Drought by Graham Masterton Page A

charged with homicide. My wife tells me that he was brought here.’
    â€˜You’ll have to show me some ID, sir. What’s your son’s name?’
    Martin reached into his shirt and lifted out his CFS identity badge. ‘Tyler, that’s his name. And I have a lawyer coming in maybe twenty minutes, David Lemos.’
    The young officer frowned at the ID badge for a moment, and then said, ‘OK, sir. Follow me.’
    He opened one of the doors and as he did so the crowd surged up the steps behind Martin, as if they, too, expected to be allowed inside. Two officers with nightsticks immediately moved across to hold them back.
    â€˜What do we want?’ the crowd kept on chanting. ‘Double-yah! Aye! Tee! Ee! Ar! –
water
!’
    Martin stepped into the chilly air-conditioned reception area. Once the door had been closed behind him, and the noise of the crowd was muffled by bombproof glass, it was eerily quiet in here, with only the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the polished marble floor, and the muted warbling of three or four unanswered telephones.
    â€˜That kid they brought in from Baker Division,’ the young officer told the desk sergeant. ‘This is his dad.’
    The desk sergeant was bulky and bald, with eyebrows that joined in the middle and a large brown wart on the side of his nose. He looked across at Martin with deep suspicion, as if Martin had deliberately fathered Tyler with the express intention of giving him extra work to do.
    â€˜Makepeace? OK. So far as I know your son is still here.’
    He picked up a phone and punched out a number. When he was answered, he cupped his hand over the receiver so that Martin couldn’t clearly hear what he was saying. Eventually he paused, and sniffed, and said, ‘OK.’ Then he looked up at Martin and said, ‘Won’t be too long, sir. Take a seat.’
    Martin waited for over fifteen minutes, sitting down at first on a very hard plywood chair, and then pacing up and down, and looking out through the windows at the restless crowd outside.
    He noticed that there was a water cooler on the opposite side of the reception area, and that officers and other staff were frequently stopping by to help themselves.
    He was still staring out of the window when he heard the squeaking of shoes behind him, and somebody coughed. He turned round to find himself facing an earnest-looking detective in a short-sleeved shirt and tan linen pants. He must have been only about thirty-six or thirty-seven, with a smooth oval face and a triangular nose like a sundial pointer. His dark brown hair was cut very short and parted on one side like a character from a 1960s TV comedy like
Bewitched.
    â€˜Mr Makepeace?’ he said. ‘Corporal George Evander, sir. Detective, Northwest Division.’
    Martin found it hard to keep his voice steady. ‘My wife says that you’ve brought in my son for shooting some storekeeper.’
    â€˜That’s correct, sir, yes. Your son was arrested in possession of a loaded firearm at Dan’s Food and Liquor on West Thirty-third Street, and the body of the store’s owner Emilio Alvarez was subsequently discovered behind the counter.’
    Martin shook his head. ‘You’ve made a mistake, detective. My son could never have shot anybody. It’s just not possible.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, sir. He was in the company of numerous other young men, but he was the one who was holding the weapon.’
    â€˜What other young men? He’s never gone around with a gang. He spends all of his time shut in his room playing video games.’
    â€˜We don’t yet know the identity of his companions, sir. They all fled the crime scene when our officers arrived, and so far we haven’t been able to trace them. Your son has given us a couple of gang names, but none of our patrol officers has heard of them, so it may be that he’s simply invented them to protect his