Blindside

by J. R. Carroll

  The second he stepped inside and closed the door he instinctively felt that something was out of place. The house was still and silent. To the right of the vestibule was a passage leading to the downstairs bathroom and kitchen, while to the left an L-shaped passage led to the lounge room via a small sewing room. Dead ahead was the staircase.

  The normally placid air had an edge to it, one he could feel and smell.

  It was a man’s cologne or aftershave.

  Why was everything so still? There was a sense that if he made a single wrong move, the consequences would be catastrophic.

  ‘Jo?’ he called, without moving from the vestibule.

  No answer. But she was here—her presence was as palpable as his.

  ‘Jo?’ he called again—louder this time.

  Nothing at first, then: ‘Here.’

  It came from the lounge room. But why was her voice so strained, so . . . tentative?

  She was not alone. Jo was never tentative. Whoever she had for company was controlling her. Justice Steer, perhaps, come to tighten the screws on his wayward daughter-in-law, to protect the family’s ‘interests’ and avert a messy divorce. There was, after all, a great deal—aside from reputations and careers—on the line. Errant wives met untimely deaths for a lot less.

  He dropped the keys on an antique wall stand next to the door. There was definitely an unwelcome presence here. Maybe even a threatening one.

  In prison, every long-term convict developed certain survival skills. Chief among these was a sixth sense, an ability to detect an impending threat or an aura of menace, well before it had shown its human face. If you could not sense that subtle shift in the molecular structure of the atmosphere, you were in serious trouble.

  He passed the open door to the sewing room and continued on, through the double-doors of the spacious, expensively furnished and upholstered lounge.

  And there was Jo.

  She stood facing him, her hands straight down at her sides. Behind her was a man: tall, blond, smartly dressed in black pants and a dark-blue patterned shirt that was buttoned to the neck.

  In his left hand he held a stainless-steel carving knife. It was pressed against Jo’s throat.

  In his right was a heavy-calibre, chrome-plated, semiautomatic pistol, possibly a Beretta or Sig-Sauer nine-millimetre: a seriously destructive handgun. The arm was extended over Jo’s shoulder, the weapon held sideways in the manner favoured by Chinese mobsters in movies, and aimed right between Shaun’s eyes.

  Jo’s eyes were wide; her face was the colour of flour.

  Shaun froze in the doorway. He had no intention of even slightly upsetting the balance in this delicate and deadly tableau. That blade was hard against Jo’s skin: any more pressure and it would cut into her. The man would tell him what to do, when to do it. Shaun only had to await his orders, and stay calm.

  ‘Keep coming, convict,’ the man said, poised and set to slice if Shaun was dumb enough to rush him. ‘Put your hands in plain view. Come on.’ He gestured impatiently with the gun as Shaun did his bidding: both hands spread in front of him, showing he was no threat.

  ‘Whatever you want, you can have it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours. Just don’t hurt her, please. We’ll cooperate.’

  ‘Oh, I know that, convict,’ the man said.‘Stop right there.’

  Shaun stopped, hands still outstretched, fingers spread: awaiting orders.

  ‘Right,’the man said.‘Lift up your shirt and do a three-sixty.’

  Shaun raised his polo shirt to chest level and did the turn. Nothing in the waistband of his jeans, or anywhere else: a clean bill of health.

  ‘Turn out your pockets,’ the man said.‘Empty ’em on the floor.’

  Shaun produced his wallet from his back pocket, showed it to the man and dropped it.From the front pockets came change, some notes, cigarettes and lighter, all of which hit the carpet.

  He stood still, waiting. Jo’s eyes never left his for a second. She was a picture of terror, but he saw and sensed that even though she was under threat her mind was ticking over. So was Shaun’s. Now he recognised the knife as part of a German carving set from the kitchen. As he awaited his next order he studied the intruder: straight, dirty-blond hair, boyish face, dancing grey eyes, razor-thin lips, pointed chin. He was one cool son of a bitch: calm, composed, in control. At first Shaun had put his age at mid-twenties, but now he detected signs of ageing on his face and throat. He was mid-forties, older than Shaun, but glance at him in the street and he would pass for much younger.

