Dead Heat, page 10
She stood in the middle of the road and waved. Immediately the car slowed as the revs were cut, then it lurched to a rocking stop and a man leaped out and ran for her, his face a pale white shape in the headlights. He wore a long white robe and sandals. For a second she thought she was hallucinating. He looked like Lawrence of Arabia.
‘Are you all right? What happened? What are you doing all the way out here?’
‘I’m just a bit wet, that’s all. Thanks for stopping.’ Her voice was surprisingly calm through her chattering teeth.
The man made to touch her arm and Georgia flinched.
‘You’re hurt,’ he said, expression mortified. ‘You’ve blood everywhere. Do you want me to call the police?’
‘No!’ Georgia could feel her features stiffen in horror. ‘No police!’
The man paused, then said cautiously, ‘How about a doctor?’
Georgia shook her head and headed for his car. She heard his footsteps behind her. Following her.
‘You need a hospital, there’s so much blood. Your jeans . . .’
He sounded tense and anxious. Georgia ignored him and clambered inside the car, pulling the door shut and buckling up. She covered her bandaged finger with her right hand. She was shivering and aching all over. Her head was thundering. She felt like she might be sick.
A click, then the sounds of the man climbing inside the car, slamming shut his door. The sound of a seat belt being buckled.
Small silence.
‘My name’s Yumuru.’
‘Georgia.’
‘Georgia, let me take you to a hospital. Please.’
She gritted her teeth against his gentle tone.
He started the engine. ‘Okay. How about the Lotus Healing Centre? It has a wonderful clinic. Mind you, I would say that since I run the place. And I won’t report anything to the police if you don’t want.’
She couldn’t think where else to go, so she gave a small nod.
‘I’ll check you over when we get there. Then you can rest up for as long as you like.’
Fifteen
They weren’t far from Nulgarra after all and when Yumuru slowed down before a driveway on the edge of town, Georgia could hardly believe it. The headlights lit a familiar bend in the road and an ancient fig tree she recognised, but instead of a small notice hammered into the tree saying ‘Free Spirits Welcome’, there was a large new wooden sign – ‘Lotus Healing Centre’.
‘This is it?’ she asked incredulously, as he turned the car down the drive.
‘Yup.’
It was where the commune used to be. She’d lived here for nine years with her mother and sister and, it had seemed, dozens of other free spirits. When the land had been sold and they’d been forced to leave, none of them returned. They couldn’t bear to see what the developer had done to their home.
‘The road’s been graded,’ she said. ‘It must have cost a fortune.’
‘Two hundred grand. It’s worth it, though. I get patients from all over the country, some from overseas too. Not all of them appreciate being shaken, rattled and rolled down the drive.’
She saw the rickety phone pylons had gone and assumed the lines were now underground. Not that the commune had had phones in every cabin, just the one in the cookhouse, left by the previous owner, who had abandoned his run-down property. Her mother’s boyfriend at the time hadn’t wanted it reconnected when they moved in, but Linette had insisted, for emergencies.
Yumuru looked across at her, then back at the headlights cutting across the forest-lined road. She couldn’t make out much of him in the gloom of the car, except that he had a well-defined profile and curly black hair flowing in luxuriant waves from a high forehead and caught in a ponytail at his nape.
‘You’ve been here before?’
‘I used to live here.’ Georgia’s tone was faint.
‘Not the commune?’
She nodded.
‘You’ll find things have changed a bit since then.’
She glanced over at him. The light bounced off his little round, gold-rimmed glasses. She wanted to ask him why he’d chosen such a remote location, but didn’t have the energy against the pain of her finger.
‘I’ve been healing for over fifteen years now. I used to be in the army, if you can imagine it. It’s good for marketing. The last headline was “Killer Turned Healer”. I quite liked that.’
His voice was calm and steady, and she realised he was trying to build her confidence in him and inject a sense of normality into her pain and her silence.
