The flash of synthetic blue up ahead burned his eyes, unnatural, but beautiful all the same.
‘Davie!’
The boy didn’t turn, frozen to the spot and staring at something in the bushes ahead. After all this time, all the kilometres trekked and as they were about to finally give up, they had found Martin. In the absolute depths of desperation they had found success.
As sure of this as of anything in his life, Chandler tore through the landscape with abandon. What he hoped to see – Martin alive – clashed with what he expected to see.
Closing in he found out it was neither what he hoped or believed – but also why the boy was so transfixed.
The hoof stuck out from the bushes, attached to the recently deceased body of a camel; a hulking mess of fur and flesh, its guts ripped out and partially eaten, maggots swarming through the putrid, pink mess. The stench that rose into the air was both natural and disgusting, off-putting and alluring, remnants of a life that was once there and was now gone.
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Chandler visualized the animal rotting in the bushes and the boy transfixed by it. Davie then, Gabriel now.
He could picture the young boy clearly in his mind now. Forced to face the cold brutality of life and death at such a young age, the discovery of the animal carcass serving as confirmation that nothing could survive out there and nothing would be found of his brother.
‘Stop there!’
The voice rumbled from the darkness, nothing soft in its intonation. Chandler tried to make out a figure flanked by two smaller shapes but his eyes located nothing in the darkness.
A torch flickered into being, blinding Chandler but hopefully providing a target for Nick to aim at. He tried to shield his eyes from the beam, but his retinas were flooded with light they couldn’t expunge.
‘You’re alone,’ said the voice, a little softer now but lined with disappointment.
‘Yes. But—’
‘But what? You’re not fulfilling your end of the bargain, Sergeant.’
‘I want to talk to you first,’ said Chandler. ‘I have a few confessions to make.’
There was a slight pause, the torchlight wavering.
‘It seems to be in the blood,’ said Gabriel coldly. ‘Your oldest – Sarah –’ he almost spat the name out, ‘she’s been talking about confession too. Trying to calm her brother. It’s been making me very angry.’
Chandler released the breath that he had been holding in. Been making me. It suggested they were still alive.
Gabriel continued, ‘Tell me, Chandler, why does she want to join a religion that ultimately wants to control her? And why are you allowing her to? Maybe I’d be doing her a favour – ending her life before you ruin it.’
The threat tore through Chandler’s skin, puncturing his lungs. He now wished that he had brought Heath and had handed him over. He could have dealt with the guilt later, gone to confession alongside his daughter and purged his soul.
‘Please, don’t,’ said Chandler. ‘Just tell me where they are.’
‘They’re safe. For now.’
For now. Chandler could feel his hand itching to go for his gun. Gabriel could obviously see it too.
‘You don’t want to do that, Chandler. Then you won’t be able to save your children. God only saves souls – not the bodies they belong to.’
‘Please, I’ll—’
‘You’ll what? Go back and get what I asked for?’
Chandler considered the request. What did Heath’s life matter? As opposed to his two kids? Surely two for one was a fair trade? His eyes adjusted to the faint light at the edge of the beam, allowing him to identify the dark, almost silhouetted figure in front of him, a solitary shape. The urge to shoot Gabriel there and then fought to the surface.
Again Gabriel seemed to read his intentions. ‘Sergeant, your kids will be in big trouble if I don’t return.’
‘Where have you put them?’
‘Ah. That I can’t tell you. Not yet. Now, take out your gun – slowly – and leave it on the ground.’
‘I know who you are,’ said Chandler. Gabriel didn’t respond.
‘David Taylor. Davie Taylor.’
The silhouette smiled, the teeth catching the faint light, a true smile, maybe the first genuine emotion that he had witnessed from Gabriel.
‘That took a while, didn’t it?’ There was an element of relief in Gabriel’s voice. ‘I honestly thought that you would have recognized me earlier. It was really my only worry . . . but after seeing you in the station, talking to you and riding in the car with you to the hotel, I realized you didn’t have a clue. You’d forgotten about me just like you forgot about my family.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Chandler.
‘What do I mean? Nearly eleven years ago we left here and that was it. The book closed, no one there for us after. Job done. Job failed. On to the next one. Abandoned, another failure by the police swept under the carpet. The others, like your partner Mitchell, I expected it from. But you, Chandler, I remember you being close to my dad. On us like glue, comforting us, guiding us, praying with us. Leading us nowhere.’
‘I . . . I tried to be a friend,’ said Chandler. He didn’t know what else to say.
‘If you were such a friend, why weren’t you in contact with us after? Not even a phone call. A simple call to ask how we were coping. That might have been enough to stop it.’
Chandler searched for an excuse. And found none. He could have got a phone number, he should have got a phone number. He had no excuse but tried anyway.
‘My girlfriend back then . . . my wife. My ex-wife—’
‘The one I met at your parents?’ interrupted Gabriel.
Chandler clenched his teeth, remembering his injured father.
‘Yes. She was nine months pregnant at the time. About to give birth. Well, after the search she did. She gave birth to Sarah and other things took over. Trying to live took over.’
