by Peter Cotton
I didn’t get far. Road blocks at either end of Northbourne Avenue had reduced traffic flow in the city to a crawl. If I joined the slow-moving stream of vehicles heading north, I wouldn’t make it to the lake before dark. So I activated the blue light on the back of the bike, jumped the curb, and ambled up the generous median strip that separated the north and south lanes. When I reached the main intersection at Dickson, I took to the shoulder of the road and skirted the traffic till I got to the last roadblock outside the Exhibition Centre. From there the traffic thinned out, and by the time I was on the Federal Highway, I had the bike up to speed and it was rolling along nicely.
I was back on Mack’s Reef Road and heading east towards Lake George when I remembered what McHenry had said about country air — how it could promote clear thinking. You could heighten that effect, I thought, by taking a two-wheeled machine down a winding country road you’d never ridden before. Few things got you thinking clearer than that.
Perhaps if my thinking had been a bit clearer back at the station, if I hadn’t given way to impulse and emotion, I might not have been on that country road. Maybe. But I’d had no choice. As for McHenry, he knew there was bad blood between me and Brady, so he must have anticipated a clash between us. Well, in the end, he’d probably pay more for my little outburst than I would. After all, he’d set up the meeting. And what about this Hanley job? Well, it was just another ‘i’ in the investigation we hadn’t dotted. Another ‘t’ to cross. And from what I’d seen of Hanley, that psych was going to more than earn her money.
The turn-off to Bungendore seemed to come up much faster than I remembered. And when I leaned into the corner for Lake Road, it was like I’d taken it a thousand times before. I even anticipated the road for Hanley’s place, and slowed down well before I got to his gate. Lucky I did. The gate that had been wide open when I’d come out with Smeaton and Bender was now closed, and secured with a padlock and a chain. Maybe Hanley had gone away for a few days. Maybe, but I’d come too far to ride back without checking.
Under the provisions of the State of Emergency, I no longer needed a New South Wales copper with me to enter Hanley’s property. Nor did I need one to escort the psych on to the place. As long as I was on legitimate police business, I could go anywhere, at any time, unchallenged.
I killed the engine and removed my gloves and helmet. I was forty-five minutes early for the psych, so I took out my phone to tell her I was going onto the property, but the phone had no signal. Damn it, I’d forgotten about Bolton’s shutdown. I switched the police radio to a Queanbeyan frequency and listened to a bit of voice traffic. Reassured that I still had some form of communication, I killed the radio, and tried to work out how best to get over the rusty old gate without wrecking my borrowed leathers.
I made it over the gate unscathed, and then walked along the rutted vehicle track towards the cabins. Hanley’s old BMW was still parked under the tree in the clearing. It didn’t mean he was around, but it was a good sign that he might be. I considered going back to the road to wait for the psych, but, as she wasn’t due for forty minutes, I pushed on.
I took the path to Hanley’s place, and when I emerged at the clearing I paused and surveyed the cabins and the ridgeline above them. Then I climbed to Hanley’s cabin. There was no answer when I knocked, so I turned the handle, gave the door a push, and went inside. The place looked much as it had when I first saw it — except that most of the food above the sink was gone, and the backpack in the corner had been secured for travelling. Was he coming or going? I didn’t really care which. The fact that his pack was here meant that he was probably still around somewhere. I sat on the mattress, undid the straps on the pack, and lifted back the flap. The foul smell that whooshed out of it forced me to turn away.
A dull thudding came from somewhere down the hill — just a few raps, like wood hitting wood. I got off the bed and walked quickly to the window. All I could see was the dense canopy of trees below me and the expanse of the dry lake-bed beyond it. The waning light lit the purple hills on the far side of the lake.
I hesitated for a moment, deciding whether to search the pack first or investigate the noise. If it was Hanley down there, I’d be better off searching his stinking belongings before he came back. And if it wasn’t Hanley, there’d be an innocent explanation for what I’d heard. Like a cabin door slamming in the breeze. Or a tree dropping a branch.
