8 Hours to Die

by JR Carroll

  Malcolm seemed to understand from Tim’s expression that an explanation was in order.

  ‘I was at home when you came by earlier,’ he said. ‘Then, not long after, this other crew showed up. They didn’t see me, but I saw them. They had to be headed your way, since no one else lives this end of the road.’

  ‘But … Why did you think they were trouble?’

  ‘They didn’t strike me as the kind of people who make social calls. But it was more than a gut feeling. One of them had a tomahawk in his belt, for starters. They were bad news, no question. And then, afterwards, I heard shots coming from this direction.’

  Tim stared hard at Malcolm.

  ‘So … how did you get here?’

  ‘Walked, of course.’

  Tim calculated. Malcolm’s house was about four kilometres away, give or take. That meant at least an hour and a half’s foot slog. Probably longer.

  ‘You walked from your place to here?’

  ‘It’s not that far. There are one or two shortcuts; a fire trail runs in a direct line from about the halfway point. Course, you have to know where it is.’

  Tim was thinking: He’s route marched all the way here, some of it cross country, in the dark, alone.

  In the rain.

  Amazing.

  ‘Don’t know how I can thank you,’ he said.

  ‘No need. Just wish I’d got here a minute earlier, that’s all. For her sake.’

  They both looked down at Amy, who opened her eyes. Tim couldn’t be sure if she’d seen him or Malcolm. It was just a flutter of eyelids.

  If she’d caught a glimpse of the stranger with the wild masses of red hair bending over her, she would’ve thought she’d died and gone to a bad place. That would become a reality if help didn’t arrive soon.

  The clock ticked on. It was 11.15pm.

  43

  Saturday, 12.35am

  Surreal was the only word for it.

  What had been an unmarked speck on the map, cut off from the civilised world and without even a proper name, was now a lightning rod for police and ambulance activity.

  It’d been a long time since Tim had seen so many police, and police vehicles, assembled together. And even more were arriving as he stood outside the house, watching.

  Cops conferred, arc light stands were being set up, crime scene officers inspected the carnage and walkie-talkies and police car radios crackled incessantly. A forensic team was upstairs, examining the remnants of the fire for evidence of accelerant.

  And now a police air ambulance helicopter slowly, carefully, descended onto a patch of open ground in the front yard. Its lights flooded the property.

  The first cops to arrive had rushed Malcolm, disarming him, forcing him to the ground and snapping on the bracelets behind his back, before Tim had the chance to tell them that Malcolm was not one of the invaders.

  The cops took some persuading—understandably, given Malcolm’s appearance. He was calm, showed the sense not to resist when the cops had come at him, guns drawn, and seemed content to let the scene play itself out.

  Finally, they uncuffed him—but held onto the rifle, ‘pending further inquiries’.

  Malcolm made no objection.

  After crime scene cops had done their work, the bodies of Lance Delaney, Stav and Christo were bagged, tagged, loaded into ambulances and driven away.

  It all took time—lots of time.

  It had already been a long night, but for Tim Fontaine it was going to be a lot longer.

  He’d already had talks with the first cops to arrive, explaining in brief what had happened, identifying the dead and wounded, providing the bare bones of a complex narrative that would fill out as the night wore on and more cops, including homicide detectives from Canberra, showed up in the early hours and demanded he go back to the start and tell the whole story again, leaving nothing out.

  Strangely, as the hours wore on, Tim was not fatigued, in the sense that he craved sleep. He was wired, a burning particle, running on pure adrenaline. Only his body, the physical part of him, was feeling the strain and pain of everything it had been subjected to. But his head was somewhere else.

  Tim watched as Amy and Jimmy were loaded into the air ambulance chopper. Soon it lifted off, flattening the grass, bending trees and creating a din that rendered speech impossible. Once clear of the ground, the chopper performed a one-eighty turn, banked and rose sharply, heading in a northerly direction.

