Crooked Leg Road

by Jennifer Walsh

  Another pair of legs appeared as Marko stepped off the verandah and moved towards Enver, barking more orders. Enver turned to come back, then there was a sudden distinct rustle in the bushes. It could have been a bird or a small animal, but David knew it wasn’t.

  Marko and Enver both turned toward the source of the sound. David knew exactly what they would find if they went to investigate.

  He could only think of one thing to do. He slithered quietly out from under the verandah, took the full water bottle from his pocket and threw it hard, as far as he could down the hill past the house. It made a satisfyingly loud noise. Both men stopped, turned and went leaping and running towards the sound. When they had gone as far as he judged they would go, David called out.

  ‘Hey!’

  He was up behind the house by now, level with the studio. When they turned to look he jumped up and down, waved his arms, then ducked behind the protective wall of the studio and disappeared from their view. A narrow path led from the back of the studio up the rise onto the ridge and into a series of twists and turns that would take him all the way up into the craggiest part of the mountainside.

  Shouts of fury followed him and he heard the men thrashing through the undergrowth, but he knew he had got a good start. He felt strong and he felt angry.

  ‘Catch me if you can,’ he chanted softly as he ran, springing lightly from rock to rock. ‘Catch me if you can.’ Finally he had something to do, and it felt good.

  LIKE Bessie, Skender’s driving was a little rusty, but after grinding the gears and kangaroo-hopping for a while down the rutted track he seemed to get the hang of it. He had learned years ago, he explained, while helping out on his uncle’s farm in Italy.

  ‘All the kids drive,’ he said, ‘boys and girls. Trucks, tractors, motor-bikes. I started as soon as I was big enough to see over the steering wheel – maybe when I was about nine. We had good times.’

  When they got to the road he had to be reminded to keep to the left side, but after that he was fine. Speed wasn’t an issue, as Bessie couldn’t manage much above fifty kilometres an hour.

  As soon as she got a signal Andrea dialled David’s home number and explained the situation as succinctly as she could to Moshe.

  ‘Please, Moshe, please, you’ve got to call Alex and tell him David’s safe, and you’ve got to call the police too. They’re going to attack the Premier and all those people who are coming to our school, you know, for the debate? They’re starting out from some boatshed, it must be somewhere fairly close to the school. Moshe, they shot my dad. We’re going to get the ambulance for him now. Moshe, you know I wouldn’t make up stuff like this. You know that, don’t you?’

  With her other hand Andrea was holding Skender’s phone to his ear while he tried again and again to call his father, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel. Martin peered through the window on the passenger side, trying to figure out where they were.

  ‘Slow down, Skender,’ he called. ‘Stop here for a minute.’

  A couple of mothers with babies in strollers were gossiping at the side of the road. Martin leaned out and got their attention.

  ‘Excuse me, we’re looking for the police station. Which way do we go?’

  The woman closest to them peered past him into the truck, taking in the sight of Skender crouched over the wheel and Andrea crammed in the middle, two mobile phones in her hands and her T-shirt covered with blood.

  ‘Reckon you’d be wanting to go the other way,’ she observed.

  The other woman pointed to a quaint old building at the far end of the main street. Inside, it had high ceilings and a long, polished counter, behind which an old constable and a young constable were lounging over a small table, playing draughts.

  ‘Please, you’ve got to help us,’ said Andrea as they burst in. ‘My dad’s been shot, and he needs an ambulance. We had to hide him from the men who shot him. He’s at his place, up on the Crooked Leg Road.’

  The older constable dropped his draughts piece.

  ‘What’s his name?’ he said.

  The younger constable came around the counter in a couple of strides and took the piece of paper Martin was holding in his hand.

  ‘Crooked Leg Road?’ he said. ‘This a map of it?’

  DAVID’S legs were screaming, but he still had his lead. Of the two men, he guessed Enver was fitter, but with any luck Enver had a bad headache from his poker wound. Whatever, David was going to keep running. All he had to do was keep running.

  ‘Catch me if you can,’ he chanted to himself.