I stood for a moment, eyeing the massive eucalypts that struggled for life at the lake’s edge. Then I suddenly recognised the view in front of me, and I was transfixed. I’d seen it frozen on canvas, at Lomax’s Blackall Street unit — a painting of the lake from this same perspective. I recognised the bush in the near distance: the same struggling trees, the line of hills like purple cutouts on the horizon. Joe the jailer had stood at this window and painted the scene below. Only his lake had been full of water, while the one below was bone dry.
Blood Oath subscription news
Friday 9 August, 3.00pm
Lansdowne brings the biggest bounce
by Simon Rolfe
Acting Prime Minister Malcolm Redding says tomorrow’s election must go ahead. He says criminals can’t be allowed to disrupt the democratic process. But is it possible his resolve is informed by a new poll which shows the government slightly ahead of the opposition for the first time in more than a year?
For all but the last day of this campaign, we’ve had two contenders slugging it out, giving as good as they got. Then, just before the last round, one of them was abducted and taken to a place unknown. Now all debate is dead, and a nation is left holding its breath.
But life goes on, one step at a time. And the people will vote tomorrow. They’ll stand in a polling booth, sizing up the government and assessing the opposition. And when they do, their thoughts will turn to the party leaders. They’ll think of Lou Feeney and they’ll remember his courage in the face of the rumour campaign that nearly ended his race. Then they’ll picture Michael Lansdowne, locked up in a place inconceivable, somewhere dark and distant where he’s fretting for his life.
And when that image of Lansdowne enters their consciousness, I believe the Australian people will vote for him, in absentia, and for his government. It’ll be partly out of sympathy for the leader, but they’ll also be expressing their contempt for Penny Lomax and all her works. So when that happens, as I believe it will, spare a thought for Lou Feeney, whose only crime was to stay free and viable until the end.
37
I TRAINED MY Glock on the door while I upended the pack with my other hand. The contents spilt out onto the floor, and I used my foot to separate the congealed clothes from the mouldy towels and dog-eared novels. Then an opaque plastic sleeve slid into view from between two filthy T-shirts. The sleeve was a match for those that had housed Proctor’s dirt. I held my breath, and removed five sheets of paper from it and lined them up in front of me on the mattress.
Each sheet had the same header: ‘Mondrian’. It was the transcript of a meeting. The participants’ names were written in full when they first contributed to the discussion or asked a question; after that, they were simply noted by their initials. Those named as attending the meeting were Michael Lansdowne, Alan Proctor, Dennis Hanley, Susan Wright, and Lansdowne’s nephew, Mick Stanton. All of them were dead now of course, except for the prime minister. And even his fate was uncertain.
My first instinct was to pocket the document, race for the bike, and call in the cavalry — quick smart. But if I ran into Tom Hanley on the way, or even Penny Lomax, it might be handy to know what had been discussed at that meeting all those years ago. So I quickly scanned the pages.
According to the date on the transcript, it had been almost fifteen years since the meeting, so Lansdowne and Wright were shadow ministers at the time. The first couple of pages were taken up with Mick Stanton explaining the bed voucher scheme that was later to embroil the governm
ent in such controversy.
The rest of the transcript was mostly questions from Lansdowne, Proctor, and Wright. Stanton and Hanley supplied the answers. They all recognised that they were doing something highly illegal, but they were mostly focused on the rewards they’d reap if the scheme was implemented.
Those rewards included cut-price shares, which Stanton said would net each of them ten million dollars. They could also take up a directorship with a Mondrian-owned company within four years if they wanted. Stanton said directors were paid two hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year for attending quarterly meetings and for providing advice on request.
Towards the end of the meeting, Dennis Hanley had said he doubted Mondrian could keep its ownership of Dolman a secret. Stanton had dismissed his concerns, saying the bank would purchase Dolman using a shelf company, and that it was perfectly legal for it not to disclose the purchase.