  Tim continued to watch as it carved through the night sky, a diminishing carnival of flashing lights. In a few minutes he could barely hear it, and then it disappeared from view behind trees.

  Tim realised that a homicide inspector, a man who had introduced himself earlier but whose name Tim had already forgotten, was by his side. A tall, solid man in a dark wool overcoat—he cut an impressive figure. And he seemed far too young to be an inspector in the homicide squad.

  He wanted to ask a few more questions, if Tim didn’t mind.

  They sat in an unmarked police car for twenty minutes or so as the cop asked his questions, trying to piece together the sequence of events, and Tim gave detailed answers.

  The inspector told Tim that he had never seen anything like this. It was going to be a big, big story, a sensational one, and it would be a long time before the whole thing was wrapped up.

  Just before dawn, as a pale, sickly light began edging up on the horizon, they called it a night. The entire property was sealed off with CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS plastic tape. Because the front door was smashed open, crime-scene tape was plastered across it too, and uniform police were assigned round-the-clock guard duty.

  Tim rode in the back of the inspector’s unmarked car, wedged between two detectives who barely spoke to him all the way back to Canberra. His impression was that they were stunned into silence by what they’d witnessed.

  As they had a right to be.

  It seemed that no part of Tim’s body didn’t hurt. That fight to the death with Stav had taken a severe toll. But, more than for himself, he had to feel sympathy for Malcolm, who was in the following car. After returning from a war, all he’d ever wanted was to be left in peace and for about four decades he’d succeeded—now this.

  He’d be subjected to intense police interrogation. He’d be photographed and scribbled about; no doubt reporters would come knocking on the door of his bush hut. And he would certainly be required to appear to face further scrutiny when the whole sorry business made it to the courts.

  That was the price he had to pay for his good deed.

  It was a long drive. Towards the end of it, by 6.45am Saturday, Tim’s eyes were closing. More than once, his head dropped to his chest. Every time it did, a nightmare scene flashed in his overwrought brain, and woke him up.

  They dropped him off at the front of his house.

  The inspector told him to get some sleep. They were going to pick him up later in the day, about one, and go back to Black Pig Bend. There was a great deal more unravelling to do yet, and they needed Tim’s help, to reconstruct exactly what took place.

  As he stood at the front gate, watching the car go, Tim didn’t think he could face up to it again. It was hitting him hard as he searched for his keys.

  Before he could reach the door, a dizzy spell came over him and he threw up in a violent spasm, all over a flower bed that lined the path.

  *

  Saturday June 30, 2012

  Three Dead in ‘Horror Show’ Home Invasion

  By Robert Casagrande

  At least three men are dead and two other people seriously injured from a violent home invasion at an isolated farmhouse in the southwest of New South Wales last night.

  NSW Police Detective Inspector Stephen McCord described the scene as ‘horrific’.

  ‘This is an absolute horror show of violence and bloodshed. Seasoned police were sickened at what they found at the scene.’

  It is understood the farmhouse is owned by prominent criminal defence barrister Tim Fontaine and
his wife, Canberra broadcaster Amy Hightower. Both were present in the house at the time of the attack. Ms Hightower and a man, believed to be a family friend who came to their assistance, were airlifted to hospital with life-threatening gunshot wounds.

  While details are sketchy at this stage, it appears that the three dead men are members of an outlaw motorcycle gang known as the Black Mamba.

  As yet, no motive has been established for the violent attack.

  ‘Robbery doesn’t appear to be part of the equation,’ Inspector McCord said. ‘Investigations are under way, but at this point we have no idea why Mr Fontaine has been targeted. We have only begun scratching the surface of this case.’

  Inspector McCord added that he did not believe it was a random attack. ‘You don’t come this far off the beaten track on the off chance.’

  The farmhouse is in the Pericoe Valley—the so-called ‘Valley of Despair’—which adjoins a state forest and is about 45 kilometres west of the fishing port of Eden.