‘It’s the centre’s tenth birthday soon. Some days I can’t believe we’ve been going that long. I healed a very ill, very rich woman in Melbourne once and she helped get me started. She even named the place, the lotus being her favourite flower. Without her, I’d never have helped as many people as I have, and being half-Aboriginal – half-psychic, my mum used to say – it’s not entirely surprising I changed careers so dramatically. The army indeed.’ He snorted. ‘Thanks, Dad.’
He braked, and the automatic transmission clicked as it changed down a gear. The headlights swept over an immaculate car park dotted with baby African oil palms.
‘You need a wheelchair or anything?’ Yumuru’s tone was light, but Georgia could feel his anxiety.
‘No, thanks.’
He stopped the car in front of a broad set of slate-and-wood steps, and tripped off the floodlights. Georgia clambered dizzily outside, barely able to recognise the place. There were no tin-roofed cabins, no vegetable plots, no chickens and bantams scratching between flowering shrubs. The forest had swallowed all evidence of the commune and in its stead was a large, thatched Balinese-style building. Its roof was draped in bougainvillea, its wrap-around verandah adorned with elaborate wicker chairs and glossy ferns. A large sign, ‘Seminar Building’, pointed left to a low-slung building made with the same materials. The place was tasteful and elegant, and dripped with exclusivity.
A man in shorts and singlet came across the car park and spoke with Yumuru before Georgia was shepherded into a reception area. Lots of deeply polished wood, bamboo chairs and scattered rugs. The smell of hay. In the light, Yumuru was older than she’d thought, probably in his early forties. She noticed his hands, long and delicate, the colour of nutmeg. They were surgeon’s hands, smooth as a girl’s, the nails lightly shaped and buffed to a high sheen.
Glancing at the man in shorts, Yumuru said, ‘Frank tells me the police are searching for someone matching your description who was kidnapped earlier today. Can we at least let them know you’re okay? We don’t, er . . . have to tell them where you are.’
Georgia ignored the longing to fall into a heap and straightened her spine. ‘That would be great. And you’re right, they ought to know . . . It might help if you spoke with a Sergeant Carter, if he’s around. Tell him it was a case of mistaken identity. As soon as they realised they’d got the wrong person, they ditched me.’
‘Right.’ Yumuru spun round and ordered Frank to call the police, but not to tell them where she was. Frank obediently trotted off.
‘Now.’ He turned back to Georgia, puffing a stray strand of hair from his lips. ‘Let’s get you to the surgery.’
*
Georgia hadn’t a clue what time it was when she woke with a start, an excruciating pain pulsing furiously from her finger and up her arm. Groaning under her breath, she reached for the pack of co-dydramol Yumuru had left on her bedside table. He’d told her one or two would be enough and not to take any more, even if the pain was bad, as they’d make her queasy. She downed two and settled back, waiting for them to kick in. After a while the pain settled to a dull throb and her breathing levelled. She opened her eyes.
Sunshine poured into her room and she could hear the raucous screech and chatter of parrots through her open window. A blowfly droned above her head. She could see three more flies on the outside of her mosquito net and she lay there for a while, listening to the sound of the bush awakening, trying to ignore the throbbing in her wedding ring finger. The pain was a fraction of what it had been, and she thanked the heavens for Yumuru and his surgeon friend from the Douglas Mason Hospital in Nulgarra, who had clambered out of bed to arrive just before midnight.
Because they didn’t have a qualified anaesthetist to hand, the surgeon was only able to give her a local anaesthetic. He gave her some midazolam and she’d floated in and out of consciousness while he injected her around the wrist and trimmed and pulled and stitched her finger, chatting to Yumuru about mutual friends, who’d got married, who was having an affair with whom, which gave her a peculiar but comforting sense of normality and security.
The surgeon had asked her what the implement had been and she’d told him, saying it had been a gardening accident. Yumuru looked at her with his sharp brown eyes but he didn’t say a word. He reminded her of Tom, with his intelligent face and kind nature, so much that her throat ached.
Georgia raised her hand and studied it. A fresh bandage protected the wound in the pad of her hand and incorporated more bandage on her finger. It almost didn’t look as though the top third was missing.
