Dead Heat, page 29
‘When the Chief’s done with you,’ Daniel said, ‘you’ll leave town?’
Not until I know what’s happened to Mum, she thought. She was alive, she had to be. ‘Any word on Lee?’ she asked.
‘Rumour is he’s left the country.’
‘Not dead?’
He glanced across at her. ‘No, not dead. Unfortunately.’
She felt a rush of horror that Lee might have abandoned her mother to the Chens and another illogical rush of emotion that Lee wasn’t in a morgue somewhere. Which meant . . . God, she didn’t know. Just that he was probably alive. But where was he? He wouldn’t have left her, she just knew, like she was sure the sun rose in the west and set in the east. Was he hiding in a safe house somewhere? Was he all right?
She felt a petal of anxiety unfurl inside her, its colour the deep purple of the heart of a pansy. She hurriedly took a handful of deep breaths, forced her apprehension away. Lee was a survivor. He’d be fine. No doubt he’d turn up one day, cigar clamped between his lips, like nothing had happened. So much for being her personal hawk, she sighed. Personal pain in the behind, more like.
They were cruising along Palm Road, appropriately named for the African oil palms lined on either side, when she thought of something.
‘Daniel, why didn’t you want anyone to know you’d survived the boat explosion?’
‘For the same reason you did. I was with you, remember, and since they’ll do anything to get hold of Jon Ming . . .’
As they crested a rise in the road, the sun hit the windscreen, lighting the multi-coloured entrails of various insects, but he didn’t activate the washer, presumably because they’d only smear the glass and make it impossible to see.
‘I decided to lay low. I didn’t want Tabby . . . involved.’
She could understand that. The Chens wouldn’t hesitate to snatch a little girl if they thought it would help them.
‘How is she?’
‘Apparently she whacked a wooden spoon over some kid’s head at pre-school for wanting to borrow her yellow crayon. She’s going to have to smarten up and learn to share or we’ll be in trouble. Poor old Gran, she’s having a tough time of it. She’s pushing eighty now, finding it harder and harder . . . God, if anything happened to me, Social Services would have a field day . . .’ His face turned bleak. ‘They’d take Tabs away from me, stick her with strangers, some awful foster home—’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to you,’ she said firmly.
He shot her a look that told her she didn’t understand, so she asked him where he thought Lee might have gone, sidetracking him nicely, and then he was pulling up outside Nulgarra’s police station, a low-slung building with sun glinting off its tin roof.
As he set the handbrake and turned off the engine, a car passed them, slowly, as though it was looking for somewhere to park. It blipped its horn briefly, and as Daniel raised his head, it accelerated past.
Snapping his seat belt free, Daniel turned to open the door. She watched the car go, thinking nothing of it, until it flashed its hazard lights twice, then switched them off. She suddenly took in the make of the car. A silver Mitsubishi with smoked-glass windows. It was sitting on its brakes at the entrance to the street, indicating left, but not moving. A hand came out of the driver’s window and flicked some ash from what looked like a long, slim cigar.
Lee? she thought. Lee?
She was scrambling out of the cop car, readying herself to run for the Mitsubishi when the brake lights went blank and it swung left and out of sight. Another blip of the horn.
He’s trying to lead me, without being seen.
‘Hey, what’s the rush?’ Daniel was out of the car, watching her. He clearly hadn’t clocked the Mitsubishi.
‘I don’t feel well,’ she said, which was true. Her heart was galloping loud as horse’s hooves on gravel and she knew she was sweating.
‘You want the Ladies? Some water?’ Daniel was ushering her solicitously into the police station.
‘Ladies,’ she panted.
‘This way. God, Georgia. All those days in that raft . . . Are you going to be okay?’
He led her inside and left, then right. Pushed open a door marked ‘Staff Only’. ‘Shall I leave you, or would you like—’
‘Leave me.’
‘I’ll be right outside.’
