Hurt Runs Within, page 35
Mackay stepped back to observe the room. On the front of each freezer was a label with a series of Roman numerals written in black marker. Likely to keep the details inside discreet. The numerals were number ranges. The freezer he stood in front of had the numbers marked IV–XII with two specified columns underneath: one marked M, one marked F. The two along the back wall both had the number XVIII+, also with two columns M and F. The last freezer on the right wall had the numbers XIII–XVIII, same columns, M and F. In English digits the numbers equated as 4–12, 18-plus and 13–18. To anybody else walking in, seeing the numerals and the frozen grapes would simply assume a date range or a grape vintage. Maybe even a weight or a volume. And the M and F columns could have stood for Month and Fruit. Mackay knew better, though. He’d switched on. Pieced it together. The number ranges were human years for children, adults and teens. The M and F columns were the gender split for male and female.
Below the labels, attached with a white fridge magnet, was paperwork. Which resembled an itemised checklist for quantity and quality. He didn’t know what the specifics were, and he wasn’t going to read them to find out either. Blood had been forcefully, or in some way involuntarily, taken from tourists and their children. Injected into the fruit then distributed. Sold on the black market as a pricey commodity through the Dark Web. Van Breeman’s moneymaker. Marketed to rich elitists with a disregard for human decency, and probably exported to African countries still practising voodoo. In any case it was a vile product for a vile customer. Hidden in plain sight. Part of the front of house where guests and tourists spent their money. Lincoln, fortunately, had alluded to the venture by accident. For the bigger picture, Mackay thought, it wasn’t completely realistic to have that much blood taken from winery tourists alone. Those four freezers held almost a thousand litres of volume in total. The frozen grapes inside, taking into account how much each bunch could hold, needed more than just a couple of tourists’ blood a day to be extracted. There was a greater operation at play. Van Breeman would have to have more connections through blood banks, paramedics, pathology clinics or phlebotomists to fill that many bulbs. Someone out there was offering patient samples in exchange for cash. Or special services. Malvin and his family just happened to be the ones passing through at the wrong time. Tourists doing tourist things when illegal demands needed to be met. Judging by the empty freezer labelled IV–XII, Mackay gathered Van Breeman had no more children’s blood and needed a fresh sample ASAP. A snap-decision leaving a horrific mess, seeing an entire family wiped out.
Mackay needed to leave. He wanted nothing more to do with the place. He didn’t know how far or how wide Van Breeman’s connections went, and he didn’t want to know. Wasn’t his problem. It was a clean-up project for someone else. For real cops with the right conscience. He knew they existed, he just wasn’t sure they existed locally. He’d found his nephew and made a dent in the ring of employment. That was enough. Above all things, his priority was to get Lincoln back to the only place he would be safe. Where both of them would be safe. Even from law enforcement, good or bad. Only back at the airbase would he and the boy have some form of refuge from the litter of bodies he’d left behind. He could potentially make it back to the UK even, if Cross’s contacts held up. Which meant he and the boy needed to make exit moves straight away – if Mackay wanted to remain a free man. Sure, he had a phone, but it wasn’t the burner he had originally purchased. The phone he had didn’t have Cross’s number logged in its software. He didn’t know her number from memory and hadn’t made the time or effort to write it down. Nonetheless, the phone he did have provided an opportunity. If played right, it would hopefully supply him with a vehicle to get him and Lincoln back to the Air Force base, and at the same time create an even bigger dent in Van Breeman’s operation.
0230hrs
Thursday December 20, 2012
Frans & Hoek Winery, Western Australia
Mackay walked Lincoln back inside the main gallery into the admin room. He found the remote control for the television and turned it on. He needed something to occupy the boy while making his way out to the maintenance shed to pick up a few supplies. The television options were quite boring at half-three in the morning: international news, a handful of home shopping channels, low-budget cooking shows and music videos. He opted for the cooking shows. Easy on the brain, not too exciting.
Mackay sat Lincoln on one of the pleather armchairs. ‘Ten minutes, then we’re out of here.’ Lincoln nodded once, tucked his knees up and looked at the screen with heavy eyes.