  ‘Get on your knees. Clasp your hands around your head.’

  Shaun did so. From this angle he saw that the blade was pressing so firmly into Jo’s throat that the carotid artery bulged alarmingly.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Just say it, you got it. No need for—’

  ‘Shut up, convict,’ the man said coolly. Shaun was staring into the black hole of the nine-millimetre. This guy obviously knew who Shaun was, but who the fuck was he? Shaun was trying desperately to slot him in somewhere in the database at the back of his brain. He did not believe he had ever forgotten a single face: they were all in there somewhere. This one was vaguely, distantly familiar, but it wasn’t coming to him yet. He wasn’t some hypo off the street—too cool and well organised, and that cannon was rock-steady in his hand. Maybe he wasn’t even local. Everything about him cried out professional. Shaun was casting his thoughts back to a time when the guy would have been mid-twenties, and just as lethal. A man like him did not take up heavy crime later in life with all the expertise of an old hand. He was an old hand: maybe from the eighties . . .

  ‘Now pay close attention, convict. You, uh, want to live, I presume?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You want the bitch to live?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then listen. You do the wrong thing once—once—and I’ll open her up. You can watch her bleed out all over the nice floor. Then I’ll do something much worse to you.’

  ‘If you kill us, we can’t give you what you want,’ Shaun said. He felt it was important to engage the guy in conversation: the first rule of negotiation. If he’s talking, he’s not killing . . .

  The man smiled his boyish, razor-lipped smile.‘You don’t understand. If it comes to that, if I have to open her, that means I don’t care any more, convict. It means I’ll deal with you for my amusement. Got it?’

  ‘Yes.’ He switched his gaze from the weapon to Jo, trying to communicate some degree of reassurance: Hang in there. I won’t let him hurt you . . .

  ‘Good. Now, I understand you are in possession of a large quantity of cash, which used to belong to the late George Petrakos. Correct?’

  The man was very well informed. This was a major, professional sting.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Fine. Now we play a little game. I’m going to ask the bitch how much is involved. She’ll whisper her answer to me. Then I’ll ask you, and if the numbers don’t match . . . well, you don’t want me to spell it out, do you? Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, you understand the rules of the game?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. Say a number, bitch,’ he said, and turned her lips to his ear using the flat side of the blade. Shaun saw her whisper, but couldn’t read it.

  ‘Your turn, convict. Go.’

  Shaun didn’t hesitate. ‘Two point eight million, plus change.’

  The man gave him a wide smile. ‘That’s what she said . . . although she failed to mention the change.’ Seeing some alarm on Shaun’s face he added: ‘But I’ll overlook that.’

  Now it hit him. Jesus Christ. It’s Pritchett. Terry fucking Pritchett. The fucking toe-cutter from Sydney. Oh, Christ. We are in some deep shit here . . .

  ‘Hate you to finish up like Henry Agar,’ the man said.

  Shaun had noticed an item in the paper about the grisly death of Henry Agar up north. Cops had no suspect. Shaun knew of Agar’s exploits over the years, but he had no reason to
connect him with Terry Pritchett. Now he did.

  ‘I knew a cop-convict once,’ the man said.‘What a busted arse he was. Fell between two worlds, the good and the bad, and neither one loved him. Sad son of a bitch ate his own gun in the end.’

  ‘What happened to Agar?’ Shaun said.

  ‘Agar was a bit too hungry. Wanted a fifty-fifty split. We exchanged views, and he, uh, lost the debate.’

  Shaun was now absolutely certain it was Terry Pritchett. He was a gangly, grinning reaper who had stepped right out of a bad dream. Shaun only recognised him from undercover surveillance photos shot at around the time of the Hamilton murders, when he was a young, arrogant hood with that same nasty grin. He’d hardly changed at all with the years.

  It was an image that did not fade in a hurry. Shaun, however, would not have come to Pritchett’s attention until the sensational events of 1992 . . .

