JJ03 - Black Ice, page 23
She had to assume Damien had been busted. Why would else would he make a call and say nothing? He'd already told her Nader was in the house. Was the call a silent warning to her that something else was going on? Some kind of message because he couldn't speak? Had someone else got hold of his phone? The kid was in trouble; she knew it. She slowed for a red light ahead. Cars waited in both lanes. Damn. She steered into the empty right-only turning lane and carefully crossed the intersection, ignoring the bleating motorists behind her.
How bad could this get? she wondered. If the whole thing was blown and these guys bolted with the goods before she could get there, she and Gabriel would look like fools, especially to the ACC. But Superintendent Last would be the one to really cop it: passing up the opportunity to take down a known clan lab with offenders in custody, on the off chance that they might get something bigger. And they didn't even have any firm leads on whether Nader actually was importing precursors. It was all just speculation, and Last had believed in her enough to ask the ACC to back down while they ran the show. Fuck. Last would never trust her again.
And Damien. She thought about the kid's reaction when she and Gabe had detailed his role in this operation. Every emotion was painted across his face as he experienced it: fear, anger, guilt. Why had she ever thought he'd be able to pull this off?
She picked up her phone to call Last. He could get the local boys to go over there right now. But what if the plan was still intact? Or what if everyone overreacted and someone got hurt? The cops would have to be told about the chemicals inside and they would cordon off the street, go in with the megaphone. It'd end up a standoff. They wouldn't go in until everyone came out and if Nader chose to take hostages, the whole thing would go to shit.
Call. Don't call. What would be best here?
She dropped her mobile back onto the passenger seat for the third time. When a truck ahead suddenly slowed, she stood on the brakes. The phone flew forward, smacked into the footrest and skidded somewhere under the seat. Well, that decides that, she thought.
A couple of streets from Damien's she backed the speed off a little. She knew Gabriel couldn't have got here ahead of her. She planned to do a recce and decide what to do when she had some more information. If all seemed quiet in there, she'd wait for Gabe and talk through their next steps. If she discovered Damien was being hurt, that would be another story.
Jill ditched the Magna out the front of a redbrick home at the top of the street. The lighting for this road was brighter than most of the others around here, and fortunately it was a pretty dark evening. She hoped to be able to get as close as possible to the house to see whether she could hear what was happening inside. Risky, she knew. If Kasem didn't know what was going on and spotted her out here, she'd be hard pressed trying to explain what 'Krystal Peters' was doing hovering around a house in Nader's parents' street in Merrylands. She figured that she could pretend to be a lovesick stalker, disgruntled at his blowing off their date, who had come to his house to find him, and then spotted his car down the road. Whether he'd believe her or not was debatable. Whatever: any way she played this, he would not be happy to see her here. Best that he doesn't, then, she told herself.
She stopped jogging three houses from the clan lab and kept as close to the property boundary as possible, out of the pools of light glowing over the road. It all seemed pretty quiet. The tension in her shoulders scaled down a little. She hadn't known what to expect – a shootout on the lawn, a body on the front steps? But the house squatted silently, windows lit behind blinds: just another home in the suburbs.
No lights were on in the house next door, and Jill took the chance that no one was home. She stepped through the gap in the low brick wall that partitioned the home from the street and crept across the well-tended lawn. Shrubs and another low-lying fence now lay between her and Damien's house. She wriggled closer, the branches of a straggly bush raking through her hair, clutching at her clothes. She thought she could hear voices now and wondered whether she should climb the fence.
Men shouting. She couldn't make out what they were saying, but something was going down in there. Jill stepped up onto the lowest rung of the fence and cartwheeled over into the dark yard next door.
Whitey lay still at Damien's feet, blood oozing from his nose.
Someone had to say something. The gas was already shimmering the air around the stove, the sweet, distinctive smell setting off an alarm in Damien's head. Finally, he found his voice. 'Kasem.'
'Ah, you can speak, uni boy.'
'I don't know what you're trying to prove here,' Damien said, 'but can you do it some other way? The shit in this kitchen is already reactive enough without the gas going. I'll tell you whatever you want, but can we just shut the gas off and open some windows?' He reached out to turn off the stove.
