Hindsight

by AA Bell

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Thunder drummed overhead as Lockman reached the side wall of the house, and in a flash of lightning, he saw that the lock on the laundry window wasn’t just broken, it was missing.

  Worn paint and polished shimmy marks on the timber ledge suggested someone had been using the alternative entrance for years, but when he tried to slide it open it during the rumble of thunder, the glass frame stuck part way and refused to budge. In the next flash of lightning he discovered the cause; someone had clogged the sliding track on the inside with washing powder. The half-empty box had been left spilled on the top of the washing machine in a room that was otherwise clean to the point of gleaming, so no doubt the culprit was someone with no respect for the occupants.

  Lockman felt bad luck riding his shoulder again, just as he heard the chime of the front doorbell. No time to waste looking for another weak point of entry. In order to verify whether or not Ben Chiron and Corporal Tarin Sei were inside — as hostages, or as bait, if at all — first, he had to get in there. Silently.

  He bolted back to the driveway in time to hear the front door open — timber door only, he noticed, since the metal security screen should have made a whole different sound. If the respondent was armed, there’d be weapons aimed at Grady by now through the metal screen and fly mesh.

  Lockman sidled along the front wall towards the main entrance where the front door was recessed into the formal portico. He crouched low under a window, but stayed crouching as he approached, hoping Grady was professional enough not to give him away with the slip of a glance in his direction.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked a gruff sounding male at the door.

  ‘Found something you lost,’ Grady replied. ‘She’s in the car. Blind girl, so high.’ He moved his arm to demonstrate Mira’s height, using three fingers, which Lockman took as the number of occupants that Grady could see inside the house. ‘Good thing I did too. She was on her way to report Greggie for rape and abduction. He’s not answering his phone. Is he here?’

  ‘Maybe … How did you know to bring her here?’

  ‘She told me. See the uniform? This makes me trustworthy. She said Greggie had some funny idea about doing her here with a couple of others he’s been entertaining lately. And this place happens to belong to an ex-girlfriend of mine — a real crash and burn relationship — so I was kinda hoping she might be here and I could slip in a little entertainment myself, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Entertainment,’ the guy repeated with a mean chuckle. ‘Yeah, right. So bring in the blind bitch.’

  ‘I’ll need a hand,’ Grady replied. ‘The car’s up the road a way. Tree’s down in the storm. I couldn’t get round it myself, and she’s being a handful. Had to cuff her top and tail to get her this far.’ He laughed trying to make light of it. ‘Maybe two to carry her, or three to shift the tree so I can drive the last bit?’

  ‘Hey, Douggie!’ shouted the thug at the door. ‘How much do you want us to help this guy?’

  ‘Be generous,’ came the ominous reply and Grady was already stepping back as the first shot fired. He fell but Lockman swung around the corner before he hit the ground, keeping low and aiming high through the security grille into each of the three successive kill zones, needing only three shots in quick succession to drop all three. Then, dragging Grady to safety around the corner, he heard windows smashing all around the house, and as he moved back for the cover of the portico, he saw smoke billowing out from the open door. With the screen still locked, he couldn’t get in, but he could see what was happening through the smoke using thermal imaging.

  Brette’s boys were inside, proceeding swiftly from room to room, then upstairs. He heard another rapid exchange of fire, followed by shouts of surrender, and then Brette himself came to the front door and unlocked it.

  ‘Forget your keys?’ he asked, grinning as he stepped over the dead and wounded. ‘Rest time’s over, lads. Wipe your feet.’

  Finnigan came out to help Lockman with Grady while two others cleared the hallway. Together, Lockman and Finnigan hefted Detective Innes-Grady through to the white leather lounge suite adjacent to the piano, while Brette held the door, admiring the single section of grille where Lockman had pierced all three rounds on their successive trajectories.

  ‘Damn, boy!’ he said, as he measured the hole against the end of his thumb. ‘Can you thread three needles in the dark at once, or what? We should rename you the seamstress.’

  ‘What have we got?’ Lockman asked, staying focused, but the moment he leaned to inspect Grady for wounds, the patient slid off the leather lounge onto the floor.

