by Peter Cotton
The sirens were very close as I stepped back into the lounge room. Then I heard a loud grunt echo from the front of the house, followed by a scuffling noise. I moved quickly through the room, and when I was a metre from the corridor, I pressed my back to the wall, edged forward, and peered around the corner.
It was Jean and Rolfe. He had one arm draped over her shoulders, his legs looked very rubbery, and she was only just managing to stay upright as she dragged him down the corridor towards me. I raced to them and took Rolfe’s free arm.
‘You did it, Glass!’ he said, slurring his words like a drunk. ‘Well done, man! Not that I doubted you. But, by God, I am surprised to be alive. Happy, but surprised. And, Glass, you should know — my feelings for you at this moment go well beyond mere gratitude. Nothing carnal, mind you. Not like my colleague here. But I love you, Glass. Like a brother.’
‘Thank you, Rolfe,’ I said. ‘For your gratitude and your love.’
Jean and I burst out laughing, and Rolfe looked at each of us in turn and then joined in. The ordeal we’d shared had sealed a bond between us, and I knew that they felt it, too. I was about to put this into words when there were a few tentative knocks at the front door.
I’d expected to hear the squeal of rubber when the lead car arrived. I’d also been prepared for Special Operations to break down the door and wave their weapons around. So what was this timid knocking?
‘That’ll be the boys,’ said Jean, hauling us faster towards the door.
‘For you?’ I said.
‘The Live Cam crew. They took a short cut. I wasn’t going to miss the biggest story of my life!’
‘You called them?’
‘While you were in the garage.’
‘Amazing,’ I said, and it was.
‘I hope their laptop’s got an uplink,’ said Rolfe, suddenly much more alert.
‘I’m sure it has, Rolfey,’ said Jean, patting his back. ‘And if you’re really quick, you might even get your story up before me.’
Channel Four Live Cam
Wednesday 7 August, 5.00pm
Good afternoon, Jean Acheson back with you again, here in leafy Yarralumla with this Live Cam exclusive. A world exclusive, really. Because the house behind me is where both Susan Wright and Alan Proctor were murdered.
And how do I know this? Because I’ve just spent the last 20 hours in the room where they died. With me was my colleague Simon Rolfe, and Detective Sergeant Darren Glass. And what were we doing in that room, you ask? We, too, were waiting to die.
In securing our freedom, it was necessary for us to kill one of our captors. His death will be the subject of a police investigation, so I can’t go into any details at this point, other than to say that, in the end, it was his life or ours.
Stay with the Live Cam. I’ll be in conversation with Brett Malone throughout the evening, giving a full account of my time in the House of Death. This is Jean Acheson. It’s great to be back.
29
THE SIRENS MORPHED into a chorus that became louder and more urgent as the cavalry homed in on Rodway Street. The three of us stood outside the house on a barren nature strip while Jean’s crew took exterior shots of the front door. I’d refused to let them inside, and she’d been fine with that.
A patrol car swung around the corner at the far end of the street and fishtailed towards us. Another quickly followed, and then came a slew of vehicles, the last of which was a big blue van.
‘No point taking any chances, guys,’ I said, lifting my hands above my head. Jean and Rolfe looked at each other, then followed suit — as did Jean’s crew — just as the first patrol car squealed to a stop in front of us. The cop in the passenger seat had his weapon pointed at the roof of the car. He and the driver eyed us nervously, both very much on edge.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Darren Glass, Australian Federal Police,’ I said, locking eyes with the armed cop. ‘The people with me are friendlies — they’re Jean Acheson and Simon Rolfe. Please lower your weapons. We are not armed. We are friendlies. Please lower your weapons.’
The armed cop waited till his partner was out of the vehicle before he opened his door. Then the two of them stood staring at us while a special-ops team surged from the blue van and swept into the house.
