DINING WITH DEVILS -- A Tasmanian Thriller

by GORDON AALBORG

  Stafford looked from Kirsten to the rifle, then back again. Then he smiled and followed Rose. But he took the weapon with him, so it didn’t matter that he was gone for what seemed a surprisingly long time. With Kendall, also chained to the eyebolt, unconscious, it wasn’t worth even trying to free them from the wall. What could she do – carry him?

  And Stafford knew that, the bastard. Knew she wouldn’t try to escape without Kendall, thus confining her effectively even if she wasn’t bound and chained.

  She heard a vehicle start up, listened as it slowly moved away. Then, to her utter surprise, heard the sound of a second engine firing up, that one, too, rumbling away over the rutted track outside.

  Dammit! Are they both going? Maybe I should try and get us loose. I can’t do anything with Kendall, but I could get a weapon of some kind, surely. There are knives everywhere if I could just reach one. Everything would be a lot easier if my hands were free.

  Which brought her to a different thought pattern. They hadn’t searched Kendall, hadn’t emptied his pockets. Didn’t he always carry a pocket knife? A tiny one, a mini Swiss Army knife on his keychain? Kirsten turned swiftly and struggled to investigate the possibility. Not an easy task with both hands bound so tightly together . . . all she could do was pat him down clumsily. Finding nothing but loose change in one front pocket and nothing at all in the other. Then remembering, with the clarity of hindsight, his complaints before they’d even left Canada about the idiotic airline rules that prohibited anything sharp, even the smallest of pocket knives.

  Typical. They worry about a man having something to clean his fingernails or slice open a letter, but they can’t stop a fiend like Stafford from traveling halfway around the world.

  She could only sigh with the frustration of it all and kneel there beside Kendall, trying not to dissolve into hysteria as she looked into his calm, sleeping face.

  My poor, innocent love. Will we both be dead before we get our shit together and make some sense of our lives? I’m sorry, Kendall . . . truly I am.

  She stared at Kendall for what seemed hours, occasionally reaching out with her clumsy, bound hands to stroke his cheek, to touch at his lips. He never moved, showed no sign whatsoever of coming out of the chemical-induced sleep.

  Then the sound of vehicle doors slamming filtered through, and she realized that Stafford hadn’t actually left, but was apparently shifting the vehicles around out there for some purpose or another. One of them, anyway; she couldn’t hear the other one at all anymore. Then everything went quiet again, and stayed that way for another five or ten minutes. Not long enough to do anything, to actually accomplish anything useful to them in their dilemma, just long enough for Kirsten’s spirits once again to flag.

  And then suddenly, he was there. Stafford, no rifle in his hands now, stepped through the doorway with a broad, cheerful smile on his lips, his voice rich with satisfaction when he spoke.

  “Right. That’s all taken care of,” he said, as if sharing some momentous news. “And now it’s bedtime. Do you need to go outside, Kirsten, because now’s the time to ask?” Even as he spoke, he was reaching the keys that would unshackle her from the wall.

  And risk you finding out how loose that eyebolt might be . . . had damned well better be? No thanks. Any chance is better than none at all.

  “I’ll just use the bucket, if you don’t mind giving me some privacy,” she replied.

  Stafford merely shrugged and opened the door to return outside. “Holler when you’re done,” he said, obviously driven by thoughts of something he considered far more interesting than Kirsten’s primitive toilet arrangements.

  When he returned, Stafford spent a few minutes sorting and resorting the various foodstuffs he’d brought, shifting things from one container to another, reading labels.

  “I might try flapjacks in the morning,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I did flapjacks. Or I could do omelets . . . we have eggs and plenty of ham.” Then he shrugged, a strange, rather perky little gesture, Kirsten thought.