  ‘Mel will kill me if I get blood on that,’ he said, wincing in pain. It was spreading down his shirt from his shoulder with a source not far from his collar bone. ‘I guess I’m gunna have a scar to match Ben’s now.’

  ‘You’ll live,’ Finnigan said, reaching into his kit for his medi-pouch. Behind him, another man in their team was calling in a med-evac, while upstairs and down, the others were rounding up the wounded and stabilising their injuries, when a knock came at the front door, followed by the creak of the security screen and timid footsteps on the tiles in the hall.

  Assault rifles bristled to bear around Lockman in the open-plan living room, but the only intruders came in the form of the park ranger leading Mira, hand in hand.

  ‘Hey, do bad guys knock first?’ Gabby complained. ‘You people need to turn on some lights in here. I feel like the blind leading the blinder.’

  Brette nodded, reassuring his men that the newcomers were friendly, and sent a man to the power-box, then the house flooded with light, also taking the edge off the epileptic effect of the lightning that flooded in through gaps in the wall of drapes that had been drawn to close out the main view.

  ‘Is he here?’ Mira asked, sounding fragile now as well as looking it.

  ‘One dead, two critical and three with flesh wounds,’ Brette reported, mainly to Lockman. ‘Two of those were upstairs posing as captives.’

  ‘Were they ever here?’ Lockman asked.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Brette replied, then with a glance to the two women, he leaned closer to Lockman to whisper, ‘There’s a lot more blood here than we spilled.’

  ‘I’m taking her up for a change of dry clothes,’ Gabby said. ‘That okay?’

  Lockman glanced to Brette, wondering why he hadn’t reported Mira’s whereabouts to General Garland yet.

  ‘Sure, ladies,’ Finnigan said. ‘Just stay out of the bathroom.’

  ‘Stay out of the bathroom,’ Gabby muttered as she led Mira upstairs and turned for the door. ‘How in the world does he expect a girl to clean mud off her face and hands without using a bathroom? You go in and get the hot water started,’ she said, cracking the door open quietly for Mira and peeking in to give the all-clear that nobody was hiding in there. ‘I’ll go find a fresh change of clothing.’

  ‘Under Ben’s bed,’ Mira said. ‘On the mezzanine level.’

  ‘Under his bed? Wow, and I thought you said you were only homework. That’s some homework!’

  ‘It’s not like that, Gabby. I wish it was, but it can’t be. He might as well be my big brother.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Gabby closed the door quietly and made off down the hall, spotting familiar colours folded on Mel’s bed along the way and returning swiftly with a bundle while the men downstairs frisked the survivors and other bodies for evidence of Ben’s whereabouts, and attended to wounded.

  Knocking once, Gabby entered with a white skirt and a pretty pink top that she’d helped to buy from the surf shop. She noticed Mira at the sink holding something that looked to be wrapped in a black ribbon while the tap poured water and steam into the sink, but Gabby couldn’t help her with her hands already full.

  ‘For some reason these were on the bed in Mel’s room,’ she said as she closed the door and hung the clothes on the hook behind it. ‘Looks to me as if she’s been reinforcing all the buttons by hand
— just one more of a million queer little quirks of that woman. I notice she’s gone mad in here with a new cleaning fetish too — everything in its place — and drawn circles around all the precise places she wants the soap and shampoo kept from now on. Mean bitch, how does she expect you to —’

  Gabby heard Mira sobbing and turned to find Mira with her glasses off, cheeks streaked with tears and eyes clamped tightly shut as if her tears stung like acid.

  ‘Hey, honey,’ she said, rubbing Mira’s back as the room continued to fill with steam. ‘We’ll find him. All those men down there searching, they’re bound to find a clue somewhere!’

  Mira shook her head and her body trembled, trying to hold it all in. She wiped her eyes dry before hiding them behind her glasses. ‘I smelled blood,’ she mumbled, dropping her glasses and rocking back and forwards with her eyes closed. ‘I just wanted the soap. Just the soap …’ Instead, she resumed stroking the ribbon-wrapped plastic pump dispenser in her left hand as if it was the tummy of a small pet bird that had died. In a way, the pump nozzle did look a lot like a beak, but …

  ‘Honey, what is that?’

