Dead Heat, page 9
The Suit interjected briefly, then Leather Jacket said, ‘We are finding it hard to understand.’
‘Me too! One minute I’m at a funeral of someone I love, then I’m in an air crash, and the next thing I’m being interrogated by the police, then kidnapped by you, and I’ve got nothing to do with anything!’
Silence.
The Suit clicked his fingers. Leather Jacket nodded at the heavies, who left the room.
Everything was quiet.
Then the door slammed open and the heavies returned, dragging a barefoot figure across the room, tied to a chair, head covered with a black bin liner. The instant she recognised the floral cotton trousers and flowing Indian shirt, she felt her spirit being broken into tiny pieces.
‘Mum,’ she choked.
Her mother’s head swung her way and she made an urgent mumbling noise. Georgia couldn’t make out what she said and realised she had been gagged.
‘Mum, are you okay? Please. God, I’m sorry . . .’
Leather Jacket came and stood next to her. The two heavies stood on either side of her mother on her chair.
‘Where is Lee Denham?’
Her mother made a mewling sound. Then a soft plea that sounded like, ‘Sweet. Run.’
Black rage overcame her.
Blacker than she’d ever known.
It swept through her like a tidal wave, blotting out everything. It could have been night. Her vision went completely dark.
Georgia launched herself at Leather Jacket. Both hands punching, gouging, nails tearing for his face. He wasn’t ready for her and stumbled backwards, losing his balance, crashing to the floor.
She swarmed on top of him, teeth bared, hooking her fingers to tear at his face, but suddenly there were bands of iron around her chest, pulling her away, and she knew the heavies had her and she ducked her head and caught the only flesh she could find between her teeth. Leather Jacket’s wrist. She bit hard as she could, shaking her head from side to side like a dog killing a rat, enraged and engorged with hatred, out of control.
Leather Jacket was hollering as she bit down hard, the heavies trying to drag her away, but she had his wrist and no way was she going to let go, she was a pit bull terrier and she was growling, chewing and biting . . .
A blow to the side of her head made her mouth go numb, but she simply bit harder, growled louder.
Another blow, and her mouth went slack. Leather Jacket’s wrist slid free from her bite. She felt herself folding to the floor, but Leather Jacket was still yelling fit to burst.
Good.
She hoped it bloody hurt.
Her mum. How dare they.
Thirteen
Georgia lay panting on the floor, the heavies surrounding her. Leather Jacket came over, cupping his wrist to his mouth, and as he brought his foot back, she rolled to protect her kidneys. When the blow came, it wasn’t as bad as she thought it might be, but she groaned a lot and saw his look of satisfaction.
She rolled a little bit further for the next blow, which glanced off her ribs and still hurt like hell, but the damage would be minimal. Just a bunch of bruises. She yelled to make him feel big, and as he was going to kick her again, she heard the Suit bark an order and Leather Jacket paused, looked across at the Suit then down at her. He made a guttural sound deep in his throat, then spat a gob of mucus at her. To her delight, it missed, landing on the floor beside her head, rather than in her face as he’d intended.
Pulling her lips back from her teeth, she snarled at him and he glared back.
The Suit barked another order. Leather Jacket marched stiffly to stand by him at the table.
Her breathing seemed to fill the room. She raised herself to see her mother on the chair, body shuddering, indecipherable sounds jerking from beneath her gag.
‘Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m fine—’
Leather Jacket spun round and clicked his fingers, and to her horror one of the heavies strode back to the table and brought a baseball bat into view, raised it away from his body, and swung it straight towards her mother’s face.
‘Mum!’ she yelled and her mother swung her face towards her but it wasn’t enough and the baseball bat smacked into the side of Linette’s head with a hollow slapping sound, like an armload of wet towels dropping on to tiles. Her chair flew sideways and her mother plummeted to the floor still tied to it, elbows angled awkwardly, head rolled to one side. Georgia stared at her mother’s still form and then she leaned over and retched and retched until her ribs ached.