  “Plenty of time to think on it tomorrow, I guess. There’ll only be the three of us to feed unless Ian surprises me by arriving early with his contributions. Rose won’t be with us for breakfast, of course, but she’ll be here for dinner.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The biggest of the Tasmanian devils had once been a giant among his kind, but he was old now, and had lost conditioning. He now weighed only about eleven pounds, but in his prime he’d weighed nearly twenty, and he was still taller than the others who were also moving through the dense forest around him. He was scarred all around his graying muzzle, the scars reminders of mating battles over many seasons. And scarred even worse in the thinning fur around his rump. Those scars were from ruckuses over food . . . not exactly battles, but the jostling for position that devils engaged in when there wasn’t space for all to eat comfortably. Instinct provided a marginal protection from such constant strife – a devil’s usual practice was to back into the fray, using its rump to shove an opponent away from the goodies. Bites nonetheless resulted, but a devil’s rump is far, far tougher than its nose.

  And a devil needs its nose. This old stager had first smelled the carrion from more than a mile away as the slow night breeze carried the scent through the dense temperate coastal forest with its pockets of genuine rainforest hidden away like jewels.

  Carrion, but fresh carrion. The scent told him that. It held the hot, coppery taste of blood in it, the delicate odors of entrails already cooling, already beginning to decay. The old devil yawned, stretched, shrugging powerful shoulders as he did so. Then he moved out of his den in a hollow beneath a windblown forest giant and began to amble his way down along the ridge.

  Around him, others of his kind also drifted through the night, following their noses, their instinct to scavenge, their hunger. Black pelts with occasional splotches of white flowed in and out of the moon-shadow beneath the hulking eucalypts as the devils congregated, eventually, around the gut pile that still steamed beneath the overhanging branch of a gigantic blue gum.

  The first arrival snuffled, searching the air for danger, although Tasmanian devils have no significant natural enemies. Protected by law for more than fifty years, they are seldom if ever shot at, nor trapped. Their biggest threat to survival comes from within . . . from the natural instinct to scavenge. It takes them out onto roads and highways after road-kill, and lures them to share that fate.

  But here there was no road with speeding trucks and blinding headlights. There was a track, to be sure, but it was merely two uneven ruts chewed into the forest floor, and while those ruts smelled of petrol and oil and rubber, they flagged no obvious danger, no threat. Not far away, but silent, totally nonthreatening, a vehicle slept beneath a tall stringy bark. The devils didn’t fear it, nor were they concerned about the person inside.

  Their attention was focused entirely on the coils of entrails there before them, the heart, lungs, liver. Steaming . . . not yet cooled. First one devil, then another rollicked in and bent to the feast, fearsomely strong jaws agape but not really needed to crush this soft food. There were only three there, in the beginning, but another soon arrived, then two more. It was enough to crowd the spoils, and soon the night was rent with the devils’ piercing, eerie screams and growls. There was pushing and shoving and snarling and caterwauling.

  When the oldest devil swaggered in, there was a momentary hiatus, but it was brief. He shouldered his way to the feast, screaming his defiance and superiority over the smaller, younger animals. Who backed off at first, at least a little, then returned to make their own claims for dominance and food.

  Sensitive noses, too, had detected new scents, potentially more lucrative ones, and piggy little eyes stared up in the moon’s pale glow to consider the carcass suspended above them. Far out of reach, it was. Pale in the moonlight, cooling quickly, no longer dripping anything tasty onto the ground where they squabbled over its insides. Hardly worth even considering. One of the y
oungest devils made a clumsy, half-hearted effort to climb the tall blue gum, but adult devils climb seldom and not well. He barely got above his own height before slumping down and rejoining the feast.

  When the headlights of the vehicle came on, they squinted momentarily, but without fear. Most of their feast had been consumed, now. Final helpings were of more significant consideration than harmless lights. Already the stronger, wiser devils were scurrying away with whatever remnants of the gut pile they could carry.

  When the vehicle lights went off again a few minutes later, only the oldest devil remained and he, too, belly filled for another day, was losing interest even in the carcass strung high in the tree above. He couldn’t reach it, couldn’t climb to it, but he wasn’t hungry anymore either. For tonight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Charlie’s dinner date began well enough, considering that he was distracted right from the start by something but didn’t quite know what it was. Something he’d seen, or heard, something that had lodged in his mind and was demanding to be processed.