Through the chaos of cops and cars, I saw McHenry coming towards us. His face was alight with the biggest smile I’d ever seen on it. When he got to me, he scooped me off the ground and held me in a bear hug that lasted too many seconds. Then he put me down, and I saw that he’d teared up a bit. I feared for a moment that he was going to kiss me.
‘You had us worried there, son,’ he said, his hands on my shoulders, shaking his head. ‘Very worried indeed. Now, first things first. Are any of you injured in any way?’
‘We’re fine,’ I said. ‘But there’s another house you’ve go to get people to, urgently — in Beagle Street, Red Hill. It’s where they nabbed us. I don’t know the number, but it’s an older-style place just up from the reserve.’
‘Number fifteen Beagle,’ said Jean from behind me.
‘We’ll get a team there right away,’ said McHenry, nodding at a senior officer who immediately headed off. ‘Anything else before we get you to your medical?’
‘There’s a body in the house,’ I said. ‘It’s the European guy who dropped the documents on Jean. And there was at least one other person in the house with him while we were in there. A woman. She left an hour-or-so ago.’
‘Do you have a description?’
‘No. I never saw her.’
‘And you know it’s a woman because …’
‘She was wearing high heels. And she and the European had a heated discussion in another room when they nabbed me, and it sounded like a woman.’
‘And the way she walked in those things?’ said Jean. ‘No man could do that.’
‘I see,’ said McHenry, smiling as his gaze turned from Jean to me. ‘Well, that narrows the field down. So they’re waiting for you at the hospital. And then I’ll see you back here, Glass. But, before you go, you should know that we found the tracker. Under Miss Acheson’s car. And your American friend James has confirmed what you were up to.’
I should have been ready for this. When they found Jean’s car they would have gone over every inch of it, and of course they would have found the tracker. I’d survived the impossible, only to go down for my sins in a previous life. In that instant, I resigned myself to losing my job. And I’d face charges over the tracker.
Jean stepped to my side. ‘What does he mean, “the tracker”?’ she said. ‘Is he talking about that little machine we put under my car?’
‘Are you saying you knew the tracker was there?’ said McHenry.
‘Of course,’ said Jean. ‘We were trying it out.’
‘And he wasn’t tailing you?’
‘You mean, following me?’ said Jean, a cheeky smile on her face. ‘Of course he was following me. He’s my boyfriend, isn’t he? That’s what he’s supposed to do!’
‘Your boyfriend, is he, Miss?’ said McHenry, smiling as he considered this turn of events. ‘Well, he’s a lucky man then, isn’t he? Very lucky indeed. Well, more of this later. Off to hospital with you now. All being well, Glass, we’ll see you back here in a couple of hours. And Miss Acheson, Mr Rolfe, my officers will want talk to you after you’re finished at the hospital, and they’ll be thorough, so please be patient.’
With that, he slapped my back and strode past us into the house, shaking his head as he went. He hadn’t believed Jean, but her quick thinking had saved my bacon. And calling me her boyfriend had sent a big shiver through me. She took my hand, but then the medics intervened, saying we had to travel to the emergency department in separate ambulances.
The quacks who saw me at the hospital said I was dehydrated, but otherwise fine. They ushered me
into a cubicle, and cleaned and dressed the cuts on my wrists and ankles. Then they put cream on the powder burns on my face, and inserted a drip in my arm. I woke up an hour later with a nurse removing the line.
When I got to the waiting room, Jean was sitting with three cops who had their noses buried in gossip magazines. She got up, went to the counter, and enquired about Rolfe. He was still being pumped with juice, so we asked the cops for some space, and, staying in their line of sight, took a seat in a quiet corner of outpatients. There I put some flesh on the story of how we’d come to be locked up together.
‘We’ll say we arranged to meet in Red Hill at eight last night,’ I said. ‘After you’d finished some interviews up there. And, essentially, the story after that is, I knew nothing about anything. Which is, in fact, the case.’