‘Where is Lee Denham?’ Leather Jacket insisted. ‘Where is Mingshu’s brother?’
The heavy was swinging the baseball bat casually in his right hand, tapping it against her mother’s bare foot. Georgia saw she had magenta nail polish on her toes. Her feet were brown and beautifully pedicured. No doubt done by a mate who wanted an astrological reading in return. That was the way Mum’s life worked. You baked a bunch of hash brownies and people fixed your roof, gave you tax advice, introduced you to a plumber who could sort your leaking cistern.
Ignoring Leather Jacket, she concentrated on her mother. Georgia could just make out that she was breathing. She was alive, but as Georgia watched, a trickle of blood seeped from beneath the black bin liner and on to the floor. Gazing at the blood, she felt a black ice creep into her veins. From her fingertips to her chipped, blue-painted toenails, it crawled malevolently to her heart. She would see them dead for this, she thought. Dead.
‘We can break every bone in your mother’s body. We will break every bone in her body if you don’t tell us what you know.’
Georgia barely felt the pain in her ribs with the new ice-cold, numbing black stream running through her, and her voice was strong when she spoke. ‘You’ve got the wrong people, don’t you get it? Do some checking. You’ll soon find out you’ve messed up big time. And I mean big time.’ She rolled on to her front and pushed herself steadily upright until she was standing. With the windows behind him, she couldn’t see Leather Jacket’s eyes, but she settled her gaze where she thought they might be. ‘I’ll be there when you realise it.’
‘Are you trying to scare me?’ he sneered.
‘I’m a Scorpio,’ she said. ‘If that isn’t a warning, then I don’t know what is.’
‘I was born in the Year of the Dragon.’
‘What a surprise. Arrogant, intolerant and discontented. Sounds just like you. In case you didn’t already know, Dragons are also capable of spectacular failure.’ She took a long pause. ‘I was born in the Year of the Tiger.’
The way he stilled told her he knew that in Chinese lore, the tiger was instinctively protective and once involved in battle, invariably won. When the mobile on the table chirped, Leather Jacket started as though he’d touched a live wire. Excellent. She had rattled him.
Snatching up the phone, he listened briefly, then disconnected.
Leather Jacket said something to the Suit, who didn’t seem to react, but when he slowly reached out and picked up Suzie’s parking card, she saw the heavies shift uneasily. Talking in a low undertone, the Suit slowly ripped the card into tiny pieces.
Everybody remained silent. Absolutely motionless.
Suddenly the Suit slammed his open palm down on the table, and the pieces of parking card scattered across the table. Every person in the room flinched, except her mother, who lay as if dead. The Suit spoke to Leather Jacket, who looked at Georgia.
‘At last we have part of the truth,’ he said. ‘Ronnie Chen hired a white Ford three days ago, but the hire company is still awaiting its return. We are wondering where it is now.’
So they knew Ronnie Chen, she thought. She said, ‘I’ve told you, Lee left it in the creek.’
‘There is no car in Cassowary Creek.’
She stared at him blankly. ‘What?’
He gave a long-drawn-out and exaggerated sigh, as though he was bored. ‘So, where is the car, and where is Lee Denham?’
A sense of dread descended upon her, but she made her tone as firm and strong as possible. ‘I don’t know. It’s the truth. It was there yesterday, I swear.’
Leather Jacket picked up the metal object off the desk.
The two men peeled themselves off the wall and came and stood on either side of her.
She swallowed reflexively. Her mouth and throat felt balled with blotting paper.
Another click of the fingers.
The two men gripped her upper arms and hauled her bodily across the room. She struggled instinctively, bucking and kicking like a captured rabbit, as they carried her to the table and forced her face down so her cheek was pressed hard against the wood. Her right hand was forced high behind her back until she screamed, ‘Don’t, please don’t!’
Infinitesimal pause.
The pressure eased a fraction.
