hours.
    Maybe he should give up for tonight and get a good night’s sleep. He knew that he would have to make a superhuman effort tomorrow to prevent himself from coming back to the department. His body needed rest, but his mind couldn’t stop turning over the details. He feared that if he loosened his grip, he’d be forced to come to terms with the way he was living and wind up spending another day off wallowing in memories and melancholy, full of self-pity—like he usually did on the weekends he spent without his kids. He would have loved to just go to bed, sleep all day Sunday, and wake up ready to go on Monday morning. Unfortunately, he could rarely stay asleep for more than seven hours, and so in any case he’d wind up watching the sun rise on yet another day in his useless existence.
    And then he’d wind up back here, in Scotland Yard.
    Eric turned off the computer and put on his jacket. Outside it was pouring rain against the window, and he had no idea where he’d put his umbrella. The St. James’s Park station was just a short walk away, but he’d already be soaked by walking from the New Scotland Yard exit to the gate surrounding the building.
    As Eric walked down the hallway, out of the corner of his eye he noticed a light on in one of the laboratories. He wasn’t the only person putting in a late night. He peeked through the doorway and found someone wearing a white lab coat at a large table in the center of the room. She arranged sealed envelopes with one hand while checking a tablet, which she held in the other. Her back was turned, but he recognized her immediately all the same. Her graceful bearing and chestnut-brown hair with auburn highlights that glimmered in the bright ceiling lights were dead giveaways.
    Eric stood still and watched her for a moment. Adele seemed unaware she had company. She