Nader smacked the rolled-up magazine across the back of Damien's hand. 'Actually, mate,' he said, 'you can tell me what I want to know right now. Who is Krystal?'
Damien gave it his best shot. 'A, um, a girl from uni.'
'FUCKING LIAR!' screamed Nader. Then, in his reasonable, calm voice, he said, 'It's Krystal Peters. She's a fucking cop, isn't she, uni boy?'
'Yes.'
'Real name?'
'Detective Jill Jackson.' Damien watched the air shimmer.
'Urgill, Agassi, get over here.' Nader waved his hand above the benchtop. 'Pack up whatever shit you can carry and get it out of here now.' He turned back to Damien. 'Never bullshit a bullshitter, isn't that what they say, Damo? You chose the wrong side.'
Damien's brain threatened to piss off somewhere again. He forced himself to focus. 'Look, we can get this shit sorted out, Kasem, but you've got to turn the gas off now. Even if you get the chemicals out of here, there're a lot of by-products and gases that remain. You'll blow us all up!'
'Thanks, Damien. That's a good point. I just need the gas going another coupla minutes.'
Damien stared open-mouthed at this lunatic. What the fuck was he going to do? He nudged Whitey with his foot. Wake up, he wanted to scream. He could try to bolt for the door, but he couldn't leave Whitey here like this, in a house full of gas with Kasem Nader. Nader smiled back at him, seemingly amused by his desperation. Damien scrambled for the right thing to say to this idiot to make him stop.
'What do you want me to do?' he asked.
'Just what you're told in future, thanks, Damo. Remember our little talk about soldiers and generals? Well, I need you to stop trying to pretend that you have a cock, and just do whatever the fuck I tell you to do.'
'Okay, okay! Just turn the gas off.' Damien started to cough. His eyes streamed. 'Whitey's out cold, man. You're gonna kill him.'
'Actually, you'd better hope you can wake your little friend up pretty quickly, Damo, or that just might be the case.' Nader rolled the magazine in his hand into a tighter cylinder, and to Damien's mushrooming horror, shoved it into the toaster next to the stove and depressed the lever.
'I'll be outside waiting, Damo,' he said. 'We'll relocate this little enterprise and you'd better do as you're fucking told next time.'
Damien forced himself to be calm and careful. He might have three minutes, if he was very lucky and the place didn't go up even before the magazine ignited. He grabbed a beaker off the sink and jetted water into it from the cold tap. If this didn't wake his friend, he'd have to drag him out. He dashed the water into Whitey's face. Whitey coughed and moaned, and Damien started dragging him.
'What the fuck? Get off me!' Whitey struggled and thrashed.
'Whitey,' said Damien, bending close to his friend's ear. 'If you want to live, please get the fuck up and run.'
58
Saturday 13 April, 8.20 pm
Jill felt like screaming. From the shadows at the side of the house, she watched Agassi and Urgill carrying out what had to be drug paraphernalia. She pictured her phone, wedged somewhere under the seat in the car at the top of the street. Please, Gabriel, get here soon, she thought.
She was sidling closer to the dark underbelly of the house when another man emerged onto the relative brightness of the porch. Kasem Nader. He too carried a box. So, would Damien be next? Or was he in there somewhere, hurt, or worse?
She began to breathe deeply, pumping herself up for action. No way could she just sit here and watch. These men were packing this thing up. They were going to get away with it. Back-up or not, she had to do something. She couldn't just squat here in the dark while they removed all the hard evidence and moved on, leaving her, Gabriel and Lawrence Last to take the crap.
She wrinkled her nose. That smell. What . . . ? The odour suddenly registered and she sprang from the ground, launching herself onto the fence using it as a hurdle.
And the world went white.
It jarred back into technicolour with a roar of sound. Jill found herself sprawled eight metres from the fence on the lawn next door to the clan lab, unable to breathe.
Am I dying? she wondered.
She made an O with her lips, as though sucking through a straw, sipping for any tiny breath of air she could get. Nothing. Her vision darkened, bruised purple, cleared, then faded again.
