Headland, page 10
‘You’re a naughty boy, Craig,’ she said, stepping backwards, just out of reach.
Watson took half a step forward, then reconsidered, stopped, dropped his hands and his head.
‘Yeah, I suppose I am,’ he said, trying to smile. There was an awkward silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Don’t be,’ she said, meeting his eyes, her expression warm, placating. ‘It’s just not the time right now. Not the place.’ She smiled then walked towards the door, holding her palm in front of her open mouth. ‘And I’ve just got to brush my teeth,’ she said.
Twenty minutes later they were sitting at the kitchen table, all awkwardness gone, chatting like old pals. It struck them both at about the same time: Ellie should really be back by now.
‘I’m starting to get a bit worried,’ Larissa said.
‘Yeah, she’s been gone a while,’ he said. It was only a two- or three-minute drive to the station.
‘Something might have gone wrong—she could be bogged or something,’ Larissa said.
‘Should we go and have a look?’
Larissa didn’t answer; she just stood up, wrapped her utility belt around her waist and grabbed her rain jacket off the back of a chair.
Watson drove. It was slow going. The station was only one street back from the river and the floodwater was coming up fast. Rapidly flowing, debris-filled brown water was swirling through the streets and running freely into shops and businesses that hadn’t had time to sandbag or barricade their doors.
Close to the station, the water was up to the bottom of the car doors. The slightly elevated car park at the rear of the block was only ankle-deep. Ellie’s patrol car stood silent and empty at the back door.
‘Oh good, she’s still here,’ Larissa said, relieved.
Watson didn’t say anything.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got a feeling.
They pulled up beside the patrol car. When they got out, Watson released the catch on his safety holster, allowing easy access to his pistol.
‘Just keep behind me,’ he said when he saw the concerned look on Larissa’s face.
The back door was closed but unlocked. Not unusual. He pushed the door open a crack, stood silently and listened. Nothing.
He pushed the door fully open and entered the kitchen—his chest thumped. The kitchen was wrecked. There was a large bottle of milk lying in the middle of the floor. There was blood smeared on the fridge door, spattered on the cupboard doors, and there were drops on the floor.
His mouth dry, he pulled his pistol. Beside him, Larissa held her hand over her mouth, hyperventilating.
‘Stay here,’ he mouthed to her, and motioned for her to pull her pistol out of her holster.
He moved towards the hallway. Two, three steps, Larissa right behind him.
‘Stay here,’ he whispered again.
She shook her head. Her eyes were wide with fear.
He continued into the hall, Larissa holding on to the back of his jacket, holding in sobs. They carried on in silence to Philby’s door. A step short of the entry, Watson stopped. Listened. Still nothing. He stepped forward, pistol leading.
Philby’s office had been ransacked. All the furniture was up-ended and smashed. Files were ripped and scattered all over the floor and the remains of the desk. The computer had been totally trashed, smashed to pieces.
They moved on. The interview rooms were empty. Upstairs was clear. The station was deserted. Ellie was gone.
16
‘Larissa’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to get your shit together.’
Watson had gone back through the station from top to bottom, front to back. As far as he could make out, Ellie had been surprised by someone who was already in the station when she got there. Someone tearing Philby’s office to pieces, by the looks of it. Thieves? Vandals?
Whoever it was would have seen Ellie’s patrol car approaching through the window in Philby’s office. Watson guessed the intruder must have then hidden and waited for her. It looked like it happened just after she had pulled the milk out of the fridge. He was no blood-spatter analyst, but it appeared that Ellie had put up a hell of a fight. There were three clear, distinctive areas around the kitchen where fighting and bleeding had taken place. Ominously, there were drag marks on the floor leading to the rear door. Any clues as to what occurred outside had been washed away by the incessant rain.
The entire time he had been searching the station, Larissa had been down on her haunches in Ellie’s workstation with her arms wrapped around herself, sobbing helplessly.
‘Arsehole,’ she said now, getting to her feet. She blew her nose loudly into a tissue and dried her eyes.
He put his arms around her and she leant into him, still holding the tissue up to her nose.
‘Someone’s taken her,’ he said. He deliberately did not mention that he suspected Ellie had been badly injured. There was a lot of blood. ‘Why would someone do that?’
Larissa didn’t respond; she slumped down into Ellie’s chair.
Watson paced back and forth across the room. ‘I think they were in Philby’s office. Destroying it.’
‘Probably after his filthy porn,’ she said. He wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.
His head hurt. His hand automatically went to his pocket for an Oxy. He had none. He was getting anxious. He had no crystal either. Shit. He felt a panic attack coming on. He walked out of the office into the hallway. Held on to the wall.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
He heard the creak as Larissa got up from Ellie’s chair. He straightened himself up. Wiped his eyes.
‘Hey, are you okay?’ she asked, following him into the hall.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘Just felt a bit … you know?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ she said, leaning the top of her head into his chest. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘You take Ellie’s car,’ he said when they stepped out into the car park. ‘We’ll cover more ground that way.’