Gabriel growled. ‘Trying to live took over my family as well. Only they couldn’t do it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean, Chandler, sorry, Sergeant, is that they died in a car crash three months after we came home.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Chandler meant it.
‘I’m sure you are now.’
‘Was it an accident?’ asked Chandler.
‘They found nothing wrong with the car,’ said Gabriel, matter-of-factly.
‘Were you—?’
The shadow nodded. ‘Yes, but I was wearing a seat belt. They weren’t. They died instantly,’ said Gabriel, a little tremor in his voice.
‘So Geoffrey and Dina took you in?’
‘Tell me, Chandler, those kids of yours . . . have you ever punished them?’ Again the soft voice turned sinister, the torchlight shaking. Gabriel’s emotions were taking over. Chandler wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Did he want a calm, rational man who might see sense, or an irate Gabriel who might make a mistake? A fatal mistake?
‘Of course,’ said Chandler, hesitantly.
‘No, I mean, really punished them.’
‘A smack across the backside if they did something really awful when they were younger, but that wasn’t often.’
‘Would you punish them even if they were good?’
‘No.’
‘For instance,’ continued Gabriel, ‘would you punish Sarah for not getting her lines right at her First Confession?’
With the conversation drifting back to his children, Chandler sought to keep Gabriel talking, to heighten the chances of him divulging where Sarah and Jasper were being kept. But he knew he needed to tread carefully, given the subject and noticeable quiver in the beam aimed at him.
‘Of course not. Nobody’s perfect,’ he replied.
‘Exactly,’ said Gabriel, some softness returning, obviously pleased at the response. ‘Nothing and nobody’s perfect. People aren’t perfect. Would you want your child to be taught at the end of a stick? Beaten and abused for failin
g?’
‘Is that what happened to you?’
There was a pause as the torchlight readjusted.
Chandler continued, ‘Because when I asked them—’
Gabriel exploded with anger. ‘You talked to them?’
‘I was trying—’
‘Why did you talk to them?’
‘To find out what might be going on inside—’ He had said too much.
‘Inside my head?’ spat Gabriel. ‘My head is clear. My actions are clear. I am of solid mind and body. Those zealot bastards however . . .’ Gabriel trailed off.
Chandler jumped in, attempting to get on Gabriel’s good side again.
‘They refused to speak to me. About you.’
‘Out of guilt,’ spat Gabriel. ‘I’ve heard all I want to from them; leaned against the wall and whipped as they read out the start of that book to me.’
‘Genesis.’
Gabriel paused. ‘Yes. Genesis. Whipped and told how we were all sinners. All sinners but it was only me that was punished, as if I was their conduit to salvation: spare the rod, beat the child. They gave me this.’ He shone the flashlight up to his ear, revealing a four-inch scar normally covered by his shaggy hair.
By focusing the light on his ear, Gabriel revealed his head as a target. But Nick wouldn’t shoot, not until the exchange. At least Chandler prayed that he wouldn’t.
‘One time they struck me right here,’ he said, caressing his scar, ‘splitting the flesh. It wouldn’t stop bleeding so they took me to the doctor. The doctor was from the church too. He didn’t ask questions. He stitched it back together and told me that God would only heal it with silence.’
‘Their evil doesn’t mean you have to hurt others.’
Gabriel snorted. ‘They took away the last link I had to my parents. God’s love. They taught me that I am evil, and evil does as it pleases. If I am the Devil as they claim, then I must carry out the Devil’s work, the Angel Gabriel sent back to punish those that have been named. I am the Devil’s hands.’
‘What about all the names you’ve missed?’ asked Chandler.
The beam danced as Gabriel shrugged. ‘I take them as I come upon them. I do not choose which order but carry out what is written down. Imagine, Chandler, imagine reciting those names over and over again, the beatings lasting as long as it took me to read them out. And if I made a mistake? After a stray lash struck bone? Then I’d have to repeat the list. Right up until Chapter Thirteen.’
‘Why Chapter Thirteen? Because it’s unlucky?’
‘No, because it first mentions Sodom and Gomorrah. Words that our beloved Geoff and Dina didn’t want spoken in their home. As if depravity had not already seeped into the walls. There are times I even forget the names of my brother and my parents – if only for a split second – but those names are ingrained into my skull.’
‘But everyone you took is innocent.’
‘How do you know that?’ said Gabriel. ‘No one named in that book is truly innocent. They are all cursed with the sin of association.’
Though his voice remained steady, Chandler could see that Gabriel was beginning to fray. Chandler needed to buy time, so he continued to probe him.
‘Why kill them out here?’ asked Chandler. ‘Surely this place only brings back bad memories. It does for me.’
‘And there I was thinking that you’d forgotten.’
‘Never,’ said Chandler, abruptly – maybe too abruptly. It sounded like an admission of guilt.
‘When I freed myself from the zealots and their idea of paradise I tried to go as far away as possible. I got access to the money from a trust fund my dad had set up years ago and travelled around for a couple of years. New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia. Then somehow I found myself back in West Australia. Something possessed me to seek out this place again. I found nothing had changed – the landscape, the smell, the feel were all the same. As if time had stood still. As if the deaths of my mum, my dad and my brother had meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Like they had been forgotten. I started walking. Maybe I wanted to do what Martin did. After a couple of days trekking and sleeping in my car I found the shack and began to treat it as home. I moved in and lived up there. It’s amazing what you find out about yourself out here all alone at night.’