  Police have seized a number of weapons and a BMW four-wheel drive from the property as part of their investigations, and are hunting for another man who is believed to have fled the scene after sustaining a serious gunshot wound.

  More to come.

  44

  Three weeks later

  Tim was sitting in a lounge chair in his Red Hill home, staring at the TV. There was a league match on, Raiders versus Titans, but he wasn’t really watching, or even noticing. He was sunk in thought. There’d been a lot of that lately.

  Every night it was the same: he’d wake up at some ungodly hour, caught in a nightmare whether he slept or not. Lying in the dark, alone, he’d go over the entire experience from start to finish, analysing every aspect of it, reliving it, trying to determine if he could’ve handled things any differently.

  The answer was always a resounding no.

  Usually, after several hours of this, he’d get up and read for a while. Then, as dawn approached and he heard the birds outside, he’d put on his tracksuit and runners and slip out for a walk.

  Always, however, he was thinking. His brain had become a churning morass of unanswered questions, fears, doubts, recriminations. He was trapped, it seemed, forever in this half world of unexplained ultra-violence. There was no escape.

  He’d even visited a shrink, on the advice of his GP.

  The shrink said he was probably suffering from PTSD.

  He’d been making regular trips to Canberra Hospital since that horrible weekend. Both Amy and Jimmy were still in the intensive care unit, where they’d undergone emergency surgery. Jimmy, in particular, had gone under the knife in a major way. According to the chief surgeon, he was lucky—if being shot three times can ever be considered lucky.

  One bullet had smashed into his ribcage; a second had passed right through his body and come out the other side, via his left shoulder blade; the third had missed his heart by the width of a cigarette paper, and partly embedded itself in his spine, where it remained. Doctors were reluctant to try to remove it for the time being, for fear of turning Jimmy into a paraplegic.

  None of the bullets had struck vital organs. That was the lucky part.

  Right now, his life hung by a thread.

  He’d been put into an induced coma and given blood transfusions, as well as the surgery, but as one of the doctors told Tim, the rest was in the lap of the gods. He likened Jimmy’s situation to that of a tightrope walker who was caught in a high wind: one slip, and he was gone.

  Amy’s was a different story.

  Malcolm was right: it was a through-and-through wound. She’d suffered shock and trauma to tissue and bone, but was expected to make a full recovery. Her condition was serious but stable. She was conscious, but said little to Tim—or anyone else. Detectives had attempted a bedside interrogation, but soon gave it up when she made it clear she was in too much of a mess to answer questions, however delicately put.

  Tim had been to see her every day. He’d sit by her bed, hold her limp hand and chat about this or that. She’d smile occasionally, but rarely said anything. Like him, she was trapped in a personal nightmare.

  On one occasion when Tim had visited Jimmy, he came to, briefly, and seemed surprised to see Tim sitting next to the bed. Not only that, he whispered; he was surprised to find himself there, still breathing.

  Tim told him he was going to make it. It would take time, but he would definitely come good, having got this far.

  Jimmy asked how Amy was, and Tim said she was doing well, considering. Jimmy didn’t know she’d been shot until Tim told him. Jimmy ran his tongue over his dry lips. Then, after a minute or so, he beckoned for Tim to come closer.

  When he did, Jimmy gave him some instructions, whispered in a cracked and wheezing voice.

  45

  Early morning, the day following the attack, police had conducted a search of the immediate area and found the body of the third gang member not far from Jimmy’s wrecked Subaru, which had gone off the road and down an embankment. He’d been shot twice in the head—by Lance Delaney, police believed—as well as in the neck, stomach and hand.

  The body was half eaten by a predator, probably a feral pig.

  The three attackers were soon identified as Dieter Mankovicz, Stefan Dechaineux—a Canadian national—and Sammy Paxinos. They were all members of Black Mamba, a small but vicious outlaw motorcycle gang that specialised in standover work and other violent crimes. It had apparently been formed by Mankovicz as a spin-off from the Hells Angels, from which he’d been expelled.

