by Jack Heath
“You!” Detective Wright roared.
Ash heard the paramedics turn towards the noise. She reached back without looking, pushed the door closed, and spun one of the dials to lock it. Then she charged at Wright, who was reaching for the service revolver in his hip holster.
He was taller and heavier than her – she had no hope of knocking him down with this wild charge. So upon impact she wrapped her arms around him like he was an old friend, and squeezed as tight as she could, momentarily trapping his gun arm against his side as she reached for the radio on his hip.
Wright snarled, grabbed her hair with his free hand, and pulled. Ash squealed as her scalp burned and her neck twisted backwards. Her grip weakened, and she heard a snap as the stud keeping Wright’s revolver in the holster came loose.
No, she thought. No!
He probably wouldn’t shoot at her. But he wouldn’t have to – at gunpoint, she would be forced to surrender.
She grabbed the revolver from underneath with one hand, forcing it up towards the ceiling. Then, even as he fought to bring it back down, she squeezed, pushing the cylinder out of alignment with the barrel.
Bullets jingled to the ground beneath her feet. Wright cursed, put his palm on her face, and shoved her backwards.
She stumbled but didn’t fall. Bad move, detective, she thought. Now I’m out of reach – and you’re unarmed.
She turned and sprinted for the double doors leading to the ramp. She could hear him giving chase, but he wasn’t going to catch her. She was too fast.
When she got to the doors, she gave a nearby shelf a mighty tug before running through and pulling them shut. She heard books thudding to the floor and a deafening WHAM as the bookshelf fell in front of the doors, sealing them.
Ash didn’t have time to rest. She had to get out of the library before Wright used his radio to warn the other cops about her.
She dashed up the ramp, slowing to a brisk walk when she got to the top. There was a uniformed cop near the information kiosk by the front entrance. He would see Ash any second now. Nothing she could do but bluff.
“Hey, Dad,” Ash called. “Can we go home yet?”
The policeman turned to face her, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Oh, sorry,” Ash said. “Thought you were my dad.”
The cop said, “Who’s your—”
“Wait, there he is,” Ash said, looking through the glass door. And then she ran out, not giving the cop time to decide whether to stop her or not. She walked down the steps, crossed the yellow tape.
A radio exploded into life somewhere behind her. “All units be advised,” Wright’s voice said. “Homicide suspect in the area. Female, hair brown, height one-sixty, age approximately sixteen. Suspect is unarmed but dangerous.”
But Ash had already disappeared into the crowd.
They barely made it back to school in time. As Benjamin squeezed the brakes and Ash let go of his shoulders – she’d been riding behind him, standing on the footrests they’d installed on either side of the rear wheel – she saw that the social was over and the other students were just starting to wander out into the car park. Some were laughing, a few were crying, and others were simply dazed by the abruptly halted music and raised lights which had suddenly turned the dance floor back into a school gymnasium.
She’d told Benjamin everything – the hard drive hidden inside the reference computer, the distress call in the fax machine, and her narrow escape from Detective Wright. Benjamin had filled her in on the detective’s interrogation of him, and his subsequent escape from the van after Wright left him alone.
“He knows what we both look like, now,” Ash said. “That’s not good.”
Benjamin shrugged. “I needed a haircut anyway,” he said. “And besides, we both have alibis – people saw you here at the social, and as far as Mum knows, I’m still playing computer games in my room.”
Ash saw her father’s car pull in. “Got to go,” she said.
“Wait – what are we going to do about the SOS?”
“Not sure,” Ash said. “We should find out where the coordinates lead before we consider doing anything.”
“They didn’t look local. So wherever it is, we’d probably need Buckland’s help to get there.”
“Get there? Hang on – we’re thieves, not a search and rescue team.”
Benjamin frowned. “So what? We can’t just do nothing.”
“We can hand it in to the cops.”
“And how exactly are we going to say we acquired it?”
He had a point. “We can drop it in anonymously,” Ash said.
“Leading them to believe it’s a hoax. What kind of hostage can get to a police station to deliver a distress call?”
“Maybe it is a hoax.”
“And maybe it isn’t. Anyway, what if where it was found is an important clue? The cops might not be able to help her without all the facts.”
“You’re suggesting that we keep them out of it and attempt a rescue mission ourselves?”
“We took the note,” Benjamin said. “It’s our responsibility now.”
That’s generous, Ash thought. We didn’t take the note. I did.
Ash’s father was climbing out of the car. “If my dad sees you here, we’re both in trouble,” she said. “Call Buckland. Tell him about the note, see what he says. Give him the drive, too. Okay?”
“Okay,” Benjamin said. “See you later.”
“See you,” Ash said.
Traditionally, Benjamin punctuated his goodbyes by asking Ash out – for a coffee, to see a concert, to go skydiving. But this time he just started pedalling, gained some speed, and was gone.
“Ash!” It was her father. “Over here.”
She jogged over to him.
“How was the social?” he asked.
“Surprising,” she said. “Thanks for making me go.”
Her father smiled. “Any time.”
They drove home in comfortable silence. It wasn’t until Ash was inside and walking past the kitchen that she realized she was starving. She hadn’t had dinner before the social. In fact, she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.