  ‘A peace offering.’ Mira sank to her knees and hugged it to her cheek. ‘It’s all my fault. I totally misjudged her.’

  ‘You’re in shock. It’s just a toothpaste dispenser.’

  ‘I know. Isn’t it perfect?’

  Turning down the hot water and up with the cold, Gabby spun on her heel to find a face cloth — and on the toilet, she saw a broad smear of blood.

  Curiosity drew her closer to lift the lid, but the moment she did, she regretted it. A human hand reached up from the water, severed.

  Gabby stumbled back beside Mira, gasping, and only then did she notice the congealed patterns of blood in the corners of the shower where someone had tried and failed to wash a lot more of someone’s life away.

  ‘We have to get out.’ She grabbed Mira for the fastest change of clothes in history, wiped her face using the insides of the ugly orange overalls she’d been wearing, dropped the wet t-shirt and overalls in the dirty clothes basket on top of a bloodied towel, and helped her climb into the new clothes, glad that Mira was too stunned to put up a fight. Then she patted Mira’s cheeks to restore colour, and hauled her out and down the hall to the stairway.

  ‘She looks worse,’ Finnigan said as Gabby guided her carefully down each tread. ‘So do you.’

  ‘Oh, oui? Stud, with such a pick-up line you must have girlfriends coming out of your ears!’

  Men laughed all around her, both soldiers and prisoners, but Gabby ignored them, leaving Mira at the bottom of the stairs to cross the room and whisper to Lockman, ‘Did your soldier buddies tell you what’s up there?’

  Lockman nodded. ‘A forensic team is on the way to confirm if it’s male or female.’

  ‘I warned you not to go in there,’ Brette scolded quietly.

  ‘Oui? Then next time you warn a girl not to use a bathroom,’ Gabby seethed, clenching her fists, ‘you’d better tell her why, or shake your finger and warn her “or else”!’

  ‘Any progress?’ Mira asked, doing a fair job at recovering her composure, and Gabby cast glares from Lockman to Brette and Finnigan and back again, also needing an answer.

  Any progress? she’d asked, and looking at her pained expression, Lockman couldn’t bring himself to disappoint her.

  ‘Any minute now,’ he said and scanned the room for the least wounded of the prisoners to interrogate. He spotted one with a superficial leg wound who, aside from a shaved head, had a strong resemblance to Detective Clyde Moser. Like Grady, the guy was wearing a cop’s uniform, while his expression betrayed the poisoned heart and eyes of the thug. Striding at him determinedly, Lockman drew out the handcuffs he’d taken from Mira. ‘Hey, Detective,’ he called, glancing sideways to Grady. ‘Borrow your keys, mate?’

  ‘Left pocket, keychain …’ He leaned, inviting Finnigan to take them and toss them across to Lockman.

  ‘You’re Douggie?’ Lockman asked, but received no reply.

  ‘Douggie Moser,’ Grady said as Finnigan applied more pressure to his shoulder wound, causing him to wince and grit his teeth. ‘That scumbag’s … ow! … a dirty cop. Different dirty to me.’

  Lockman nodded. ‘He was at the shop when your cover was blown, and since he obviously brought that news here to warn The Big G, I’m guessing he may want to help us out now to save himself some pain during prosecution.’

  Moser spat at his feet.

  ‘Where are they?’ Lockman asked nicely again, but Moser only glared at him, so Lockman grabbed him by the collar and spun him against the stairway banister to cuff his hands behind his back. ‘How’s the leg?’ he asked nicely, turning him round again.

  ‘Put another bullet in it!’ Gabby shouted. ‘Or kick him, at least!’

  Moser grinned smugly. ‘Ain’t nothing you can do to me. I’m screwed now, every which way.’

  ‘Join the club,’ Lockman said and clenched his fist to deliver initiation.

  ‘Allow me,’ Brette said, intercepting him. ‘This here is my specialty.’

  ‘Ah, the dark art of interrogation,’ Finnigan said, still attending to Grady’s shoulder. ‘The sarge is a wizard.’

  Lockman hesitated, unwilling to cross the next line into that field of morally repugnant behaviour, but inspired, he smiled wickedly. ‘I’ve got him.’ He patted Moser’s cheek and winked. ‘I just need to scrape some dirt off before medics arrive.’