  ‘So where is it, this . . . two point eight million, plus change?’ Pritchett said.

  ‘Not here,’ Shaun said.‘It’s at a bank. In a safe deposit box.’

  ‘Of course—exactly the right place for it. Where is the key to this box?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  ‘I see. All right, listen. Get up, convict. Leave your shit there. Turn around and lead us slowly to the kitchen. Keep those hands clasped behind your head. Any sudden moves and you know what. Go on.’

  When they were in the kitchen, Shaun stopped and waited.

  ‘Turn around,’ Pritchett said.

  Shaun faced Jo and Pritchett. They were much more intimately grouped in here. Jo was watching him, eyes jumping from one of his to the other, trying to read his thoughts or connect in some way.

  ‘Where?’ Pritchett said.

  ‘In a canister, on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘Get it.’

  Shaun opened the tin canister and removed the small bronze keys, which he held up for Pritchett to see. Pritchett’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Fine. Now we reach a critical point in proceedings. You, convict, have the power of life and death in your grubby hands. But that’s nothing new, is it? This time, however, your bitch’s life is in the balance. Still with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen. You have precisely three-quarters of an hour to go to the bank, take out all the cash, and bring it here. If you are one minute longer, she dies. If you try to involve cops, or anyone, she dies. If I even suspect you are trying to fuck me up in any way, she dies. Are we in concert?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He glanced at the bench next to the sink: Walsh’s phone was on a charger, still plugged in. Useless. He couldn’t see Jo’s phone anywhere. His pistol was in the bedroom, nowhere in contention. He had nothing.

  ‘Shaun, take the Honda,’ Jo said suddenly. ‘It’s quicker.’

  He held her eyes, nodding as he picked up her keys from the table. Using her eyes she was imploring him in some urgent, secret way.

  ‘Clock’s ticking,’ Pritchett said.‘What are you waiting for, convict? A fanfare?’

  ‘Uh . . . I need the cases to put the money in.’

  ‘Where might they be?’

  ‘In a cupboard, under the staircase.’

  More watchful supervision while he armed up with the aluminium luggage.

  Through the kitchen window Pritchett could see him load the three cases into the trunk, climb into the maroon Prelude and fire it up. The steel door went up, and he reversed into the narrow laneway. As he drove down the lane the door came down again.

  Where the laneway met the street he stopped and thought it over. Jo had told him: ‘Shaun, take the Honda.’ They were the first words she’d uttered, and she was using them to tell him something. He did not believe she had ever once called him by his name before: it sounded . . . odd, unnatural, when it came out. It was a wrong note. Come to that, he never addressed her by name either, except just then. Theirs was a name-free relationship.

  It was significant. And the reason she gave for using the Honda—‘It’s quicker’—was bullshit. It was cover.

  There was a message in her words. What?

  Then he saw it, staring him in the face.

  The Prelude was equipped with a carphone. At least, there was the mounting and connection for one. Where was the handset?

  There: in the glove compartment.

  He pushed the T-bar into ‘P’. The car idled soundlessly. The beginnings of a plan rose from the swirling mist of his confusion and panic. Seconds disappeared. Sweat popped under his arms and slid down his sides. Then in a decisive moment he drove around the corner, past the house, and stopped. Quickly he removed the front door key from the key ring, opened the car door and silently, out of sight of anyone in the house, placed the key under the welcome mat. Then, just as silently, he got back in the car, connected the phone and took off for the city.

  One thing he knew and remembered about Terry Pritchett: he was an ice-cold killer. A butcher. He chopped up Brian Hamilton and his partner at that motel back in ’85, when Shaun was a young constable attending a crime scene. It was the most horrific thing he had ever witnessed, and it was carried out after Pritchett got what he came for.

  He would certainly do the same to Jo and him when he got the cash. No doubt of it. He was fresh from the butchering and burning of Henry Agar. The man was on a roll. Two more victims would be meat and potatoes to him. A true psychopath, he killed not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

  The moment he had the cash he would cut Jo’s throat and shoot Shaun—with that boyish smile all over his cool, psychopath’s dial.