In the machinery shed Mackay found both things he was looking for quickly and easily. The first was a jerry can, the second was a lighter. The jerry can he found on a tiered shelving unit next to the ride-on lawnmower. It was half full and more than enough to start a blaze. The lighter was inside the skinny cowboy’s front jeans pocket. As Mackay searched his pockets, the cowboy began to wake. Starting with light moaning first, then slowly building to an annoying bleat. Like a hungry young calf looking for its mother. The pain signals shooting up from his ankle, sternum and jaw into his nervous system, then back down again. For good measure, and to keep him out of the picture, Mackay cracked him in the face. Twice. Right fist, middle of the forehead. Enough to put him back to sleep and prolong the headache he was about to have. No knuckle dusters this time, the poor lackey had suffered enough.
Next, Mackay went back to the stable for the woman. As he entered the swinging gate, the lone horse left inside started up, just like last time. Braying and snorting. Backing away from the gate and kicking up a fuss. Mackay felt a little bad for the poor thing. It didn’t have a clue about what had happened to its friend: a broken neck, dead, lying out there in the vineyard on top of its master. Mackay didn’t intend it that way, the beast was basically collateral damage. Maybe the animal welfare groups would call it manslaughter, or whatever terminology was used in that context. He could never live down that moniker now though. Horse-killer. Two in one lifetime was a solid effort.
The woman was where he had left her. Still breathing, still bruised and swollen. She hadn’t moved. Mackay picked her up and placed her over his shoulder. He held her there with one hand and carried the jerry can with the other. He threaded back through the property, left the jerry can out the front of the wine-press facility, then continued with the woman all the way up to the main gallery. The cooking show was still playing in the admin room, lighting Lincoln’s face with a cool blue. Some frumpy woman with grey hair and glasses was pulling a cheesy dish from an oven. Lincoln was asleep. Out cold with exhaustion. His chest rose and fell steadily which was comforting. Mackay wished his brother was there to see him. See his son lying there, alive and comfortable. If there really was a spiritual place to go to after death, he hoped Malvin was there and knew Lincoln was safe. Watching over him from above, or perhaps standing somewhere nearby.
Mackay moved quickly outside to the front veranda. He didn’t want Lincoln to wake and see the sunken, bloodied form of the woman on his shoulder. He then moved toward the open room with all the freezers, but he didn’t go inside. He laid the woman down, just outside the door on the veranda floor. Recovery position. Head turned sideways over an outstretched arm. The soft hay would have been more comfortable, but he wanted her there. The emergency responders needed to see her body first.
Before getting to the main theatrics, Mackay stepped inside the room and walked over to the freezer on the right wall. The one numbered XIII–XVIII. He moved around behind it, found its power connection and ripped out the lead. He shuffled the bulky prism away from the wall, opened the lid, reached underneath and lifted – pouring all the fruit bulbs of blood onto the floor. It was as if a massive gumball machine had exploded, scattering millions of frozen purple and green balls everywhere.
Mackay moved onto the two freezers lining the back wall numbered XVIII+. He performed the same four-step process. The first of the two was an exact repeat: power lead out, shuffle it from the wall, open the lid, lift and tip. More grapes everywhere. The second of the two was slightly different. It was heavier. Mackay went through the same motions, only when he got to lift and tip, he had to readjust his hand position underneath, clamping down harder and lifting with more effort. This time there weren’t just grapes being emptied from the inside compartment, a body toppled out with it. A frozen female. Folded in half to fit. Naked and dead and purple. Like the grapes. She had needles fixed with tubes attached to various sections of her see-through skin. Whoever the woman was, she was now shrivelled, dehydrated and ultimately sucked dry of all her blood. Part of Van Breeman’s 18+ catalogue. Her face was a gaunt outline of bone. Her prominent features reduced to a film as thin as food wrap. Her hair, strangely, was tied up away from her face, wrapped in a neat bun. Her eyes, once wide and pretty, were now hardened to glass. She had high cheekbones with even features at all angles. Probably a looker back in her day. How long she had been crammed at the bottom of the freezer only Van Breeman would know. Now a dead man’s guess. No rhyme or reason. Another tick in the box for humanity, thought Mackay, and someone else’s problem very shortly.