  He dragged him around beside the piano, ignoring his cries of pain as he shoved Moser’s back up against the brick pillar and pinned him by the neck with one arm. The room fell silent with anticipation as he reached slowly into a pocket of his army parts.

  Moser started sweating, his eyes bulging with fear as Lockman withdrew a razor blade. Dragging it down his own cheek first — painstakingly rasping off each short whisker from his five o’clock shadow and pushing hard enough to draw his own blood — Lockman grinned wickedly, and then slowly and deliberately, scraped the blade down the bricks beside Moser’s face.

  ‘You don’t scare me!’ Moser cried, but the tremor in his voice belied him. ‘Not with all these witnesses! You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘Don’t count on me as a witness, scumbag,’ Grady said. ‘I’m delirious.’

  ‘Did I mention we’d wait outside?’ Brette added. ‘We’re getting too much blood on the rug.’ He gave his men the order to shift the other two conscious prisoners out to the beach in preparation for evacuation and as he opened the glass sliding door to the beachside patio, he found that the door behaved much like a volume switch for the storm and ocean. ‘Gotta love this weather,’ he said, holding aside the drapes as the others filed passed him. ‘You can’t hear a damn thing out here.’

  ‘We’re next to tear strips off him!’ Gabby said, shifting Mira to the couch near Grady as spectators.

  Lockman remained focused on Moser until the others were gone. ‘Let’s see how much noise we can make,’ he said slowly, deliberately, and all the while grinning wickedly until he reached Moser’s belt and unfastened the buckle.

  ‘You crazy, sick son of a bitch!’ Moser swore. ‘You won’t hurt me! You can’t …!’

  Lockman’s grin widened. ‘Oh, it’s not me you need to worry about, pal.’ He scraped the razor down the bricks one more time, then raised it level with Moser’s eyes to ensure he could see how damaged the blade had become. ‘That there young lady is blind,’ he said without taking his eyes off his captive. ‘As you probably know, she also happens to be the girlfriend of the guy who owns this place. So I’m going to give you one last chance to explain exactly where she can find him, or I’m going to put this razor into her shaky … little … hands and let her down there to shave you to match your head.’

  Moser trembled but remained resolute, even as Lockman leaned the point of his elbow deeper against his neck.

  ‘Let me have him,’ Gabby pleaded.

  ‘You haven’t spent the past ten years locked up wit
h crazies,’ Lockman argued. ‘She’s the only one here who can mess him up bad and not be prosecuted … Think about it,’ he added for Moser’s benefit. ‘It’d be kinder to stick your dick in a blender.’

  Moser gulped but tightened his lips, prompting Lockman to call Mira, who was already flushing red with rage and tensing for vengeance.

  Lockman reached down and tugged on Moser’s trouser zipper, causing Detective Grady to look away as if he couldn’t bear to watch after all.

  ‘So what’ll it be?’ Lockman asked with a chuckle. ‘Butch or Brazilian? And if you’re lucky, no amputation.’

  PART NINE

  Triple Crossed

  Evil deeds from evil causes spring

  Aristophanes

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Lurking silently in the shipping channel between Stradbroke Island and the mainland, the submarine commander kept surveillance on the docks at the nearest end of the Drift Inn’s marina, where a particular fishing trawler remained at anchor. On the deck, he could see a mini-forklift loading the last crate of ice cylinders; each tank the size and shape of a torpedo. Thirty in all — two sizes, both diameters matching his own tube specifications.

  Through the green haze of enhanced night vision, he saw the trawler captain inspect the last tank personally, and as the forklift driver dismounted, the sub-commander magnified the image, at the same time focusing and narrowing the field of interference for the long-distance listening devices in his periscope to enable him to listen in on their conversation as well as watch it.

  ‘… and the square tanks would fit more storage space on the same crate,’ said the forklift driver.

  ‘Square tanks can’t be programmed to swim home full of fish,’ replied the captain. ‘This way we can double or triple our payload per trip.’ He unlocked and twisted a control cone on the nose and like a coffin lid, the side of the tank popped open.