  But the paths were leading him up to a sort of plateau, and he realised that a plateau was not the best place to be. Up there he would be too exposed, if they came after him. They might not want to kill him just yet, but they could always shoot him in the leg.

  And he wasn’t sure how to get down off the plateau again, apart from the way he had come. There might be nothing but sheer cliffs. He kept trying to find other routes, but there wasn’t time to explore his options, and whatever he did, the plateau was getting closer.

  Enver was getting closer too. For all his resolve, David couldn’t find the extra burst of speed he wanted. He gritted his teeth and tried harder, running where he could, scrambling up the steeper sections, ignoring the cuts and scratches on his hands. Fear made his heart beat louder and louder as he emerged after all onto the bare plateau and started to run across it. Louder and louder.

  But that wasn’t his heart. There was a shadow making patterns on the ground, and the noise was deafening. Right above his head was a helicopter, so close he was making eye contact with the pilot. He jumped up and down, waving his arms and yelling for help. From the corner of his eye, he saw Enver melt away, disappearing over the side of the plateau.

  35

  ‘THEY’VE got your dad,’ the young policeman said to Andrea.

  ‘Who’s got him?’ They had been waiting at the police station for what seemed like an eternity, though it was probably only half an hour. Andrea had been sitting hunched up on the wooden bench, biting her nails and not looking at anyone. Martin knew better than to try and make conversation with her.

  ‘Care Flight. They’re taking him on the chopper to Parramatta, to Westmead Hospital. Couple of kids with him too.’

  ‘Is he all right?

  ‘Stable, they reckon.’

  ‘Did you catch those men?’ asked Martin.

  ‘The helicopter pilot saw a car near the house,’ said the older policeman, ‘but by the time we got up there it was gone. We’ve put out a bulletin, but we didn’t get much of a description from you kids. Newish, sort of light colour, as I recall.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Martin. ‘We only saw it once. But what about the boat, and the Premier? What’s happening there?’

  The policeman shrugged. ‘The boys in Sydney are handling that. They’ll make sure the Premier’s safe.’

  ‘Okay, then.’ Andrea smiled for the first time since they’d been there. ‘Can we go now? When’s the next train?’

  ‘We’re organising a lift for you,’ said the policeman. ‘Drop you off at Westmead, if you like.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great,’ said Andrea.

  ‘All part of the service. It’ll be about fifteen minutes.’

  Andrea stood up and stretched.

  ‘Just going for a walk,’ she said to the others. ‘Back soon.’

  Martin borrowed Skender’s phone and, with some dread, called his father. He had had some time to rehearse his story, but it was still going to be a difficult phone call. At least he could now say that Kitty was all right.

  His father listened in stunned silence.

  ‘They’re taking us to Westmead Hospital now, to see how Adam’s going,’ Martin finished. ‘It might take a couple of hours, but Kitty’ll be there much sooner. Do you want to pick us up there?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Paul O’Brien. ‘I’ll be looking forward to hearing all the details, and what on earth the two of you were doing up there in the fir
st place.’

  ‘Has there been anything about this on the news? About our school?’

  ‘There was something quite dramatic on the internet – someone tweeted some footage from a helicopter showing this boat. They reckoned the Premier was on it, tooling sedately towards the jetty at your school, then suddenly it does a U-turn and goes tearing back down the Harbour.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Martin.

  ‘And then,’ his father went on, ‘there’s an unconfirmed story about Joe Rozman being arrested. I think you’ve heard me saying there was something fishy about him?’

  ‘Yes, Dad. You were right.’

  As Martin finished the call Skender’s phone trilled, and Skender snatched it. He talked rapidly for a few minutes and listened for a lot longer, his expression dark at first, then slowly changing to one of relief.

  The front door opened and the lady taxi driver they had met earlier looked in.

  ‘All set for Westmead?’

  Martin and Skender stood up, and the taxi driver did a double-take.

  ‘Hey, you kids musta been in the wars! Where’s your girlfriends?’