As soon as the door banged shut she spun round. Two stalls, a single sink. A small window set high in the wall. Rushing to the window, she reached up and pushed it open. Wide enough, but how to get up there? She scanned the room and saw a plastic bin in the corner, half-filled with used paper towels. She raced for it, turned it over by the window, got one foot on it and was just hooking her elbows on the sill when she heard Daniel’s knock.
‘Georgia? Are you okay?’
‘Yes, thanks! It’s just that . . . it’s that time of the month. Give me five, okay?’
‘God, sorry. Of course.’
Kicking off the plastic bin, she heaved her torso up and over the sill, the aluminium digging into her breasts, then her ribs. Wriggling hard, she dragged her stomach through, then her hips. Hanging there, she looked up and down the building, saw nothing but scrubby bush and gravel, a handful of rubbish lying on the ground. She tried to turn around, wanting to grip the top of the window and swing her legs down, but there was no space. She’d have to fall head first.
Looking at the ground, she knew it wasn’t far, maybe two metres, and it didn’t sound much, but right that minute it could have been twenty metres, and for the first time in her life she wished she’d taken a parachute course and knew how to break her fall, to avoid snapping her hands and wrists, or smashing her face.
She was hesitating, taking up valuable time. She’d better just do it. Lunging forward, she felt her thighs slide agonisingly over the aluminium.
Her body was hanging, balanced so she could tumble either way if she wanted, and she was reaching for the brickwork below, searching for a handhold, but there wasn’t one. In the distance she heard a car horn. Blasting long and clear.
Lee. Calling to her. Did he have her mother? Was she safe?
Covering her head with her arms, just as she had in the air crash, she gave a huge lunge to clear her knees. Gravity did the rest.
Searing pain along her shins. It felt as though they were being stripped. Then she was crashing to the ground, on to her right shoulder with a dull thud. The breath was knocked from her body and for a moment she lay there, feeling the sting of gravel on her cheek, the smacking pain of her thighs and shins. But it wasn’t as bad as having her finger chopped, and the thought gave her strength.
Georgia stumbled upright, took her bearings. She could see the flank of a cop car to her right and she trotted down the side of the building, ducking low past a window to avoid being seen, and paused when she came to the edge of the car park. No cover. Should she blast across it, come what may, or take the longer route and cut across the bush?
She decided to go for broke. After all, what could the cops do her for? Running across their forecourt without due care?
Taking a breath, she sprinted across the bitumen, and just as she hit the street she heard a shout.
‘Hey, you!’
As she swung left she saw the Mitsubishi’s white reversing lights glaring, wheels spinning for her. She raced for the passenger door, which was already opening, and flung it wide, jumping inside. With a screech of rubber on hot bitumen, the car surged forward. Grabbing the door handle, she yanked the door shut.
‘Took your time,’ Lee said.
Without taking his eyes off the road, he popped open the glove box and pulled out a pack of tissues, which he passed to her.
‘You’ve blood on your cheek.’
She snatched the tissues from him. ‘Took my time? You’re the one who’s been taking time! Where’s my mother? You said you’d ring me, but you didn’t! Where is she?’
Expecting platitudes, maybe an apology, she was prepared to punch him for letting her down when she’d been relying on him so much, but he took the wind right out of her sails when he said calmly, ‘We’re going there right now.’
‘She’s alive?’
‘Oh, yes. Very much so. The Chens want to know if you’re alive or dead before deciding what to do with her. She’s been reciting quotations from the Dalai Lama. Chanting a lot. Or so I’ve heard.’
Out of nowhere, her throat swelled and tears spilled down her cheeks. In the commune Linette Parish’s chanting OM had been legendary. The Dalai Lama was her spiritual focus. Her mother was alive. She blew her nose and mopped her face.
‘We’re going to her?’ she choked. ‘Now?’
‘Couldn’t do it before. They moved her. Twice. Then I had a bit of a run-in with a couple of their blokes and took a bit of damage. Had to lay up for a while. And your phone wasn’t working.’
That was true; it was at the bottom of the Coral Sea, along with Songtao.