  Shaun drove. His mouth was set tight. In his mind he carefully composed some words, then stabbed numbers on the phone as he sped west along Wellington Parade, into the heart of a tight clutch of skyscrapers.

  A terrible fear had weighed on him from the moment he’d left the house: Jo was completely at Pritchett’s mercy. Forty-five minutes was a long time to wait with a blade at her throat and a gun behind her head.

  What if he became restless? What if he decided to turn his attention to her? An attractive woman like Jo . . . he could do whatever he wanted and she’d be powerless to resist. He’d kill her in an eye-blink if she tried, and Jo was the type who would fight the bastard, regardless. Christ, what if he went feral on her?

  Worse: he wasn’t there to protect her. But what choice did he have?

  Now he was palpitating.

  Sweat streamed down his face as he struggled with the awful possibilities that might greet him when he returned.

  Inside the house, Pritchett’s mind was starting to fragment. Fifteen minutes had gone by, then twenty. He had already stuffed a tea towel into Jo’s mouth and made her sit down at the head of the table, under threat of having her hands trussed if she moved. Unnervingly he stood behind her: a sinister, mostly silent presence made even more unbearable by the fact that he was out of sight. She couldn’t see what he was up to. The sharp blade never deviated from her throat. Her instinct was to grab the arm holding the knife, but that would be a fatal mistake. She could hear him breathing and a rustling of his clothes occasionally. She could also smell his strong aftershave.

  His occasional attempts at one-way small talk came to zero.

  Then he started touching her hair, ever so delicately. A cold shiver rippled straight through her. It was starting . . .

  His face came down alongside hers.

  ‘No reason we can’t be nice to each other,’ he said in a vacant, dead voice. ‘While we wait.’

  She shut her eyes while he curled a lock of her hair around his fingers.

  ‘Convict’s gonna be a while,’ he murmured. ‘We could make whoopee. How about it?’

  She arched slightly as his right hand left her hair and started groping her breasts. Where was the gun? Must have put it down his pants . . .

  ‘You’ve got a lovely set,’ he said. ‘Wasted on the convict.’

  Without warning he ripped open her shirt. Buttons flew over the table. She braced herself to screa
m, but all she could manage was a deep muffled sound.

  ‘Yummy,’ he whispered, then deftly used the blade to cut open her bra, between the cups.

  Jo twisted and squirmed under his hold while he fondled and squeezed and pinched nipples. Now his tongue was dipping in and out of her ear.

  The hand inevitably moved south. When she stiffened he gave her a taste of the blade’s edge.

  He forced his hand down inside her jeans, popping open the stud, and grabbed her. She clenched her legs together and tried so hard to scream she was starting to see spots.

  ‘Know what I like to do, baby?’ he said, and whispered into her ear.

  The bile was rising: she was about to throw up. If so, she would surely choke to death.

  After a long minute he removed the hand from in her jeans and slid his fingers slowly over her breasts, leaving a smear. Then he trailed them lingeringly over her shoulder. Her eyes darted nervously. The flat of the blade was pressed so hard against her throat it was cutting off her windpipe.

  She heard him unzip.

  And that was when she lashed out with everything she could muster.

  Down in the bowels of the bank Shaun was shoving wads of banknotes into the cases. His worst fears were rapidly mounting. How would Pritchett be able to resist taking advantage of the situation?

  Bastard wouldn’t hesitate for a nanosecond.

  The race was against Pritchett, not the deadline.

  In his haste he was spilling wads onto the floor. Stay calm, he told himself, but could not.

  So much fucking money . . .

  Twenty-six minutes remained when he snapped the last case shut. He left the building at a fast trot, as fast as he could go without breaking into a run and attracting the attention of security guards: through the revolving doors, banging them loudly with the cases, out into the busy street. The Prelude was double-parked right outside, its hazard lights flashing. No sign of a cop. He threw the cases into the trunk, jumped in, put it in Drive and performed an illegal, squealing U-turn with barely a glimpse at the mirrors.

  Twenty-two minutes left.