Pressure Chamber

Nir Hezroni

Description

Four babies have been kidnapped from four different maternity wards in Tel Aviv. With not a single lead to follow, all investigators can do is wait patiently for the suspect they call ‘The Babysitter’ to make their next move.

Four weeks earlier, on a quiet street, a medical student went out for a run and was killed by a hit and run driver. Then a second student went out and never returned. Daphne Dagan, a young, talented police officer, is first to realize that the hit and run and the kidnappings are related.

But she's also in the middle of her own battle - a recurring nightmare that's been haunting her for years. The strain of dealing with a real-life killer and kidnapper during the day, and the man who murders her in her sleep each night drive her into a place of darkness and despair from which she must escape if she is to catch ‘The Babysitter’.

PRAISE FOR NIR HEZRONI

‘This book has a clever plot and plays upon the fear that there are hidden persons out there prepared to do us harm for obscure reasons... There are passages that make you gasp in horror.’ Crime Review

‘Hezroni’s superior thriller debut will send chills up the spines of even jaded genre fans.’ Publishers Weekly

‘Thriller fans will be enthralled as well as disturbed.’ Washington Post

‘Clever, compelling, dark, twisted and disturbing - this highly original novel packs a punch!’ Sam Carrington

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Women Sleuths
• Medical
• Thrillers
• Medicine
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789559040
• Langue: English

