Before It Breaks

by Dave Warner

‘You’re not kidding.’

  ‘And I hope you told Lalor Corona, ’cause I like Corona.’

  The bet was common knowledge. Hagan would have to share. From the case, he’d be lucky to wind up with a brace.

  As he was about to open his door to climb into the relative safety of his cabin he saw a vehicle approaching from the Derby direction. This was the opposite direction to where he expected the abductor, that’s why he’d set up on the other side of the road, to get vehicles heading out of town. Hagan was good at spotting makes and models from a very long distance, it was his specialty, similar to how some of the indigenous boys could spot a roo and it would look to him like a small shrub. Part of him was inclined to let the car go. But then again the bet would be a tie. Neither would buy a case, and the Sarge and the other cheapskates would have to buy their own beers. He could see the car was an SUV, white. He hit his lights and walked into the road with his sign that read POLICE STOP. He managed to give the driver enough time to slow and eventually pull over. Hagan made sure the road was clear and headed across, his shirt flapping like the sails of yacht. His cap wouldn’t make it in the high winds so he left it in his car as he approached the Rav4. There was only the driver, a young guy. Hagan made sure he could see his hands at the wheel. He wasn’t taking any chances.

  ‘Everything okay? I don’t think I was speeding.’

  ‘No, just checking cars on another matter.’

  Hagan used his phone to snap the plates. It beat trying to write anything in this wind.

  ‘You got your licence?’

  The young guy flicked through his wallet. Went back and checked again.

  ‘I think I must have left it.’

  Hagan’s phone buzzed with a text. He read it. It gave the make, model and rego of the vehicle they were after. His training kicked in and his hand went to his gun before he even had time to get nervous.

  ‘Would you get out of the vehicle please, sir?’

  52

  Clement drove fast, following Risely’s car. They’d been standing back at the bungalow, dispirited, watching Lisa Keeble and her team collect evidence. Then Risely’s phone had gone off.

  It was Mal Gross and he sounded like he’d won lotto.

  ‘Hagan’s picked him up. He’s bringing him in,’ he’d shouted down the line. So now Clement was tailgating his boss, foot flat to the floor through vacant streets. The station loomed dead ahead. The camera crews were battened down God knew where, missing the action. Somewhere a news chief would be spewing.

  Risely’s car cruised to the electronic gate. It had taken them nine minutes from the Mimosa. The gate seemed to take that long to open. Eventually they slid through and around the back. Clement pulled in beside Risely and got out. Graeme Earle’s car was back. The wind was howling, anything not tied down cartwheeling across earth or spinning through air. Mal Gross was waiting for them at the back door. He was no longer excited.

  ‘There’s a problem.’

  Within thirteen seconds of stepping inside Clement saw the problem in the flesh standing next to Earle.

  ‘Who is this guy?’

  He pointed at a thin, curly headed young guy of about twenty who stood between an embarrassed Hagan and pissed-off Graeme Earle. He was the one who spoke.

  ‘Says his name is Jake Windsor.’

  ‘I am Jake Windsor.’ The young guy seemed confused, not sure whether he was allowed to be angry at cops.

  Gross deflected heat from Hagan. ‘He didn’t have ID and your description went out after he’d already been picked up.’

  Earle chimed in. ‘Says Bourke sold him the car yesterday for four hundred dollars.’

  Windsor was jiggling. ‘He did. I got the receipt. I haven’t had a chance to register it yet.’

  Clement was sure somebody had already asked this but asked anyway. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘No. He quit yesterday, said the whole murder thing was too creepy. I haven’t seen him since last night. I drove out to Derby and pulled a girl.’

  Graeme Earle spoke. ‘I called the Mimosa. Bourke quit last night, the night manager hadn’t pulled him out of the system yet so they didn’t know when you were there earlier.’

  Clement fought frustration, turned back to Windsor.

  ‘What time last night?’

  ‘About seven.’

  Clement told Earle to call back the Mimosa. ‘We need to speak with Arvie.’

  Risely cursed softly in the background. Clement was thinking that if Bourke had sold the car he might be thinking airport.

  ‘We have to check airlines.’