She microwaved some leftover pasta and wolfed it down. It wasn’t great – her father rarely put much effort into his cooking when she wasn’t around – but it filled the gaping hole in her stomach. Afterwards, she scooped some cold blueberry pie into two bowls and gave one to her dad. They ate in front of the TV.
Ash finished eating, washed the dishes, said goodnight and was shuffling towards her bedroom when her father called out.
“Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you heard from your mother lately?”
Ash frowned. This was the first time he’d mentioned her in months. “No, why?”
“She hasn’t cashed the last two cheques.”
Ash’s father was supposed to make regular alimony and child support payments to her mother, even though he was the one living with Ash and his ex-wife was the one with a well-paid job. How that was legal, Ash wasn’t sure – she suspected it was mostly sexism on the part of the courts.
This situation occasionally eased Ash’s guilty feelings about her criminal ventures. What was legal, she knew, wasn’t always what was right.
“That’s not like her,” she told her father. “Maybe she’s grown a conscience.”
“Hey!” His stare was sharp. “That’s your mother you’re talking about.”
I’m uncomfortably aware of that, Ash thought. “She ditched us. The fact that she’s my mother makes that worse, not better.”
He looked away.
“Anyway, I haven’t spoken to her,” Ash said. “In years.”
Quietly, her father said, “Okay. Just asking.”
Ash went into her bedroom and shut the door.
She never had trouble sleeping. She supposed that was the reward for leading an active life. Exhaustion. Her arms and legs felt heavy as she changed into her pyjamas, lifted the duvet, and
tumbled into bed. Her eyes were closed before her head hit the pillow.
She was just starting to dream about Detective Wright – how his real first name was Alice, and the note was part of an elaborate trap to ensnare her, and now he knew her phone number because Benjamin had accidentally mentioned it and he was calling her, tracing the signal, storming towards her front door – when she realized her phone was actually ringing in real life.
She knocked a few things off her bedside table groping around for it. She blinked away the blur of sleep to check the caller ID. Benjamin.
“Benjamin,” she mumbled, pressing the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry about before, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything, it was just—”
“Forget it,” Benjamin said. “Buckland wants to do this rescue tomorrow. And we’ll have to be away overnight. Can you do it?”
“Wait,” Ash said. “What? Away where?”
“Not sure yet,” Benjamin said. “But Buckland said we’d be flying there, and that it’d take a while.”
Ash yawned. “The school thinks I’m sick anyway – I can miss one more day. But why? What’s going on? Does Buckland know who Alice is?”
“He said he’d explain everything on the way. Meet you at my place at eight a.m.?”
“Okay,” Ash said. “See you then.” The phone slipped out of her fingers as she tried to put it back on the table. She intended to pick it up, but the bed was so soft, and suddenly she was asleep again.
Beneath the Surface
“Peachey,” the guard said. “You got a visitor.”
Michael Peachey opened his eyes to see the same yellow concrete ceiling he’d been looking at for five months now. He’d stuck up some drawings of trees and bell towers – who would have thought prison would have an art programme? – but they only made the cell gloomier by contrast.
He’d been here for one hundred and fifty-three nights. He still had ten thousand, seven hundred and ninety-seven to go.
His anger had yet to fade. The government had paid him to kill Hammond Buckland to save their failing economy. And now, the same government had locked him up for the murder – even though it turned out that Buckland wasn’t dead. There was no part of this that made sense.
Peachey turned his head on the pillow to look at the two guards behind the thick shatterproof glass.
“Visiting hours are over,” he said. “Get lost.” He shut his eyes again.
“Visiting hours are when we say they are,” the guard told him. He was a balding man, middle-aged, but had few wrinkles – he looked like the sort of man who didn’t use his face enough to crease it. “Are you coming out, or am I going to have to come in and get you?”
Peachey remained still just long enough to worry the guard, then sat up. He swivelled on the mattress so his legs were over the side and then he dropped to the floor.
The prisoner in the bunk below awoke with a start. “Whoa, man, what are you doing?”
“Shut up,” Peachey said, “or I’ll tear your nose off your face.”
The man fell silent. He was Peachey’s third cellmate so far. The first one had attacked Peachey when he refused to vacate the top bunk, and Peachey had broken his jaw. The second had opened a letter from Peachey’s lawyer; he was currently in a coma.
The new guy seemed smarter. He understood that Michael Peachey was a violent sociopath, easily provoked, and that the best way to survive a sentence at Hallett State Remand Centre was to stay out of his way.
Peachey pulled on his high-visibility orange overalls, turned his back to the guard, and put his hands through the slot in the cell door. The guard tightened manacles around his wrists, while a second guard watched. Peachey heard the slot at the bottom of the door open, and felt shackles close around his ankles.
“Step away from the door,” the guard said.
Peachey did.
“Thomas, you going to be good?”
The other prisoner nodded.
The door was unlocked with a rusty crunch. The balding guard walked into the cell and looped a chain over Peachey’s manacles and under his shackles, tightening it to keep his arms down by his sides.
“All right,” the guard said. “Let’s go.”