'You all right there, Krystal?'
Nader. He reached a hand down. Jill heard the Maroubra surf in her ears.
'You're just winded, I think. Here, sit up a bit,' he said. She could barely hear him.
He carefully hooked an arm around her waist and helped her sit up. Air streamed into her lungs and she sat quietly with her head between her knees, drinking it in. The sweetness quickly gave way to the acridity of smoke.
She coughed and turned her head to the left. The wall of the clan lab she'd huddled against was gone. A mouth-like opening now yawned, revealing blackened furniture and a sputtering fire within the house. She lifted her eyes to Nader. They seemed to be the only part of her body she could move without pain.
'Little Krystal,' he said, smoothing her hair from her eyes. 'Such a talented little soldier. I would have made you an officer.'
Jill wasn't certain she was hearing any of this right. The ocean still rushed inside her head. She blinked up at him.
'But that's not going to happen now,' he said. 'I'd say your cover is blown, ah, Jackson.'
Their eyes met and they both looked back at the house. Nader winked and walked away.
Jill lay down in the cool grass and waited for Gabriel.
59
Sunday 14 April, 12.30 pm
Seren leaned back on her elbows on the picnic rug and watched Marco kick a soccer ball with some kid he'd just met. The midday sun had been almost too hot today, which was surprising for April, especially this close to the harbour, which usually cooled things down a lot. She tilted her head back further and studied the intricate underbelly of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, almost directly above her. She sighed, and just as they had all night, her thoughts flip-flopped backwards and forwards. Should she let go of the plan and try to make the most of what she had, or should she just go ahead with the final step – confront Christian with the evidence and demand a million dollars?
Seren knew Christian had that much money and more. On several occasions before going out for the night, he'd traded shares online; she'd seen his portfolio. Before she'd been imprisoned, he'd even offered to give her some tips for online trading, and she'd almost slapped him, even then, when she'd loved him madly. Like she needed to know how to do that. What was she going to buy shares with? And she knew his Darling Harbour apartment was worth more than a million alone. Late one Saturday morning, two Asian men had knocked on Christian's door and offered him $1.8 million to buy it. He'd later explained that they owned the apartment next door and, like him, had bought their unit off the plan when it was worth half as much. He told Seren that his neighbours knew he owned the apartment outright, and they'd been trying to buy the property for their relatives ever since they'd moved in. She knew Christian had the money, and she believed he'd pay it rather than risk exposure and gaol, but she was no longer certain that she could bear the strain of the risks she was taking.
By eight this morning she'd had to get out of her flat. She didn't think she'd slept even one moment last night. She couldn't believe she'd got out of that office alive, let alone with the camera, and that evidence. With hands that still shook, when she had arrived home she'd carefully downloaded the footage onto the laptop, transferring it to the folder she'd hidden in her system files. She had re-set the password and shoved the computer back under her bed. She thought about the girl – whoever Cassie Jackson was, she'd saved Seren's life. She had a feeling that Tracksuit Man wouldn't have let her just walk out of there if he'd seen the camera. But now, what did she owe Cassie? No one gives you something for nothing – her stepfather had taught her that one useful thing at least.
Surely last night was a sign of how dangerous this whole thing was. She looked back at her son, saw him laughing, his too-long black hair flopping into his eyes, then streaming back from his forehead as he ran. How could she be so selfish as to put him at risk again? She knew there were three ways their life could now pan out. One: Marco having her there to protect him as best she could in that unit block – well, at least for the foreseeable future. Two: she and Marco, rich and safe, away from there forever. Option three was Marco, all alone in the world again, with her in gaol or dead. What right did she have to take the gamble?
She turned to Angel, sitting on the rug next to her, carefully peeling a mandarin. Should I ask her advice? she wondered again.
'Whatcha thinking, hun?' said Angel, startling her.
'Ah, just how I wish I could hang out with Marco more and that I didn't have to go to work tomorrow,' she said.
'I hear that!' said Angel, who worked a probation-and-parole-ordered job in a mail-sorting depot, with an hour's commute each way.