  Risely was across that. ‘No flights out today. All cancelled because of the weather.’

  ‘What about last night?’

  Shepherd was a reservoir of trivia, on this occasion useful. ‘Last flight out was five o’clock to Perth.’

  Clement looked at Windsor but was really speaking to everybody else.

  ‘And you saw him at seven so he wasn’t on that flight.’

  Earle came over and shoved a cordless telephone at Clement. ‘Arvie.’

  Clement had to shout so Arvie could hear. The poor bastard must have still been outside somewhere.

  ‘When did you last see Peter Bourke?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Huh? I can’t hear.’

  Clement shouted the question again.

  ‘When I woke up, seven, around then.’

  Clement hung up on him.

  ‘Bourke didn’t fly out last night. What time were today’s flights supposed to go?’

  Again Shepherd was the timetable guru. ‘The Bali flight via Hedland usually goes at two twenty. The flight to Perth I think is at three or three fifteen.’

  Clement’s watch said one fifty. Graeme Earle was already dialling. ‘I’ll check the airlines to see if he was booked.’

  ‘What about coaches? Any coaches leave today?’

  Mal Gross said the coach always went around eight thirty.

  Clement asked Shepherd to run that down. If Bourke was on a coach he’d be easy to scoop up at his destination.

  Earle swore. ‘I can’t get through.’

  ‘We’ll go out there. Ryan, Whitey, hire cars. He might be trying to drive out.’

  Clement turned to Risely. ‘Can we keep the roads blocked?’

  ‘In this weather we can’t have people working outside vehicles but we can patrol.’

  ‘There won’t be many on the road. Let’s just pull over anybody who is.’

  Clement and Earle headed for the door.

  ‘Take separate cars, we might need to split up.’

  53

  Logic decreed he should never have gone back to the pit this morning. Right now he could be on a beach in Bali. But he was the wasp and the wasp did not fly off, it trapped its enemy, it bade its time, it watched it wither. He’d already sold his car to Jake, half what he paid, but he didn’t mind, it had served its purpose well. Ana who worked in the kitchen had let him borrow hers to get out to Donen for his farewell visit and then she’d dropped him to the airport, which was nice of her.

  There everything went wrong. He sensed it when he saw other vehicles peeling away, the place near deserted. Ana offered to wait for him but she was due on her shift and he told her he’d be fine. The only people in the terminal were three befuddled backpackers, one young woman behind the airline counter, a rent-a-car girl who had already turned the lights off in her booth and a couple of terminal trolls who were sweeping up.

  The plane he was supposed to be flying out on had never arrived, diverted because of the cyclone. Part of him wanted to abuse the counter girl who was telling him this through overly blushered cheeks. Weren’t they supposed to text him? he asked with an edge. She said they had. He checked his phone and found a text sent thirty minutes earlier. She apologised, circumstances beyond their control, blah, blah, blah.

  It was at that point he calmed. ‘Circumstances beyond their control’ was a telling c
hoice of words. This whole enterprise he had long known was beyond his control. Therefore this latest permutation might be seen as a deliberate act by the real Power who guided everything. It may be the Power wanted him caught and punished. It may be the Power wanted him protected. Perhaps, had it taken off, the plane would have crashed in the cyclone. Or maybe he would have arrived safely in Denpassar only to be bitten by some infected mosquito. How could one insignificant person think they could understand the machinations of the universe? It was futile to bother.

  This did not mean he should abdicate all thought and just expect fate to carry him where it would. No, he still needed to select what he thought was the best course of action. It would be right or wrong but he must act. The girl said he would be re-booked on the first available flight which she expected would be tomorrow. He was trying to decide what to do when his phone rang. He saw from the display it was Marie. He debated about picking up and finally did.

  ‘Hi Marie. How’s this storm?’

  ‘Scary. Listen do you know anything about Jake?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Rosa was in town. She said she saw him in the back of a police car.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About half an hour ago.’

  54

  By the time he reached the turn-off to the airport Clement had learned that Peter Bourke was not listed as a passenger on the morning coach. That did not mean definitively he had not been on the coach. Nor did the absence of his name from any car-rental lists mean he had not hired a car under another name. Hell, he may even have had a second car he’d organised earlier standing by. The first big splotches of rain slapped his windscreen. He buzzed Earle who had a slight lead on him.