  Tim had never heard of any of them.

  The fourth man was identified as Lance Delaney, a career criminal who had only recently been released from prison.

  It was Delaney’s presence that perplexed and worried Tim most of all. He’d been no closer to finding out what the attack was all about; who was behind it. All he had were suspicions. Until today.

  Following his instructions, and armed with his keys, Tim went to Jimmy’s flat. There he’d found a padded bag containing a bubble-wrapped CD, and some sheets of paper, as well as a police surveillance DVD.

  Tim noticed a frying pan on the stovetop; in it was a partly-cooked steak. On the table was a half-empty glass of red wine. Tim realised that Jimmy had dropped everything in a big hurry to come to Tim’s assistance—and paid dearly for it.

  At the time he wondered what had triggered this sudden decision to abandon his dinner and rush to the Pericoe Valley, many miles away, by plane and rented car.

  Now he believed he understood. In fact, he understood more than he wanted to.

  Now he stared at the TV screen, not seeing the rugby match but steeped in thought. There was no denying what he had heard, read and seen, but still he could not accept it.

  First, he’d played the CD, and read the accompanying transcript, of an apparently wiretapped series of telephone conversations between unknown parties. This material was sent to Jimmy by ‘POD’.

  Tim knew Pat O’Dwyer, a colleague and good mate of Jimmy’s, who was part of a major task force investigating the importation of recreational or party drugs. They had some big names in their sights, including the senior member of a federal crime-busting outfit, along with outlaw bikie gangs. Tim didn’t know any of this officially, but scuttlebutt of that nature got around in legal circles.

  The CD contained only one passage of interest to Tim. Two males were discussing—and barely even bothering to speak in code—a trip to the bush, to Pericoe no less, for the purpose of killing someone—a ‘shyster’. They laughed about it. When asked if it was a hospital or cemetery job, the person who had initiated the call said he wanted the victim ‘dealt out of the game, period. That’s the instruction.’

  Tim sat back and pondered what he’d heard and read, playing key phrases over in his mind: One less shyster. Consider it done. No payment necessary.

  Didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  They were discussing a plot to murder Tim. Sitting there, listening to it after the e
vent, sent a chill down his spine. That conversation was date- and time-coded on the transcript: 26 June, 2012: PM11:31:44.

  Three nights before the attack.

  He played it over and over, trying to identify the parties, whose names were blacked out on the transcript. The one who’d made the call had an occasional lilt to his voice—a slightly musical note that some people find charming. An Irish voice.

  Tim recalled, when he had been at Lance Delaney’s mercy in the last seconds of his life, him saying: ‘If I do, you won’t know anything about it, mate.’

  He’d had that same lilting tone.

  Tim couldn’t be absolutely certain, but he was ninety percent convinced the man on the phone was Delaney. The more he played it, the more convinced he became.

  He couldn’t identify the other voice, but it had to be one of the bikers. Probably the leader, the one with the ponytail who finished up being eaten by a wild pig.

  Delaney, if that’s who it was, had said, That’s the instruction, when asked if it was a cemetery job.

  Meaning, someone else was behind him. Delaney was the middle man in a chain of conspirators. So, who was the third party, the originator of the plot?

  Only one name came to mind.

  Dale Markleigh and Lance Delaney served time concurrently at Long Bay; Delaney was released about three months ahead of Markleigh. Their paths would certainly have crossed in prison. In fact, being an ex-cop with plenty of enemies on the inside, it would be in Markleigh’s interests to establish an alliance with someone like Delaney, who could watch his back. Delaney was a dangerous, violent man; people would steer clear of giving him—or any friend of his—grief.

  So, in the exercise yard, or in the mess hall, or wherever, the plot to kill Tim probably germinated.

  It seemed a likely scenario. Both men had motive: Markleigh because Tim had failed to get him off; Delaney because he was having an affair with Amy.

  With Tim out of the way, he could have her all to himself.