Gabriel paused for breath. Chandler considered making another heartfelt plea for his kids’ well-being but instinct told him that Gabriel was not in the mood to be distracted.
‘There’s a lot of pain in this forest, Chandler, pain that was heaped upon me. People have brought me nothing but pain, religion has brought me nothing but pain, so it’s right that I take revenge on these things, out here where it started, offer something to the soul of my brother, the souls of my parents. They didn’t die out here but this is where they were lost. They deserve some company out here.’
All of a sudden Gabriel let out a humourless chuckle. ‘The first victim was called Adam,’ he continued, glancing at Chandler. ‘Ironic I suppose – but unplanned.’
‘When?’ asked Chandler, the policeman in him taking over.
‘Nearly three years ago. January the fourteenth 2010. He was hitching to find work like Heath. Those are the easy ones, the desperate ones. He was a talkative lad, a bit older than me, eager to make some money for a holiday. He was obsessed with himself; Adam did this, Adam did that, repeating his name over and over and over. Hearing it repeated like that – well the urge to kill him suddenly came over me. I needed to kill him. But I had no idea how to do it. So in the middle of nowhere I pulled off the highway on to a dirt road. Told him I needed to have a piss, grabbed the rope from the boot, climbed into the back seat and strangled him.’
Gabriel stared at him. ‘It was hard to do, harder than I’d imagined it would be but I felt charged, like I had gained some measure of revenge.’
Chandler wondered whether Gabriel’s intention was to kill him too. He had, after all, been lured out here in the middle of the night. He didn’t think his name was in Genesis but anything was possible, his name could be twisted into something from the Bible; even Canaan might have been close enough for Gabriel to believe Chandler should be punished.
But Chandler realized something further. There was nowhere else he would rather be. He would go to the depths of hell to get his kids back.
Gabriel continued, ‘The next couple I abducted in the hope that they could help look for Martin’s remains but keeping a hostage for longer than a day proved difficult. They were always whining.’ There was incredulity in his tone. He was apparently amazed that people might not like being held prisoner. ‘It’s not that easy getting supplies up here either and I ended up spending more time looking after them than I did searching. I tried to explain to them – Seth and Eva – why they had been taken. They called me crazy and worse, but I’m not crazy.’
Chandler bit his tongue.
Chandler could see that Gabriel had truly convinced himself that by murdering others his brother would be somehow returned.
‘But I can let Sarah go. In return for Heath. I might be what you and everyone else considers evil but I’m not a monster. You did try to comfort my dad, even though you told him to give up.’
‘It was best for your family.’
‘How can you say that when they’re all dead?’
‘I couldn’t have known—’
‘And you didn’t.’
There was a brief silence, the stolen gun glinting as it flashed in Gabriel’s hand.
Gabriel continued, ‘Bring me Heath and I’ll happily hand them over.’
‘No one else needs to die. Your dad wouldn’t—’ said Chandler.
Gabriel interrupted. ‘People die, Chandler, that’s what they do.’
‘Heath, Sarah, Jasper – they don’t deserve to die. They haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Neither had my brother, my mum, my dad. But God saw fit to take them.’
‘You’re angry and you’re right to be, but you can’t do this . . . Davie.’
&n
bsp; ‘This is what I have to do. I don’t have a choice but you do, Chandler, a simple one: him or them.’
‘Tell me where they are.’
‘Now, Chandler . . .’ Gabriel’s grin peeked out from the gloom.
Chandler battled for an advantage. ‘If you had this so under control, how did Heath get away?’
In the faint light Chandler could see Gabriel’s brow knit together.
‘Is this a ploy to waste time until backup comes?’
Chandler shook his head, blocking the beam with his hand. ‘There’s no backup. Do you think that they’d just let me kidnap Heath and hand him over?’
Gabriel’s grin wormed its way through the darkness. ‘That’s the kind of dedication I respect.’
‘So how did he escape?’
‘As we said: he managed to hack through the manacles,’ said Gabriel, stunting a laugh. ‘In a way I admire him; it must have taken a hell of a lot of willpower. He got out of the shack and ran, I caught him and we fell over that ridge. When I woke up all I had was a piece of his shirt. I knew he’d head downhill towards the road but I also knew that it was a long way on foot so I went back and got my car. I intended to run, get out of the state and hide. In those brief moments I forgot what I was tasked to do, as if I was being tested. So I decided to head him off and made for town. Maybe I was a little curious too. About whether God would allow me to get away with pinning the blame on an innocent person. Surely the supreme overlord wouldn’t allow them to be punished? It was like being God: having control of someone’s life – but in a different way to killing them. It was intriguing. New. If I was truly evil and God truly had the ultimate power then I wouldn’t get away with it. So I left it down to fate. If God deemed it, He would allow Heath to escape my justice. Otherwise I would act as the hand of fate.’
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