  ‘Why don’t you take the charters, just in case?’

  ‘Copy that.’

  Earle peeled off at forty-five degrees down a feeder road to a pair of hangars. The rain began to drum faster on the bodywork. Clement pulled up out front of the terminal which looked near deserted. He struggled out and the wind drove him like a rugby pack towards the building. As he reached the door a deep grinding roar snapped Clement up. His first thought was it was the cyclone hitting early, pulling guttering or the roof apart but what he saw was a silver Rav4 powering out from behind the building and up a service road. He only caught a glimpse of the driver but it was enough. Clement fought the wind for his door and got back inside. He fired up his engine, reversed into the kerb behind then turned his wheel hard right and drove up and over a narrow strip of bark chips before slamming down hard again on bitumen. He hammered fifteen metres the wrong way down a one-way strip to the service exit Bourke had taken moments earlier.

  The storm hit with a sudden fury. Whatever light there had been was vacuumed out, rain smashing down in a dark blitzkrieg. The rutted service road ran about four hundred metres before dead-ending on Broome Road. He grabbed the two-way and yelled for Earle. No answer. Visibility was almost zero, rain was sheeting and he could not see whether the Rav4 had gone north or south, but south led down to the end of the peninsula so he turned north, hammering as he fumbled for his phone. The phone jumped out of his hands and landed somewhere on the floor. Shit. A car passed on the other side, a blur in the darkness. He hit the headlights. Visibility improved to a few metres. He pushed his foot hard to the floor.

  He tried the two-way again. This time Earle answered. Clement spoke fast and loud.

  ‘I just saw Bourke driving out the airport in a silver Rav4. I’m following north. It’s stolen or a hire. See if you can get details and call Risely.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  Clement hit the Gubinge Road intersection as there was a momentary easing in the rain, and visibility tripled, which took it to miserable. To the left Clement spied a distant fantail of water. Bourke must be heading west, either to double back down towards the Mimosa or give him the slip through the western suburbs. The rain dumped heavier than ever. Clement gave chase, closing rapidly on barely visible tail-lights.

  Too rapidly.

  His brain was just figuring Bourke wouldn’t be driving this slow as he caught a glimpse of the vehicle ahead, a small truck. Shit. On impulse he threw his car into a skidding U-turn. It was a stupid thing to do. Had a vehicle been coming the other way it would have crushed him. Luckily there was none. His back wheels were skating, in this wind he could easily flip. A three-sixty seemed inevitable but the Subaru snapped out at two hundred, he straightened and powered back to Broome Road having lost too much time. The wind was pushing the car across the road. Impossible as it seemed, the downpour intensified. He drove blind. If anything blew across the road there would be no chance to avoid it. Earle came back on the two-way.

  ‘He rented a car. I’ve texted Risely the details. Be careful.’

  ‘I will,’ said Clement but he knew there was no way of being careful at this speed in these conditions. He kept his foot to the floor, headlights were useless. He was Jonah in the pit of the whale.

  55

  He had caught the Avis girl as she was about to leave. She was not exactly thrilled to write last minute business.

  ‘I only have one available car,’ she cautioned as if hoping he’d say forget it but he couldn’t shake the warning that was urging him to get out of Broome. Coincidentally the car was another Rav4, a silver one. The forms had taken longer than he would have liked and he had only just climbed into the car when the rain started. He was torn now about where he should head. If he went east towards Fitzroy Crossing the storm would follow and perhaps overtake him. He wouldn’t want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere. He could drive south for Port Hedland and pick up another flight there but they’d expect that. It had to be north, try and get to Darwin or maybe find a fishing boat somewhere. As he pulled out of the hire-car area he saw the detective heading for the terminal. The detective looked his way and Peter sensed he had ducked too late. He swung up a service road and pushed his foot to the floor, assuming the cop would follow. The first phalanx of rain hit and everything was suddenly much darker. He swung hard left into a cape of grey, felt the car swivel beneath him as it fought for traction, then right itself. The curtain of rain would hide him from his pursuer. Maybe he’d guess wrong? The cop would radio ahead but it was a cyclone, it would be hard to get out on the road. He had a full tank of petrol and there were lots of places to disappear.