  It annoyed him out of all proportion, because Charlie had his own agenda for the evening and didn’t need to be niggled and distracted. He had enough to worry about right there on the personal front. Right there in front of him, directly across the tidy expanse of the dining room in Linda McKay’s bed-and-breakfast establishment. In the form of Linda McKay herself, to be precise.

  Linda was a tidy, attractive blonde, a bit younger than Charlie but not too much younger. An intelligent, mature, and desirable woman. Highly desirable. A woman whom Charlie thought just might be as attracted to him as he was to her. A woman he was more than half convinced he wanted permanently in his life. A relationship, much as he loathed and hated and detested the word and all its implications.

  Thus far, their relationship had been limited to occasions that barely even qualified as dates – a couple of drives in the country, two Monday night meals . . . counter meals at local pubs, coffee together when they happened to meet in the main street and both had a few minutes to spare. Linda was a busy woman with a busy life. She ran her bed-and-breakfast professionally, competently, and with a serious eye to detail. The place was, after all, her home as well as her business. And it kept her very busy indeed, to the point where about the only nights she could reasonably be sure of any free time were Mondays, and sometimes not even then in a busy tourist season.

  Linda was a police widow; she knew and understood the complications of being married to a cop. Which was the good part. The bad part was that Linda’s husband had been a bad cop, a bent cop, a narcotics officer poisoned by the very substances he was charged with policing. The worst part was that Charlie had been a major, if behind the scenes, personage in the sting that eventually caught Alan McKay and then, to everyone’s gratification, saw him die of a heart attack even before charges could be laid. Which meant no huge publicity issues, no media feeding frenzy, no political bun fight in which the state police got kicked from pillar to post with no visible means of defense.

  McKay’s situation was no secret within the police community, and Charlie was all too aware that Linda would have known . . . must have known her husband was bent, but as to his own involvement . . . ? Charlie was reasonably certain Linda didn’t know that, knew he would eventually have to tell her, didn’t know how to do it, or when, or even if he truly, logically, should.

  What Charlie did know was that he should never – could never – tell Linda that her husband had died cursing Charlie to hell and back, even accusing Charlie of setting him up because Charlie was infatuated with Linda. And that he would have to tell her. Tonight. Because he couldn’t not tell her, not if their fragile situation was to have a chance of thriving.

  At the time of the accusations, Charlie had only ever met Linda once. At a police function in Launceston several years earlier. And had spoken no more than five words to her. Five words – no more.

  But – infatuated? The truth of that was never in doubt . . . then, or now. Charlie had taken one look at Linda McKay, upon being introduced to her all those years ago. And had been attracted, no doubt of that. Had said, “A pleasure to meet you,” listened to her polite response in a husky, contralto voice that somehow reached out and touched him. And had become infatuated, done like a dinner, as they say.

  Alan McKay’s accusations, nonetheless, were nonsense. Charlie hadn’t seen or spoken to Linda after that initial meeting until long after McKay’s death, and Linda’s move to St. Helens. Which didn’t explain why he somehow felt strangely guilty when he thought about those fateful words, uttered as Charlie was leaving McKay in custody, less than an hour before the man’s heart attack and death.

  Others had heard the accusations. Other policemen, most of them more directly involved with McKay than they were with Charlie. They were stationed in Launceston, as McKay had been, while Charlie, even then, had opted for the existence of a country cop. He didn’t do politics well, least of all office politics.

  Still, he’d wondered then as he did now – had one of them told Linda? Or told his wife and she had told Linda? It was a worry, despite his own moral certainty that he’d done the right thing. Charlie was a thoroughly decent man. He had his faults and they were legion, but he knew right from wrong and always at least tried to do the right thing.