Then her left arm was stretched out flat on the table. Her bandage removed. Her hand was spread wide, pulling the stitches and making her bite her lip against the pain.
Leather Jacket leaned over to peer into her face. So close she could count the acne scars on his cheekbones. ‘You had Mingshu’s bag,’ he said. ‘You hid the disk. You were taking it to Mingshu’s brother, weren’t you? We want to know where Mingjun is. We want the truth.’
‘I wasn’t taking it anywhere,’ she moaned. ‘Suzie gave it to me.’
‘Stop lying!’
She felt his spittle on her face and smelled cigarettes on his breath.
‘I’m not lying – I swear I don’t know anything.’
‘If you know nothing, tell me why you hid the disk!’
‘Because of the intruder.’
‘Liar!’
‘I’m not—’
‘See this?’
Leather Jacket brought the metal object into view. She felt her bowels soften. It was a pair of gardening secateurs. They had a white plastic handle and a small black button on the side. Slowly, he pressed the small button so the blades sprang free.
A child was screaming, an endless shriek of terror. She realised distantly it was her.
Leather Jacket gripped the third finger of her left hand. Her wedding ring finger. He said, ‘I ask you for the last time . . .’
She was yelling and fighting, trying to break free, but there were lead weights on her back, her shoulders and arms. She was pinned to the table like a live rat to a dissecting table.
He positioned the blades around the second knuckle. She felt the keen steel brush against her finger.
‘Where is Lee Denham?’
She could smell her own rank smell of fear. Bitter sweat and vomit and urine. She wanted to cry and scream and plead with him, but knew it would make no difference. Voice trembling, she said, ‘If I knew, I would tell you. But I don’t.’
The secateurs brushed her skin. In that moment, with sudden clarity, Georgia knew this was it. She was going to die. An endless, painful death. A death of blood and screaming and no dignity, her corpse chopped into pieces and flung into a darkened alley. There was nothing she could do about it. Nothing.
She’d seen her mother breathing, and knew she was alive. Would they kill her too?
She saw Leather Jacket’s hand squeeze the secateurs, felt the pressure of the blades. Blood blossomed on her finger.
This is it, she thought. This really is it. And I’ve no idea why.
Fourteen
The shears cut straight through the flesh of Georgia’s wedding ring finger and through the knuckle and bone with a small crunching sound.
For a split second the shock was so big, she thought it didn’t hurt.
Then the pain hit.
Screaming, black howling, shrieking red, it raced from her finger into her hand and up her arm and into her heart, white-hot as a poker and she was screaming so hard her voice cracked.
‘Where is Mingjun?’
Scalding pain licked at her, scorching her skin, her blood and veins, and she was shuddering and shaking against the weights pressed on top of her, and as the pain thundered and roared and pulsed, her screams faded into choking gasps.
‘If you do not tell us, we will continue until you have no fingers and no toes.’
‘Please,’ she managed, ‘help me . . .’
‘Where is Lee Denham?’ Leather Jacket demanded.
Her voice came out as a whimper. ‘I don’t know.’
Leather Jacket positioned the secateurs around her thumb knuckle and she was begging him, pleading with him, but he didn’t seem to hear.
‘One more time,’ Leather Jacket said. ‘Where is he?’
She opened her mouth and yelled and yelled, waiting for more pain, more agony, worse pain . . .
Please God, she prayed, let me faint. Let me die. Please.
Gradually, she became aware nothing had happened. Gulping convulsively, she saw Leather Jacket had put the secateurs down. He had put them down.
The seconds ticked past. Leather Jacket was saying something to the Suit. The Suit sounded angry. Leather Jacket sounded insistent, and nobody moved or spoke except Georgia, who couldn’t stop the involuntary whimpering sounds jerking from her throat.
Finally, the Suit spoke. Quietly, almost a murmur.