Jean asked if there’d be an inquiry into Joe’s death. I said it was likely there would be, but her actions were clearly justifiable and any hearing would be a formality. I said I’d vouch for her and support her, and I put my arms around her and gave her a long kiss. Then, tired but elated, we headed back into casualty and waited for Rolfe.
When he finally emerged from treatment, we ushered him into Outpatients, where I reminded him of his promise not to write anything about cat fur falling into the wrong hands. Nor about Wright and Proctor dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. He told me I was repeating myself, then asked that I not talk publicly about what we’d endured at Rodway Street — at least for a couple of days. That way, he and Jean would have an exclusive on their own story. I was happy to consent to that, and then I signalled the cops over.
They led us through a labyrinth of corridors to the hospital’s loading dock, reckoning it was the only exit not swarming with journos. Even so, when we stepped out onto the dock, a dozen reporters and cameramen rushed us, and we had to push through them to get to the patrol cars that were waiting to take us away.
Rolfe clambered into the front seat of the first patrol car, and I guided Jean into the back seat and closed the door. As they moved off through the shouting journos, Jean turned in her seat, smiled sadly, and fluttered her fingers at me.
When I got back to Rodway Street, McHenry sat me down on a couch in the lounge room and gave me a strong cup of coffee. Then he had me go through how I’d been captured, and the details of our incarceration and our escape. He seemed to accept what I said, even the part about my relationship with Jean. And that bit seemed real.
He asked if I was okay to go back into the carpeted room. I said was fine with it, and really thought I was. But my guts tensed up as I followed him down the corridor. When I stepped back into Joe’s death chamber, I felt intensely vulnerable, as though I’d been pitched back into mortal danger.
I thought I was going to throw up. McHenry asked if I wanted to get out. I took a minute to steady myself, and then told him that I just wanted to get on with the job. But, as I detailed our time in the room, I started to doubt what I was saying — as though it was a dream, or only half true. It took the lingering smell of the absent toilet bucket to assure me that it had all actually happened.
When we got back to the lounge room, McHenry called the officer who was overseeing the search of the Beagle Street house. Then he signalled me to follow him through the double-glass doors and out onto the paving. I had a feeling I was in for a bollocking. And I was right.
‘So, the boyfriend, are ya?’ he said, his smiling eyes drilling into me. ‘Well, I’d call it a retrospective relationship at best. A love affair backdated to protect the dim-witted.
‘Then again, it must be love, because you sure weren’t thinking straight. Breaking every rule in the book. And, by God, you were lucky, son, although it looks like your luck’s finally run out. But that’s out of my hands, thank God. So go home now, get all the sleep you need, and I’ll see you tomorrow. And be prepared for a big day when you get in. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
And standing outside the house where I’d almost died, I mulled over my prospects. More precisely, I pondered the likely death of my career. But that wasn’t McHenry’s call. Brady and the mob upstairs would make that decision, and they’d have to sniff the wind before they could work out what to do with me.
Blood Oath subscription news
Wednesday 7 August, 9.30pm
Back from the dead
by Simon Rolfe
Hello. Here I am again. Back from my holiday in hell, still wondering how I survived it. Imagine if you will, a garage barely big enough to house a family sedan. Throw in some mouldy mattresses and a plastic bucket for a toilet, and you’ve got some idea of where I’ve just spent what could have been the last days of my life.
I thought we were gone. Jean Acheson and me. And I was prepared for it, dear reader. Resigned to it, even. Thankfully, Detective Sergeant Darren Glass was there with us, and his survival instincts proved to be much more acute than ours.
And Darren, in the tumult, I forgot to thank you for saving us. So now, with every fibre of my being, I thank you.
As for Ms Acheson, her network is planning a telemovie based on our ordeal. I won’t be tuning in when it goes to air. The past forty-eight hours were the most horrific of my life. I wouldn’t want to relive them.