It was only when the word ‘damage’ sunk in that she saw the distinctive white of crêpe bandage peeking from the neck of his shirt.
She felt the sudden poker-red heat of anxiety. She’d been right all along. ‘You’re hurt?’
‘Not any more. Your friend Yumuru fixed me up.’
She checked his bandage to see it was clean, no blood seeping through. Then she scanned his arms, his hands, the cashew-coloured cords standing out in his neck. Aside from the bandage, he looked fine. Ignoring the tidal wave of relief crashing over her, she said, ‘Mum?’ Her tone turned pleading, frantic. ‘Where is she? My mother?’
‘In the rear storeroom of a Chinese restaurant.’
‘And we’re—’
‘Driving there now.’
Georgia turned the pack of tissues over in her hands. ‘Is she guarded?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Won’t we need the police?’
‘No.’
She looked outside and saw they were sweeping along Ocean Street and past the Bendigo bank and then he swung left down Musgrave Street and left again on to Crown. They were a street away from Mrs Scutchings’s, she realised, she could see the cemetery.
‘That one, there,’ Lee said, pointing at Timothy Wu’s Chinese restaurant, the Mighty Chopstick.
‘My mother’s there? In a storeroom?’
‘Yup.’
He was cruising past and making no attempt to brake.
Alarmed, she said, ‘Aren’t we going to stop?’
‘No. We’re going to come back tonight when it’s dark. Just thought I’d show you, that’s all.’
She was craning her head round as he continued steadily down Crown Street for Harbour Road, gazing at the restaurant she’d had umpteen takeaways from as a kid. Timothy Wu, with his broad smile, had handed over spring rolls and buckets of sweet-and-sour chicken topped with sweet, thick rice.
‘Is Timothy Wu involved?’
‘Only so far as he’s handed over the keys. He’s down in Gympie for a christening.’
‘How did you find out she was there?’
He changed down into second, a smooth double-declutch, matching the engine note perfectly with the gears, and she suddenly noted the Mitsubishi wasn’t automatic, but stick-shift. All the better for getting out of tricky situations, she thought to herself. Automatics were all very well, but you couldn’t beat having complete control of your revs.
‘Long story,’ he said. ‘Not one you really want to hear.’
Since it probably involved slashing men’s stomachs until their entrails showed, she decided against pressing him. Instead, she said, ‘How on earth did you know I was going to be at the police station?’
He had turned right into Harbour Road and was heading along Julian Street, for the western side of town.
‘Because I’m a cop. And a cop always knows what’s going on.’
Startled, she looked at the side of his face. ‘You were a cop. You got chucked out, for . . . for . . .’ She couldn’t say the words. Betraying your partner, leaving them to bleed to death, fingers and toes chopped off, on a rubbish tip.
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘Didn’t do what?’
‘Give Tatts away.’
She suddenly saw his face was drawn and pale, the grooves around his mouth deep as canyons.
‘Someone else did that. Not me.’ He turned his head for a second to look at her. ‘Why do you think I’m here? For the scenery?’
India’s voice in her mind. He’s not stupid . . . Surely you can’t believe he’s sticking around just for you?
‘You want to find whoever killed your partner,’ she said breathlessly, and he nodded.
‘Someone packed a ton of cash into my account an hour after Tatts was snatched. If I’d hung around, they’d have lynched me. The evidence was that tight. Even had a bunch of phone calls I never made on my mobile, to the RBG. No way would they look elsewhere. My coming from out of town . . . with a different way of thinking, made it easier for them to hate me.’
She knew he meant because he’d come from Hong Kong, and was half-Chinese.
‘Spider set me up,’ he continued in the same level tone. ‘Spider knows that I know what they did . . . but I still don’t know who it is. The paper trail leads straight to Panama; two hours later it hops to St Lucia for barely ten minutes and after that there’s no trace. Not from want of looking. You’ve stirred things up nicely, though. I’m hoping to get a bead on them soon.’
‘You stopped the two gangs getting together,’ she said, recalling his wiping out two guys in the Dragon Syndicate.