Leather Jacket picked up her bandage and clicked his fingers at the heavies. They held up her hand. She was saying, no, no, no, as she saw the top third of her finger lying on the table, the bloody mess of her stump showing a splinter of white bone through the pulp of red, the slightly yellow sheen of cartilage in what used to be her finger pumping, pouring blood . . .
‘If you tell anyone of this,’ Leather Jacket said, ‘we will find you and we will kill you.’
Leather Jacket reached for her bleeding hand.
‘And no police.’
He made to bind her finger with the bandage.
‘We have friends in the police. We will hear.’
As the crêpe touched her gaping, pulsing stump, the pain rocketed into her head, her brain, and she was shouting again, longing to faint, praying for oblivion, but it never lessened, and then one of the heavies produced a length of black cloth and blindfolded her and, gripping her upper arms, they carted her out of the room and down some stairs. She smelled garlic. Then they were outside, and rain was on her mouth and chin. In a car. She lost track of time as she sat there, unable to see, pain crashing in her finger, her hand. Eventually the car halted, engine still running. There came the sound of someone getting out of the car, her door opening.
She was shaking convulsively, unable to believe they were going to let her go. She couldn’t make sense of it. The same thought went round and round her head: Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.
Someone gripped her arm from outside and pulled her, scrambling and bewildered, into the rain. She stood cupping her left hand, protecting her damaged finger, which throbbed in a single, sickening black ache. As soon as the men left her, she lurched violently and fell to her knees. The engine was still running.
She flinched when Leather Jacket spoke close to her right ear.
‘I only bound your hand to stop you bleeding all over my car.’
His shoes scrunched as he shifted closer. She felt him push something into her rear jeans pocket.
‘So you know how to find us.’
She knelt there, trembling.
‘Meantime, 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. Do you understand?’
She gave a jerky nod.
‘We will find you wherever you are. You cannot hide from us.’
Another nod, then she heard footsteps crunching lightly on bitumen and two doors slam shut. The automatic transmission kicked in. With a wet swoosh of tyres, the car drove away.
Georgia didn’t dare move. Was it a trap? Was one of the men still there?
The engine hummed into the distance and gradually disappeared. Cradling her throbbing, pounding hand against her chest, she tilted her head to one side, checking for any sound, but otherwise didn’t move. She didn’t want them to think she might have seen which way they went and come back to kill her. She tried to ignore the pain pulsing through her and listened some more. Nothing. Just the patter of rain on leaves. Cautiously, she raised her right hand and pushed the blindfold up and over her head.
She blinked a few times to clear her vision. Glistening bitumen and rainforest. The air was thick and warm and wet, and she breathed in deeply. A great choking sob of relief caught her lungs and her head dropped almost to her knees. She wanted to pray, to thank God for her life, but her mind wasn’t functioning properly. She sprawled there numbly in the rain, shuddering convulsively.
*
She wasn’t sure how long it took before any sort of rational thought began, but it had to have been well over ten minutes because she realised she was soaked to the skin.
Checking the bandage on her finger, she saw it was already seeping blood and that it needed rebinding. Leather Jacket had done a sloppy job, but she thought she might either pass out or throw up if she unwound the sodden crêpe and saw her stump right now.
She knew the pain throbbing in her finger was tolerable, but only if she didn’t think about what had happened. It wasn’t the pain as much as what it meant.
Resolutely, she turned her mind away from her finger and concentrated on getting to her feet. It took her two tries, but then she was upright, swaying slightly, and looking up and down the dark, rain-puddled road. In her pain she didn’t recognise it. Were they near Nulgarra?
Instinct told her the thugs would have driven towards a town, wherever they were, so she started walking in the direction they’d driven. She felt so weak and drained it was more of a shamble than a walk, but at least she was moving.
*
It was still raining when she heard an engine in the distance. Turning, she saw a pair of headlights cutting through the darkness behind. Her legs were desperately tired and it wasn’t because she’d been walking for that long, maybe half an hour or so, but her body was reacting to the shock and stress and simply wanted to rest.