Mackay didn’t need to empty the last freezer. The one numbered IV–XII was bare anyway, so there was no point. He left the room and worked his way down to the wine press, moving inside with the jerry can to the most flammable object in the facility. The antique wooden structure. The old basket press he’d come across earlier. All wood, all old, all ready to burn. Luckily Van Breeman liked to keep some forms of tradition alive, which for this job was a good thing. Mackay felt a little bad about destroying it, as it was rather beautiful considering its age and craftsmanship, but it was owned by a dead guy with shameful ethics. In the end, Mackay figured burning the old press was serving a purpose for the greater good. Like a martyr.
The two vertical beams were tall enough to almost reach the wooden ceiling joists. Another good thing. Especially when the flames started licking at the top. Mackay doused the press with fuel from the jerry, splashing evenly at the front, then pouring a nice little pool inside the central basket to get the heat going. He then moved around to the back of the structure, tight up against the gyprock wall behind it. Using what fuel remained, he doused it along the back of the beams and rotating capstans. Suddenly, Mackay stumbled sideways into the gyprock with his shoulder – falling inward through a door cut into it. Seeing as the wall itself remained erect, Mackay figured he’d fallen through a concealed partition. A false door. Opening to an entirely new room completely separate from the main facility. As he looked around, the first thing he noticed was the long wooden table in front of him, extending left to right. Two tables aligned together end to end, stained with shades of purple and red. Grape juice. Or blood. Most likely both.
Set at the table closest to him were six chairs: three chairs per table. On the other side were four surgical trolleys, all lined with stainless steel trays. The two trays on the left were neatly laid out with laboratory equipment, as if prepped for a high school science experiment. Each tray had an open box of surgical gloves, pathology syringes, a vial rack filled with a dozen vials, two small strainers, a box of paper filters, beakers, and a set of everyday kitchen scissors. The two trays on the right were lined with cutting implements. Some were surgical like scalpels, forceps and scissors – same as what you’d find during an autopsy. Some were more industrial like what you’d find at a butcher: cleavers, boning knives, chef’s knives, clam knives and scimitars. A fully fleshed-out blood-grape operation. It was worse than Mackay originally thought. They weren’t just acquiring blood volumes through pathology clinics or blood banks; they were also taking their quantities by force. Victims captured and killed. Taken down like slabs of meat at an abattoir. The wall on the left had a set of black aprons on hooks. Shiny waterproof ones made with rubber and vinyl. The wall opposite had a big stainless-steel wash basin. The floor was laid with smooth tiles and a small drainage grill fixed in the middle. There was also a retractable winding hose reel set in the corner, which Mackay assumed was used to pressure clean the floor with, and regularly too. There wasn’t a hint of leftover residue or debris to be seen, everything was immaculately kept. No flies and no smell either. Someone somewhere had been running the place to inspection order.
The room was obviously set up for blood injections. Employees who were probably shuffled around in alternating shifts to inject grapes, then serve customers at the front of house. Six chairs for six workers, though could easily allocate for more considering the space. Workers who would soon find themselves unemployed wherever they were. This was the real daily grind of the winery. Working bees diligently slicing, dicing, draining then infusing. Who knew what they did with the remains, or whose the remains were or where they came from. The list of possibilities was a wide-open source: locals, tourists, refugees, illegal immigrants, even international cadaver shipments. A matter for a higher power. Not Mackay’s problem. He’d be long gone before anybody came looking for him, and he was about to burn the place to the ground anyway. Better that way. There’d still be plenty of evidence left over for an open-and-shut case, but at least the most crucial elements would be taken down in the blaze.