'Angel . . .' began Seren, at the same moment that Angel said, 'Speaking of which . . .' They both laughed, and Seren said, 'You go first. What were you going to say?'
'Nothing exciting,' said Angel. 'I was just going to say that maybe we should pack up and start heading back. I've got to get a few things sorted before work tomorrow.'
'Yep, okay, we should,' said Seren. 'As long as you come over for dinner tonight. I've decided I'm going to make chicken lasagne. I'll shout a good red.'
'Hey, good red or shit red, you don't have to ask me twice. I'm there.'
They packed up the remnants of their lunch and Seren called Marco over. Angel bent to pick up a bag and winced.
'Angel! What are you doing?' she said. 'Marco, take that bag from Aunty Angel.' She watched with concern as Marco hurried to take the bag from Angel's bandaged right hand. A prickling of blood welled through the large cloth bandage. 'That hand isn't getting better very quickly, is it?' Seren said. 'You never did tell me how you hurt it.'
'Oh, just cooking, like I said before,' said Angel. 'There's no big bloody story.' She grabbed the rug from the grass with her left hand and shook it out, favouring the right. 'Let's get going. I've got nothing washed at home, and I'm not gonna get anything dry if we don't hurry up.'
60
Monday 15 April, 12.40 pm
Jill could glimpse sunshine in Belmore Park to the right of the Central Square building, but none of its warmth reached her. She stepped out of Gabriel's car into Castlereagh Street, a strong wind from the railway tunnel behind her blasting straight up her shirt. She wrapped her arms around her body, and hurried after Gabriel towards the multistorey building. The street noise muted instantly when the glass doors shooshed closed behind them, and they crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators that would take them up to the Sydney offices of the Australian Federal Police.
Two jump-suited federal cops, necks like front-row forwards, stood beside a desk and studied their approach when they got out of the lift.
'Help you?' one of them said. He looked to Jill like some monstrous teenager; she wondered how the hell his parents had kept him fed.
'It's all right, Moose. I've got 'em.' Jill watched Cameron Genovese make his way across the room – it took him maybe two strides. He and the other two footy players dwarfed her and Gabriel, and looking up at them she suddenly felt her throat constrict. She automatically scanned the room for every exit point and for something to use as a weapon. Her eyes closed involuntarily but she could still picture where everyone stood, heard every movement in the room. She forced herself to open her eyes, furious with her body for assuming this ridiculous defensive reaction every time she perceived male threat. Having trained herself for years to fight blindfolded, her first instinct was to close off the visuals when she perceived danger.
You're in the copshop, stupid, she told herself, following Gabriel and Genovese from the lobby. Whatever greeting they'd exchanged when shaking hands had not registered. But she was certain she wouldn't have missed much of a love-fest between these two.
Genovese led them down a narrow corridor and into a clinically-outfitted office. A desk, a few high-backed office chairs, and that was it. But there was no need for decoration in the room; the entire wall facing the door was made of glass. She walked across and stood looking over the park to Central Station, the ornate sandstone clock tower registering eleven forty am. A train to the left of the tower snaked silently towards the city; she watched it until it disappeared at the corner of the window, then turned when she heard footsteps approaching the room.
Olsen Lanvin knocked once at the open door and walked in. Jill could see the clock tower reflected in his wire-rimmed glasses, with no eyes visible behind the reflection. She crossed the room to shake hands. Gabriel and Genovese had already claimed their seats. She took the one closest to the window and swivelled her back to the view.
'Would anyone like some coffee or water, before we begin?' asked Lanvin. When everyone responded in the negative, he too sat.
Jill steeled herself for the lecture. She knew that the ACC would badly have wanted the clan lab bust, and she was certain that Lanvin and Genovese would've copped heat from their superiors for not taking the Merrylands operation down as soon as they knew about it. She rubbed at her neck, which was still stiff and sore from the blast. Sore she could understand, but she could not believe that she still felt tired – she'd spent the whole day yesterday asleep in her bed, in her real bed, in Maroubra. After being checked out by ambos at the explosion site in Merrylands, and making her formal report to Superintendent Last, he'd instructed her to go home, informing her that her undercover operation would be shut down.