Extrait

Pressure Chamber
Nir Hezroni
Translated by Steven Cohen
Legend Press Ltd, 51 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HJ
[e-mail] | www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents Nir Hezroni 2021
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
First published in Hebrew by T chelet Publishing in 2020.
English Translation by Steven Cohen.
Print ISBN 978-1-78955-9-033
Ebook ISBN 978-1-78955-9-040
Set in Times. Printing managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd
Cover design by Simon Levy | www.simonlevy.co.uk
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Nir Hezroni was born in Jerusalem. His first two thrillers, were sold in two-book deals in six territories and have been optioned for film by Sony Pictures Television Inc. He now lives with his family near Tel-Aviv.
Follow Nir @nirhezroni
Warning. Lucid dreaming, and how to induce lucid dreams, as described in the book, are very real. All people react to sleep paralysis differently, and some responses also have the potential to be problematic and could give rise to phenomena such as nightmares and psychological trauma. This book does not constitute a recommendation to experiment with lucid dreaming, does not purport to be a guide to lucid dreaming, and the author cannot be held responsible or accountable for any harm that may come, Heaven forbid, to any readers who decide to try out something from the book on themselves.
A second warning. The process of guiding someone into a trance that appears in Chapter 81 is real and shouldn t be tried without prior knowledge of hypnosis.
Sleep, little baby, sleep Daddy has gone to the fields Mommy has gone out to work The demon with the hollow eyes is waiting on your rooftop Sleep peacefully, little baby Sleep deep
1.
She used to run along the seashore when it rained. The sand would empty of people and she could run fast without having to weave around amblers or beachgoers sitting under umbrellas with children sowing minefields of colorful plastic toys in her path. In the winter, she runs along the waterline, her feet leaving quick-fire impressions in wet sand in the wake of the receding waves, like skin that tightens after someone holds your hand over the spout of a boiling kettle, like her father used to do to her when she was small.
Daphne!
It always happened if she misbehaved, and she always misbehaved, or most of the time at least, so he d say. If she d known how to behave, she would have, and then there d have been fewer marks on her hands.
Daphne! Come here!
She tried, when she was very small, with all her might, but the slaps and fists never failed to materialize, and so she stopped trying, and waited for it to happen. Better to bring things to the boil quickly, to take the punishment and get it over with.
Heavy steps Her bedroom door opens A large hand grabs a small wrist and tugs
The waves rumble to her right, raindrops drum against the sand. Water, a chemical compound composed of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, boils at one hundred degrees and freezes at zero. A human body is usually at 38.6 when measured with a thermometer under the tongue. A third of the way between the blue pain of zero and the red of one hundred.
It s cold outside, but her body is warm, and she moves closer to the water s edge, running over the white foamy limits of the waves that lick the sand, paying no heed to the small rocks that stab her bare feet.
Everything s gray. Dulled. The pain, too.
PART 1
THE GUARDIAN
AUGUST 2016
2.
Don t fight it.
He leans over her. A slender trail of blood trickles from her ear and drips onto the road, creating a bright red puddle on the black asphalt.
Don t be afraid.
Her eyes open. She tries to say something, but her lips won t move.
It ll be over soon.
Her right foot convulses in her white Nike running shoe and stills. He puts his ear to her mouth and feels no breath.
He slowly runs the tip of his finger from her hairline all along the bridge of her nose, her mouth slightly open, his finger skipping from the upper to the lower lip, chin, neck, chest, grazed stomach from the blow, with horizontal scratches in the region of her belly button, covered with small drops of blood. A piercing. Silver-plated clover leaf.
He touches the tip of her nose again.
There we go, it s over. You see? It was quick.
That which dies, let it die; and that which is cut off, let it be cut off. Zechariah, Chapter 11 , Verse 9. Nine Eleven.
He stands up straight and walks away. Slowly.
It ll take him years at this rate. He isn t putting enough into this cycle and needs to amend his priorities somewhat. So many things to do. Life is the sequence of actions you take in the limited period of time afforded to you. People can live their entire lives without doing anything meaningful. Without driving a spoke into the universe.
He inhales deeply, drawing in the scent of the flowers in the courtyards of the private homes along the winding street, the smell of perfume, the sweat and blood on the sweatpants of the girl lying on the road, the stench of the fur of the dog lazing in the yard of the nearest house. The humid summer air pulsates around him. The earth and the flora moves and breathes. People in small houses are fast asleep in their boxy middle-class existences.
He gets into the car, which awaits him open-doored, buckles up and drives off.
3.
Daphne is sleeping in nothing but a pair of panties. The three-room apartment she rents with Anna is equipped with an air conditioner in the living room only, and that died on them a few days ago. She tried calling the landlords, only to learn that they were in China, on an organized tour for senior citizens. We ll take care of it the moment we return, in five weeks time, they informed her before hanging up.
The fan she purchased does a good job of dispersing the humidity evenly throughout the room and cools her back somewhat by helping the sweat evaporate at a quicker rate. She of all people knows that the evaporation rate of a liquid depends on the type of liquid, its temperature, the surface area and the air flow above its surface. Under identical conditions, acetone will evaporate faster than benzene, which will evaporate faster than chloroform. She remembers the table of evaporation coefficients of liquids by heart.
The same nightmare keeps recurring. Her eyes move under her closed eyelids and the sweat on her back, comprised of water with the addition of sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium, evaporates into the expanse of the room, mixing with the general humidity of the apartment and, through the open windows, the city of Tel Aviv as a whole. SCAMP. As a student of molecular biology, she used to come up with acronyms to remember the assortment of chemicals racing through the human body. Sweat is mostly SCAMP. Sodium. Calcium. Magnesium. Potassium.
She turns to the left in her sleep to lie on her side in the fetal position, exposing a sweat stain on the sheet. Sweat can be used sometimes for forensic identification purposes. Sweat can contain small traces of zinc, copper, iron, chromium, nickel and lead, and everyone has different amounts. Bodily fluids, skin cells, fingerprints, hairs - from the second we emerge from the body that has sheltered us, up to the moment we start to decompose and turn into other chemical compounds, after two and a half billion heartbeats, we re constantly scattering remnants of ourselves wherever we go. The yellow brick road , she calls it; though she doesn t feel like Dorothy - she feels closer to Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.
She didn t set an alarm for this morning. She only got out of the lab yesterday at 11 p.m., and, arriving home at her dilapidated apartment on HaNevi im Street after an hour-and-a-half drive from the National Israeli Police Headquarters, she immediately crashed into bed.
Her cell phone rings.
Still half asleep, and thinking it s the alarm she didn t set, she reaches out and silences the device. It rings again a few seconds later. She looks at the screen. The name of her team leader appears alongside the time: five-thirty.
Nathan?
Daph, don t come into HQ this morning.
You re an angel. I m going back to sleep.
No, what I mean is you need to get up now and get yourself to Kiryat Ono.
She looks at the half-closed shutter and the sun s rays penetrating it creating sunspots on the bed, then reads the time on her cell phone. It s five-thirty in the morning.
A hit-and-run, young girl dead at the scene.
Shit. She rubs her eyes.
Do you have the kit in the car?
It takes her a few seconds to remember before responding. Yes. What s the address?
It s 25 Trumpeldor Street. Kiryat Ono.
I hope I make it there before they contaminate the entire scene. You on your way?
Yes, dressing and leaving Jerusalem in a few minutes. I ll be there in an hour or so, depending on traffic.
See you there.
Daphne.
What?
Look with the eyes of a child. Ask yourself: What s different? What s happening on the street around the scene? What s there that appears
to be out of place. Doesn t belong there. On my way.
She sits up in bed and stretches through a yawn, then heads to the shower and stands under a stream of cold water. She needs to wake up. She has to be sharp. She can t afford t