  ‘They’re around,’ said Martin. He sensed that this question made Skender slightly uncomfortable. ‘One of them’s coming back with us.’

  The taxi was waiting outside, engine purring, and Andrea came back along the street with a white paper parcel.

  ‘Hi,’ she said to the driver, as they all got in. ‘Are you a plainclothes cop or something?’

  ‘That’s right, love,’ said the driver, pulling the car out into the road. ‘Mostly undercover, you know?’ She laid a finger against the side of her nose and chuckled.

  ‘I would have got some extra chips if I’d known it was you,’ said Andrea.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, sweetie. I’m watching me weight.’

  Andrea opened the parcel and offered steaming chips to Martin and Skender.

  ‘Seriously, though,’ she said to the taxi driver as they ate, ‘don’t they have police cars any more?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s all this outsourcing these days,’ was the reply. ‘They reckon they’re saving money by paying me to drive people around, instead of having young Darren Emmett do it. So he’s sitting on his you-know-what back at the station doing nothing, and I’m feathering me nest. They even pay me a bit extra to drive back on me own.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to pick up me mum at Winmalee on the way back, bring her out home for tea.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Martin, ‘could you do something for us? We borrowed an old truck to drive into town, and we want to make sure it gets back to its owner.’

  ‘Hey, I seen old Bessie parked outside the station there. Was it you brung her into town?’ said the driver. ‘You never! Which one of you drove Bessie?’

  Skender reluctantly put up his hand.

  ‘Well, I don’t know who’s going to believe this story,’ said the driver. ‘Yeah, I’ll make sure Bessie gets back to old Cappy. Not that he’d know. Can’t see past his nose, poor old so-and-so. But they might as well both rot out there together.’

  36

  ANDREA was taken straight into the emergency room to see her father. David was there with his parents, and Linda Newman motioned for Andrea to sit in the chair by the bed, but instead she threw herself across Adam’s motionless body and burst into tears.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said David, patting her back awkwardly. ‘He’s actually really okay.’

  ‘The doctors said David did a great job.’ Linda couldn’t hide the pride in her voice. ‘He did all the right things, bandaging the wound and giving him water.’

  ‘I was just guessing, really,’ said David.

  ‘It’s just . . . ’ Andrea gulped. ‘All these tubes, and he looks so pale.’

  ‘The tubes are good,’ said David. ‘They gave him blood at first, but now it’s just kind of water, and antibiotics. They said he’s going to be fine.’

  When they went down to the hospital cafeteria, all the others were there, including Martin and Kitty’s parents. Clearly still ravenous, despite the chips, Martin and Skender were tucking into big plates of lasagne.

  ‘Andrea!’ said Kitty, leaping up and hugging her. ‘I thought you’d never get here. We came in a helicopter! And a spider crawled over my leg. The biggest huntsman I’ve ever seen. They nearly caught us. You should have seen David go! By the time I knew what was happening I could see him way up the mountain, and they were slipping and sliding and bellowing like crazy, trying to get up there after him.’

  Paul O’Brien pushed two tables together while his wife and Linda went up to the counter, then they all settled in with more provisions.

  A big television screen on the wall, the sound turned off, kept showing the same images over and over: disappointed school children moving away from the water’s edge while security police combed the school grounds, the Premier emerging from a boat near the Opera House surrounded by burly guards and, most intriguingly, a familiar-looking street in Balmain overrun with police and emergency vehicles, with flashing blue lights reflecting off the road.

  ‘The people who’d got David sent me an SMS with a pretty alarming picture, and told me to meet them outside and not to tell anyone,’ said David’s father. ‘But of course I told a couple of my closest colleagues. It was just what I’d feared, and we’d talked about how to handle it. At the rendezvous, they claimed they’d brought David back to Sydney, so I said I’d go with them and tell them what they wanted to know if I could see him.’

  Andrea glanced at Skender. His impenetrable brown eyes were fixed on Alex’s face.