‘Yeah. My boss liked that.’
‘Who’s your boss?’
‘He’s on the board of the People Strike Smuggling Team, the PST. The board is made up of senior representatives from the feds and DIMA, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Daniel’s boss is in the feds but mine is from DIMA. He knew me in Hong Kong, was aware I’d been set up. When Tatts got wiped out, we decided to stick me undercover. See what we could get.’
So he was legit. She was shocked. Could you be legit and still kill people, disembowel them? ‘Weren’t the RBG suspicious?’
‘They welcomed me with open arms. They thought I’d been their snitch for years and I didn’t disillusion them. After Tatts died, Spider stopped his dealings with them for six months or so, and when he started up again, with Jason Chen as his handler, the RBG assumed it was a new source.’
‘Doesn’t Spider know you’re undercover? Trying to find him?’
‘Nope. With my background, I took to crime like a flea to a dog and let it be known I was grateful to Spider for showing me the light. Spider – and every other police office here – thinks I’m a full-blown happy hood. All the same, he wouldn’t mind if I met with an untimely end, considering I’m the only person who knows the true story behind Tatts.’
He was barrelling the car through the outskirts of town, and she could see the rainforest looming ahead, foliage thick and green, sturdy trunks of trees planted firmly into mossy soil.
‘I still don’t get how you found me at the cop shop.’
He shot her one of his looks that told her she hadn’t been listening properly. ‘My boss. We keep in touch.’
‘Oh. Of course.’
They’d swept past the last house on the edge of Nulgarra and were heading north-east, as far as she knew, into the middle of nowhere.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To rest up at my place.’
‘You’ve a place?’
‘What, you think I sleep in a tree?’
Thirty-eight
Lee’s place was a rented timber cabin near Bountiful Point and up a steep winding forest track that looked as though it had been made by a wandering goat. The simplicity of the cabin suited Lee. Four walls, a sturdy verandah and an aluminium roof. No frills.
He showed her a bedroom with a view of his car sitting in the clearing at the front of the cabin. ‘You want to sleep, put your head down.’
‘Maybe later.’ She didn’t think she’d ever felt so wide awake. They’d be springing her mum tonight!
Lee made coffee for her, and green tea for him. She sat opposite him in the lounge with the sweet smell of gun oil at the back of her mouth, and watched him clean his firearms. Two Glocks, a .357 Magnum and a Beretta. She asked if she could handle the Beretta, and he passed it over.
He raised an eyebrow when she checked the chamber, eased the slide back and decocked it on an empty magazine.
‘You do much shooting?’
‘Just two hours on the range.’
The Beretta had a fifteen-round magazine, and was relatively handy too, weighing in, Lee told her, at around a kilo fully loaded.
‘Nice weapon,’ she said, and passed it back.
‘I prefer the Magnum. But you can have a Glock, if you like. For tonight. You know about the safe action trigger system?’
‘Yes.’
Yumuru had taught her all about it. The Glock had a semi-cocked double action, which meant no fiddling about with external safety catches or cocking hammers before the gun was ready to fire. You just loaded it and pulled the trigger. Yumuru had reassured her she could drop the gun, kick it or throw it over a cliff and it wouldn’t go off. There were three automatic independently operating mechanical safeties, which were sequentially disengaged when pulling the trigger, and which were automatically re-engaged when the trigger was released.
Lee finished cleaning the Magnum, then started over again.
‘You’re supposed to clean them twice?’
‘I find it helps settle the mind before a raid. Besides, as my grandmother would say over and over, you can never be too prepared.’ He gave a small smile. ‘She always said if I listened to her I’d grow up to be a wise man. Wish I’d paid more attention.’
He dropped oil on to a yellow pipe cleaner, which made a soft snicking sound as he cleaned the barrel, but she wasn’t looking at his hands, just at his face, enchanted with the echo of the smile she’d seen, the way it had softened his face, brought a sheen of wry amusement into his eyes.