  He’d immediately put his unexpected lust and infatuation away in an emotional bottom drawer. And left it there, although he was honest enough to admit he’d taken it out occasionally over the years, dusted it off, fantasized a little, even. And then returned it to the drawer, slammed the drawer. Done the right thing, dammit!

  And all these years later, he wasn’t much better at subterfuge and subtlety, at least in his personal life, which was why he’d decided that tonight, this very night and pretty damned soon, too, he would bring the whole sordid mess out in the open. The issue was one of when. He’d already lost the first opportunity, when Linda had handed him a goblet filled with the wine he’d bought earlier in the day.

  Then she’d lifted her own glass in a silent toast, and her eyes had glistened with mischief as she smiled and looked at him over the rim of her own goblet. And he had been dumbstruck, had wanted only to drown in those eyes, never to return again to the real world. It was like being fifteen again, suffering from that first adolescent crush.

  Charlie sat down at the dinner table, followed Linda with calf-eyed attention as she brought in the platters of potato, vegetables, finally the crown roast of pork with its decorative little doily caps on the ends of the ribs. He rose, politely, when it became obvious she was about to seat herself, rushed around the table to hold her chair. Once again basked in the warmth of her smile as he returned to his own seat.

  And then his cell phone – which he thought he’d turned off, given the circumstances – chirped like a demented sparrow that promptly shat all over everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The chief fingerprint techie in Hobart was not a happy camper. She’d had a rough weekend, a pig of a Monday already, and she’d hoped to knock off a bit early. Quite a bit early. Also, her period was due and she knew, usually to her later regret, that she could give PMS a whole new definition if she wasn’t careful. So did her coworkers, which is why the one who brought in the package from Launceston merely dropped it on the desk and fled.

  Her first inclination was to leave it for the next morning. There was no PDQ or ASAP notice attached, nothing except a scrawled note indicating that the sergeant at St. Helens had called about it earlier in the day. Which stirred her curiosity. Why would Charlie Banes be interested in fingerprints obtained from a knife found at Mole Creek?

  Seven fingerprints, to be exact. Thumb and first three fingers of a right hand, and thumb and forefinger from the left. Exactly what you’d expect from somebody opening a stock knife in the usual way. Two of the prints ever-so-slightly smudged, but the rest as clear as the proverbial bell. Good lifts – somebody had taken the proper care to do it right.

  A litt
le curiosity can be a dangerous thing. Almost before she realized it herself, the techie was started on the process that would see the prints run through the scanner for checking by the national computerized data bank.

  So much for an early day of it.

  Other work came in to keep her busy during the wait, but she was bored and restless and busily clock-watching when the results finally arrived. The techie looked at them, slowly digested the information that accompanied the matches – perfect matches. No mistake! – then took a deep breath before reading it all again.

  This can’t be happening. It is not, NOT possible. Somebody’s having a lend of me, here . . . this is all some sort of practical joke. It has to be! And it is not, Not, NOT funny!

  Whereupon the PMS crankiness evolved first to a flurry of mind-fucking, then became a raging storm and whirled into a tornado before it took on a life of its own and upgraded to a full-scale cyclone of truly astonishing proportions. E-mails were sent, received, replied to. Phone lines sizzled and snapped and crackled with the intensity. Harsh words were exchanged as the storm raged up the Tassie police food chain like a new strain of botulism.

  And then down again . . . ending with Sergeant Charlie Banes of the St. Helens police station. Charlie Banes, wine goblet in hand, lust in his heart and an emotional dilemma to deal with. Charlie Banes, who picked up his cell phone to hear his commanding officer’s angry, impatient, unhappy voice.

  “Have I disturbed you at something important, Charlie? I certainly hope so, because I’ve just had my evening ruined on your behalf.”

  “I . . . can you hang on a tick, Sir?” Charlie didn’t wait for a reply. He shot an apologetic glance at Linda and another toward the meal that he knew instinctively would surely be cold before he got back to it. If he got back to it.