Mackay stepped back through the gyprock wall and lit up the old wooden press with the cowboy’s lighter. The theatrics started slow, creeping from a smoulder to a flame, to a blaze to a bonfire. The final dent in Van Breeman’s enterprise. He then made his way back to Lincoln who was still sound asleep in the chair basking in the warmth of pulled pork sliders on the television. He could see Lincoln’s eyes moving underneath the lids. Dreaming. Hopefully about chocolates and Mary Poppins and not of the brick fireplace or whatever else he’d been through over the last three days.
Mackay left the room again, letting Lincoln sleep. Safe and comfortable. There was still a little time, and Lincoln had earned a bit of shut-eye. Somebody needed to be notified of the situation: the beaten woman, the blood in the grapes and the hollowed, defrosting body from the freezer. And that somebody was not going to be any individual paramedic or police officer. Or anyone with any connections to the local emergency services in the area. He needed to call everyone. Because chances were, if all emergency departments were there, accountability to manage the truth was at a much higher percentage. The more members dealing with the bodies, fire, and Van Breeman’s exports, the higher the likelihood it would be handled through correct processes. The more the merrier.
Mackay took out the mobile phone he’d found on the wine-tasting bench and stepped onto the veranda. Which was when he encountered a problem. He didn’t know Australia’s emergency number, which he recognised put him in the complete-idiot category, pure and simple. Then and there, his greatest dumb-arse moment of his entire life. Cross would never let him live it down if she ever found out. He was a world-traveller. A soldier. A corporal for goodness’ sake. Yet he hadn’t the foggiest idea. Europe was all 112, and the whole world knew 911 was for the United States and Canada. He even knew the secondary 999 number of Ireland, but Australia? He’d never visited before. Never needed to know. Foreign number, foreign country. His mind was blank.
‘Fuck. What the fuck is the emergency number?’ he said out loud, hating himself every passing second. Spoiling the momentum right when things were swimming along. In that same flash of disappointment, Mackay heard a small set of feet shuffling through the gallery behind him. Tiny tiptoeing steps, slow and light. Mackay turned. Lincoln’s malnourished form hobbled over next to him. Mackay knelt down as Lincoln wrapped his arms around his neck and hugged him, like it came naturally.
‘Zero, zero, zero,’ Lincoln said in Mackay’s ear. His voice dry and automated.
Mackay paused, blinking away his confusion. He shuffled back and faced his nephew.
‘What’s that, Lincoln?’ said Mackay.
‘You told me.’
‘What did I tell you?’
‘After your accident we visited. You said soldiers don’t say oh. They say zero. That’s the emergency number here. Zero, zero, zero.’
The little autistic boy knew it.
‘How did you figure that out?’ said Mackay. ‘Who told you that was the emergency number here?’
‘I read it.’
‘Where?’
Lincoln pointed to the female toilets at the other end of the veranda. ‘A sticker on the big red bottle.’
From where they stood, Mackay could just make out the fire extinguisher fixed to the wall through the female bathroom’s vacant doorframe. Above the paper towels he used to wipe Lincoln down with.
‘You’re incredible,’ said Mackay.
‘You could still dial one, one, two,’ said Lincoln, ‘it wouldn’t matter. It would still go to an Australian emergency line.’
‘How do you know that?’
Lincoln shrugged.
Lincoln’s spectrum quirks made Mackay feel even more stupid.
‘I’m tired,’ said Lincoln, and nestled his head on Mackay’s shoulder. Gently, comfortably. ‘You should call right away,’ he said. ‘There’s a fire out there.’ Lincoln turned and pointed. ‘Behind us. I saw it. It’s far away so we’re okay now, but it’s big. You’re supposed to call the fire department if you see a fire.’
Mackay’s sense of stupidity vanished, immediately replaced with endearment for the boy. An uncle’s love. A family tie that would never break. In that moment Mackay had found his new purpose in life: to look after Lincoln until he was a grown man. Until he was able to manage the world on his own.
Mackay dialled 000. A recorded message began:
“You have dialled emergency triple zero. Your call is being connected. An operator will answer your call and ask whether you need police, fire and rescue, or ambulance.”