Like Stanton, Wright had been very upbeat about the ‘opportunity’ that they’d all been given. And she said that the voucher scheme represented humane policy, and any party that embraced it should be congratulated.
So this was what had got them all killed. No wonder Susan Wright had been desperate to get her hands on the Mondrian tape on the night she disappeared. If this was a transcript of that tape, and I had no doubt it was, then it damned her, and Lansdowne, and everyone else who was in on the Mondrian conspiracy.
And it meant that even if we were to rescue the prime minister, it was not going to end well for him. He’d effectively go from one prison to another. I was dealing with that image when a car fired up down below. It could only have been Tom Hanley on the move.
I gathered up the document, shoved it into my jacket pocket, and dashed for the open door. A long, thin cloud of dust rose through the treetops below, marking the progress of Hanley’s BMW as it roared along the track towards Lake Road. I glanced up at the three cabins coming off the stairs above me, and then I jumped down the stairs, two and three at time, and sprinted through the trees towards the road.
My best chance of stopping Hanley was to get to him before he opened the gate. But by the time I emerged into the clearing that bordered the fenceline, the gate was already open, and Hanley was getting back into his car. He gunned the engine, his vehicle fish-tailed in the loose stones in the driveway, and then it rocketed down Lake Road like a car half its age.
When I got a direct line of sight on it, I raised my Glock and took a bead on the head behind the steering wheel. Hanley looked to be alone in the car, but if the PM was trussed up on the backseat, I might hit him. As I stood there, immobilised by this dilemma, the car rounded the corner a hundred metres away and disappeared behind a stand of conifers.
I lowered my gun and raced back to the bike, hoping that Hanley had been too concerned with his getaway to tamper with it. No such luck. Every exposed hose and cable on the machine had been severed. The microphone for the radio was gone. He’d even bent the aerial for good measure.
I tried kick-starting the bike, but couldn’t raise a spark, so I slumped onto the petrol tank and considered my next move. Just then, an old Monaro, blowing heaps of smoke, came around the same stand of trees that had swallowed Hanley.
I stood in the middle of the road and waved the car down, obliging the young woman driver to bring the thing to a shuddering halt a few metres in front of me. A fag hung from her mouth, and the dark rings under her eyes magnified the stress she was obviously feeling at being stopped by a cop in full leathers.
She wound down her window and I showed her my badge. That seemed to stress her out even more, so I assured her that she wasn’t in any trouble. I considered commandeering her car to pursue Hanley, but the old bomb looked too far gone for that. Instead, I told her I was dealing with an emergency, and that I needed her to drive me to her place so I could use her phone.
‘Sorry, I can’t help you there,’ she said, taking the fag from her mouth. ‘The lines along here went down yesterday, and they reckon they’ll be out for another day at least. You after that bastard in the Beamer? The one who nearly side-swiped me back there?’
She drew on her fag and eyed me expectantly. I ignored the question and tried to think through the situation. I knew now that Tom Hanley had been consorting with Joe, a fact that put him in the frame for the murders and the abductions. The transcript in his pack was another indicator of his involvement at a high level.
If Hanley was also in league with Lomax, as I strongly suspected he was, there might be something back at the huts pointing to Lansdowne’s whereabouts. In fact, that might be where they were holding him. I had no choice, really — I had to get back there in a hurry. But first I had to trust this raggedy woman with one of the biggest jobs I’d ever given anyone. She shrank back as I leaned in her window.
‘What’s your name?’ I said.
‘Jenny Smith,’ she said, more edgy now than ever.
‘Jenny, the life of the prime minister could depend on your doing exactly what I ask you to do right now. I need you to get into Bungendore as fast as you can, and get to a phone and call this number.’