‘No.’
‘No? What do you mean no?’
‘No way. This is what happens in the movies. You split up and something bad happens. I’m not doing it; I’m not going anywhere by myself. We can look together—the town isn’t that big.’ To make her point, Larissa opened the passenger-side door of Watson’s car and climbed in. He got in himself and looked across at her, speechless. She stared straight ahead, no eye contact.
‘Well, come on, let’s go,’ she said angrily, tears welling up again.
The town of Gloster had no more than twenty streets and the four or five of them closest to the river were now underwater or impassable. Most of the town’s long streets ran parallel to the river, with shorter streets connecting the long streets in a grid pattern. The only exception was a single long road running up onto the headland close to the beach; it was the furthest from town.
‘We’ll start up on the headland and work our way back down through town,’ Watson decided, turning left out of the station driveway.
Larissa sniffed. Her nose was running and she didn’t have any more tissues. It wasn’t often that he felt like the grown-up.
Watson needed an Oxy so badly he thought he was about to vomit.
He drove fast to the beach end of town. Sand had been washed across the road and sat in piles up against the sides of the Surfside Hotel. There was a huge muddy brown stain out in the ocean where the river emptied into the sea. The beach was covered in tree branches, sticks and leaves and what looked like an entire oyster lease that must have been washed down the river by the flood.
He gunned the motor through a low dip in the road and they went down to the bottom of the doors, sending a massive spray of dirty brown puddle water into the air on either side of the road.
Larissa started, covered her face with her hands and wiped her brow. He thought she was about to cry and was seriously considering putting her out of the car. His hands were sliding on the steering wheel, made slippery with his own sweat. He swallowed back acid-tasting bile.
‘Keep an eye out,’ he said harshly.
She gave him a sullen look.
The road leading up to the headland provided a spectacular vista out to their left, down the coast and out to sea. Low cloud and rain squalls obscured the horizon. The sea reflected the grey clouds overhead and was flecked with white caps and a chaotic heaving swell. No ships could be seen, there were no helicopters or planes in the sky. The wind was howling up over the cliff tops, buffeting the car and hammering into the impressive-looking two-storey houses on their right.
He slowed the car at the top of the road, where it ended in a wide circular dead end. A little park with a couple of picnic tables backed onto thick coastal scrubland that covered the cliffs. Turning the car around, they had a panoramic view back over the town itself.
They both saw it at the same time. The river, wide in flood, streaming through the main shopping precinct and extending as far back into the misty fog and gloom as they could see. The leafy residential streets running parallel to the river before petering out into flooded farmland further to the west and, from one house, just in fits and starts, smoke.
‘There!’ Larissa yelled, pointing. ‘Smoke!’
Watson hammered it.
They hit the puddle in the road doing one-twenty. The noise was horrendous. Larissa stifled a scream. Held on to her seat. Watson was grinding his teeth. Sweating up a storm.
‘Which street, which street?’ he yelled over the racing motor and the gushing spray.
‘Turn here,’ she yelled. ‘Second on the left.’
He threw the car into the turns.
‘Look for the smoke,’ he told her.
‘There,’ she said, craning her neck.
‘Where?’
‘We just went past it.’
He threw the car into reverse. Backed up two houses along the abandoned residential street.
They flung open their doors and charged in. It was a typical three-bedroom weatherboard. A short driveway running up the side to a separate garage at the rear.
Watson drew his pistol.
‘I’ll head out the back,’ Larissa said, sprinting for the driveway.
Watson leapt the waist-high front fence and went for the door.
‘Stop! Police!’ Larissa’s voice, urgent, panicked.
Watson smashed his foot into the door. It didn’t budge. Solid.
Fuck.
Bolted for the driveway. Larissa vaulted the back fence. He went after her.
He leapt at the fence, scrabbled over, regained his balance. Kept going.
Larissa’s yellow rain jacket disappearing around the side of the house to the rear. A blur of movement.
By the time he reached the front yard of the next house, Larissa was going hard, up the side of a house on the other side of the road.
‘Stop! Police!’ she yelled again.
He felt a rush of hot liquid steaming up the back of his throat. He spasmed in the middle of the road and projectile-vomited. Eggs, bacon and tomato. He kept moving. Up the side passage of the house across the road. The backyard was empty.
He ran for the back fence. Larissa was already in the next yard. She turned and walked back towards him.
‘I lost them,’ she said.
He bent over and unleashed hell onto the lawn.
They jogged back to the car using the same route through the houses and over back fences. His head was a blinding mass of pain. They did half-a-dozen laps of the surrounding streets, got out and checked a couple of garages and overgrown gardens, but found nothing. They kept cruising up and down, around and around.
‘Kids,’ Larissa said. ‘Two kids. A boy and a girl.’
‘Anything else? Specific?’
‘Um, teenagers. Youngish teenagers. The girl was leading the boy—that’s a bit unusual.’
‘What were they wearing?’