  56

  Clement drove blind. Randomly a branch or other debris would skitter across the road or thump into the body of the car. There were no other vehicles on the road now. Earle was following somewhere at a slower pace. Risely had people looking for Bourke but the storm was pulling numbers out for emergency situations, limiting coverage. Still the major roads out south and east were covered and he had managed to raise a couple of vehicles to man the road at Beagle Bay which meant if Bourke didn’t turn off he had about ninety minutes before his road ran out. The isolation Clement felt was intense, were it not for the crackle of the two-way it might have been an apocalyptic dream. He was a submarine searching a fathomless ocean, his quarry could be two hundred metres ahead or kilometres either side, there was no way of knowing. It had about it the feeling of a moment undecided, of a continuing balance and a resultant stasis, of walking the line between life and death. If he had snapped awake and found himself lying in a bed in post-operative care it would not have surprised him. The image of a hospital immediately conjured his father as if they were in this moment linked in some pervasive heartbeat, as if this could have been his father’s dream, just as it might have been Peter Bourke’s, as if this landscape and all his thoughts belonged to something bigger than him and his tiny life. The experience ended abruptly when a large branch cartwheeled directly into his path. He swung the wheel reflexively and felt the broken wood thud and scrape into the passenger side of the vehicle but the escape manoeuvre was bought at the cost of any control over the vehicle and this time it skidded into a broadside he could not right. The car skated across the opposite side of the road before leaving the sl
ippery bitumen and ploughing into muddy scrub where it eventually came to rest. He sat for a second or two, his beating heart at odds with what still felt like the tail end of a transcendental state. His foot slammed into the accelerator but the tyres spun impotently, mud churned. Each second meant more bitumen between him and Bourke. He threw the vehicle into reverse and punched down again, urging the rubber to grip. Finally it did, hauling him back out as the rain thumped with the heaviness of banshee fists on the glass. He spun back towards the road and then onto it, at least two more minutes lost. Again he pushed his foot to the floor, gripped the wheel and stared into a river fanning across the windscreen.

  How long the next void continued he could not compute, perhaps close to an hour, the two-way his lifeline. The signal varied, sometimes he’d thought transmission lost completely but then Earle would crackle back on. His mind drifted sometimes, to Phoebe then Marilyn and past tensions. He’d followed her once, shadowed her in the best tradition of the KGB. She’d driven to a house and he’d watched from up the street as a man had opened the door and welcomed her in. Clement did not remain to time her stay or see if they’d lit out on some new adventure walking to the car with the easy intimacy of lovers, awkwardness of potential lovers or purposefulness of mere friends. He ran no check on the man. It was her secret.

  To reveal what he had done would only condemn him further in her eyes. It cut him she was no longer his. Whether that was love or possessiveness he did not know, semantics wouldn’t help but the hurt was true and deep even if none of it made sense.

  The orange fuel indicator lit up. He believed that meant he had about twelve k to go before his tank ran dry, a thought that turned him concave until he remembered the cars always carried a spare plastic jerry can of fuel. Running out of fuel on the main road would present a fatal hazard to anybody using it so he was forced to pull over in an area of low scrub. He climbed into the back and found the fuel. It seemed the wind had backed off but it was still ferocious and it took him all his strength to force open the door. The rain continued to bucket, the ground a rice paddy, water to his ankles. Within seconds he was sodden, his slicker threatening to split like a spinnaker. Fortunately the petrol compartment opened with a push, he twisted off the cap and it nearly snapped from the cord holding it. The yellow jerry can bucked in his hands as he fought to shield it with his body. He managed to get the nozzle up and then shove it down into the tank but when it had drained the wind ripped it from his grasp and tore it through the air. It reminded Clement of a James Bond film where the villain was sucked from the plane and spat into the heavens. He fought to get back into the car, the rain smashing into his skin. He called Earle on the radio as he fired up the car and saw the fuel gauge climb.