I wrote McHenry’s name and number in my notepad, and jotted down a series of dot points that I wanted Jenny to read to the boss when he answered. Essentially, I told McHenry to send a SWAT team out to Tom Hanley’s place with extreme urgency. I knew this might not be warranted, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I told him Hanley was armed and dangerous, and I supplied the details of his car. I said he might have vital information concerning Lansdowne’s whereabouts, and that he was on the road somewhere in the Bungendore–Lake George area.
I wrote my name at the bottom of the page, and ripped the page from my notebook and gave it to Jenny Smith. Then I gave her some coins, thanked her for her help, and waved her on her way. She did a perfect three-point turn on the narrow road and took off towards Bungendore, trailing a cloud of smoke and dust. When she was out of sight, I ran back up the track towards the cabins.
I was almost out of breath by the time I got to the foot of the stairs, so I gave myself a minute to recover before making my way up, step by step, holding my Glock two-handed in front of my eyes. I was ready for anything — or so I thought.
The first cabin off the stairs was as bare as it had been when I’d first visited with Smeaton and Bender. So was the next one up. And the one after that. I had another quick look in Hanley’s cabin, but it was unchanged from a few minutes before. I was closing the door to the cabin, and questioning the wisdom of trusting Jenny Smith, when I heard a loud grunt from somewhere above me.
I ran to the stairs just as the prime minister staggered from the shadows of the next cabin up. He was hunched over, his suit was filthy, and he looked sickly and weak. A hand holding a revolver came around the corner of the cabin. Another Cobra .38 Special, it was pointed at Lansdowne’s head. Lomax didn’t show herself. She simply shouted.
‘Throw your gun into the bush! As far as you can! Now, or he dies! Do it!’
I hurled my Glock at a tall tree about twenty metres away, and forlornly watched it bounce off the trunk and drop into the scrub below. Lomax stepped from the shadows, lowered her weapon to Lansdowne’s back, and prodded him forward a few steps.
‘What kept you, inspector?’ she said, looking down at me with a half-smile on her face. ‘I told Michael here you’d be back in five minutes. And that was what? Eight minutes ago?’
‘Are you okay, Prime Minister?’ I said, though the answer was obvious.
‘I …’ said Lansdowne, and he spluttered and clamped both hands to his mouth, attempting to suppress a cough. ‘I can’t …’
But before he could get anything else out, he was taken by a coughing fit that bent him over and wracked him so completely I thought he’d collapse. When he finally got his breathing under control, he spat out a gob of phlegm, then looked at me, his eyes begging for delivera
nce.
‘He’s fine,’ said Lomax, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. ‘It was cold out here last night, wasn’t it, Michael?
‘What’s the prime minister done to deserve this?’
‘What’s he done?’ she said, as if it were the stupidest question in the world. ‘Don’t play with me, detective. You’ve seen the transcript. You know about the meeting — the one our friend here taped on the sly. What’s he done? Well, for a start, he killed my dad with his scheme. And that ended it for my mum. Then he set Proctor onto my brother, Tom, and look at poor Tommy now. Then there’s me — your worst nightmare. This guy can take credit for me, too. What’s he done? Well, he’s done quite a lot, hasn’t he?’
‘You’re Sylvie. Sylvie Hanley.’
‘Give the man a prize,’ she said.
Her gaze seemed to harden, and there was a tremor in her chin. I had to keep her talking, but I’d have to be careful. If she thought I was stringing things out, she’d bring our little chat to a quick end, and by the look of her that could happen at any moment.
‘So this was your objective, was it? To kill Lansdowne? Like you did the other two?’
‘We only wanted the tape,’ she said, patting the breast pocket of her jacket. ‘And we definitely never planned to kill Susan. But once we got her back to Rodway Street, she went all Catholic on us. You know — reckoned she had to confess everything and accept her punishment. I didn’t want to hurt her, but there was no talking her out of it. Proctor was a different matter. And this guy. But we didn’t want to hurt Susan.’