30
ONE OF THE UNIFORMS dropped me back at City Station, and though I was tempted to go straight to the room, I did as McHenry had ordered and got into my car and drove home. The first thing I did when I walked in the door was make myself a big bowl of toasted muesli, which I ate while sitting in a hot bath. Then I got dressed and called Jean.
Even though she’d just got home after being on-air all evening, and sounded tired, she insisted that I come straight over. Her invitation, however, came with a warning. Most of her gallery colleagues were still pursuing us, she said, and now the paparazzi had joined the hunt. Their interest had been sparked by a headline on one of the blogs: ‘Love lives in House of Death’.
Jean gave me her address, which I already had, and the number of her apartment. She said that when I came over, I should park under her building. That way, I could mostly escape the shutter hounds who were camped on the nature strip across from her place.
Fifteen minutes later, when I drove into Jean’s street, twenty photographers rushed my car, their cameras on rapid fire as they pursued me into the carpark under her building. I parked and ran through the carpark; even so, some of them were just metres behind me as Jean buzzed me through to the lifts.
She looked very sleepy when she opened her door, but she gave me a lingering kiss before taking my hand and leading me into a dimly lit lounge room. We sat on a couch facing a big picture window, and she asked what I’d like to drink.
‘I’ve got beer and Guinness,’ she said. ‘And there’s a chardonnay. Or you can have a tea or a coffee, if you like.’
‘I’ll go the Guinness,’ I said, ‘if you’re having one.’
She smiled and brushed the back of my hand, and I turned and watched her leave the room. Then I looked the place over. There seemed to be framed photos and intriguing bits and pieces on every flat surface. The northern wall was all glass, with sliding doors that led out onto a balcony crowded with potted plants.
Jean came back with two tall glasses of Guinness, and settled down next to me on the couch. We sipped our drinks in silence, staring out at the lights that dotted the slope up to Red Hill. I desperately wanted to take her in my arms, but then doubt assailed me. What if she’d called me over for a ‘Dear John’ meeting? Was it possible that she was going to thank me and just say, ‘See you around’? No. That made no sense at all, and I knew it.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said in that room,’ she said, running a finger around the rim of her glass. ‘About life-threatening situations doing strange things to people. And it’s true, it made us very close, very quickly. But the thing is, I though
t you were a knockout the first time I saw you. And the second. And the way I feel about you now has nothing to do with gratitude. Or, worse still, hero worship. I really like you, Darren, and even if we’d never been locked up together, I still think we would have ended up like this.’
She leaned in and we kissed. Then we put our drinks aside and wrapped our arms around each other, kissing and withdrawing, looking into each other’s eyes, saying nothing. It had been a long time for me, and I was glad to go slowly. But then Jean got up, and, still holding my hand, led me down a corridor and into her bedroom.
We slowly undressed each other, letting our clothes drop where we stood. Then she pulled me towards her, and we fell onto her bed and coiled together, skin on skin.
I woke up alone in her bed. The dull light breaking through the slit in the curtains told me it was morning. Crockery clinked somewhere down the corridor, and then Jean came in with a tray on which she had a teapot, two cups, and some slices of cake on a plate. She set the tray down next to me on the bed, and then she left again. Minutes later, she returned with the morning newspapers.
Most front pages featured big photos of us leaving the hospital. The accompanying stories cast me as the hero who’d rescued Jean, my new love, from the ‘House of Death’. I was also credited with saving the ‘hapless’ Rolfe. None of them had much information on Joe, other than the fact that he was dead. And they all gave front-page treatment to Brady’s reaction. He’d told them I’d been well trained for what I’d confronted at Rodway Street, and that I’d done the AFP proud. So it looked like he was holding fire.
Jean turned on the TV, and we watched a segment about ourselves on one of the morning shows. It included a long clip of her from the Live Cam, and a shot of me hustling her into the patrol car at the hospital. We flipped between networks. Each of them had a different shot of my arrival at her place. And every story was a variation on the theme ‘From House of Death to Love Nest’.