‘They both had on hoodies, that’s why I didn’t get a good look at them. Hers was pink, his was blue. And they could really run,’ she added.
‘And jump,’ he said.
A flash of pain jolted his head forward.
‘Oh my God, are you all right?’ Larissa asked, touching her hand lightly to his shoulder.
‘I’m – no, I’m not,’ he said. ‘This migraine is killing me.’
‘We have some Panadol back at our place,’ she offered.
‘No, I’ve got Panadol,’ he said. ‘It’s not enough. Not nearly enough.’
She looked concerned. He was having trouble seeing.
‘Oh God,’ she said, jamming her hands down between her legs.
‘Chemist,’ he said. ‘I need to go to a chemist.’
‘Down here.’ She pointed. ‘Turn right at the end.’
There were two chemists in Gloster. The one on the main drag was waist-deep in water, but the other one was a street further back from the river, slightly more elevated. It was only knee-deep.
He pulled up a further street back from the pharmacy.
‘Wait here,’ he said.
She didn’t respond, just got out of the car and followed.
They sloshed along the footpath up to their knees, careful to avoid potholes and the masses of floating debris. The floodwater was like a swirling mobile rubbish tip. Larissa stumbled over a piece of submerged rubble and he turned and caught her. They made the last twenty metres to the chemist with their arms intertwined.
The chemist had a large display front window and a firmly barred and bolted front door.
‘Out the back,’ he said, and led the way down a narrow driveway between the buildings.
The back door was also heavily barred. There was no window.
‘Shit,’ Larissa said. ‘What do you want to do?’
He led her back to the street and walked just a little further down to a cement rubbish bin container. He pulled the metal bin out of the cement container and emptied the rainwater and sopping garbage into the swirling flood at his knees.
‘Stand back,’ he said.
‘I don’t know if this –’
The bin made a horrendous smashing clashing sound as it went through the front window. Watson smashed off the jagged bits of glass with his baton and climbed in.
It was dry inside; the owners had done a good job sandbagging the doors, and the base of the window was above the flood level. He made his way straight to the rear, behind the prescriptions counter, where he found a large padlocked cabinet. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and battered the padlock into submission.
His heart skipped a beat when he opened the cabinet. Xanax, Vicodin, OxyContin, Buprenorphine—it was an Aladdin’s cave of goodies for the prescription-addicted. His mouth was watering as his hand hovered over the array of glorious opportunity before he selected two boxes of twenty Oxys and another two of twenty Xanax. He pocketed the boxes, turned, then turned back and grabbed another box of Oxy—just to be on the safe side.
He made his way back to the front of the store. Larissa was standing in the middle of the shop with a plastic shopping bag stuffed to the brim with deodorants, make-up, perfumes and what looked like a new hairdryer, still in its box.
‘Get what you need?’ she asked.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He laughed.
‘Yep. Let’s get going.’
He swallowed an Oxy and washed it down with some bottled water. By the time they arrived back at the house they had just chased the children from, he was starting to feel calm, his head was clearing, he no longer felt nauseous.
The back door of the house remained open; it was obvious where the frame of a pet door had been removed to gain entry.
‘Would have to have been a skinny kid,’ Watson said.
‘The girl,’ Larissa said. ‘Built like a whippet.’
They entered straight into a kitchen. There were the remains of a couple of meals. Bacon-and-egg sandwiches and a bowl of cereal by the look of it. A frying pan on the gas cooktop still retained some heat. The rest of the house looked relatively untouched: just some blankets in front of the dying embers of a fire in a small combustion heater.
‘You know, I get the feeling they weren’t here that long,’ Watson said.
‘Me too,’ Larissa said, returning from a quick scout of the house. ‘None of the beds have been slept in.’
‘The cooktop is still warm, and this fire doesn’t look like it’s been going too long. Any idea whose house it is?’
Larissa found a pile of recently opened mail on the kitchen bench.
‘Karen and Michael De Jong,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘Never heard of them.’
Watson inspected an array of family portraits arranged along a wall in the hallway. They were all fairly recent, and showed a young married couple, a dog, no children.
‘They’ve come in through the pet door, had a feed and tried to warm up with this fire. They’ve heard us pull up outside and bolted.’
‘Jesus,’ Larissa said. ‘We’re supposed to be the good guys. What would they be running from?’
‘I don’t know, but the same thing happened to me at the caravan park last night. It’s like they’re scared of us.’
‘The caravan park?’ Larissa said.
‘It’s worth another look.’
The flooding hadn’t got much worse in the park since the night before. It was up to Larissa’s knees and only just below his. The floodwater somehow seemed dirtier in the caravan park, murkier, and Larissa crinkled up her nose as she waded along.
They went from cabin to cabin, having a quick look through each front window before trying the door. Watson had the safety catch released on his holster. They were four from the end, and Watson was wading towards the next cabin, when a movement caught his attention. He froze, held his hand out to his side. Larissa stopped moving behind him.
‘What?’ she asked softly.
‘The last cabin,’ he said, ‘on the other side of the road. Something moved.’