He pushed Peachey through the door, followed him out, and locked it behind him. The other guard, a tall man with a thin moustache, prodded Peachey’s back with a baton.
Peachey could feel the eyes of a hundred other prisoners, watching him from their cells. Gang members, bomb-makers, serial killers. Addicts who would gladly stab him for a single gram of meth. As the supposed murderer of a celebrity, he was used to being stared at – but it was harder to remain calm while he was in leg irons and his observers weren’t.
The guards led him out of the cell block and into an exercise yard with featureless cement walls that were five metres high and almost as thick. There was a steel grille above, separating him from the starless sky. He suddenly wondered if he had a visitor at all. Maybe the guards intended to beat him to death with their batons, here and now. Maybe they were working for the federal agents who’d originally hired him. Or, perhaps, for Buckland himself.
Peachey figured he could knock down one of the guards with a headbutt, then jump onto his chest and stop his heart, or at least snap his sternum so he couldn’t get back up. But he couldn’t see a way to stop the other one from cracking his skull with the baton. If they were here to kill him, he was going to die.
He was led through the exercise yard, all the way to the door at the other end, without incident.
The visiting room was a dull, sterile hall, with two doors. One was marked Visitors, the other Remandees. There were eight small tables evenly spaced around the room, with four chairs bolted to the floor around each one. Three were brown, one was grey. The brown chairs were for visitors. The grey chairs were harder, with straighter backs.
When Peachey shuffled in, Detective Wright was sitting in a brown chair. He raised his paper coffee cup by way of greeting.
What the hell? Peachey thought. What’s he doing here, at this time of night?
One of the guards pushed Peachey down into the chair opposite Wright. Wright sipped his coffee while Peachey stared at him.
Peachey was the first to speak. “You’ve found Buckland,” he guessed.
“Not yet,” Wright said. “But we will. Tell me where he is, and I’ll get five years taken off your sentence.”
“You don’t have the authority to do that.”
“Don’t I? Maybe I know something you don’t. Maybe some evidence was overlooked in your trial. Maybe enough to open it up to appeal, if someone were to bring it to the judge. But that won’t happen, unless you help me find the body.”
“There is no body. He’s not dead.”
Wright’s face was inscrutable. “Serve the full thirty – see if I care.”
Buckland can’t stay underground for ever, Peachey thought. Someone will find him, sooner or later, and when it goes public, the government will have to let me out of here.
Wright wouldn’t have come here just to offer Peachey deals he’d already rejected. Peachey said, “So what do you want?”
“I’ve found your accomplice,” Wright said.
Peachey raised an eyebrow. “My accomplice?”
“Don’t insult me. She kept my team distracted while you were hunting Buckland, and then she was with you when you killed him, standing nice and close so my sniper couldn’t drop you. Plus, I saw you say something to her on your way out.”
Peachey clenched his hands into fists behind his back. Buckland’s puppet, he thought. The one who knocked me out, and ran me over in a stolen car. Wright thinks she was working for me.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said.
“No?” Wright didn’t look convinced. “Brunette, young, hell of a liar. Calls herself Ashley. Ring any bells?”
Ashley. Peachey smiled. Now I know your name. When I get out of here, I’ll get you. I’ll make you lead me to Buckland, and then I�
�ll kill you both.
“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t think I know her. Did you get a last name?”
“Tell me where she is,” Wright said, “and I’ll get them to take off ten years. With good behaviour, you could be out of here by the time you’re fifty.”
“I thought you said you’d found her.”
Wright flung his coffee into Peachey’s face so fast he didn’t have time to blink. He gasped as the fluid stung his skin – not hot, but ice-cold. Wright had been drinking a frappuccino.
“Last chance,” Wright snarled. He was on his feet, reaching out, grabbing Peachey by the face and squeezing. “Where is the girl? Who is she? How do I find her?”
The coffee was trickling down Peachey’s collar. He tried to bite Wright’s hand, but couldn’t – the palm covered his entire mouth.
Wright pushed Peachey against his chair, stepped back, and waited for a response.
“You’re third,” Peachey said, panting.
Wright said nothing.
“First Buckland,” Peachey continued. “Then Ashley. And then you.”
Wright didn’t ask what he was talking about. “Before too long,” he said, “you’ll realize how many enemies you have among the prisoners, and how many friends I have among the guards. You’ll wonder if you’re even going to last thirty years.” He shrugged into his coat. Buttoned it up. “And you’ll wish you’d taken the deal.”
He turned and walked out the visitors’ exit. The door boomed closed behind him.
Peachey turned to look at the guards who’d brought him in, suddenly suspicious. Was Wright bluffing? Would he really try and have Peachey killed in prison?
The guards were gone.
He twisted his head left and right. The room was empty.
Peachey stood. Shuffled away from the chair, his movement restricted by the chains. He crouched for a moment and pulled his cuffed wrists under the shackles so his hands were in front of him, although he still couldn’t raise them higher than his waist. Then he kept going towards the door. He didn’t know why the guards were gone, but it might be an opportunity to escape. Wright may not have locked the doors on his way out, expecting them to auto-lock or thinking the guards would do it. And if the guards were gone...