Taking her time, she rose and showered, then went back to bed. She fell asleep again, finally waking when the sun was high in the sky. Her body was sore and aching from Leather Jacket’s kicking, and she downed another painkiller, not caring if she got queasy. Anything rather than the constant agony of her body trying to heal. Slowly, she got dressed, her stomach lurching every time she thought she might knock her finger.
Her clothes were clean and ironed, thanks to Yumuru, and he’d put her handful of change and two business cards carefully on top of her underwear, where she couldn’t miss them. One was Daniel’s, the other Leather Jacket’s. She tucked the latter into her front jeans pocket without looking at it.
Finally she was standing at her window. Warm morning air drifted around her, and birds fluttered after insects in thick grass the height of her thighs.
She thought of her mother, bound and gagged and bleeding from her head, and her legs immediately began to tremble, her lungs unable to grab any air. She wanted to howl and cry and lash out at something, but it wouldn’t do any good. She had to remain strong, and not let her grief and rage take control.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said. ‘I can’t think about what you’re going through. I’m going to have to pretend you’re okay, or I won’t be able to function and I’ll be no use to you.’
Georgia turned her mind to Leather Jacket and the Suit.
We will keep your mother. But only for a week. You have seven days to find Lee Denham and Mingjun before we chop off all your mother’s fingers and toes and leave her to bleed to death. Then we will come and kill you. Slowly. One knuckle at a time.
She pictured Leather Jacket’s sneer, the Suit’s nicotine-stained teeth, and felt the rush of black ice return.
She had seven days.
Seven days to save her mother, to save herself.
She had better get started.
Sixteen
Intending to find Yumuru, Georgia was about to open her bedroom door when someone knocked sharply on the other side.
Stepping back, she called, ‘Who is it?’
‘Dominic.’
‘Who?’
‘Are you decent? I hope so, because I’m coming in.’ The door opened and a slender man in blue linen trousers and matching shirt marched inside. ‘I’ve been told you might not want to see me but well, here I am, and you’d better know I can be extremely determined.’
He had a pink holdall in one hand, which he put on the end of her bed, then he looked at her, expression appalled. ‘I’ve come to cut your hair. Immediately.’
She found herself smiling at him, and as she moved to close the door she saw a tray of fresh fruit, coffee, raisin toast and butter had been left outside her room. With her good hand she brought it in. The coffee was in a pot, the fruit sliced mango and papaya, and the butter came in a little pack, marked unsalted. Yumuru had to be a mind reader. Her favourite breakfast.
‘Let’s go short, shall we?’ Dominic said briskly. ‘Very gamine, very chic.’
Georgia let him sit her on the edge of the bed, fluff a blue-spotted robe around her neck and damp her hair down with a handheld spray. While he cut her hair, she ate her breakfast, and when he’d finished, she looked in the mirror he held for her. She blinked.
‘You don’t like it?’ he asked anxiously over her shoulder.
Spikes and a chin the size of the Great Australian Bight gazed back. She ran a hand over the spiky creation, amazed at the feel of silk against the vision of aggression. She looked like an echidna, spines erect and ready to defend its life, but it was so soft.
‘No, it’s not that I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘It’s just that it’s not who I used to be.’
He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘So who are you now?’
‘I don’t know.’ Impulsively she turned and kissed his cheek. ‘I felt so ugly. How much do I owe you?’
‘You don’t have to worry, it’s paid up.’
‘By who?’
‘This was a personal request from the guy who runs this place. A gift.’
‘Yumuru?’
‘Is that a problem?’
Georgia studied her reflection again.
‘No,’ she said faintly. ‘No problem. It’s a lovely gift.’
*
Dominic was replaced by a huge, barefoot Aboriginal woman who introduced herself as Joanie. ‘’Muru asked me to show you round,’ she said. ‘Tells me you used to live here.’
Georgia looked outside at the sun streaming through the grass. In her day the grass would have been shorn, thanks to the goats. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she said on half a sigh, ‘when it used to be a commune.’