  ‘They blindfolded me so I wouldn’t know where we were going,’ went on Alex. ‘When they uncovered my eyes we were in a boatshed with lots of them swarming around. They needn’t have bothered with the blindfold, because there were plenty of cracks in the doors. I could see across to Cockatoo Island, so I was pretty sure I knew where we were. The general idea was to keep stalling.’ He looked at Skender. ‘I figured that if I didn’t come back, the people in my office would know who to warn. I also thought that if I could get to David, the two of us together might just work out how to get away.’ His wife put an arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. Andrea realised that David had told them the whole story by now.

  ‘Only then they brought in Korab Hassan. He just looked at me. I started trying to tell him that I hadn’t given him up, and one of these b . . . ’ he glanced at his wife ‘. . . these thugs sneered and said they didn’t need me after all. He said the people in my office had given them what they wanted. Well, of course they wouldn’t, except for one little toerag who I happen to know has a gambling problem . . . ’

  ‘Has he got thin red hair and glasses?’ asked Andrea.

  ‘That’s him! Why?’

  ‘I saw him in the lane, that first day. They were giving him money.’

  ‘I might have known,’ said Alex. ‘He must have been pointing out our house. I was wondering how they found out I was the one looking after the Hassans. We still kept very quiet about where you were living, Skender, but I guess there was some loose talk today when I went missing, and our toerag found out.’

  ‘So what were they going to do with you?’ asked David.

  ‘Well, they bundled Korab into a smart-looking speedboat and started tying his hands to the wheel, and they seemed to be arguing about whether to put me in too,’ said Alex. ‘Then suddenly there was bedlam, with sirens right outside, helicopters overhead and I think I could even hear police boats approaching, and with that they all . . . ’ – he held up his hand and wiggled his fingers – ‘scarpered.’

  He smiled at them all.

  ‘Next thing I knew Moshe came hurtling in. He’d half-walked, half-run all the way, hobbling down the road with his phone in his ear, rounding up the lot – half the city’s cops, Special Forces, Police Rescue – they were spilling out of the boatshed. And when Moshe threw himself at me he looked so crazy I was wo
rried some of them might think he was our captor, come back to finish us off.’

  ‘After Andrea phoned Moshe, he had a pretty good idea which boatshed it was, and luckily he was right,’ explained Linda. ‘My job was to convince the authorities about the threat to the Premier. I must say they whisked her away very efficiently, but I felt sorry for those poor kids left flat-footed at the school.’

  ‘Where is Moshe?’ asked Andrea. ‘I thought he might have come with you.’

  ‘He wasn’t sure there’d be enough room in the car, going back,’ said Linda. ‘But I think he’s also tired himself out with all the excitement. He’s not as young as he used to be. But he told me to give you an extra big hug, from him.’ She put her arms around Andrea.

  ‘Did the police have a good look at the boat?’ asked Paul O’Brien.

  ‘Well, they were trying to usher us out so we wouldn’t see anything,’ said Alex. ‘But they pulled out something that definitely looked like explosives.’

  ‘These people are worse than terrorists!’ exclaimed Paul. ‘This wasn’t even for some political ideal. Rozman was prepared to take out the Premier and anyone else who was nearby just to make sure his puppet got into power and he got his hands on that land.’

  ‘Yes, and Korab would have looked like some fanatic who was trying to kill Rozman,’ said Alex. ‘We wouldn’t have had much of a case after that.’

  ‘THEY turned up at Adam’s last night,’ said David to his father. ‘Did they give you any idea how they found me?’

  ‘They did say something about “your friend George”. Adam and I had been communicating through his art dealer George Bailey. Maybe they had some way of intercepting my calls.’

  ‘I think they’re a bit smarter than we imagine,’ said David. ‘They had all sorts of information on me.’

  ‘But there’s one thing I still don’t understand,’ said Martin. ‘What boatshed was it? How did Moshe know?’

  ‘Oh, sorry – didn’t I say?’ said Alex. ‘It was Harold Buckingham’s place. Moshe knew he’d been in cahoots with Joe Rozman, so it was obvious, really.’