‘Not any more, but, ’Muru’s turned it right round.’ Joanie pulled her too-tight yellow-and-red dress down over her hips, looking proud. ‘He gets patients from all over. Even had a bloke from Perth last month. Real sick, he was, but ’Muru fixed him up.’
‘Perth’s a long way to come,’ Georgia agreed, but despite her friendly tone, Joanie gave her a narrowed look.
‘Don’t know what you’ve heard in town about ’Muru, but whatever they’ve said, take it with a bucket of salt. He’s all right, ’Muru, okay? Goes a bit troppo from time to time, but most of us do anyway up here. Especially in the bloody wet.’
‘I remember.’
Joanie grinned, showing purple gums and broad teeth. ‘That why you leave? Fed up with the wet?’
Not wanting to go into the fight they’d had trying to keep the commune, she shrugged and said, ‘I guess so.’
The commune had been a swamp in the wet. Just getting from their cabin to the cookhouse was a struggle, and she and Dawn invariably arrived at breakfast muddy and bedraggled and feeling like creatures from the deep lagoon. Dawn hadn’t taken to living in the rainforest as well as Georgia. She missed town life and loathed the long-drop loos with their plethora of creepy-crawlies. It wasn’t the fact that a spider might bite her rear end as much as the smell. No wonder she’d fled to Canada and all that clean, pure air.
For a brief moment, Georgia considered calling Dawn and immediately rejected the idea. Dawn would drop everything and come over, the thugs might snatch her and then she’d have two people to worry about, not one.
‘You okay to follow me?’ said Joanie. ‘Then you’ll know where everything’s at. ’Muru said you can stay long as you like.’
‘Joanie, I’m sorry, but there’s no point in showing me round. I won’t be staying.’
She looked shocked. ‘’Muru will kill me if I haven’t done the full tour. He’s proud as hell with what he’s done since you lot were here.’
‘I have to be going, honestly—’
‘We’ll do the shortened version, then,’ Joanie said firmly and ushered her out of her room and down a long corridor for a door at the far end, which Georgia hoped was the exit. However, it was just a very small room, and as she reluctantly followed Joanie inside Georgia put a hand against the wall, suddenly unsteady. The air was filled with the scents of sandalwood, lavender and burned juniper. If she closed her eyes she could be at the commune, but the commune had never been this silent. Too many chickens and parrots, laughter, the odd argument, pots and pans being bashed about, children playing, someone singing.
‘You okay?’ Joanie was peering at her, big brow creased.
Georgia straightened. ‘Fine. Thanks.’
‘This is where he prays. Well, anyone’s welcome. But it’s mostly ’Muru’s place.’
The room was tiny, and against the opposite wall was an altar. Made out of simple whitewashed boards, it had three small steps flanked by vases of flowers and little bowls of sand stuck with incense sticks.
There were two photographs on the altar. One was of the Dalai Lama, but the second made her breathing falter.
‘You okay?’ Joanie asked again.
Wordlessly, she pointed at the photograph.
‘She used to work here.’ Joanie rubbed her forehead and looked at the floor. ‘She was on the plane that went down. She didn’t make it.’
Georgia touched the photograph with a finger.
It was Suzie Wilson.
*
Joanie took Georgia’s sudden enthusiasm to take the full tour in her stride and showed her a communal living area, where there was a kitchen as well as a small library and a balcony overlooking a fig tree, which was being slowly strangled by the biggest vine Georgia had ever seen. Her mind in overdrive about Suzie, she asked Joanie if she knew Suzie’s family.
‘She didn’t have none,’ Joanie said. ‘Well, not here anyway. They’re all in China.’
‘Where did she live?’
Joanie frowned and Georgia hurriedly added, ‘Sorry. I heard about the crash. I was just curious.’
Joanie didn’t reply and, seemingly unperturbed by Georgia’s nosiness, proceeded to lead her along a long corridor of polished boards covered with tatami mats and into reception. Georgia glanced into the car park to see nine cars, two of which were brand-new, white, top-of-the-range Land Cruisers. Each had a bright purple emblem of a lotus on its front doors.
